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Comment From TFA (Score 5, Funny) 322

by sm62704 (#23465950) Attached to: New Linux Distribution — Exherbo, Announced

OK, I Want to Try Exherbo
No you don't.

Yes I Do
OK, maybe you do, but we don't particularly want you to try it because we don't want to deal with you whining when you find that absolutely nothing works. Exherbo isn't in a fit state for users. We might get there one day, but it's not a priority. Right now, all we care about is getting it into a fit state for a small number of developers.

We don't provide packages for lots of things you consider critical.

A lot of the packages we do provide don't work.

A lot of the packages that worked five minutes ago all just broke because we just decided to redesign several large features.

We don't provide support.

We don't provide install media.

We don't provide a usable init system.

Really, all we provide is a few things that the few people working on all this find useful for themselves. When we have something for anyone else, we'll let you know.


OK, I don't need to try it. However, I'm curious about one thing:

Former Gentoo developer Bryan Østergaard recently announced a new linux distribution aptly named Exherbo
OK, wikipedia has no clue what an "Exherbo" is. What is an "Exherbo" and why is it such an apt name? I don't speak Klingon, are there any Klingons here that can explain this to me?

From TFA I would guess that "Exherbo" means "fuck you" in Swahili?

Comment System Requirements Indicate WoW will Remain King (Score 5, Insightful) 582

by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (#23465232) Attached to: Age of Conan's "Kinda" Launch and Massive Pre-Orders

I don't think it likely either of these will dethrone WoW. First, the system requirements for both seem to be missing the "midrange computer from two years ago" that is the normal target for mainstream games. As such, they're only hitting the relatively small "extreme gamer" market. Next, there is no support for the Mac, which cuts out 14% of the total US market and much more of the game buying market. Third, losing a small portion of the market because of requirements can lose you much bigger portions of the market because these are networked games. If just one person in a group of friends has a Mac or a lower end PC, the entire group may well decide to stick with WoW or some other game that they can all play (especially if that one player is the cute co-ed gamer in the dorm).

Really, there is nothing wrong with either of these games, but they just aren't targeted at the same demographic as WoW, or if they are they are very poorly targeted. Some day someone will come out with a WoW-killer but I don't think either of these are even viable candidates.

Comment Wow, just what we need (Score 0, Insightful) 322

by Anonymous Coward (#23465862) Attached to: New Linux Distribution — Exherbo, Announced
I'll probably get modded down by the groupthink mods around here (hint: metamods: moderate any downmods as unfair)...

but really, is this what the Linux user community needs? Yet another Linux distro. Wow. And maybe we can add a new window manager and another variant of Firefox/IceWeasel/Netscape/etc.

It's really a shame for F/OSS that, time and time again, there is such a huge duplication of effort and half-assed half-finished projects lying around in the junkyard of the Open Source cemetery.
The Military

Submission + - Paul Tibbets, Pilot of Enola Gay, Dies at 92.

Submitted by wiredog
wiredog writes: Paul W. Tibbets Jr., 92, who piloted the Enola Gay on the first combat atomic bombing mission, against Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945 died on Nov. 1 at his home in Columbus, Ohio.

Gen. Tibbets said he had no regrets over the more than 100,000 Japanese killed and wounded at Hiroshima, and made a point of saying he slept easily at night.
Space

Submission + - Record-setting stellar-mass black hole (yahoo.com)

Submitted by
chyllaxyn
chyllaxyn writes: "Astronomers have discovered a new supermassive black hole orbiting a star a mere 1.8 million light-years from Earth. Weighing in with a mass of 24 to 33 times that of our Sun, topping the previous record of 16 times the mass of our sun. I can feel it's pull already, or maybe that's just the candy corn talking..."
Unix

Submission + - First release of OpenSolaris Project Indiana

Submitted by Orthuberra
Orthuberra writes: The first developer preview release of Project Indiana is now available. Project Indiana is an effort by Sun and the OpenSolaris community to create and installable LiveCD based on OpenSolaris, but with the look and feel of a modern desktop. This is including installation and configuration procedures of the operating system. Downloads are now being offered at the following location.
Programming

Submission + - The anatomy of a port: X11/Motif to Windows

Submitted by
Vilorman
Vilorman writes: "A command line Unix application running on Regulus, born in the late 1980's slowly made it way from the old 8MHz machines into a SunOS/X11 application in the early 1990's and adopted Motif as a primary widget set and user interface structure. Later on it was ported to Solaris/SPARC while keeping the X11/Motif interface and then again compiled on Solaris/X86. As time progressed even further and Solaris lost it's strong hold and PCI hardware became more readily available this application made it way into the Linux world; starting with Redhat 7.3, then Fedora Core 3 and is now developed and shipped on Fedora 5. Still, using the X11/Motif user interface. The only place left to go, and demanded by the user base is Microsoft Windows. But how??? How do you port an application that uses PCI hardware and Linux device drivers from X11/Motif to MS Windows. So, I ask all ye wise slashdotters — how do we do this? What is best way to do this? To get an application ported from Unix to Windows? Books? References? Links? Advice?"
Software

Submission + - Forty Years of LOGO

Submitted by SoyChemist
SoyChemist writes: Forty years ago, LOGO, a derivative of LISP, was born. Several years later, it became the cornerstone of educational software that simultaneously taught geometry and how to think like a coder. With a plethora of high-end educational software packages to choose from, each with flashy multimedia and trademarked characters, parents and teachers may find the humble turtle a bit outdated. Thankfully, several LOGO programs are available for free through a variety of websites, but perhaps 3D programming environments like Alice will be the wave of the future.
The Internet

Submission + - Evolution of the 'Captcha' (nytimes.com)

Submitted by FireballX301
FireballX301 writes: The New York Times is running an article about the small word puzzles various sites use in order to defeat automated script registration while still letting humans through. It seems many people can't actually solve them anymore, so new alternatives (image recognition) are being created. This, of course, seems breakable as well — is there a feasible alternative to the captcha, or are we stuck jumping through more and more hoops to register at places?
Media

Submission + - Blender Open Movie 2 and an Open Game announced (blender.org)

Submitted by
LetterRip
LetterRip writes: "The Blender Foundation has announced 'Peach' a second open movie project, their first open movie project was 'Project Orange' that resulted in Elephants Dream. Peach is planned to be a funny movie in contrast to the dark and surreal nature of Elephants Dream. A second exciting announcement is that in cooperation with Crystal Space and NLGD Conference ( the "Nederlandse Game Dagen" the annual conference for the Netherlands game industry) an open game (Project Apricot) will be developed. Lastly the Blender Foundation announced the establishment of the Blender Institute that will be a studio dedicated to hosting these and future projects. Also the Blender Foundation has put out a new manual 'Essential Blender' to make it easier to learn Blender. For those unfamiliar with Blender it is a free 3d animation suite."
The Courts

Submission + - International gambling experts testify in congress (theregister.com)

Submitted by
rocketgoldstar1962
rocketgoldstar1962 writes: "International experts from countries with well-regulated internet gambling environments testified in Congress Friday in support of revising American online gambling law. Experts from payment processing institutions, credit card compliance officers, and even compulsive gambling support groups debunk the myth that internet gambling is inherently evil, and argue that it is time for a rational revision of American internet gambling legislation."
United States

Submission + - Politicians want IT to solve US Healthcare Crisis?

Submitted by muhan
muhan writes: Looking back at the recent New Hampshire Democratic and Republican presidential debates, I see a recurring theme amongst most of the candidates that they will use and fund Information Technology to drastically reduce the cost of healthcare in America. They seem to believe that electronic records and prescriptions, patient ownership of their medical records etc. will help drive down costs in the healthcare system. The only things I've heard and read about in respect to these types of IT projects in healthcare is that it's a big money pit. Prime example: The current IT modernization program in England called the National Programme for IT in the NHS. The link states that it is behind schedule and being constantly revised in real time.

Are there any examples of IT in healthcare for things like electronic records that has actually been successfully implemented on a large scale? Is the massive use of IT to drive down healthcare costs a pipe dream and simply an easy political sound bite for these politicians?

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