Tuesday, August 19, 2003

NWN 1.31 Patch Released -- 8:24 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Bioware has released the 1.31 patch for Neverwinter Nights for Windows, Mac, and Linux as well as one for those who also own Shadows of Undrentide for Windows and Linux. This page has all the changes and fixes for all the patches. Thanks Blue's News.

Pictures of Alleged Code Copying -- 9:31 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

German website Heise Online managed to get two pictures of the alleged code copying from SCO's presentation. One has a side by side code comparison and the other is just a section of Linux code. I'm not much of a programmer, but I don't even think that the second slide shows legitimate code (see the first couple of lines). I also like how they used a Greek font to obfuscate the Unix comments. They apparently didn't think that any geeks would be familiar with the Greek alphabet. Unfortunately for them, both J.t.Qbe and I are well-versed in it. Here is a "translation" for you:

* As part of the kernel evolution
toward modular naming, the
* functions malloc and mfree are being
renamed rmalloc and rmfree.
* Compatibility will be maintained by
the following assembler code:
* (also see mfree/rmfree below)

What a bunch of bozos. Of course, they didn't show changelogs for Unix or Linux to show when the code was added to either OS and by whom (although it wouldn't take a Linux hacker very long to use his mad grep skills and check the Linux changelogs anyway). Even though SCO will scream "They stole our code!" there are other possibilities: 1) The code was actually stolen from Linux and incorporated into Unix, 2) The code was placed there by a SCO/Caldera employee deliberately to taint Linux, 3) The code was placed there by a SCO/Caldera employee because the company didn't have a firm grip on who was doing what. Of course, this doesn't matter much. IBM will bleed SCO white. Thanks Linux Today.

J.t.Qbe comments: It took about 2 seconds to start reading those Greekified lines. . . and they prove exactly nothing. What a joke. But I think I've figured it out: with all of its ridiculous claims, SCO's going for the insanity defense. Unfortunately, SCO's actually insane. It's now claiming that "millions of lines" of Linux kernel code are infringing SCO's IP, which is at least 20-40% of the kernel. Uh, right guys.

Don't miss the good article at lwn.net: "Why SCO won't show the code".

The Master comments: Oh, now THAT is a delicious article. The issue I can see, however, is this: will a lawyer, or a court of law, give a damn about any of this, or will they just screw IBM, and the open source community as a whole?

A.T. Hun comments: SCO still has to produce evidence within a reasonable doubt and pay mightily to fight IBM's countersuit. Blood will flow. For more fun, Bruce Perens gives us his two cents. I forgot to mention that my translation is ©2003 by A.T. Hun and is released under the GNU General Public License :)

Monday, August 18, 2003

Jedi Academy Preview -- 10:42 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

UGO (yes, to my surprise, they still exist) tossed up a preview of Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. This is the first preview I've read that touches on the pros and cons of going with a single lightsaber, duel sabers (ala Anakin at the end of Episode II), or a saber staff (ala Darth Maul). I'd have to try them all out, but I think I'd prefer the solo saber. Call me a traditionalist. Thanks Blue's News.

XFree86 4.3.0 and libSDL Fix -- 10:20 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

After months of searching, I found a fix for my problems with XFree86 4.3.0 and libSDL not playing nice together (story). Basically what happened was that if I played an SDL game at a resolution other than my desktop resolution, the monitor refresh rates would get all wonky. Thankfully, a fix for this problem has gone into libSDL's CVS. I downloaded the latest CVS snapshot, compiled, and installed it. (As an aside, it was nice that Slackware doesn't make me worry about RPM dependencies to get this to work.) I had to remove ./lib: from the Neverwinter Nights nwn script and move libSDL-1.2.so.0 from UT2K3's System directory so those games would use the system libSDL instead. Now the games can change resolutions and not force me to play with a 60Hz refresh rate. Huzzah!

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