This isn't directed at all at you, and I'm sure your drivers will help patch things up better for the current state that Linux is in, but I still think that an out of the box solution is implementable, because as long as you know the model/type/identification of the input device, the OS should be smart enough to use it correctly while at the same time presenting an easy API for games and other programs to use to allow them to easily interface with those input devices without having to do so directly and to know how to use each device. I believe that's possible, but maybe Linux can't do it right now because it needs a new smarter system/API/framework/whatever. Maybe your programs are what will do that, but I guess I'm saying that instead of patching the existing system, maybe it's a bad system and should be replaced with something smarter. Again, I believe this is possible, because I believe anything with software is possible. ^^ Maybe it's a project for Xorg, dunno where it would fall...but Freedesktop.org should definitely get behind it, as standards are their thing.
That's cool, I could do that yeah, or I could just not play it and stick to stuff that's not buggy and broken, and could come back later for their stable version. I mean, if you can't even bother to test your own software on a "normal" Linux machine, that's just sad.
Maybe it's bugs like this that has caused Linux gaming sites not to "remember" it as a "great Linux game". Just saying. Pretty bad when you can't even install and run the thing...doesn't even get into the game where normal bugs might be found on a normal stable game, so I'd call this a, what, alpha release?
You're not telling me anything I don't know. Linux and Ubuntu are names that get recognized publicly as being "the operating system". Saying GNU/Linux is even more awkward than the word Linux is, or Ubuntu for that matter. Get over it, society uses easier words for things, it's called slang.
"games access the joystick/event interface directly. The whole problem with games not recognizing the dpad is a completly different beast and in large part simply caused by gamepads having a wide variety of different configurations (some have one digital stick and two digital buttons, other have two analog sticks, a digital dpad and a dozen of buttons, some buttons are analog, some digital,...) and games simply are not able to handle all of them, because hardly anybody has all those input devices floating around to test all those things."
I'm sorry, I just don't see why this joystick interface isn't standardized, or why a standardized one isn't made. If you had the interface report the following:
(5) digital buttons
(3) analogue triggers
(2) analogue sticks
that's three different classes of input "sub"-devices being reported as belonging to that joystick. You also have the joystick interface report the name of the joystick when available. Then, you make a game which recognises those different types of input so that they are re-definable in the game if the player wants. The driver needs to know what kind of joystick it is and should tell the interface things like appropriate sensitivity levels for the detected device, and other such specific information like that, when available. Then, there should be a calibrator program that you know, actually works and doesn't break anything, which preferably comes with Gnome and KDE, so you can calibrate and adjust things correctly when the specific joystick isn't listed. Yes, that would involve making a library of names and descriptions, so what? That's how it is with remotes too, it doesn't know which buttons to map to which things until it's told via a mapping config file or whatnot. It's the driver's job to detect and use devices directly. I agree that these companies suck if they don't make their devices more standardized in their communication, but for now that's what needs to be done.
There's no reason it can't work out of the box in Linux and no reason there can't be a good API for programs to interface with joysticks through that removes the pain from the game developers and moves it to maintainers of the API/standard interface. If the simple interface reported to the game the information I gave above and maybe a little bit more, it'd be cake for the game maintainer.
In other words, programmers of Linux apps like games and others should not be the ones required to interface correctly with every conceivable device, that should be the job of the Linux OS.
I'm not arguing with you, I'm sure you're right, I'm just telling you that it should be easier. If making Linux apps is difficult, it slows down the growth of Linux. That's bad.
ERROR: " Web cursor bitmap not found. This is most likely due to one of three reasons: 1) You're running FreeSpace Open from somewhere other than your FreeSpace 2 folder; 2) You've somehow corrupted your FreeSpace 2 installation; 3) You haven" at graphics/2d.cpp:1526
Re-installation didn't do anything. I wasn't running Freespace from somewhere else. Oh current state of Linux application installation, how we all hate you.
Thanks for your knowledgeable response instead of a "you noob"-type one.:)
"a little HAL config file however can easily fix that permanently"
Would be nice to see it included by default then in either HAL or come with Xorg, or the problem fixed in Xorg perhaps would be a better solution instead of a "patchier" solution, if it is.
"In the end I think the only short time fix is to have an input driver that is actually configurable enough to handle all those situations, which is why I wrote one, its however right know limited to Firestorm pad and Xbox360 gamepads."
So in other words, if I understand right, Xorg is doing some interpreting as to what goes where, instead of just letting the driver do it's job? You're saying the driver knows what to do and how to interface correctly with specific controllers, but Xorg is ignoring/overriding the driver? Why is it doing that? This just sounds like a really stupid problem with communication, and that would mean that standards are being ignored/changed and/or not communicated about. That's a pretty major problem, if you were Xorg, to suddenly decide "lets change this core functionality, and screw over all these drivers that were working fine before, so now they don't work". This is what I mean by a lack of standards on Linux, the OS which should be brimming full of standards.
I don't know any game that actually uses Xinput, most use either the old/dev/input/jsX directly, the new/dev/input/eventX or just a wrapper library like SDL."
All I know is that instead of re-inventing the wheel every time, when a program wants to interface with an input device like a keyboard or mouse or joypad, there should be a single, standardized, easy way of doing so without having to create a joypad communication framework every time they want to make a game. In other words, joypad configuration in Linux should be defined and done once, and games should then simply communicate with that standard. If Xinput is that standard, that's what everyone should use. Gnome and KDE can then easily interface with that standard and show those joypad configuration settings, in case the user wants to tweak anything.
Linux can have different ideas, it can have different ways of doing things, "standards" doesn't mean removing choice, you can implement a simple communication "portal" that gets everyone on the same page as far as communication goes, but still lets them do anything they want. Makes me wonder how many Linux developers out there are concerned with playing nicely with others at all enough to work together to create these standards.
Linux needs all the development help it can get, and the easier it is to develop Linux software the better it will be for all Linux users everywhere (and Windows and Mac users too).
P.S., even if someone didn't like communicating with Xinput for whatever reason, and wanted to do it some other way, you can still make that new interface be a dependency of your game, and make it compatible with the Xinput configuration settings so that users can still use those GUI tools so that you don't completely break everything.
So, your eye has to look above and below the title to see everything, which is a pretty poor site layout IMO. Not to mention my eye didn't find even the link to download the auto installer at first, since it has a dark grey background like the other non-important parts of the page. Seriously, their website maintainer needs to change a few things. =P
Wasn't trying to be one, didn't see the link as it's ABOVE the title of the website instead of in the download section where normal surfers might look. So, maybe it's just me and being blind, but that was really unexpected and they might want to change the layout a little but that's JMO. Thanks tho. ^^
Then you should hook up a Linux PC to your TV sometime, like we've done. Your PS2 and PS3 controller should work out of the box from my experience, the only trouble I'm having with the PS3 controller is for some reason it powers off now instead of staying on. Weird. Maybe Jaunty will fix it. Xbox controllers also work but you have to use the following commands to make them recognized as a joypad if it moves the mouse pointer when you move the stick, posted here in case anyone needs it:
$ xinput list
See which device number the Xbox controller has...
$ xinput set-int-prop THATDEVICENUMBER 'Device Enabled' 32 0
It's sad really that those joypads have been out for so long and don't work out of the box, when the PS2 and PS3 ones do. I haven't tried any other controllers with Linux, so can't recommend anything else. One problem though is that some emulators are better than others, and can't sense things like the D-pad sometimes, while others can. This is either due to a lack of Linux input standards, or, it's a lack of an update to the emulators to make them work with the Xinput standards if it actually is a standard. In any case, our Linux HTPC is quite nice, even have XBMC installed which is pretty nice, or you can install MythTV which is probably more powerful but more of a pain to install. (XBMC requires a repository add, and then Synaptic download of it, which means everyone not using Ubuntu is screwed which sucks, but until all distros can decide to incorporate the use of some package installation system which can be cross-distro, like Zero Install, things will continue to suck in that regard.)
Only annoyance which isn't too bad is the small black boarders around the screen when you switch to the PC on the TV. I've heard that some TVs don't do this though and display the resolution correctly. Why TVs are having a problem fitting a 1080p resolution perfectly to their 1080p screens is beyond me though. Next time I buy a TV I'm taking a laptop/notebook/wtfever with Linux on it to the store to find one that will display it correctly.
Yay. Gotta love those forums where you have to dig around for centuries just to try to figure out what in the hell is going on, and where to download the damn game from.
From the main page: "The Source Code Project was started roughly five years ago, when Volition released the source code to the game known as 'Freespace 2'. This virtually unknown game consistently won awards for being a great action space sim, but never really caught on when it was released. The Source Code Project has worked, and continues to work, on improving the graphics and gameplay of this ten-year-old game. See the screenshots page; I think they pretty much speak for themselves."
Oooh awesome! I'll try it out! So you go to the downloads section and find...tools....and two launchers...and a "viewer". So you're like WTF. Your only alternative is to dig around on the stupid forums to try to find out where to download it from, which is frustrating in and of itself, and usually gets very cryptic, involving lots of Firefox tabs and links to see other things if you need this part, and these links over here to get that part, and oh you have to compile this part...
In other words, this game isn't ready to be played so that I can see those pretty screenshots for myself. Maybe that's why no one mentions it when they mention Linux gaming! But hack on, hack on, maybe in five more years you'll actually share some of that goodness with everyone else by having the actual game for download.
Why should that surprise anyone? They are two OSes. Of course one is going to have better drivers in some cases, worse in other cases. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's intelligent to overlook fundamental differences that can contribute to those differences though, and certainly in comparing the whole OSes against each other, Linux is leaner (yaya it's a kernel I know, shyaddup), so better performance here shouldn't be shocking to anyone. Even some Windows games seem faster in Wine on Linux, but I don't have any frame rate evidence to back that up, plus you have to make sure the game looks identical (same game feature set on both systems).
I hope your not some corporate turfer, you never know these days, but I'll argue your point. The main point of argument here, aside from arguing against patents in general and their effects on technological progress and the sharing of information, is that the major difference between software patents and "normal" patents is that software can implement an idea, any idea, whatsoever. If it is something that the computer can physically interface with, it can be done. In other words:
If you can dream it, you can implement it.
This is very, very different from patenting physical things, which requires physics to actually, you know, function in favour of your idea for it to actually work. This is why someone cannot patent, say, a teleportation device that transports big objects, because even though this has been dreamed up, it requires getting the physics right to implement it. Software does not require this. In software, you can implement anything. With software patents, I could come up with something so-called "unique" that hasn't been patented yet and lacks "prior art", throw together some stupid program (or do they even require some actual software before patenting??) that does it, and I'm golden. For instance, I'll patent the interface between a computer and, lets see, a device that calculates the number of molecules in Leonard Nimoy's butt. Sure, it's just a stupid program that uses some stupid protocol or whatnot to interface with the device, like all devices, but because it's so-called "unique", even though in reality it's really fucking not unique at all, it'll be awarded a patent I assure you.
Let me summarize:
Regular patents: pretty fucking stupid in most cases, and in general slow the progress of technology.
Software patents: really god damn fucking stupid in every case, like patenting math or dreams.
Of course, ultimately they should let RH know they should join with everyone, especially those open source companies, to ban the exclusivity laws involving math and "software" (ideas) which are only harming the world and progress.
Probably since typing in whatever.com often just gets you some stupid site that's not really what you wanted. Sadly, sometimes this too happens with Google searches.
Or quite simply, because software is just an idea. Computers can be programmed to perform anything their physical outputs and inputs are capable of, as well mix and matching and changing and comparing etc data internally. Trying to control ideas is as retarded as trying to control math. Programming is simply the work to get from idea A to software B, think of it as labor like digging a ditch. You pay laborers to do work that you need to have done, but you don't patent and copyright and license and control the idea, that's stupid and wrong.
can fuck off. Nuff said. They as well as much/most/all of the patent system for everything else, everywhere in the world, need to be banished like a plague. They only slow the progress of development and science.
Don't promote torrenting as being something "sneaky". They can't stop everyone from sharing information, nor will they ever be able to, so the more who do it and do it visibly, the better.:)
(Besides, any and all content can be shared, who's to say you didn't have permission.)
I always thought it was lame hearing Google wanting developers to make stuff for Android specifically. A GUI should be able to scale itself down or up as much as is needed, so developers can just make GTK or QT (especially QT due to it's dynamic cross-platform nature) interface and have it run everywhere on any Linux platform. I can understand making available a Linux software bundle (distro) that comes with the programs that users of phones/PDAs/whatever would prefer by default though, but even that shouldn't be necessary if installing Linux apps was easier.
Of course, your Window manager should be smart enough so that you'd never have to move windows in this fashion, but by "mouseclick" they meant a left mouse button click aka touching the screen if it's a touch screen.
"Most of us will probably wait for the distros to test the new version and upgrade gradually, but you always have the option of grabbing the source and compiling it yourself."
Translation: "Most of us would try it out if only it was easy to do so and we had the freedom to easily install and use Linux software, but we don't, because software installation standards have yet to be worked out and right now it's annoying as hell tracking down the dependencies manually and struggling through the compilation process. Instead, we'll rely on distro companies to give us access to software instead of being able to download and run like Mac and Windows users have the luxury of doing."
Yeah, I'm sure I'll hear the "if they want to try out BASH then they probably know how to compile already" argument, but a) that doesn't make it any less annoying, just because you like using the command line doesn't mean you hate convenience, and b) I'm speaking generally about the sever lack of Linux binaries in existence, and the complete lack of nice installation packages unless you get lucky and someone targeted your specific version of your specific distro.
Once Linux application installation becomes a snap, so any Linux users can easily share software, you will see a much greater proliferation of Linux programs out there, torrents etc, because it will actually be useful keeping archives of packages because they won't go obsolete in 6 months. Once users can easily share Linux programs, it will help make Linux adoption sore and Linux users who don't want to or don't know how to compile will finally be free of suckling on distro companies for their software milk.
You're probably just a troll, but it's Linux users. They give a fuck. Why? Because more Linux adoption means Linux is bigger and has more weight with software developers. This means more software for Linux users.
So, yeah, we care. You're probably a Winblowz user who doesn't. So, go suck Bill's nutsack, dirty faggot.
"Anne Loucks built a device which, when her cat steps on it, they can click the 'I Agree' button of a EULA. Who knows what the lawyers will make of this sort of madness. Can a cat make a legal agreement? Do they need to be of legal age? She lures them onto the device, and they step on it of their own free will. Anyway, folks who hate EULAs now have another tool to make the lawyers freak out."
Linux DEs (desktop environments) should be made easily scalable for any resolution. Duplicating a completely new DE just for smaller devices seems like a big wasted effort when all you should need perhaps is a pre-configuration option for it, if that (be nicest if it was done automatically).
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't directed at all at you, and I'm sure your drivers will help patch things up better for the current state that Linux is in, but I still think that an out of the box solution is implementable, because as long as you know the model/type/identification of the input device, the OS should be smart enough to use it correctly while at the same time presenting an easy API for games and other programs to use to allow them to easily interface with those input devices without having to do so directly and to know how to use each device. I believe that's possible, but maybe Linux can't do it right now because it needs a new smarter system/API/framework/whatever. Maybe your programs are what will do that, but I guess I'm saying that instead of patching the existing system, maybe it's a bad system and should be replaced with something smarter. Again, I believe this is possible, because I believe anything with software is possible. ^^ Maybe it's a project for Xorg, dunno where it would fall...but Freedesktop.org should definitely get behind it, as standards are their thing.
That's cool, I could do that yeah, or I could just not play it and stick to stuff that's not buggy and broken, and could come back later for their stable version. I mean, if you can't even bother to test your own software on a "normal" Linux machine, that's just sad.
Maybe it's bugs like this that has caused Linux gaming sites not to "remember" it as a "great Linux game". Just saying. Pretty bad when you can't even install and run the thing...doesn't even get into the game where normal bugs might be found on a normal stable game, so I'd call this a, what, alpha release?
You're not telling me anything I don't know. Linux and Ubuntu are names that get recognized publicly as being "the operating system". Saying GNU/Linux is even more awkward than the word Linux is, or Ubuntu for that matter. Get over it, society uses easier words for things, it's called slang.
Sorry, the driver's job to work correctly with the devices, I mean.
"games access the joystick/event interface directly. The whole problem with games not recognizing the dpad is a completly different beast and in large part simply caused by gamepads having a wide variety of different configurations (some have one digital stick and two digital buttons, other have two analog sticks, a digital dpad and a dozen of buttons, some buttons are analog, some digital, ...) and games simply are not able to handle all of them, because hardly anybody has all those input devices floating around to test all those things."
I'm sorry, I just don't see why this joystick interface isn't standardized, or why a standardized one isn't made. If you had the interface report the following:
(5) digital buttons
(3) analogue triggers
(2) analogue sticks
that's three different classes of input "sub"-devices being reported as belonging to that joystick. You also have the joystick interface report the name of the joystick when available. Then, you make a game which recognises those different types of input so that they are re-definable in the game if the player wants. The driver needs to know what kind of joystick it is and should tell the interface things like appropriate sensitivity levels for the detected device, and other such specific information like that, when available. Then, there should be a calibrator program that you know, actually works and doesn't break anything, which preferably comes with Gnome and KDE, so you can calibrate and adjust things correctly when the specific joystick isn't listed. Yes, that would involve making a library of names and descriptions, so what? That's how it is with remotes too, it doesn't know which buttons to map to which things until it's told via a mapping config file or whatnot. It's the driver's job to detect and use devices directly. I agree that these companies suck if they don't make their devices more standardized in their communication, but for now that's what needs to be done.
There's no reason it can't work out of the box in Linux and no reason there can't be a good API for programs to interface with joysticks through that removes the pain from the game developers and moves it to maintainers of the API/standard interface. If the simple interface reported to the game the information I gave above and maybe a little bit more, it'd be cake for the game maintainer.
In other words, programmers of Linux apps like games and others should not be the ones required to interface correctly with every conceivable device, that should be the job of the Linux OS.
I'm not arguing with you, I'm sure you're right, I'm just telling you that it should be easier. If making Linux apps is difficult, it slows down the growth of Linux. That's bad.
ERROR: " Web cursor bitmap not found. This is most likely due to one of three reasons: 1) You're running FreeSpace Open from somewhere other than your FreeSpace 2 folder; 2) You've somehow corrupted your FreeSpace 2 installation; 3) You haven" at graphics/2d.cpp:1526
Re-installation didn't do anything. I wasn't running Freespace from somewhere else. Oh current state of Linux application installation, how we all hate you.
Thanks for your knowledgeable response instead of a "you noob"-type one. :)
/dev/input/jsX directly, the new /dev/input/eventX or just a wrapper library like SDL."
"a little HAL config file however can easily fix that permanently"
Would be nice to see it included by default then in either HAL or come with Xorg, or the problem fixed in Xorg perhaps would be a better solution instead of a "patchier" solution, if it is.
"In the end I think the only short time fix is to have an input driver that is actually configurable enough to handle all those situations, which is why I wrote one, its however right know limited to Firestorm pad and Xbox360 gamepads."
So in other words, if I understand right, Xorg is doing some interpreting as to what goes where, instead of just letting the driver do it's job? You're saying the driver knows what to do and how to interface correctly with specific controllers, but Xorg is ignoring/overriding the driver? Why is it doing that? This just sounds like a really stupid problem with communication, and that would mean that standards are being ignored/changed and/or not communicated about. That's a pretty major problem, if you were Xorg, to suddenly decide "lets change this core functionality, and screw over all these drivers that were working fine before, so now they don't work". This is what I mean by a lack of standards on Linux, the OS which should be brimming full of standards.
I don't know any game that actually uses Xinput, most use either the old
All I know is that instead of re-inventing the wheel every time, when a program wants to interface with an input device like a keyboard or mouse or joypad, there should be a single, standardized, easy way of doing so without having to create a joypad communication framework every time they want to make a game. In other words, joypad configuration in Linux should be defined and done once, and games should then simply communicate with that standard. If Xinput is that standard, that's what everyone should use. Gnome and KDE can then easily interface with that standard and show those joypad configuration settings, in case the user wants to tweak anything.
Linux can have different ideas, it can have different ways of doing things, "standards" doesn't mean removing choice, you can implement a simple communication "portal" that gets everyone on the same page as far as communication goes, but still lets them do anything they want. Makes me wonder how many Linux developers out there are concerned with playing nicely with others at all enough to work together to create these standards.
Linux needs all the development help it can get, and the easier it is to develop Linux software the better it will be for all Linux users everywhere (and Windows and Mac users too).
P.S., even if someone didn't like communicating with Xinput for whatever reason, and wanted to do it some other way, you can still make that new interface be a dependency of your game, and make it compatible with the Xinput configuration settings so that users can still use those GUI tools so that you don't completely break everything.
Well with some games that's how it is, though I didn't see the link at the very top of the page, above the page title.
http://scp.indiegames.us/bnr_installer.php
So, your eye has to look above and below the title to see everything, which is a pretty poor site layout IMO. Not to mention my eye didn't find even the link to download the auto installer at first, since it has a dark grey background like the other non-important parts of the page. Seriously, their website maintainer needs to change a few things. =P
Wasn't trying to be one, didn't see the link as it's ABOVE the title of the website instead of in the download section where normal surfers might look. So, maybe it's just me and being blind, but that was really unexpected and they might want to change the layout a little but that's JMO. Thanks tho. ^^
Then you should hook up a Linux PC to your TV sometime, like we've done. Your PS2 and PS3 controller should work out of the box from my experience, the only trouble I'm having with the PS3 controller is for some reason it powers off now instead of staying on. Weird. Maybe Jaunty will fix it. Xbox controllers also work but you have to use the following commands to make them recognized as a joypad if it moves the mouse pointer when you move the stick, posted here in case anyone needs it:
$ xinput list
See which device number the Xbox controller has...
$ xinput set-int-prop THATDEVICENUMBER 'Device Enabled' 32 0
It's sad really that those joypads have been out for so long and don't work out of the box, when the PS2 and PS3 ones do. I haven't tried any other controllers with Linux, so can't recommend anything else. One problem though is that some emulators are better than others, and can't sense things like the D-pad sometimes, while others can. This is either due to a lack of Linux input standards, or, it's a lack of an update to the emulators to make them work with the Xinput standards if it actually is a standard. In any case, our Linux HTPC is quite nice, even have XBMC installed which is pretty nice, or you can install MythTV which is probably more powerful but more of a pain to install. (XBMC requires a repository add, and then Synaptic download of it, which means everyone not using Ubuntu is screwed which sucks, but until all distros can decide to incorporate the use of some package installation system which can be cross-distro, like Zero Install, things will continue to suck in that regard.)
Only annoyance which isn't too bad is the small black boarders around the screen when you switch to the PC on the TV. I've heard that some TVs don't do this though and display the resolution correctly. Why TVs are having a problem fitting a 1080p resolution perfectly to their 1080p screens is beyond me though. Next time I buy a TV I'm taking a laptop/notebook/wtfever with Linux on it to the store to find one that will display it correctly.
Yay. Gotta love those forums where you have to dig around for centuries just to try to figure out what in the hell is going on, and where to download the damn game from.
From the main page: "The Source Code Project was started roughly five years ago, when Volition released the source code to the game known as 'Freespace 2'. This virtually unknown game consistently won awards for being a great action space sim, but never really caught on when it was released. The Source Code Project has worked, and continues to work, on improving the graphics and gameplay of this ten-year-old game. See the screenshots page; I think they pretty much speak for themselves."
Oooh awesome! I'll try it out! So you go to the downloads section and find...tools....and two launchers...and a "viewer". So you're like WTF. Your only alternative is to dig around on the stupid forums to try to find out where to download it from, which is frustrating in and of itself, and usually gets very cryptic, involving lots of Firefox tabs and links to see other things if you need this part, and these links over here to get that part, and oh you have to compile this part...
In other words, this game isn't ready to be played so that I can see those pretty screenshots for myself. Maybe that's why no one mentions it when they mention Linux gaming! But hack on, hack on, maybe in five more years you'll actually share some of that goodness with everyone else by having the actual game for download.
Why should that surprise anyone? They are two OSes. Of course one is going to have better drivers in some cases, worse in other cases. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's intelligent to overlook fundamental differences that can contribute to those differences though, and certainly in comparing the whole OSes against each other, Linux is leaner (yaya it's a kernel I know, shyaddup), so better performance here shouldn't be shocking to anyone. Even some Windows games seem faster in Wine on Linux, but I don't have any frame rate evidence to back that up, plus you have to make sure the game looks identical (same game feature set on both systems).
I hope your not some corporate turfer, you never know these days, but I'll argue your point. The main point of argument here, aside from arguing against patents in general and their effects on technological progress and the sharing of information, is that the major difference between software patents and "normal" patents is that software can implement an idea, any idea, whatsoever. If it is something that the computer can physically interface with, it can be done. In other words:
If you can dream it, you can implement it.
This is very, very different from patenting physical things, which requires physics to actually, you know, function in favour of your idea for it to actually work. This is why someone cannot patent, say, a teleportation device that transports big objects, because even though this has been dreamed up, it requires getting the physics right to implement it. Software does not require this. In software, you can implement anything. With software patents, I could come up with something so-called "unique" that hasn't been patented yet and lacks "prior art", throw together some stupid program (or do they even require some actual software before patenting??) that does it, and I'm golden. For instance, I'll patent the interface between a computer and, lets see, a device that calculates the number of molecules in Leonard Nimoy's butt. Sure, it's just a stupid program that uses some stupid protocol or whatnot to interface with the device, like all devices, but because it's so-called "unique", even though in reality it's really fucking not unique at all, it'll be awarded a patent I assure you.
Let me summarize:
Regular patents: pretty fucking stupid in most cases, and in general slow the progress of technology.
Software patents: really god damn fucking stupid in every case, like patenting math or dreams.
Of course, ultimately they should let RH know they should join with everyone, especially those open source companies, to ban the exclusivity laws involving math and "software" (ideas) which are only harming the world and progress.
Probably since typing in whatever.com often just gets you some stupid site that's not really what you wanted. Sadly, sometimes this too happens with Google searches.
Or quite simply, because software is just an idea. Computers can be programmed to perform anything their physical outputs and inputs are capable of, as well mix and matching and changing and comparing etc data internally. Trying to control ideas is as retarded as trying to control math. Programming is simply the work to get from idea A to software B, think of it as labor like digging a ditch. You pay laborers to do work that you need to have done, but you don't patent and copyright and license and control the idea, that's stupid and wrong.
can fuck off. Nuff said. They as well as much/most/all of the patent system for everything else, everywhere in the world, need to be banished like a plague. They only slow the progress of development and science.
Don't promote torrenting as being something "sneaky". They can't stop everyone from sharing information, nor will they ever be able to, so the more who do it and do it visibly, the better. :)
(Besides, any and all content can be shared, who's to say you didn't have permission.)
What, did you suddenly remember that 7 is based on Vista?
I always thought it was lame hearing Google wanting developers to make stuff for Android specifically. A GUI should be able to scale itself down or up as much as is needed, so developers can just make GTK or QT (especially QT due to it's dynamic cross-platform nature) interface and have it run everywhere on any Linux platform. I can understand making available a Linux software bundle (distro) that comes with the programs that users of phones/PDAs/whatever would prefer by default though, but even that shouldn't be necessary if installing Linux apps was easier.
Of course, your Window manager should be smart enough so that you'd never have to move windows in this fashion, but by "mouseclick" they meant a left mouse button click aka touching the screen if it's a touch screen.
"Most of us will probably wait for the distros to test the new version and upgrade gradually, but you always have the option of grabbing the source and compiling it yourself."
Translation: "Most of us would try it out if only it was easy to do so and we had the freedom to easily install and use Linux software, but we don't, because software installation standards have yet to be worked out and right now it's annoying as hell tracking down the dependencies manually and struggling through the compilation process. Instead, we'll rely on distro companies to give us access to software instead of being able to download and run like Mac and Windows users have the luxury of doing."
Yeah, I'm sure I'll hear the "if they want to try out BASH then they probably know how to compile already" argument, but a) that doesn't make it any less annoying, just because you like using the command line doesn't mean you hate convenience, and b) I'm speaking generally about the sever lack of Linux binaries in existence, and the complete lack of nice installation packages unless you get lucky and someone targeted your specific version of your specific distro.
Once Linux application installation becomes a snap, so any Linux users can easily share software, you will see a much greater proliferation of Linux programs out there, torrents etc, because it will actually be useful keeping archives of packages because they won't go obsolete in 6 months. Once users can easily share Linux programs, it will help make Linux adoption sore and Linux users who don't want to or don't know how to compile will finally be free of suckling on distro companies for their software milk.
You're probably just a troll, but it's Linux users. They give a fuck. Why? Because more Linux adoption means Linux is bigger and has more weight with software developers. This means more software for Linux users.
So, yeah, we care. You're probably a Winblowz user who doesn't. So, go suck Bill's nutsack, dirty faggot.
"Anne Loucks built a device which, when her cat steps on it, they can click the 'I Agree' button of a EULA. Who knows what the lawyers will make of this sort of madness. Can a cat make a legal agreement? Do they need to be of legal age? She lures them onto the device, and they step on it of their own free will. Anyway, folks who hate EULAs now have another tool to make the lawyers freak out."
Linux DEs (desktop environments) should be made easily scalable for any resolution. Duplicating a completely new DE just for smaller devices seems like a big wasted effort when all you should need perhaps is a pre-configuration option for it, if that (be nicest if it was done automatically).