<sarcasm>Yes, there must be a conspiracy!</sarcasm>
Pffffffft.
They sponsored us because the organizers asked. Its no more complicated than that. All of the sponsors were asked to help and they did.
If anyone is "naive" here, it is your automatic assumption that everything done by MS is part of some evil conspiracy to suppress linux or open source or whatever you feel is your One, True, Valiant Cause. Even after your initial fallacious assumptions are pointed out as such and after it was pointed out that only a few seconds of clicking would have told you this is the case, you still "suspect" something else going on.
The demoscene is completely orthogonal to open source software and/or linux. This business of "selling their soul to Microsoft" is just complete nonsense. Democoders just code for what's commonly available, like any other software producer. Some democoders who care write demos that are portable to many platforms. Other democoders that don't care about Windows code specifically for their favorite platform, whether that is the C=64, Macintosh, GBA or whatever.
There are people in both scenes who participate in the other, but the demoscene has always had more in common with proprietary closed software than it has had with open source. Very few people publish the source to their demos because they hold their bag of tricks close to their chest, just like proprietary software vendors.
About the only thing the demoscene has in common with the free software movement is that demos are freely available for download and charging money for demos is generally frowned upon.
Also, comparing a demo of Doom 3 to what a democoder produces in a typical demo is a pretty silly comparison. That is like comparing the layout of my household vegetable garden to the elaborate displays at Longwood Gardens.
Doom 3 is a commercial effort (not open source!) with probably tens of man years invested in the code base.
Your other comments seem similarly misinformed. Very few of the modern demos have high hardware requirements and commercial game programs coming out currently don't have high minimum hardware requirements, but they also drop off all the bells, whistles and fancy chrome when you run them on crappy hardware. Democoders prefer to take advantage of the hardware if they need it but don't bother in trying to make scaled-down crappy looking versions of their demos to run on old hardware. The difference is that games won't get funded if they don't run on old crappy hardware, whereas democoders could care less if you've got old crappy hardware and can't run their demo.
5 seconds of googling for "history of computer graphics" would have answered your question in less time than it took you to post a baseless whine about it here.
NAID, Crash, Spring Break and Coma are all dead and don't happen anymore. There are no web pages for those parties where you can contact the organizers. There are no plans to revive any of these demoparties and continue them.
Unless you have a TARDIS, the only demoparty you'll be attending in North America is Pilgrimage. Pilgrimage is the only North American demoparty with a plan to be around for more than 2-3 years as a fluke. Pilgrimage is the only North American demoparty that has a functioning web page.
Pilgrimage organizers have never claimed it was the only demoparty to ever happen in North American. The organizers are well aware of the history of North American demoparties. However, the point is that those other parties are HISTORY not ongoing events you can still attend.
You "guess" completely wrong, but in a manner totally consistent with a dothead that engages in baseless MS bashing.
Did you even look at the results from last year? There was a FreeBSD demo released all while Microsoft sponsored us.
There won't be any linux demos as long as noone submits linux demos. The same is true for any other platform. Nowhere do we require that demos be on a specific platform. All you had to do was read our compo rules in order to learn that.
But hey, that would require actually knowing something before you dish out slurs. Have you thought of a career in journalism?
Slashdot Mirror
<sarcasm>Yes, there must be a conspiracy!</sarcasm>
Pffffffft.
They sponsored us because the organizers asked. Its no more complicated than that. All of the sponsors were asked to help and they did.
If anyone is "naive" here, it is your automatic assumption that everything done by MS is part of some evil conspiracy to suppress linux or open source or whatever you feel is your One, True, Valiant Cause. Even after your initial fallacious assumptions are pointed out as such and after it was pointed out that only a few seconds of clicking would have told you this is the case, you still "suspect" something else going on.
The demoscene is completely orthogonal to open source software and/or linux. This business of "selling their soul to Microsoft" is just complete nonsense. Democoders just code for what's commonly available, like any other software producer. Some democoders who care write demos that are portable to many platforms. Other democoders that don't care about Windows code specifically for their favorite platform, whether that is the C=64, Macintosh, GBA or whatever.
There are people in both scenes who participate in the other, but the demoscene has always had more in common with proprietary closed software than it has had with open source. Very few people publish the source to their demos because they hold their bag of tricks close to their chest, just like proprietary software vendors.
About the only thing the demoscene has in common with the free software movement is that demos are freely available for download and charging money for demos is generally frowned upon.
Also, comparing a demo of Doom 3 to what a democoder produces in a typical demo is a pretty silly comparison. That is like comparing the layout of my household vegetable garden to the elaborate displays at Longwood Gardens.
Doom 3 is a commercial effort (not open source!) with probably tens of man years invested in the code base.
Your other comments seem similarly misinformed. Very few of the modern demos have high hardware requirements and commercial game programs coming out currently don't have high minimum hardware requirements, but they also drop off all the bells, whistles and fancy chrome when you run them on crappy hardware. Democoders prefer to take advantage of the hardware if they need it but don't bother in trying to make scaled-down crappy looking versions of their demos to run on old hardware. The difference is that games won't get funded if they don't run on old crappy hardware, whereas democoders could care less if you've got old crappy hardware and can't run their demo.
5 seconds of googling for "history of computer graphics" would have answered your question in less time than it took you to post a baseless whine about it here.
SCO isn't in Salt Lake City. They aren't even in Salt Lake County.
NAID, Crash, Spring Break and Coma are all dead and don't happen anymore. There are no web pages for those parties where you can contact the organizers. There are no plans to revive any of these demoparties and continue them.
Unless you have a TARDIS, the only demoparty you'll be attending in North America is Pilgrimage. Pilgrimage is the only North American demoparty with a plan to be around for more than 2-3 years as a fluke. Pilgrimage is the only North American demoparty that has a functioning web page.
Pilgrimage organizers have never claimed it was the only demoparty to ever happen in North American. The organizers are well aware of the history of North American demoparties. However, the point is that those other parties are HISTORY not ongoing events you can still attend.
You "guess" completely wrong, but in a manner totally consistent with a dothead that engages in baseless MS bashing.
Did you even look at the results from last year? There was a FreeBSD demo released all while Microsoft sponsored us.
There won't be any linux demos as long as noone submits linux demos. The same is true for any other platform. Nowhere do we require that demos be on a specific platform. All you had to do was read our compo rules in order to learn that.
But hey, that would require actually knowing something before you dish out slurs. Have you thought of a career in journalism?