News Valve's Gabe Newell calls Windows 8 a 'catastrophe'

You still play TF2? I stop playing that game when everyone is cheating, is trying to sale their items over voice and/or chat non stop. There was even an admin that kicked out people who refused to buy his stuff. Talking about spam land.

 

*facepalm* GoodBytes? Really? I didn't think you would stoop so low as to question another individual's opinions? TF2 is an enjoyable game to many (including me), and no matter what you say will not make us stop playing it. You don't like it? Go play a different game then.

Sorry if that sounded a bit condescending.

 

The Newell has spoken!

S*D

 

I was expressing my opinion of this enjoyable game that I purchased, and got ruined. Yes. All my friends stop playing it, and I was genuinely surprised that still people play this game. I was hopping to be told that I was wrong and things has changed.

 

Surely regardless of OS, this isn't down to having a password or not. This is down to someone being silly.

Sure, if I let you on my PC and you need the admin password to install stuff, then I know that you can't install porn.exe, or superfunhappysmileyface.exe, but shouldn't the question be more why are you trying to install that sh*t on my PC without asking me first?

Also, (and correct me if I'm wrong, only just started on linux) if you said "Hey what's your password? I want to show you something superepicandcool." and I turn round and say "Oh yea it's qwerty" then the password really hasn't done a thing.

Passwords are just another layer of protection that stupidity can quite easily remove, just like hitting yes on the UAC prompt.

More on topic, I'm glad Valve are doing stuff with Linux, it gives people more options and hopefully pushes forward another OS. As for windows 8, I think it might be bad as an idea, but not bad in practice. Reading goodbytes thoughts on the metro system, I do kind of agree. It'll just take some getting used to I suppose!

 

Find the servers and communities that suit you - this goes for all games. I play TF2 almost daily with friends I met on CS:S and BF2. I rarely see cheaters on the servers I play on, and by rarely, I mean maybe one a month, way less then on other games, unless i'm just better than most cheats (don't mean to sound big headed). The buying/selling/trading was a bit bothersome when it was first introduced, mainly as almost everyone was trying it out and some people realised they could get cool stuff for common items from the less knowledgeable. This has stopped almost completely now. I spent 2-3 times more in Mann Co then the Steam store during the sale too. I play other games too, BF3 was my last big game I sunk a bit of time into but after 80 hours of play it has just become stale but its had more time then the various CODs had at 20-40 hours and MOH was similar. I sunk more time into BC2 & QW:ET (~200 hours) and BF2 had almost 1000 hours. TF2 must me doing something right, as I just keep going back game after game.

 

Why dont you check out the average price paid for the humble music bundle http://www.humblebundle.com/ now i'm placing it here early and lets see if its still valid in a few days because atm its MS $7.13, Mac $9.40 & Linux $11.89. Open Source Software doesn't stop people making money, as its about free as in speech rather than free as in beer. It's just a lot of people/companies can also make money and give it away for free. It would seem if you charge, you can get a few users thus a few people that pay. Give it away and charge for support + have donations, you get many users and a few pay + support fees. If its free and good, many pay it seems.

 

Before we get "proper" games support on Linux, we'll have to wait for real driver support from AMD&nVidia. Also, development will have to switch from DirectX to an alternative that works natively in Linux. As said by GoodBytes, OpenGL isn't necessarily the best option. There was an interesting BT article months back about future games bypassing DirectX (an API layer) and using straight-to-hardware code (how console games are written). This also allows higher performance as the API layer isn't in the way slowing things down.

So my guess is that we'll be waiting until direct to hardware programming is the norm, OR some DirectX API alternative, before we see much movement away from Windows. After all, the reason many still use Windows is that it is the only feasible gaming OS currently.

 

While that may be true, it's not legal to do it that way. The License Agreement prohibits running Office on anything other than Windows. How nice of them to restrict it that way, isn't it?

 

AFAIK, consoles still use a form of API. Xbox 360 uses a highly modified version of DX9 - which is why there are lots of modern games not using DX10 or 11. The PS3 on the other hand only has support for OpenGL 2.4. Thus, game developers that write their own engine already use OpenGL - they just need the OS-specific window and event handling backend to match, then they could release games for Linux and Mac very easily. Unfortunately, MS have locked the 360 into using DirectX, so developers need to write for both APIs anyway while they still develop for this generation of consoles.

Of course, the game developers that use a pre-made game engine (think Unreal Engine or Source) have it the easy way. All the (often big) company behind the engine needs to do is port the engine to use OpenGL on Linux - most of the games based on that engine can therefore be ported easily as well. This is what Valve are doing - they are porting their Source engine to Linux, along with Steam, which will make porting all Source games very easy to do.

 

*facepalm* you COMPLETELY miss the point of security. The point of UAC or passwords on mac/linux are to prevent people who you DON'T approve of messing with your computer, or prevent the placement/activation of malware. That's like asking "why put a lock on the door to this safe with my life savings in it when you shouldn't be in there in the first place?".

The password DID do something. If you haven't noticed by now, you only have write access to your home folder and no other location in the entire system. You're not even allowed to rename an executable in /usr/bin. When something is asking for the root password, its grating you the privelages of root for the upcomming program. Root in linux/unix is immensely powerful compared to administrator in windows, as it able to unquestionaly do nearly anything you want. Run "sudo rm -rf /" and you'll delete 100% of your system, including the code that is deleting things in the first place. This is why linux/mac wants passwords - people will do stupid things and ruin a system. Windows has been so easy to infect because nearly anywhere in the system can be modified without notification or permission. The problem with UAC is it will react upon something that shouldn't be done by notifying you (this is a problem because this is where people just click "allow" without thinking), whereas with *nix OSes, the action will just simply never happen unless you specifically told it to from the beginning.

Unless you auto-signin as root or have a password as useless as qwerty (which nobody in the *nix world suggests), you can't avoid a password. You might not ever need one, but you must have one anyway because it'll still protect your stuff without you knowing.

 

If Windows had the same system, I can assure you, that the most common password would be ' ' without quotes (space). So that it's easy. I would do that. In fact, I do that on my Linux system. It is so cumbersome to put a password. And for what? so that someone can't access my computer? please.

 

So that something cannot access your computer (or rather, those parts that should not be fiddled with)...

 

No... someone
Remember, I am not talking about home users, which is the issue. No one will use my computer, password or not. I don't use my mother computers either (even though I know her password, which she gave me...) So Having a password system, will make people, at home, have a stupid 1 character password... Space being the easiest, as it's a large button, and hard to forget. This by-passing the point of Linux password. And will not stop people opening: image.jpg.exe form their e-mail, and allow full rights. Even if they put the entire password.. people don't go "Wait.. a picture needs admin? WTF!"... NO they go "I want to see that picture!"

 

You missed 3 key points"
1. It's not just about people using your computer locally. While someone hacking into it seems more unlikely, it isn't impossible. Also it helps slow you down before you decide to make a really big accident that could affect the system.
2. In linux anyway, you don't need a password to run anything that you yourself put in your home folder. You do, however, need to chmod something to become executable, which at times can be a pain but it also ensures that NOTHING will start without your permission. Without a password, any executable can be placed in any part of the system and be auto-started at any time without your permission. This is exactly why Windows is so insecure - malware can (and does) just put itself anywhere it pleases, modify the registry without any restictions, and then when launched, does further damage to your stuff. This can't happen if you don't have access to the rest of the system and if you don't have the password to it. UAC can be avoided by good programmers.
3. Passwords aren't supposed to be easy, they're supposed to be secretive, and the point of being secretive is to protect something. Linux USED to allow accounts with no passwords, but once people realized how vulnerable that makes the average person, they forced a password to exist. When you have an easy password like spacebar, not only does it make hacking your computer very easy but it increases the chances of malware. The difference between a password and UAC is you can't continue without knowing exactly what the password is, whereas UAC will permit anything as long as you click allow, which is just as insecure as pressing spacebar.


BTW, I'm not really paranoid - I have nothing on my computers worth of value to anyone, so someone could freely hack into my stuff and copy/delete everything and while I'd be really mad, my life can continue just fine. But dismissing passwords to do administrative tasks (and yes, any tasks that modify the system outside of your user account no matter what OS is considered administrative) as useless is ridiculously naiive.

 

Yeah Gabe we get it, blah blah, catastrophe, blah, ecosystem, blah blah platform.

We all know you're just trying to distract our attention from the fact that we're STILL not playing HL3.

I keed, I keed!

 

I'm not trying to be funny, but, your sounding rather stupid. Almost all your 'points' have been proven to be at best 'not quite right'. Just put the spade down and get out of the digger, the hole you have dug is MASSIVE. You don't like Linux and its not suitable for you, fine, but its not anything like your making it out to be.

 

@schmidtbag I'll say again that I'm pretty new to linux, so if say I downloaded something malicious on windows, and hit yes on the user prompt, and it fubars my system - Or if you're modd1uk you don't have UAC on and you install something in chinese that fubars your system .

Now if we take the same example for linux, download something malicious and run it, will it not ask for access to root prompting for my password, and if I enter would it still not fubar the system?

If you do respond, which I'd like and I'm interested to learn some more , I'd say PM me as this thread is going fairly off topic

 

To both,
You are not getting what I am trying to say. My point is that lay people (average people), at home, if they know that they'll need to put passwords everywhere, then they won't put a strong password, they'll put something silly, so that it's easy to remember, and quick to do.
My mom password is 1 hair from abc123. Why? She already needs to remember several passwords at works that keep changes.... she has enough of passwords. Already she wanted initially no password to log-in, and I kinda push her to have SOMETHING. Now I am not too worried about her computer, because I know what she does, and it's nothing important, and and I have a strong (for home), network security, and all computers fully updated, and the hole set of security package.

Lay people, aren't US. We have the brain for this kind of things.. we are used to it, we like complicated things, and tweak the **** of things, and gets our hands dirty. We are computer enthusiasts, and damn proud of it. It's not the same thing for lay people. They want simple, they just want to do what they want. If you try to complicate things.. they'll find ways (stupid ways) to go around it. My experience in IT supports what I am saying about lay people.

In conclusion, having you to enter a password, won't be "more secure" than hitting "Allow" button on the UAC dialog box.

 

My dad, called 'millennium bug' by his colleagues for his ability to break any computer at work trying to do simple things, I'm sure he would be in your group 'lay people', well I decided to give him a linux computer to see if it helped, as i was fed up with fixing his windows computer. apart from having to change openoffice to save in microsoft office formats he didn't really have any issues. That was Suse 8.2 back in 2003/4. He still doesn't really know anything about computers but uses the ubuntu install on his dual boot laptop more than XP, and he only has that as he has a work program that will only work on XP. I know of two people that used his ubuntu computer and have said it was good, i dont know anyone that has had trouble with it, and it will have been used by at least 30 people, probably 50+.