It's pretty hard to blame the OS for a game lockup. In most cases it's the graphics driver getting woefully confused and eating it, resulting in a hard lock, or the game just wedging (if you could get the processor time to switch out you could kill the process, but often you can't--this happens in Linux gaming, what little there is of it, too).
Before my time; I had a XENIX machine in the early 90's, but I was five years old when I got it and switched to DOS/Windows not long after. Only got back into Linux around 2000 or so.
I understand your current position, even if I don't agree. However, I think there is something you are overlooking, which is the collateral damage to society brought about by RIAA attempting to stop those "folks who infringe on their copyrights".
Yes, because the "collateral damage to society" brought about by this is actually relevant compared to the fucking neoconservative right dragging us into wars or the batshit loony left spending my fucking money on idiotic social programs with no actual benefit.
I save my outrage for things that matter, you see; the RIAA does not.
Do you actually believe that 100% of the hundreds (or perhaps thousands, there is no real way to know how many) of people who are contacted by RIAA for paying a mere few thousand dollars to settle out-of-court are all guilty?
I would bet more for it than against it. I work part-time at a university IT shop, at a university where the RIAA has sent letters. I have known personally about a dozen of them and I don't believe that a single one of them is innocent.
I also don't really give a shit about the innocent ones, because those who are not innocent have the option of going to trial. Is it expensive? Yes (but as I note later, you can recoup these costs if you're actually innocent, by winning). Is it hard? Yes. Is it thankless? Yes. Does it mean not rolling over and taking the path of least resistance, in order to demonstrate that your name means something and that you're willing to fight for it? Also yes. If you're not willing to defend yourself, you might as well be guilty. You've already bought into your position as a thoroughly bovine slave, you've signed away your rights to take the easy path out. Deal with those choices.
I'm also probably jaded by Tanenbaum and Thomas-Rasset, the poster boy (and girl) of "we're innocent and being oppressed!" obviously having done it, and in the latter case probably guilty of obstructing justice to boot.
Mind you I don't think the RIAA's actions are effective or all that smart, but they're within their rights. You're entitled to boycott them if you choose to. I do not choose to.
You do realize that even for someone who is actually innocent, settling out-of-court is the financially correct decision to make in these cases?
I'm sure it is. But I don't have much sympathy for someone who won't stand up and fight for themselves. I don't pirate music. If the RIAA came knocking, I have logs and records that indicate this (and I have my CD collection, too, which doesn't help them any). And here's the thing that makes this most amusing to me: in the United States, if you're sued and the plaintiff loses, the plaintiff generally is assigned court costs if the defendant requests it. The money isn't as big a factor as Slashdot's wee little whiners would have you believe.
There is also the matter of how distorted and dysfunctional copyright law has become because of lobbying by RIAA. Do you actually believe that it helps society (or even the record companies themselves!) that the term of copyright is so enormously long? It looks to me to be the opposite, even for them. If the term were only something like 10 years, I think that new artists recycling of works which still had some cultural significance would actually generate more music, and more interesting music, for the industry to push. And I doubt that the 10 year limit would actually change the recording industry's income by very much, the vast majority of their sales are either new acts or to people who wouldn't bother to waste time/effort looking for the free copy as opposed to just clicking in iTunes/Amazon/or similar.
I agree entirely. I also don't really muster up the energy to care, because while that'd be nice, and I wouldn't at all be against it, I am a content creator too and indirectly benefit from their lobbying. I wouldn't mind too terribly having the length of copyright shrunken down, but whether or not it happens does not bother me either way.
I'll buy RIAA member labels' music if it interests me, thank you very much, so long as the CDs themselves are DRM-free (and frankly, even then, so long as it isn't a pain in the ass I'll buy it). I have no real problem with the RIAA suing folks who infringe on their copyrights, so no, I don't think I'll do as you suggest. Thanks for your concern.:-)
Halo can be fun, purely as a twitch game, and I say that as somebody who hates--I mean hates--console FPSes, except for Halo in particular. But I have to play it on Legendary to get any feel of fun or accomplishment, because the regenerating shield gimmick stops mattering when you die that fast.
I don't reload unless I die, and I try very hard to avoid dying. It's not as fun for me to just reload the game.
I rescued Paul by thinking fast, my first time through the game (LAMs on the doorway when I heard them coming through, I hadn't seen the MiBs and got lucky that the secondary explosions scragged the soldiers, and a couple GEP rounds solved the rest of it). If I hadn't, I would have said "man, that sucks" and played on.
I like feeling like I've earned my win, I guess. Not diminishing how you play, but just noting that Halo et al. sap that feeling so much that to actually enjoy Halo I have to play on Legendary, and CoD not at all (it's just not fun). Deus Ex was, to me, about managing scarce resources to best effect. Halo is not, and is the poorer for it.
Health recovery was done by an incredibly expensive nano augment in the first game. Energy recovery was done by repair bots or biocells. You could run out of medkits and energy cells and still had to keep going. That was a major part of the gameplay, rather than sitting in a corner and getting Master Chiefed up to full health again. It lend a feeling of urgency and panic to the game that free regeneration takes away. No, fuck that noise.
Plus, I played DX1 multiplayer, not just single-player. There are more concerns than just the plot and single-player gameplay (and frankly, if Eidos fucking Montreal is involved, I don't have much faith for them to not suck, either).
How is giving away, in its entirety, a copyrighted work anywhere near "fair use"? Your post makes no sense and fails to address this very basic issue; causing harm to the copyright holder is only one part of the fair use test and you can't contort your position (in an intellectually honest manner) to satisfy the others.
(And they're not thriving, though that isn't necessarily because of piracy. Don't get me wrong; I don't like the RIAA, at all. But I create intellectual property too, and I don't need it pirated by people too cheap to actually buy it, so I can't be OK with RIAA members' works being pirated, either.)
I wouldn't be so sure about that. My company is nowhere near ready to announce anything, but we're planning a WC-style space sim (at least, if I can convince the other founders that it'd sell).
There's the High Definition Texture Pack fan project, which is pretty damn cool looking. There's only so much you can do with the original Unreal Engine, but it looks pretty good.
Eh, MW4 wasn't that good, but MW4:Mercs was a lot of fun. The free re-release is going to be integrated with the MekTek Mech Packs, too, which will be a lot of fun.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, because I really keep another computer around just in case X wedges when I'm playing the (very few) games that exist on Linux.
Oh, wait. I don't, because my other machines (which do run Linux) are all headless and keyboardless.
You're a fucking retard.
So, what you're telling me is that it does wedge the system for any normal user?
Awesome. Thanks for the corroboration.
Unless you're trolling to demonstrate how braindead-fucked-up the Linux-on-the-desktop people tend to be, in which case I applaud heartily.
The .NET Framework (at least, parts of it) have already been ported to ARM; the Compact Framework runs on it as I recall.
I believe Mono has an ARM port too.
Your lame-ass puns can suck my Dragonballs.
It's pretty hard to blame the OS for a game lockup. In most cases it's the graphics driver getting woefully confused and eating it, resulting in a hard lock, or the game just wedging (if you could get the processor time to switch out you could kill the process, but often you can't--this happens in Linux gaming, what little there is of it, too).
Sorry, I'm more interested in things that matter. Which probably sounds more flip than I intend, but I'm not too worried about it.
After all, lots of things infringe on the Constitution. The IRS comes to mind.
Before my time; I had a XENIX machine in the early 90's, but I was five years old when I got it and switched to DOS/Windows not long after. Only got back into Linux around 2000 or so.
Care to elaborate? :-)
I understand your current position, even if I don't agree. However, I think there is something you are overlooking, which is the collateral damage to society brought about by RIAA attempting to stop those "folks who infringe on their copyrights".
Yes, because the "collateral damage to society" brought about by this is actually relevant compared to the fucking neoconservative right dragging us into wars or the batshit loony left spending my fucking money on idiotic social programs with no actual benefit.
I save my outrage for things that matter, you see; the RIAA does not.
Do you actually believe that 100% of the hundreds (or perhaps thousands, there is no real way to know how many) of people who are contacted by RIAA for paying a mere few thousand dollars to settle out-of-court are all guilty?
I would bet more for it than against it. I work part-time at a university IT shop, at a university where the RIAA has sent letters. I have known personally about a dozen of them and I don't believe that a single one of them is innocent.
I also don't really give a shit about the innocent ones, because those who are not innocent have the option of going to trial. Is it expensive? Yes (but as I note later, you can recoup these costs if you're actually innocent, by winning). Is it hard? Yes. Is it thankless? Yes. Does it mean not rolling over and taking the path of least resistance, in order to demonstrate that your name means something and that you're willing to fight for it? Also yes. If you're not willing to defend yourself, you might as well be guilty. You've already bought into your position as a thoroughly bovine slave, you've signed away your rights to take the easy path out. Deal with those choices.
I'm also probably jaded by Tanenbaum and Thomas-Rasset, the poster boy (and girl) of "we're innocent and being oppressed!" obviously having done it, and in the latter case probably guilty of obstructing justice to boot.
Mind you I don't think the RIAA's actions are effective or all that smart, but they're within their rights. You're entitled to boycott them if you choose to. I do not choose to.
You do realize that even for someone who is actually innocent, settling out-of-court is the financially correct decision to make in these cases?
I'm sure it is. But I don't have much sympathy for someone who won't stand up and fight for themselves. I don't pirate music. If the RIAA came knocking, I have logs and records that indicate this (and I have my CD collection, too, which doesn't help them any). And here's the thing that makes this most amusing to me: in the United States, if you're sued and the plaintiff loses, the plaintiff generally is assigned court costs if the defendant requests it. The money isn't as big a factor as Slashdot's wee little whiners would have you believe.
There is also the matter of how distorted and dysfunctional copyright law has become because of lobbying by RIAA. Do you actually believe that it helps society (or even the record companies themselves!) that the term of copyright is so enormously long? It looks to me to be the opposite, even for them. If the term were only something like 10 years, I think that new artists recycling of works which still had some cultural significance would actually generate more music, and more interesting music, for the industry to push. And I doubt that the 10 year limit would actually change the recording industry's income by very much, the vast majority of their sales are either new acts or to people who wouldn't bother to waste time/effort looking for the free copy as opposed to just clicking in iTunes/Amazon/or similar.
I agree entirely. I also don't really muster up the energy to care, because while that'd be nice, and I wouldn't at all be against it, I am a content creator too and indirectly benefit from their lobbying. I wouldn't mind too terribly having the length of copyright shrunken down, but whether or not it happens does not bother me either way.
Just as an example, Astralweks is an EMI imprint.
There are others, but I don't feel like going through my collection right now.
I'll buy RIAA member labels' music if it interests me, thank you very much, so long as the CDs themselves are DRM-free (and frankly, even then, so long as it isn't a pain in the ass I'll buy it). I have no real problem with the RIAA suing folks who infringe on their copyrights, so no, I don't think I'll do as you suggest. Thanks for your concern. :-)
The kernel still contains about two percent Linus-code, which is a staggering amount for one person on a project so large.
That's not as funny.
Color me disappointed.
I never heard that one, but please tell me it stands for "Right Fucking Now."
Halo can be fun, purely as a twitch game, and I say that as somebody who hates--I mean hates--console FPSes, except for Halo in particular. But I have to play it on Legendary to get any feel of fun or accomplishment, because the regenerating shield gimmick stops mattering when you die that fast.
I don't reload unless I die, and I try very hard to avoid dying. It's not as fun for me to just reload the game.
I rescued Paul by thinking fast, my first time through the game (LAMs on the doorway when I heard them coming through, I hadn't seen the MiBs and got lucky that the secondary explosions scragged the soldiers, and a couple GEP rounds solved the rest of it). If I hadn't, I would have said "man, that sucks" and played on.
I like feeling like I've earned my win, I guess. Not diminishing how you play, but just noting that Halo et al. sap that feeling so much that to actually enjoy Halo I have to play on Legendary, and CoD not at all (it's just not fun). Deus Ex was, to me, about managing scarce resources to best effect. Halo is not, and is the poorer for it.
My mobile runs Chrome. Sorry for your incapability.
Health recovery was done by an incredibly expensive nano augment in the first game. Energy recovery was done by repair bots or biocells. You could run out of medkits and energy cells and still had to keep going. That was a major part of the gameplay, rather than sitting in a corner and getting Master Chiefed up to full health again. It lend a feeling of urgency and panic to the game that free regeneration takes away. No, fuck that noise.
Plus, I played DX1 multiplayer, not just single-player. There are more concerns than just the plot and single-player gameplay (and frankly, if Eidos fucking Montreal is involved, I don't have much faith for them to not suck, either).
I warned them about that ahead of time. I think that's probably why they didn't hate it.
How is giving away, in its entirety, a copyrighted work anywhere near "fair use"? Your post makes no sense and fails to address this very basic issue; causing harm to the copyright holder is only one part of the fair use test and you can't contort your position (in an intellectually honest manner) to satisfy the others.
(And they're not thriving, though that isn't necessarily because of piracy. Don't get me wrong; I don't like the RIAA, at all. But I create intellectual property too, and I don't need it pirated by people too cheap to actually buy it, so I can't be OK with RIAA members' works being pirated, either.)
Of course you can. Claims to the contrary are fearmongering tardspew.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. My company is nowhere near ready to announce anything, but we're planning a WC-style space sim (at least, if I can convince the other founders that it'd sell).
There's the High Definition Texture Pack fan project, which is pretty damn cool looking. There's only so much you can do with the original Unreal Engine, but it looks pretty good.
And it has Halo-style regenerating health and is in basically all ways a fucking console shooter. Go away.
Seeing as how one of the games my company is working on is a Wing Commander or X-Wing clone, I damn well hope you're wrong about that...
Definitely agree on the motion sickness, though. That game's twists and turns helped disassociate the horizon from my inner ear. It's awesome.
Eh, MW4 wasn't that good, but MW4:Mercs was a lot of fun. The free re-release is going to be integrated with the MekTek Mech Packs, too, which will be a lot of fun.