We also decided that all men are aliens.
Nov. 13th, 2003 03:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguist"Jeff is so cute," Jenn said. "Do you know what he did? He bought me a starter deck for Magic."
I laughed at her. A lot. "Magic?! You're going to be more geeky than I am!"
"I am not more geeky than you!" she protested. I found it terribly amusing that she wants to avoid being geekier than I am.
"All of the things I know about computers put together are not as bad as Magic," I said. She must have agreed with me, all she did was laugh.
Later, though, she actually said "open-source." It's a weird thing to hear her say. She said she's being taught all these things by the boys she hangs out with these days. She told me she even knows about Linux now. "I know about RedHat, at least," she said. "Not the others, like Mandrake or anything."
"You know the names, Jenn!" I said. "That's so cool!" I clutched my hands to my chest, melodramatically. I figured teasing would only make her self-conscious, and it did, but I couldn't help it. It was so funny. I decided to quiz her. "Do you konw which one I use?"
"Yes," she said. "Well, sort of. It starts with an S." Indeed it does! I was impressed. "It's okay," I said, "any girl who knows anything about Linux is totally impressive."
"I know!" she said. "Wayne said he'd marry me, if he didn't have a girlfriend. He said, 'How do you know this stuff?' And I said, 'Well, my roommate ... ' (I started laughing again) " ... and her boyfriend are obsessed!"
"Hey!" I said. "I'm not obsessed with Linux. I don't even know enough. I just like using it because it doesn't suck." So, if I am obsessed with using things that don't suck, then so be my fate.
So now she's heard of Mozilla from someone else besides me, and says she might actually download it (now that I've been asking her to let me download it every time I use her computer). She's also talking about partitioning her hard drive and using Windows and RedHat!
I'm so proud.
I laughed at her. A lot. "Magic?! You're going to be more geeky than I am!"
"I am not more geeky than you!" she protested. I found it terribly amusing that she wants to avoid being geekier than I am.
"All of the things I know about computers put together are not as bad as Magic," I said. She must have agreed with me, all she did was laugh.
Later, though, she actually said "open-source." It's a weird thing to hear her say. She said she's being taught all these things by the boys she hangs out with these days. She told me she even knows about Linux now. "I know about RedHat, at least," she said. "Not the others, like Mandrake or anything."
"You know the names, Jenn!" I said. "That's so cool!" I clutched my hands to my chest, melodramatically. I figured teasing would only make her self-conscious, and it did, but I couldn't help it. It was so funny. I decided to quiz her. "Do you konw which one I use?"
"Yes," she said. "Well, sort of. It starts with an S." Indeed it does! I was impressed. "It's okay," I said, "any girl who knows anything about Linux is totally impressive."
"I know!" she said. "Wayne said he'd marry me, if he didn't have a girlfriend. He said, 'How do you know this stuff?' And I said, 'Well, my roommate ... ' (I started laughing again) " ... and her boyfriend are obsessed!"
"Hey!" I said. "I'm not obsessed with Linux. I don't even know enough. I just like using it because it doesn't suck." So, if I am obsessed with using things that don't suck, then so be my fate.
So now she's heard of Mozilla from someone else besides me, and says she might actually download it (now that I've been asking her to let me download it every time I use her computer). She's also talking about partitioning her hard drive and using Windows and RedHat!
I'm so proud.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 01:57 pm (UTC)Of course Illuminati: NWO is the greatest card game ever.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 02:05 pm (UTC)And it's not like she's addicted to Magic (though she probably wouldn't tell me if she were), it's just more a thing she does because her friends do.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 02:07 pm (UTC)Holly by the way, I said it starts with an S ... and you said really... then told me the name!
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 06:36 pm (UTC)And by the way, are you seeing this debate going on here about which distribution you should or should not be using? I think it's funny.
Besides, as for you partitioning your drive and using Linux at all ... I'll believe it when I see it! :-) So it all seems a moot point to me.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 09:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-14 07:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-14 08:22 am (UTC)I feel that if you're going to claim something is free, it should be more than just money free. The BSD license is completely free. GPL is viral.
I'm believe quite strongly that information should be free, and people should be free to use the information as they see fit, and people have a right to make a living from the information they know. I disagree with patents, but I don't see any reason why someone should have to give away their work. GPL is basically a way to say "I'm not interested in making money from this code, but I'll see that you sure as hell don't". I think it's of benefit to rich white males, and sucks for people trying to make a living. If you're a coder and already have a good job and plenty of money, and just want to write stuff as a hobby in your spare time, it's a great idea. But if I want to be enterprising and write small apps, without a team of developers to code everything for me, I'll want to take advantage of freely available code, and then get paid for what I've done with it. Anyone else is still free to write a copy of my application if they wanted to, but I don't have to give them my code.
GPL says anyone can use the code, so long as everything they create is added to GPL. I wont develop with GPL code, because while I'm happy to give away code such as implementations of fundamental algorithms, I don't want to give away whole applications. There are ways to do this even with GPL'd code, but I don't think my code design should have to revolve around avoiding the restrictions of a license.
I'll just shut up now, and get off my soap box.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-15 03:18 pm (UTC)The GPL is not viral, because no one is under any obligation to include GPL-licensed code in anything they write. You're free to use only BSD-licensed or public domain code for your applications. Furthermore, there's a special variant of the GPL, the Library-GPL (or LGPL), which is designed so that you can link to LGPL-licensed code from anything you want, with the whole purpose of allowing proprietary software to build on the functionality of free libraries.
The idea of the GPL isn't to prevent anyone from ever making money from GPL-licensed code. Selling a GPL-licensed program isn't prohibited by the license, even if you're not the author or copyright holder. What the GPL aims to do is to ensure that the software remains free for everyone.
Using a proprietary license says, "I only want people to use my code in the specific ways I explicitly permit."
Using a BSD-style license says (basically), "I want this code to be in the public domain, but you have to leave my name on it."
Using the GPL says, "I want everyone who gets their hands on my code to be able to do whatever they want with it, including improvements other people make to it along the way."
There are things to be said for each approach, but if you want the right to use a proprietary license, which might grant only the freedom to use one copy of the code in binary form, which maybe doesn't grant the freedom to modify or extend the code, and which might even exclude the freedom to have access to the source code, then you can't complain about the GPL, saying, "it isn't free enough."
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-16 05:47 am (UTC)I have heard the points you raised before, and still disagree with them, but if you want to continue this we'll have to move it somewhere else.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 10:25 pm (UTC)I was trying to find you a link to the section on the wizards website, that used to discuss advanced tactics, but I couldn't find that specific section, and the few articles I could find I realised weren't really of any benefit to people that haven't played the game, or who aren't at least familiar with the rules.
There's a reason why people get addicted to Magic.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 10:36 pm (UTC)I used to play with the likes of Eric Tam and Paul McCabe (World Champion competitors) It was fun. but its a game for children and moneymen.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 10:50 pm (UTC)Anyway, I got back into it at uni, and discovered that the rules had changed quite drastically, and the game had become quite intricate, and it's not entirely a money game anymore. You can win with cheap cards if you're smarter than your opponent. The victory comes in a carefully constructed deck, not a really expensive power card. There are still expensive power cards, but usually you can't use them in tournaments anyway.
A cheap way to play is with pre-constructed decks, and with booster-drafts. In Australia, you can play in an official booster draft, usually for less than the cost of the boosters (AU$15) and come away with a fairly ok deck, and it's completely fair. I bought for $40 a box of about 1000 cards from a card store, where they take out the rare's to sell individually, and you get the rest of the cards, and sometimes we play spam-drafts with them.
I suggest you have another look at it... it's no longer a game for children and moneymen, as you put it.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 10:57 pm (UTC)Yeah, degenerate decks. wooo!
I used to play. Now with a rule change though, it might be too tough for me to get back into it.
TH ethought of a closed deck tournament wouldn't be bad though.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 11:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-14 06:28 am (UTC)Hmm, I might have to check it out then.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-14 07:11 am (UTC)They took out interrupts, and there is an instruction stack now... well, not instruction, but spell, you know what I mean. It's the stack that lets you do interesting things, and the simplification was that originally you could mess with the stack in ways other than just push and pop.
I don't understand why people would stop playing because they introduced phasing, and things like that...? None of these things break the game. It's not a matter of you have to have the latest mechanic to be competitive, you just have to adjust your play to compensate. It keeps the game dynamic.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-14 08:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 11:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 10:56 pm (UTC)I'll have to reserve judgement on Illuminati:NWO having never played it, but if you're looking at games in the class of ChezGeek, I'd recommend you instead find yourself a copy of UNO, it's much more fun, and the rules are simpler, good for the whole family and random strangers passing in the hall.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 11:02 pm (UTC)INWO is entirely the opposite. It is deadly serious (but amusing) and incredably complex.
SJGames is one of the most brilliant forward thinking companies out there (just look at tile chess, for Xsakes!)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 11:38 pm (UTC)Some SJGames stuff can be quite disappointing though. Some of their games have quite glaring flaws in the system, take Frag:Deadlands, for instance, with the weapon malfunction rule. I have another friend who's peeved that they cost so much, when the quality of manufacture is not that much higher than cheapass games... you always have to cut out the tokens yourself, and you usually have to supply dice and stuff as well.
They do also make quite a few good games, but I wouldn't try to suggest that they stand out any better than Wizards of the Coast, or Wizkids, or Rio Grande, or Games Workshop. Thinking about it, they're probably a little more flexible that the others, they tend to dabble in quite a few areas for the size of their company, so I'll have to give them a few points for that. I guess maybe they are risk takers in the gaming industry, compared to the other big successful companies.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-14 02:50 am (UTC)As for games of theirs I have but have never actually played: Proteus. It seems incredibly cool, but I can never get anyone to play with me!!
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-14 07:14 am (UTC)Yes, GURPS is an amazing resource, but don't ever try to do anything larger than personal scale with it. I had a friend try to run a mecha game in GURPS, and you needed a computer to run the math, it was terrible.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-14 06:26 am (UTC)The thing about SJG, is that almost every product is tongue in cheek, its games for Gamers (witha capital 'g' that is people who know and love the industry)
Another great game I played recents, but damn it, I can't remember the name. It sort of combines the best of Frag, with capture the flag, and superpowers, its quick, but fun.
Wizards isn't bad, but its mostly their TSR line from pre-merger that impressed me (Marvel Super Heros, etc...)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-14 07:27 am (UTC)I think you are probably confusing the original Car Wars with the card game, or the recent Car Wars duels mini books. I'm referring to the full blown game that was around in the 80's, and was big enough to have it's own quarterly magazine for a decade. It's quite a bit more complex than the newer releases in the same setting.
As for their games being tongue in cheek. It's only really their card games that are that way, and a few others of their recent games. They used to be a quite serious gaming company, but their market has changed, and them with it. They're targeting a younger audience with shorter attention spans, and less dedication. It takes a week to learn the rules to Carwars well enough to design an effective vehicle, and about two hours to design it. Not something most people are interesting in doing. Game play requires keeping a log sheet of events each turn.
I quite enjoy games this complex, and I'm in the habit now of collecting them, because they are so much harder to come buy, you have to get hold of them before they all disappear. The original Crimson Skies was like this, if you got an expansion for it (Behind the Crimson Vale). Why it was even sold without the expansion I don't know, because it's like the expansion contains the other half of the rules. There's a game of my fathers that I've gotten from him called After the Holocaust, and it's amazingly complex. You have to rebuilt the US after a Nuclear Holocaust, and the game even models taxation, research and efficiency. It's basically one of those games that takes a week to play. It's so complex it's actually a challenge to play it solo.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-14 08:48 am (UTC)I don't see how you can think that SJG is for younger audiences with short attention spans.. Most of the players I know are in their late 20's/early 30's and quite a number of their games (such as INWO) last for HOURS and involve complex barganing and descision-making.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-14 08:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2003-11-13 02:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 04:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 05:15 pm (UTC)I did mention to her that Mandrake (which, along with Debian, was the other name she could rattle off) is pretty cool and apparently user-friendly, and we do have a friend who (I think) uses that. But really, I don't entirely believe that she's going to actually get Linux at all, so the which-distro question seems a bit moot at this point.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 06:53 pm (UTC)And in case you're wondering, I stumbled across your journal through
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 07:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 06:12 pm (UTC)Seriously, RH9 is the only version I've used (http://www.livejournal.com/users/hyuri/43722.html), and I didn't like it at all. I'd vote for Slackware, since she obviously knows someone who's at least somewhat familiar with it. ^_^
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 06:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 09:11 pm (UTC)And, yes, it is intrinsically cool. (How could it not be? It's Slack!) However, you and your boyfriend knowing it was my major reason there.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 06:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-13 06:57 pm (UTC)As I pointed out to Jenn, there are indeed two that start with S! And, since that wasn't a very interesting part of the story (and I've mentioned elsewhere in my journal that it's Slackware I use, which I wouldn't expect you to know since you're a first-time visitor here, as far as I can tell). So you're not blind or an idiot.
(no subject)
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