I've seen very few people that don't know Apple makes iPods, that Macs are made by Apple, or that Xbox is made by MS (hell, it's printed on the box - and it's on the startup screen every time you turn it on).
"When something goes wrong with their computer, they don't necessarily blame Microsoft--they blame the company they bought the computer from."
That depends. If it's an exploding battery, yeah they'll blame Dell. If it's a problem they experience with Windows they'll blame Windows - especially if they know friends who have the same problems with a different brand.
"you're not helping your cause by being stupid, you're impeding it."
I run Windows too from time-to-time. Enlighten me - what are these games you play that are so much newer than Quake 4? That's the last one I got, even for Windows.
Yes, I know there are new Windows games but they're not *that much* newer, and the ones Linux has ought to be enough for casual gamers. Maybe YOU only play the latest-and-greatest, but last LAN party I went to they had a wide range of games old and new - from Battlefield 2 to Halo PC to Warcraft 3. (all of which, BTW, are older than Quake 4.)
"Don't be a dumbass in order to further your OS religious war - you're not helping your cause by being stupid, you're impeding it."
Don't be a dumbass to further YOUR OS religious war. I don't have a religious war, it seems to me that you're the one who does. I have an opinion, not a religious war.
I've noticed that lately it's been the Windows users picking fights about OSes rather than the Linux users. I merely said that the games Linux has should be enough for casual gamers, and you come back and call me a dumbass. Well if you want to play that way, Windows sucks, especially 64-bit edition, and Vista will too. There.
If you want to keep playing your games, keep Windows, that's fine with me. I don't give a shit. Like I said, it's your war, not mine. I've got my opinion of Windows, you've got yours.
"Even though the game Neverwinter Nights had a linux port, it didn't include video support due to the closed nature of bink."
According to RAD's site (the guys who made BINK) there IS a Linux client. It's not any more open than the Windows version, but I don't see why NWN couldn't've made use of it.
"In my opinion, and I'm sure everyone with a sane and reasonable way of thought will agree, an open source implementation would be a fool's errand. With the limited amount of hardware-accelerated drivers for linux, just how large are the chance for an implementation by a hardware vendor even if open source Direct3D was a reality? The best solution, which both Wine and Cedega utilize, is a Direct3D->OpenGL wrapper. It's not optimal, but it often works decently."
Huh?
OpenGL is open-source. Hardware vendors have no problem implementing that. Why would they have trouble implementing an open-source D3D API? And FYI there already is SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) which is basically the same thing.
Not to mention, the hardware wouldn't care if the Direct3D implementation was open-source or not. It wouldn't know the difference. Try installing a open-source OpenGL implementation, and compare that to a closed-source one. One might run better than the other, but that's not your vidcard's fault. The difference is in the software.
Define "gamer". Define "Casual". Some gamers like to play StarCraft, and that's about it. Others play Halo, WarCraft, DOOM, and a plethora of others, and still call themselves "casual gamers".
And might I ask. . . if you moved beyond all these games years ago, what did you move to? Neverwinter Nights, DOOM III, and Quake 4 are all fairly new. And if you really believe that gamers don't play old games. . . you're sorely mistaken.
Linux plays all the games I need - DOOM III, Quake 4, and with Wine, Starcraft. Not to mention a wide-range of open-source games.
So many movies nowadays like to throw in big-name actors just to get people to watch the movie. They forget that the way they became well known was because they were in a good movie - who knew of Tom Cruise before Top Gun? Now he's in a bunch of shitty movies just because people liked Top Gun and now he's famous.
Special effects, good actors, and good photography are all important - but the storyline is what's most important. Except for action movies where ass-kicking is most important, but even then there has to be a somewhat interesting storyline and some wierd twists in the plot. I like action movies like "The Transporter" and, even though the emphasis is on the action and special effects, they do have a few things in the plot to keep you interested.
The viewer needs to be kept interested in the movie. Not the special effects, not the actors, but the movie. "Ocean's Eleven" was a good movie and it probably would've been just as good without big-name actors.
Not to say that they haven't written any good movies, but the last few I've seen haven't been good enough to make me want to go out to the movie theatre - needless to say, "The Village" was a little disappointing. . .
That's like saying MS is responsible for someone downloading LimeWire and stealing music. It's not true at all - the person who acually stole the music (or movies for that matter) is responsible. It's not MS or LimeWire's fault that the user is stealing music.
"Also, what real use can you glean from a PC these days, without a network connection?"
The laptops will have network capabilities. Didn't you read about them?
Whether or not there's Internet for these children doesn't matter anyways - there's no Internet without computers, and they need the computers before they can have Internet. Maybe later someone can give them Internet.
"So does anyone out there have a non-connected PC hooked up performing some life-changing work, or are they just useless when disconnected from the wwworld?"
Does anyone out there have a connected PC hooked up performing some life-changing work, or are they just useless when connected to the wwworld?
When's the last time most people have done anything life-changing with a PC, with or without the Internet? Sometimes the Internet is detrimental, too - a lot of people spend entirely too much time online, and setting down a small schoolchild and letting him use the Internet all day isn't so good.
PCs don't need to be hooked to the Internet to be useful. There were useful programs and stuff before the Internet became mainstream.
And at least when the kids do get the Internet, they'll already know how to use a computer.
I think the reason is that iPods are expensive and popular. And white headphones are associated with iPods and PSPs, which are both expensive and popular.
Okay, so then you also copy over the source code you didn't modify. Either way it's still a non-event, just start the machine copying all the sources to a local medium or to your server, let the machine do its thing and leave it alone for a while, and then when you come back it'll be done. Easy as that.
"what happens to a distro like MEPIS? Do they need to retain a full and publically available source repository for every package in Ubuntu?"
What happens is the guys at MEPIS make the sources available for any changes they made. Which they've already got from when they changed the code. It's no hassle -- it'll take them all of 10 minutes, they can just start it copying those source files and then walk away from the computer and do something else, use a different computer, take a walk -- and it's a real non-event.
Read the GPL, it might help you out. If you don't change the code, you don't have to distribute it.
"surely all a downstream distro has to do is refer to those sources for untainted packages? Is this good enough for the FSF, or are they just going to turn into the bully of the FOSS community?"
Yes, that's all a downstream distro has to do. Yes that's good enough for the FSF.
The problem is, that MEPIS *did* make some changes, and those need to be made available.
I don't see why this is such a big deal. A developer created some software under the GPL. If you want to distribute that software you need to comply to the GPL. Simple as that. If you don't like it, don't use that software.
"I wonder how many of of PCChips tactics were absorbed by ECS..."
I don't know a whole lot about ECS but I do know quite a few people (myself included) who have had bad experiences with ECS. Mine, the motherboard was actually cut when I bought it.
They replaced it, but still. . . I don't see how they cut the silicon and didn't notice it during inspection. And I didn't receive the replacement until like two months later - I had already purchased a new Gigabyte mobo.
"Steve hasn't been successful enough to do nearly as much social good so it doesn't really matter."
Only in the eyes of an IDIOT is Steve Jobs not "successful enough".
What's on Jobs' list of accomplishments you might ask? How about being one of the few computer companies to last through Gates' tyranny? How about changing the music industry?
No? How about giving one of the movie industry's biggest names (Disney) a run for their money -- and winning?
You say Jobs is unsuccessful. . . looking at all the big-time animated movies, I'd say you're wrong. Toy Story/Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc. . . I'd say Jobs did pretty well for himself.
Jobs might not donate a lot of money, I don't know, but he has certainly done a lot to make computing easier and better - MacOS has had speech recognition and other helpful technologies for quite some time now - and I'd say he's done his share to make the entertainment industry better, both with his flat pricing for all songs and with his movies that you know are "kid-safe" and are good family entertainment.
You think you know everything about Gates? Read a biography on him. I have.
You think he earned his money by being "very successfully competitive in a very competitive industry"? The bio I read ("Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry - and Made Himself the Richest Man in America" by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews) has multiple instances where he is pretty anti-competitive. For example when he ditched IBM and the OS/2 project, only to use the same code and interface for Windows. How about when he promised IBM that he had an OS all ready for them to ship on the PC, and then having to bribe a small computer shop for the rights to their custom, homemade OS.
I could go on, but I won't. Just realize that you don't know everything about Gates, and he certainly didn't earn his fortune 100% honestly.
If you think MS execs just "make their first million" and leave, you're sorely mistaken. Bill Gates would've left long ago, as with many other MS employees/execs.
I think it's because they finally realized that after their (what is it now, 5 years?) of developing Longhorn, with all the features they're leaving out, NO ONE CARES ABOUT VISTA. I think they tried to make some people care about it by drawing attention to "Aero Glass" (I saw it live, nothing special IMO) but most people don't really care that much - they might think it looks cool but that's not enough for them to buy Vista; they tried to make a few gamers care about it by making Halo 2 PC Vista-only but that failed because now all the Halo hype's around Halo 3.
So now they're screwed because that's a good, what, 4-5 years of their work gone down the drain. Their search engine is going nowhere, and the Xbox 360 is selling well but they're selling it at a loss, so they don't really have much to fall back on.
Which IMO is what they deserve for thinking that, once again, they can be the best by simply playing "follow-the-leader" and by trying to pull the sheet down over everyone's eyes.
Slashdot Mirror
"When something goes wrong with their computer, they don't necessarily blame Microsoft--they blame the company they bought the computer from."
That depends. If it's an exploding battery, yeah they'll blame Dell. If it's a problem they experience with Windows they'll blame Windows - especially if they know friends who have the same problems with a different brand.
Well yes, if one of you is an arsonist or something.
If you stay within the legal limits and don't go too far there's nothing wrong with "getting back".
I run Windows too from time-to-time. Enlighten me - what are these games you play that are so much newer than Quake 4? That's the last one I got, even for Windows.
Yes, I know there are new Windows games but they're not *that much* newer, and the ones Linux has ought to be enough for casual gamers. Maybe YOU only play the latest-and-greatest, but last LAN party I went to they had a wide range of games old and new - from Battlefield 2 to Halo PC to Warcraft 3. (all of which, BTW, are older than Quake 4.)
"Don't be a dumbass in order to further your OS religious war - you're not helping your cause by being stupid, you're impeding it."
Don't be a dumbass to further YOUR OS religious war. I don't have a religious war, it seems to me that you're the one who does. I have an opinion, not a religious war.
I've noticed that lately it's been the Windows users picking fights about OSes rather than the Linux users. I merely said that the games Linux has should be enough for casual gamers, and you come back and call me a dumbass. Well if you want to play that way, Windows sucks, especially 64-bit edition, and Vista will too. There.
If you want to keep playing your games, keep Windows, that's fine with me. I don't give a shit. Like I said, it's your war, not mine. I've got my opinion of Windows, you've got yours.
According to RAD's site (the guys who made BINK) there IS a Linux client. It's not any more open than the Windows version, but I don't see why NWN couldn't've made use of it.
"In my opinion, and I'm sure everyone with a sane and reasonable way of thought will agree, an open source implementation would be a fool's errand. With the limited amount of hardware-accelerated drivers for linux, just how large are the chance for an implementation by a hardware vendor even if open source Direct3D was a reality? The best solution, which both Wine and Cedega utilize, is a Direct3D->OpenGL wrapper. It's not optimal, but it often works decently."
Huh?
OpenGL is open-source. Hardware vendors have no problem implementing that. Why would they have trouble implementing an open-source D3D API? And FYI there already is SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) which is basically the same thing.
Not to mention, the hardware wouldn't care if the Direct3D implementation was open-source or not. It wouldn't know the difference. Try installing a open-source OpenGL implementation, and compare that to a closed-source one. One might run better than the other, but that's not your vidcard's fault. The difference is in the software.
Define "gamer". Define "Casual". Some gamers like to play StarCraft, and that's about it. Others play Halo, WarCraft, DOOM, and a plethora of others, and still call themselves "casual gamers".
And might I ask. . . if you moved beyond all these games years ago, what did you move to? Neverwinter Nights, DOOM III, and Quake 4 are all fairly new. And if you really believe that gamers don't play old games. . . you're sorely mistaken.
Linux plays all the games I need - DOOM III, Quake 4, and with Wine, Starcraft. Not to mention a wide-range of open-source games.
Exactly.
So many movies nowadays like to throw in big-name actors just to get people to watch the movie. They forget that the way they became well known was because they were in a good movie - who knew of Tom Cruise before Top Gun? Now he's in a bunch of shitty movies just because people liked Top Gun and now he's famous.
Special effects, good actors, and good photography are all important - but the storyline is what's most important. Except for action movies where ass-kicking is most important, but even then there has to be a somewhat interesting storyline and some wierd twists in the plot. I like action movies like "The Transporter" and, even though the emphasis is on the action and special effects, they do have a few things in the plot to keep you interested.
The viewer needs to be kept interested in the movie. Not the special effects, not the actors, but the movie. "Ocean's Eleven" was a good movie and it probably would've been just as good without big-name actors.
Not to say that they haven't written any good movies, but the last few I've seen haven't been good enough to make me want to go out to the movie theatre - needless to say, "The Village" was a little disappointing. . .
That's like saying MS is responsible for someone downloading LimeWire and stealing music. It's not true at all - the person who acually stole the music (or movies for that matter) is responsible. It's not MS or LimeWire's fault that the user is stealing music.
The laptops will have network capabilities. Didn't you read about them?
Whether or not there's Internet for these children doesn't matter anyways - there's no Internet without computers, and they need the computers before they can have Internet. Maybe later someone can give them Internet.
"So does anyone out there have a non-connected PC hooked up performing some life-changing work, or are they just useless when disconnected from the wwworld?"
Does anyone out there have a connected PC hooked up performing some life-changing work, or are they just useless when connected to the wwworld?
When's the last time most people have done anything life-changing with a PC, with or without the Internet? Sometimes the Internet is detrimental, too - a lot of people spend entirely too much time online, and setting down a small schoolchild and letting him use the Internet all day isn't so good.
PCs don't need to be hooked to the Internet to be useful. There were useful programs and stuff before the Internet became mainstream.
And at least when the kids do get the Internet, they'll already know how to use a computer.
I would NEVER visit a site if it knew what bank I went to, if I ever searched for furniture before, where I live, etc.
Yes, I know there are cookies that collect certain data about my search habits, that's fine, but for them to know what bank I go to and where I live?
I was hoping it was to "stab them in the face with a soldering iron" :)
I think the reason is that iPods are expensive and popular. And white headphones are associated with iPods and PSPs, which are both expensive and popular.
Okay, so then you also copy over the source code you didn't modify. Either way it's still a non-event, just start the machine copying all the sources to a local medium or to your server, let the machine do its thing and leave it alone for a while, and then when you come back it'll be done. Easy as that.
What happens is the guys at MEPIS make the sources available for any changes they made. Which they've already got from when they changed the code. It's no hassle -- it'll take them all of 10 minutes, they can just start it copying those source files and then walk away from the computer and do something else, use a different computer, take a walk -- and it's a real non-event.
Read the GPL, it might help you out. If you don't change the code, you don't have to distribute it.
"surely all a downstream distro has to do is refer to those sources for untainted packages? Is this good enough for the FSF, or are they just going to turn into the bully of the FOSS community?"
Yes, that's all a downstream distro has to do. Yes that's good enough for the FSF.
The problem is, that MEPIS *did* make some changes, and those need to be made available.
I don't see why this is such a big deal. A developer created some software under the GPL. If you want to distribute that software you need to comply to the GPL. Simple as that. If you don't like it, don't use that software.
I don't know a whole lot about ECS but I do know quite a few people (myself included) who have had bad experiences with ECS. Mine, the motherboard was actually cut when I bought it.
They replaced it, but still. . . I don't see how they cut the silicon and didn't notice it during inspection. And I didn't receive the replacement until like two months later - I had already purchased a new Gigabyte mobo.
Only in the eyes of an IDIOT is Steve Jobs not "successful enough".
What's on Jobs' list of accomplishments you might ask? How about being one of the few computer companies to last through Gates' tyranny? How about changing the music industry?
No? How about giving one of the movie industry's biggest names (Disney) a run for their money -- and winning?
You say Jobs is unsuccessful. . . looking at all the big-time animated movies, I'd say you're wrong. Toy Story/Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc. . . I'd say Jobs did pretty well for himself.
Jobs might not donate a lot of money, I don't know, but he has certainly done a lot to make computing easier and better - MacOS has had speech recognition and other helpful technologies for quite some time now - and I'd say he's done his share to make the entertainment industry better, both with his flat pricing for all songs and with his movies that you know are "kid-safe" and are good family entertainment.
I'm sick of hearing this crap.
You think you know everything about Gates? Read a biography on him. I have.
You think he earned his money by being "very successfully competitive in a very competitive industry"? The bio I read ("Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry - and Made Himself the Richest Man in America" by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews) has multiple instances where he is pretty anti-competitive. For example when he ditched IBM and the OS/2 project, only to use the same code and interface for Windows. How about when he promised IBM that he had an OS all ready for them to ship on the PC, and then having to bribe a small computer shop for the rights to their custom, homemade OS.
I could go on, but I won't. Just realize that you don't know everything about Gates, and he certainly didn't earn his fortune 100% honestly.
But why the hell is parent modded "Score:4, Insightful"? How is that insightful?
"Please excuse me, I have to go clean myself off."
I don't think it's funny. Those things hurt!
If you think MS execs just "make their first million" and leave, you're sorely mistaken. Bill Gates would've left long ago, as with many other MS employees/execs.
So now they're screwed because that's a good, what, 4-5 years of their work gone down the drain. Their search engine is going nowhere, and the Xbox 360 is selling well but they're selling it at a loss, so they don't really have much to fall back on.
Which IMO is what they deserve for thinking that, once again, they can be the best by simply playing "follow-the-leader" and by trying to pull the sheet down over everyone's eyes.
Dude, what happened to your Dell?
Well now that you all know my XP Product Activation Code. . .
IIRC msvcrt.dll isn't required to run the program, only to compile it.
Nope. True, VB produces an .exe file, but you can't run it without the VB interpreter.