No, they are not "all" developing for Linux. You've mentioned one games company and a publically-funded organisation, who just happen to have brought out a free game for promotional purposes. Do you have, for example, any details of Doom 3 for Linux sales figures?
Actually, I think you may even have read it 2-3 weeks ago. Can we have a moratorium on "Linux on the Verge of Gaming Paradise" until, say, Linux has a market share that justifies the heavy hitters developing games for it.
> Although I don't use it on Linux or Mac OS X, > Skype works pretty well, voice quality is good
With broadband and good-quality microphones, make that "fantastic". I was a slight skeptic 'til I used it first, and couldn't believe the sound quality, even with bog-standard stereo speakers and a desktop microphone. I invested in a proper USB noise-cancelling headset, and it's great being able to conference-call friends of mine in California and Belgium while playing "Day of Defeat" (the voice quality in Skype being far superior to anything offered by online games themselves).
In fact, since I recently was able to get cable broadband, and since I hate my current phone company, I've even ditched our landline altogether, and use SkypeOut for outgoing calls to telephones. Cheap and the voice-quality isn't bad (not quite as good as a normal phone call, but quite usable).
I'm not sure about the US, where I think landline rentals and calls tend to be a lot cheaper; certainly in Ireland, I think VOIP will be the killer app of the next few years.
Oh lord, is someone bringing up "man" again? Let's ignore the total lack of features that any other help system have, and concentrate on the dense text. From a past post of mine:
--
Just as an illustration, try "man find". It took me years to figure out that "find . -name {file_name}" would find all files matching {file_name} below the current directory - which I imagine is the usage of 99% of users.
Check out the description of the tool:
"find searches the directory tree rooted at each given file name by evaluating the given expression from left to right, according to the rules of precedence (see section OPERATORS), until the outcome is known (the left hand side is false for and operations, true for or), at which point find moves on to the next file name."
Do you imagine that most users would know what on earth that meant? Why not at least prepend it with "This tool enables you to find files"? Then give one or two examples of common usage? _Then_ by all means bombard them with the myriad of possible parameters.
I would hope that everyone would mod the parent up. Not that I agree with it - I vehemently disagree with it. But hopefully the more people who see this kind of attitude, the more people will realise that advocating Linux boxes as gaming machines is really just pie-in-the-sky thinking. For god's sake, people - PC gaming is declining because people think installing and configuring games on Windows is too complicated! And then here comes the usual zealot whose response to some well-founded criticism is "Well, nyah, you're stupid".
At work, I use Linux and Windows; at home, I use Windows. Let me tell you, it's a relief to get home, away from the pain of having to endlessly search forums in order to do the simplest things. It took me two hours the other day to install Firefox! A frickin' browser!
* Linux weenie: Linux is GrAtE! * Non-linux weenie: But it took my 2 days to install Firefox! * Linux weenie: Linux is GrAtE! U'Re St00pid! * Non-linux weenie: Um, OK *Fires up Windows again*
Much as I was underwhelmed by the Meeja Lab's output (see the parody of it from a friend of mine at http://meejalab.tripod.com/), I was surprised they pulled the plug on it so ignomiously. Our Prime Minster Bertie has already seen one beloved project, a huge unwanted sports stadium/complex cancelled, so I assumed he could pull strings to keep the lab going.
A side impact of this will probably be a reevaluation of the so-called Digital Hub in the St Jame's Gate area of Dublin, where the Lab was located. Apart from a lot of wind, not much has actual been done (apart from, I'm presu,ming, generous grants to companies). The area itself is rather isolated; I know of one company that has relocated simply because they felt the area didn't give a great impression of businesses there; a friend of mine felt quite frightened walking to work there at any time, and she said that the frequent burnt-out cars beside the building didn't exactly impress customers. And it doesn't help that, mainly thanks to Eircom, Ireland's broadband infrastructure lags behind most other developed countries.
XLiveCD does gives the option to install. I haven't tried this personally, but I did mention to other writers that they could simply mount the ISO using something like DaemonTools, negating the need for a physical CD and drive.
Using "ssh -Y" to connect to an account negates any problems with setting DISPLAY, etc. It really is damn simply, leaving me more time to write. It's sweet; kudos to the people to came up with this.
Oversimplification? No way. Cygwin is a dog to install; I couldn't get it installed, but was relieved to hear that two very smart techies I know couldn't get it working either. This is an absolute lifesaver for me personally (technical writer working on Windows, but documenting UNIX software).
So, what do you do? Bring the game back to the store? There's no box, and, oops, no store.
Listen, I bought through Steam and I'm quite happy with my purchase so far. But it didn't give me any confidence that, when I bought the game through Steam, I got several errors and even a message accusing me of fraud! Also, when I recently emailed their support line about a problem I was having, I received no response whatsoever.
In the end, the problem fixed itself, but what if it didn't? I would hope that in that instance, I could simply get a refund from my credit card company. But I don't know about this.
In the end, I hope Steam works out and is a benefit for gamers. But that depends on Valve putting the resources (including bandwidth) and manpower into dealing with problems related to it. At the moment, their score card is only a C.
Sorry, but this is considered insightful? +3 modded? If no-one who bought products had any rights, there wouldn't be such a concept as consumer rights, would there?
Imagine, someone buys a car and it explodes into flames. Hey, nobody put a gun to your head and made you buy it, buddy...
That brings memories of playing "It's a Crime" by play-by-mail almost 20 years ago! Fond memories, though I had to give up as it was a little expensive, taking most of my pocket money. "GTA Vice City" for the stamp-licking era.
The difference is, a miner is pretty much a miner: their output won't vary very much...
You're joking. Right? Mining was primarily a physical activity in those days. Whatever makes you think that one guy didn't hack out coal/etc faster than another?
I downloaded Steam a few months in order to play the latest version of Day of Defeat, one of my favourite games. I initially found it buggy, but it seemed to work reasonably well, so was quite happy to keep it installed.
However, I was a little skeptical of Valve's promotion of it as a content delivery system, and considering the prices of Half-Life 2 over Steam, I think my skepticism has been borne out.
For example, the UK retail version on DVD of Half-Life 2 is EUR 39 (including S&H) from play.com to Ireland, while to buy even the equivalent Bronze package over Steam is EUR 49 incl. tax (an extra EUR 10, not counting the hidden cost of having to use up at least half my monthly broadband quota to download it - and for Ireland, my quota is pretty generous).
I'm not sure why Valve didn't choose to lure consumers into buying over Steam by simply offering packages that were more financially lucrative that buying through retail. To be _more_ expensive strikes my ridiculous, when I have to go to all the expense of downloading and backing up the game myself. Not withstanding, I like the idea of having a box to look at.
If I could have bought the Bronze edition for, say, EUR 29, then I would certainly have considered it. At the current price, I know which way my wallet will be voting.
Not only is the final score higher than Doom 3 but, more importantly, the text of the review is far more positive. The Doom 3 review, while ending in a high score, was full of caveats (fully justified by what is, in the end, a rather dull trudge through corridors); the Half-Life 2 review is basically 8 pages of "man, this is beautiful".
I don't have a DVD drive on any of my computers yet, and don't really plan to get one any time soon
Why?
DVD drives are cheap. Even dual-layer DVD burners can now be gotten for StgUK40 (EUR60). I tried to sell my previous DVD drive on eBay the other day for £5, and didn't get a single bid. I don't see why there is such a resistance to this upgrade. It makes installation a lot smoother, and also (I would guess) means that it's a lot cheaper to get a replacement if you do scratch/break your media (I'm basing this on EA, who charge £7.50 _per CD_ to replace your disks.)
The problem with dual-layer burners at the moment isn't really the speed but the price of the blank media. I got an NEC 2510a for the ridiculously cheap price of 80, which burns dual-layer at 2.4x - more than acceptable in my book. However, while I can get good-quality single layer blanks for around 60c each, dual-layer blanks are around 6. So I'll be holding off on those for a while, I think....
This has to be a parody. Please? I can't believe anyone, no matter what age (and she is 19) is quite that stupid:
my dad was tellin me just the other day he caught some
pakistani dude tryin 2 sneak a bomb into a preschool (my dad is a cop) but he caught them. GO BACK TO ARABIA U EVIL PPL UNITED WE STAND GOD BLESS AMERICA
Ah yes, I remember being 13 years old and seeing "Return of the Jedi" on pirate VHS in the pub next door. That is, through the door, since kids weren't allowed in. Didn't stop me then going to see it in the cinema of course.
Just as an illustration, try "man find". It took me years to figure out that "find . -name {file_name}" would find all files matching {file_name} below the current directory - which I imagine is the usage of 99% of users.
Check out the description of the tool:
"find searches the directory tree rooted at each given file name by evaluating the given expression from left to right, according to the rules of precedence (see section OPERATORS), until the outcome is known (the left hand side is false for and operations, true for or), at which point find moves on to the next file name."
Do you imagine that most users would know what on earth that meant? Why not at least prepend it with "This tool enables you to find files"? Then give one or two examples of common usage? _Then_ by all means bombard them with the myriad of possible parameters.
think the idea is your favorite email software isn't available everywhere. If you're ever using a computer other than your home desktop, and you want to read your email, you don't have the option of launching up whatever email client you like-- because the computer won't have it.
With Outlook Express/Hotmail, I have the best of both worlds. At home and the office, I have a full-fledged email client which allows me to access, IMAP-style, a centralised email account, back up mails, store address books (which I can sync with PDAs, phones, etc). On the move, I simply go to www.hotmail.com. Sorry, I still don't get the whole Gmail buzz. I have an account and haven't used it; why bother? Maybe if I was in the habit of sending multi-MB attachments, but I'm not.
My personal view on this is that it is the continuity of your consciousness that makes you *you*. So I personally would never be frozen or ever take a transporter.
Slashdot Mirror
No, they are not "all" developing for Linux. You've mentioned one games company and a publically-funded organisation, who just happen to have brought out a free game for promotional purposes. Do you have, for example, any details of Doom 3 for Linux sales figures?
P.
Actually, I think you may even have read it 2-3 weeks ago. Can we have a moratorium on "Linux on the Verge of Gaming Paradise" until, say, Linux has a market share that justifies the heavy hitters developing games for it.
P.
> Although I don't use it on Linux or Mac OS X,
> Skype works pretty well, voice quality is good
With broadband and good-quality microphones, make that "fantastic". I was a slight skeptic 'til I used it first, and couldn't believe the sound quality, even with bog-standard stereo speakers and a desktop microphone. I invested in a proper USB noise-cancelling headset, and it's great being able to conference-call friends of mine in California and Belgium while playing "Day of Defeat" (the voice quality in Skype being far superior to anything offered by online games themselves).
In fact, since I recently was able to get cable broadband, and since I hate my current phone company, I've even ditched our landline altogether, and use SkypeOut for outgoing calls to telephones. Cheap and the voice-quality isn't bad (not quite as good as a normal phone call, but quite usable).
I'm not sure about the US, where I think landline rentals and calls tend to be a lot cheaper; certainly in Ireland, I think VOIP will be the killer app of the next few years.
P.
Oh lord, is someone bringing up "man" again? Let's ignore the total lack of features that any other help system have, and concentrate on the dense text. From a past post of mine:
--
Just as an illustration, try "man find". It took me years to figure out that "find . -name {file_name}" would find all files matching {file_name} below the current directory - which I imagine is the usage of 99% of users.
Check out the description of the tool:
"find searches the directory tree rooted at each given file name by evaluating the given expression from left to right, according to the rules of precedence (see section OPERATORS), until the outcome is known (the left hand side is false for and operations, true for or), at which point find moves on to the next file name."
Do you imagine that most users would know what on earth that meant? Why not at least prepend it with "This tool enables you to find files"? Then give one or two examples of common usage? _Then_ by all means bombard them with the myriad of possible parameters.
I would hope that everyone would mod the parent up. Not that I agree with it - I vehemently disagree with it. But hopefully the more people who see this kind of attitude, the more people will realise that advocating Linux boxes as gaming machines is really just pie-in-the-sky thinking. For god's sake, people - PC gaming is declining because people think installing and configuring games on Windows is too complicated! And then here comes the usual zealot whose response to some well-founded criticism is "Well, nyah, you're stupid".
At work, I use Linux and Windows; at home, I use Windows. Let me tell you, it's a relief to get home, away from the pain of having to endlessly search forums in order to do the simplest things. It took me two hours the other day to install Firefox! A frickin' browser!
P.
The circle of life:
* Linux weenie: Linux is GrAtE!
* Non-linux weenie: But it took my 2 days
to install Firefox!
* Linux weenie: Linux is GrAtE! U'Re St00pid!
* Non-linux weenie: Um, OK *Fires up Windows again*
P.
A side impact of this will probably be a reevaluation of the so-called Digital Hub in the St Jame's Gate area of Dublin, where the Lab was located. Apart from a lot of wind, not much has actual been done (apart from, I'm presu,ming, generous grants to companies). The area itself is rather isolated; I know of one company that has relocated simply because they felt the area didn't give a great impression of businesses there; a friend of mine felt quite frightened walking to work there at any time, and she said that the frequent burnt-out cars beside the building didn't exactly impress customers. And it doesn't help that, mainly thanks to Eircom, Ireland's broadband infrastructure lags behind most other developed countries.
P.
Oh come on, don't leave us in suspense - I hope you kept some of it?
P.
XLiveCD does gives the option to install. I haven't tried this personally, but I did mention to other writers that they could simply mount the ISO using something like DaemonTools, negating the need for a physical CD and drive.
Using "ssh -Y" to connect to an account negates any problems with setting DISPLAY, etc. It really is damn simply, leaving me more time to write. It's sweet; kudos to the people to came up with this.
P.
Oversimplification? No way. Cygwin is a dog to install; I couldn't get it installed, but was relieved to hear that two very smart techies I know couldn't get it working either. This is an absolute lifesaver for me personally (technical writer working on Windows, but documenting UNIX software).
P.
So, what do you do? Bring the game back to the store? There's no box, and, oops, no store.
Listen, I bought through Steam and I'm quite happy with my purchase so far. But it didn't give me any confidence that, when I bought the game through Steam, I got several errors and even a message accusing me of fraud! Also, when I recently emailed their support line about a problem I was having, I received no response whatsoever.
In the end, the problem fixed itself, but what if it didn't? I would hope that in that instance, I could simply get a refund from my credit card company. But I don't know about this.
In the end, I hope Steam works out and is a benefit for gamers. But that depends on Valve putting the resources (including bandwidth) and manpower into dealing with problems related to it. At the moment, their score card is only a C.
P.
Sorry, but this is considered insightful? +3 modded? If no-one who bought products had any rights, there wouldn't be such a concept as consumer rights, would there?
Imagine, someone buys a car and it explodes into flames. Hey, nobody put a gun to your head and made you buy it, buddy...
P.
That brings memories of playing "It's a Crime" by play-by-mail almost 20 years ago! Fond memories, though I had to give up as it was a little expensive, taking most of my pocket money. "GTA Vice City" for the stamp-licking era.
Wonder is there an email version?
P.
The difference is, a miner is pretty much a miner: their output won't vary very much...
You're joking. Right? Mining was primarily a physical activity in those days. Whatever makes you think that one guy didn't hack out coal/etc faster than another?
P
A few googles have revealed nothing about what this application actually does; can anyone elaborate?
P.
I downloaded Steam a few months in order to play the latest version of Day of Defeat, one of my favourite games. I initially found it buggy, but it seemed to work reasonably well, so was quite happy to keep it installed.
However, I was a little skeptical of Valve's promotion of it as a content delivery system, and considering the prices of Half-Life 2 over Steam, I think my skepticism has been borne out.
For example, the UK retail version on DVD of Half-Life 2 is EUR 39 (including S&H) from play.com to Ireland, while to buy even the equivalent Bronze package over Steam is EUR 49 incl. tax (an extra EUR 10, not counting the hidden cost of having to use up at least half my monthly broadband quota to download it - and for Ireland, my quota is pretty generous).
I'm not sure why Valve didn't choose to lure consumers into buying over Steam by simply offering packages that were more financially lucrative that buying through retail. To be _more_ expensive strikes my ridiculous, when I have to go to all the expense of downloading and backing up the game myself. Not withstanding, I like the idea of having a box to look at.
If I could have bought the Bronze edition for, say, EUR 29, then I would certainly have considered it. At the current price, I know which way my wallet will be voting.
P.
Not only is the final score higher than Doom 3 but, more importantly, the text of the review is far more positive. The Doom 3 review, while ending in a high score, was full of caveats (fully justified by what is, in the end, a rather dull trudge through corridors); the Half-Life 2 review is basically 8 pages of "man, this is beautiful".
P.
DVD drives are cheap. Even dual-layer DVD burners can now be gotten for StgUK40 (EUR60). I tried to sell my previous DVD drive on eBay the other day for £5, and didn't get a single bid. I don't see why there is such a resistance to this upgrade. It makes installation a lot smoother, and also (I would guess) means that it's a lot cheaper to get a replacement if you do scratch/break your media (I'm basing this on EA, who charge £7.50 _per CD_ to replace your disks.)
P.
The problem with dual-layer burners at the moment isn't really the speed but the price of the blank media. I got an NEC 2510a for the ridiculously cheap price of 80, which burns dual-layer at 2.4x - more than acceptable in my book. However, while I can get good-quality single layer blanks for around 60c each, dual-layer blanks are around 6. So I'll be holding off on those for a while, I think....
P.
P.
Ah yes, I remember being 13 years old and seeing "Return of the Jedi" on pirate VHS in the pub next door. That is, through the door, since kids weren't allowed in. Didn't stop me then going to see it in the cinema of course.
P.
Just as an illustration, try "man find". It took me years to figure out that "find . -name {file_name}" would find all files matching {file_name} below the current directory - which I imagine is the usage of 99% of users.
Check out the description of the tool:
"find searches the directory tree rooted at each given file name by evaluating the given expression from left to right, according to the rules of precedence (see section OPERATORS), until the outcome is known (the left hand side is false for and operations, true for or), at which point find moves on to the next file name."
Do you imagine that most users would know what on earth that meant? Why not at least prepend it with "This tool enables you to find files"? Then give one or two examples of common usage? _Then_ by all means bombard them with the myriad of possible parameters.
P.
So, are you afraid to go asleep? :)
P.
Did you try rebooting in safe mode?
P.