Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Fedora Core 5 Gets Mono -- 9:50 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Fedora team has decided that Fedora Core 5 will include Mono, the open-source version of Microsoft's .NET. I'm really leery about this, as is Red Hat. Red Hat is concerned because they don't want to end up in patent litigation with MS (and if you don't think that's a possibility, search this site for references to SCO). I'm wondering how long it will be before Mono is a prerequisite for Gnome itself. If/when that happens, every distribution will have to think long and hard as to whether they are willing to risk having MS bust out the patent portfolio whuppin' stick on them. There's a TMBG song that has the line "Can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding." Microsoft has given plenty of reasons for absolutely no one to trust them in the open source community. I fear that this is a deal with the Devil that we will later live to regret.

I find it more than a little bit ironic that KDE used to be the one bashed for not really being open source because of its reliance on TrollTech's QT (a situation that has long since been remedied). Now it seems like Gnome is the one doing all of the questionable things. The silence from the big names in open source/free software on this subject is deafening. Of course my distro, Slackware, has dropped Gnome altogether for other reasons so I guess it will never affect me (ha ha).

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Bleh: Gaming -- 9:22 am CST, Update by The Master

I just finished playing through Darwinia again, and I must say, even though the game is a bit short, I have REALLY enjoyed it. I hope they create another based on the same concept, because overall I think the simple gameplay really brings a lot of fun to the table. It's almost a flashback to the classic Lemmings! type of gaming.

I started playing through Deus Ex again, because I'm sick like that. It's such a shame that this franchise will likely never see another game. I've really enjoyed the DX games.

Now that I'm thinking about it, Valve has announced the add-on for Half-Life 2 is due in April. At least there's SOMETHING to look forward to in the "modern" FPS scene.

A.T. Hun comments: I was thinking about making a gaming post myself. Most of the new PC games I can't play without sticking $1000+ into my box which I'm not about to do. In all honesty, there's not much that interests me either. However on my PS2 I've been enjoying Ratchet: Deadlocked and Burnout: Revenge. R:D throws away the majority of its platforming roots and instead goes pure action. It's a lot of fun, but it's perhaps not as deep as Up Your Arsenal was. B:R is just a hoot. I had a hard time seeing them improving on Burnout 3, but they managed to do it. The ability to check traffic, besides being a lot of fun, makes races a lot easier. The new/tweaked gametypes encourage you to drive as fast and as recklessly as possible. In B3, a crash meant disaster in a race. In B:R, there's still plenty of opportunities to catch up. So basically it's just as challenging without being as frustrating. It's a Good Thing. Play it with the stereo up. Subwoofers are mandatory :)

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