Step 3 is not arbitrary, because Step 4 is to add them up as roman numerals. I'd say it's the sum of steps 3 and 4 that are arbitrary -- after all, when it's BILLGATES3 that you want to be evil, you add up the ASCII codes. Basically, numerology is the art of taking statement X and making number Y, massaging statement X as necessary. Really, take anything you want to be evil, modify the statement/word and the process significantly, and you can almost always make 666 out of it.
I'm just being practical. To me, it seemed like you were wondering why hardcore gamers aren't flocking to Linux, and why the Mac (of all platforms) is getting more developer love than Linux. It's just a numbers problem. Gamers want good games. But you'd be hard-pressed to get developers to support an OS with less than 1% market share.
I'm just wondering if it really breaks down the same way among gamers. After all, you do still find more games for the Mac than for Linux, though not many. Most of the games I see with Mac support either have native Linux support, or will run in OpenGL under Windows, and thus work very well under Wine.
[about malware] Anyway, that's going off topic from games.:)
Not particularly. Malware may leave web surfing, word processing, email, and other regular applications fast enough, but it's going to hurt game performance the most, and it's going to hurt game performance first.
I can probably count on one hand the people I know who use Windows securely. I can't count the number of people I know who use Linux securely, due to security being the default.
The problem with that last statement is that it doesn't really jive with the idea of "openness", that the whole open source movement is about. It's particularly vicious to purposely make your product not work on another platform (and arguably that's the reason why lots of folks are always mad at MS).
Who says my game is going to be open? I probably won't know whether I want it to be open until close to release.
Now, that's different than making a game for one platform, and just saying that anything else is unsupported, because it's not developed or tested under it. I'm sure that's all you really need to do.
Due to the nature of how I want to develop this game, that's not really possible unless I am an asshole about it. The game will be designed to be cross-platform, and indeed, I'm planning to support Linux on all archs, and possibly a BSD or two. Maybe even Solaris. I'm going to do all of this with minimal effort of my own.
The point is to break the monoculture, not to promote any one OS, although I think Linux is currently the best we've got.
But the work involved to make it as portable as I just said probably also makes a Windows or MacOS version just a compile away, so I would pretty much have to deliberately not support Windows.
Having it half-ported to Windows would be much worse than having no Windows port at all. Having no Windows port means everyone will hate me, until they start running it off a boot CD. If it's a good enough game, that will be worth it. That's far better than having a Windows port that breaks, because then common perception would probably be that the whole game is slow/buggy/bad.
Perhaps the best solution would be to have a well-supported Windows version that claims not to be supported (in an "are you sure" dialog), and to have Linux in the recommended system requirements.
And where did you get that? I see no mention of Flash on their page. The other two games mentioned are full 3D games for the PS2, and Flash currently does neither 3D nor PS2.
Sure, there are a few cases where compromise helps. I already compromise by tainting my kernel with the proprietary nvidia drivers. I hear people rave about subscription music services -- pay so much per month, get as much music as you can download, lose it if you stop paying -- requires DRM on a level that probably never will exist on Linux.
But for the most part, it's all about ease of use. People complain that their iPod doesn't work -- BS. Your iPod not only works well with Linux, but you can even put Linux on your iPod. But it's not easy to do.
People complain they can't play the music and movies they want to. Really? The only music I can't play is DRM'd iTunes crap -- everything else can be solved with codecs, which are of questionable legality and are not always easy to set up.
People complain about all sorts of things wrong with Linux, but for the most part, I don't see any kind of compromise necessary. Apple could release iTunes for Linux, and that would solve a lot of issues -- and no one would have to compromise. Same with the proprietary codecs -- most of them are legal to use if you've got a Windows license, and most of these people are moving from Windows.
Where he's right, though, is that compromise would help. I agree that I'd hate to see Linux turn into OS X just to capture the pod generation, but I'd also hate to see the opposite -- Linux on the desktop fades into obscurity, and more and more people switch back to Windows, because more and more things simply don't work with Linux because we weren't willing to compromise.
Here's what would make more sense: Compromise any way we feel we have to. When we completely own the market, then we can start to make demands. Imagine Linux was the primary gaming platform, and a coalition of distros sends a message to nVidia and ATI: "Whichever of you releases the first fully functional, fully-supported open-source Linux drivers, gets to be supported by us." That means if ATI becomes 100% open and nVidia is still closed, we officially no longer support nVidia -- ATI will be detected and will work out of the box, be supported by package management, and so on, but nVidia will be completely on its own. New boxes will be shipped with "plays best on ATI" logos, nVidia customers would get a warning about nVidia drivers voiding their warranty...
I bet nVidia would find a way to open up pretty quick, if that happened.
Do you see the point? Linux world domination and open source philosophy can go hand in hand, because if we have the world domination, we can apply pressure to achieve the open-ness.
The problem is, it's a much harder problem than simply buying codecs. We need great software, too, and great UIs. We need the codecs, but we also need them to work well out of the box, which requires more than just a license.
True, there is definately a subculture of hardcore gamers that's big into the hardware. And those folks *MAY* be interested in Linux, if it did magically give better performance for games that a Windows or Mac machine.
And despite your claim to the contrary, Linux does have advantages here. Depending on the game, some games have been shown to actually run faster on Linux (native Linux Quake3 > Quake3 under Wine > quake3 under Win2k), but this is extremely old news, and it's probably different today. The real advantage is, Windows can get malware, and Linux is currently less likely to -- and Linux is also more tunable/tweakable than OS X, if not for performance, then for personal preference. If a gamer is willing to spend half an hour setting up an optimal control scheme, then surely there are things they'd like to do to their OS that are easier under Linux.
My Windows games currently perform better under Windows mostly because I have a Linux partition for my real work. I don't have to work nearly as hard keeping the Linux side clean as I would keeping the Windows side clean. And since the Windows side is only used for games, it is pretty much stripped to the bone and can be used with extreme paranoia. I have never, to my knowledge, had any malware on this Windows install -- except one thing I downloaded as a curiosity only to scan it (never intending to run it), so it never affected me.
Linux is also nice for server admins, but it always bothers me when there's a native Linux server, but no client.
I get the feeling that you're really a Linux fan first (obvious since that's the platform you keep trying to push), and a gamer a distant second.
Not distant. And I do play games on other platforms, and I do have a Windows partition explicitly for games. But you're right. I consider my personal freedom and security to be much more important than my entertainment.
If you really want to get gamers to adopt Linux, I think your best bet is to get an awesome game developed that can only be run on that platform. Well, one game won't do it, so probably an entire franchise or two. Hey, it certainly worked for Microsoft. If it weren't for Halo
No, Halo proves that you only need a single game -- the Xbox would've died without Halo 1, and it lives with Halo 1, irrespective of sequels.
I think the real problem is that I'm not Microsoft, so I don't yet have the resources to develop a Linux-exclusive game that makes it worth it for people to install Linux to play it.
So, maybe the solution is to develop a reasonably good, cross-platform game, and then, when I have the money, develop another game that is primarily Linux and a real pain to make work on Windows, and totally unsupported on Windows. Collect statistics on that and see if I need to be an ass and release a game that will not run on Windows or Mac.
That's a silly stereotype.... Hardcore gamers just want good games.
Why is your steriotype any less silly?
I'm thinking of the PC gamer steriotype -- the person who's perpetually upgrading, tweaking, and overclocking a system just to squeeze a few more FPS out of, say, Counter-Strike, or to score a few more 3DMarks.
You know the type. Watercooling, RAIDed 10k RPM drives, case has a window and UV lights inside...
If Linux was 5-10 fps better than Windows for some games, and can easily be tweaked to use less RAM and practically no CPU to get out of the way of your games, then it makes perfect sense for gamers to switch -- except the games aren't there yet.
And I don't get how you can call Mac "a toy" these days.
I'm not, but that is the perception. It doesn't help that Apple has always pandered so heavily to the newbie that experts suffer -- why does my Powerbook only have one mouse button? I've been denied easy, familiar functionality so that their techs don't have to answer the question "right or left click"? I know about ctrl+click, and it's a pain in the ass. And on the software side, nothing specific, but sometimes I come away with the feeling that everything just worked perfectly, and that the software was written with me. And sometimes it's just the opposite -- no one at Apple thought it was important, so it is annoyingly difficult to use.
When a single company controls the source to not only your computer's entire system, but also to many/most of the applications that you depend on every day, and only gives you source code
Yeah, I agree with you, if you meant what I think you did -- which is not source code.
My thought would be, if you're just trying to grab a raw rip -- to re-encode, say, for your video iPod -- you could create an insanely patched Windows Media Player and Windows (or even ReactOS) and run it all under qemu. Wouldn't affect MS Office, you'd run that in the host Windows -- assuming, of course, you need a host Windows at all.
Yes. I did a quick Google search,and came up with this source. Mac is around 4% and Linux, still under 1%.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics. I'd also imagine that the gamer demographic would be a bit more biased towards Linux than Mac. After all, the Mac is still seen as a toy, without many games, but Linux is seen as hardcore and customizable, and hardcore gamers like to customize.
Besides, cause and effect. If it costs you one developer, part-time, to do a Linux port, then why not? And you'll be supporting a saner platform, and making it a more likely choice of gamers in the future.
With more and more game companies making multi-platform games, it makes sense for them to continue as much development as possible on the PC, and then port it over to the console as late as they can.
I disagree -- I'd think you'd keep it working on all platforms. No cross-platform kit is going to do 100% of the work for you, thus you have to make sure there aren't obscure issues. One of the programming principles I've come to accept is: unit test, early, often, and as comprehensive as possible. Thus, the best way to avoid obscure porting issues is to port early and often -- automate it, if possible.
And apple has created an environment which cultivates buckets of raw sewage in the shape of human beings, if they have a system which encourages lying.
Fer chrissakes, how many times do I have to say "not boolean"? In your example, if you confess to murder, you do often get a lighter sentence. It doesn't mean you go home, but it does provide you an inscentive to plead guilty if you are.
And how do you think we learn principle and honor? Not because someone told us about Heaven and Hell, or Right and Wrong, but because it's usually reinforced by society. Parents behave the same way -- tell the truth, and you get less of a punishment.
Hopefully, yes. But how do you legally prevent distributing patches? I'm sure patches can be done in such a way that they don't expose any of the original code, although it does make them more likely to fail when files change.
Use h.264 -- it seems to do better at absolutely everything -- looks better, is smaller, for pretty much any compression rate and resolution -- except that it's a relatively new codec, and not necessarily supported. But DivX isn't necessarily supported either, and all "Codec X isn't supported" conversations can be ended with three letters: VLC.
And it's got nothing to do with WMV. It's the crypto on physical HD/BD discs. I can play pretty much any WMV file I want, though ironically the HD ones usually make me use a 32-bit mplayer on Linux, so they can use 32-bit Windows DLLs.
Are you honestly suggesting that Dell wants to put that they "reccommend Windows" but can't unless they go through that certification? I think you've got that backwards.
Nothing is necessary. And HD is more than just a minor improvement. It may not be enough to justify selling our souls to the MPAA, but the difference in visual quality is pretty stunning, and long overdue.
My Gentoo has done just fine, the only annoyance is the software that must be installed as 32-bit, for various reasons. Ironically, Windows Media HD content must be played with a 32-bit player, so it can use the 32-bit DLLs, as no one seems to have figured out how to make 64-bit DLLs work.
Wow. This seems amazingly retarded. All we have to do is modify kqemu, which does support 64-bit, to allow kernel patches. Also, what is preventing people from patching the kernel on-disk, then rebooting?
My Linux desktop is 64-bit, and mplayer natively supports h.264, which means that when I get an unencrypted HD video, it plays just fine. Has to scale down slightly for my screen sometimes, but I can certainly tell that the CPU usage is incredibly low, even with scaling (either way). My Powerbook (running OS X) can't come close -- it can reasonably play a 720p video, scaled up, but 1080p scaled down is too much for it.
Ironically, since none of the 64-bit Windows codecs are supported yet, I'm forced to use a 32-bit mplayer with the 32-bit dlls to support high def WMV. It still confuses me why anyone wouldn't use h.264, given the choice. You can't even argue that it's that much more convenient -- I mean, 20-30 secs of HD video is 20-30 megs, at least, which makes VLC start to look tiny by comparison. But whatever.
Unfortunately, this doesn't mean I'll be able to play HD movies if I decide to get an optical drive which can handle it. HDCP has been cracked, which makes it just another pain in the ass for consumers, but the disk encryption (equivalent of CSS for DVDs) has not. The only way I can see watching DVDs without that happening is if someone gets a hold of a Windows DLL and a proper API that can handle it. But Trusted Computing may prevent that, also.
At this point, I'm not at all convinced that this is easily crackable. If it does not get cracked, I will not buy encrypted HD, simple as that. This means my HD selection will be sadly limited to movie trailers, porn, and movies stolen over BitTorrent. Which means really, no HD content for me except games.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference is, the Barny site is a parody, and it doesn't matter at all wether Barney agrees with it or not.
Wait... that means...
In Soviet Russia, the EFF sues you?
WTF?
Step 3 is not arbitrary, because Step 4 is to add them up as roman numerals. I'd say it's the sum of steps 3 and 4 that are arbitrary -- after all, when it's BILLGATES3 that you want to be evil, you add up the ASCII codes. Basically, numerology is the art of taking statement X and making number Y, massaging statement X as necessary. Really, take anything you want to be evil, modify the statement/word and the process significantly, and you can almost always make 666 out of it.
I'm just wondering if it really breaks down the same way among gamers. After all, you do still find more games for the Mac than for Linux, though not many. Most of the games I see with Mac support either have native Linux support, or will run in OpenGL under Windows, and thus work very well under Wine.
Not particularly. Malware may leave web surfing, word processing, email, and other regular applications fast enough, but it's going to hurt game performance the most, and it's going to hurt game performance first.
I can probably count on one hand the people I know who use Windows securely. I can't count the number of people I know who use Linux securely, due to security being the default.
Who says my game is going to be open? I probably won't know whether I want it to be open until close to release.
Due to the nature of how I want to develop this game, that's not really possible unless I am an asshole about it. The game will be designed to be cross-platform, and indeed, I'm planning to support Linux on all archs, and possibly a BSD or two. Maybe even Solaris. I'm going to do all of this with minimal effort of my own.
The point is to break the monoculture, not to promote any one OS, although I think Linux is currently the best we've got.
But the work involved to make it as portable as I just said probably also makes a Windows or MacOS version just a compile away, so I would pretty much have to deliberately not support Windows.
Having it half-ported to Windows would be much worse than having no Windows port at all. Having no Windows port means everyone will hate me, until they start running it off a boot CD. If it's a good enough game, that will be worth it. That's far better than having a Windows port that breaks, because then common perception would probably be that the whole game is slow/buggy/bad.
Perhaps the best solution would be to have a well-supported Windows version that claims not to be supported (in an "are you sure" dialog), and to have Linux in the recommended system requirements.
And where did you get that? I see no mention of Flash on their page. The other two games mentioned are full 3D games for the PS2, and Flash currently does neither 3D nor PS2.
What makes you think it will be Flash?
Sure, there are a few cases where compromise helps. I already compromise by tainting my kernel with the proprietary nvidia drivers. I hear people rave about subscription music services -- pay so much per month, get as much music as you can download, lose it if you stop paying -- requires DRM on a level that probably never will exist on Linux.
But for the most part, it's all about ease of use. People complain that their iPod doesn't work -- BS. Your iPod not only works well with Linux, but you can even put Linux on your iPod. But it's not easy to do.
People complain they can't play the music and movies they want to. Really? The only music I can't play is DRM'd iTunes crap -- everything else can be solved with codecs, which are of questionable legality and are not always easy to set up.
People complain about all sorts of things wrong with Linux, but for the most part, I don't see any kind of compromise necessary. Apple could release iTunes for Linux, and that would solve a lot of issues -- and no one would have to compromise. Same with the proprietary codecs -- most of them are legal to use if you've got a Windows license, and most of these people are moving from Windows.
Where he's right, though, is that compromise would help. I agree that I'd hate to see Linux turn into OS X just to capture the pod generation, but I'd also hate to see the opposite -- Linux on the desktop fades into obscurity, and more and more people switch back to Windows, because more and more things simply don't work with Linux because we weren't willing to compromise.
Here's what would make more sense: Compromise any way we feel we have to. When we completely own the market, then we can start to make demands. Imagine Linux was the primary gaming platform, and a coalition of distros sends a message to nVidia and ATI: "Whichever of you releases the first fully functional, fully-supported open-source Linux drivers, gets to be supported by us." That means if ATI becomes 100% open and nVidia is still closed, we officially no longer support nVidia -- ATI will be detected and will work out of the box, be supported by package management, and so on, but nVidia will be completely on its own. New boxes will be shipped with "plays best on ATI" logos, nVidia customers would get a warning about nVidia drivers voiding their warranty...
I bet nVidia would find a way to open up pretty quick, if that happened.
Do you see the point? Linux world domination and open source philosophy can go hand in hand, because if we have the world domination, we can apply pressure to achieve the open-ness.
The problem is, it's a much harder problem than simply buying codecs. We need great software, too, and great UIs. We need the codecs, but we also need them to work well out of the box, which requires more than just a license.
I actually get more like 50% stock stuff. It simply amazes me that no one's caught these fuckers. I mean, the money has to go somewhere, right?
And despite your claim to the contrary, Linux does have advantages here. Depending on the game, some games have been shown to actually run faster on Linux (native Linux Quake3 > Quake3 under Wine > quake3 under Win2k), but this is extremely old news, and it's probably different today. The real advantage is, Windows can get malware, and Linux is currently less likely to -- and Linux is also more tunable/tweakable than OS X, if not for performance, then for personal preference. If a gamer is willing to spend half an hour setting up an optimal control scheme, then surely there are things they'd like to do to their OS that are easier under Linux.
My Windows games currently perform better under Windows mostly because I have a Linux partition for my real work. I don't have to work nearly as hard keeping the Linux side clean as I would keeping the Windows side clean. And since the Windows side is only used for games, it is pretty much stripped to the bone and can be used with extreme paranoia. I have never, to my knowledge, had any malware on this Windows install -- except one thing I downloaded as a curiosity only to scan it (never intending to run it), so it never affected me.
Linux is also nice for server admins, but it always bothers me when there's a native Linux server, but no client.
Not distant. And I do play games on other platforms, and I do have a Windows partition explicitly for games. But you're right. I consider my personal freedom and security to be much more important than my entertainment.
No, Halo proves that you only need a single game -- the Xbox would've died without Halo 1, and it lives with Halo 1, irrespective of sequels.
I think the real problem is that I'm not Microsoft, so I don't yet have the resources to develop a Linux-exclusive game that makes it worth it for people to install Linux to play it.
So, maybe the solution is to develop a reasonably good, cross-platform game, and then, when I have the money, develop another game that is primarily Linux and a real pain to make work on Windows, and totally unsupported on Windows. Collect statistics on that and see if I need to be an ass and release a game that will not run on Windows or Mac.
Thank you, Gabe and Tycho! Even Ctrl Alt Del is happy to put the Linux user in a closet.
It's a surprise, but a welcome one.
Source? Is there some specific vulnerability I should be concerned about?
But no, I don't count on that. I also count on common sense.
Why is your steriotype any less silly?
I'm thinking of the PC gamer steriotype -- the person who's perpetually upgrading, tweaking, and overclocking a system just to squeeze a few more FPS out of, say, Counter-Strike, or to score a few more 3DMarks.
You know the type. Watercooling, RAIDed 10k RPM drives, case has a window and UV lights inside...
If Linux was 5-10 fps better than Windows for some games, and can easily be tweaked to use less RAM and practically no CPU to get out of the way of your games, then it makes perfect sense for gamers to switch -- except the games aren't there yet.
I'm not, but that is the perception. It doesn't help that Apple has always pandered so heavily to the newbie that experts suffer -- why does my Powerbook only have one mouse button? I've been denied easy, familiar functionality so that their techs don't have to answer the question "right or left click"? I know about ctrl+click, and it's a pain in the ass. And on the software side, nothing specific, but sometimes I come away with the feeling that everything just worked perfectly, and that the software was written with me. And sometimes it's just the opposite -- no one at Apple thought it was important, so it is annoyingly difficult to use.
Yeah, I agree with you, if you meant what I think you did -- which is not source code.
My thought would be, if you're just trying to grab a raw rip -- to re-encode, say, for your video iPod -- you could create an insanely patched Windows Media Player and Windows (or even ReactOS) and run it all under qemu. Wouldn't affect MS Office, you'd run that in the host Windows -- assuming, of course, you need a host Windows at all.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics. I'd also imagine that the gamer demographic would be a bit more biased towards Linux than Mac. After all, the Mac is still seen as a toy, without many games, but Linux is seen as hardcore and customizable, and hardcore gamers like to customize.
Besides, cause and effect. If it costs you one developer, part-time, to do a Linux port, then why not? And you'll be supporting a saner platform, and making it a more likely choice of gamers in the future.
I disagree -- I'd think you'd keep it working on all platforms. No cross-platform kit is going to do 100% of the work for you, thus you have to make sure there aren't obscure issues. One of the programming principles I've come to accept is: unit test, early, often, and as comprehensive as possible. Thus, the best way to avoid obscure porting issues is to port early and often -- automate it, if possible.
And apple has created an environment which cultivates buckets of raw sewage in the shape of human beings, if they have a system which encourages lying.
xwe xdid xit xfirst.
WinAnd WinApple WinDidn't WinCheck WinFor WinPrior WinArt.
Fer chrissakes, how many times do I have to say "not boolean"? In your example, if you confess to murder, you do often get a lighter sentence. It doesn't mean you go home, but it does provide you an inscentive to plead guilty if you are.
And how do you think we learn principle and honor? Not because someone told us about Heaven and Hell, or Right and Wrong, but because it's usually reinforced by society. Parents behave the same way -- tell the truth, and you get less of a punishment.
Hopefully, yes. But how do you legally prevent distributing patches? I'm sure patches can be done in such a way that they don't expose any of the original code, although it does make them more likely to fail when files change.
Use h.264 -- it seems to do better at absolutely everything -- looks better, is smaller, for pretty much any compression rate and resolution -- except that it's a relatively new codec, and not necessarily supported. But DivX isn't necessarily supported either, and all "Codec X isn't supported" conversations can be ended with three letters: VLC.
And it's got nothing to do with WMV. It's the crypto on physical HD/BD discs. I can play pretty much any WMV file I want, though ironically the HD ones usually make me use a 32-bit mplayer on Linux, so they can use 32-bit Windows DLLs.
Are you honestly suggesting that Dell wants to put that they "reccommend Windows" but can't unless they go through that certification? I think you've got that backwards.
But then people with photographic memories would be keeping illegal backup copies in their brains!
Who said anythings about putting it above kernel level?
Nothing is necessary. And HD is more than just a minor improvement. It may not be enough to justify selling our souls to the MPAA, but the difference in visual quality is pretty stunning, and long overdue.
My Gentoo has done just fine, the only annoyance is the software that must be installed as 32-bit, for various reasons. Ironically, Windows Media HD content must be played with a 32-bit player, so it can use the 32-bit DLLs, as no one seems to have figured out how to make 64-bit DLLs work.
Wow. This seems amazingly retarded. All we have to do is modify kqemu, which does support 64-bit, to allow kernel patches. Also, what is preventing people from patching the kernel on-disk, then rebooting?
My Linux desktop is 64-bit, and mplayer natively supports h.264, which means that when I get an unencrypted HD video, it plays just fine. Has to scale down slightly for my screen sometimes, but I can certainly tell that the CPU usage is incredibly low, even with scaling (either way). My Powerbook (running OS X) can't come close -- it can reasonably play a 720p video, scaled up, but 1080p scaled down is too much for it.
Ironically, since none of the 64-bit Windows codecs are supported yet, I'm forced to use a 32-bit mplayer with the 32-bit dlls to support high def WMV. It still confuses me why anyone wouldn't use h.264, given the choice. You can't even argue that it's that much more convenient -- I mean, 20-30 secs of HD video is 20-30 megs, at least, which makes VLC start to look tiny by comparison. But whatever.
Unfortunately, this doesn't mean I'll be able to play HD movies if I decide to get an optical drive which can handle it. HDCP has been cracked, which makes it just another pain in the ass for consumers, but the disk encryption (equivalent of CSS for DVDs) has not. The only way I can see watching DVDs without that happening is if someone gets a hold of a Windows DLL and a proper API that can handle it. But Trusted Computing may prevent that, also.
At this point, I'm not at all convinced that this is easily crackable. If it does not get cracked, I will not buy encrypted HD, simple as that. This means my HD selection will be sadly limited to movie trailers, porn, and movies stolen over BitTorrent. Which means really, no HD content for me except games.