Quoting: CatKillerI've just had a horrible thought: am I going to be compelled to say, "I use Arch, btw," everywhere I go?

You might have to start saying, "I use Arch, on the way."

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: subWe can only profit from it
as long it's not failing like Steam Machines.

This project avoids the total hardware spec mayhem that doomed steam machines; so if it fails, at least it won't fail because of the absurdity that no one knew what it really was.

I follow this channel on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_0CVCfC_3iuHqmyClu59Uw [External Link] where the host reviews various handheld/compact systems. My impression is that Nintendo Switch style PCs have been really expensive crowd-funded curiosities so far, but that might be changing now that Valve has entered the picture.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library GuyWell, hurrah! Happy birthday!
You know, GoL has become the place where I go for Linux news, period. Anything important and relevant to the desktop tends to be relevant to gaming as well, so I see it here.

Yeah, me too, pretty much. For specific things I subscribe to a newsletter, or rss feed from first-hand sources; but for no-nonsense general news coverage GoL is the place to go.

It has also built an impressively civilized community around it. (Anyone who's taken a glance at the comments sections of various well-known Linux ... outlets ... knows what *uncivilized* in this context might mean.)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Happy birthday, & best wishes going forward.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

First new purchase in a *long* time; I picked up Superliminal & The Pedestrian; really looking forward to both.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library GuyBy the way, does anyone else find annoying the fashion among big corporations to rename themselves by the acronym of what used to be their name, except now it officially doesn't stand for anything it's just this free-floating brandable signifier?

So like we got EA which used to be Electronic Arts but now is just two meaningless letters. In Canada, our big banks all went that way--the Bank of Montreal is BMO (not just BM, heh), the Royal Bank of Canada is RBC and so on. And the slogan is "Our name stands for nothing, and so do we!"

At least they didn't pull an 'Xfce' (from https://docs.xfce.org/faq#what_does_it_mean) [External Link]:

The name Xfce originally stood for XForms Common Environment, but since then, Xfce was rewritten twice and doesn't use XForms toolkit anymore. The name survived, but the F is no longer capitalized (not “XFce”, but “Xfce”). Currently the abbreviation doesn't stand for anything (suggestion: X Freakin' Cool Environment). It's not pronounced “X-Face”. There is no “a” in it.

... or a 'GNOME': (from https://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2010-April/msg00050.html) [External Link]

Am Dienstag, den 06.04.2010, 08:08 -0500 schrieb Bharat Kapoor:
> At least now I know what GNOME is an acronym for :)
> The talk is about name or rename (if our mission is consistent with)
> GNU Network Object Model Environment

Once again: GNOME WAS an acronym. GNOME is NOT anymore an acronym.
GNOME stands for GNOME nowadays. Only. That's all.

andre

Though if GNOME ever goes back to an acronym, I suggest the gloriously recursive:
GNOME has NO MErcy.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: slaapliedjeIs it me, or is this just a ploy to get people to install Origin. Like EA finally realized it was a failure, but so they went back to allowing games to be sold on Steam again... but still require origin so they have a reason to say the software still lives?

Of all the 'trademarks' that EA bought & made a travesty of, the case of 'Origin' is possibly the most bizarre.

Thought I think the name will be laid to rest soon: https://venturebeat.com/2020/09/14/electronic-arts-doubles-down-on-ea-play-brand-with-ea-desktop-app/ [External Link]

View this comment - View article - View full comments

> Spoiler alert though for older players: apparently the face of Tali was changed from a stock photo you could see in-game to a unique and more appropriate image, it does make me laugh that such a small change has generated big headlines across the major gaming sites.

Oh boy... I was at the bioware forums when people discovered the stock photo; it sure brings back memories.

... a moment of silence for M. Shields

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Termy

Honestly it amazes me companies, bigger ones especially, don't see how these projects can benefit them and instead send the lawyers

yeah, i really don't get how dense you have to be to decide "i'd rather take a shitstorm and damage my reputation with the fanbase instead of free advertisement to keep the IP relevant and maybe even some sales from very old games"...

These people are usually motivated by maximizing their short-term gains; but here what's at stake seems to be something fundamental — which, I think, is to maintain the 'intellectual property' regime that prevails, & to make sure it doesn't get challenged.

I think the rampant *commodification* of knowledge is one of the greatest crises of our age; if they could, they'd turn every bit of cognitive advance (an explanation as to how things work in the natural world, an efficient algorithm, an elegant mathematical proof, and so on) into trade secrets. So they've gone from owning bits of 'IP' like the formula for Coca Cola, to wanting to own the chemical theory that would explain why the stuff inside Coca Cola reacts the way it does.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: slaapliedjeWhile we're on the subject of UIs... anyone else driven insane by Firefox's idea to get rid of the title bar and put tabs in there? Makes it hard to drag the damn window around...

I think they want the windows to be dragged from the blank spaces - as in the default configuration - on either side of the address bar. I resisted that setup at first, though I got used to it over time; I put the extension icons in the 'overflow menu' so the sides of the address bar are mostly empty.

I'm really not happy with some of the design changes in the current Nightly, though.

View this comment - View article - View full comments