MySQL is called a database because people are stupid. My/etc/passwd file is a database. My comma-delimited file of CDs is a database. MySQL is a database management system. Whether or not it's relational is for the pedants to bicker about.
I liked "Big Trouble in Little China". It had Kurt Russel. It had kung fu fighting. It had humor. But this is no "Big Trouble in Little China".
The trouble with this D&D movie is that the whole rehashed plot is spelled out in the trailer, the protagonists border on annoying and the villain looks like he's just graduated from the School of Cartoonishly Evil Villains. I like big dopey action flicks, but even I have a hard time with this one.
Maybe it's just a stupid trailer, but it doesn't inspire hope for the finished product. I'll probably end up seeing it at some point anyway, but I'm still looking forward to LotR.
For added authenticity, the characters, plot and theme of the D&D film were all rolled randomly and the results turned into the script. I expect the sequel will feature even larger quantities of both cola and chips.
The PS1 may
have been a bitch at first too, but who cares when there are great games like Gran Turismo 2.
Actually, the PS1 wasn't a bitch at first. Programmers had a very easy time with getting good results out of the PS1; it was Sega's Saturn that gave them so much difficulty. Eventually the Saturn titles got a lot better, but not after a great deal of work. The PS2 is likely to get a lot better also, but it will take effort - and probably more effort than the developers will need to get similar results on other systems.
While it is true that, in general, games for a given platform tend to improve (in terms of technical accomplishments, not necessarily in terms
of quality), Panzer Dragoon was actually an 'early' game for the Saturn and IMHO was one of the best, both technically and as a game.
In the US, Daytona and Panzer Dragoon were both launch titles. Perhaps the original poster meant Panzer Dragoon Zwei or Panzer Dragoon Saga, both of which showed how much better the Saturn could be than its early launch titles.
I disagree. Think about it. It's got to be *way* easier to port your own source code than it is to write an emulator. You can hire any goober
programmer to port code, but you need a rocket scientist to write an emulator from scratch.
That's just silly. The MAME team has had arcade-perfect CPS-1 and Neo Geo emulation for years, and that hardware is little different from CPS-2 hardware that Capcom is using for its 2D fighters. And that's just on a volunteer basis from people who've had to get the hardware specs themselves. Capcom already has those specs.
The only way that an emulator would pay off is if a program is written almost entirely in asm. And I doubt that this is the case (nowadays),
because it kills code portability. Capcom knows that hit games will be ported to consoles and maybe even the PC.
Arcade games are never written for portability, and the age of the CPS-2 architecture makes assembly a necessity. Fortunately, the hardest bit is getting the graphics working since the game engines are fairly straightforward (hence only a 25% gain in productivity), but it would be a big help to eliminate that re-coding step.
That being said, I suspect that Capcom has actually developed some sort of "portability API", and is incorrectly attaching the "emulation"
buzzword to it.
If it's only a buzzword, I don't see how it'll help. Only hard-core techie geeks (like slashdotters) and arcade purists care whether the games are ports or the emulated article. Everyone else just cares that "Street Fighter Alpha 4 is out for PlaystationCastX! Yay!"
Of course, I bet they put some kind of scrambling in there to make it harder than that.
Sadly, the CPS-2 encryption that these games use hasn't been broken yet. But assuming they do a simple dump of the ROMs, there's a good chance this will let the cps2shock team figure out how to decrypt them without trashing the board. It wouldn't hurt, that's for sure.
That's possible, and remember, we're both guessing - but a similar story on IGN.com mentions new versions of Resident Evil specifically:
certainly *not* a CPS game, and probably not a game with a great deal of assembly coding involved.
I just checked the IGN.com article, but it makes no mention of emulation or cost reduction and is entirely focused on online play. I think the two articles may be entirely unrelated except for the multi-platform aspect. Too bad the emulation one is so short...
This is likely not to be virtual machines or portable APIs. What few here seem to realize is that Capcom's "bread and butter" 2D fighting games are using very old hardware running very slow (16 Mhz) 68000 chips. The reason for using this hardware is that arcade operators need only swap in new ROMs in order to upgrade rather than getting whole cabinets (and the game programmers don't have to target new systems every year). They are writing new games for this hardware even today, and emulating it is both sensible and feasible on the latest arcade systems.
It's not VMs. It's not APIs. It is making moving a lot of hand-tweaked assembly code easier to move from the arcade to the home system. And that's why it's news.
They have source code, why would they use performance-hogging emulation?
Because a lot of their arcade games are written with a lot of 68000 assembly in order to milk the most out of a very old processor. In order to get their 2D fighers onto other systems, all that coding needs to be re-done - which is a pain. It's much easier just to emulate that old hardware (which they're still writing games for) and have the whole arcade game running on the home systems at a fraction of the effort.
I imagine this is to help Capcom port its 2D fighters to a variety of platforms, and those run on CPS-2 hardware. This means a couple of 68000 chips, one at 16Mhz, and a Z80 chip. So, it shouldn't be hard to emulate. Thus making arcade-perfect ports to all the newest systems.
Some of its 3D fighters and fancier shooters (19XX runs on x86 hardware, I believe) aren't likely to be emulated, but the article doesn't say it'll be for all their games anyway.
Sick of voting for the lesser of two evils? Now's your chance to make a change in Washington. I am against both children and the elderly, as well as poor and the middle class. If elected, I will most certainly raise your taxes in order to fund all manner of evil creations, including robot monsters to terrorize all who would oppose me. Expect me to destroy social security utterly while plundering the nation's natural resources. Doom and darkness await if only you would vote for me.
Don't vote for the lesser of two evils. Vote for me, and let my unholy reign of darkness begin. Yes, people of America, you *will* bow down before me!
I don't bash Red Hat. I just don't like their distribution. Lots of bugs in point-zero releases. Lots of rough edges.
Nothing wrong with that. Distribution competition is better for all of us. But I'd much rather hear about the cool stuff SuSE has than how the submitter's laptop is "still recovering from RedHat 7". That sort of remark doesn't enlighten anybody and doesn't show the good things that SuSE does.
The default font looked like crap, but I was able to change it to a nice one without a hitch./. renders okay and the response is snappy. It takes about half the memory of Netscape and I haven't hit any show-stopping bugs yet. If the finished product is just a bit more polished, I'd consider making a purchase.
He is complaining that in X, you cannot paste/replace text like you can in Windows.
He makes two points, really. One is the lack of a highlight->replace type feature you mention, the other is the lack of a menu item. I was irked specifically by the menu item (or lack thereof) but probably should've mentioned the highlight->replace issue also.
Under X, the procedure typically goes like:
select some text
cut text from screen
select other text
copy text into previous spot
Which is not altogether different except for the lack of having two things highlighted at once. But the end results are the same. I just don't see what his problem is in that regard.
How do you replace ? How do you copy an Image ? How do you copy without leaving the keyboard ?
Replace doesn't make a lot of sense for a whole lot of apps. I'm not going to be able to highlight arbitrary xterm text and replace it in any meaningful way. Images are the same story; I'm not going to be able to copy the Slashdot logo into my C source code. Some apps can handle such things (a fancy word processor, for example), but since those actions aren't universal, neither is the method to perform them.
Copying & pasting text is universal, but far too many people don't understand how to do it.
Also, almost none of
the apps available for X have cut/copy/paste in their edit menu.
If you don't know how to properly copy & paste in X, please refrain from broadcasting your ignorance to the world. But for everyone's benefit, I'll say that X does not need menus for proper copying & pasting. Here's how it works:
Left click to mark area for copying
Middle click to paste marked area someplace else
That's how it works. No stupid keystrokes. No stupid menus. Works everywhere. Simple. Effective. And oh how I wish I could throttle every dumb-ass Windows/Mac user who doesn't understand the simplest X basics...
It was the former, though it was hard to write without making it too obvious. If I'd have said "...pretty revolting already" that's not terribly subtle, so I just had to hope for the best.
that ten years figure could be way off. It sure *feels* like ten years though.
It's actually eleven years, and I recall the Lynx and Gameboy came out around the same time, which was sad given how much better the Lynx really was in terms of graphics and sound. But I believe the Gameboy had better battery life and Nintendo behind it, which is likely why it sells to this day.
Slashdot Mirror
MySQL is called a database because people are stupid. My /etc/passwd file is a database. My comma-delimited file of CDs is a database. MySQL is a database management system. Whether or not it's relational is for the pedants to bicker about.
The trouble with this D&D movie is that the whole rehashed plot is spelled out in the trailer, the protagonists border on annoying and the villain looks like he's just graduated from the School of Cartoonishly Evil Villains. I like big dopey action flicks, but even I have a hard time with this one.
Maybe it's just a stupid trailer, but it doesn't inspire hope for the finished product. I'll probably end up seeing it at some point anyway, but I'm still looking forward to LotR.
For added authenticity, the characters, plot and theme of the D&D film were all rolled randomly and the results turned into the script. I expect the sequel will feature even larger quantities of both cola and chips.
Actually, the PS1 wasn't a bitch at first. Programmers had a very easy time with getting good results out of the PS1; it was Sega's Saturn that gave them so much difficulty. Eventually the Saturn titles got a lot better, but not after a great deal of work. The PS2 is likely to get a lot better also, but it will take effort - and probably more effort than the developers will need to get similar results on other systems.
In the US, Daytona and Panzer Dragoon were both launch titles. Perhaps the original poster meant Panzer Dragoon Zwei or Panzer Dragoon Saga, both of which showed how much better the Saturn could be than its early launch titles.
Slashdot has never had a shortage of fluff content and re-runs, that's for certain.
It looks like a collection of things people doodle on their Palm during long boring meetings and/or commutes.
But it's about fourteen years too late. I expect the Cybermen will arrive shortly to drain the earth of its precious energy...
That's just silly. The MAME team has had arcade-perfect CPS-1 and Neo Geo emulation for years, and that hardware is little different from CPS-2 hardware that Capcom is using for its 2D fighters. And that's just on a volunteer basis from people who've had to get the hardware specs themselves. Capcom already has those specs.
Arcade games are never written for portability, and the age of the CPS-2 architecture makes assembly a necessity. Fortunately, the hardest bit is getting the graphics working since the game engines are fairly straightforward (hence only a 25% gain in productivity), but it would be a big help to eliminate that re-coding step.
If it's only a buzzword, I don't see how it'll help. Only hard-core techie geeks (like slashdotters) and arcade purists care whether the games are ports or the emulated article. Everyone else just cares that "Street Fighter Alpha 4 is out for PlaystationCastX! Yay!"
Sadly, the CPS-2 encryption that these games use hasn't been broken yet. But assuming they do a simple dump of the ROMs, there's a good chance this will let the cps2shock team figure out how to decrypt them without trashing the board. It wouldn't hurt, that's for sure.
I just checked the IGN.com article, but it makes no mention of emulation or cost reduction and is entirely focused on online play. I think the two articles may be entirely unrelated except for the multi-platform aspect. Too bad the emulation one is so short...
It's not VMs. It's not APIs. It is making moving a lot of hand-tweaked assembly code easier to move from the arcade to the home system. And that's why it's news.
Because a lot of their arcade games are written with a lot of 68000 assembly in order to milk the most out of a very old processor. In order to get their 2D fighers onto other systems, all that coding needs to be re-done - which is a pain. It's much easier just to emulate that old hardware (which they're still writing games for) and have the whole arcade game running on the home systems at a fraction of the effort.
Some of its 3D fighters and fancier shooters (19XX runs on x86 hardware, I believe) aren't likely to be emulated, but the article doesn't say it'll be for all their games anyway.
Don't vote for the lesser of two evils. Vote for me, and let my unholy reign of darkness begin. Yes, people of America, you *will* bow down before me!
Nothing wrong with that. Distribution competition is better for all of us. But I'd much rather hear about the cool stuff SuSE has than how the submitter's laptop is "still recovering from RedHat 7". That sort of remark doesn't enlighten anybody and doesn't show the good things that SuSE does.
I'm sure that'll help the SuSE discussion immensely. I hear RedHat 7.1 will ship with 25% more Pure Evil than 7.0...
The default font looked like crap, but I was able to change it to a nice one without a hitch. /. renders okay and the response is snappy. It takes about half the memory of Netscape and I haven't hit any show-stopping bugs yet. If the finished product is just a bit more polished, I'd consider making a purchase.
He makes two points, really. One is the lack of a highlight->replace type feature you mention, the other is the lack of a menu item. I was irked specifically by the menu item (or lack thereof) but probably should've mentioned the highlight->replace issue also.
Under X, the procedure typically goes like:
Which is not altogether different except for the lack of having two things highlighted at once. But the end results are the same. I just don't see what his problem is in that regard.
Replace doesn't make a lot of sense for a whole lot of apps. I'm not going to be able to highlight arbitrary xterm text and replace it in any meaningful way. Images are the same story; I'm not going to be able to copy the Slashdot logo into my C source code. Some apps can handle such things (a fancy word processor, for example), but since those actions aren't universal, neither is the method to perform them.
Copying & pasting text is universal, but far too many people don't understand how to do it.
If you don't know how to properly copy & paste in X, please refrain from broadcasting your ignorance to the world. But for everyone's benefit, I'll say that X does not need menus for proper copying & pasting. Here's how it works:
That's how it works. No stupid keystrokes. No stupid menus. Works everywhere. Simple. Effective. And oh how I wish I could throttle every dumb-ass Windows/Mac user who doesn't understand the simplest X basics...
It was the former, though it was hard to write without making it too obvious. If I'd have said "...pretty revolting already" that's not terribly subtle, so I just had to hope for the best.
Perhaps Lucas thinks the fans are already revolting.
It's actually eleven years, and I recall the Lynx and Gameboy came out around the same time, which was sad given how much better the Lynx really was in terms of graphics and sound. But I believe the Gameboy had better battery life and Nintendo behind it, which is likely why it sells to this day.
Sad, really. I still love my Nomad, though.