I'll probably lose karma for this one, but I'm really counting on Judge Jackson doing something at least moderately nasty to MS if this is infact true. He needs some sort of swift, powerful punishment to help even out the OS playing field.
Of course, whatever ruling he passes, MS will likely appeal. Oh well.
I don't think Bill needs to be so scared yet about BeOS. Yes, Be is really good. I'm using it right now, actually, with few problems. If it had the same amount of Software as Windows, Bill would infact need to be very, very afraid. It is easier to use than Windows, and it still has a command line hidden away fro users who want a bit more control. However, the software support is pretty pathetic, it seems, and in some cases I still need to build things from source.
As a Linux user, there are actually a lot of things I don't like about it. Of course,it beats out Windows and MacOS. The fact that it does have a shell is great.
Developers should really take a look at BeOS as the OS for people who don't want to jump blindly into Linux, but want to get the hell away from Windows.
If there has been one thing in my experience that has stopped potential Linux users, namely those interested in running Linux, from switching over, it is the fact that they say the want to play the more popular games.
Efforts by a lot of people over the last year have helped make these things possible, and Loki is primarily to be thanked. Quake 3 and Unreal Tournmanet for Linux keep my gaming needs met, so I don't have to boot into Windows at all anymore just to fill the urge to frag something. Sim City 3000 will be another quality game port that I'll probably buy, and hopefully we'll see some Blizzard games on Linux sometime soon.
Of course, Loki can not port every game. Hopefully, gaming on Linux picks up even more, and companies start making an effort to get their products working on Linux without us having to beg.
When I first tried out Mozilla, it was unusable, as expected of early software of its type. M14 is very nice and stable, as it seems. I believe that it renders pages better and looks better than Netscape 4.7, despite what some people may say. I don't care for the password remembering stuff and other IE-like features, but I don't have to use them. This is a browser that will be used in the mainstream eventually (as Netscape 6.0), so it isn't a bad thing to have those things. Hopefully we see the jump to "beta" quality code soon.
I'd really be surprised if Microsoft actually did it. Right now their most valid argument why people should use Windows over Linux, in my opinion, is that it is too hard for people to use the applications that they need to do their work if they switch to Linux. Since most people use Office to do their word processing and spreadsheets, porting this to Linux would cause this argument to break down.
If we were, however, to see a split up of Microsoft in which the portion that makes Office is independent of the OS, then I'd say the chances we'd see Office on Linux would increase.
Of course, I can't say what will really happen. Maybe MS will port Office to make a quick buck. Who knows?
Yeah, this is a very unfortunate situation for the Palm series. I don't know of too many people who are using them to their full capabilities. There is actually a lot of cool, interesting software out there for PalmOS, but most people just use the default software that comes with it for the simple things. This is OK, since this is what they bought it for.
Of course, I think that they are missing out on a lot of cool things, and this is one of them.
Yeah, I do suppose your right with the B&N thing. If Amazon's patent was purely defensive, then they wouldn't have sued B&N. This slipped my mind while I was writing that. That suit does kind of defeat the idea of a defensive patent. Of course, if my company had yet to make a profit, I'd probably be on the lookout for ways to line my pocket. ^_^
Of course, I'm sure B&N would have sued Amazon if they had patented the 1-click shopping idea first.
Again, this whole ordeal is a mess. The fact remains that the patent shouldn't have been awarded in the first place. ^_^
Yeah, I know that Amazon is coming under a lot of fire from us for patenting the most idiotic of things. Bezos does have a point, however, when he says that if Amazon wouldn't have done it, someone else would have and destroyed them with it.
Now, I don't agree with these patents being awarded to anyone. However, I think Bezos realized how stupid the patent laws were and took advantage of them. I agree that if he wouldn't have, someone else would have, and that company would be the target of our flames instead.
The real problem is with the patent office and the laws itself. I think most of on Slashdot agree (or at least it would seem by the response to these things) that the patent laws in the US are very messed up. This is due to big companies lobbying for years to get patent laws that allowed them to screw over competitors. The entire patent system really needs an overhaul for the 21st. century.
Looks like this browser is starting to actually become usable. I'm counting the days until I can finally ditch Netscape 4.x for good for my graphical browsing needs and still have a browser that has full functionality.
Obviously, someone failed to smash the little Bill that stole the Tux out of the box in his X-Bill game, and this is what happened. Thanks to that X-Bill player who did not prioritize saving Tux over the other OS Logos, our favorite penguin mascot is now in the clutches of Microsoft!
Anyway, If Coupland cops out of this OSS guerilla-style rescue of Tux (detailed below, the one where ESR provides cover), count me in. I want a piece of those MS bastards!
Advantages of female characters (part 60000000)
on
Men Playing as Women
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· Score: 2
Yes, as so many others have said, there are some very real advantages to being a female character in some games, especially in an online game situation.
In a FPS like Quake 3, I find it really doesn't matter what model you use. Sure, Slash has some very funky movements that will throw you off the first few times you try to rail her, but the model doesn't modify the fact that that you can be gibbed by a few rockets. So, there is no advantage in Quake 3, as far as I can discern. So there is no real reason to play with a female model.
In a fighting game, such as Street Fighter or what have you, there are sometimes advantages to being female characters. It depends on the game or characters. I feel that in Street Fighter Alpha 1, Chun-Li was the most powerful character. In Street Fighter Alpha 3, she is not. Sometimes certain characters are more in synch with your playing style, and sometimes those characters are female. If the character has the set of moves that are to your liking in a particular game, who cares what gender the character is? Of course, most people do just fine with Ken, Ryu, Akuma,......
In an online role playing environment, there is a true advantage to being female. As others have said, people give female characters things, even when it is blatantly obvious that the character is played by a guy. Even though there is no possible way to "score" online. I've even seen this phenomenon in traditional RPGs, where a female PC played by a male player (who'se sitting right in front of the others) is given stuff by the guy PCs. I guess if the guys can't score, they might figure they can at least get their PCs to score. X_X
I'm not sure if what they say about a psychological advantage is true, that guy players will go easier in a head to head competition. I don't seem to have any problem shooting down female models in Quake 3 at the same rate I shoot down male models. I know that the player on the other end is more likely a guy, and even if they are infact female, there is nothing saying a female can't be a good Quake player.
But I don't really think people actually do "gender exploration," or at least most people. I think they do it for other reasons (perhaps to check out Lara's "polygon count" or something).
Isn't it just replacing television!?
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LonelyNet
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· Score: 2
How many hours do people spend watching Television a week? Certainly, 3 hours watching the tube is about as useless as 3 hours surfing the web. Now, I rarely watch TV nowadays, but I'm online a lot (not only to post on/., but I have to work online as well).
Isn't the web just replacing TV as Amercia's favorite time waster? Or are most poeople wasting time on BOTH now? ^_^
Normally, I'm pretty happy when something new comes to Linux, however in this case I'm not sure if I should be.
It is about time Sun got decent Java support to Linux. I know that they'd rather spend effort on working on their own OS, but if they truly want a language that is portable to all systems, they need to make sure it actually works on all systems.
Now for the negative side. My experience with Java screams that the language is in need of much work. It runs slowly. It requires you to look up the APIs constantly anytime you want to do something useful, and it just doesn't get the job done as well as C/C++. It has a place, but I'm not sure that it is really the greatest tool for Linux programmers when compared to C/C++/Perl/Whatever. Still, the idea of "crossplatform" is nice.
Not that this isn't a good article, and that I'm bashing Slashdot for posting it, but this article pretty much sums up what the typical Slashdotter has said about most of these stupid patents from the beginning.
What I did find more valuable about this article was the fact that he talked more about pushing Linux into the business world. He had some interesting comments that strayed from the patent talk a bit about Open Source.
I find that solution quite interesting, actually. However, I think that most users, even the more non-adept ones like to at least feel they are in some sort of control. An install shield type front-end at least (IMO) provides that, without giving more control than an average user actually needs.
Of course, this frontend I'm suggesting is NOT for the typical/. user.
Although, I'm willing to just wait and see what appears for package management. Personally, I'm pretty happy with compiling from source. I'm just brainstorming on what an average user might need.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
Now, for Linux to go mainstream, it is going to need some type of InstallShield type utility under X to do package management. I don't think this would be a very hard thing to do well, but this has not really been done yet because most Linux users do not need it. Most of us are happy compiling our software, and some of us just straight prefer it.
The average computer user simply can't handle the command line, let alone compiling things or even extracting files from a tarball. If we want a Mainstream Linux Desktop, we'll need this type of install utility.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
I'm not going to jump onto the "Katz Sucks" bandwagon here. Though I agree that this article of his is typically oversimplified and doesn't appear that it contains much of any thought, he does have a point that the web seems somehow divided along the.com and.org lines.
Rather than describe the division by sites, I'd tend to think of it as divided by the people who make up online communities / the types of people who actually use the sites, rather than the sites itself.
Typical Slashdotters associate with the open source / Linux movement. They typically don't hang out at big.com sites and "portal" sites that are taylored for newer users or non-technical users. However, there are clear cases when the use of a technical person and a non-technical person will overlap. In this case, the same site is visited upon by many types of people.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
MS vs. *nix aside, System security is usually based on the sysadmin. Now, to my understanding, a good deal of the boxes used as zombies were controlled by educational institutions..edu sites are pretty well known to be among the least secure in general. A good deal of the systems at.edu sites are also *nix boxes.
Plus, if the attackers were more familiar with *nix, they probably wouldn't have tried to crack NT boxes.
There is nothing saying a Windows box can't be more secure than a *nix box or vice versa. It all depends on the admin in charge of security doing their job.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
I've been told by various people that the latest release of Win2K sometimes crashes during installation (like I'm going to go any further if the product can't even install itself), and has a myriad of problems when you wish to run your old software.
Also, while I hear Win2K actually is more reliable than NT4 (which isn't saying much), nobody with a Win2K box (again, latest RC) I know has had an uptime that I would call impressive.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
This is because everyone knows security at.edu institutions is lax. Since universities tend to use *nix for their servers, *nix boxes were compromoized.
This has nothing to do with a secure OS. It has everything to do with the admins of those servers doing their jobs (which they didn't).
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
The Playstation is a computing device. Not a toy. If someone wishes to make a compatible device through reverse engineering, they should have every right to if they can pull it off.
This software, afterall, does NOT promote pirating Playstation Software. Rather, it allows people to play Playstation games they have purchased legally without having to purchase the Playstation Console.
An excellent decision by the judge, in my opinion.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
The FBI has also compiled a list of signs to tell if your box has been compromised by script kiddies. Using their advanced technical knowledge, they've come up with some of the following things.
You know you've been owned when:
1. You start up X, and instead of your normal background image, you see a sign that says "Got Root?"
2. You're index.html file has mysteriously been altered to contain phrases such as "1 0wn j00," "7h1s b0x0r h4z b33n 0wn3d!" and "n474113 p0r7m4n (fill in derogitory remark here)."
3. Packet bombardment has concentrated around port 1337.
4. You're using Red Hat.
Hmnn. Perhaps my lame attempt to be funny has failed...
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
It seems that a lot of our representatives and senators are willing to sign our rights away very quickly. Before we all jump on the bandwagon of bashing them, we must consider that a good deal of them are not familiar with computers in a sense where they realize what they are doing. This aside, it is still true that they are not representing our interests. I agree with the previous posts that we need new people in congress. People who understand technology a bit better.
I know that a good number of people on Slashdot like to think of themselves as Libertarians. And perhaps the Libertarian Party is the one that best supports the beliefs of our community. Realisticcally, I don't think the Libertarian party has a snowball's chance in hell that it will have a major say in politics, not while the GOP and the Democrats have more money and support.
But it seems we need a bit more input. People have said it before, and I'll say it again: We need a hacker (again: the good kind) lobby or something along those lines. Those among our community who have been made wealthy thanks to IPOs and such might consider donating a bit to starting some sort of lobby. If we could form a PAC, then hackers could start providing information to congress about tech issues, and we could gain access to the loop.
Starting this lobby is clearly not an easy task by any means. It would take a lot of money and support, but I think if it were actually to happen, it would be quite beneficial, not only for us, but for the rights of people who don't even realize their rights are being stripped away (at this point, at least).
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
I think this is what many major universities that have not done so should do. They can freely modify the OS to taylor it to the University's typcial needs, use it for educational purposes, save money, and avoid the need to be bought out by big companies (not only Microsoft, mind you, but also Sun, HP, etc).
A good deal of the faculty in the CS department at my school uses Linux. The first day here as a Freshman, our Prof told us to install Linux. A lot more people would have if he would have handed everyone a school-tailored distro.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, whatever ruling he passes, MS will likely appeal. Oh well.
As a Linux user, there are actually a lot of things I don't like about it. Of course ,it beats out Windows and MacOS. The fact that it does have a shell is great.
Developers should really take a look at BeOS as the OS for people who don't want to jump blindly into Linux, but want to get the hell away from Windows.
Efforts by a lot of people over the last year have helped make these things possible, and Loki is primarily to be thanked. Quake 3 and Unreal Tournmanet for Linux keep my gaming needs met, so I don't have to boot into Windows at all anymore just to fill the urge to frag something. Sim City 3000 will be another quality game port that I'll probably buy, and hopefully we'll see some Blizzard games on Linux sometime soon.
Of course, Loki can not port every game. Hopefully, gaming on Linux picks up even more, and companies start making an effort to get their products working on Linux without us having to beg.
When I first tried out Mozilla, it was unusable, as expected of early software of its type. M14 is very nice and stable, as it seems. I believe that it renders pages better and looks better than Netscape 4.7, despite what some people may say. I don't care for the password remembering stuff and other IE-like features, but I don't have to use them. This is a browser that will be used in the mainstream eventually (as Netscape 6.0), so it isn't a bad thing to have those things. Hopefully we see the jump to "beta" quality code soon.
If we were, however, to see a split up of Microsoft in which the portion that makes Office is independent of the OS, then I'd say the chances we'd see Office on Linux would increase.
Of course, I can't say what will really happen. Maybe MS will port Office to make a quick buck. Who knows?
Of course, I think that they are missing out on a lot of cool things, and this is one of them.
Of course, I'm sure B&N would have sued Amazon if they had patented the 1-click shopping idea first.
Again, this whole ordeal is a mess. The fact remains that the patent shouldn't have been awarded in the first place. ^_^
Now, I don't agree with these patents being awarded to anyone. However, I think Bezos realized how stupid the patent laws were and took advantage of them. I agree that if he wouldn't have, someone else would have, and that company would be the target of our flames instead.
The real problem is with the patent office and the laws itself. I think most of on Slashdot agree (or at least it would seem by the response to these things) that the patent laws in the US are very messed up. This is due to big companies lobbying for years to get patent laws that allowed them to screw over competitors. The entire patent system really needs an overhaul for the 21st. century.
Of course, I doubt we'll get it. ^_^
Looks like this browser is starting to actually become usable. I'm counting the days until I can finally ditch Netscape 4.x for good for my graphical browsing needs and still have a browser that has full functionality.
Anyway, If Coupland cops out of this OSS guerilla-style rescue of Tux (detailed below, the one where ESR provides cover), count me in. I want a piece of those MS bastards!
In a FPS like Quake 3, I find it really doesn't matter what model you use. Sure, Slash has some very funky movements that will throw you off the first few times you try to rail her, but the model doesn't modify the fact that that you can be gibbed by a few rockets. So, there is no advantage in Quake 3, as far as I can discern. So there is no real reason to play with a female model.
In a fighting game, such as Street Fighter or what have you, there are sometimes advantages to being female characters. It depends on the game or characters. I feel that in Street Fighter Alpha 1, Chun-Li was the most powerful character. In Street Fighter Alpha 3, she is not. Sometimes certain characters are more in synch with your playing style, and sometimes those characters are female. If the character has the set of moves that are to your liking in a particular game, who cares what gender the character is? Of course, most people do just fine with Ken, Ryu, Akuma, ......
In an online role playing environment, there is a true advantage to being female. As others have said, people give female characters things, even when it is blatantly obvious that the character is played by a guy. Even though there is no possible way to "score" online. I've even seen this phenomenon in traditional RPGs, where a female PC played by a male player (who'se sitting right in front of the others) is given stuff by the guy PCs. I guess if the guys can't score, they might figure they can at least get their PCs to score. X_X
I'm not sure if what they say about a psychological advantage is true, that guy players will go easier in a head to head competition. I don't seem to have any problem shooting down female models in Quake 3 at the same rate I shoot down male models. I know that the player on the other end is more likely a guy, and even if they are infact female, there is nothing saying a female can't be a good Quake player.
But I don't really think people actually do "gender exploration," or at least most people. I think they do it for other reasons (perhaps to check out Lara's "polygon count" or something).
Isn't the web just replacing TV as Amercia's favorite time waster? Or are most poeople wasting time on BOTH now? ^_^
It is about time Sun got decent Java support to Linux. I know that they'd rather spend effort on working on their own OS, but if they truly want a language that is portable to all systems, they need to make sure it actually works on all systems.
Now for the negative side. My experience with Java screams that the language is in need of much work. It runs slowly. It requires you to look up the APIs constantly anytime you want to do something useful, and it just doesn't get the job done as well as C/C++. It has a place, but I'm not sure that it is really the greatest tool for Linux programmers when compared to C/C++/Perl/Whatever. Still, the idea of "crossplatform" is nice.
What I did find more valuable about this article was the fact that he talked more about pushing Linux into the business world. He had some interesting comments that strayed from the patent talk a bit about Open Source.
Of course, this frontend I'm suggesting is NOT for the typical /. user.
Although, I'm willing to just wait and see what appears for package management. Personally, I'm pretty happy with compiling from source. I'm just brainstorming on what an average user might need.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
The average computer user simply can't handle the command line, let alone compiling things or even extracting files from a tarball. If we want a Mainstream Linux Desktop, we'll need this type of install utility.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
Rather than describe the division by sites, I'd tend to think of it as divided by the people who make up online communities / the types of people who actually use the sites, rather than the sites itself.
Typical Slashdotters associate with the open source / Linux movement. They typically don't hang out at big .com sites and "portal" sites that are taylored for newer users or non-technical users. However, there are clear cases when the use of a technical person and a non-technical person will overlap. In this case, the same site is visited upon by many types of people.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
Plus, if the attackers were more familiar with *nix, they probably wouldn't have tried to crack NT boxes.
There is nothing saying a Windows box can't be more secure than a *nix box or vice versa. It all depends on the admin in charge of security doing their job.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
Also, while I hear Win2K actually is more reliable than NT4 (which isn't saying much), nobody with a Win2K box (again, latest RC) I know has had an uptime that I would call impressive.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
This has nothing to do with a secure OS. It has everything to do with the admins of those servers doing their jobs (which they didn't).
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
This software, afterall, does NOT promote pirating Playstation Software. Rather, it allows people to play Playstation games they have purchased legally without having to purchase the Playstation Console.
An excellent decision by the judge, in my opinion.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
You know you've been owned when:
1. You start up X, and instead of your normal background image, you see a sign that says "Got Root?"
2. You're index.html file has mysteriously been altered to contain phrases such as "1 0wn j00," "7h1s b0x0r h4z b33n 0wn3d!" and "n474113 p0r7m4n (fill in derogitory remark here)."
3. Packet bombardment has concentrated around port 1337.
4. You're using Red Hat.
Hmnn. Perhaps my lame attempt to be funny has failed...
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
I know that a good number of people on Slashdot like to think of themselves as Libertarians. And perhaps the Libertarian Party is the one that best supports the beliefs of our community. Realisticcally, I don't think the Libertarian party has a snowball's chance in hell that it will have a major say in politics, not while the GOP and the Democrats have more money and support.
But it seems we need a bit more input. People have said it before, and I'll say it again: We need a hacker (again: the good kind) lobby or something along those lines. Those among our community who have been made wealthy thanks to IPOs and such might consider donating a bit to starting some sort of lobby. If we could form a PAC, then hackers could start providing information to congress about tech issues, and we could gain access to the loop.
Starting this lobby is clearly not an easy task by any means. It would take a lot of money and support, but I think if it were actually to happen, it would be quite beneficial, not only for us, but for the rights of people who don't even realize their rights are being stripped away (at this point, at least).
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
A good deal of the faculty in the CS department at my school uses Linux. The first day here as a Freshman, our Prof told us to install Linux. A lot more people would have if he would have handed everyone a school-tailored distro.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"