Voicing a dissenting opinion isn't being a bitch, man.:)
Anyway, I think it's great that you had such a positive experience with that game under Linux. But like you said, the great majority of new games won't work under Linux at all. The AC above you suggested that a lot of games will work fine under WINE, which I find hard to believe though I've also never tried it out.
I really think that the only real solution to the problem of game developers not developing for Linux will only be solved when a Linux-only game company starts up. If they start making decent games for Linux that sell well, they can take those numbers to the bigger companies and say "Hey, look at this. Linux may only have an OS marketshare of x%, but y% of those people play games on the platform!"
Of course, that won't do much for the DirectX vs OpenGL debate, but that's for another time.
*Doom 3, UT2004 and other games come with Linux support (UT2004 came with it out of the box)
Those are two games. Two, out of thousands that don't. Any serious gamer will never consider Linux as a vaible platform. Also, what 'other games'? Those are the only two that I can think of off the top of my head.
*Gimp has color management support out of the box
And an interface that requires varying amounts of getting used to, especially if you're already coming from an Adobe/Macromedia background. You really think a business will migrate to The Gimp from Adobe, just because it's free? (Remember, it's NOT free when you have to take into account time and money lost during migration and training.)
*Blender kicks ass and is no harder to learn that 3D Studio Max (Screw industry standards, isn't "the troubles of being locked in" what this article is about)
Define 'kicks ass' and 'no harder to learn'. I've heard (no, I'm not a graphics artist and I've never used either product, but I have talked to designers) that Blender's interface is counterintuitive. Granted, the people I've talked to have all used mostly 3D Studio Max and Maya, so 'counterintuitive' to them might be just 'really different from what I'm used to'. But that is the whole point anyway. This thread is about 'the troubles of being locked out', yes. But it's also mostly about 'switching from Windows to OSS because of Vista's EULA'. What a lot of Linux zealots (I am loathe to use the word because of its negative connotations; please don't read into it, I'm not trying to be offensive) ignore are things that are extremely important to any business wanting to undergo any sort of software migration:
Cost of migration and what I like to call Headache of migration. Is the cost saved migrating to OSS worth the headache of worrying about whether your printer/scanner/[other devices integral to your business] will keep working? Is it worth the retraining of your entire staff and the posiblity that some unforseen issue will crop up later that will make the entire thing worthless (ie. Open-source software A can't do [extremely important task] that retail software B could do)?
Don't get me wrong, I am a huge proponent of Linux and OSS for things like server work and programming. But I can't tell a business who is paying me to consult them honestly that OSS is the best thing for them when it ISN'T. In a business, sometimes maintaining the status quo is an extremely important thing. This isn't 'backwards' or stupid, it's just the way the business world works.
So I - as an adult and a citizen - shouldn't get to play this game because releasing it might cause it to fall into the hands of your kid against your will? Some kids drive without a license, so all cars should be banned to prevent this from happening?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that is what Mr. Thompson is proposing, and what you seem to be backing. You can control your kids' media intake at home, but not when you're not around - this is a given. It always has been a given, and will continue to be true until Big Brother takes over and we're all watched 24/7 anyway (and for the love of God, don't make a tangent about this).
Know who your kids hang out with, what they're doing. This is not difficult; they're hardly going to be firing up the systems to play some rousing matches of UT or Halo or GTA or [M Rated Game] at school. Our society already has such 'safegards' - to an extent - insofar as that it's not (supposed to be) possible for kids to buy 'questionable' games. Yeah, those restrictions need to have harsher penalties (and not just for retailers), but they are there. There are management systems built into all current- and next-gen systems that allow you to keep the system from playing games above a certain threshold, like the V-chip.
Speaking of the V-chip, I think it's pretty interesting that everyone whines about tougher safeguards against kids playing violent games, but there is no whining about tougher safeguards on other violent media. Why isn't there a system to keep kids from buying violent books? There are a lot of kids who can read well despite public schools, and I would posit that they would be just as affected by the message a book broadcasts as they would a game or TV show - if not more so. What is stopping a kid from buying a ticket for a G-rated movie and then sneaking into the R-rated theatre? The list goes on.
I say this because this rediculous crusade against games under the sacrosanct guise of "protecting the children" is really starting to bother me on a deeper level than just "Oh goddamnit, Thompson is at it again." If it bothers you so much, don't buy your kids a system and don't let them go to friends' houses that have systems / violent games. Call their parents and ask about it. I'm certain your kids will be shell-shocked when they get out into the Real World(tm) after a life so sheltered. A better solution would be to talk to them about good values early. Adults these days underestemate the age at which their kids are exposed to mature ideas and media. In this day and age, it is never too early to start talking to your kids about things like this.
I don't disagree with you, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone posit that murderous propensities are genetically inherited. Most of the time when I hear people talk in favour of capital punishment, it's always "They deserve it for what they've done" or "I don't want my tax dollars paying for them to keep on living" or something along those lines.
The real question is, is Joe Windows Vista User going to go to nvidia.com to download the latest drivers for his new videocard and find that there's now a surcharge for the file, ostensibly to cover the cost of signing the driver? Or is this expenditure going to be integrated into the cost of the hardware, artificially raising the price?
Or is this just business as usual? Do devs have to pay now for driver signatures? I honestly don't know the answer to these.
If a UK judge orders their domain shut down and they comply with that, but then just switch domains and keep right on going, the judge could hold them in criminal contempt of the court, depending on how the ruling was worded and how severe the cout thinks the infraction is.
In the US, a person is either held in contempt or not, but in the UK judicial system, a person can be in civil contempt or criminal contempt. Criminal contempt charges (from what I understand; IANAL) can be very serious, entailing heavy fines and sometimes jail time.
This all seems to be moot, as the UK doesn't seem to have any great interest in prosecuting anybody over this case. However, that is the hypothetical situation the GP was talking about.
Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?
We don't. We kill them because we as a society would rather take the easy and more satisfying way out. Thinking that capital punishment is a deterrent is as juvenile as thinking jails are for rehabilitation.
And the rest of your post is so idiotic, I'm just not going to touch it.
Why don't you want to see that happen? Because it's a big, bad devil corporation making it instead of some other corporation that believes in OSS?
Personally, I will keep telling my clients to use whatever is the best for what they tell me they want to do. Whether that is Linux or OSX or Windows running Photoshop or The Gimp or MS Office or OO.o or etc. I get paid money to tell people these things honestly, not be an OSS zealot. And the day closed-source software starts being more secure than OSS software is the day I will start telling people that.
Where does it say that the Mac version only has one bug? From here it looks like it says one of the flaws is only present in the mac version. In other words, the Mac version has a bug that the Windows version doesn't (which, considering how different OSX is from XP, is perfectly understandable); it doesn't say "The only bug in the Mac version was patched". Given the amount of such posts I've already seen in this thread, I'm pretty suprised you're latching onto this 'only one bug' thing, instead of the 'only one bug found, but how many more are still there / created from the fix' shtick.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the people who are writing the software are not the people who gave the order for it to be written, and they definately are not the people controlling how it is going to be deployed.
I may be sounding like Dr. Phil here but one thing that really strikes me about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that no one takes ownership. It's all "they need to be nicer to us" rather than "we need to be nicer to them". That's not to say anyone has to accept ethnic prejudice but a good place to start is to not engage it in oneself.
I agree, that's a very admirable thing to do. However, there have been many 'ceasefires' in the Mid-east and one side or the other has always been attacked to end it somehow.
I see this sentiment a lot here on Slashdot and elsewhere in the media, and while it always strikes me as a great thing to think, I often wonder... What happens when Israel does that and then still gets attacked again (as has happened before)? (And yes, yes, yes. Israel has done its fair share of starting shit. There, we've gotten that one out of the way, now let's try and make an attempt to stay on-topic.)
Should Israel ignore it? Should they strike back, defending themselves (assuming, to preempt the trolls again, that that's all they did: simply retaliated and took out the ones behind the hypothetical attack)? What about Palestine, if Israel attacks them? Should they retaliate? Or turn the other cheek, under this policy of "not engaging in ethnic pedjudice"? What if Israel completely gives up the West Bank, then is the victim of another attack?
I don't have any answers. But I'm getting a little annoyed of people who think that the solution to everybody's problems is holding hands and singing Kumbyah.
I think rather your blanket assumptions that all people that believe abortion is bad are also raving murderers who bomb clinics and shoot doctors will get you flamed. I think it would be a pretty good argument if you clarified you are talking about radical crazies and just went with the "extremist == extremist" argument.
I agree with your points, but it's a videogame, chief. The Muslim world has enough propaganda outlets as it is. A few games are just a drop in the ocean.
The problem is that the environment is too controlled. Put the lunatics on an island with lots of guns. They'll definately 'cancel each other out' then.
The fact is, that's life. You can't always have your cake and eat it too. If you want to use your new toy for homebrew, use it for home brew. If you want to use it for official games, use it for that instead. If you want both, buy two systems. Frankly, Nintendo has zero obligation to make homebrewers happy. They will have plenty of marketshare without them.
Slashdot Mirror
Voicing a dissenting opinion isn't being a bitch, man. :)
Anyway, I think it's great that you had such a positive experience with that game under Linux. But like you said, the great majority of new games won't work under Linux at all. The AC above you suggested that a lot of games will work fine under WINE, which I find hard to believe though I've also never tried it out.
I really think that the only real solution to the problem of game developers not developing for Linux will only be solved when a Linux-only game company starts up. If they start making decent games for Linux that sell well, they can take those numbers to the bigger companies and say "Hey, look at this. Linux may only have an OS marketshare of x%, but y% of those people play games on the platform!"
Of course, that won't do much for the DirectX vs OpenGL debate, but that's for another time.
Those are two games. Two, out of thousands that don't. Any serious gamer will never consider Linux as a vaible platform. Also, what 'other games'? Those are the only two that I can think of off the top of my head.
And an interface that requires varying amounts of getting used to, especially if you're already coming from an Adobe/Macromedia background. You really think a business will migrate to The Gimp from Adobe, just because it's free? (Remember, it's NOT free when you have to take into account time and money lost during migration and training.)
Define 'kicks ass' and 'no harder to learn'. I've heard (no, I'm not a graphics artist and I've never used either product, but I have talked to designers) that Blender's interface is counterintuitive. Granted, the people I've talked to have all used mostly 3D Studio Max and Maya, so 'counterintuitive' to them might be just 'really different from what I'm used to'. But that is the whole point anyway. This thread is about 'the troubles of being locked out', yes. But it's also mostly about 'switching from Windows to OSS because of Vista's EULA'. What a lot of Linux zealots (I am loathe to use the word because of its negative connotations; please don't read into it, I'm not trying to be offensive) ignore are things that are extremely important to any business wanting to undergo any sort of software migration:
Cost of migration and what I like to call Headache of migration. Is the cost saved migrating to OSS worth the headache of worrying about whether your printer/scanner/[other devices integral to your business] will keep working? Is it worth the retraining of your entire staff and the posiblity that some unforseen issue will crop up later that will make the entire thing worthless (ie. Open-source software A can't do [extremely important task] that retail software B could do)?
Don't get me wrong, I am a huge proponent of Linux and OSS for things like server work and programming. But I can't tell a business who is paying me to consult them honestly that OSS is the best thing for them when it ISN'T. In a business, sometimes maintaining the status quo is an extremely important thing. This isn't 'backwards' or stupid, it's just the way the business world works.
Touche. My apologies for misreading your first post, and thanks for taking the time to correct me instead of just posting a flame :)
So I - as an adult and a citizen - shouldn't get to play this game because releasing it might cause it to fall into the hands of your kid against your will? Some kids drive without a license, so all cars should be banned to prevent this from happening?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that is what Mr. Thompson is proposing, and what you seem to be backing. You can control your kids' media intake at home, but not when you're not around - this is a given. It always has been a given, and will continue to be true until Big Brother takes over and we're all watched 24/7 anyway (and for the love of God, don't make a tangent about this).
Know who your kids hang out with, what they're doing. This is not difficult; they're hardly going to be firing up the systems to play some rousing matches of UT or Halo or GTA or [M Rated Game] at school. Our society already has such 'safegards' - to an extent - insofar as that it's not (supposed to be) possible for kids to buy 'questionable' games. Yeah, those restrictions need to have harsher penalties (and not just for retailers), but they are there. There are management systems built into all current- and next-gen systems that allow you to keep the system from playing games above a certain threshold, like the V-chip.
Speaking of the V-chip, I think it's pretty interesting that everyone whines about tougher safeguards against kids playing violent games, but there is no whining about tougher safeguards on other violent media. Why isn't there a system to keep kids from buying violent books? There are a lot of kids who can read well despite public schools, and I would posit that they would be just as affected by the message a book broadcasts as they would a game or TV show - if not more so. What is stopping a kid from buying a ticket for a G-rated movie and then sneaking into the R-rated theatre? The list goes on.
I say this because this rediculous crusade against games under the sacrosanct guise of "protecting the children" is really starting to bother me on a deeper level than just "Oh goddamnit, Thompson is at it again." If it bothers you so much, don't buy your kids a system and don't let them go to friends' houses that have systems / violent games. Call their parents and ask about it. I'm certain your kids will be shell-shocked when they get out into the Real World(tm) after a life so sheltered. A better solution would be to talk to them about good values early. Adults these days underestemate the age at which their kids are exposed to mature ideas and media. In this day and age, it is never too early to start talking to your kids about things like this.
Welcome to Slashdot. If it bashes the current Administration or America in general, what matter if it's a complete fabrication?
Wow, for real. That site could be the posterchild for how not to make a website.
Not as entertaining as people who think they're clever by trying to read too far between the lines.
It's no conspiracy theory, that's why I asked those last two questions; I honestly didn't know. Just food for thought.
I don't disagree with you, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone posit that murderous propensities are genetically inherited. Most of the time when I hear people talk in favour of capital punishment, it's always "They deserve it for what they've done" or "I don't want my tax dollars paying for them to keep on living" or something along those lines.
The real question is, is Joe Windows Vista User going to go to nvidia.com to download the latest drivers for his new videocard and find that there's now a surcharge for the file, ostensibly to cover the cost of signing the driver? Or is this expenditure going to be integrated into the cost of the hardware, artificially raising the price?
Or is this just business as usual? Do devs have to pay now for driver signatures? I honestly don't know the answer to these.
If a UK judge orders their domain shut down and they comply with that, but then just switch domains and keep right on going, the judge could hold them in criminal contempt of the court, depending on how the ruling was worded and how severe the cout thinks the infraction is.
In the US, a person is either held in contempt or not, but in the UK judicial system, a person can be in civil contempt or criminal contempt. Criminal contempt charges (from what I understand; IANAL) can be very serious, entailing heavy fines and sometimes jail time.
This all seems to be moot, as the UK doesn't seem to have any great interest in prosecuting anybody over this case. However, that is the hypothetical situation the GP was talking about.
In fact, it's probably a bad idea to tell your CEO that his filesystems are FAT. You may lose your job.
We don't. We kill them because we as a society would rather take the easy and more satisfying way out. Thinking that capital punishment is a deterrent is as juvenile as thinking jails are for rehabilitation.
And the rest of your post is so idiotic, I'm just not going to touch it.
Why don't you want to see that happen? Because it's a big, bad devil corporation making it instead of some other corporation that believes in OSS?
Personally, I will keep telling my clients to use whatever is the best for what they tell me they want to do. Whether that is Linux or OSX or Windows running Photoshop or The Gimp or MS Office or OO.o or etc. I get paid money to tell people these things honestly, not be an OSS zealot. And the day closed-source software starts being more secure than OSS software is the day I will start telling people that.
Where does it say that the Mac version only has one bug? From here it looks like it says one of the flaws is only present in the mac version. In other words, the Mac version has a bug that the Windows version doesn't (which, considering how different OSX is from XP, is perfectly understandable); it doesn't say "The only bug in the Mac version was patched". Given the amount of such posts I've already seen in this thread, I'm pretty suprised you're latching onto this 'only one bug' thing, instead of the 'only one bug found, but how many more are still there / created from the fix' shtick.
Maybe he's a swimmer, or a football player. Don't those people shave themselves?
Thankfully, 99% of computer users are not that anal about their security, so I won't have to read masturbation posts like this very often.
Also, it means that this software is still viable on most peoples' PCs. Not that that was the point of your post.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the people who are writing the software are not the people who gave the order for it to be written, and they definately are not the people controlling how it is going to be deployed.
I agree, that's a very admirable thing to do. However, there have been many 'ceasefires' in the Mid-east and one side or the other has always been attacked to end it somehow.
I see this sentiment a lot here on Slashdot and elsewhere in the media, and while it always strikes me as a great thing to think, I often wonder... What happens when Israel does that and then still gets attacked again (as has happened before)? (And yes, yes, yes. Israel has done its fair share of starting shit. There, we've gotten that one out of the way, now let's try and make an attempt to stay on-topic.)
Should Israel ignore it? Should they strike back, defending themselves (assuming, to preempt the trolls again, that that's all they did: simply retaliated and took out the ones behind the hypothetical attack)? What about Palestine, if Israel attacks them? Should they retaliate? Or turn the other cheek, under this policy of "not engaging in ethnic pedjudice"? What if Israel completely gives up the West Bank, then is the victim of another attack?
I don't have any answers. But I'm getting a little annoyed of people who think that the solution to everybody's problems is holding hands and singing Kumbyah.
It would also make it very difficult for people to kill each other through biting.
I think rather your blanket assumptions that all people that believe abortion is bad are also raving murderers who bomb clinics and shoot doctors will get you flamed. I think it would be a pretty good argument if you clarified you are talking about radical crazies and just went with the "extremist == extremist" argument.
I agree with your points, but it's a videogame, chief. The Muslim world has enough propaganda outlets as it is. A few games are just a drop in the ocean.
The problem is that the environment is too controlled. Put the lunatics on an island with lots of guns. They'll definately 'cancel each other out' then.
Screw over MySpace users and bring to light a potentially devestating new attack, all at the same time? That sounds win-win to me. I'm on it.
So don't play Wii games with your homebrew'd Wii.
The fact is, that's life. You can't always have your cake and eat it too. If you want to use your new toy for homebrew, use it for home brew. If you want to use it for official games, use it for that instead. If you want both, buy two systems. Frankly, Nintendo has zero obligation to make homebrewers happy. They will have plenty of marketshare without them.
You're right; I wasn't even thinking about third-party aps, more responding to the GP's troll about "stolen games".