How about we return it for a refund? If enough people did that they'd have to stop!
You know, I bet we could just take the digital-out of the cdplayer and pipe it into our soundcard....
Even a D-A-D conversion would be a little lossy, but after that we could copy as much as we wanted.
Damn those RIAA bastards to hell! They're releasing defective CDs!
These go against the redbook standard. For shame.
Hey, I think I'm witty! I'll make a list of all the comments that people will make in the article because that's all people ever say in these articles! Oh, wait....
It'll be great to bring quantum chips to the assembly line. Tying in with an older slashdot story, we can even ship them in rental cars. Sure, they'll know exactly how fast we're going, but they'll have no clue where we've taken their car!
So I've got a machine that I want to wipe clean and install something on, and I'm thinking Debian, Slackware, or Linux From Scratch.
Right now I'm leaning toward debian, as all examples I've seen of apt-get are extremely nice. However, I'd have no clue how to even start/using/ apt-get. I don't know what the sources file is. I don't know how to use dpkg. I have no clue.
So the question is: is there an easy way to pick up on this and other debianisms that I'm going to run into?
I had a 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 a while back, and had pretty much the same problems you mentioned with blender. Not only blender, but also AC3D and - here's the kicker - the problems were present on the Windows versions as well.
That in mind, it might be a card issue more than a driver issue.
As far as new cards, I have a Nvidia Geforce MX that's fully supported. The drivers are binary, and once I got the newest ones from NVidia, I had no problems with them.
If you want open-source only drivers, I believe that ATI's are - though I don't know how well they're supported.
Have you used freenet? If not, get a client and fire it up - it's not terribly difficult to do. During the two or three days I played around with it, I found:
Weblogs a-plenty. Lots of folks put 'blogs up like personal homepages.
Personal homepages. People put things up on Freenet just to do so.
Music. It wasn't music I had heard of, so it's possible it's even legal music. (Of course, I haven't heard everything:)
Pornography. Nothing illegal either, just generic porn.
Keylists. These are essentially compilations of links to other freenet pages.
The client that comes with the freenet package that I got works as a mini-webserver: that is, you can connect to your box on port 8081 through your browser of choice. From then on, it's just like using the web.
Try it out - it's like having your own private, anonymous internet. So if you're asking about legitimate uses, it's like asking about legitimate uses to the ordinary web. Sure, you could use the web to trade warez, but you could also put up a personal home page.
This is the second or third editorial I've seen that's cited Quake3 on linux as being a "failure". I'm honestly curious about this: I was unable to find the slashdot link that discussed it, but I recall that Quake 3 turned a profit.
By definition, profit is making more money than you spend, so I don't really see how q3 failed. True, it wasn't a huge or impressive profit, but it keeps you in business, yes?
From what I've heard, TuxGames is profiting as well; if everything's making money, why all the negative press about linux games being unprofitable?
I'm writing my own linux game which will eventually (one can hope) be released sometime next year. I not only plan to show screenshots, but I also plan to release binaries. And yes, they will be x86 only.
It's not because I have anything against people who aren't on an x86, it's because I don't have any of the other platforms required:)
I'd like to make this clear when I release the game. Would something along the lines of "I'm providing x86 binaries only because that's all I have. If you'd like a PPC (or alpha, or sparc) package, and you have such a machine, contact me and I'll make you the official package maintainer" work?
I guess I'm saying that there's no reason for large companies who can afford to buy this stuff not to release a PPC binary; however I personally can't release one because I don't have the cash:)
There's another area where this sort of thing creeps up from time to time: fanfiction.
Fanfiction, by definition, uses characters that aren't the author's. Now and again, we see companies try to stamp out fanfiction sites, but we also occasionally see a company endorse or create their own site for fanfiction of their property.
It's the first thing I thought when I saw this article - the DBZ mod is nothing more than a DBZ fanfic, albeit interactive.
Similarly, at one point, I'd considered writing a star wars game, fanfic style, but I imagined my efforts would have been rewarded only with Cease and Desist letters. I personally see nothing wrong with fanfiction (or game mods themed like fanfiction) when it's not-for-profit.
Moves like this don't bode well for people who want to make game mods, nor does it bode well for fanfic authors. Will Funimation start shutting down DBZ fanfic sites, or has this already begun?
Now they have to justify all their advances to a public that wants the glitz of Star Trek but don't realize where our science actually is at technology wise.
This is a bigger issue than I think a lot of people here on Slashdot realize. Here's an illustrative example from one of my classes:
My Software Engineering teacher was talking about how many things you'd have to engineer into the space shuttle (she used to work for NASA, so this was an area of expertise for her) - she opened it up to the class so we could get an appreciation for how complex complex systems really were.
The suggestions were, for the most part, right on: Things like navigation, communication, life support. Then one person, the one sitting next to me, piped up.
"What about the gravity controller?"
Dead silence.
"You know, the part that controlls the gravity on the shuttle...."
"Um... we can't do that yet." I had to explain. It absolutely floored me - this person in my class seemed to believe that we had actually had that level of technology.
So yes, NASA has a long way to go before it's what the public expects.
Um, excuse me ignorant fool, but this was a front page story for approximately one hour. That was the period of time during which most of us were doing our bitching.
Sorry, not all of us can monitor slashdot 24 hours a day before composing our flames. That said, I'd probably have been complaining too if I'd seen it on the front page, especially since (if I recall correctly) the other three didn't make it.
Looking at your comment below, though, you've got a very good point about it possibly being hurtful to people. We didn't really hear a lot from people who said 'can we not bring this up' not because it had already been posted, but because it was disturbing to them and they'd just as soon let it go.
I'll get modded down to hell for this, but oh well....
I'm not trying to be inciteful here, but people, pay attention!
Why is Jon rehashing this old stuff? Because it's excerpts from the book. The book that many people complained took people's comments without asking. These posts are both to give the slashdot populace a preview of the book, and to allow anyone who had a comment in there and doesn't want it a chance to speak out.
In addition, this wasn't a front page story. It was one line in a Slashback for God's sake. And you (by which I mean the people griping) chose to click the link and read it. Nobody pointed a gun to your head and forced you to go here (and if they did, you have other, larger, problems to deal with). If you don't want to discuss the articles, then don't!
Katz's ego is too big - look, he's referring to himself in the third person! No, he's not. In the original article (revisited) even though it seems to have been posted by Jon Katz, CmdrTaco did the writeup. I don't think it's that much of a stretch to conclude that may also be true in this case.
In short, the people who are complaining here are complaining about nothing, and for no reason.
So why am I here, if all I'm doing is complaining? I read the article to both revisit the hellmouth series and to see if any new discussion had crept up - it's been a while since columbine, has the fallout faded away yet, or are schools more authoritative than ever? The usual kind of questions that come up. Instead, I'm bombarded by people who aren't paying attention or shouldn't even be in this article in the first place.
I came to slashdot back in the day for discussion and news, not misplaced complaints over simple misunderstandings.
I don't know if this counts as "value", but I've got a Voodoo 3 3000 (picked it up for about $150, I think they're less expensive now) and it works flawlessly with XFree 3.3.6 and Q3A.
I've heard the drivers aren't the best, but I haven't had to deal with it - when I switched distros, the new one picked up the card and threw the drivers in for me so I didn't have to set anything up.
I'll post again, because I think it's appropriate.
on
The PS2 Experience
·
· Score: 2
I first wrote this in response to a comment I saw earlier of this nature, but I really can't resist the urge to do so again:
Slashdot implements 'everything' category
HOLLAND - Slashdot founder Rob Malda announced today his newest addition to the topics list, "everything".
Malda stated that the new category was an answer to "the endless bunch of people whining about how they hate an extremely specific type of story that doesn't come up all that often normally, but has recently. Now they can just filter everything out."
"It's wonderful," proclaimed one slashdot reader. "Now I don't have to put up with boring PSX2, CueCat, or CPHack stories! I don't have to listen to Jon Katz and I don't have to see duplicate stories; it's as though I'm not reading slashdot at all!"
The reader was unavailable for comment after being informed he didn't have to read slashdot in the first place
People, I cannot stress the importance of voting. If you don't vote, you don't allow your voice to be heard. I know, it looks like a lockup right now, it seems like the leader is going to just walk away with this one. That can't happen.
So please, take a little time out of your day to go and vote. It's not hard, you just move the mouse from the front page of./ for once, and a bit to the right. You're nearly there.
Vote. Vote early, vote often. There may already be 31863 votes already, but yours can make a difference. Throw your support behind a third party candidate. Vote what you believe.
I can't stress it enough: Vote. The favored candidate may be in the lead, but I think we can all agree that with this election, there is one certainty:
It was the coolest place, because they had no clue that a bunch of lambs like us had infiltrated it. Of course, it all goes straight to hell at the end of disc 1, but still, it was pretty cool while it lasted.
HOLLAND - Slashdot founder Rob Malda announced today that his newest addition to the topics, "everything".
Malda stated that the new category was an answer to "the endless bunch of people whining about how they hate an extremely specific type of story that doesn't come up all that often normally, but has recently. Now they can just filter everything out."
"It's wonderful," proclaimed one slashdot reader. "Now I don't have to put up with boring ISS, CueCat, or CPHack stories! I don't have to listen to Jon Katz, I don't have to see duplicate stories, It's as though I'm not reading slashdot at all!"
The reader was unavailable for comment after being informed he didn't have to read slashdot in the first place.
As I recall, there was some discussion on raif a week or so ago when redhat 7 was released. Turns out ftp.gmd.de is a mirror, and none of us could get to the games because everyone was downloading the new version
Somehow, I don't think things are going to get better now:)
Slashdot Mirror
At first I thought you were joking, but then I went and started up Counterstrike - good god, there are terrorists everywhere in that game!
How about we return it for a refund? If enough people did that they'd have to stop!
You know, I bet we could just take the digital-out of the cdplayer and pipe it into our soundcard....
Even a D-A-D conversion would be a little lossy, but after that we could copy as much as we wanted.
Damn those RIAA bastards to hell! They're releasing defective CDs!
These go against the redbook standard. For shame.
Hey, I think I'm witty! I'll make a list of all the comments that people will make in the article because that's all people ever say in these articles! Oh, wait....
Sure, the starcat is great and all, but don't we want to be using starncat instead?
This always happens! I just downloaded and built Akira the other night, and then a new version comes out.
Next time, could you guys wait for the mirrors to pick it up? Or at least a formal announcement. I'll never get the iso at this rate....
It'll be great to bring quantum chips to the assembly line. Tying in with an older slashdot story, we can even ship them in rental cars. Sure, they'll know exactly how fast we're going, but they'll have no clue where we've taken their car!
So I've got a machine that I want to wipe clean and install something on, and I'm thinking Debian, Slackware, or Linux From Scratch.
Right now I'm leaning toward debian, as all examples I've seen of apt-get are extremely nice. However, I'd have no clue how to even start /using/ apt-get. I don't know what the sources file is. I don't know how to use dpkg. I have no clue.
So the question is: is there an easy way to pick up on this and other debianisms that I'm going to run into?
I had a 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 a while back, and had pretty much the same problems you mentioned with blender. Not only blender, but also AC3D and - here's the kicker - the problems were present on the Windows versions as well.
That in mind, it might be a card issue more than a driver issue.
As far as new cards, I have a Nvidia Geforce MX that's fully supported. The drivers are binary, and once I got the newest ones from NVidia, I had no problems with them.
If you want open-source only drivers, I believe that ATI's are - though I don't know how well they're supported.
Have you used freenet? If not, get a client and fire it up - it's not terribly difficult to do. During the two or three days I played around with it, I found:
The client that comes with the freenet package that I got works as a mini-webserver: that is, you can connect to your box on port 8081 through your browser of choice. From then on, it's just like using the web.
Try it out - it's like having your own private, anonymous internet. So if you're asking about legitimate uses, it's like asking about legitimate uses to the ordinary web. Sure, you could use the web to trade warez, but you could also put up a personal home page.
I mean come on! Do you have any idea how late for class I'm running?
This is the second or third editorial I've seen that's cited Quake3 on linux as being a "failure". I'm honestly curious about this: I was unable to find the slashdot link that discussed it, but I recall that Quake 3 turned a profit.
By definition, profit is making more money than you spend, so I don't really see how q3 failed. True, it wasn't a huge or impressive profit, but it keeps you in business, yes?
From what I've heard, TuxGames is profiting as well; if everything's making money, why all the negative press about linux games being unprofitable?
I'm writing my own linux game which will eventually (one can hope) be released sometime next year. I not only plan to show screenshots, but I also plan to release binaries. And yes, they will be x86 only.
It's not because I have anything against people who aren't on an x86, it's because I don't have any of the other platforms required :)
I'd like to make this clear when I release the game. Would something along the lines of "I'm providing x86 binaries only because that's all I have. If you'd like a PPC (or alpha, or sparc) package, and you have such a machine, contact me and I'll make you the official package maintainer" work?
I guess I'm saying that there's no reason for large companies who can afford to buy this stuff not to release a PPC binary; however I personally can't release one because I don't have the cash :)
There's another area where this sort of thing creeps up from time to time: fanfiction.
Fanfiction, by definition, uses characters that aren't the author's. Now and again, we see companies try to stamp out fanfiction sites, but we also occasionally see a company endorse or create their own site for fanfiction of their property.
It's the first thing I thought when I saw this article - the DBZ mod is nothing more than a DBZ fanfic, albeit interactive.
Similarly, at one point, I'd considered writing a star wars game, fanfic style, but I imagined my efforts would have been rewarded only with Cease and Desist letters. I personally see nothing wrong with fanfiction (or game mods themed like fanfiction) when it's not-for-profit.
Moves like this don't bode well for people who want to make game mods, nor does it bode well for fanfic authors. Will Funimation start shutting down DBZ fanfic sites, or has this already begun?
This is a bigger issue than I think a lot of people here on Slashdot realize. Here's an illustrative example from one of my classes:
My Software Engineering teacher was talking about how many things you'd have to engineer into the space shuttle (she used to work for NASA, so this was an area of expertise for her) - she opened it up to the class so we could get an appreciation for how complex complex systems really were.
The suggestions were, for the most part, right on: Things like navigation, communication, life support. Then one person, the one sitting next to me, piped up.
"What about the gravity controller?"
Dead silence.
"You know, the part that controlls the gravity on the shuttle...."
"Um... we can't do that yet." I had to explain. It absolutely floored me - this person in my class seemed to believe that we had actually had that level of technology.
So yes, NASA has a long way to go before it's what the public expects.
Sorry, not all of us can monitor slashdot 24 hours a day before composing our flames. That said, I'd probably have been complaining too if I'd seen it on the front page, especially since (if I recall correctly) the other three didn't make it.
Looking at your comment below, though, you've got a very good point about it possibly being hurtful to people. We didn't really hear a lot from people who said 'can we not bring this up' not because it had already been posted, but because it was disturbing to them and they'd just as soon let it go.
That's the kind of discussion I was hoping for :)
I'll get modded down to hell for this, but oh well....
I'm not trying to be inciteful here, but people, pay attention!
Why is Jon rehashing this old stuff? Because it's excerpts from the book. The book that many people complained took people's comments without asking. These posts are both to give the slashdot populace a preview of the book, and to allow anyone who had a comment in there and doesn't want it a chance to speak out.
In addition, this wasn't a front page story. It was one line in a Slashback for God's sake. And you (by which I mean the people griping) chose to click the link and read it. Nobody pointed a gun to your head and forced you to go here (and if they did, you have other, larger, problems to deal with). If you don't want to discuss the articles, then don't!
Katz's ego is too big - look, he's referring to himself in the third person! No, he's not. In the original article (revisited) even though it seems to have been posted by Jon Katz, CmdrTaco did the writeup. I don't think it's that much of a stretch to conclude that may also be true in this case.
In short, the people who are complaining here are complaining about nothing, and for no reason.
So why am I here, if all I'm doing is complaining? I read the article to both revisit the hellmouth series and to see if any new discussion had crept up - it's been a while since columbine, has the fallout faded away yet, or are schools more authoritative than ever? The usual kind of questions that come up. Instead, I'm bombarded by people who aren't paying attention or shouldn't even be in this article in the first place.
I came to slashdot back in the day for discussion and news, not misplaced complaints over simple misunderstandings.
So if it's a keyless keyboard, this means...
Ye Gods, they've invented the BOARD!
Can you imagine the lame jokes that are going to show up on this article?
I don't know if this counts as "value", but I've got a Voodoo 3 3000 (picked it up for about $150, I think they're less expensive now) and it works flawlessly with XFree 3.3.6 and Q3A.
I've heard the drivers aren't the best, but I haven't had to deal with it - when I switched distros, the new one picked up the card and threw the drivers in for me so I didn't have to set anything up.
I first wrote this in response to a comment I saw earlier of this nature, but I really can't resist the urge to do so again:
Slashdot implements 'everything' category
HOLLAND - Slashdot founder Rob Malda announced today his newest addition to the topics list, "everything". Malda stated that the new category was an answer to "the endless bunch of people whining about how they hate an extremely specific type of story that doesn't come up all that often normally, but has recently. Now they can just filter everything out." "It's wonderful," proclaimed one slashdot reader. "Now I don't have to put up with boring PSX2, CueCat, or CPHack stories! I don't have to listen to Jon Katz and I don't have to see duplicate stories; it's as though I'm not reading slashdot at all!" The reader was unavailable for comment after being informed he didn't have to read slashdot in the first place
People, I cannot stress the importance of voting. If you don't vote, you don't allow your voice to be heard. I know, it looks like a lockup right now, it seems like the leader is going to just walk away with this one. That can't happen.
So please, take a little time out of your day to go and vote. It's not hard, you just move the mouse from the front page of ./ for once, and a bit to the right. You're nearly there.
Vote. Vote early, vote often. There may already be 31863 votes already, but yours can make a difference. Throw your support behind a third party candidate. Vote what you believe.
I can't stress it enough: Vote. The favored candidate may be in the lead, but I think we can all agree that with this election, there is one certainty:
We cannot allow /home to win!
Thank you.
Let's hope Sony picks up on this real quick. Why, with this technology, we might be able to play our playstation games on our PS2!
Wouldn't that be great?
A cautionary message to all would-be voters:
A Vote For Jon Katz Is A Vote For...
Eh? What's that? Jon Katz isn't running?
Screw it then, I'm not voting.
Solaris rocked!
It was the coolest place, because they had no clue that a bunch of lambs like us had infiltrated it. Of course, it all goes straight to hell at the end of disc 1, but still, it was pretty cool while it lasted.
Slashdot implements 'everything' category
HOLLAND - Slashdot founder Rob Malda announced today that his newest addition to the topics, "everything".
Malda stated that the new category was an answer to "the endless bunch of people whining about how they hate an extremely specific type of story that doesn't come up all that often normally, but has recently. Now they can just filter everything out."
"It's wonderful," proclaimed one slashdot reader. "Now I don't have to put up with boring ISS, CueCat, or CPHack stories! I don't have to listen to Jon Katz, I don't have to see duplicate stories, It's as though I'm not reading slashdot at all!"
The reader was unavailable for comment after being informed he didn't have to read slashdot in the first place.
I guess this means we're all going to have to start mirroring this program now.
As I recall, there was some discussion on raif a week or so ago when redhat 7 was released. Turns out ftp.gmd.de is a mirror, and none of us could get to the games because everyone was downloading the new version
Somehow, I don't think things are going to get better now :)