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It's funny.  Laugh. Government Software Politics

Lame Duck Challenge Ends With Free Codeweavers Software For All 433

gzipped_tar writes to tell us that The Codeweavers "Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge" has ended in surprise and free software all day Tuesday (October 28, 2008) at the Codeweavers site. A while back Codeweavers gave President Bush a challenge to meet one of several goals before he left office. One of these goals was to lower gas prices in the Twin Cities below $2.79 a gallon, which has since transpired. "How was I to know that President Bush would take my challenge so seriously? And, give the man credit, I didn't think there was *any* way he could pull it off. But engineering a total market meltdown - wow - that was pure genius. I clearly underestimated the man. I'm ashamed that I goaded him into this and take full responsibility for the collapse of any savings you might have. Please accept our free software as my way of apologizing for the global calamity we now find ourselves embroiled in."
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Lame Duck Challenge Ends With Free Codeweavers Software For All

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  • by mbone ( 558574 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @07:33AM (#25539279)

    I think that this was a good marketing ploy. I hope their servers can stand the strain.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Spazztastic ( 814296 )

      I think that this was a good marketing ploy. I hope their servers can stand the strain.

      They went to a low-bandwidth version to alleviate some of it.

    • by volxdragon ( 1297215 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @07:36AM (#25539299)

      Slow??!? It's dead Jim.

    • by Culture20 ( 968837 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @07:38AM (#25539313)
      It's not slashdotted; they just turned the servers off until tomorrow.
    • Coincidentally, I got up early today, at 4:30AM Pacific time. Still too late.
  • by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @08:00AM (#25539491)

    Bush: Hank, we still need to get gas down below $2.79. The economies are tough. What can we do?
    Palson: Mr. President, I'm with you on this. As you know, we are having severe margin calls with some of the investment banks. Rather than save a Wall Street's CEO's ass like we did with Bear Stearns and AIG we could just let them fry in the hot sun. The public hates them anyway. Let's see, overnight accounting data shows that Lehman Brothers is close to the edge. I won't do anything and let them slip into the beyond.
    Bush: Hank, I knew I got the right man for the job. Bit what does this do with oil?
    Paulson: This will be a real kick in the pants to the arabs. The commodities bubble will deflate like the Hindenburg. They won't be able to give the stuff away. All this "peak oil" talk will be shown for the scam that it is
    Bush: Sounds great Hank. What could go wrong?
    Paulson: Nothing really. A week later everyone will forget Lehman Brothers even existed.

    • A week later everyone will forget Lehman Brothers even existed.

      I did until you reminded me.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by beh ( 4759 ) *

      Hmm - apart from the implied conversation going the wrong way round - AIG was saved AFTER the White House showed how tough they are by letting Lehman's go to the wall...

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Just in case someone (like me) got interested in upgrading its PPC-iBook into an oldschool gaming machine. Won't work :-(

  • by myxiplx ( 906307 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @08:24AM (#25539655)

    I just downloaded the crossover-pro and crossover-games packages at over 600Kb/s each. Whoever's running those servers knows how to handle their traffic.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Aggrajag ( 716041 )

      Downloading works ok. It's the free serial number that gives problems.

      "Unable to find available serial number! Please go back and try your request again in a few minutes while the system generates more."

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by mdmkolbe ( 944892 )

      The serial number sign up is slashdotted even though the downloads come down just fine. The script keeps giving an error about being unable to get more serial numbers or it times out or resets. They know how to handle the bandwidth, but the GCI requests are killing them.

      Since they are giving away the unlocked versions, I guess you only need a serial number if you want support.

      • by kat_skan ( 5219 )

        Actually, the download is the demo version, which is unlocked by the serial number you get. So if you can't get through to that server today, you're outta luck.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by mj01nir ( 153067 )
          Actually, the download is the demo version

          I think they've changed the site. Earlier they only had the demo versions, now the site says:

          "For today only, we are putting up fully unlocked builds."

          I've downloaded it, but haven't tried to install yet. I was able to get a serial early this morning, though.
    • by Nimey ( 114278 )

      Got a URL? The registration page doesn't have a link at the moment.

  • Go figure (Score:4, Funny)

    by emandres ( 857332 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @08:42AM (#25539785)
    Who would have thought? "Free Software" in a Slashdot title, and all of a sudden codeweavers isn't responding.
  • I live in the Twin Cities and saw gas for $2.15 this morning! It hasn't been $2.79 in over a month, well, granted I live in the south metro area so maybe it is taking a little longer to propagate down up there.

  • by neowolf ( 173735 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @09:01AM (#25539957)

    This will probably kill my Karma, but...

    It amazes me how many people get personally offended and go on flaming rampages every time Bush is labeled a scapegoat. Yet at the same time- these very same people likely (and rabidly) supported Bush's government while we were going to war against other scapegoats for other countries. How very hypocritical.

    That said- Codeweavers is an excellent company that has done a lot to push Linux into the mainstream. Unfortunately it seems this marketing move of theirs has backfired- and their server isn't just slow, but completely down.

  • by wbav ( 223901 ) <Guardian.Bob+Slashdot@gmail.com> on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @09:10AM (#25540025) Homepage Journal
    According to the e-mail I just got:

    *Alert* This serial code will have a short shelf life. The original plan was that it would be valid only today. But the response has been overwhelming for our server, so that site is not working.

    Given that, we intend to honor the serial codes through the end of October, with the hope that our server will get time to recover.

    Please try the registration again tomorrow. We will be putting direct download links to the full version live on our site shortly, please check our main page to get a full download.

    Limit 1 copy per customer. Download only.
  • What a joke (Score:4, Insightful)

    by the computer guy nex ( 916959 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @09:13AM (#25540069)

    Unless GWB was in the office of every bank in America that gave a mortgage to someone who could not afford it, don't blame him. The President really has little effect on an overall economy. Most of us work for CEOs who have much more impact.

  • by rxmd ( 205533 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @09:15AM (#25540075) Homepage

    Their low-bandwidth page also contained direct download links for unlocked versions of their products. The page is down, but the downloads still work (they come from a different server). So if you're only interested in having an unlocked version, you can help keep the load on their registration page down. Here are the links:

  • by 4D6963 ( 933028 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @09:22AM (#25540141)

    I clearly misunderestimated the man

    Fixed.

  • by NotBornYesterday ( 1093817 ) * on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @09:25AM (#25540189) Journal
    Trolling slashdot has long been an amusing, if somewhat frowned-upon passtime here, but this summary (sorry, can't RTFA even if I wanted to) raises the humble "troll" from amusement to art form by combining a) a FOSS-friendly entity, b) a free software giveaway, and c) gratuitously sarcastic, if somewhat tired, political rhetoric. The result is an article that is causing people from both the left and right to froth at the mouth in an almost Pavlovian fashion. However, by placing the troll in the article itself rather than in a response, they have essentially created an uber-troll.

    My hat is off to you. I shall raise a toast to you as soon as I start drinking today.
  • by XB-70 ( 812342 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @10:21AM (#25540883)
    I quickly scanned through all the replies and NOT ONE of you has said thank you to Codeweavers. Not one. These guys have shown some true honour and given up real potential revenue because they did what they said they would do.

    Thank you Codeweavers. You deserve a huge round of applause.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Culture20 ( 968837 )
      Potential revenue? I agree with the post a few places above yours: People are downloading it now because it's free, not because they need it and would have paid for it otherwise. Codeweavers hit market saturation, so now they're pulling a Microsoft, and letting some free copies roam in the wild to try and win more business. And I'm betting it will work.
  • by LingNoi ( 1066278 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @10:54AM (#25541299)

    Can someone tell me the difference between "Linux Pro" and "Games Linux"?

With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once build a nuclear balm?

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