Seconded: as a game dev using XNA is a breeze, and being able to port games directly to Windows and the XBox 360 means that for an indie developer you get access to three huge markets with little to no modification!
Lol, you have no clue, do you? A gaming library is a very complicated piece of software where a correct implementation is as important as a fast implementation. This means a lot of stuff that is very specific to the hardware on which the code will run. If it were this simple, a compatible implementation would already be there; the reason why it isn't is that such a library is full of nasty stuff like quaternions (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb281611(VS.85).aspx) and worse. This means that to implement something like DirectX you need developers who are great developers capable of writing very low-level code that directly accesses the underlying hardware (be it CPU instruction sets or GPU operations) and good mathematicians who understand the mathematical nuisances of computer-approximated algebra.
There is exactly one DirectX in the world. If some other entity shows that it is possible to undertake such a powerful development effort without being a company that throws lots of money to the problem, then I will be very glad.
And OpenGL is a graphics rendering system, not a gaming library, so the two are not easily compared without taking into account a fuckload of input, audio, networking and loop/windows management additional libraries.
It's the kind of thing that helps keep Windows from having to compete on its merits
But those are its merits. Having a clean and well implemented gaming API where gaming is highly desirable for many people is a merit! What is stopping you, or anybody, from downloading the latest DX SDK and reimplementing it in *nix? Just that it's a damn huge amount of absolutely non trivial work. Add to that work the complexity of designing it in the first place, and you get why it is a major strong point of Windows.
Also, game developers are not idiots and do not care the least bit about Microsoft. DX is chosen instead of cross-platform libraries simply because it works well and is consistently implemented well by good quality drivers for practically all modern graphics cards. No game developer in their right mind would ever wish to have a chance to "create/use/improve" other tools just because those are cross-platform. Gamedev is a damn hard business in itself, and the better the API the less ginormous an undertaking making a game becomes.
Yes, why should DX be considered awful? Many game devs choose it because it is a generally well documented API which evolves quickly and with hardware.
If there is one thing Microsoft has been doing well in the last decade is game libraries: between DX >= 7 and XNA it feels like there are alternatives but not opponents...
There's this company in Italy that I believe has nailed just the right policy: you pay a monthly fee of about 9 euros and you get 1GB high speed Internet. Should you download more than 1GB, your browsing speed will slowly decrease so that you do not weigh too much on the network.
This way you get a limited amount of videos, music, large downloads but you are never left without access to the essentials like email...
Never said it was Java's fault, it's just that in C/C++ the type of a reference/pointer to something is syntactically different than the type of a value to the same thing:
C c(...);
C *c = new C(...);
this makes Java responsible for blurring the distinction maybe a bit too much; if have you ever discussed programming with someone who started coding in Java, then you know what I mean:)
PS: I love Java and its sibling, C#, so don't get me wrong!
Ha! There's a mistake coming from the Java culture of our days. In C/C++ (and indeed in.Net) there is a difference between value and reference, and an object is not the same as a reference to that object. This said, the reference is actually capable of acting transparently as a proxy to the object itself, but this does not make it identical to the object (indeed, they even have different types!).
The particular idiocy of the above poster is that he is thinking about aliases (references, pointers, however you want to call them). Philosophers are simply stating that in something like C/C++, you cannot write:
struct T {
T has_A;
};
3D graphics and shaders would be highly compatible in *nix?
Have you ever tried porting even a trivial 3d application that makes use of advanced features and seen it halting to a crawl or nor working properly on the right hardware because driver support was a mess? I have (gamedev here), and it's not pretty.
Coding your own game might be a good analogy: I don't like the game made or the conditions associated with playing it so I rolled out my own, but obtaining it illegally is not related to "learning some medicine" or "building your own ferrari".
Also keep in mind that no matter what, gaming is something you do to enrich your life, not to survive. It is ridiculous that people are so self-entitled to everything they *like*, not even *need*, that they do not accept that it is the publisher and the developer of the game who rightfully set price and rules for their product and if those conditions are found unacceptable you simply don't buy and play the game. What the fuck, the message you guys are sending is "I want it, but I don't want to pay for it, so I will take it if I can"? Really, if this is what educated and civilized people reason then we are in shit neck-high.
You don't read too, apparently. IT DEPRIVES THEM OF THE VALUE OF THEIR TIME.
When I play a game, read a book or watch a movie, my existence gets a tad richer. I experience alternate worlds and interesting personal tales (to a degree) and this is something very valuable. Producing a coherent world is a very costly enterprise, one that requires lots of time and effort and talent. Generalize your dumb argument and imagine that nobody pays for ANY of these goods. Then NOBODY will produce them anymore because their value goes to zero, apart from amateur productions with unbalanced storylines and awful art and effects. Really, is this so hard to understand?
On a side note, your dumb argument implies that doctors should work for free (well, if you don't pay the doctor you aren't really stealing from you, are you?), architects too, engineers, software developers, teachers, etc. Really?
When will people learn? The important things about teaching are, in order:
the willingness of the student to put time and effort in learning
the intelligence of the student with respect to the particular subject
the interest and ability of the teacher
the tools used to teach
Blackboard and chalk have been fine for decades and replacing those is simply not as important.
Clearly, but my point is that math is a far larger field than is usually understood and at its foundation it is no more than structured reasoning. My answer to "How Much Math Do We Really Need?" is "lots", but maybe we should reconsider studying different (more fundamental) branches of maths rather than calculus and its surroundings.
Math is important for understanding why math is important. Which in turn allows you to see that math is important for being able to reason in a structured and abstract way about the world.
Many people confuse math with arithmethic, algebra, trigonometry and calculus because these were all labeled math when they were students. Nothing could be farther from the truth. At its foundation, math is very closely tied with logic in that it is deductive rather than inductive, and you use it to prove complex assertions by stitching together smaller components you already know are true. The fact that with this system you can go on and prove the validity of the theoretical tools that you use to build a bridge that stays up or to make an airplane that flies or even to understand the best way to invest your own money is what makes math not only important but also amazing...
...and the topic is interesting. This said, I am starting to find the Internet a less pleasant place to be day after day. All the dynamism somehow makes the experience more stressful, and whenever I am just looking for some plain information I feel "bombed" with banners, moving stuff, colors, etc.
To the point that I ended up working with a computer disconnected from the Internet to keep focused and relaxed.
The Internet is becoming more and more entertainment and less and less focused processing of information. I am not sure it is a great improvement!
You are not really changing the nature of MS monopoly, you are just changing the logo. There are ways to break the monopoly, but I believe this is not even one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Seconded: as a game dev using XNA is a breeze, and being able to port games directly to Windows and the XBox 360 means that for an indie developer you get access to three huge markets with little to no modification!
Lol, you have no clue, do you? A gaming library is a very complicated piece of software where a correct implementation is as important as a fast implementation. This means a lot of stuff that is very specific to the hardware on which the code will run. If it were this simple, a compatible implementation would already be there; the reason why it isn't is that such a library is full of nasty stuff like quaternions (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb281611(VS.85).aspx) and worse. This means that to implement something like DirectX you need developers who are great developers capable of writing very low-level code that directly accesses the underlying hardware (be it CPU instruction sets or GPU operations) and good mathematicians who understand the mathematical nuisances of computer-approximated algebra.
There is exactly one DirectX in the world. If some other entity shows that it is possible to undertake such a powerful development effort without being a company that throws lots of money to the problem, then I will be very glad.
And OpenGL is a graphics rendering system, not a gaming library, so the two are not easily compared without taking into account a fuckload of input, audio, networking and loop/windows management additional libraries.
It's the kind of thing that helps keep Windows from having to compete on its merits
But those are its merits. Having a clean and well implemented gaming API where gaming is highly desirable for many people is a merit! What is stopping you, or anybody, from downloading the latest DX SDK and reimplementing it in *nix? Just that it's a damn huge amount of absolutely non trivial work. Add to that work the complexity of designing it in the first place, and you get why it is a major strong point of Windows.
Also, game developers are not idiots and do not care the least bit about Microsoft. DX is chosen instead of cross-platform libraries simply because it works well and is consistently implemented well by good quality drivers for practically all modern graphics cards. No game developer in their right mind would ever wish to have a chance to "create/use/improve" other tools just because those are cross-platform. Gamedev is a damn hard business in itself, and the better the API the less ginormous an undertaking making a game becomes.
Yes, why should DX be considered awful? Many game devs choose it because it is a generally well documented API which evolves quickly and with hardware.
If there is one thing Microsoft has been doing well in the last decade is game libraries: between DX >= 7 and XNA it feels like there are alternatives but not opponents...
There's this company in Italy that I believe has nailed just the right policy: you pay a monthly fee of about 9 euros and you get 1GB high speed Internet. Should you download more than 1GB, your browsing speed will slowly decrease so that you do not weigh too much on the network.
This way you get a limited amount of videos, music, large downloads but you are never left without access to the essentials like email...
Never said it was Java's fault, it's just that in C/C++ the type of a reference/pointer to something is syntactically different than the type of a value to the same thing:
:)
C c(...);
C *c = new C(...);
this makes Java responsible for blurring the distinction maybe a bit too much; if have you ever discussed programming with someone who started coding in Java, then you know what I mean
PS: I love Java and its sibling, C#, so don't get me wrong!
Ha! There's a mistake coming from the Java culture of our days. In C/C++ (and indeed in .Net) there is a difference between value and reference, and an object is not the same as a reference to that object. This said, the reference is actually capable of acting transparently as a proxy to the object itself, but this does not make it identical to the object (indeed, they even have different types!).
The particular idiocy of the above poster is that he is thinking about aliases (references, pointers, however you want to call them). Philosophers are simply stating that in something like C/C++, you cannot write:
struct T {
T has_A;
};
Adding driver versions to system requirements would be ridiculous. Needs Nvidia Driver Version X on Nvidia Card Version Y?
3D graphics and shaders would be highly compatible in *nix?
Have you ever tried porting even a trivial 3d application that makes use of advanced features and seen it halting to a crawl or nor working properly on the right hardware because driver support was a mess? I have (gamedev here), and it's not pretty.
Google Earth is really beautiful. And really pointless. With trees it's even more beautiful. And even more pointless.
Bah.
...no official figures, no official declarations, no after-holiday-season data, no actual news.
I understand this is slashdot, but come on. Criticism sticks better if it is documented, otherwise it's just another form of shilling.
Coding your own game might be a good analogy: I don't like the game made or the conditions associated with playing it so I rolled out my own, but obtaining it illegally is not related to "learning some medicine" or "building your own ferrari".
Also keep in mind that no matter what, gaming is something you do to enrich your life, not to survive. It is ridiculous that people are so self-entitled to everything they *like*, not even *need*, that they do not accept that it is the publisher and the developer of the game who rightfully set price and rules for their product and if those conditions are found unacceptable you simply don't buy and play the game. What the fuck, the message you guys are sending is "I want it, but I don't want to pay for it, so I will take it if I can"? Really, if this is what educated and civilized people reason then we are in shit neck-high.
You don't read too, apparently. IT DEPRIVES THEM OF THE VALUE OF THEIR TIME.
When I play a game, read a book or watch a movie, my existence gets a tad richer. I experience alternate worlds and interesting personal tales (to a degree) and this is something very valuable. Producing a coherent world is a very costly enterprise, one that requires lots of time and effort and talent. Generalize your dumb argument and imagine that nobody pays for ANY of these goods. Then NOBODY will produce them anymore because their value goes to zero, apart from amateur productions with unbalanced storylines and awful art and effects. Really, is this so hard to understand?
On a side note, your dumb argument implies that doctors should work for free (well, if you don't pay the doctor you aren't really stealing from you, are you?), architects too, engineers, software developers, teachers, etc. Really?
Neural implants? :)
When will people learn? The important things about teaching are, in order:
the willingness of the student to put time and effort in learning
the intelligence of the student with respect to the particular subject
the interest and ability of the teacher
the tools used to teach
Blackboard and chalk have been fine for decades and replacing those is simply not as important.
...larger pipes cost more to maintain :)
After 25 years? I'm having trouble getting the point of this story...
Would be even cooler if we could have similar computer inside CELLPHONES!!! Oh, wait...
Clearly, but my point is that math is a far larger field than is usually understood and at its foundation it is no more than structured reasoning. My answer to "How Much Math Do We Really Need?" is "lots", but maybe we should reconsider studying different (more fundamental) branches of maths rather than calculus and its surroundings.
Math is important for understanding why math is important. Which in turn allows you to see that math is important for being able to reason in a structured and abstract way about the world. Many people confuse math with arithmethic, algebra, trigonometry and calculus because these were all labeled math when they were students. Nothing could be farther from the truth. At its foundation, math is very closely tied with logic in that it is deductive rather than inductive, and you use it to prove complex assertions by stitching together smaller components you already know are true. The fact that with this system you can go on and prove the validity of the theoretical tools that you use to build a bridge that stays up or to make an airplane that flies or even to understand the best way to invest your own money is what makes math not only important but also amazing...
You might wanna ask the retailer?
...and the topic is interesting. This said, I am starting to find the Internet a less pleasant place to be day after day. All the dynamism somehow makes the experience more stressful, and whenever I am just looking for some plain information I feel "bombed" with banners, moving stuff, colors, etc. To the point that I ended up working with a computer disconnected from the Internet to keep focused and relaxed. The Internet is becoming more and more entertainment and less and less focused processing of information. I am not sure it is a great improvement!
...or against MS, but how is a disc-shaped D-pad and grey buttons "news" (for nerds or otherwise)?
You are not really changing the nature of MS monopoly, you are just changing the logo. There are ways to break the monopoly, but I believe this is not even one of them.