That being their drivers suck. Also that writing GPU drivers is hard and the OSS community hasn't done a good job.

AMD released a bunch of hardware info, and what code they could (they can't just open up all of their proprietary driver, there are things in it they legally can't release). There were claims of an absolutely amazin' driver that would be made, better than Windows, that there were thousands of skilled OSS programmers who were chomping at the bit to work on it.

Well that was mostly just people bragging on places like /. who didn't know what they were talking about, someone who'd fooled around writing a NIC or SATA driver and thought it was easy. Turns out graphics drivers are REALLY COMPLEX and each generation of hardware needs a new one. So the AMD OSS driver has been pretty poor quality. I mean it works, and supports some features, but it has some stability issues and is nowhere near the full feature set.

So ya, not really helping them. What the OSS community wants is for someone to write an nVidia quality driver, and open it up. Do all the work and then hand it out. Doesn't seem like anyone is interested in doing that. In part that is because some of what makes those closed drivers good is IP that gets licensed that can't be open sourced.

Valve has little to no Linux gaming clout. Ya they released a rebadge of Ubtunu with Steam on it. Yay. So far it has had very little influence. Most people continue to game on Windows (and to a lesser extent OS-X). They are not migrating in droves, nor are there droves of people who used Linux but didn't game that are now. Valve has changed very little in the Linux gaming space, as of yet,

The Unity engine and Kickstarter have done a lot more for driving any sort of Linux gaming than Valve.

Most of nVidia's gaming customers play on Windows, and they don't care about closed source drivers. Indeed, binary drivers are the way of things, the users would be extremely mad if you gave them source packages and told them to download a compiler. On OS-X it is all Apple's way, all the time. You gets the drivers you gets from Apple and live with it. Only in the Linux arena is there any wish for OSS drivers, and then only form a minority of their customers. Most of nVidia's Linux customers are high end enterprises, doing simulations or CAD work. They want certified binary drivers, because they want everything to be verified to work.

Valve really doesn't have much they can do to change nVidia's mind. I mean maybe if Valve themselves made Steam Machines and they could threaten to change vendors, but they don't, all kinds of hardware companies make them and they all do business with nVidia.

The proof is in how many different kinds of games are being made. That we have games which are massive franchises, that have been homogenized and distilled to appeal to the masses, yet we have games that are filling niche wants for gamers of certain types. We have games for people who are extremely hard core games, and games for those that are extremely casual. We have games targeting all skill levels, all types of play, and so on.

Whatever you likes, there is probably a game being made for you.

That list of games was a list of games which were to counter the point of things just being "movies" since all were most emphatically not. If you want a list of something else, then specify what you are interested in. The whole point was the AC, like so many of the other whiners, are complaining about a very specific type of game that is popular, but hardly the only thing. I was providing a list of games that are not what they are complaining about, and were released fairly recently as a counter example.

What has happened is that various things have brought down barriers, so now small groups of people, or even single people, can create and compete in the games marketplace. The upshot is we get things for more interests, not just the mainstream.

The Chinese fab is a 65nm fab, which is for older stuff. All their 22nm fabs are in the US and Israel.

After all what is a gun? I mean it may seem intuitive but I mean really think about how you write a formal definition that includes everything you want to regulate but isn't overreaching and hits things you don't. It's not the easiest thing in the world.

So, maybe the law needs to be changed to deal with a new development. Would hardly be the first time. Sounds like that's what they are evaluating.

For this use I'd need one with realtime video capability since it would be non-line of sight operation. Hence more cost. Since it is mostly just me wanting to check on things, not worth it.

If there is an actual problem, I have professionals look at it.

In general things involving roof inspection are well suited to be done by drone. While there still are times you'd need to put a person on the roof, a drone with a high rez camera can get you the information you need in most cases. Safer, and also faster.

If they weren't so expensive I'd love to have one for my own use for that purpose. I live in a second story condo and access to the roof is a problem (you need a really big ladder). I'd love to be able to fly a drone up to check for debris occluding vents, damage to my A/C, etc.

You are a perfect example of what I'm talking about. No perspective on modern games, just bitching. You act like CoD is all there is. Let's see, off the top of my head for modern games that are deep and involved: Kerbal Space Program, Wasteland 2, Pillars of Eternity, Frozen Cortex, Sins of A Solar Empire Rebellion, Endless Space, Grey Goo, Transistor, Starpoint Gemini 2, Divinity Original Sin, and Age of Wonders 3.

That's not a list of all of them, just what I can think of easily. These are all titles that have come out in the last year or two, have real meat to the gameplay, little to no cinematics and are a hell of a lot of fun.

If you can't find games that are good, that's you being a stick in the mud and being too lazy to read anything but IGN, not because there aren't tons of releases.

There are a -LOT- of single player games these days. A lot fo multi player ones too, but that one exists doesn't get rid of the other. Whatever genre you like, you can find some of both.

Since you mention shooters, Wolfenstein the New Order is a single player only shooter acclaimed by critics and fans alike.

For whatever reason, humans (some of them at least) have this need to view the past with rose coloured glasses and then whine about everything modern. Happens with gaming just as anything else.

An objective look at gaming shows we are in an amazing golden age of gaming right now. Tons of games are being made. With that means tons of crap, of course, but plenty of good ones. What's more, basically everyone's needs are being met. Gaming isn't targeted at just one or two demographics, there is a massive variety out there. So we can have both something like Call of Duty, which is designed to appeal to a mass market, and something like Kerbal Space Program which has a much more limited audience. One does not choke out the other and everyone can find something they like.

My problem with games these days lack of time to play all the games I want. I have a big wishlist of games on Steam, and a collection of games I bought but haven't yet installed. However life intrudes and I have only so much time to spend gaming. I wish I could waste more time playing games but I can't.

Very different from my childhood where I would have to play and replay the same games over and over since I had very few.

This is just a cop out to pay people less. "Oh sorry we don't negotiate on salary, it is a gender equality thing, you'll just have to take the pay we offered you even though it is below what you should make." It's a CEO being a CEO and looking to line their own pockets. However she's just figured out how to couch it in equality rhetoric so as to mask the fact that it is just designed to screw over workers to enrich her.

Because if you start exaggerating and making shit up, it makes people listen to you less. The whole "boy who cried wolf" thing. If you keep saying doom is coming and it never comes, well then people are going to quit listening to you even if you are right one time.

Also it leads people to question your legit, non-exaggerated points. I mean after all, if the problem you are talking about really is so bad, why the need to make shit up? Is it really so bad if you have to exaggerate what you say? If you exaggerated this thing, how do we know you aren't exaggerating more?

The best thing is to keep it truthful. No, people won't always be interested in listening or in doing what you ask, but that's life. If you want to have any credibility long term and have hope of being listened to, you need to be truthful. Let people truthfully know the problems they will face and show them when they are facing them. Ya, it'll probably have to get to be a bigger problem before people fix it, that is how humans tend to operate.

Is he was pretty accurate on the "fucktard" thing? :D

Seriously though, this is part of the reason she's undefeatable. If her supporters don't even know who she's running against, how can that person have any hope?

She's an incumbent, which gives her a big advantage. Add to that the number of rabid "I'll never vote republican EVAR" folks in California, she's got enough that she'll never get voted out.

Only bright spot is she's currently the oldest serving senator. At some point probably reasonably soon, she'll have to leave because of age.

But like I said, crazy geek. What would I recommend to people? Probably 20mbps for individuals, 100mbps for families or power users.