It's a blip. But the trend even without that number looks positive. And we've seen a number of sources lately suggesting a positive overall trend for Linux use. Basically everyone except the Steam survey.

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Quoting: heidi.wenger

Quoting: zimplex1Absolute degeneracy.

Or just the common mindset of liberals? Yet they won't tolerate you if you're conservative enough to disagree with them

Tolerating intolerance is a different category from tolerating groups such as (other races, other genders, other sexual orientations). Cases for or against the two of them need to be made separately. This should be obvious to conservatives, since they typically don't tolerate (various groups of people) but do tolerate intolerance. In fact, it's actually quite difficult to hold the same stance on the two cases--how, for instance, would one both be intolerant of other races and intolerant of intolerance?

So the "liberals are so inconsistent/hypocritical because they tolerate eg gays but don't tolerate us" argument is basically facetious, a cute "zinger" meant to annoy the unwary but with nothing behind it. It's like saying that because you tolerate sushi, to be consistent you have to also tolerate swearing.

Note that this comment says nothing about the relative merits of "liberalism" or "conservatism" in themselves, I'm just pointing out the illogic of a particular argument I see too often.

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Quoting: qptain NemoFinally, the attention this case would bring could be the most fatal mistake of all. MS can't afford to lose the "who cares about Linux lol" cultural status quo. If they themselves show that they care about Linux, let alone are this threatened by it, it would make a lot of people's heads turn and actually reconsider the situation. There is no more damning evidence of viability of Linux vs Windows than MS themselves testifying to that fact by moving into the offensive.

. . . With the possible exception of MS themselves literally testifying on the witness stand in such a court case that Linux is important enough that Wine is dangerous and damaging to them, which they'd probably have to do in order to make a case for damages or whatever.

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Quoting: BeamboomAnd yes, a good review is very structured

Ah, I see what you mean now. You sounded very much like you were talking about an organizational structure.
You seem to be making a bit of a "No True Scotsman" argument. You point out all the cases and factors which make most "professional" reviewers fail to live up to the standards you raise, but then insist that we should think and act as if they all did.

There are actually other problems with professional reviewers, that can set in even if they're the "unicorn" case of having all the excellent qualities and advantages you list all rolled into one semi-mythical reviewer and simultaneously has made no concessions to "the industry". For instance, professional reviewers whether of movies, games or whatever, are jaded. Their very expertise tends to cause them to experience games differently from the typical gamer and look for different things in a game. They will put a high value on novelty because they have seen the setups that became cliche so many times before. But many gamers, particularly the more casual, have not, and so if a classic setup (whether in terms of mechanics or story type or whatever) became cliche because it was basically a good one, it will be a good thing for a casual gamer but a bad thing for a typical professional reviewer. To put it a different way, gamers will be looking more for "is it fun?", while reviewers will inevitably start shifting towards "is it interesting?"

On average this sort of problem doesn't outweigh the extra effort put into a full review or the experience involved, no. But I think your position, which basically seems to be that amateurs should shut up and listen to their betters while nobody should ever read what mere players of games say about them because it's almost all worthless dribble (although you concede sometimes somebody speaks who really belongs among the elect and so doesn't count) is also somewhat distorted. And really, if professional reviewers, with their many advantages and platforms and whatnot, can't get people to pay attention . . . whose fault is it? Ehhh, truthfully probably not theirs, there's a lot of systemic stuff going on, but you're talking like it's somehow immoral for an amateur to successfully get people to read what they say.

More broadly, I think that the position that the problem with modern times is the failure of technocracy and the rejection of expertise, is mistaking a symptom for the cause. In these times, expertise and authority are increasingly rejected because they are not trusted. One frightening manifestation of this is the rise of people who believe all kinds of fascist bullshit instead because they don't have a good alternative source of truth (and because some groups are actively taking advantage of this failure of trust to try to gain power through demagoguery). But the problem is not the lack of trust--the problem is that many of the technocrats and experts really are untrustworthy, that they have served money and power at most people's expense. People may be thrashing around failing to find workable alternatives, and some of the amateurs that rise instead may not know jack--but the fact is, people have been hosed for a long time and the job of many experts has been to explain, while billionaires are pissing on our heads, that it's raining and anyway we should be grateful for the "trickle-down" effect. Blaming the amateurs for things falling apart is misplaced. The amateurs are a failing attempt at salvage of a situation that was falling apart anyway.

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Quoting: GuestI have no interest in such streaming services. They're not even satisfactory on my 1gb LAN, let alone over the internet. Nor do I wish to 'rent' access to games. Nor do I want 'yet' another subscription.

The value is terrible in the end to boot.

I am also prejudiced against this sort of arrangement. I sometimes feel like half my life is spent resisting new and innovative methods of getting me to shell out yet another monthly fee--which will then prove impressively difficult to cancel.

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Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: Purple Library GuyYou talk as if professional reviews are much better. There are some good professional reviewers, but lots of them are no better than the average "user review"--a bit longer, is all.

Writing, and reviewing is a craft, just like any other craft. It requires something. Practise. Understanding. Insight. An editor. Directions. Professionalism. A structure, and above all an ability to view something as objectively as can be, and as nuanced as required.

Leaving alone for a moment the oddity of claiming that writing a few cogent paragraphs on any given topic requires "A structure", are you seriously trying to claim that the average professional game reviewer has all that stuff?

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Quoting: BeamboomI long for the day when the world no longer put way, way waaaaay too much value into "user reviews". Most regular users are unable to consider anything obectively, nor do they have proper ability to put things into context and weight the various elements of the game.
Thats why they have only implemented a "thumb up / down", cause in case of most users asking for anything more nuanced than that is too far fetched.

You talk as if professional reviews are much better. There are some good professional reviewers, but lots of them are no better than the average "user review"--a bit longer, is all. And of course quite a few professional reviewers, while perhaps skilled, have significant conflict of interest, being part of a machine whose objective is to sell stuff. This is a problem "user reviews" do not have. And while user reviews vary wildly in quality, looking through it's generally pretty easy to spot the ones worth paying attention to.

The thing about "more nuanced" rating systems, like 1-5 stars or whatever, is that people use them tactically so they end up being exactly the same as up/down systems. That is, if you look at a thing on one of these platforms, it will almost always have an aggregate "score" that is either higher and lower than you think it deserves. So if you rate it, you will rate it one star if you want to bring down the average and five stars if you want to bring up the average. That's what most people do, they don't rate based on how good they think something actually is, they try to push the rating to where they think it belongs. The "nuance" ends up pointless, containing almost exactly the same meaning as "mostly positive".

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I'd like to point out that there is a way already now of getting some nuance from the reviews beyond "mostly positive" or whatever from the aggregation of up/downs. You can, like, read some of the reviews themselves, which are right there on the page. Usually, the negative reviews say something about what they don't like. I know, radical approach, but I've found it useful in the past.

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The trailer seems very calming.

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Thanks!

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