I can understand Linus' gripe... but likewise I understand nVidia and others' gripes with Linux.

nVidia does that because that's how they protect themselves.

Drivers for Linux suck because it doesn't have a valid ABI, and not even a very stable software API.

Fix that problem, the political bullshit, and the "let's change it just because we can" mentality, and you might see things change for the better.

My solution of the whole Linux desktop mess, which still exists though in slightly lesser form, was to get a Mac and be done with it.

My solution to speed issues was to use my remaining Linux/UNIX systems with plain window managers.

Linux desktop environments and applications are still an ugly mess even in 2012.

As you write it above, your statement is wholly unfounded. If you made a blanket statement like that and she stays away from you, more power to her. I suspect you left a lot out, or I hope so anyway.

I play DDO a lot, 90% of it with a good friend. She and I have both benefitted from it, its hardly making our life suck. We are both working professionals with careers that require a high degree of training and dedication. We play #1 out of friendship, and #2 to dump some stress from life. Our life will not suck less if we stop playing, so if your above statement is true, then it must be highly situational. It certainly is not true in general.

We both work hard and the game keeps us connected and let's us blow off some steam together. I have some friends which due to circumstance, I've not been able to see in person for many years now. Without things like online gaming, we'd have precious few moments of interaction, and I find my life made better by this.

Of course, I also drink alcohol, and don't have the problems of alcoholism. Personal responsibility is the bigger issue, no matter how much we try to come up with convenient excuses and other things to blame our mistakes on otherwise.

You could do the same with a lot of computer software for desktop/laptop as well. Unfortunately most of it is utter garbage or very expensive, or severely limited on the platforms it will work with.

There is a heavy need for good software but what is out there isn't great.

The problem is that 4th Edition is horrible in every other way. Its grossly overpowered and overcomplicated once you leave the basics.

THAC0 and those old rules were pretty horrible from a usability standpoint, but we've gone too far the other way. The abstractions don't even make sense for high fantasy any more.

3.5 and Pathfinder are the last really playable versions to me, though 4th edition rules will probably work well for the upcoming Neverwinter MMO.

If you want to introduce people to RPGs, you can also consider the D6 system. Its simpler than just about any of them and fast to learn, leaving the game largely up to the players.

Harn... Harnworld and Harnmaster...

Give that a try. Very realistic combat. No silly hit points or armor class. Instead you get things like "your opponent strikes your upper shoulder, piercing the leather but not the underlay, leaving a heavy bruise on your upper arm." Your skills are not arbitrarily assigned, to gain them you must practice and use them. No levels, no hit points, skills are raw numbers. Much like real life, even a very skilled fighter can be killed by a six stone weakling that hits you right, or maybe you just get an infection. Of course, in the interest of fun, its fairly easy to modify things so you are fairly "heroic" as long as you don't do stupid things... in which case well... your character should die.

If you want to go in another direction where long-term role play of lives happens, try Ars Magica, where games typically cover many years.

Hardly... the USSR got its ass kicked flat out. The US has not.

World of difference.

That's funny. I've been in some "audiophile" shops and I remember reading Drew Kaplan's old DAK sales catalog years ago, and people actually use terms about as fantastical as that.

It works well on the clueless.

Years ago I was working on ScramNet (fiber optic realtime memory mirrors) and it wasn't working. I unplugged a cable and put it back and it just randomly started working. As a joke I told my very tired EE friends that I had "let some light out of the cables to reduce photonic pressure" and he said "Oh, OK. Good."

There was a long pause and he started cracking up and we had a good laugh. He then disappeared and went and told our boss the same thing I had said. The difference is that our boss really didn't know any better, and rather than admit it he said to us: "I thought that might be it and just wanted to give you guys time to figure it out on your own."

Clueless people can be fun.

I don't see the point for general distribution. However, just because a human cannot hear the differences in an audio sample like this doesn't mean its not useful. If you process audio a lot, having more headroom results in fewer errors and side effects.

The same is true for my photographs. I record at far higher resolutions and colors than I really need, because I lose less when manipulating the images. Its not my final output that needs the headroom, its the steps before.

I expect that probably far fewer people manipulate audio, and that's the more accurate reason why a format like this has little value in the distribution case. There is a sweet spot somewhere that allows some fiddling without artifacts without also being too large to be generally useful, or so it seems to me.

What if you lose your device and lose Amazon? Where will you get your books?

I'll still have my paper books, which well cared for will last long after I die. None of my computers will live that long.

This.

This is precisely what we need. I do not want my data stored in the cloud unless the cloud is mine. A cheap $300 server is more than enough for a whole family, maybe even several families.

Its beyond stupid that its 2012 and we force people to use a middleman.

Its not coming from *AMERICAN* groups. Any group that pushes for bullshit like this is by definition un-American. This kind of mental disease is worldwide. I wish it were only America, we'd have a better chance of fighting it if it were.

Some of your ideas are good, but you seem to imply that people only pay for high bandwidth so they can pirate stuff, and that simply is not true. Everything runs faster on high speed, and its very, very noticable. My parents use it and they never download large files at all, but they don't want to use anything slower.

I don't pirate stuff as a general rule, but I do download gigabytes of game updates, paid for movies and audio, operating systems, software, etc.

Things like that aren't really going to help when license servers go down. That's the real reason I'm against software licenses enforced by code: I have the right to the code, and should continue even if the company goes away, my net connection gets killed, or I change my video card (see latest bullshit from Ubisoft activation based CP).