You'll have to define "gameplay". Personally, I assume it's something that I find fun and lots of people have found Minecraft "fun" for a long time now. Your definition must be different than mine.
You made some good points, but just to be a devil's advocate...
The whole point of trademark is so customers don't get confused. If I go to a *.xxx site, I would expect porn. If someone went to Hooters.xxx and found the actual Hooters restaurant site, they would be miss-led and confused.
One could go so far to say that ANY site using a trademark on *.xxx would be expected to be a parody site for non-porn related trademarks, and a non-parody site would cause confusion.
Domains like "xxx" are privately owned. Anyone can make any domain they want as long as they're willing to fork money over for it. Why should private companies be forced to sell their domain space for $10 because someone purchased a similar domain name from another company?
University. Best part is not worrying about audits. We had an unlimited licence for all the MS products we used. Our little 8 man team installed about 100 new computers per year mostly during the 2-3 months after the fiscal year restarted, and retire the older computers out of the system. That meant a large portion of our 800 computer install base got shuffled every year as we did hand-me-downs.
During peak, each one of us would be turning over about 3-5 computers per day plus service calls for printer/network/etc problems. We could have done probably more on average if we didn't have to walk and move computer by foot around the campus.
We had fast computer turn over. Quite streamlined.
We still had time to yourtube/facebook and we didn't work overtime.
Reinstalling windows is something you did back with 9x and sometimes with XP.
I do agree with updates taking up some time, but you don't have to apply all of them.
With changes to Windows 8 that allow ~8 sec from power button cold boots and nearly as fast shutdowns, I'm hoping for sub 30sec restarts for Windows Updates. Still annoying to close your current programs though.
Dual booting? As long as it doesn't require restarting my computer. My computer only gets restarted for 3 things: Windows updates, Power outages, and Hardware upgrades. Otherwise it runs 24/7 without a hick-up.
I have a few semi-requirements for my desktop.
1) Rarely have to restart, only for maintenance 2) My games and daily applications must run side-by-side 3) I can play games Day 1 of release 4) I can take advantage of my $300 graphics card 5) Runs Steam transparently, not setup/config/etc. 6) I get about 100+ fps in almost every game with graphics quality cranked, which I do get with Windows
When Linux can get close to mostly doing those, I'm sold. Doesn't have to be perfect. I'm an early adopter when it comes to graphics.
Linux will need high performance stable graphics drivers for the newest of cards, transparent installation and configuration of Windows Apps, and DX11+ support. Last I heard, DX11 should be easy to emulate in Wine and Wine developers were saying DX11 is better/easier than OpenGL.
From what I've read, Linux is on its way towards this goal. DX11 support was being worked on a while back, but lack of DX11 titles, hardware, and opensource drivers has slowed this down. Hopefully development will pick up as these things become more standard. And ATI opensource drivers are starting to take off.
All we need is OpenGL to support true multithreading for rendering commands. Last I heard there were no plans for this as OpenGL is not actually targeted towards games, but they never said they won't.
" Sure it may be bad drivers, but the fact they can *still* cause problems is not a good thing."
Drivers run at Kernel level. There is NOTHING the OS can do to keep a bad driver from crashing the OS. Same with Linux and any other OS.
You can do some things to help lessen the chance of a crash, like allow some of the driver code to run in user land and let only the code parts that need to talk to the hardware actually run in kernel, but Win7 already does this.
If you're seeing BSODs in Win7, you have crappy drivers and/or crappy hardware, or failing hardware. Hard to blame the OS. I had about 6 months of up-time with Win7 RTM(no patches) before I rebooted for Windows Updates.
Last time I had a BSOD with Windows: 8+ years ago Last time I had a virus/malware: 10+ years ago
The only time I reinstall Windows is when a new version comes out.
Working with Windows in IT for 2.5 years, the only problems I had were when there was something wrong with the hardware. We could re-image a computer and have all the settings/data restored in under 1 hour and sometimes under 30min with a faster computer.
We had 8 people managing about 800 windows machines and that include installs, tech support, upgrades, printer installs, networking, etc. We handled almost everything during the life cycle of a given machine. The end users had admin access to their machines and open internet. We had a lot of free time because it was so easy. I can count how many times I had to fix/remove Malware/Virii on one hand.
Working with Windows is fine if you know what you're doing and have the tools.
Linux/etc is a lot more strait forward though. So I'm not saying Windows is better, but it's not as bad as you make it out to be.
I don't know about other people, but I'll easily spent a 10% mark-up for a local product because 1) Get it NOW 2) Returning is much easier 3) Try it out (if applies)
But most of the time it isn't about price, it's about selection.
"It really doesn't matter how many gazillions of addresses IPv6 makes available, you will only get one. Addresses are a commodity, to be leased for a profit." "Can you think of any reason they can't implement exactly the same limits with IPv6 that they currently have with IPv4?"
I can. Every OS/Router assumes you have full access to AT LEAST a/64 or WILL BREAK. So.. yes, ISPs will give you at least/64s if they want IPv6 to work with any major OS.
Nearly all of Bill Gate's money will be going to charity once he dies. His kids are only getting something like 10mil a piece, which is is nothing compared to the lot.
Why would they want to re-read the directory when they could just cache the data, then only rebuild the cache when something changes in the directory? They could even limit it to files that change.
All of the profs in my classes were willing to work one-on-one with students if they had trouble. If more than few students had problems, the prof would find some great tutors.
Playing catch up can be done outside of class hours.
Assuming the table actually holds binary data(pictures), and the table is of any decent size, you're not going to have the table cached. Plus, most tables don't store binary date in the pages themselves, so the DB will still stream data from the IO.
I can't think of a situation where this won't cause heavy IO, assuming the table has a decent size. An index won't help, it will just add more overhead during inserts and possibly updates.
" it sounds like something that can be done without too much difficulty by writing to temp files (in the same filesystem) and then "committing" the transaction by jiggling hard links"
What you described would work for applications that are aware of your way of doing transactions, but the biggest benefit for the FS doing it, is for applications that aren't aware. If the FS doesn't forcefully lock the file from other applications, you will get race conditions that will cause dirty reads/writes.
NTFS supports transactions just like a database. Plus, the new transaction framework allows linking transactions across multiple computers and even into MS-SQL, so when you commit, you can make sure your DB, local fs and remote fs are all in sync.
Slashdot Mirror
That makes more sense now :-)
I would have to agree then.
When is it coming to Steam? I want to buy it, but I'm holding out.
You'll have to define "gameplay". Personally, I assume it's something that I find fun and lots of people have found Minecraft "fun" for a long time now. Your definition must be different than mine.
You made some good points, but just to be a devil's advocate...
The whole point of trademark is so customers don't get confused. If I go to a *.xxx site, I would expect porn. If someone went to Hooters.xxx and found the actual Hooters restaurant site, they would be miss-led and confused.
One could go so far to say that ANY site using a trademark on *.xxx would be expected to be a parody site for non-porn related trademarks, and a non-parody site would cause confusion.
Domains like "xxx" are privately owned. Anyone can make any domain they want as long as they're willing to fork money over for it. Why should private companies be forced to sell their domain space for $10 because someone purchased a similar domain name from another company?
University. Best part is not worrying about audits. We had an unlimited licence for all the MS products we used. Our little 8 man team installed about 100 new computers per year mostly during the 2-3 months after the fiscal year restarted, and retire the older computers out of the system. That meant a large portion of our 800 computer install base got shuffled every year as we did hand-me-downs.
During peak, each one of us would be turning over about 3-5 computers per day plus service calls for printer/network/etc problems. We could have done probably more on average if we didn't have to walk and move computer by foot around the campus.
We had fast computer turn over. Quite streamlined.
We still had time to yourtube/facebook and we didn't work overtime.
Reinstalling windows is something you did back with 9x and sometimes with XP.
I do agree with updates taking up some time, but you don't have to apply all of them.
With changes to Windows 8 that allow ~8 sec from power button cold boots and nearly as fast shutdowns, I'm hoping for sub 30sec restarts for Windows Updates. Still annoying to close your current programs though.
Dual booting? As long as it doesn't require restarting my computer. My computer only gets restarted for 3 things: Windows updates, Power outages, and Hardware upgrades. Otherwise it runs 24/7 without a hick-up.
I have a few semi-requirements for my desktop.
1) Rarely have to restart, only for maintenance
2) My games and daily applications must run side-by-side
3) I can play games Day 1 of release
4) I can take advantage of my $300 graphics card
5) Runs Steam transparently, not setup/config/etc.
6) I get about 100+ fps in almost every game with graphics quality cranked, which I do get with Windows
When Linux can get close to mostly doing those, I'm sold. Doesn't have to be perfect. I'm an early adopter when it comes to graphics.
Linux will need high performance stable graphics drivers for the newest of cards, transparent installation and configuration of Windows Apps, and DX11+ support. Last I heard, DX11 should be easy to emulate in Wine and Wine developers were saying DX11 is better/easier than OpenGL.
From what I've read, Linux is on its way towards this goal. DX11 support was being worked on a while back, but lack of DX11 titles, hardware, and opensource drivers has slowed this down. Hopefully development will pick up as these things become more standard. And ATI opensource drivers are starting to take off.
All we need is OpenGL to support true multithreading for rendering commands. Last I heard there were no plans for this as OpenGL is not actually targeted towards games, but they never said they won't.
" Sure it may be bad drivers, but the fact they can *still* cause problems is not a good thing."
Drivers run at Kernel level. There is NOTHING the OS can do to keep a bad driver from crashing the OS. Same with Linux and any other OS.
You can do some things to help lessen the chance of a crash, like allow some of the driver code to run in user land and let only the code parts that need to talk to the hardware actually run in kernel, but Win7 already does this.
If you're seeing BSODs in Win7, you have crappy drivers and/or crappy hardware, or failing hardware. Hard to blame the OS. I had about 6 months of up-time with Win7 RTM(no patches) before I rebooted for Windows Updates.
Last time I had a BSOD with Windows: 8+ years ago
Last time I had a virus/malware: 10+ years ago
The only time I reinstall Windows is when a new version comes out.
Working with Windows in IT for 2.5 years, the only problems I had were when there was something wrong with the hardware. We could re-image a computer and have all the settings/data restored in under 1 hour and sometimes under 30min with a faster computer.
We had 8 people managing about 800 windows machines and that include installs, tech support, upgrades, printer installs, networking, etc. We handled almost everything during the life cycle of a given machine. The end users had admin access to their machines and open internet. We had a lot of free time because it was so easy. I can count how many times I had to fix/remove Malware/Virii on one hand.
Working with Windows is fine if you know what you're doing and have the tools.
Linux/etc is a lot more strait forward though. So I'm not saying Windows is better, but it's not as bad as you make it out to be.
Lockheed installed a 128bit quantum computer this year
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2011/10/31/lockheed-martin-installs-quantum-computer/
I have no idea of the specifics, but it sounds as if they have a working version.
I don't know about other people, but I'll easily spent a 10% mark-up for a local product because 1) Get it NOW 2) Returning is much easier 3) Try it out (if applies)
But most of the time it isn't about price, it's about selection.
Darwin has stupidity covered, but our government is trying it's best to protect people from this tax.
"That this huge address space will be fragmented to the point where it will be unable to cope with demand for the next generation of networks"
Since IPv6 routing is hierarchical, the actually physical routes would also have to be fragmented just as badly.
"It really doesn't matter how many gazillions of addresses IPv6 makes available, you will only get one. Addresses are a commodity, to be leased for a profit."
"Can you think of any reason they can't implement exactly the same limits with IPv6 that they currently have with IPv4?"
I can. Every OS/Router assumes you have full access to AT LEAST a /64 or WILL BREAK. So.. yes, ISPs will give you at least /64s if they want IPv6 to work with any major OS.
why would you have to close your browser before playing any 3d games?
Funny how almost every other web page out there doesn't break between versions. You sure it's a "FireFox" problem?
It's called experimenting, it's how things move forward.
2012, here we come!
Nearly all of Bill Gate's money will be going to charity once he dies. His kids are only getting something like 10mil a piece, which is is nothing compared to the lot.
Why would they want to re-read the directory when they could just cache the data, then only rebuild the cache when something changes in the directory? They could even limit it to files that change.
All of the profs in my classes were willing to work one-on-one with students if they had trouble. If more than few students had problems, the prof would find some great tutors.
Playing catch up can be done outside of class hours.
BUILD showed off a laptop that cold booted Win8 to desktop in 5-8 seconds. I thought that was pretty good.
Assuming the table actually holds binary data(pictures), and the table is of any decent size, you're not going to have the table cached. Plus, most tables don't store binary date in the pages themselves, so the DB will still stream data from the IO.
I can't think of a situation where this won't cause heavy IO, assuming the table has a decent size. An index won't help, it will just add more overhead during inserts and possibly updates.
" it sounds like something that can be done without too much difficulty by writing to temp files (in the same filesystem) and then "committing" the transaction by jiggling hard links"
What you described would work for applications that are aware of your way of doing transactions, but the biggest benefit for the FS doing it, is for applications that aren't aware. If the FS doesn't forcefully lock the file from other applications, you will get race conditions that will cause dirty reads/writes.
NTFS supports transactions just like a database. Plus, the new transaction framework allows linking transactions across multiple computers and even into MS-SQL, so when you commit, you can make sure your DB, local fs and remote fs are all in sync.