Thomas Rösner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> posted [EMAIL PROTECTED], excerpted below, on Wed, 17 Jan 2007 03:41:58 +0100:
> Andrei Slavoiu wrote: >> --- Thomas Rösner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> wrote: >> >>> Btw, may I come to your place when UT2007 is out? >>> ;-) >>> >> Unless it will be released under a free license I >> doubt Duncan will let you run it on his computer :-p >> > > Everyone has his dark secret, perhaps his is a dual boot to win98... (I > really liked that flipper table!). Well, not that, but there /is/ still one slaveryware app I still run. (Note, NOT a binary ring-zero kernel module, which as black-box code at the kernel level exposes the entire system to danger, see for instance the recent NVidia security issues they knew about but tried to cover up while not providing a fix for some time!!) Yes that certainly does pretty much makes me a slave to it as I've not found it acceptable to kill as yet. The app in question? The old original Master of Orion game, DOS version, copyright 1993 so 14 years old now! I run it in freedomware DOSBOX, so at least the game's not dragging any other slaveryware with it. I figure I accepted it back then and if nothing else, it's a decently well known quantity, or DOSBOX couldn't support it as well as it does, but at some level both you and I know that's rationalization. (FWIW, I tried MOO-2, but wasn't particularly enthralled, as it lacked a single feature that would have made the game nearly as addicting as the original. It needed a general planetary development pre-load queue, that is, a list of enhancements that would preload into the work queue as soon as one colonized the planet, thus saving the repetitive task of putting the same thing into each build-queue, scores of times. Without that, the game was too much mundane repetition and not enough actual challenge. To its credit, that's one balance the original MOO obviously got /very/ right, thus my continued addiction to it. I think I was getting ready to switch to Linux just as MOO-3 was coming out, and by that time wasn't buying anything further that didn't run on Linux directly, so I never played it.) Nothing else, however, and if I found it necessary to load other slaveryware (say MSWormOS DLLs under WINE) to support it, I expect it would be long gone. Single binary-only/slaveryware app, no other binary dependencies, but yes, I remain a slave to it, this I'll publicly admit. (If you notice, my no slaveryware statements are almost always in a forward-looking context. I haven't purchased nor will I purchase any non-freedomware software or hardware that requires it, since the switch. (I did make the mistake of purchasing an NVidia card shortly before the switch, having checked it for Linux drivers, but not actually realizing that some binary-only drivers existed and the significance of that fact. I was /so/ glad to get off the thing, about a year later, tho! Since then it has been Radeons 9250 or lower, thus freedomware driver supported, which happen to be relatively cheap, so I haven't been complaining. =8^) However, that's /not/ saying I don't have that one remaining legacy app, now an incredible 14 years old. What's 14 computer years in human years? My relatively modest rule of thumb is a 5:1 ratio, so if it was a human, it'd be a good 70 years old now, at least. I've seen others use the same 7:1 ratio often used for dogs, which would put it at 98 human-years old! In any case, it's OLD, but still very addicting, obviously, or I'd not still be running it!) -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman -- [email protected] mailing list
