...as the GP said, if he were to provide it (which would probably take all of 15 minutes) it would shut up all those who are currently asking...
You are provably wrong, since he did provide it and numerous people here are still asking for it. I already linked to a copy of it in a reply, and several other people linked to articles verifying it was released.
Here's the mod's thought process: "I really like Obama and that guy seems to be saying something that doesn't promote Obama. Clearly he must be a troll!"
No, I suspect the thought process is more like this:"Oh god, another person trying to get replies by posting things that are completely wrong and everyone knows is wrong, but which many people will feel they need to respond to anyway."
I'll explain this birth certificate controversy.
You can't. There is no controversy. There are a bunch of rumors and nonsense and a smear campaign and a bunch of hysterical idiots who either can't do any research or are unwilling to believe despite any evidence presented. He released his birth certificate. He did it a long time ago, and we still have morons claiming he didn't or that it is a forgery or that a "certificate of live birth" isn't a birth certificate, despite that being what mine says on it. Please spend 30 seconds doing research next time something comes up, instead of 10 minutes writing a completely misinformed rant.
It seems there are few to none 3D games for Linux that are not just multiplayer arenas but have a story or at least can be played alone with artificial enemies.
There isn't any real story I've seen. The single player is more like Quake.
It really is a fun game. The game is freakin FREE, and pretty decently done, so who gives a shit if it doesn't have some big fancy storyline or the latest in state of the art graphics?
I didn't find the game to be much fun when I tried it on OS X. Maybe I'll install the Linux version and give it a try. Basically, I found it pretty unusable.
You can just jump right into it with no effort and start blasting.
Yeah, I tried that. The mouse sensitivity was so bad it took me a full minute to turn around. I went back and adjusted it, but spent a good minute and a half trying to get out of the settings because to close them you have to find a nearly invisible textured dark grey on textured dark grey button in the upper right of the window. Now I've been casually playing FPS games since the original Wolfenstein. I've sunk many hours into Doom, Marathon, and Quake variants. Even so, trying to just run around in Nexuiz was painfully difficult for me. I'm sure with practice and enough time tweaking mouse settings I could get it to work acceptably, but "out of the box" it was pretty unusable. I might mention other controls were similarly poorly designed.
Casual gamers, unlike hardcore FPS gamers, don't really give a shit about a game having the 100% latest state of the art graphics, or following storylines, or that type of thing. They just want to play a fun game that they don't have to put much thought into, then when they get tired, jump up and do something else.
I think casual gamers do care about the story to some degree, but really gameplay is the key. You don't need the latest engine or most polished graphics to have a fun game for casual players. You do, however, need a higher degree of usability testing, UI design, and learnability for the interface. Nexuiz is a step backwards in usability, even from games like Doom or Quake.
Now let me ask you this. If Nexuiz were bundled with Windows Vista, what percentage of people would rather play that instead of freakin Minesweeper, Hearts, etc?
I haven't tried the Windows version, but based upon the Mac version, I'd say a minority. Sure, some people would get it to work for them, but those are the same people that currently go download freeware games now instead of relying on pre-installed games like minesweeper. The minesweeper crowd needs usability and something they can pause while they do other tasks and come back to quickly. They need something obvious in its use that tells them the controls and just works smoothly and which gradually teaches them the interface as they play. You think of Minesweeper and think "crappy game" and in many ways you're right. But in terms of some of the characteristics that matter to novice users, it far exceeds Nexuiz.
So you see what Ubuntu is doing, by including such games in their catalog, is adding value to their product by satisfying a desire.
Absolutely they are. They're also giving some users the (correct) impression that a lot of Linux and Linux software is still pretty amateur and poorly implemented in certain ways... but hey its free. There is a trade off there.
It also helps to grow the Linux "gamer" market, which also helps to make said market more attractive to other software developers, both big and small.
I'm not sure this is true. Getting more people running Linux certainly grows the potential market for people to buy games developed for it. Introducing more competing games, however, reduces the chances people will buy their game. After all, if they can play another FPS for free, why will they pay to get the one we're developing? One of the draws of smaller market is the lack of competition and this undermines that to some degree.
First person shooters have never been and will probably never be a competitive aspect of opensource. The major reason is because they are extremely content-intensive, and the collaboration advantages open source has in creating code just don't apply to things that require sound and art studios.
I agree with your premise, but disagree with your conclusion. I think opensource video games, including first person shooters will eventually out-compete closed source, but I think this will happen once OSS projects are developed which sufficiently separate the content from the engine and controls. When there is an OSS project that has a strong engine that allows end users to drop in content (which includes most graphics, sound, maps, and scripting) and said OSS project includes decent, free developer tools for creating said content. We're a long way from that stage, but think of it in terms of the following analogy. Some day gaming engines may well be analogous to DVD/video players. They can play open or closed source DVDs and the DVDs themselves can be quite profitable to make, separate from the player.
It's only "bloat" if it's in the default install. If it's something you specifically want installed, it's not "bloat".
The problem being you have a choice between incompatibility with server versions of Linux (and any other distros that don't implement it) or not implementing it as the default, at which point developers don't use it because they can't count on it being there.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.
I'm talking about how self contained applications allow users to simply pull their software from and old computer to a new one instead of re-installing them from disks and/or the internet when upgrading desktop hardware. For server purposes, that isn't very useful so server users have opposed application packages since they view it as an unnecessary change which could cause them stability problems in the short term and bloat which causes them small amounts of disk space in the long term.
Well, if you're talking software stack, there's lots of software that is written just for desktop use or just for server use.
Yes there is. There is also a core of software built around the Linux kernel, like window managers, package managers, and configuration tools, and services, all of which rely upon standards... standards which can't change if the powerful server oriented developers of Linux don't want them to nd which can consequently hold back any distro from making large improvements because any individual improvement is not as important as maintaining standards compatibility with the server and other distros.
The people who are telling you this stuff need a reality check.
I've been working in the industry for a decade, mostly for companies developing OSS and Linux based products. Nobody's telling me anything. I'm just describing what I see happening.
This is false. Nothing that makes a "better desktop" affects anything used by a server.
Sure it does. Developers using Linux for servers oppose inclusion of features all the time because of "bloat" where those features are not useful to them.
Linux doesn't have "better desktop" because it already has the best "desktop" environments that were created for any OS.
You see, this is the kind of zealotry that is an issue.
If someone made them "better" you wouldn't notice it and would contiunue bitching because your real problem has absolutely nothing to do with desktop design or infrastructure, it's presence of proprietary soeftware[sic] that you are accustomed to.
I use Linux on the desktop daily and certainly do notice improvements. If I didn't use it all the time, why would I bother trying to motivate improvements? I do miss the lack of certain application (both OSS and closed source) on Linux, but I use multiple OS's so I just run those programs on other OS's. The real telling point is when I have a choice of running the same application on multiple OS's, why is it that Linux is often not my first choice? It is simply because Linux is lacking in certain functionality available elsewhere. (Note: for some applications, Linux is my first choice, but usually only for software written for Linux and then badly ported to other OS's.)
No, I will not write Photoshop for Linux just because you promise to use Linux...
I don't want you to. I'd much rather have something not as bloated and with better functionality. I do use photoshop for certain tasks, but not for a great many other. I use GIMP for most tasks I want automated (for example) although Pixelmator+Automator has been winning me over for many of those tasks lately.
it'smuch[sic] easier to tell you to fuck yourself and find a way to make Photoshop less popular
I don't know what you think telling me to fuck myself is going to accomplish. The way to make photoshop less popular is to make alternatives more usable and powerful as well as cheaper. It's also to target niches where you can do a better job than photoshop. People are already doing it.
Please, elaborate. What improvements could be made that would benefit the desktop but haven't been pursued because they would be detrimental to the server?
Here's an example. GNUStep, drag and drop, self contained applications that can be IM'd or run on multiple platforms. I've been told numerous times that having extra binaries for other platforms is "bloat" and while disk is not usually constrained on desktops it is too valuable on servers. Another, related, example is hardware upgrades. It is easy to have the OS pull software from a previous machine with GNUStep, but for the server admins (myself included) prefer building from scratch and mostly run OSS software anyway, so re-installing and re-registering is not an issue as it is for desktops.
If I remember correctly, improvements to the kernel to improve server or desktop operation generally either have no impact on the other mode or benefits both.
I was speaking of Linux distros in general, not necessarily the Linux kernel, as that is what the article is about.
Linux has no deficiency of people who criticise[sic] and no deficiency of people who listen and act on it... MacOSX has worse than deficiency of people who criticise[sic] as they have people who actively criticise[sic] the critics and even attempt to silence them. MacOSX has a deficiency of people who listen and act on it....just to put it out the way I see it.
I've seen the opposite. A large number of former desktop Linux users I know are now OS X users. The main reason being, all the cool desktop stuff from Linux was cloned by UNIX guys at Apple. All the cool OS X stuff was never cloned and pulled into Linux. Consider things like virtual desktops. It is something the Apple UI guys didn't like and didn't want and did not fit with their paradigm... but the oldschool UNIX guys at Apple wanted it as did people coming from Linux and UNIX, so Apple copied it. Apple added expose to OS X about six years ago and instantly it became a huge boon to some of our workflows, but to date it is not running on any default Linux distro I've used. I always have to add a plug-in in Compiz, or mess with KWin to get something similar, something normal users aren't going to even know they can do.
I've always felt Apple benefits significantly from Linux development because they take most of the good ideas and incorporate them into OS X, sometimes even taking code for various projects. At the same time, Linux seems to benefit very little from OS X development, simply because they don't take the good ideas and often not even the good code. I attribute this in large part to ignorance on the part of Linux developers and a refusal to listen to criticism or the ability of any developer to actually make significant changes. Take a look at Konqueror, for another example. Apple dumped tons of money into upgrading and improving their HTML engine and in the end, seven years later, Konqueror still isn't shipping with those changes by default, even though many other opensource companies are using it and collaborating with Apple (Nokia, Google). As a result, the Konqueror project is slipping further and further behind the curve.
I wish both Apple and Linux developers would listen more to criticism and actually make changes. What I see, however, is that Apple is moderately responsive to desktop users, and Linux developers rarely if ever listen and improve based upon feedback from desktop Linux users.
Re:I hear lots of negative criticism about Linux.
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Linux Needs Critics
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I hear lots of negative criticism about Linux. Mostly from uneducated haters, but there's no lack of it.
My problem is the opposite, uneducated Linux developers. I'll submit a bug asking for feature parity with Windows or OS X and get a response back that clearly misunderstands how those OS's work. I then spend a week educating the person and explaining to them why (from and end user perspective) the way Linux does things now really isn't better and what the other OS in question does. In the the end they usually agree, it would be cool to improve Linux to work that way, but too much work or would be incompatible with other distros, so they ignore it.
Alternately, I submit a usability bug (I have worked as a UI/usability expert in the past) and then spend hours trying to explain to a server engineer working on making a desktop, why their design ignores all the research in the field and (if they did testing) is going to be a huge problem when they test it.
Don't get me wrong. I like and use Linux. In many ways it has leapt ahead of other OS's and provides a model for them to follow. It just does have some serious flaws and problems that have gone unaddressed for a long time and don't seem likely to be fixed anytime soon.
Oh, and in lots of cases, it IS ready for the desktop. Either in a managed environment with a guru at the top, for those who know what they're doing, and for locked down spoon fed distros.
I agree it can work and save money in certain uses.
I would even go so far as to say that Linux (and the Free Software ecosystem that surrounds it) has a lot more critics than closed software - or at least more effective critics.
I think the article is mistaken in a few ways. With Linux, generally when people have pain points, they fix them because the developers are the users... or are directly paid by them. There are problems that are never solved, however, because no one person has the authority to push through disruptive changes. Much could be done to make Linux a better desktop, but because it would make it a poorer server and appliance OS, those things are not likely to happen. Even cross-distro standards and interoperability don't work well to promote real advancement, rather than mitigate the minor conflicts between them while giving more reason for development to freeze where it is.
Large software companies pay PR departments to generate positive coverage.
They also pay R&D departments to survey people and conduct studies to see what potential users want but aren't getting. Futrher, there is a non-zero chance they will make a change to accommodate those users, even if it breaks compatibility with old version of their OS.
The issue is that the pricing of Macs is completely devoid of choice. Don't need a built-in, high-res webcam? Too bad! Don't need the latest processor? We know better than you!
Sigh. As opposed to computer makers like Asus who don't know better than you, but offer even fewer different models, despite having a larger share of the market? Let me get this straight... Apple is inhibiting your choice by not offering the same number of different models as all the rest of the computer industry combined? That's your thesis here?
To me on the the biggest issues with Apple is that they don't really offer a full range of configurations. So if for instance somebody wants a mid-range tower they are out of luck. Or a consumer notebook with a big screen. What they do make I think is competitive in those markets. But an expanded lineup would really help.
Apple will never have as wide a selection of different computers as all other computer manufacturers combined. It is unlikely this problem will ever go away. That said, the more models they offer, the less this is an issue. Apple already offers significantly more models than some computer makers with a larger market share than they have (like Asus). It is a balance between having enough models to fit as many people's needs as possible and not having so many that they are overextended for engineering and production and lose economies of scale.
i would find it highly ironic if an anti-monopoly ruling of some court would help the biggest search engine to bundle their browser preinstalled to consumer PCs.
Why? Antitrust law only applies to bundling that undermines a free market. Even the largest competitor in a given market can bundle without necessarily undermining a second market, if they lack sufficient influence in the market. Google bundling a browser (where they obviously don't have a monopoly) with PC's (where they also obviously don't have a market since they don't even sell them) has little or nothing to do with antitrust law.
Your analogy was that, though murder has been happening for a long time (like climate change), guns are a major tool that are used to make it happen (like carbon dioxide).
Yes.
Dyson's point is that he believes the data on the magnitude of the CO2-climate change link (guns-murder connection) is insufficient to scientifically justify some of the climate change predictions and CO2 reduction strategies (gun control laws) that are being pushed.
Except, scientifically, there isn't a much of a "gun-murder connection" Gun control laws don't correlate well with rates of violent crime and murder. The best scientific model established for reducing murders is to decrease wealth disparity, which has a very strong correlation.
CO2, on the other hand, has been determined by the scientific method to be the most likely causative factor for the rapid change in global temperature. That's where the analogy falls apart, you see?
Personally I think you picked an unfortunate analogy since it's, if anything, MORE politically charged than climate change.
Maybe that makes it a better example. What I'm advocating is following the scientific method and looking at the published, peer reviewed data, rather than paying attention to PR pieces, paid adverts from special interests, or politicians who we all know want votes more than effective solutions. This particular article and discussion are very relevant because much of what people are attributing to Dyson are quite the opposite of his actual opinions; both in discussion and in articles from the press.
FYI, I'm a Canadian, who thinks are more strict gun control laws make us a safer country than the US...
I don't think the science supports that belief. Looking at correlative and potentially causative factors for violent crime (lack of safety), It would be supportable to say that socialized healthcare makes you safer than people in the US. But from the data, you'd have t conclude gun control laws have little or no impact on violent crime in Canada.
...and I generally agree with initiatives to decrease CO2 production and increase efficiency.
But the real question is why you support those initiatives. Is it because you feel you should and justify it with reasoning, or is it because you looked at the application of the scientific method and decided CO2 is the most likely cause of a problem and changes to CO2 production are thebest solution based upon the leading theory?
I ALSO think that, at least in this particular case, Dyson is making a positive and important contribution to discussion of important topic.
Dyson's comments are a mixed bag, by themselves. Some of his comments are valid criticism, much of which applies to things already addressed by the models. Other of his comments (especially about remedies) are ill conceived and have no scientific backing at all. They're just guesswork on his part and guesswork from a not very informed perspective and with no scientific evidence to back them up. Moreover, the effect of Dydson's comments is to provide fodder for the propaganda campaign trying to prevent any actions that might reduce their profits, regardless of the truth.
PS: your mention of bullet proof vests seems to be an ill conceived and poorly thought out attempt to play on the politics of gun control (which you picked as an analogy in the first place). A bullet proof vest in this analogy would be more like building underground bunkers, or space colonies. Something that would protect us regardless of what the causes of climate change are.
I disagree. The mention of bulletproof vests is a more apt extension of the analogy because bulletproof vests are scientifically supported as a good model for reducing murders. Passing gun control laws are not scientifically shown to have any such effect, ba
Good point. Now, if I were to take your results and claim that banning guns would end murder, what would you think?
That you missed the point of the analogy and are trying to claim current attempts to mitigate climate change are like gun control laws, when they're a lot more like investing in bulletproof vests.
OSX is as incompatible with OS9 as Linux is to Windows. You could get the same results by doing a seamless integration of virtual box...
IApple's OS X seamlessly ran OS 9 applications such that some novice users didn't know or care whether an application they were running was written for OS X or OS 9. Linux could implement similar technology to run Windows and try to get it working as well as Apple's classic mode did... but no Linux distro I ever used did this.
OS X ran OS 9 software. The mechanism by which it did this is irrelevant to users. It was compatible in every way that mattered to users.
What? That makes absolutely no sense. Lock-in means that you bundle two normally separated products to exclusively function with eachother.
Actually lock-in is any method which prevents users from moving to competitors by making such a move difficult or painful. It doesn't have to involve "separated products". I think you're getting lock-in confused with antitrust abuse.
I stand by my points though. There really isn't any proof that there has been an "unprecedented rate of change" recently.
Both IPCC and CSIRO reports disagree with you. If you look at things on the scale of thousands of years of change, then ti has been over a million years since we've had this rapid of temperature change (then at the end of an ice age). If you look at it on the scale of hundreds of years, we have no record of any global temperature change as rapid as we've experienced in the last two hundred years.
Temperature has fluctuated throughout the ages, and not because of carbon dioxide(there is a correlation, but the CO2 levels change after the temperature)...
That is not the scientific consensus. The most supported (by experimental evidence) scientific model is that rises in greenhouse gasses are causative of temperature change. You may have a different theory, but to date the evidence has not supported that conclusion and the IPCC report concurs with this.
...and we haven't reached anything close to the top or bottom of the ranges that the world has been in in the past.
Of course not, but if we did can you imagine the ramifications for humanity? Even moderate changes, relative to the top and bottom, are enough to lead to massive death and upheaval. A small, regional climactic change resulted in the displacement of people and thousands of deaths in Darfur. A global change of a five degrees would likely result in such enormous expense and loss of life that it would be unprecedented.
Now, I realise that people don't want to have to deal with global change, but the world is a damn complex system... there is absolutely no way to know how our actions affect it exactly...
We do have a method of determining the most likely explanation for how things happen. It's called the scientific method. It is not a logical method of defending a belief, but a formal, logic method for forming the most likely correct belief. It works.
Now I totally support reducing(through social and economic means, not through government regulation) pollution
How can you disassociate social trends and the economy from government regulation/deregulation?
But CO2 doesn't have any negative effects to our bodies, nor is there any statistically significant evidence to show that it has an effect on the world, except perhaps to allow more trees to grow.
Why is it every scientific paper I've read disagrees with you? New Scientist, Scientific American, the IPCC report, the CSIRO report. Literally everything in peer reviewed journals seems to disagree with you. The only things that agree with you are non-scientific PR pieces. I'm curious, what peer reviewed, scientific papers have lead you to form your belief?
They can tell you that, but can they be right more often than a simple historical model (i.e. "It's snowed in February in the last 75 out of 100 years") would predict? If not, their predictions aren't worth squat.
But they have been more correct, both for the last few decades where they were making predictions and for the predictions they make about times past when you look them up and compare them to predictions. That's the whole point. Our most supported (by predictions) models indicate that CO2 is a factor and is leading to climate change at an unprecedented rate. The long term consequences can be estimated with less reliability, but the potential negatives are severe enough and the amount of time needed for corrective measures to take effect long enough, that we need to be cautious.
I wish I where as smart as you sir, perhaps I could figure out how you just disproved my theory with two paragraphs worth of utter bullshit.
Calling my logical argument "bullshit" does not address any of the points I made. I'm sorry you're too close minded to learn the scientific method and how you can apply it to more accurately form correct beliefs.
I am sorry I will head over to You Tube so I can watch a true scientist (Al Gore) describe the armageddon we will endure within the next ten years if we
don't buy his book.
Following up your proclamation with such an obvious and weak strawman doesn't help.
I would have to agree with the man, consider this fact. The area in which I currently live was just 10,000 years ago covered by a glacier nearly a mile in thickness. Now we certainly where[sic] not burning fossil fuels 10k years ago, yet somehow global warming caused the glaciers to recede and melt. Yes I do believe in global warning it has been going on for over 10k years, I do not however believe that man is the ultimate and or major cause.
Consider this fact. 10,000 years ago people were murdered. Now we certainly were not firing guns 10k years ago, yet somehow bladed weapons caused people to die. Yes I do believe in murder has been going on for over 10k years, I do not, however, believe that guns are a main tool used to commit murder.
Hopefully my analogy has demonstrated to you that you've provided no support whatsoever for the theory that current global warming trends are not caused by mankind in general or greenhouse gas emissions in particular, as the scientific models with the best experimental evidence to date seem to indicate. If you'd like to present alternate theories that show how the unprecedented rate of change fits within a different model where greenhouse gasses from human activity is not a major factor, and then perform experiments and make falsifiable predictions until your theory has more evidentiary support, please do, it will be a boon to all of mankind. If you'd care to cite peer reviewed scientific models and experiments of others that you think already show this, by all means enlighten me. As a scientist and a rational person, I form my beliefs based upon the results of the scientific method and the results all seem to be showing the same thing, to one degree or another. I see a lot of unscientific PR pieces that disagree, but no real science. Sadly, it seems PR works as well as anything to form opinions, which is why people persist in such unscientific beliefs and deny manmade global warming or the evolution of man or the spherical earth theories; which science has pretty well established as facts at this point.
I am skeptical about our ability to accurately predict the future using current mathematical models. They can't even accurately predict the weather a week in advance.
You should recognize the fallacy in this reasoning. Scientists can't tell me if it's going to rain two weeks from Monday. They can, however, tell me it is going to snow next February. They climatology can predict large trends based upon past data, even if they can't make micro-predictions about what is going to happen a given day. In fact, the models in use to predict overall temperature changes have been fairly accurate, but they don't make predictions on small enough of a scale to predict what will happen in a given year even, just what is likely to happen in a given decade.
For another example, scientists can't tell you what day you're going to die, but they can tell you the general trend as to how many people will die at a given age. Not being able to predict the former does not make the latter any less possible.
Slashdot Mirror
...as the GP said, if he were to provide it (which would probably take all of 15 minutes) it would shut up all those who are currently asking...
You are provably wrong, since he did provide it and numerous people here are still asking for it. I already linked to a copy of it in a reply, and several other people linked to articles verifying it was released.
It's too bad this was modded as Troll.
I disagree.
Here's the mod's thought process: "I really like Obama and that guy seems to be saying something that doesn't promote Obama. Clearly he must be a troll!"
No, I suspect the thought process is more like this:"Oh god, another person trying to get replies by posting things that are completely wrong and everyone knows is wrong, but which many people will feel they need to respond to anyway."
I'll explain this birth certificate controversy.
You can't. There is no controversy. There are a bunch of rumors and nonsense and a smear campaign and a bunch of hysterical idiots who either can't do any research or are unwilling to believe despite any evidence presented. He released his birth certificate. He did it a long time ago, and we still have morons claiming he didn't or that it is a forgery or that a "certificate of live birth" isn't a birth certificate, despite that being what mine says on it. Please spend 30 seconds doing research next time something comes up, instead of 10 minutes writing a completely misinformed rant.
Is there a single player mode?
Yes.
It seems there are few to none 3D games for Linux that are not just multiplayer arenas but have a story or at least can be played alone with artificial enemies.
There isn't any real story I've seen. The single player is more like Quake.
It really is a fun game. The game is freakin FREE, and pretty decently done, so who gives a shit if it doesn't have some big fancy storyline or the latest in state of the art graphics?
I didn't find the game to be much fun when I tried it on OS X. Maybe I'll install the Linux version and give it a try. Basically, I found it pretty unusable.
You can just jump right into it with no effort and start blasting.
Yeah, I tried that. The mouse sensitivity was so bad it took me a full minute to turn around. I went back and adjusted it, but spent a good minute and a half trying to get out of the settings because to close them you have to find a nearly invisible textured dark grey on textured dark grey button in the upper right of the window. Now I've been casually playing FPS games since the original Wolfenstein. I've sunk many hours into Doom, Marathon, and Quake variants. Even so, trying to just run around in Nexuiz was painfully difficult for me. I'm sure with practice and enough time tweaking mouse settings I could get it to work acceptably, but "out of the box" it was pretty unusable. I might mention other controls were similarly poorly designed.
Casual gamers, unlike hardcore FPS gamers, don't really give a shit about a game having the 100% latest state of the art graphics, or following storylines, or that type of thing. They just want to play a fun game that they don't have to put much thought into, then when they get tired, jump up and do something else.
I think casual gamers do care about the story to some degree, but really gameplay is the key. You don't need the latest engine or most polished graphics to have a fun game for casual players. You do, however, need a higher degree of usability testing, UI design, and learnability for the interface. Nexuiz is a step backwards in usability, even from games like Doom or Quake.
Now let me ask you this. If Nexuiz were bundled with Windows Vista, what percentage of people would rather play that instead of freakin Minesweeper, Hearts, etc?
I haven't tried the Windows version, but based upon the Mac version, I'd say a minority. Sure, some people would get it to work for them, but those are the same people that currently go download freeware games now instead of relying on pre-installed games like minesweeper. The minesweeper crowd needs usability and something they can pause while they do other tasks and come back to quickly. They need something obvious in its use that tells them the controls and just works smoothly and which gradually teaches them the interface as they play. You think of Minesweeper and think "crappy game" and in many ways you're right. But in terms of some of the characteristics that matter to novice users, it far exceeds Nexuiz.
So you see what Ubuntu is doing, by including such games in their catalog, is adding value to their product by satisfying a desire.
Absolutely they are. They're also giving some users the (correct) impression that a lot of Linux and Linux software is still pretty amateur and poorly implemented in certain ways... but hey its free. There is a trade off there.
It also helps to grow the Linux "gamer" market, which also helps to make said market more attractive to other software developers, both big and small.
I'm not sure this is true. Getting more people running Linux certainly grows the potential market for people to buy games developed for it. Introducing more competing games, however, reduces the chances people will buy their game. After all, if they can play another FPS for free, why will they pay to get the one we're developing? One of the draws of smaller market is the lack of competition and this undermines that to some degree.
First person shooters have never been and will probably never be a competitive aspect of opensource. The major reason is because they are extremely content-intensive, and the collaboration advantages open source has in creating code just don't apply to things that require sound and art studios.
I agree with your premise, but disagree with your conclusion. I think opensource video games, including first person shooters will eventually out-compete closed source, but I think this will happen once OSS projects are developed which sufficiently separate the content from the engine and controls. When there is an OSS project that has a strong engine that allows end users to drop in content (which includes most graphics, sound, maps, and scripting) and said OSS project includes decent, free developer tools for creating said content. We're a long way from that stage, but think of it in terms of the following analogy. Some day gaming engines may well be analogous to DVD/video players. They can play open or closed source DVDs and the DVDs themselves can be quite profitable to make, separate from the player.
It's only "bloat" if it's in the default install. If it's something you specifically want installed, it's not "bloat".
The problem being you have a choice between incompatibility with server versions of Linux (and any other distros that don't implement it) or not implementing it as the default, at which point developers don't use it because they can't count on it being there.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.
I'm talking about how self contained applications allow users to simply pull their software from and old computer to a new one instead of re-installing them from disks and/or the internet when upgrading desktop hardware. For server purposes, that isn't very useful so server users have opposed application packages since they view it as an unnecessary change which could cause them stability problems in the short term and bloat which causes them small amounts of disk space in the long term.
Well, if you're talking software stack, there's lots of software that is written just for desktop use or just for server use.
Yes there is. There is also a core of software built around the Linux kernel, like window managers, package managers, and configuration tools, and services, all of which rely upon standards... standards which can't change if the powerful server oriented developers of Linux don't want them to nd which can consequently hold back any distro from making large improvements because any individual improvement is not as important as maintaining standards compatibility with the server and other distros.
The people who are telling you this stuff need a reality check.
I've been working in the industry for a decade, mostly for companies developing OSS and Linux based products. Nobody's telling me anything. I'm just describing what I see happening.
This is false. Nothing that makes a "better desktop" affects anything used by a server.
Sure it does. Developers using Linux for servers oppose inclusion of features all the time because of "bloat" where those features are not useful to them.
Linux doesn't have "better desktop" because it already has the best "desktop" environments that were created for any OS.
You see, this is the kind of zealotry that is an issue.
If someone made them "better" you wouldn't notice it and would contiunue bitching because your real problem has absolutely nothing to do with desktop design or infrastructure, it's presence of proprietary soeftware[sic] that you are accustomed to.
I use Linux on the desktop daily and certainly do notice improvements. If I didn't use it all the time, why would I bother trying to motivate improvements? I do miss the lack of certain application (both OSS and closed source) on Linux, but I use multiple OS's so I just run those programs on other OS's. The real telling point is when I have a choice of running the same application on multiple OS's, why is it that Linux is often not my first choice? It is simply because Linux is lacking in certain functionality available elsewhere. (Note: for some applications, Linux is my first choice, but usually only for software written for Linux and then badly ported to other OS's.)
No, I will not write Photoshop for Linux just because you promise to use Linux...
I don't want you to. I'd much rather have something not as bloated and with better functionality. I do use photoshop for certain tasks, but not for a great many other. I use GIMP for most tasks I want automated (for example) although Pixelmator+Automator has been winning me over for many of those tasks lately.
it'smuch[sic] easier to tell you to fuck yourself and find a way to make Photoshop less popular
I don't know what you think telling me to fuck myself is going to accomplish. The way to make photoshop less popular is to make alternatives more usable and powerful as well as cheaper. It's also to target niches where you can do a better job than photoshop. People are already doing it.
Please, elaborate. What improvements could be made that would benefit the desktop but haven't been pursued because they would be detrimental to the server?
Here's an example. GNUStep, drag and drop, self contained applications that can be IM'd or run on multiple platforms. I've been told numerous times that having extra binaries for other platforms is "bloat" and while disk is not usually constrained on desktops it is too valuable on servers. Another, related, example is hardware upgrades. It is easy to have the OS pull software from a previous machine with GNUStep, but for the server admins (myself included) prefer building from scratch and mostly run OSS software anyway, so re-installing and re-registering is not an issue as it is for desktops.
If I remember correctly, improvements to the kernel to improve server or desktop operation generally either have no impact on the other mode or benefits both.
I was speaking of Linux distros in general, not necessarily the Linux kernel, as that is what the article is about.
Linux has no deficiency of people who criticise[sic] and no deficiency of people who listen and act on it... MacOSX has worse than deficiency of people who criticise[sic] as they have people who actively criticise[sic] the critics and even attempt to silence them. MacOSX has a deficiency of people who listen and act on it. ...just to put it out the way I see it.
I've seen the opposite. A large number of former desktop Linux users I know are now OS X users. The main reason being, all the cool desktop stuff from Linux was cloned by UNIX guys at Apple. All the cool OS X stuff was never cloned and pulled into Linux. Consider things like virtual desktops. It is something the Apple UI guys didn't like and didn't want and did not fit with their paradigm... but the oldschool UNIX guys at Apple wanted it as did people coming from Linux and UNIX, so Apple copied it. Apple added expose to OS X about six years ago and instantly it became a huge boon to some of our workflows, but to date it is not running on any default Linux distro I've used. I always have to add a plug-in in Compiz, or mess with KWin to get something similar, something normal users aren't going to even know they can do.
I've always felt Apple benefits significantly from Linux development because they take most of the good ideas and incorporate them into OS X, sometimes even taking code for various projects. At the same time, Linux seems to benefit very little from OS X development, simply because they don't take the good ideas and often not even the good code. I attribute this in large part to ignorance on the part of Linux developers and a refusal to listen to criticism or the ability of any developer to actually make significant changes. Take a look at Konqueror, for another example. Apple dumped tons of money into upgrading and improving their HTML engine and in the end, seven years later, Konqueror still isn't shipping with those changes by default, even though many other opensource companies are using it and collaborating with Apple (Nokia, Google). As a result, the Konqueror project is slipping further and further behind the curve.
I wish both Apple and Linux developers would listen more to criticism and actually make changes. What I see, however, is that Apple is moderately responsive to desktop users, and Linux developers rarely if ever listen and improve based upon feedback from desktop Linux users.
I hear lots of negative criticism about Linux. Mostly from uneducated haters, but there's no lack of it.
My problem is the opposite, uneducated Linux developers. I'll submit a bug asking for feature parity with Windows or OS X and get a response back that clearly misunderstands how those OS's work. I then spend a week educating the person and explaining to them why (from and end user perspective) the way Linux does things now really isn't better and what the other OS in question does. In the the end they usually agree, it would be cool to improve Linux to work that way, but too much work or would be incompatible with other distros, so they ignore it.
Alternately, I submit a usability bug (I have worked as a UI/usability expert in the past) and then spend hours trying to explain to a server engineer working on making a desktop, why their design ignores all the research in the field and (if they did testing) is going to be a huge problem when they test it.
Don't get me wrong. I like and use Linux. In many ways it has leapt ahead of other OS's and provides a model for them to follow. It just does have some serious flaws and problems that have gone unaddressed for a long time and don't seem likely to be fixed anytime soon.
Oh, and in lots of cases, it IS ready for the desktop. Either in a managed environment with a guru at the top, for those who know what they're doing, and for locked down spoon fed distros.
I agree it can work and save money in certain uses.
I would even go so far as to say that Linux (and the Free Software ecosystem that surrounds it) has a lot more critics than closed software - or at least more effective critics.
I think the article is mistaken in a few ways. With Linux, generally when people have pain points, they fix them because the developers are the users... or are directly paid by them. There are problems that are never solved, however, because no one person has the authority to push through disruptive changes. Much could be done to make Linux a better desktop, but because it would make it a poorer server and appliance OS, those things are not likely to happen. Even cross-distro standards and interoperability don't work well to promote real advancement, rather than mitigate the minor conflicts between them while giving more reason for development to freeze where it is.
Large software companies pay PR departments to generate positive coverage.
They also pay R&D departments to survey people and conduct studies to see what potential users want but aren't getting. Futrher, there is a non-zero chance they will make a change to accommodate those users, even if it breaks compatibility with old version of their OS.
The issue is that the pricing of Macs is completely devoid of choice. Don't need a built-in, high-res webcam? Too bad! Don't need the latest processor? We know better than you!
Sigh. As opposed to computer makers like Asus who don't know better than you, but offer even fewer different models, despite having a larger share of the market? Let me get this straight... Apple is inhibiting your choice by not offering the same number of different models as all the rest of the computer industry combined? That's your thesis here?
To me on the the biggest issues with Apple is that they don't really offer a full range of configurations. So if for instance somebody wants a mid-range tower they are out of luck. Or a consumer notebook with a big screen. What they do make I think is competitive in those markets. But an expanded lineup would really help.
Apple will never have as wide a selection of different computers as all other computer manufacturers combined. It is unlikely this problem will ever go away. That said, the more models they offer, the less this is an issue. Apple already offers significantly more models than some computer makers with a larger market share than they have (like Asus). It is a balance between having enough models to fit as many people's needs as possible and not having so many that they are overextended for engineering and production and lose economies of scale.
i would find it highly ironic if an anti-monopoly ruling of some court would help the biggest search engine to bundle their browser preinstalled to consumer PCs.
Why? Antitrust law only applies to bundling that undermines a free market. Even the largest competitor in a given market can bundle without necessarily undermining a second market, if they lack sufficient influence in the market. Google bundling a browser (where they obviously don't have a monopoly) with PC's (where they also obviously don't have a market since they don't even sell them) has little or nothing to do with antitrust law.
Your analogy was that, though murder has been happening for a long time (like climate change), guns are a major tool that are used to make it happen (like carbon dioxide).
Yes.
Dyson's point is that he believes the data on the magnitude of the CO2-climate change link (guns-murder connection) is insufficient to scientifically justify some of the climate change predictions and CO2 reduction strategies (gun control laws) that are being pushed.
Except, scientifically, there isn't a much of a "gun-murder connection" Gun control laws don't correlate well with rates of violent crime and murder. The best scientific model established for reducing murders is to decrease wealth disparity, which has a very strong correlation.
CO2, on the other hand, has been determined by the scientific method to be the most likely causative factor for the rapid change in global temperature. That's where the analogy falls apart, you see?
Personally I think you picked an unfortunate analogy since it's, if anything, MORE politically charged than climate change.
Maybe that makes it a better example. What I'm advocating is following the scientific method and looking at the published, peer reviewed data, rather than paying attention to PR pieces, paid adverts from special interests, or politicians who we all know want votes more than effective solutions. This particular article and discussion are very relevant because much of what people are attributing to Dyson are quite the opposite of his actual opinions; both in discussion and in articles from the press.
FYI, I'm a Canadian, who thinks are more strict gun control laws make us a safer country than the US...
I don't think the science supports that belief. Looking at correlative and potentially causative factors for violent crime (lack of safety), It would be supportable to say that socialized healthcare makes you safer than people in the US. But from the data, you'd have t conclude gun control laws have little or no impact on violent crime in Canada.
...and I generally agree with initiatives to decrease CO2 production and increase efficiency.
But the real question is why you support those initiatives. Is it because you feel you should and justify it with reasoning, or is it because you looked at the application of the scientific method and decided CO2 is the most likely cause of a problem and changes to CO2 production are thebest solution based upon the leading theory?
I ALSO think that, at least in this particular case, Dyson is making a positive and important contribution to discussion of important topic.
Dyson's comments are a mixed bag, by themselves. Some of his comments are valid criticism, much of which applies to things already addressed by the models. Other of his comments (especially about remedies) are ill conceived and have no scientific backing at all. They're just guesswork on his part and guesswork from a not very informed perspective and with no scientific evidence to back them up. Moreover, the effect of Dydson's comments is to provide fodder for the propaganda campaign trying to prevent any actions that might reduce their profits, regardless of the truth.
PS: your mention of bullet proof vests seems to be an ill conceived and poorly thought out attempt to play on the politics of gun control (which you picked as an analogy in the first place). A bullet proof vest in this analogy would be more like building underground bunkers, or space colonies. Something that would protect us regardless of what the causes of climate change are.
I disagree. The mention of bulletproof vests is a more apt extension of the analogy because bulletproof vests are scientifically supported as a good model for reducing murders. Passing gun control laws are not scientifically shown to have any such effect, ba
Good point. Now, if I were to take your results and claim that banning guns would end murder, what would you think?
That you missed the point of the analogy and are trying to claim current attempts to mitigate climate change are like gun control laws, when they're a lot more like investing in bulletproof vests.
OSX is as incompatible with OS9 as Linux is to Windows. You could get the same results by doing a seamless integration of virtual box...
IApple's OS X seamlessly ran OS 9 applications such that some novice users didn't know or care whether an application they were running was written for OS X or OS 9. Linux could implement similar technology to run Windows and try to get it working as well as Apple's classic mode did... but no Linux distro I ever used did this.
OS X ran OS 9 software. The mechanism by which it did this is irrelevant to users. It was compatible in every way that mattered to users.
What? That makes absolutely no sense. Lock-in means that you bundle two normally separated products to exclusively function with eachother.
Actually lock-in is any method which prevents users from moving to competitors by making such a move difficult or painful. It doesn't have to involve "separated products". I think you're getting lock-in confused with antitrust abuse.
I stand by my points though. There really isn't any proof that there has been an "unprecedented rate of change" recently.
Both IPCC and CSIRO reports disagree with you. If you look at things on the scale of thousands of years of change, then ti has been over a million years since we've had this rapid of temperature change (then at the end of an ice age). If you look at it on the scale of hundreds of years, we have no record of any global temperature change as rapid as we've experienced in the last two hundred years.
Temperature has fluctuated throughout the ages, and not because of carbon dioxide(there is a correlation, but the CO2 levels change after the temperature)...
That is not the scientific consensus. The most supported (by experimental evidence) scientific model is that rises in greenhouse gasses are causative of temperature change. You may have a different theory, but to date the evidence has not supported that conclusion and the IPCC report concurs with this.
...and we haven't reached anything close to the top or bottom of the ranges that the world has been in in the past.
Of course not, but if we did can you imagine the ramifications for humanity? Even moderate changes, relative to the top and bottom, are enough to lead to massive death and upheaval. A small, regional climactic change resulted in the displacement of people and thousands of deaths in Darfur. A global change of a five degrees would likely result in such enormous expense and loss of life that it would be unprecedented.
Now, I realise that people don't want to have to deal with global change, but the world is a damn complex system... there is absolutely no way to know how our actions affect it exactly...
We do have a method of determining the most likely explanation for how things happen. It's called the scientific method. It is not a logical method of defending a belief, but a formal, logic method for forming the most likely correct belief. It works.
Now I totally support reducing(through social and economic means, not through government regulation) pollution
How can you disassociate social trends and the economy from government regulation/deregulation?
But CO2 doesn't have any negative effects to our bodies, nor is there any statistically significant evidence to show that it has an effect on the world, except perhaps to allow more trees to grow.
Why is it every scientific paper I've read disagrees with you? New Scientist, Scientific American, the IPCC report, the CSIRO report. Literally everything in peer reviewed journals seems to disagree with you. The only things that agree with you are non-scientific PR pieces. I'm curious, what peer reviewed, scientific papers have lead you to form your belief?
Why is it when people post completely unsupportable assertions, they usually do so from anonymous coward accounts?
They can tell you that, but can they be right more often than a simple historical model (i.e. "It's snowed in February in the last 75 out of 100 years") would predict? If not, their predictions aren't worth squat.
But they have been more correct, both for the last few decades where they were making predictions and for the predictions they make about times past when you look them up and compare them to predictions. That's the whole point. Our most supported (by predictions) models indicate that CO2 is a factor and is leading to climate change at an unprecedented rate. The long term consequences can be estimated with less reliability, but the potential negatives are severe enough and the amount of time needed for corrective measures to take effect long enough, that we need to be cautious.
I wish I where as smart as you sir, perhaps I could figure out how you just disproved my theory with two paragraphs worth of utter bullshit.
Calling my logical argument "bullshit" does not address any of the points I made. I'm sorry you're too close minded to learn the scientific method and how you can apply it to more accurately form correct beliefs.
I am sorry I will head over to You Tube so I can watch a true scientist (Al Gore) describe the armageddon we will endure within the next ten years if we don't buy his book.
Following up your proclamation with such an obvious and weak strawman doesn't help.
How's about this one then: Ãoescience will not intrude on public policy.Ã
That's a quote from Dyson about what he says the administration made clear to him, not a quote from Gore.
I would have to agree with the man, consider this fact. The area in which I currently live was just 10,000 years ago covered by a glacier nearly a mile in thickness. Now we certainly where[sic] not burning fossil fuels 10k years ago, yet somehow global warming caused the glaciers to recede and melt. Yes I do believe in global warning it has been going on for over 10k years, I do not however believe that man is the ultimate and or major cause.
Consider this fact. 10,000 years ago people were murdered. Now we certainly were not firing guns 10k years ago, yet somehow bladed weapons caused people to die. Yes I do believe in murder has been going on for over 10k years, I do not, however, believe that guns are a main tool used to commit murder.
Hopefully my analogy has demonstrated to you that you've provided no support whatsoever for the theory that current global warming trends are not caused by mankind in general or greenhouse gas emissions in particular, as the scientific models with the best experimental evidence to date seem to indicate. If you'd like to present alternate theories that show how the unprecedented rate of change fits within a different model where greenhouse gasses from human activity is not a major factor, and then perform experiments and make falsifiable predictions until your theory has more evidentiary support, please do, it will be a boon to all of mankind. If you'd care to cite peer reviewed scientific models and experiments of others that you think already show this, by all means enlighten me. As a scientist and a rational person, I form my beliefs based upon the results of the scientific method and the results all seem to be showing the same thing, to one degree or another. I see a lot of unscientific PR pieces that disagree, but no real science. Sadly, it seems PR works as well as anything to form opinions, which is why people persist in such unscientific beliefs and deny manmade global warming or the evolution of man or the spherical earth theories; which science has pretty well established as facts at this point.
I am skeptical about our ability to accurately predict the future using current mathematical models. They can't even accurately predict the weather a week in advance.
You should recognize the fallacy in this reasoning. Scientists can't tell me if it's going to rain two weeks from Monday. They can, however, tell me it is going to snow next February. They climatology can predict large trends based upon past data, even if they can't make micro-predictions about what is going to happen a given day. In fact, the models in use to predict overall temperature changes have been fairly accurate, but they don't make predictions on small enough of a scale to predict what will happen in a given year even, just what is likely to happen in a given decade.
For another example, scientists can't tell you what day you're going to die, but they can tell you the general trend as to how many people will die at a given age. Not being able to predict the former does not make the latter any less possible.