That depends on what you're scheduling, though. If you're scheduling an event "30 days from right now", storing the time as UTC is appropriate. But if you're scheduling a meeting at "3PM, March 20, 2007", UTC is not the way to go. You should be adding the local time zone to that date/time (e.g. "US/Central") which avoids hard-coding whether it's DST or not and allows smooth conversion to other time zones.
Perhaps I can pressure my legislature to provide magic fairies who will change my clocks when the need arises.
The fact is, DST is not going away. Even if it disappears in some territories, it's safe to assume it will not disappear from all of them in our lifetimes. Thus, we're still going to have to deal with it on our computer systems. And so the constant calls of "abolish DST" remain entirely unhelpful.
Not to mention WAV files can't be streamed at all as-is. Miss the "fmt" chunk at the front of the file and you're out of luck. It should be easy enough to build a PCM container format which can be streamed (complete with sync bits, frame headers and so forth) but FLAC's done all of that already.
If Nintendo's ahead by the middle of next year, they're going to stay there. Console sales are a matter of momentum. Selling a lot of consoles attracts developers, which make the console more attractive to customers, which sells more consoles. While it's certainly possible for one to come from far behind and take the lead with some killer app that appears long after launch, I can't remember any instances of that happening.
Why don't they implement a Unicode string which can be encoded to a classic string via UTF-8 or some other desired encoding. Then add an decode() method to regular 8-bits-per-character strings to reverse the process. This eliminates ambiguity between "a binary blob of random data" (regular strings) and "human-readable text in some language" (Unicode strings). Python's used this method for years without a problem, so Ruby should be able to follow suit.
Security not through obscurity would be akin to keeping the decryption key from a third party so that he'll have to try and use brute force to decrypt your data. Much like how web browsers use SSL to keep packet sniffers at bay.
In the case of DRM, the guy who wants to watch the movie is the same person that the studios are trying to keep from decrypting it. So they try and hide the decryption key in the player so the owner can't find it. Thus, DRM always boils down to finding a way of obscuring the key's location in a big game of hide-and-seek.
The original Doom had multiplayer deathmatches, but it took a significant amount of effort to get it going. Quake 1 streamlined the process and stuck multiplayer-over-IP into the main game menu.
The symlink(2) manpage mentions that they're also known as "soft links", as opposed to the hard links created by link(2). It's not a very common usage, though.
What is going to keep X-Box and PS3 from stealing the Wii thunder? They simply need to make a remote to match their systems and Nintendo will be off the board, perhaps for good.
If developers can't count on this hypothetical controller to be on every system, like the Wiimote, it's always going to be a secondary peripheral. That's why it's too late for Microsoft and Sony to try and copy it completely this time around, since their systems are launched and established.
Perhaps their next consoles will be more Wiimote-like, but one can be sure Nintendo isn't going to stop trying to improve either.
The fact is, a bunch of 2+ year old systems wasn't any "saturating the market" or providing any competition at all. The Saturn wasn't taking off either. The Playstation's big competitor was inertia from the SNES and by Christmas 1995 the only question was whether the delayed N64 would be able to reclaim Nintendo's dominance when it actually arrived.
It really wasn't that hard to see where the market was going a few months after launch, even 10 years ago.
At the time of the Playstation's launch, the Sega CD, CD-i, Turbo Duo, 3DO and Jaguar were all either dead or dying in the market. The Neo Geo kept on churning out 2D fighters at the arcades, but never had any impact on the home systems. That leaves the Saturn which launched a few months earlier, but was $100 more expensive with a weak 1st party lineup and increasingly disinterested 3rd parties.
It didn't take long for the cheaper, easier-to-develop, 3D-focused Playstation to catch on.
I was under the impression that the PS3 uses a new architecture, and only supports PS2 titles in the same way that the 360 supports xbox1 titles: Through some kind of emulation/porting.
That was the plan originally, but Sony must've realized backwards compatibility was going to be very spotty if they went that route so they added a PS2 hardware to the PS3 at some point during development and that's how it was released.
After the slow-motion PS3 train wreck, Sony's going to discover why staying on top in the console business is very hard. But they know there's a lot of money to be made there, so I expect they'll regroup and try again rather than abandon the business. I predict that'll result in a leaner, cheaper console with a focus on gaming (especially casual gaming, following Nintendo's lead) and not under the tainted Playstation banner.
As an analogy, if the PS3 is Sony's Saturn - an overdesigned, expensive disappointment - their followup will be a more pleasant Dreamcast.
"Here's your corner office, secretary, and 6 figure salary. Just try not to break anything."
The corner office is to ensure he's far away from anything he can break. But you can bet his salary doesn't make the shame any easier to take - or the fact he'll never touch anything Playstation-related again.
From what I've read, Wiis that get an error when updating have a manufacturing defect - it's not caused by a network error or lack of checksumming. How many suffer from the defect will probably never be known, but I don't think it's anywhere close to 1%.
Re:Misleading Summary
on
Fedora Linux
·
· Score: 1
I don't agree with the notion that Red Hat is taking advantage of Fedora users like unpaid beta testers. The software that gets tested and fixed in Fedora has patches submitted upstream and those improvements wind up in every other distro - including CentOS for those that don't like paying Red Hat. It's fair enough to avoid Fedora if one wants something less bleeding edge, but being more bleeding edge benefits all Linux users in the end.
If I remember correctly, isn't the PS2 outselling the PS3, 360, and Wii combined (and is above the XBox)?
Probably. Much like the NES outsold the Genesis for a long time also. But getting sloppy and complacent about providing an upgrade path is a surefire way to lose lots of market share, because the old systems aren't going to sell forever.
The article says it doesn't rip to VBR MP3s, not that it doesn't play them.
The whole reason VBR MP3s took off is because MP3 players could handle both VBR and CBR without any modifications. For the Zune to handle only CBR would require extra effort, which makes no sense.
So, how long before I can walk into a Toys 'R Us or Target and pick one off the shelf? Perhaps even before Christmas. This is the most amazing example of an economic boom to bust I've ever seen.
Given Sony's supply problems (the low Cell yield and Blu-Ray laser shortages, in particular) it might be awhile before one can walk into a store and pick up a PS3. But I think the decline of huge eBay markups is an illustration that the demand for the PS3 at the current price is not very broad once the hardcore "must have it on day one" buyers are out of the way.
The Wii will be either first or third. The PS3 and 360 are competing for the same hardcore gamer audience. Those people want to play more refined versions of the same games they're playing now. They might also buy the Wii, but they're not the Wii's target audience.
The Wii is aiming at the non-hardcore who want something easier to get into and without an intimidating controller loaded with buttons and control sticks. If Nintendo can deliver to these people, it'll easily surpass both the 360 and PS3 much like the DS blew past the PSP. If that audience is too small or doesn't buy into the system, the Wii won't get out of third place.
Who has a PS3? Surely one of you can give us a mini-review? Impressions? Anything?
Assuming one's just picked up a PS3 at retail price, it'd be foolish to keep it. One can fetch much more than retail price selling it on eBay. Then, if one's still interested in the console, those profits can be put towards buying one a few months from now when it's not as scarce.
I imagine that's what most of the campers are doing. That's why actual system impressions are so scarce.
How about: 1. Sell few systems to customers 2. Third parties lose money making games for system, since there's few customers 3. Third parties abandon system for ones that do make money 4. Customers abandon system for ones with more games 5. Sony abandons system - takes big loss
For a system like the PS3 that relies heavily on licensing third party games to be profitable, not getting systems into people's living rooms is a major problem.
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That depends on what you're scheduling, though. If you're scheduling an event "30 days from right now", storing the time as UTC is appropriate. But if you're scheduling a meeting at "3PM, March 20, 2007", UTC is not the way to go. You should be adding the local time zone to that date/time (e.g. "US/Central") which avoids hard-coding whether it's DST or not and allows smooth conversion to other time zones.
Perhaps I can pressure my legislature to provide magic fairies who will change my clocks when the need arises.
The fact is, DST is not going away. Even if it disappears in some territories, it's safe to assume it will not disappear from all of them in our lifetimes. Thus, we're still going to have to deal with it on our computer systems. And so the constant calls of "abolish DST" remain entirely unhelpful.
Not to mention WAV files can't be streamed at all as-is. Miss the "fmt" chunk at the front of the file and you're out of luck. It should be easy enough to build a PCM container format which can be streamed (complete with sync bits, frame headers and so forth) but FLAC's done all of that already.
If Nintendo's ahead by the middle of next year, they're going to stay there. Console sales are a matter of momentum. Selling a lot of consoles attracts developers, which make the console more attractive to customers, which sells more consoles. While it's certainly possible for one to come from far behind and take the lead with some killer app that appears long after launch, I can't remember any instances of that happening.
Why don't they implement a Unicode string which can be encoded to a classic string via UTF-8 or some other desired encoding. Then add an decode() method to regular 8-bits-per-character strings to reverse the process. This eliminates ambiguity between "a binary blob of random data" (regular strings) and "human-readable text in some language" (Unicode strings). Python's used this method for years without a problem, so Ruby should be able to follow suit.
Security not through obscurity would be akin to keeping the decryption key from a third party so that he'll have to try and use brute force to decrypt your data. Much like how web browsers use SSL to keep packet sniffers at bay.
In the case of DRM, the guy who wants to watch the movie is the same person that the studios are trying to keep from decrypting it. So they try and hide the decryption key in the player so the owner can't find it. Thus, DRM always boils down to finding a way of obscuring the key's location in a big game of hide-and-seek.
The original Doom had multiplayer deathmatches, but it took a significant amount of effort to get it going. Quake 1 streamlined the process and stuck multiplayer-over-IP into the main game menu.
The symlink(2) manpage mentions that they're also known as "soft links", as opposed to the hard links created by link(2). It's not a very common usage, though.
If developers can't count on this hypothetical controller to be on every system, like the Wiimote, it's always going to be a secondary peripheral. That's why it's too late for Microsoft and Sony to try and copy it completely this time around, since their systems are launched and established.
Perhaps their next consoles will be more Wiimote-like, but one can be sure Nintendo isn't going to stop trying to improve either.
Too much demand, I imagine. Nintendo's been trying to ramp up supply, but it's clear they didn't expect the Wii to catch on as quickly as it has.
The fact is, a bunch of 2+ year old systems wasn't any "saturating the market" or providing any competition at all. The Saturn wasn't taking off either. The Playstation's big competitor was inertia from the SNES and by Christmas 1995 the only question was whether the delayed N64 would be able to reclaim Nintendo's dominance when it actually arrived.
It really wasn't that hard to see where the market was going a few months after launch, even 10 years ago.
At the time of the Playstation's launch, the Sega CD, CD-i, Turbo Duo, 3DO and Jaguar were all either dead or dying in the market. The Neo Geo kept on churning out 2D fighters at the arcades, but never had any impact on the home systems. That leaves the Saturn which launched a few months earlier, but was $100 more expensive with a weak 1st party lineup and increasingly disinterested 3rd parties.
It didn't take long for the cheaper, easier-to-develop, 3D-focused Playstation to catch on.
I think those are two different warranties: a 90 day one via the store and a 1 year one via Nintendo.
That was the plan originally, but Sony must've realized backwards compatibility was going to be very spotty if they went that route so they added a PS2 hardware to the PS3 at some point during development and that's how it was released.
After the slow-motion PS3 train wreck, Sony's going to discover why staying on top in the console business is very hard. But they know there's a lot of money to be made there, so I expect they'll regroup and try again rather than abandon the business. I predict that'll result in a leaner, cheaper console with a focus on gaming (especially casual gaming, following Nintendo's lead) and not under the tainted Playstation banner.
As an analogy, if the PS3 is Sony's Saturn - an overdesigned, expensive disappointment - their followup will be a more pleasant Dreamcast.
The corner office is to ensure he's far away from anything he can break. But you can bet his salary doesn't make the shame any easier to take - or the fact he'll never touch anything Playstation-related again.
From what I've read, Wiis that get an error when updating have a manufacturing defect - it's not caused by a network error or lack of checksumming. How many suffer from the defect will probably never be known, but I don't think it's anywhere close to 1%.
I don't agree with the notion that Red Hat is taking advantage of Fedora users like unpaid beta testers. The software that gets tested and fixed in Fedora has patches submitted upstream and those improvements wind up in every other distro - including CentOS for those that don't like paying Red Hat. It's fair enough to avoid Fedora if one wants something less bleeding edge, but being more bleeding edge benefits all Linux users in the end.
Probably. Much like the NES outsold the Genesis for a long time also. But getting sloppy and complacent about providing an upgrade path is a surefire way to lose lots of market share, because the old systems aren't going to sell forever.
The article says it doesn't rip to VBR MP3s, not that it doesn't play them.
The whole reason VBR MP3s took off is because MP3 players could handle both VBR and CBR without any modifications. For the Zune to handle only CBR would require extra effort, which makes no sense.
Given Sony's supply problems (the low Cell yield and Blu-Ray laser shortages, in particular) it might be awhile before one can walk into a store and pick up a PS3. But I think the decline of huge eBay markups is an illustration that the demand for the PS3 at the current price is not very broad once the hardcore "must have it on day one" buyers are out of the way.
The Wii will be either first or third. The PS3 and 360 are competing for the same hardcore gamer audience. Those people want to play more refined versions of the same games they're playing now. They might also buy the Wii, but they're not the Wii's target audience.
The Wii is aiming at the non-hardcore who want something easier to get into and without an intimidating controller loaded with buttons and control sticks. If Nintendo can deliver to these people, it'll easily surpass both the 360 and PS3 much like the DS blew past the PSP. If that audience is too small or doesn't buy into the system, the Wii won't get out of third place.
Since there's going to be plenty of Wiis available, there's little incentive to camp out for one to make a quick buck on eBay.
Assuming one's just picked up a PS3 at retail price, it'd be foolish to keep it. One can fetch much more than retail price selling it on eBay. Then, if one's still interested in the console, those profits can be put towards buying one a few months from now when it's not as scarce.
I imagine that's what most of the campers are doing. That's why actual system impressions are so scarce.
How about:
1. Sell few systems to customers
2. Third parties lose money making games for system, since there's few customers
3. Third parties abandon system for ones that do make money
4. Customers abandon system for ones with more games
5. Sony abandons system - takes big loss
For a system like the PS3 that relies heavily on licensing third party games to be profitable, not getting systems into people's living rooms is a major problem.