Tipa at West Karana tells about her blissful upgrade from Ubuntu to Mint this morning. I mention this because, well, I’m jealous.

I tried, once again, to move my laptop from Vista to Linux, using Mint this time. And again, I went back to Windows over one single issue: video driver support. Specifically, the embedded Radeon x600 in my year-and-a-half-old laptop. Apparently Radeon and Linux just don’t… get along.

I use my laptop chiefly as my ‘communications’ machine, and take it to and from work to check email, keep up with IMs, store files, listen to my MP3 collection while working, take notes, etc. I’ve been pretty happy with it, though I find I rarely use the tablet functionality as time wears on simply because I type much faster than I write and there’s no cultural aversion at NCsoft to people merrily typing away into laptops during meetings.

The programs I use most often on the laptop: Outlook, OneNote, Winamp, and Trillian. There’s Linux alternatives to all of these, though I could do with a better interface than Evolution (unfortunately as NCsoft uses Exchange, that’s really the only option) and note taking apps for Linux are still fairly primitive.

But the kicker: I need to be able to dock my laptop. And when I dock it using Vista, it smoothly switches from the 1280×768 internal widescreen display to an external 1280×1024 monitor. But with Linux, it …doesn’t. Despite repeated cajoling of .conf files, the best I can ever get is a madly flickering 1280×768 resolution on my external monitor, either mirrored or extended. Which, on a non-widescreen LCD monitor? Looks like *ass*.

So, I’d really like to walk around with a Linux laptop. I’m willing to give up tablet functionality to do it. But I’m *not* willing to give up my ability to dock to an external monitor. Linux, thou hast forsaken me! Or my video card. Which is kind of the same thing, really.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iYBmAVuBns

• Game Systems Engineer (3+ years C++ programming experience). You’ll be working with me directly, so you need a high tolerance for designers that smoke a lot of crack. Industry experience strongly preferred, but if you’re good enough, that’s negotiable. A passion bordering on mania for improving the current MMO state of the art is not negotiable.
• Server Engineer (5+ years C++ and Linux experience). You’ll be working with the guy I share an office with directly, so you’ll probably run into a lot of crack smoking designers. SQL and Lua knowledge a plus. If you spend all your free time playing MMOs, that’s also a plus.
• Tools Engineer (3+ years programming experience). SQL and Lua knowledge a plus, because it’s guaranteed you’ll be using both on the job. You’re going to be the guy the crack smoking designers yell at all the time. Doesn’t that sound exciting? I thought so. It’s how I started in the game industry, so don’t knock it.
• Senior Animator (3+ years experience, extensive experience rigging models). I can’t crack any jokes about the art positions. Experience with motion capture technology a plus. If you have a demo reel or animation simulations, those are pluses. You will be helping lead an art team on a really cool project.
• Senior Modeler (3+ years experience, 2 shipped products (games/movies/TV) to credit). I still can’t crack any jokes about the art positions. Links to online samples of your work are huge pluses. You will be helping lead an art team on a really cool project.
• Senior World Builder (2+ years experience) You will be the first of many, so experience is really required. You will be working directly with the design lead that doesn’t smoke crack, although the design lead that does smoke crack (me) will probably kibitz about your work a lot. You will be on the ground floor of building a really cool MMO.

Job atmosphere is chaos, but fun chaos. We’ve done really well so far at fostering a small, agile guerilla team within a larger company, so if you like small, agile teams where people crack jokes and stuff gets done, drop me a line. Did I mention this was a really cool project?

These positions are in Austin, Texas. If you’re outside the US, you’ll need to be able to provide H1Bs. And no, I can’t talk about the project. Unless, you know, you come in for an interview and sign a lot of forms. If you do that, well, imagine me not being able to talk about what I’ve been working on for a whole year. It kind of scares people when I buffer dump, actually.

So if this all sounds like your brand of craziness, drop me a line at sjennings at brokentoys.org and we’ll get the ball rolling.

[Microsoft's lawyer] says that the Linux kernel – the deepest layer of the free operating system, which interacts most directly with the computer hardware – violates 42 Microsoft patents. The Linux graphical user interfaces – essentially, the way design elements like menus and toolbars are set up – run afoul of another 65, he claims. The Open Office suite of programs, which is analogous to Microsoft Office, infringes 45 more. E-mail programs infringe 15, while other assorted [free and open source] programs allegedly transgress 68.

The risibility of Microsoft accusing “teh Interweb” of, say, violating its intellectual property on user interfaces? Indeed, quite risible.

In 1988, Apple sued Microsoft for copyright infringement of the LISA and Apple Macintosh GUI. The court case lasted 4 years before almost all of Apple’s claims were denied on a contractual technicality. Subsequent appeals by Apple were also denied, and Microsoft and Apple apparently entered a final, private settlement of the matter in 1997 as a side note in a broader announcement of investment and cooperation.

Steve Ballmer claims that Microsoft is being bullied by, um, teh Interweb. No, really.

“We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property,” says Ballmer in an interview.

As seen by Microsoft’s history of honoring and supporting intellectual property by purchasing it, putting it in a small box, and then taking it out and playing with it on annual developer days.

Note that it’s a sad day when Fortune’s title for this story is actually funnier than mine:

Microsoft takes on the free world.

95% of the net is machine generated robbery and gibberish. Spam. Imagine if every time you turned on your TV someone tried to rob you. Or you go to the cinema and all the people are pickpockets.

New features (most of which weren’t advertised):

• “Stop Sending Me Expeditionary Forces Dammit” button (fixes one of HOI2 Doomsday’s most irksome “features”)

• Two fantasy scenarios (eh, I suspect Kaiserreich is probably still better)
• Ability to play until 1964 (however, with no new techs or events that’s kind of pointless – guess it’s so modders don’t have to include a No Time Limit patch for their ColdWar scenarios that never come out)
• Autobuild units with attachments (something I thought was missing from HOI2 when I first played it)
• Add attachments to naval units which can upgrade (similar to air wings on carriers, keeps your ancient navy somewhat relevant)
• Completely reworked naval combat which requires surface units to detect targets for naval bombers (no more Royal Navy being wiped out by unsupported Stuka wings)
• Reworked air combat system
• Button you can push to show all your movement arrows at once (the “I AM THE VERY MODEL OF A MODERN MAJOR GENERAL” screenshot button)

It costs $5. In a perfect world it would be a patch… but one suspects this is how Paradox is trying to finance a “live team” for a game well past its shelf date. Still a disappointment from a team that supported EU2 for free for years.

Sadly, I will get it merely for the first feature. A sad panda, I am. And yes, I know I am rewarding bad behavior… this *really* should have been a patch, not a money generator.

Ninety-Nine Nights: To be fair, I had already seen this at a friends’ house. But Phantagram. Why you got to be that way, baby. We used to be so good together! Daddy doesn’t want to hurt you. Just walk away.

Gears of War: Ooh, pretty. Ouch, hurty. OK, I don’t like shooters on consoles.

GRAW: OK, maybe I do like shooters on consoles, as long as they let me snipe people and call in airstrikes from gunships.

Viva Pinata: Hm, this could grow on me, assuming I figure out some actual gameplay.

Star Trek Legacy: I had tried this on the PC and gave up because it was so obviously a console port. I then tried this on the console and gave up because it was so obviously a really bad game.

Dead Rising: OK, this is why I bought this machine. Thanks. (swings bat, kills 5 zombies) Although the paucity of save points reminds me of console frustrations past.

XBox Arcade: Aaah, Time Pilot, comfort food of my youth, you sing to me so sweetly with your siren calls of random bombings and death. And Lumines isn’t a half bad port either. Does anyone play Hold’em Poker online?

For the true hard-core World War II nut to even suggest that there is something other to do with the Hearts of Iron game engine than play World War II is tantamount to heresy. If you are such a person we suggest you stop reading about now.

OK!