Is everyone really upset because your new Disney DVD is going to require Windows 2005 and a Palladium CPU to play? Instead of bitching about how you should be able to play/copy your new NSync CD anywhere you want, maybe people need to stop feeding the corporate beast that spawns this crap. Support garage bands. See local shows with local talent. See an indie film at your local arthouse or the MFA. By a PowerPC, Alpha, or Sparc. Download a free or opensource MMORPG/RTS/MUD on the internet and spend a few hours making friends with humans all over the world, and in the process create your own DRM-free content! I know this is slashdot, and we only care about freedom/justice/rights until Blizzard puts out a new game, Disney imports some anime, or George Lucas belches, but come on. There is so much good content available out there. You don't *have* to buy/rent your entertainment from Viacom. If you don't buy DRM enabled content, you don't have to worry about owning a DRM enabled machine. I am sure I will always have a unixy (Linux/BSD/whatever) box on which to run my indie content. Of course, you can just ignore this message, and go back to downloading your Divx rip of AOTC on kazaa while bitching that your "rights" are being trampled.
From the Article: New Orleans police will be using a system Microsoft developed for the state of Oklahoma. Dubbed the Offender Data Information System, the system can link dozens of law enforcement agencies, jails and court systems.
From the Blues Brothers: Elwood:"I bet these cops got SCMODS." Jake:"SCMODS?" Elwood:"State, County, Municiple Offender Data System." Jake:"Shit!"
Don't forget he validated the shareware game sales model. Doom proved that if your software was actually good, people would buy shareware, and buy a *lot*. That's why Carmack will always be my pusher. He gives the first hit for free.:) Now I am just waiting for him to say the magic word: d3test
Switching from MS Windows to Linux is like fleeing a country run by a mad tyrant dictator. Sure, in your new home you might have to work a little harder, but at least you are free. You can even participate in the local politics if you want. Maybe the food isn't as good as in the motherland, but at least the ingredients are listed on the label.
XRender is only for fonts. The translucent menus in KDE are a hack.
Not true. I suggest you check the Developers Guide to XRENDER before making false statements. Even a perfunctory glance at the screenshots on the page show alpha blended geometries other than fonts.
And I am quite sure for KDE 3.0.1 KDE->Control Center->Look and Feel->Style->Effects->Menu Translucency Type has an option for "XRender Blend". XRender, not just for fonts anymore.
Who cares? Linux has never been officially supported on my laptop, a Powerbook G3. But Mandrake 8 still runs better on it than the OS with which the laptop came.
If you need an officially supported Linux laptop, there are places to get one.
I won't go into why, because I grow very weary of the "My Distro Rocks; Your Distro Sucks mines balls" arguements that seem to permeat the Linux community.
I think the whole Gentoo phenomenon is not the "my distro is better" arguement. It is the "my distro is newer" arguement. The same way Sawfish gets replaced with Metacity in GNOME2, or the way the KDE theme users go "ooh-ooh Liquid!, no wait - Keramic!, no - Crystal!
None is better than the other, people just like the newer one. It is not as cool to keep saying "Debian r0x0r my b0x0r!" for five years. (But it does.)
...as much as I really like the idea of Linux, and the look of gnome and kde, and the coolness of using a console... you'd still have to dumb it down a bit more for me.
I can not accept this complaint against a Linux desktop. This might have been true in 1999, but today Linux with KDE 3 (and maybe GNOME 2) is ready.
When a user starts KDE for the first time, it runs a little wizard to customize settings. One of the screens asks "How should I behave?" with options to act like Windows, Mac, Sun (CDE), or plain KDE style. A "dumb" (your word, not mine) user can just select the Windows option and get to work. No real learning curve and no hard-to-use applications, with maybe a five-minute tour of the available features will let even the least tech-savvy user be productive and comfortable. The system pretty much behaves as expected.
I installed Mandrake 8 on my laptop and hid the console icons from my spouse's user account. She never noticed they was missing. She uses Linux every day, and doesn't know that the console even exists.
A Linux desktop in 2002 is featureful, stable, attractive, fun, and useful. There are applications available that fit every common niche from games to desktop tools to network software. SuSE 8 even comes on 7 CDs! That is a lot of software!
The only excuse I still accept for not making the switch is "I need to run and it needs Windows!" If that is your reason, fine. But do not let a fear of the command prompt keep you from freeing yourself. Linux is dumb enough.
I fail to see why people feel the need to bow to RMS's ego; the GNU utilities are primarily rewrites of existing utilities, not innovative new technologies.
I say GNU/Linux, and I hardly consider it bowing to RMS's ego.
The GNU tools are a *huge* part of the Linux experience. The gnu compiler toolchain, the shell utilities, the autoconf/automake system, and the almighty emacs are like old and dear friends that make my workday more streamlined and productive every day. I find it such a culture shock whenever I work on a *BSD or Sun machine that doesn't have the GNU tools installed. The little inconsistencies and the smaller feature sets of non-GNU unixy tools all add up to make one realize exactly how convenient and powerful GNU software can be. Without GNU, Linux is just like a strange *BSD or a bloated minix.
The other reason GNU software deserves all the respect in the world is the portability. There are lots of portable utilities, but the GPL license and the high-quality of the GNU tools ensure they are available nearly everywhere. When I am far from penguin-land, I can still take comfort in having all of my favorite utilities available. Cygwin gives me a *real* shell with tools on Windows, autoconf makes my software build on OSX with zero changes, and a tiny little GNU sed even edits on my Palm3x!
And finally, GNU actually brings people to Linux. A friend of mine recently told me how much he like the PRC-Tools for developing PalmOS applications, and how he just discovered the same toolchain for Gameboy programming. He couldn't believe such good tools were available for free. I told him that he was using GNU, that GNU was awesome, that Linux is mostly GNU tools, and I can even make Windows binaries under Linux using yet another iteration of the same toolchain! Four hours later, he calls me back and asks "In going to install RedHat. Is that a good Linux?" I just smiled knowingly and said "That's a good GNU/Linux."
With Nautilus/GNOME you can swap out the HTML viewer component. By default mozilla gecko will render HTML pages in Nautilus, but it is possible to use the nautilus-gtkhtml component to replace (completely or partially) moz as the HTML viewer. I have seen the converse option in KDE. It is possible to use mozilla gecko in konqueror views. It is not as well-behaved as the default khtml viewer, but it is possible.
I have to pay for the bandwidth used by my web site. So when thousands of unpatched and infected Windows boxes start hammering my site with virus-du-jour requests, it costs me money directly. Maybe not billions of dollars, but every penny counts when you are barely holding your dot-com finances together.
Anyone who has felt the anguish of lost mail, lost code, damaged servers, running around trying to cauterize machine infections and keep those Outlook users from clicking anything knows how bad a virus problem can be.
I apologize to the media that the internet hasn't imploded spectacularly enough to make a highly-rated special report on CNN, but that does not mean the problem of virus outbreaks isn't real.
Additionally, any Torque engine games that a developer wishes to distribute must be published through Garage Games. One must accept their publishing contract. See the Torque SDK FAQ for details.
You can see the parody image on the home page of The Church of Satan near the end of the page. (Don't worry, it's not that offensive.) They also tell their half of the story regarding the "Made with Macintosh" debacle.
At least the Church of Satan really uses Macs. Didn't Apple's actual "Think Different" campaign feature Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and other people who never used Apple computers?
C'mon now, you're not willing to throw quarters in the guitar case? Never mind that all the content is created by volunteers, and all slashdot does is distribute it.
This is such a fallacious argument. It is based on the assumption that your opinion is more valuable than the network services that distribute it. An opinion is worthless. Every person has one and every person wants to give it to you. The content (mostly the opinions of the uninformed) here is cheap, but bandwidth and employees are not. What's wrong with paying for the services that/. provides?
There is a coffee house down the street from my house that has open-mic poetry readings every Wednesday. I go, buy a cup of coffee, and listen to (and read) some poems. I am not going to demand my coffee for free, just because I provide some of the "content" on poetry night. The coffee shop provided the mic, stage, tables, lights, and ambiance. Isn't that worth as much (if not more) than the small amount of "content" that the users provide?
Mandrake 8.2 has given me the proof that Linux is ready for the desktop. I just wiped my 128M G3 Powerbook clean and installed Mdk 8.2 on it. While it will run OSX, it runs dog-slow. KDE however, runs like a pleasant dream (and I have more apps now!)
I got all of the vindication I needed though, when one of my semi-computer-literate (he knows just enough to get himself in trouble) friends saw it yesterday. He loves to taunt me about my Linux zealotry, and because of him I have often doubted (forgive me Tux!) the "readiness" of the Linux desktop. I had left the room for a minute, and when I returned he was toying with my laptop, running games and digging through the menus. (Next time I'll lock the screensaver!) He looks up at me with a big satisfied smile, and says "Leave it to Apple to finally make a user-friendly Unix!"
Having never seen it, he just assumed it was OSX. He absolutely refused to believe it was Linux, even after I pointed out the penguin on the desktop and the little "K" button in the corner. Never again will I doubt.
On MacOS X , which is better, OpenGL or DirectX? On Linux for the Playstation2, which is better?
Most of the comments here are decidedly Wintel bent. Most people are agreeing that DirectX is better than OpenGL, on intel hardware running Windows. That may be true, but I can't seem to get DirectX to run on my PPC NetBSD machine. There are lots of platforms out there that are not (yet) 0wned by MS, that stand to lose big *if* OpenGL starts getting crushed.
Am I the only mozilla user who clicked on the link anyway, and had the page sit there doing nothing until I got bored?
I clicked the link, and much to my suprise (dismay?), the ad appeared and worked fine. I then tried the other four ads from link, and they worked also. This is with mozilla nightly with the crossover plugin on x86 Slackware 8. I think moz has gotten a little *too* featureful.
PS2 has some incredible graphic, violent, adult games
A have always thought the concept of graphic violence as an "adult" theme way laughable. That seems more like a concept teenage boys would like. If you really are mature, do you *actually* play video games rated "M for mature"?
I (as an adult) enjoy the flavor of Nintendo games as inoffensive escapism. Mario and Zelda are safe enough that me, my mom, and my kids can play together. Software shouldn't have to contain copious amounts of blood and nudity to escape the "just a kids game" label.
Re:i'm going to suffer for this but...
on
KDE Wins 3 awards
·
· Score: 1
when i first installed kde2 it took me about five minutes to work out how to change the screen resolution and then i had to reset kde before it took effect. and don't get me started on the default setup's choice of font in konqueror.
When I first installed WinXP it took me five minutes to work out how to change the hideous "Luna" interface and then I still had to look at window shadows. And don't get me started on the default Start Menu layout.
Slashdot Mirror
Crap! I meant reject. I have taco-itis.
Is everyone really upset because your new Disney DVD is going to require Windows 2005 and a Palladium CPU to play? Instead of bitching about how you should be able to play/copy your new NSync CD anywhere you want, maybe people need to stop feeding the corporate beast that spawns this crap.
Support garage bands. See local shows with local talent. See an indie film at your local arthouse or the MFA. By a PowerPC, Alpha, or Sparc. Download a free or opensource MMORPG/RTS/MUD on the internet and spend a few hours making friends with humans all over the world, and in the process create your own DRM-free content!
I know this is slashdot, and we only care about freedom/justice/rights until Blizzard puts out a new game, Disney imports some anime, or George Lucas belches, but come on. There is so much good content available out there. You don't *have* to buy/rent your entertainment from Viacom. If you don't buy DRM enabled content, you don't have to worry about owning a DRM enabled machine. I am sure I will always have a unixy (Linux/BSD/whatever) box on which to run my indie content.
Of course, you can just ignore this message, and go back to downloading your Divx rip of AOTC on kazaa while bitching that your "rights" are being trampled.
From the Article:
New Orleans police will be using a system Microsoft developed for the state of Oklahoma. Dubbed the Offender Data Information System, the system can link dozens of law enforcement agencies, jails and court systems.
From the Blues Brothers:
Elwood:"I bet these cops got SCMODS."
Jake:"SCMODS?"
Elwood:"State, County, Municiple Offender Data System."
Jake:"Shit!"
Don't forget he validated the shareware game sales model. Doom proved that if your software was actually good, people would buy shareware, and buy a *lot*. :)
That's why Carmack will always be my pusher. He gives the first hit for free.
Now I am just waiting for him to say the magic word: d3test
Sheesh, can't Toho just wait until our little browser stomps all over Redmond and breathes atomic fire on the Microsoft campus?
Switching from MS Windows to Linux is like fleeing a country run by a mad tyrant dictator.
Sure, in your new home you might have to work a little harder, but at least you are free. You can even participate in the local politics if you want. Maybe the food isn't as good as in the motherland, but at least the ingredients are listed on the label.
XRender is only for fonts. The translucent menus in KDE are a hack.
Not true. I suggest you check the Developers Guide to XRENDER before making false statements. Even a perfunctory glance at the screenshots on the page show alpha blended geometries other than fonts.
And I am quite sure for KDE 3.0.1 KDE->Control Center->Look and Feel->Style->Effects->Menu Translucency Type has an option for "XRender Blend". XRender, not just for fonts anymore.
Who cares? Linux has never been officially supported on my laptop, a Powerbook G3. But Mandrake 8 still runs better on it than the OS with which the laptop came.
If you need an officially supported Linux laptop, there are places to get one.
I don't see Macromedia complaining that Flash isn't built into Windows
Ahem, Flash does come with Windows.
I won't go into why, because I grow very weary of the "My Distro Rocks; Your Distro Sucks mines balls" arguements that seem to permeat the Linux community.
I think the whole Gentoo phenomenon is not the "my distro is better" arguement. It is the "my distro is newer" arguement. The same way Sawfish gets replaced with Metacity in GNOME2, or the way the KDE theme users go "ooh-ooh Liquid!, no wait - Keramic!, no - Crystal!
None is better than the other, people just like the newer one. It is not as cool to keep saying "Debian r0x0r my b0x0r!" for five years. (But it does.)
Gentoo is the penultimate Linux distro in my opinion.
Yeah, in mine too. Penultimate means "next to the last."
Debian is the ultimate Linux distro.
...as much as I really like the idea of Linux, and the look of gnome and kde, and the coolness of using a console... you'd still have to dumb it down a bit more for me.
I can not accept this complaint against a Linux desktop. This might have been true in 1999, but today Linux with KDE 3 (and maybe GNOME 2) is ready.
When a user starts KDE for the first time, it runs a little wizard to customize settings. One of the screens asks "How should I behave?" with options to act like Windows, Mac, Sun (CDE), or plain KDE style. A "dumb" (your word, not mine) user can just select the Windows option and get to work. No real learning curve and no hard-to-use applications, with maybe a five-minute tour of the available features will let even the least tech-savvy user be productive and comfortable. The system pretty much behaves as expected.
I installed Mandrake 8 on my laptop and hid the console icons from my spouse's user account. She never noticed they was missing. She uses Linux every day, and doesn't know that the console even exists.
A Linux desktop in 2002 is featureful, stable, attractive, fun, and useful. There are applications available that fit every common niche from games to desktop tools to network software. SuSE 8 even comes on 7 CDs! That is a lot of software!
The only excuse I still accept for not making the switch is "I need to run and it needs Windows!" If that is your reason, fine. But do not let a fear of the command prompt keep you from freeing yourself. Linux is dumb enough.
I fail to see why people feel the need to bow to RMS's ego; the GNU utilities are primarily rewrites of existing utilities, not innovative new technologies.
I say GNU/Linux, and I hardly consider it bowing to RMS's ego.
The GNU tools are a *huge* part of the Linux experience. The gnu compiler toolchain, the shell utilities, the autoconf/automake system, and the almighty emacs are like old and dear friends that make my workday more streamlined and productive every day. I find it such a culture shock whenever I work on a *BSD or Sun machine that doesn't have the GNU tools installed. The little inconsistencies and the smaller feature sets of non-GNU unixy tools all add up to make one realize exactly how convenient and powerful GNU software can be. Without GNU, Linux is just like a strange *BSD or a bloated minix.
The other reason GNU software deserves all the respect in the world is the portability. There are lots of portable utilities, but the GPL license and the high-quality of the GNU tools ensure they are available nearly everywhere. When I am far from penguin-land, I can still take comfort in having all of my favorite utilities available. Cygwin gives me a *real* shell with tools on Windows, autoconf makes my software build on OSX with zero changes, and a tiny little GNU sed even edits on my Palm3x!
And finally, GNU actually brings people to Linux. A friend of mine recently told me how much he like the PRC-Tools for developing PalmOS applications, and how he just discovered the same toolchain for Gameboy programming. He couldn't believe such good tools were available for free. I told him that he was using GNU, that GNU was awesome, that Linux is mostly GNU tools, and I can even make Windows binaries under Linux using yet another iteration of the same toolchain! Four hours later, he calls me back and asks "In going to install RedHat. Is that a good Linux?" I just smiled knowingly and said "That's a good GNU/Linux."
Apologies to any accidentally offended BSD users.
With Nautilus/GNOME you can swap out the HTML viewer component. By default mozilla gecko will render HTML pages in Nautilus, but it is possible to use the nautilus-gtkhtml component to replace (completely or partially) moz as the HTML viewer.
I have seen the converse option in KDE. It is possible to use mozilla gecko in konqueror views. It is not as well-behaved as the default khtml viewer, but it is possible.
I have to pay for the bandwidth used by my web site. So when thousands of unpatched and infected Windows boxes start hammering my site with virus-du-jour requests, it costs me money directly. Maybe not billions of dollars, but every penny counts when you are barely holding your dot-com finances together.
Anyone who has felt the anguish of lost mail, lost code, damaged servers, running around trying to cauterize machine infections and keep those Outlook users from clicking anything knows how bad a virus problem can be.
I apologize to the media that the internet hasn't imploded spectacularly enough to make a highly-rated special report on CNN, but that does not mean the problem of virus outbreaks isn't real.
Additionally, any Torque engine games that a developer wishes to distribute must be published through Garage Games. One must accept their publishing contract. See the Torque SDK FAQ for details.
You can see the parody image on the home page of The Church of Satan near the end of the page. (Don't worry, it's not that offensive.) They also tell their half of the story regarding the "Made with Macintosh" debacle.
At least the Church of Satan really uses Macs. Didn't Apple's actual "Think Different" campaign feature Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and other people who never used Apple computers?
C'mon now, you're not willing to throw quarters in the guitar case? Never mind that all the content is created by volunteers, and all slashdot does is distribute it.
/. provides?
This is such a fallacious argument. It is based on the assumption that your opinion is more valuable than the network services that distribute it. An opinion is worthless. Every person has one and every person wants to give it to you. The content (mostly the opinions of the uninformed) here is cheap, but bandwidth and employees are not. What's wrong with paying for the services that
There is a coffee house down the street from my house that has open-mic poetry readings every Wednesday. I go, buy a cup of coffee, and listen to (and read) some poems. I am not going to demand my coffee for free, just because I provide some of the "content" on poetry night. The coffee shop provided the mic, stage, tables, lights, and ambiance. Isn't that worth as much (if not more) than the small amount of "content" that the users provide?
Mandrake 8.2 has given me the proof that Linux is ready for the desktop. I just wiped my 128M G3 Powerbook clean and installed Mdk 8.2 on it. While it will run OSX, it runs dog-slow. KDE however, runs like a pleasant dream (and I have more apps now!)
I got all of the vindication I needed though, when one of my semi-computer-literate (he knows just enough to get himself in trouble) friends saw it yesterday. He loves to taunt me about my Linux zealotry, and because of him I have often doubted (forgive me Tux!) the "readiness" of the Linux desktop. I had left the room for a minute, and when I returned he was toying with my laptop, running games and digging through the menus. (Next time I'll lock the screensaver!) He looks up at me with a big satisfied smile, and says "Leave it to Apple to finally make a user-friendly Unix!"
Having never seen it, he just assumed it was OSX. He absolutely refused to believe it was Linux, even after I pointed out the penguin on the desktop and the little "K" button in the corner. Never again will I doubt.
Now all I have to do is fill my professor's house with jiffy-pop, and get my teenage roommate to hack into the laser guidance system...
Its a lot better in many ways than OpenGL
On MacOS X , which is better, OpenGL or DirectX? On Linux for the Playstation2, which is better?
Most of the comments here are decidedly Wintel bent. Most people are agreeing that DirectX is better than OpenGL, on intel hardware running Windows. That may be true, but I can't seem to get DirectX to run on my PPC NetBSD machine. There are lots of platforms out there that are not (yet) 0wned by MS, that stand to lose big *if* OpenGL starts getting crushed.
Am I the only mozilla user who clicked on the link anyway, and had the page sit there doing nothing until I got bored?
I clicked the link, and much to my suprise (dismay?), the ad appeared and worked fine. I then tried the other four ads from link, and they worked also. This is with mozilla nightly with the crossover plugin on x86 Slackware 8. I think moz has gotten a little *too* featureful.
when I worked for a software store when the DC came out, it crashed plenty
That can also be directly blamed on Microsoft, since DC games ran on a "special" version of Windows CE.
PS2 has some incredible graphic, violent, adult games
A have always thought the concept of graphic violence as an "adult" theme way laughable. That seems more like a concept teenage boys would like. If you really are mature, do you *actually* play video games rated "M for mature"?
I (as an adult) enjoy the flavor of Nintendo games as inoffensive escapism. Mario and Zelda are safe enough that me, my mom, and my kids can play together. Software shouldn't have to contain copious amounts of blood and nudity to escape the "just a kids game" label.
when i first installed kde2 it took me about five minutes to work out how to change the screen resolution and then i had to reset kde before it took effect. and don't get me started on the default setup's choice of font in konqueror.
When I first installed WinXP it took me five minutes to work out how to change the hideous "Luna" interface and then I still had to look at window shadows. And don't get me started on the default Start Menu layout.