What's the blatant abuse, exactly? Instead of giving Works to vendors for free, they're going to provide an ad-ware version. If anything, it makes their product *less* appealing. (Also I'm not sure exactly what the computer vendor gets out of the deal...)
And can we stop using the term "convicted monopolist?" Yes, yes, it's accurate, but it doesn't actually *mean* anything, and it's nearly always entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand. For instance, this matter. At this point it's just a meaningless buzzword.
Raven Software makes pretty good games, and they always seem to come out exactly on time.
I think the problem is that most of the game industry is terrible at project management. They set unrealistic timelines, or far too many features, or both. And then when it's obvious they can't complete the game in time, they wait until the very last minute to say anything about it.
For instance, look at how Valve screwed ATI with ATI's Half-Life 2 giveaway. By the time HL2 actually came out, the Radeon 9600 you bought to get it for free was nearly obsolete! To make matters worse, the only reason Valve announced the delay at all is that their source code leaked. If that hadn't happened, who knows how long it would have taken them to admit their schedule was off.
As for mounting shares, I don't really know. I mounted them by editing/etc/fstab at the same time I added nfs shares to my system. Perhaps you'd care to share how you mount SMB shares at boot on an apple? Do you know how to do it in the GUI? Or how you find the shares when they don't turn up magically in the 'Network' tab - command-K followed by the IP address isn't it?
You just make an alias to the share and put it wherever you want.
Seriously, how much easier could it be? It helps to know a teeny bit about OS X before complaining about it.
Bullshit. Apple's QA process works perfectly, because the iBook is sold with OS X installed, and OS X correctly sleeps it when the lid is closed. You can't expect Apple to QA the laptop with every possible after-market modification out there-- as sold, the iBook works fine. In any case, it's still no excuse for Ubuntu not at least WARNING the user that they should turn on sleep mode.
Sleep might "work" out of the box, but it's not turned on by default. (I tried this less than 9 months ago; it's possible it's fixed now, it certainly wasn't fixed 2 years ago.) That means the default settings go against the specs of the machine and could potentially damage it. I'm not saying your iBook WILL overheat and fail if you install Ubuntu on it, I'm saying that it's a distinct possibility unless you manually turn on sleep mode. I don't know about you, but:
1) I think this is important enough that people should know about it. After all, if Ubuntu destroys your $1200+ piece of hardware, they disclaim all responsibility and you're basically screwed.
2) I think it points out a HUGE flaw in all Linux distributions: Lack of a thorough QA process. There's no way a software product that could potentially harm hardware should ever be available for download by anybody. It's a huge mark against Ubuntu that they didn't even do this very basic piece of testing before release. I'm not asking for every tiny little bug to be ironed out, but before you say "hey! download and install this on your iBook!" you might want to do enough testing to ensure it won't actually go against the specs of the hardware first. Maybe I expect too much.
Except that it doesn't sleep iBooks when you close the lid, and Apple recommends that iBooks be in sleep mode whenever they are closed up to prevent overheating. In short, although Ubuntu runs on Macs, it has default settings that are actually capable of damaging your hardware! No thanks.
'so mysterious, so stunning and so amazing--that 'THEY' might become one of the most anticipated world premiere titles from this year's Games Convention!'
WOW would be 100 times better if you could change you freakin' hair style and makeup. I'm not asking for anything crazy, just like a hair salon in the game where it costs a bit of gold and you can change your look somewhat.
Then there are the ones who spend more time bitching about what game is better or how all the new games suck, then they actually spend enjoying the games they hold so highly.
You'll enjoy this recent SomethingAwful article where they look at postings from a forum where everybody is convinced that Fallout and Fallout 2 are the best games ever, to the extent that they actually threaten to kill Bethesda developers for "ruining" the franchise. (Bethesda's version is not even released yet!)
Here's the problem with Molyneux: While his games have great concepts and ideas, the execution is usually lacking.
Dungeon Keeper had a great concept, but as a game it was kind of eh. Dungeon Keeper 2, on the other hand, is a much better game in every way. Ditto with Black and White and Black and White 2. For some reason, Molyneux's sequels come out to be better games than the originals... either this is because he needs some feedback from the gaming community to decide what to change, or that he pays less personal attention to the game to give more power to his 'underlings' to add features. (i.e. skipping the tutorial in Black and White 2, but even that was a patch.)
Interestingly, both Dungeon Keeper and Black and White had the exact same bug. In both games, once you set your minion to worship, they were supposed to leave when they get hungry or tired, go get some food, then come back to the job. Instead, they would worship until they starved to death and died. Both Dungeon Keeper 2 and Black and White 2 fixed this bug.
I will give him this though: Although he makes crazy promises, like a lot of bigwig game producers, he's a lot better at following-up with them than most. I think Black and White contained nearly every feature it was touted to contain. (Although I know Fable was missing more than a few.) Also, his games come out at least remotely close to "on time."
P.S. What was with that level in Black and White where they stole your creature away? The creature was the selling point of the game, and frankly the most fun part of it by far. Then you go to an island, and bam it's gone. That sucked.
What's the deal with Futurama's constant parody of Nixon, anyway? Does anybody who's a fan of the show even *remember* Nixon? Hell, for that matter, do the writers of the show even remember Nixon, or are they just going by the standard "make fun of Richard Nixon" humor template?
I just find that odd. If it was Reagan, more people would relate I think. I mean, yes, ok, we get it, Nixon was a bad president, ha ha ha. But he's already been parodied in every comedy show there is, we don't need yet another go at it.
We've been jerked around with this news for like 3 years now. I'll believe it when I see the disk on a shelf, but I'm not investing any emotion into any more of these press releases.
The reason a lot of American families own SUVs isn't because they just want to arbitrarily waste gas, but because they have things to tow. Maybe a horse trailer, or some jet skis, or a fishing boat. The reason people buy gas economy cars and not electric ones is that even the cheapest gas economy car has 4 seats (small ones, given) and a trunk, and people need to take their groceries and gymbag home.
Yet Another Electric Car that doesn't meet either of these needs is not going to succeed, period. An electric car that seats two people, costs a $34k, and has no trunk? Might as well buy a couple scooters for thousands less.
Wow, you have a good level of crazy going on here. The government is holding back flying car development because they think it would be harder to catch suspects? I suppose it couldn't possibly have anything to do with flying cars having crappy range, terrible safety records, are super-expensive, and hard to fly. Must be the government!
Small Electric Car May Usher In Big Changes... just like the last 200 small electronic cars that ushered in big changes.
Seriously, though, nobody's going to take you seriously if you can't use the car to haul groceries. If your car doesn't have at least the utility of a Toyota Echo, then just give up now.
Airlines have problems because travel gets bigger every year, but airports (generally) do not. There's a bit they could do to resolve problems like yours (for instance, keep more pilots in reserve so pilots calling in sick doesn't affect flight schedules), but a lot of those delays are simply too many planes and too few runways/gates.
Try reading anything from IBM. I used to have to deal with them, simply finding a driver on their website involved reading paragraph after paragraph of vague business-ese and following links that went everywhere *except* the driver. It was enough to drive you mad.
The only reason they would have increased the warrantee period, is because they analysed the situation and came to the conclusion that the lost business from having such an unreliable product would cost them a lot more than offering a 3 year warrantee and repairing large numbers of the faulty products. It certainly wouldn't ever have been done for the good of the customers.
You can prove this statement with some kind of evidence?
I'm not a professional game reviewer, and I really don't have any desire to be a professional game reviewer. I'd sell the reviews to some huge site if they really wanted to pay for them, but I don't have any desire to give up my day job (so to speak.)
You'll notice I also don't even write very good ones; I don't include the developer or publisher, or the ESRB rating, or the retail cost, or even the platform. (I think all the reviews there are Xbox 360, though, but I have some PC ones coming.)
You gotta put something in the sig, right?
Thanks for expressing interest, though. Someone mark this Off-Topic.
Slashdot Mirror
What's the blatant abuse, exactly? Instead of giving Works to vendors for free, they're going to provide an ad-ware version. If anything, it makes their product *less* appealing. (Also I'm not sure exactly what the computer vendor gets out of the deal...)
And can we stop using the term "convicted monopolist?" Yes, yes, it's accurate, but it doesn't actually *mean* anything, and it's nearly always entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand. For instance, this matter. At this point it's just a meaningless buzzword.
Raven Software makes pretty good games, and they always seem to come out exactly on time.
I think the problem is that most of the game industry is terrible at project management. They set unrealistic timelines, or far too many features, or both. And then when it's obvious they can't complete the game in time, they wait until the very last minute to say anything about it.
For instance, look at how Valve screwed ATI with ATI's Half-Life 2 giveaway. By the time HL2 actually came out, the Radeon 9600 you bought to get it for free was nearly obsolete! To make matters worse, the only reason Valve announced the delay at all is that their source code leaked. If that hadn't happened, who knows how long it would have taken them to admit their schedule was off.
As for mounting shares, I don't really know. I mounted them by editing /etc/fstab at the same time I added nfs shares to my system. Perhaps you'd care to share how you mount SMB shares at boot on an apple? Do you know how to do it in the GUI? Or how you find the shares when they don't turn up magically in the 'Network' tab - command-K followed by the IP address isn't it?
You just make an alias to the share and put it wherever you want.
Seriously, how much easier could it be? It helps to know a teeny bit about OS X before complaining about it.
Attention Slashdot moderators:
Stating a fact is not a troll. Ubuntu does not, in fact, sleep iBooks when you close the lid.
That is all.
Of course not, but you can expect them to do the most basic level of QA before releasing their product to the public.
Bullshit. Apple's QA process works perfectly, because the iBook is sold with OS X installed, and OS X correctly sleeps it when the lid is closed. You can't expect Apple to QA the laptop with every possible after-market modification out there-- as sold, the iBook works fine. In any case, it's still no excuse for Ubuntu not at least WARNING the user that they should turn on sleep mode.
Sleep might "work" out of the box, but it's not turned on by default. (I tried this less than 9 months ago; it's possible it's fixed now, it certainly wasn't fixed 2 years ago.) That means the default settings go against the specs of the machine and could potentially damage it. I'm not saying your iBook WILL overheat and fail if you install Ubuntu on it, I'm saying that it's a distinct possibility unless you manually turn on sleep mode. I don't know about you, but:
1) I think this is important enough that people should know about it. After all, if Ubuntu destroys your $1200+ piece of hardware, they disclaim all responsibility and you're basically screwed.
2) I think it points out a HUGE flaw in all Linux distributions: Lack of a thorough QA process. There's no way a software product that could potentially harm hardware should ever be available for download by anybody. It's a huge mark against Ubuntu that they didn't even do this very basic piece of testing before release. I'm not asking for every tiny little bug to be ironed out, but before you say "hey! download and install this on your iBook!" you might want to do enough testing to ensure it won't actually go against the specs of the hardware first. Maybe I expect too much.
Except that it doesn't sleep iBooks when you close the lid, and Apple recommends that iBooks be in sleep mode whenever they are closed up to prevent overheating. In short, although Ubuntu runs on Macs, it has default settings that are actually capable of damaging your hardware! No thanks.
'so mysterious, so stunning and so amazing--that 'THEY' might become one of the most anticipated world premiere titles from this year's Games Convention!'
Then again, it might not.
WOW would be 100 times better if you could change you freakin' hair style and makeup. I'm not asking for anything crazy, just like a hair salon in the game where it costs a bit of gold and you can change your look somewhat.
You prefer the Taurens, perhaps? When you're playing horde, man, you gotta take what you can get!
Then there are the ones who spend more time bitching about what game is better or how all the new games suck, then they actually spend enjoying the games they hold so highly.
u t-scarleteen-armenianclub.php
You'll enjoy this recent SomethingAwful article where they look at postings from a forum where everybody is convinced that Fallout and Fallout 2 are the best games ever, to the extent that they actually threaten to kill Bethesda developers for "ruining" the franchise. (Bethesda's version is not even released yet!)
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/weekend-web/fallo
Here's the problem with Molyneux: While his games have great concepts and ideas, the execution is usually lacking.
Dungeon Keeper had a great concept, but as a game it was kind of eh. Dungeon Keeper 2, on the other hand, is a much better game in every way. Ditto with Black and White and Black and White 2. For some reason, Molyneux's sequels come out to be better games than the originals... either this is because he needs some feedback from the gaming community to decide what to change, or that he pays less personal attention to the game to give more power to his 'underlings' to add features. (i.e. skipping the tutorial in Black and White 2, but even that was a patch.)
Interestingly, both Dungeon Keeper and Black and White had the exact same bug. In both games, once you set your minion to worship, they were supposed to leave when they get hungry or tired, go get some food, then come back to the job. Instead, they would worship until they starved to death and died. Both Dungeon Keeper 2 and Black and White 2 fixed this bug.
I will give him this though: Although he makes crazy promises, like a lot of bigwig game producers, he's a lot better at following-up with them than most. I think Black and White contained nearly every feature it was touted to contain. (Although I know Fable was missing more than a few.) Also, his games come out at least remotely close to "on time."
P.S. What was with that level in Black and White where they stole your creature away? The creature was the selling point of the game, and frankly the most fun part of it by far. Then you go to an island, and bam it's gone. That sucked.
You realize Microsoft's console is a multi-processing machine, also, right?
What's the deal with Futurama's constant parody of Nixon, anyway? Does anybody who's a fan of the show even *remember* Nixon? Hell, for that matter, do the writers of the show even remember Nixon, or are they just going by the standard "make fun of Richard Nixon" humor template?
I just find that odd. If it was Reagan, more people would relate I think. I mean, yes, ok, we get it, Nixon was a bad president, ha ha ha. But he's already been parodied in every comedy show there is, we don't need yet another go at it.
We've been jerked around with this news for like 3 years now. I'll believe it when I see the disk on a shelf, but I'm not investing any emotion into any more of these press releases.
The reason a lot of American families own SUVs isn't because they just want to arbitrarily waste gas, but because they have things to tow. Maybe a horse trailer, or some jet skis, or a fishing boat. The reason people buy gas economy cars and not electric ones is that even the cheapest gas economy car has 4 seats (small ones, given) and a trunk, and people need to take their groceries and gymbag home.
Yet Another Electric Car that doesn't meet either of these needs is not going to succeed, period. An electric car that seats two people, costs a $34k, and has no trunk? Might as well buy a couple scooters for thousands less.
Wow, you have a good level of crazy going on here. The government is holding back flying car development because they think it would be harder to catch suspects? I suppose it couldn't possibly have anything to do with flying cars having crappy range, terrible safety records, are super-expensive, and hard to fly. Must be the government!
Small Electric Car May Usher In Big Changes... just like the last 200 small electronic cars that ushered in big changes.
Seriously, though, nobody's going to take you seriously if you can't use the car to haul groceries. If your car doesn't have at least the utility of a Toyota Echo, then just give up now.
Airlines have problems because travel gets bigger every year, but airports (generally) do not. There's a bit they could do to resolve problems like yours (for instance, keep more pilots in reserve so pilots calling in sick doesn't affect flight schedules), but a lot of those delays are simply too many planes and too few runways/gates.
More to the point, why don't you run Linux in the virtual machine and keep OS X as the host? Doesn't that make much more sense?
Try reading anything from IBM. I used to have to deal with them, simply finding a driver on their website involved reading paragraph after paragraph of vague business-ese and following links that went everywhere *except* the driver. It was enough to drive you mad.
The only reason they would have increased the warrantee period, is because they analysed the situation and came to the conclusion that the lost business from having such an unreliable product would cost them a lot more than offering a 3 year warrantee and repairing large numbers of the faulty products. It certainly wouldn't ever have been done for the good of the customers.
You can prove this statement with some kind of evidence?
I'm not a professional game reviewer, and I really don't have any desire to be a professional game reviewer. I'd sell the reviews to some huge site if they really wanted to pay for them, but I don't have any desire to give up my day job (so to speak.)
You'll notice I also don't even write very good ones; I don't include the developer or publisher, or the ESRB rating, or the retail cost, or even the platform. (I think all the reviews there are Xbox 360, though, but I have some PC ones coming.)
You gotta put something in the sig, right?
Thanks for expressing interest, though. Someone mark this Off-Topic.
Dude, they eke an existence repairing cars made in 1981. Do you seriously think they have the capital to make all those changes you're talking about?
They just probably realized they have to fab new replacement parts, so they might as well make some extras and assemble cars while they're at it.