Over time, the debate about promoting and submitting your own content has been tossed around the communities.

For those of you who are unsure what self-submission or self-promoting is, its simply submitting your own blog or your own site to social media sites like Digg, Mixx, Reddit, etc. Some people feel that this is bad etiquette and bad for the community. I take the opposite stance....to a point.

I mainly submit stories to Mixx as I've pretty much moved away from Digg and never really got into any of the other social media sites. I sometimes submit my own blog entries to Mixx, but only those I feel are of quality. If you look at all my submissions from my blog compared to all my entiries on my blog, you'll notice many were never submitted to Mixx or any other social site - with good reason. My blog is also by no means the only thing that I submit. If you look at my Mixx Profile, you can see my submissions are from a wide variety of sources and you'll only see the occasional post from DarkerNemesis.com in my submissions page. And I feel that this is what makes the difference. Submitting only your own stuff to any social media site is not really adding to the community, especially if the links aren't quality links. Also, scraping is by no means acceptable so make sure its ORIGINAL content.

So here's a quick run-down of what to remember if you're going to self-submit

1. Do it with restraint

2. Make sure if you do, the entries/links are of quality, no one wants to read utter crap or even worse, scraped content

3. Don't only submit your entries. The internet is filled with tons of funny, interesting, thought-provoking, and other great sites with great content, why not submit those as well? Also, submitting random stuff just to drown out your self-submissions with other material will be noticed, people want to see good content and not just filler.

Tags: tech, socialmedia

So I'm thinking about starting a tech-related podcast, would anyone be interested in co-hosting?

Tags: tech, life, podcast

The Linux Operating System has recently been gaining ground even for those who aren't exactly, how should we say it...tech saavy. One of the things that Linux lacks and can prevent people from moving over entirely, including myself are computer games. Yes the consoles have started to put PC gaming seemingly in the background, but there are still many who swear by gaming with the keyboard and mouse. Wine, the popular Linux software that allows you to run Windows apps under Linux, including games has improved tremendously lately, but it still doesn't do a good enough jobs for enough games to truly allow for it to be a 100% go-to option. It's compatibility list is growing but still not where it needs to be to make Linux a truly viable platform. There are some games that are built for Linux and allow a native install like Unreal Tournament 2004 and Quake 3, but the few games that can hardly be counted as the norm.

The Case For:

• Unreal Tournament 2004, Quake 3, and others have shown that popular 3D games can be built to natively run under the Linux OS.
• Linux has become more of a truly viable platform for the PC in both laptops and desktop computers.
• The OpenGL libraries are already in place in most Linux desktop environments so 3D games are entirely possible without having to build everything from scratch.
• There are plenty of proven cases where proprietary software can be natively installed on Linux without divulging the source code, so game makers don't have to worry about their source code being released.
  

The Case Against:

• Linux, while it has gained ground in marketshare, still only makes up a small percentage of the PC Operating System market making it less appealing for game developers to build on while selling enough to make up for the cost of development.
• There is no central graphics interface, like DirectX to allow for a uniform utilization of the graphical power of computers.
• Piracy has hurt the PC gaming industry and to put funds into developing for another platform that already doesn't match the marketshare of Windows may not seem cost-efficient for companies to put money into.
  

What Needs to Be Done:

• The development of a central platform like DirectX, only for Linux should be developed. Creating it will allow for a central library for developers to use to make the development of games easier for the game developers.
• Word needs to get out more on Linux, to show companies that Linux can indeed be a viable platform for game companies to develop software and games for.

Tags: linux, opensource, tech

If I had to give one reason why I don't completely wipe out Windows on my desktop, I would have to say that reason is games. I am a gamer and there are still several PC games I enjoy playing.

These games are made for Windows and can't natively be run under Linux. WINE, which just released version 1.0 of its software to run Windows applications under Linux does a pretty good job at running many PC games, sadly though, it is not a full substitute for running the game on the Windows operating system. I know me personally have had mixed success with running games with WINE. Sometimes I get it working perfectly, other times it takes a little bit of work to configure to get it to even work, and there are other times where I can't get a game to work at all.

The real reason for this is that developers won't make games for Linux. It's not just a matter of making a different installer, its about programming for a different set of graphics libraries, and programming the game to run natively under a completely different system. And despite my wishes that more developers would choose to release Linux versions of their games, I can't say I don't understand their reasoning. Game companies are in the market to make money, like any business. To make more money, it only makes sense for them to make their games for the greater user base, which in this case, is Windows. Like it or not, Windows is still the operating system with the most market share, and it only makes sense for developers to target Windows for their games. Windows may be slowly declining in market share percentage, but its still at the top, and the logical platform for PC games.

Mac OS X has recently grown noticeably in computers sold and some game companies, like EA have taken notice and are starting to develop more for the OS X platform. This goes to show that if a platform becomes more noticeable in the spotlight, it could very well start being developed for.

The argument could always be placed "well game companies should make a version of the game for Linux, so us users aren't left out in the cold". And I think of that argument too, and wish that some developers would take the plunge and start developing for Linux. Some companies have. Unreal Tournament 2003 came with a Linux installer and ran natively, Penny Arcade's game also came with a Linux version. I would love to see big-name games come to Linux, I think that Linux is a great platform and would definitely pay for a game that would run natively on Linux. But again, until more market jumps on the Linux bandwagon, its not realistically profitable for game companies to use Linux as a platform.

There are a lot of pretty good games that do run natively on Linux, but not many of them are the big name titles that you see everyone talking about. To make an example, I've been playing Crysis, the first person shooter from EA and Crytek. This game is a good game with amazing graphics and some pretty good gameplay. It currently can only run on Windows XP and Windows Vista. Its support under WINE is shoddy, and even if you could get it working under WINE, the graphical aspects of it that make it what it is would be lost because WINE can't run it natively.

I'm honestly not trying to bash Wine, I love it and it does a great job with the majority of applications and games, but for those games it doesn't run or just half-runs, there really is no alternative to Windows at the moment. We can only hope Wine improves and/or developers take more notice to Linux. If I can get most of my games to run under Linux, I would be love to be able to wipe Windows off my desktop and just go with a pure Linux system.

What do you think?

Tags: opinion, opensource, tech, linux

I found this on Digg, its an interesting article on how close we are to technology in Star Trek. Granted we aren't that close at all, but it's interesting to see the progression we have made in the last decade or two.

How Close Are We to Star Trek Technology [blahblahtech.com]

Tags: startrek, tech, breakthrough, interesting