Re:It's not great news for everyone
on
Qt Becomes LGPL
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· Score: 1
It's great news for everyone, except for Trolltech. Good luck paying the bills
Ummm...I think Nokia, who now owns Trolltech, will be paying their bills.
Well, I have to admit I had the same concern when I read this story. If they're decreasing their push to get people to buy commercial licenses, and if the whole Qt business is now insignificant relative to the overall business of Nokia anyway, then how strong will their commitment to future development and maintenance of Qt be?
Not like I can see the future or anything, it just concerns me a little.
Admittedly, it's sort of a knee-jerk reaction to be suggesting statistical analysis as the solution to every problem - particularly when it's not even assured that the currently-available sample size will be adequate to provide useful data - but it is nevertheless a popular reaction.
You can count on it. In five years an OLED screen may well be a couple of bucks.
But you won't be getting it from Sony. The PS3 is being eaten alive in the market, and pretty much every analyst agrees that it's because it costs twice what its competitors cost.
Sony's response?
They removed PS2 backwards compatibility from the PS3.
I wasn't too thrilled about that, or about the fact that they cut the number of USB ports on the machine... But in the end I don't think it was necessarily worth the cost to keep that PS2 hardware in the PS3. If removing PS2 hardware helped them to bring the cost of the PS3 out of the stratosphere (barely) then I think it was worth it.
Backwards compatibility? Xbox 360, Wii. Not PS3.
Now hold on... The 360 supports a limited subset of the original XBox's game library, through software emulation - same as the PS3. (Though I guess some models of PS3 don't even have the software emulation...)
And the PS3 does support PS1 games. That's pretty "backward".:D
Innovative downloadable titles? Xbox 360 with XNA, Wii with WiiWare. PS3? Nothing.)
PS3 has downloadable titles. I guess it all depends on what you consider "innovative".
I guess there's not a downloadable title that I'd say is as enjoyably "innovative" as "World of Goo" on the Wii... But "World of Goo" is kind of the exception in that it's "innovative", downloadable, and fun. LBP is innovative and fun... Street Fighter HD is downloadable and fun (but not innovative)... Mega Man 9 is also downloadable and fun (but not innovative). How "innovative" and fun are, for instance, "Beer Pong" or "Major League Eating"? Some Wiiware is just junk. I wouldn't rate it higher than, for instance, EchoChrome (or PS Home, for that matter) on the PS3.
I agree, something that really pisses me off is people who use torches outside at night.
A few weeks ago me and some mates took a shortcut through the cemetery, the place is huge so it makes allot more sense to walk through than to walk a few miles around the outside. Some of my mates kept using small key ring torches of course they ignore my advice that it is better to simply not use them, like all humans they ignore logic and a few of them managed to walk into low hung tree branches, trip on solid objects and a variety of other things. I walked about 100meters ahead of them and could see as clear as day the whole way through without injuring myself.
Well, it's different in a cemetery - what with all the voices of the unrestful dead whispering to you. It really all depends on whether you disturb them, whether they will guide you truly or lead you astray.
Elsewhere, it's better to rely on your own senses.
Just make the light so bright it blinds everyone. If criminals can't see through the burned-out husks that were once their eyes, they can't commit crime! The number of wailing people stumbling around aimlessly, bleeding profusely from the face, will undoubtedly increase somewhat. Small price to pay.:-P
Yeah, but then we'll all become slaves to our new, one-eyed masters.
Nothing provides help for criminals like a poorly designed streetlight that provides strong cover shadows while blinding would-be crime watchers. Most super bright nighttime lighting does exactly this. People like you who think any light is a good light are part of the problem, both for crime and seeing the stars.
C'mon. If nobody's watching, then all a streetlight does is let the criminal see what he's doing.
Do you think turning Jupiter into a small star could solve the problem?
Perhaps the rest of you could finally kill each other off so I can enjoy the night sky. Its a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
Yeah, but then you'd go and drop your thick prescription glasses, which would shatter into a million pieces and you wouldn't be able to see your precious night sky - and I bet then you'll wish that everybody killing each other off hadn't included your local Lenscrafters!
- I'm also confused by their campaign choice, let's stop light pollution cause it's so.. beautiful!
It's kind of a capital-A Art thing...
Basically, you want to put a bunch of focus on this problem, and what sort of effects it has. But to draw people in, the parts of the problem you examine have to be compelling somehow. Meanwhile, as side-effects of this problem there's all kinds of unique effects which can get the "found art" treatment...
People see the pretty pictures, and hopefully take the time to read about what's wrong with 'em. I guess that's the idea.
Meh, the software catalog was always a bit limited. I mean, OK, they had Bonk's Adventure - but how does that measure up against the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Brothers, or Rockman?
I think it says a lot about society when maturity and violence are assumed to go hand in hand.
This is more about the opposite situation - feeling like we're being shielded from these themes because it's assumed we're not mature enough to handle them. I hate that.
Oh, and this is also the game where everybody in town rags on you if you don't play for a while - and you have to do a bunch of chores like pulling weeds and stuff...
I found it fun for a while, actually - but eventually I found I didn't like feeling obligated to play frequently, particularly according to a particular schedule, in order to get ahead.
Uh...there are plenty of violent games on Wii, check this thread if you had any doubts. Madworld might be right up your alley.
Personally, I don't think "blood and guts" equates to "mature," it sounds more like angsty teenagers trying to act mature, but whatever.
But, on the other hand, a game that goes out of its way to avoid those themes gives the impression that the designers have no confidence in the audience being mature enough to handle it. Likewise for sex.
I can think of exactly one on the Wii: Wii Sports. None for the other systems, true, but Nintendo's offering isn't pushing the bounds of gameplay or something. It's taking existing gameplay and just putting a new spin on it. It's just like the DS. I have yet to play the DS game that uses the touchscreen in some awesome, revolutionary way (despite the "innovation" people praise). All the Wii has, besides the pack-in, is stuff like Metroid Prime 3, which has some really nice touches with the new controls, but the fundamentals are all old hat.
Well, here's my take on how things went down on the DS...
On the one hand, there's always been a fair deal of "innovative controls" games - titles that have you constantly drawing things or whatever - to me, it's fun to experiment with these titles sometimes, to see what people can come up with to effectively use those controls...
On the other hand, there's titles that are basically just regular games like you might see on any other platform - they may not use the touchscreen at all, or they may use it in a strictly "bolted-on" sense... Among these are those games where the touchscreen controls aren't strictly necessary, but you receive artificial incentives for doing so (for instance, being able to do use the force in Lego Star Wars - either by holding down the "A" button for three seconds, or by scribbling on the touchscreen with your thumb for half a second...)
But then, in the middle, there's stuff that's not necessarily innovative in any noticeable way - but which uses the available features effectively. For instance, I think Elite Beat Agents (and, of course, its predecessor Ouendan) is one of the most fun rhythm games I've played, in large part because of its use of the touchscreen. Then there's stuff like Advance Wars, or the various graphical adventure games for the DS - the way those games use the touchscreen is pretty much a no-brainer, but it's very handy for that type of game, certainly a big improvement over a D-pad or analog stick. And then there's Metroid and Starfox - those games just use the screen as a replacement for a mouse or analog joystick... I found the mouse-look-ish controls in Metroid to be very nice. The Starfox controls were maybe more of a compromise - not as good as an analog stick, I'd say, but better than a D-pad and a good use of the screen.
The last group turned out to be what I enjoy most about the touchscreen on the DS. Not the "Holy crap, that's a touchscreen game!" kind of gimmicky releases (though I am still interested in those) - just the plain old effective uses of the touchscreen.
Wii could turn out the same way, in the end. I've played a few different Wii Controller-oriented games - I've enjoyed 'em but mostly I play more conventional stuff. I am interested to see what people can come up with in terms of interesting use of the controller, but mostly what I'm looking forward to are the games where the use of the controller is less experimental and gimmicky, more practical.
On the other hand, there's no reason there couldn't be a good Wii GTA, except that it would be much more disturbing than other console versions. In ordinary GTA games, your character does all sorts of bad things while you sit around pushing buttons on a controller. In a proper Wii version, you'd be miming doing the bad things yourself, which will seem a whole lot worse.
Well, there's a version of Bully for Wii - the main "immersive" aspect is fighting (motion controls for throwing punches) - other than that the controls don't make a significant difference. I had a lot of fun with it, personally.
I'm sorry... what? I don't see how that's a reasonable choice at all.
The 32-bit Linux kernel cannot efficiently handle more than 1 GB RAM. Linus Torvalds himself is outspoken on this subject and recommends using a 64-bit kernel with more than 1 GB (alas, I can't find the reference right now, but he has written many times on the subject in RealWorledTech.com's forums).
Here, I was real curious about this issue, so I looked it up:
Basically, when a system has more than 1GB of memory, the kernel can't directly map all physical RAM into its own address space (because 3GB of the virtual address space is reserved for applications...) - which makes certain operations more complex than they need to be. The kernel needs to take some extra steps when dealing with more than 1GB of physical RAM when exchanging memory addresses between different modules, for instance... The problem gets worse as you go beyond 4GB RAM and have to deal with PAE, etc...
You can get around that by changing the amount of virtual address space reserved for the kernel vs. user space - for instance a 2GB kernel/2GB user split of virtual address space on a system with 2GB RAM, or 3GB kernel/1GB user split on a system with 3GB RAM - but of course that's not ideal as it limits how much virtual memory (RAM + swap, etc.) is available to user processes...
On the other hand, using 64-bit in userspace is pointless for most users. Most applications don't need more than 3GB of RAM. Also, there are binary plugins, etc, which only work in 32-bit.
I don't know that I agree with that. Among other things, in x86-64 there are twice as many general-purpose registers. This makes it a lot easier for GCC to optimize compiled code effectively. Additionally the other features present on modern processes can be safely taken as assumptions by the compiler and standard libraries. The binary-only problem isn't as bad as it used to be, either - video drivers are available in 64-bit, flash is available in 64-bit, Java is available in 64-bit... I just recently built a new system and I decided to go fully 64-bit - I think it's worth it, and so far there's been only minimal difficulty. I guess the main disadvantage of a 64-bit userspace is the increased size of pointers and std::size_t, etc. using more RAM. To me the tradeoff would be worth it.
64-bit kernel and 32-bit userspace is the most efficient and practical choice for the vast majority of users.
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It's great news for everyone, except for Trolltech. Good luck paying the bills
Ummm...I think Nokia, who now owns Trolltech, will be paying their bills.
Well, I have to admit I had the same concern when I read this story. If they're decreasing their push to get people to buy commercial licenses, and if the whole Qt business is now insignificant relative to the overall business of Nokia anyway, then how strong will their commitment to future development and maintenance of Qt be?
Not like I can see the future or anything, it just concerns me a little.
Umm... what does it abbreviate?
"Statistical Analysis!"
Admittedly, it's sort of a knee-jerk reaction to be suggesting statistical analysis as the solution to every problem - particularly when it's not even assured that the currently-available sample size will be adequate to provide useful data - but it is nevertheless a popular reaction.
it means (in their opinion) as technology advances, worthwhile content decreases
OK, so how does one interpret these sorts of codes, anyway? What can I learn from this instance that will allow me to understand the next one?
You can count on it. In five years an OLED screen may well be a couple of bucks.
But you won't be getting it from Sony. The PS3 is being eaten alive in the market, and pretty much every analyst agrees that it's because it costs twice what its competitors cost.
Sony's response?
They removed PS2 backwards compatibility from the PS3.
I wasn't too thrilled about that, or about the fact that they cut the number of USB ports on the machine... But in the end I don't think it was necessarily worth the cost to keep that PS2 hardware in the PS3. If removing PS2 hardware helped them to bring the cost of the PS3 out of the stratosphere (barely) then I think it was worth it.
Backwards compatibility? Xbox 360, Wii. Not PS3.
Now hold on... The 360 supports a limited subset of the original XBox's game library, through software emulation - same as the PS3. (Though I guess some models of PS3 don't even have the software emulation...)
And the PS3 does support PS1 games. That's pretty "backward". :D
Innovative downloadable titles? Xbox 360 with XNA, Wii with WiiWare. PS3? Nothing.)
PS3 has downloadable titles. I guess it all depends on what you consider "innovative".
I guess there's not a downloadable title that I'd say is as enjoyably "innovative" as "World of Goo" on the Wii... But "World of Goo" is kind of the exception in that it's "innovative", downloadable, and fun. LBP is innovative and fun... Street Fighter HD is downloadable and fun (but not innovative)... Mega Man 9 is also downloadable and fun (but not innovative). How "innovative" and fun are, for instance, "Beer Pong" or "Major League Eating"? Some Wiiware is just junk. I wouldn't rate it higher than, for instance, EchoChrome (or PS Home, for that matter) on the PS3.
TV technology ->+
TV content -<+
What the hell does that even mean?
"Nyah, nyah, 3-D Playstation 3... Yo' momma had a card reader, and enough USB ports for everyone to hook up..."
Blinding your self with a torch so you can't see the graves is a sure way to end up walking into one.
I don't doubt it. But there's the whole voices of the dead thing to consider. They speak to you, tell you to... do things... Things that aren't right!
All you need is a cassette tape drive and 40 minute load times to complete the feeling.
Bah! You didn't need the tape drive for a 40-minute load time - in some cases you could get that from the C64 floppy, too...
Dumb dur-heads, crippling the peripheral bus to keep it VIC-20-compatible...
two computers.
RAPE RAPE RAPE
Krauser-san raped time itself and became Abraham Lincoln??!?
I agree, something that really pisses me off is people who use torches outside at night.
A few weeks ago me and some mates took a shortcut through the cemetery, the place is huge so it makes allot more sense to walk through than to walk a few miles around the outside. Some of my mates kept using small key ring torches of course they ignore my advice that it is better to simply not use them, like all humans they ignore logic and a few of them managed to walk into low hung tree branches, trip on solid objects and a variety of other things. I walked about 100meters ahead of them and could see as clear as day the whole way through without injuring myself.
Well, it's different in a cemetery - what with all the voices of the unrestful dead whispering to you. It really all depends on whether you disturb them, whether they will guide you truly or lead you astray.
Elsewhere, it's better to rely on your own senses.
Just make the light so bright it blinds everyone. If criminals can't see through the burned-out husks that were once their eyes, they can't commit crime! The number of wailing people stumbling around aimlessly, bleeding profusely from the face, will undoubtedly increase somewhat. Small price to pay. :-P
Yeah, but then we'll all become slaves to our new, one-eyed masters.
Nothing provides help for criminals like a poorly designed streetlight that provides strong cover shadows while blinding would-be crime watchers. Most super bright nighttime lighting does exactly this. People like you who think any light is a good light are part of the problem, both for crime and seeing the stars.
C'mon. If nobody's watching, then all a streetlight does is let the criminal see what he's doing.
Do you think turning Jupiter into a small star could solve the problem?
Perhaps the rest of you could finally kill each other off so I can enjoy the night sky. Its a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
Yeah, but then you'd go and drop your thick prescription glasses, which would shatter into a million pieces and you wouldn't be able to see your precious night sky - and I bet then you'll wish that everybody killing each other off hadn't included your local Lenscrafters!
- I'm also confused by their campaign choice, let's stop light pollution cause it's so.. beautiful!
It's kind of a capital-A Art thing...
Basically, you want to put a bunch of focus on this problem, and what sort of effects it has. But to draw people in, the parts of the problem you examine have to be compelling somehow. Meanwhile, as side-effects of this problem there's all kinds of unique effects which can get the "found art" treatment...
People see the pretty pictures, and hopefully take the time to read about what's wrong with 'em. I guess that's the idea.
I'd be rather surprised if "ping 192.168.1.20" resulted in trying to ping 192.168.1.200. Might want to check your network settings or something.
That was the auto-complete feature. :D
PC Engines are another option.
Meh, the software catalog was always a bit limited. I mean, OK, they had Bonk's Adventure - but how does that measure up against the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Brothers, or Rockman?
Obligatory XKCD...
I think it says a lot about society when maturity and violence are assumed to go hand in hand.
This is more about the opposite situation - feeling like we're being shielded from these themes because it's assumed we're not mature enough to handle them. I hate that.
Oh, and this is also the game where everybody in town rags on you if you don't play for a while - and you have to do a bunch of chores like pulling weeds and stuff...
I found it fun for a while, actually - but eventually I found I didn't like feeling obligated to play frequently, particularly according to a particular schedule, in order to get ahead.
Uh...there are plenty of violent games on Wii, check this thread if you had any doubts. Madworld might be right up your alley.
Personally, I don't think "blood and guts" equates to "mature," it sounds more like angsty teenagers trying to act mature, but whatever.
But, on the other hand, a game that goes out of its way to avoid those themes gives the impression that the designers have no confidence in the audience being mature enough to handle it. Likewise for sex.
I can think of exactly one on the Wii: Wii Sports. None for the other systems, true, but Nintendo's offering isn't pushing the bounds of gameplay or something. It's taking existing gameplay and just putting a new spin on it. It's just like the DS. I have yet to play the DS game that uses the touchscreen in some awesome, revolutionary way (despite the "innovation" people praise). All the Wii has, besides the pack-in, is stuff like Metroid Prime 3, which has some really nice touches with the new controls, but the fundamentals are all old hat.
Well, here's my take on how things went down on the DS...
On the one hand, there's always been a fair deal of "innovative controls" games - titles that have you constantly drawing things or whatever - to me, it's fun to experiment with these titles sometimes, to see what people can come up with to effectively use those controls...
On the other hand, there's titles that are basically just regular games like you might see on any other platform - they may not use the touchscreen at all, or they may use it in a strictly "bolted-on" sense... Among these are those games where the touchscreen controls aren't strictly necessary, but you receive artificial incentives for doing so (for instance, being able to do use the force in Lego Star Wars - either by holding down the "A" button for three seconds, or by scribbling on the touchscreen with your thumb for half a second...)
But then, in the middle, there's stuff that's not necessarily innovative in any noticeable way - but which uses the available features effectively. For instance, I think Elite Beat Agents (and, of course, its predecessor Ouendan) is one of the most fun rhythm games I've played, in large part because of its use of the touchscreen. Then there's stuff like Advance Wars, or the various graphical adventure games for the DS - the way those games use the touchscreen is pretty much a no-brainer, but it's very handy for that type of game, certainly a big improvement over a D-pad or analog stick. And then there's Metroid and Starfox - those games just use the screen as a replacement for a mouse or analog joystick... I found the mouse-look-ish controls in Metroid to be very nice. The Starfox controls were maybe more of a compromise - not as good as an analog stick, I'd say, but better than a D-pad and a good use of the screen.
The last group turned out to be what I enjoy most about the touchscreen on the DS. Not the "Holy crap, that's a touchscreen game!" kind of gimmicky releases (though I am still interested in those) - just the plain old effective uses of the touchscreen.
Wii could turn out the same way, in the end. I've played a few different Wii Controller-oriented games - I've enjoyed 'em but mostly I play more conventional stuff. I am interested to see what people can come up with in terms of interesting use of the controller, but mostly what I'm looking forward to are the games where the use of the controller is less experimental and gimmicky, more practical.
On the other hand, there's no reason there couldn't be a good Wii GTA, except that it would be much more disturbing than other console versions. In ordinary GTA games, your character does all sorts of bad things while you sit around pushing buttons on a controller. In a proper Wii version, you'd be miming doing the bad things yourself, which will seem a whole lot worse.
Well, there's a version of Bully for Wii - the main "immersive" aspect is fighting (motion controls for throwing punches) - other than that the controls don't make a significant difference. I had a lot of fun with it, personally.
Not that there was much humor in there to begin with I guess.
Yeah, sometimes the jokes are funny - other times they are not. I can't claim a perfect success rate, but I have fun... :D
The 32-bit Linux kernel cannot efficiently handle more than 1 GB RAM. Linus Torvalds himself is outspoken on this subject and recommends using a 64-bit kernel with more than 1 GB (alas, I can't find the reference right now, but he has written many times on the subject in RealWorledTech.com's forums).
Here, I was real curious about this issue, so I looked it up:
http://linux-mm.org/HighMemory
Basically, when a system has more than 1GB of memory, the kernel can't directly map all physical RAM into its own address space (because 3GB of the virtual address space is reserved for applications...) - which makes certain operations more complex than they need to be. The kernel needs to take some extra steps when dealing with more than 1GB of physical RAM when exchanging memory addresses between different modules, for instance... The problem gets worse as you go beyond 4GB RAM and have to deal with PAE, etc...
You can get around that by changing the amount of virtual address space reserved for the kernel vs. user space - for instance a 2GB kernel/2GB user split of virtual address space on a system with 2GB RAM, or 3GB kernel/1GB user split on a system with 3GB RAM - but of course that's not ideal as it limits how much virtual memory (RAM + swap, etc.) is available to user processes...
On the other hand, using 64-bit in userspace is pointless for most users. Most applications don't need more than 3GB of RAM. Also, there are binary plugins, etc, which only work in 32-bit.
I don't know that I agree with that. Among other things, in x86-64 there are twice as many general-purpose registers. This makes it a lot easier for GCC to optimize compiled code effectively. Additionally the other features present on modern processes can be safely taken as assumptions by the compiler and standard libraries. The binary-only problem isn't as bad as it used to be, either - video drivers are available in 64-bit, flash is available in 64-bit, Java is available in 64-bit... I just recently built a new system and I decided to go fully 64-bit - I think it's worth it, and so far there's been only minimal difficulty. I guess the main disadvantage of a 64-bit userspace is the increased size of pointers and std::size_t, etc. using more RAM. To me the tradeoff would be worth it.
64-bit kernel and 32-bit userspace is the most efficient and practical choice for the vast majority of users.