The Lunch Hour Report: Humor Edition

Today I would like to start off with the article that inspired this post, that would be the article on Aegisub titled "If Programming Languages Were Religions". While at times mildly inaccurate, I found it to be really quite funny and also true in some respects. I highly recommend you read it, enjoy it and take it with a grain of salt if you're offended by humorous religious comparisons.

Another great read today (though a short one thanks to the joys of my friend "WebSense" content filtering in my office, I can't actually read the entire article, rather I got the small blurb and some of the links given in the slashdot article, but it seems like an interesting read no-the-less. It was recently uncovered that Microsoft was hiding the fact that their Xbox360 consoles scratched game disks and not only did they hide it, they put a disclaimer in the manual (according to the slashdot article) that told the user if it got scratched, the user was at fault, not Microsoft. It comes as no surprise to me that Microsoft would try to hide something like this, but the fact that they had 3 other possible solutions but rejected all of them in favor of a small print section blaming the user for a defective product is just inexcusable. I was thinking of buying a 360 myself soon, and some day maybe I still will, but I think the PS3 just got bumped up on the priority list (right below a Wii) by a few points lost on the behalf of Microsoft.

And I'll close us out today with an article from the ComputerWorld blog. Apparently Cisco is in the process of getting screwed because they decided not to read past the lines of the GNU/GPL license agreement that said, you could re-distribute this software in your own way. They are being sued because most of their routers run an operating system that is either built using or designed around some form of open source software. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but Cisco unfortunately failed to realize that using GNU/GPL licensed software means you can use it how you want, but the source needs to be available to anyone who wants it, including any changes you made to it for your own purposes. So, basically, the fact that they won't give anyone the source code to their routers and other products means they are in violation of the license agreement they acknowledged when they first started developing their products.

Steam Linux: Updates

So, I found some info on Arstechnica today that helps re-enforce my claim from the other day that Valve is on the way to porting the steam platform (and with it, the games) to the open source platform of Linux. This could be a huge boost for the popularity of Linux as a gaming OS, as the argument for many people not making the switch is poor game support on the operating system. Now, before I continue, I'm not making the claim that Microsoft should be shaking in their boots (but you know they are). However, I will say this, and that is that with this, comes Valve's virtual stamp of approval that the Linux platform is now a viable desktop operating system that has the potential to be a new market for them and considering the influence that Valve is in the gaming community, that could push some of the other gaming companies to start following suit and publishing more games on the Linux platform, and if nothing else, that should start giving Microsoft the chills and the hair stand on the back of their necks if not but just a little bit. So, to say the least I'm very happy about Valve's decision to do this and I wish the best of luck to them in this undertaking, it's not small task to port a game over to run on a new platform, let alone the mammoth empire of a gaming ecosystem that Steam has become, but I'm excited and can't wait to see what the future holds once this becomes official.