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Latest Comments by Purple Library Guy
Valve announce a new game that's not Half-Life 3, introducing 'Artifact', a card game
9 August 2017 at 4:26 pm UTC

Quoting: Mountain Man
Quoting: kalinI hate card games.
I like the idea of computer card games in general. What I don't like are the micro-transactions and/or hours of grinding to build a competitive deck so you don't get curb-stomped by an opponent.
So, kind of like real card games then. Except with the real ones it tends to be macro-transactions.

Valve announce a new game that's not Half-Life 3, introducing 'Artifact', a card game
9 August 2017 at 4:25 pm UTC

Well, it's nice that the teaser gives such in-depth insight into the gameplay.

Wednesday Madness, a quick look at some good Linux gaming deals
9 August 2017 at 4:04 pm UTC Likes: 1

Am I the only one who morphs titles a teeny bit for my amusement? So for instance, I always see something like "Feral Fury" as "Feral Furry".

Linux game sales statistics from multiple developers, part 5
6 August 2017 at 3:21 am UTC

Quoting: manus76And with a quote from Adam Smith we might summarise the whole discussion about Apple: '...that I have fresh bread and rolls every morning is not because of the baker's goodwill, it's because of his greed' (or something to that effect, quoted from a failing memory).
I suggest we leave it at that and do not open this usual can of worms, it might turn too political and heated.
Here's another relevant quote from Adam Smith:
QuotePeople of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

Linux game sales statistics from multiple developers, part 5
4 August 2017 at 8:57 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: manus76
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: manus76So should Apple (and Microsoft) just say: 'Listen guys, we abandon Metal (or DX11/12 in the case of MS) and support Vulkan. That means if you primiarily game you won't need to use our OS, and hardware either, just go with linux'. Does that make sense for a commercial entity to even consider such a thing?

Well, the theory of capitalist competition is that people use one product over another because it works better, has nicer features, is cheaper and whatnot. That's what's supposed to be good about it--that this competition stuff will result in good cheap products. If that's not how capitalism really works I don't have a duty to defend its dysfunction. Traditionally the supposed remedy was laws enforcing real competition and disallowing various kinds of anticompetitive behaviour--including, but not limited to, antitrust laws. Again, if the political climate is such that passing or enforcing such laws is impossible, then that's how it is--but if there ought to be a law, then surely one can at least complain.
And if capitalism never actually does the stuff it's supposed to do, if it doesn't "make sense for a commercial entity to even consider such a thing" as actual competition by creating better products rather than by erecting barriers to entry, that doesn't mean I should rearrange my notions of what's OK to include stuff that's harmful, it means I should start questioning the virtues of a system that does not work as advertised.

Not a personal attack, more an admission of my own failing (and probably dementia): even though I studied English and thought I was pretty competent at it, I haven't understood anything above.
Maybe you're used to assuming that there doesn't have to be a reason for markets to be good, they just are by definition, and so someone talking different seems incoherent? But the original theorists of capital, like Adam Smith and Ricardo and so forth, didn't treat capitalism and markets as ends in themselves, but as means to an end. They were justified to the extent that they were useful, to actual people--or could be made, by government regulation or social custom, to be so. If you can assimilate that idea, I think my comment is more or less understandable.

(Side note: It is actually often the case that a lot of people speaking ill of a corporation for antisocial behaviour has produced some changes to the corporation's behaviour. I wouldn't expect it to work in the case of Apple, since their misdeeds are relatively subtle and require some knowledge to understand. But it's not like getting mad at companies is completely useless--to the contrary, they tend to consider their public image very important, whatever their private amorality.)

Linux game sales statistics from multiple developers, part 5
4 August 2017 at 5:50 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: manus76So should Apple (and Microsoft) just say: 'Listen guys, we abandon Metal (or DX11/12 in the case of MS) and support Vulkan. That means if you primiarily game you won't need to use our OS, and hardware either, just go with linux'. Does that make sense for a commercial entity to even consider such a thing?

Well, the theory of capitalist competition is that people use one product over another because it works better, has nicer features, is cheaper and whatnot. That's what's supposed to be good about it--that this competition stuff will result in good cheap products. If that's not how capitalism really works I don't have a duty to defend its dysfunction. Traditionally the supposed remedy was laws enforcing real competition and disallowing various kinds of anticompetitive behaviour--including, but not limited to, antitrust laws. Again, if the political climate is such that passing or enforcing such laws is impossible, then that's how it is--but if there ought to be a law, then surely one can at least complain.
And if capitalism never actually does the stuff it's supposed to do, if it doesn't "make sense for a commercial entity to even consider such a thing" as actual competition by creating better products rather than by erecting barriers to entry, that doesn't mean I should rearrange my notions of what's OK to include stuff that's harmful, it means I should start questioning the virtues of a system that does not work as advertised.

West of Loathing, a comedy stick-figure wild west adventure RPG is coming to Linux soon
4 August 2017 at 5:39 pm UTC

Quoting: razing32Is this made by the same people that made Kingdom of Loathing ?

Description says "set in the wild west of the Kingdom of Loathing universe" so I would suspect so.

Linux desktop market share hit an all time high in July, according to one measure
4 August 2017 at 5:27 pm UTC Likes: 3

If Adobe didn't seem to hate Linux we'd be a lot better off.

Linux desktop market share hit an all time high in July, according to one measure
4 August 2017 at 5:25 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: calfretShould users expect everything to work? No, of course not. Should Linux users and developers do their best to make things work? Yes, and I see evidence everyday of that happening. Every day or two a new release comes out that fixes some kind of compatibility issue somewhere. It would be smart to focus on the big issues first though. It's great that shadows now work finally on Game XYZ part 2. Now can we get the most common peripherals that millions of users own working properly?
Except as near as I understand from the factual bits of the discussion, they do. That is, the problem cited is not that Xbox controllers don't work under Linux, it's that Xbox controllers don't work in Wine for certain games whose Wine support is experimental, unless you do some fiddling to get some experimental thingie that fixes it to work. That would seem to come under the "shadows not working on Game XYZ part 2" category.

Linux desktop market share hit an all time high in July, according to one measure
4 August 2017 at 5:16 pm UTC

Quoting: Pompesdesky
Quoting: GuestSince capitalism is the current global economic system it is fitting that the OS's of large corporations takes the largest market share. It is thus impossible for community-driven OS's to take up larger share than what is shown in the statistics, I think.

In a pure socialist economy, all software would be open source and have a community-based development.

US citizen ?

I don't get how the OS market share would relate so much on politics. In a capitalist market if a product is good it would be adopted so an open source software could compete with a closed source one as long as it offers a good service. Also Linux is not only community driven, it is also backed by large corporations. And go apply your logic to the server side of computing, where's the largest market share of the said large corporation ? See, no need for evil communism for Linux to succeed :D

I, personally, would be happy to see a bit of that evil communism ;) (if by that you mean any and all non-capitalist stuff), but I do agree that it's perfectly possible for open source software to succeed under capitalism; as you say, we know this because plenty of it does. The desktop situation is a matter of timing and the particular players and their particular strengths and interests. If, say, Linux had started development a little earlier, or some strong competitor to Microsoft had emerged--say a ruthless, ambitious IBM executive had been in charge of OS/2 and played hardball with MS--things might have been quite different.