They actually do seem to get it. It was a well written article (and the one on dealing with griefers is good too) -- and while we make fun of it, I can certainly see how some parents who don't know much about that there intra-web could find it to be very useful.
Compared to, say, http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,88686,p g,2,00.asp, where they include 'kiss' as 'keep it simple stupid'. Have you ever seen anyone actually use that in chat?
I have, yes. Of course, it's more of a technical term than pwn3d. `KISS' has been around for a lot longer than l33tspeak.
Another good (i.e. amusing) article is this one -- this slang I've generally not seen, but I guess I'm not a 15 year old girl pretending to be 25 on AIM either. But while I'd not be fooled by strange abbreviations, I realize that others might. Fortunately, my kids are still a bit over a decade away from being 15, so I've got some time to not pick up the new lingo.
On the contrary, it tends to encourage discussions to stay on track and keeps outdated posts from being brought up over and over again.
Who are you to decide when a post is outdated? If people want to bring it up again, they should.
As for staying `on track', the only reason web forums stay `on track' is because the moderators will usually smack you down if you don't. (A double edged sword, more on that later.)
Click the "See New Posts" icon.
Assuming that this particular software has it, and it works as you expect. Every one is different. Also, none of these options that you list work *at all* unless you actually register with the site and log in.
Click the "Ignore" button.
Assuming that this particular software has it, and it works as you expect. Every one is different. And often this option isn't available unless you pay for an account (more on that later.)
Click the "Disable Emoticons" checkbox.
Assuming that this particular software has it, and it works as you expect. Every one is different...
The administrator can disable images.
Assuming that this particular software has it, and it works as you expect. And assuming that the administrator has actually done this -- it doesn't seem to happen very often.
Most of them provide attachment capabilities, if enabled by the administrator.
Most is a stretch. Some is probably more accurate. And generally they don't offer you that unless you actually pay them for an account. Which makes sense, as images do suck up the bandwidth.
Paying for an account to get access to the features that Usenet has given me for decades is even worse. I wouldn't mind paying $5/month or so, but that $5/month only covers one board. Alas, I don't just follow one group in Usenet, but instead a few dozen. If these all moved to web forums, that would be probably be like $100/month just for some of the functionality I have now with Usenet.
Honestly, this is just a pure troll.
No, I don't think your (you = sploo22) post is pure troll. You've brought up some useful points, but it seems that maybe you just haven't gotten used to a good Usenet newsreader, or have forgotten how functional they are...
I can add to the list of web forum deficiencies as well :
It's not easy to run a spell checker. Perhaps they offer some java one, but what if you don't let your browser run java? And every forum is different...
(For example, I suspect I mispelled deficiencies. I before E, except after C?) I could grep/usr/dict/words for it, but I think I'll just write this paragraph instead.)
I guess I could type my post up in emacs, run my spell checker, then post it to the forum...
How do you save a thread to your disk? Make a bookmark? That might work for a week or two, but sooner or later, the forum will get upgraded, or moved, or shut down, or the content will be expired -- and the link you saved is dead. Same goes for trying to keep a record of everything you've posted. With Usenet, it's trivial.
Suppose you recall seeing something on a forum a year ago. But don't recall exactly where. How will you find it? It's probably expired off the forum, if the forum still exists at all. If so, google probably won't find it. The Internet Archive might have a copy, but that's iffy. With Usenet, you just hit google and enter some phrases and you'll probably find it quickly enough.
Suppose the forum administrator doesn't like you or your views. So he deletes your posts, or worse -- edits them. And there's nothing you can do about it but go somewhere else. Perhaps open your own competing forum?
Of course, I'm typing this into a web forum now. (In
Yes, the/. summary did mention the error the number of DVDs made, but...
With hundreds of billions of DVDs pressed every year
vs.
out of the $27.5 billion that analyst firm Screen Digest estimated they collected from worldwide DVD sales and rentals last year.
I suspect they meant to say `hundreds of millions'. Which seems a bit low, though maybe rentals (where they get paid over and over for the same DVD) makes up the difference.
And of course, DVDs do more than hold movies, but I suspect that they're only talking about movies and TV shows and such, not computer data on DVDs.
Right. MS licenses the content from the US Government (assuming it's a government sat that takes the photos and not a private one).
I don't think there's any licensing involved. I believe the data is freely available -- you just have to pay for the media (which for this much data is probably quite a bit.) I believe that the aerial protographs themselves (and anything else that comes from the USGS) are in the public domain.
except the angle of the photo.
The angle is pretty different. And the bean-thing probably only makes up a few pixels on one of these pictures. At what point can you claim that a picture infringes upon your copyright when all that shows on the picture is just a few pixels of some sort of blob?
Also note that most of the data in the terraserver came from, last I checked, airplanes and not satellites.
It's also generally several years old. It wouldn't surprise me if this thing isn't even covered by the USGS surveys yet.
next time Microsoft's terraserver updates the area
To be fair, Microsoft's terraserver is just a bunch of computers with lots of disk space. It doesn't take pictures -- that's done by the US government, the geological survey people, most likely. Microsoft just puts the pictures online.
the gaming gods would never redeem their souls for the shitmess that was....Daikatana.
1) these people did not release Daikatana. Instead, they did winners line Deus Ex, Thief and Anachronox. (Deus Ex 2 was not nearly as good as Deus Ex 1, but it was still ok.)
2) And even Daikatana wasn't as bad as people make it sound. I suspect that most of the people who preach the `Daikatana sucks!' mantra on/. have never even played it.
Granted, it was pretty mediocre. Had it come out several years earlier, we might have thought it was pretty good, but unfortunately it did not. And as for the hype that preceeded it, well, not even Half Life 1 or 2 could have lived up to that hype. Really, it's the hype that makes everybody say it sucked so much -- had there not been so much hype, the game would have just been doomed to mediocritry, like many other games, rather than being burned as a pariah everytime somebody even mentions Ion Storm (even the _wrong_ Ion Storm.)
In any event, I'm sorry to see Ion Storm Austin go. They will be missed.
is going to convince me that substance is more important than style.
er, that style is more important than substance. But while this seems obvious to me, many web sites appear to be written as if style was king, and the substance was sort of an afterthought.
Take a course in Graphic Design, or heck, just talk to a graphic designer for a few minutes. I think your tune would change pretty quick.
I don't think a graphic design class or another few minute talk with a graphic designer is going to convince me that substance is more important than style.
What would get more attention: a photocopied 8.5x11 sheet of paper typed in 14 point Times New Roman in all caps or a 4'x5' yellow poster with 6" tall letters in sans-serif handwriting?
Nice extreme and irrelevant example. I was thinking more of the meetings that I've had to attend where people spent an hour arguing about whether the font should be Helvetica or Times New Roman. Or where they're all worried that two pictures didn't quite line up on a certain browser -- so management told the guy making the page to, if he couldn't fix it, add code to not let the person with the `wrong' browser view the page, telling him to go pick the `right' browser.
I think the real problem is not discussing the look and "flashiness" of a website but in poor execution or a lack of understanding of the medium (or both).
The problem I'm mostly referring to is spending more time on making the web site `flashy' then on making it functional and adding the desired content. So we'll get a web site with flash animations, pretty pictures, java menus -- and a phone number to call support rather than a customer accessible ticketing system.
If understanding the medium means I have to give up actually useful stuff on a web site in exchange for pretty pictures and mouse-over events, I don't want to understand the medium.
Bringing this back around to on-topic discussion, the more complicated you make your front end (by using flash, ActiveX, CSS, and etc.) the more bugs will exist in your site which leads to more exploits.
Huh? Exploits for what? Your server or your customer's browser? None of the specific things you mentioned help lead to exploits in your site. Now, some of them can and have led to exploits for people's browsers, but I don't see where that can possibly be the web developer's fault, except that maybe he shouldn't be requiring things like ActiveX anyways.
Web-browsing is like sex
Maybe that's my problem. I don't think they two are at all alike.
Wouldn't the more sensible approach be to avoid all browser specific hacks?
Sure. But people want flashy, spiffy web sites -- or at least that's what the web site creators generally think, and so they spend as much or more time on how the information looks rather than on the information itself. And they may very well be right about what people want.
Having several meetings about which _font_ your home page uses are _not_ unheard of, and the same goes for their use of java, dhtml, javascript, ActiveX, Flash, Shockwave, etc.
To add insult to injury, in some cases when they find that they can't make their page render the way they want it to, they just save it as a gif and make their entire page one image, or at least several images of text and such. Which works on all browsers, as long as you're not blind or using lynx anyways.
Generally they don't care too much about that last 10% as long as they can make it look right for the 90% that use IE.
However, Steam is a huge step in what I believe is the right direction.
Certainly, Steam sounds kind of neat in theory.
But I was certainly annoyed that even after buying HL2 at the store, I had to fight with Steam for hours (seriously) before I could play the game. And even after that was all done, it was 5 minutes after I booted up before I could even play HL2 (Steam had to fully initialize first, and that took several minutes) for several weeks. Then that got fixed somehow.
Distributing games via the Internet is a great idea. Buying games at the local store is a tried and true technique, which makes it a great idea too (just not that new.) But don't mix the two, unless it's for more than just copy protection (like with a MMORPG.)
It would be icing on the cake if gamers themselves stuck a knife in
its back.
Valve stuck the knife in itself by requiring that the retail version of HL2 require Steam. The gamers are just twisting the knife a little -- which certainly seems fair considering what Steam has done to many (including me), and without even offering some reach-around.
But the quesiton then becomes: should they give to a TV show, or to the needy?
Except that there will always be needy people, no matter how much you individually give. So, if you really feel that your money needs to go to the people who need it most, you'll be broke and living in a cardboard box, even with $100k+/year of income, because there's always somebody who needs it more.
And what's so special about the tsunami anyways? People are starving every day, dying from easily cured diseases. The tsunami was a tragic event, certainly, but people were dying who needed our help before the tsunami, and they're still dying after the tsunami.
On problem with this solution is that newer firewall software blocks referer headers. I know Norton Internet Security 2004 does this.
Then Norton Internet Security 2004 will not work with a lot of web sites, because a lot of web sites do this already.
In reality, the sites usually work if the Referrer: header is empty, or if it says you came from the same site. It's when the Referrer: site says the link is from another site that the site denies the request, so NIS 2004 won't break every site. But I'm sure it still breaks a good number of them, the ones that go to great pains to make sure you only go through their web site the way that _they_ want you to. (Granted, these are good web sites to avoid, but still.)
It is obvious that this guy should have had an anti-virus package active
No, it's not obvious. Virus scanners are only currently needed for those who run Windows and maybe MacOS, and then only if the machines in question are actually at risk of getting hit with viruses. If a *nix box runs a virus scanner, it's only to protect Windows and MacOS machines that use it as a server, not to protect itself.
My Linux box certainly doesn't have or need a virus scanner, and the Windows box I have has no virus scanner and I've not had a windows virus or worm on it or any other box of mine in I think fourteen years. (This is the last virus I got. Downloaded it from a BBS from a disk usage program. du.exe.)
It's all a matter of being smart about what you run and disabling services that you don't need. And keeping up to date on patches doesn't hurt, and neither does doing most of my Internet stuff on my Linux box. (The Windows box is mostly for games, and the occasional program my wife needs.)
I'd hate for the banks to start requiring that their electronic banking users have virus scanners installed in a knee-jerk reaction to this sort of incident.
What's illegal about spamware? I thought it was spamming that was illegal, not software that could be used for spamming.
And in any event, one person's `spamware' may very well be another person's tool of choice for sending out mail to a large (and yet legitimate) mailing list.
Out of curiousity, which office suite is superior to Microsoft Office? I like to bash Microsoft more than most, but I'm still not aware of any office suite which is superior to Microsoft Office
I'd guess that the most popular OSS office suite is OpenOffice, but it doesn't even come close. It's advantages are that 1) it runs on OSs other than Windows and MacOS, 2) it's free and 3) you've got the source if you want it, but beyond that, it's not nearly as functional as Microsoft Office and crashes even more often. (Especially when trying to open Microsoft Office documents, which isn't really a fair comparison, I know...)
(Microsoft does have more products than Windows, after all. And the last few Microsoft games I played (Halo, Age of Mythology, Crimson Skies, Mechwarrior 4) were pretty good too...)
OS/2 never caught on because Microsoft kept promising Windows
No, OS/2 never caught on because the applications weren't there. Sure, OS/2 2.0 ran Windows 3.0 applications, in many cases better than Windows did, but in other cases they wouldn't work at all or had issues. And it couldn't run Windows 3.1 applications, at least not until a later version of OS/2.
If you had a native OS/2 application, it was almost certain to be better than a native Windows application on Windows. But these applications were few and far in between, and so OS/2 had to emulate Windows to run Windows applications, and that was less than perfect. People didn't really properly appreciate OS/2's advantages -- they just wanted something that would give them less trouble -- so they'd take their PS/2 that came preinstalled with OS/2, and replace it with Windows.
Linux is in a similar position, except that it's not as good at emulating Windows as OS/2 was. (Well, emulating Windows was much easier back then. Wine can probably run Windows 3.x applications as well as or better than OS/2 2.1 did.)
As for the Hurd, there's a lot of potential there, but the rest of the computing world isn't just waiting around for the Hurd to finally be finished. As said by another poster, the goal of the Hurd is to be better than anything else out there -- which is great, but if the new version just ran it's first program, it's a long way from catching up to anything, let alone surpassing it.
The people that have developed these packages are certainly skilled enough. They have also demonstrated tremendous drive. Any ideas?
Ultimately, people either write things that they need, or stuff they're interested in. In the case of the Hurd, Linux and 386BSD (and then the other *BSDs later) removed much of the need for a `GNU kernel', so it probably mostly left people who were working on it just because it was interesting.
And many of those packages that you've mentioned are a lot simpler than a *nix-like kernel, and so it's easier to `get your arms around them' and contribute.
Hasn't RMS referred to Linux as the `missing' `GNU kernel'? Around the time of the `lignux' fiasco?
In any event, I see the Hurd as something of an experiment in making a new kernel not because it's needed, but because you can. Linux was in the same boat many years ago, but it became extremely useful pretty quickly. The last I'd heard, the Hurd was reaching the useful stage too, but now that I hear that they've started from scratch, well, I guess it'll be a while.
In any event, had Linux and the *BSDs not come around when they did, we could all very well be singing the praises of the Hurd on Slashdot now, talking about how it's so much better than the OS/2 that had monopolized the PC OS market...
(OS/2 was a very worthy OS, but it just never really caught on. It seemed appropriate to throw it into my bizarro world...)
There are HDTV capable consoles (Xbox and Gamecube) but you have to buy the HD plugs and obviously have a HDTV.
So there are. But it looks like only certain games support these enhanced resolutions -- which I guess is true for PC games too.
Whether the keyboard/mouse combo is better for FPSs is debatable as well as based on personal preferance.
Really, what's happened is that console games have been dumbed down to be playable with the little joysticks/joypads that they give you. With a mouse, you can zero in on the bad guy's face and get a head shot off very quickly -- with a joypad, it would take much longer to do so, so the console game is set up to either auto-aim for you, or to make it so making head shots really isn't important to the game -- either you get no extra benefit from it, or the game is easy enough that you don't need to make them very often.
But if you tried to play something like the PC version of UT with a joypad like you had on an X-Box, vs. guys with keyboard and mouse, you'd get pwn3d quick. It's just that the PC version makes it important to be able to aim precisely, something the joypad just isn't good at.
Not quite. Any Tom, Dick or Harry can write a PC game. But to write a console game, you need to get a development kit from the console maker, and pay them royalties on every game made.
True, but how many PC games do you think are 'copy-cat' games?
Probably a number similar to the number of console games that are `copy-cat' games. The vast majority of games out there, PC and console, are copies of other games, with some tweaking or new features. Few are revolutionary rather than evolutionary.
The grandparent post of this post was claiming that `Exclusive PC titles are a rare breed these days' -- which couldn't be further from the truth. And I pointed out why. (Though I guess if you restrict yourself to `big budget, blockbuster titles', then maybe that statement is becoming true.)
As for consoles not getting RTSs is a matter of RTS games being TOO complex for the general gamer.
Ok, I won't argue too much about that -- I really can't claim to know too much about what your average console player wants.
But since there will always be `extra'-ordinary games, PC games will *never* die, at least until the consoles can cater to them a little better.
Trerice, a 26-year-old known among his friends for his off-the-wall schemes, stayed in the apartment while Kirk was away.
Well, if you really feel that you need _revenge_, rather than to just one-up your friends, might I suggest first 1) getting new friends, and 2) changing the locks?
(I'm guessing you don't really want revenge. You just want to do your friends, even better than they got you. And they _did_ get you pretty good...)
The Steam figures will probably not be larger than the retail package.
Probably not. But the grantparent post claimed that the numbers would not be changed by moderation -- which is true, but the Steam figures _will_ change them.
With little to differentiate them
You're kidding, right? Right now, today, PC games are still blessed with much better graphics (HDTV consoles aren't here yet, are they?) and better interfaces for certain types of games (the mouse still rules the FPS and the RTS, for example. Has any console since the Dreamcast offered a mouse?)
And then there's mods to existing games -- remember, Counterstrike started as a HL mod. Currently, consoles really don't allow anybody to modify the games at all, though it's possible that they may in the future.
Expect graphical superiority to be wiped out with the coming systems and HDTV.
... except that PC games are already doing better than HDTV resolution, so even HDTV won't `wipe out' the graphical superiority. If consoles want resolutions as high as PCs, they'll need to use PC monitors -- which may very well happen.
Exclusive PC titles are a rare breed these days
Not quite. Any Tom, Dick or Harry can write a PC game. But to write a console game, you need to get a development kit from the console maker, and pay them royalties on every game made.
I'm still guessing (and granted, it's just a guess) that the PC has a much larger base of games available than say the X-Box. Perhaps 10x as large. The PS2 is a tougher one to beat, as it can still run PS1 games, but even there, the PC has many years of head start, and probably even more people making games for it. (Remember, an individual can make a PC game. Generally an individual cannot make a console game.)
few things apart from the very unique (Rollercoaster Tycoon, Total War etc) don't get ported.
... except that the RTS and the simulation game aren't just games -- they're entire genres. The Sims has been ported to consoles, but beyond that, not many simulation games have at all. Same goes for RTS games (which seem to have fallen out of favor lately, but they'll be back.)
Ultimately, consoles are already full fledged computers -- the X-Box even uses an Intel cpu, PC hard drive, Nvidia graphics and a version of Windows. It may be that later versions of the consoles are even more computer like -- even going so far as having a mouse and keyboard for input, and allowing the use of a computer monitor for higher resolution graphics. And it may then allow you to do things like look at web pages, chat and do your taxes.
Really, right now, the differences between a console and a computer are pretty small --
A console is generally cheap up front, and a computer costs more. The console is often even sold at a loss, because...
Console (games) generally cost more than PC games, because a signifigant chunk of the cost goes to the console maker. Lose money on the razor, but make it back on the blades...
A console's hardware is almost completely standardized
A console cannot be customized to any signifigant degree.
And that's really about it.
I imagine that in the future, PCs will look more like consoles, and consoles will look more like PCs. The entire issue is likely to be academic.
Its not dead, but PC gaming is staggering in a standing 8 count right now.
PC sales may be dropping slowly (I don't think the 2004 figures are quite out yet, but an increase wouldn't surprise me) but it's a _long_ way from dead.
Mod away, but it won't change the numbers.
... but the Steam sales figures will. The 1.7 million only counts the people who bought the retail package.
Last time I compiled the kernel I saw an option (which I left off of course) for a kernel level web server.
The kernel level web server was written many years ago, and the goal was basically to do well at artificial `see how many static pages this OS can serve' benchmarks. These benchmarks are very artificial because 1) even a slow box can serve a huge slew of static pages, and 2) the vast majority of time spent serving web pages is spent generating non static pages.
I seriously doubt anybody actually uses it. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if it doesn't even work anymore. But then again, merely having it as an option doesn't hurt anything, so it's just ignored rather than removed. (And even if it were removed, anybody could re-implement it as a kernel module.)
Slashdot Mirror
Another good (i.e. amusing) article is this one -- this slang I've generally not seen, but I guess I'm not a 15 year old girl pretending to be 25 on AIM either. But while I'd not be fooled by strange abbreviations, I realize that others might. Fortunately, my kids are still a bit over a decade away from being 15, so I've got some time to not pick up the new lingo.
Who are you to decide when a post is outdated? If people want to bring it up again, they should.
As for staying `on track', the only reason web forums stay `on track' is because the moderators will usually smack you down if you don't. (A double edged sword, more on that later.)
Assuming that this particular software has it, and it works as you expect. Every one is different. Also, none of these options that you list work *at all* unless you actually register with the site and log in.
Assuming that this particular software has it, and it works as you expect. Every one is different. And often this option isn't available unless you pay for an account (more on that later.)
Assuming that this particular software has it, and it works as you expect. Every one is different ...
Assuming that this particular software has it, and it works as you expect. And assuming that the administrator has actually done this -- it doesn't seem to happen very often.
Most is a stretch. Some is probably more accurate. And generally they don't offer you that unless you actually pay them for an account. Which makes sense, as images do suck up the bandwidth.
Paying for an account to get access to the features that Usenet has given me for decades is even worse. I wouldn't mind paying $5/month or so, but that $5/month only covers one board. Alas, I don't just follow one group in Usenet, but instead a few dozen. If these all moved to web forums, that would be probably be like $100/month just for some of the functionality I have now with Usenet.
No, I don't think your (you = sploo22) post is pure troll. You've brought up some useful points, but it seems that maybe you just haven't gotten used to a good Usenet newsreader, or have forgotten how functional they are ...
I can add to the list of web forum deficiencies as well :
It's not easy to run a spell checker. Perhaps they offer some java one, but what if you don't let your browser run java? And every forum is different ...
(For example, I suspect I mispelled deficiencies. I before E, except after C?) I could grep /usr/dict/words for it, but I think I'll just write this paragraph instead.)
I guess I could type my post up in emacs, run my spell checker, then post it to the forum ...
How do you save a thread to your disk? Make a bookmark? That might work for a week or two, but sooner or later, the forum will get upgraded, or moved, or shut down, or the content will be expired -- and the link you saved is dead. Same goes for trying to keep a record of everything you've posted. With Usenet, it's trivial.
Suppose you recall seeing something on a forum a year ago. But don't recall exactly where. How will you find it? It's probably expired off the forum, if the forum still exists at all. If so, google probably won't find it. The Internet Archive might have a copy, but that's iffy. With Usenet, you just hit google and enter some phrases and you'll probably find it quickly enough.
Suppose the forum administrator doesn't like you or your views. So he deletes your posts, or worse -- edits them. And there's nothing you can do about it but go somewhere else. Perhaps open your own competing forum?
Of course, I'm typing this into a web forum now. (In
And of course, DVDs do more than hold movies, but I suspect that they're only talking about movies and TV shows and such, not computer data on DVDs.
Also note that most of the data in the terraserver came from, last I checked, airplanes and not satellites.
It's also generally several years old. It wouldn't surprise me if this thing isn't even covered by the USGS surveys yet.
Sorry, Anachronox was made by Ion Storm Dallas instead of the Austin office. It was a pretty good game, though it never really sold very well.
2) And even Daikatana wasn't as bad as people make it sound. I suspect that most of the people who preach the `Daikatana sucks!' mantra on /. have never even played it.
Granted, it was pretty mediocre. Had it come out several years earlier, we might have thought it was pretty good, but unfortunately it did not. And as for the hype that preceeded it, well, not even Half Life 1 or 2 could have lived up to that hype. Really, it's the hype that makes everybody say it sucked so much -- had there not been so much hype, the game would have just been doomed to mediocritry, like many other games, rather than being burned as a pariah everytime somebody even mentions Ion Storm (even the _wrong_ Ion Storm.)
In any event, I'm sorry to see Ion Storm Austin go. They will be missed.
If understanding the medium means I have to give up actually useful stuff on a web site in exchange for pretty pictures and mouse-over events, I don't want to understand the medium.
Huh? Exploits for what? Your server or your customer's browser? None of the specific things you mentioned help lead to exploits in your site. Now, some of them can and have led to exploits for people's browsers, but I don't see where that can possibly be the web developer's fault, except that maybe he shouldn't be requiring things like ActiveX anyways. Maybe that's my problem. I don't think they two are at all alike.Having several meetings about which _font_ your home page uses are _not_ unheard of, and the same goes for their use of java, dhtml, javascript, ActiveX, Flash, Shockwave, etc.
To add insult to injury, in some cases when they find that they can't make their page render the way they want it to, they just save it as a gif and make their entire page one image, or at least several images of text and such. Which works on all browsers, as long as you're not blind or using lynx anyways.
Generally they don't care too much about that last 10% as long as they can make it look right for the 90% that use IE.
But I was certainly annoyed that even after buying HL2 at the store, I had to fight with Steam for hours (seriously) before I could play the game. And even after that was all done, it was 5 minutes after I booted up before I could even play HL2 (Steam had to fully initialize first, and that took several minutes) for several weeks. Then that got fixed somehow.
Distributing games via the Internet is a great idea. Buying games at the local store is a tried and true technique, which makes it a great idea too (just not that new.) But don't mix the two, unless it's for more than just copy protection (like with a MMORPG.)
Valve stuck the knife in itself by requiring that the retail version of HL2 require Steam. The gamers are just twisting the knife a little -- which certainly seems fair considering what Steam has done to many (including me), and without even offering some reach-around.And what's so special about the tsunami anyways? People are starving every day, dying from easily cured diseases. The tsunami was a tragic event, certainly, but people were dying who needed our help before the tsunami, and they're still dying after the tsunami.
In reality, the sites usually work if the Referrer: header is empty, or if it says you came from the same site. It's when the Referrer: site says the link is from another site that the site denies the request, so NIS 2004 won't break every site. But I'm sure it still breaks a good number of them, the ones that go to great pains to make sure you only go through their web site the way that _they_ want you to. (Granted, these are good web sites to avoid, but still.)
My Linux box certainly doesn't have or need a virus scanner, and the Windows box I have has no virus scanner and I've not had a windows virus or worm on it or any other box of mine in I think fourteen years. (This is the last virus I got. Downloaded it from a BBS from a disk usage program. du.exe.)
It's all a matter of being smart about what you run and disabling services that you don't need. And keeping up to date on patches doesn't hurt, and neither does doing most of my Internet stuff on my Linux box. (The Windows box is mostly for games, and the occasional program my wife needs.)
I'd hate for the banks to start requiring that their electronic banking users have virus scanners installed in a knee-jerk reaction to this sort of incident.
And in any event, one person's `spamware' may very well be another person's tool of choice for sending out mail to a large (and yet legitimate) mailing list.
I'd guess that the most popular OSS office suite is OpenOffice, but it doesn't even come close. It's advantages are that 1) it runs on OSs other than Windows and MacOS, 2) it's free and 3) you've got the source if you want it, but beyond that, it's not nearly as functional as Microsoft Office and crashes even more often. (Especially when trying to open Microsoft Office documents, which isn't really a fair comparison, I know ...)
(Microsoft does have more products than Windows, after all. And the last few Microsoft games I played (Halo, Age of Mythology, Crimson Skies, Mechwarrior 4) were pretty good too ...)
Not what they're after, not really much of a cardio workout, but even so ...
If you had a native OS/2 application, it was almost certain to be better than a native Windows application on Windows. But these applications were few and far in between, and so OS/2 had to emulate Windows to run Windows applications, and that was less than perfect. People didn't really properly appreciate OS/2's advantages -- they just wanted something that would give them less trouble -- so they'd take their PS/2 that came preinstalled with OS/2, and replace it with Windows.
Linux is in a similar position, except that it's not as good at emulating Windows as OS/2 was. (Well, emulating Windows was much easier back then. Wine can probably run Windows 3.x applications as well as or better than OS/2 2.1 did.)
As for the Hurd, there's a lot of potential there, but the rest of the computing world isn't just waiting around for the Hurd to finally be finished. As said by another poster, the goal of the Hurd is to be better than anything else out there -- which is great, but if the new version just ran it's first program, it's a long way from catching up to anything, let alone surpassing it.
And many of those packages that you've mentioned are a lot simpler than a *nix-like kernel, and so it's easier to `get your arms around them' and contribute.
Hasn't RMS referred to Linux as the `missing' `GNU kernel'? Around the time of the `lignux' fiasco?
In any event, I see the Hurd as something of an experiment in making a new kernel not because it's needed, but because you can. Linux was in the same boat many years ago, but it became extremely useful pretty quickly. The last I'd heard, the Hurd was reaching the useful stage too, but now that I hear that they've started from scratch, well, I guess it'll be a while.
In any event, had Linux and the *BSDs not come around when they did, we could all very well be singing the praises of the Hurd on Slashdot now, talking about how it's so much better than the OS/2 that had monopolized the PC OS market ...
(OS/2 was a very worthy OS, but it just never really caught on. It seemed appropriate to throw it into my bizarro world ...)
But if you tried to play something like the PC version of UT with a joypad like you had on an X-Box, vs. guys with keyboard and mouse, you'd get pwn3d quick. It's just that the PC version makes it important to be able to aim precisely, something the joypad just isn't good at.
Probably a number similar to the number of console games that are `copy-cat' games. The vast majority of games out there, PC and console, are copies of other games, with some tweaking or new features. Few are revolutionary rather than evolutionary.The grandparent post of this post was claiming that `Exclusive PC titles are a rare breed these days' -- which couldn't be further from the truth. And I pointed out why. (Though I guess if you restrict yourself to `big budget, blockbuster titles', then maybe that statement is becoming true.)
Ok, I won't argue too much about that -- I really can't claim to know too much about what your average console player wants.But since there will always be `extra'-ordinary games, PC games will *never* die, at least until the consoles can cater to them a little better.
(I'm guessing you don't really want revenge. You just want to do your friends, even better than they got you. And they _did_ get you pretty good ...)
And then there's mods to existing games -- remember, Counterstrike started as a HL mod. Currently, consoles really don't allow anybody to modify the games at all, though it's possible that they may in the future.
I'm still guessing (and granted, it's just a guess) that the PC has a much larger base of games available than say the X-Box. Perhaps 10x as large. The PS2 is a tougher one to beat, as it can still run PS1 games, but even there, the PC has many years of head start, and probably even more people making games for it. (Remember, an individual can make a PC game. Generally an individual cannot make a console game.)
Ultimately, consoles are already full fledged computers -- the X-Box even uses an Intel cpu, PC hard drive, Nvidia graphics and a version of Windows. It may be that later versions of the consoles are even more computer like -- even going so far as having a mouse and keyboard for input, and allowing the use of a computer monitor for higher resolution graphics. And it may then allow you to do things like look at web pages, chat and do your taxes.
Really, right now, the differences between a console and a computer are pretty small --
A console is generally cheap up front, and a computer costs more. The console is often even sold at a loss, because ...
Console (games) generally cost more than PC games, because a signifigant chunk of the cost goes to the console maker. Lose money on the razor, but make it back on the blades ...
A console's hardware is almost completely standardized
A console cannot be customized to any signifigant degree. And that's really about it.
I imagine that in the future, PCs will look more like consoles, and consoles will look more like PCs. The entire issue is likely to be academic.
I seriously doubt anybody actually uses it. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if it doesn't even work anymore. But then again, merely having it as an option doesn't hurt anything, so it's just ignored rather than removed. (And even if it were removed, anybody could re-implement it as a kernel module.)