Actually, it was made from "The Castle of Cagliostro" (at least in English) one of the bazillion Lupin III movies, which was one of the first projects of Hayao Miyazaki, of Princess Mononoke, Laputa: Castlie in the Wind, Nadia: Secret of Blue Water, Kiki's Delivery Service, Nausicaa, etc etc fame.
Heh, the original Dragon's Lair was ALL about eye-candy. That was its ONLY selling point. A knee-jerk reaction about how "all the old games were good because they were about gameplay and not graphics" falls on its face and HARD when applied to that game.
Well, I was an admin at UCR's CS department, and a student (graduate) at one point.
Mr Hyde IS a bit strident, to be sure, and he did personally tell me once (when I had to go fix something wrong with the web server that at the time hosted AoA) that system administrators were simply the janitors of the internet, and hardly real computer scientists, but for the most part, I found him reasonable to get along with, certainly on-par-with/better-than your average professor.
Of course, I do remember some of his "flunking large numbers of students" occurences. On the brighter side, he usually did (at the time at least) let students work over the summer to complete the course.
I took the undergraduate compiler class from him (since I never took a compiler class at UCLA) and I really do feel I learned a lot in that class.
But I could see them abandoning the Xbox completely if it doesn't make them money. In fact, they probably WILL do that. That's only common sense.
And I could also definitely see console companies going away completely if for (in the perhaps ridiculous) example they all realize their margins are far less than what they could be getting doing something else, or if in the perhaps even more unlikely example that they AREN'T making any profit, just not doing business. I'm not privy to the exact margins of the industry, but I'd bet that even 10% piracy rates could make it unattractive to play in that field.
I wouldn't consider it entirely unlikely, if in the event that these business models are "outmoded" as everyone seems to think they are, that there really isn't any mass-market method to replace them, and the future will consist of very little games in general.
Of course, the more likely example is that the games market will be the PC market, since that's a relatively easy market in which to (alt.binaries.warez) engage in piracy, and its more or less done "OK" (but not great) for the past 15 years. I'd be comfortable with that, with video gaming remaining a niche market that supported a few people. Of course, losing the ability to "just play it" and ALWAYS having to deal with the annoyances of PC gaming for all video-gaming WOULD be a set-back for the consumer, I think.
You're never going to get a DOS-box, especially one you keep changing to the level of simplicity of a console. The Xbox practically IS commodity PC-hardware, but its still standardized, and that level of standarization is one of the big reasons that console game sales kick the crap out of PC game sales. Because somebody who bought a PS2 2 years ago knows that if a PS2 game comes out tomorrow, it will work perfectly OK with his PS2, and won't run poorly because it needs the latest DirectEcks Video card, or will crash because he's using the wrong sound drivers. Nor will he have to frequently "defrag" his hard drive to make sure that things run well, nor does he have to wonder if this time "SuperCrappy.DLL" will randomly go missing because the OS is feeling a bit mischevious today.
I'd like to see games drop to $20-40US too... Of course, wait, if you're willing to wait a few months and not buy them the day they come out, they do. And DVDs probably "should" be 15 bucks at most, and not the $20-24US they usually are (unless its a promotional deal).
Actually, isn't all they (Steve) really done here is whine a little bit? Some people are calling it "threats" but they really need to look up the word. Yeah, MS is pretty much just moaning a little bit, and trying to make it petulant enought that Australia will listen. Of course, they won't, because I've never met an Australian who'll listen to even 5 seconds of whining, but oh well.
How about all those people who clog the pipe trying to download new RedHat ISOs the minute they're released. Or people who will religiously download the latest kernel from kernel.org, only to basically copy over their.config, set up the exact same options they've been using for the past 30 or so revisions, and probably would have been better off sticking with one kernel that they got good uptime out of.
Just saying that the irrational "latest and greatest" syndrome is pretty much endemic to the human species, or at least the computer using portion of it.
Heck it got mine, and I fussed and fumed at the doorway to thefreeworld.net trying to justify why I should click yes. Eventually though I decided to be a good little corporate citizen and go back to my hole. Then somebody posted it on Slashdot as a comment.
Heh. I never learned Pascal in my CS classes. I think they reserved that for engineers who just wanted to learn "programming" My first academic computer program was a Turing machine, which as I remember we'd test on a little program that ran on Mac II's. My last program for that course filled a couple of huge plotter pages at a really really tiny font. The circles for states weren't much larger than a capital O is on my screen right now. At least the little Turing machine emulator thing allowed you to build and reuse modules that could be encapsulated as single states in a larger program. It was an odd lesson in forcing students to program modularly when if you didn't, it simply would not fit on the screen.
When the 2nd quarter class started, I still remember the professor saying "Alright, you're going to need to know how to program C in 2 weeks, but we aren't teaching that in class. Tutoring sessions are available starting at 11pm tonight." Those were a crazy couple of weeks, but at least it taught me never to get too attached to any language.
I learned OSes on Minix, and I have to be thankful that I learned on it. Everything was abstracted enough that I didn't have to worry about the fundamentals of how tricky x86 instructions can sometimes be when all I wanted to do was just UNDERSTAND how file systems and virtual memory worked and interacted...
A few years later, I helped in the lab for a class that was using Linux (probably 1.2 or 1.3 at the time) to do OS education, and while some students did some pretty neat things, there was a lot more struggle just to understand how it all fitted together and to fight with whatever strange bugs the current path release had.
I never really wanted to use Minix as my OS of getting work done (although, for 2 quarters, it was all that was on my PC, so to a degree, I had to) but I was glad to learn under it. Sure, the message passing microkernel may not be the way things are done now, but at least I could write a system call, build a bitmap for marking off inode use, etc etc.
People who like the GPL and its "must disclose source code" clause probably shouldn't go throwing stones. Of course, you don't think its unreasonable (and niether do I) but that's not to say that other individuals wouldn't and haven't.
It's probably best, if you don't like Bitkeeper's license, to not like Bitkeeper either.
$5800US for a single license isn't it? This is from leaks of the price sheet, as far as I know, so its 2nd hand information and could be wrong.
If that's the case, I think we have differing opinions on cheap. Actually, I think you and 99.99999999999999% of the rest of the world have differing opinions on what is cheap.
Oh come on, at some point, nearly ALL of us have worked at a fast food restaurant, and while I did, I could never stomach eating there, but I still eat fast food OCASSIONALLY, as long as I don't have to look in the back.
Remember, as Cypher from the Matrix says "Ignorance is bliss"
It is mildly funny to just lump the whole of "business end of things" into one small category... And not just for the unintentional pun that is implied by it.
The "business end of things" comprises probably 80% of the reason why computers are used on a daily basis.
Whether Windows is the BEST choice for it remains debatable, but in many cases it IS good enough.
UC Riverside certainly didn't have anything like an OC-12 when I was admining there, of course, that was a few years ago and i2 and the like were JUST starting to be deployed.
The logical conclusion to this is that everyone stops using NIX (since if it listens to NO criticism, then it does NOT improve in any tangible way).
Seriously, the ability to accept criticism is one of those socialization skills you're supposed to pick up by the 3rd-4th grade. It's a fairly telling remark if you say "Don't tell those developers what's wrong with their system, they won't like it."
The "go-do-it-yourself" arguement is also of only minor merit and breaks down in the absolutist sense in which many seem to want to appy it.. Don't like your car... BUILD ONE YOURSELF! Don't like your country's road infrastructure? MAKE SURE YOUR CAR THAT YOU'RE BUILDING IS ALL-TERRAIN AND CAN FLY!
In closing, here's a silly reactionary statement to provide counterbalance to the "don't like it? Do your own" arguements: "Don't like hearing/reading criticism regarding something you've done? Drive nails into your ears and eyes!" Yeah, THAT makes sense.
There is one line in this review that bothered me: The last one.
"Thanks to Ed Boyce for going through the pain of proof reading this article."
Because the article really didn't feel proof-read to me.
Examples like "So, there are two questions remain:" and such made the article sound a good deal more stilted than it really was. I thought it was a pretty good "practical" review of RedHat 8, even if it delved into the specific details of problems (the back and forth of all the things tried to get a working mode line) a bit much at times (we're all bound to have our own unique "experiences" with it as we try to deploy it).
What is the point of this story, if not to flame? What is the point of the FAQ, if not to flame?
PERHAPS it was intended to get people to think, and change their opinions, but I think based on the level of comments here its been a glorious failure.
It is occasionaly cogent in its arguements, and occasionally quite inflammatory (the side digs at Linux regarding the atom bomb are in my opinion both uncalled for and unethical.)
Preface: I love BF1942 and truly think its one of the neater games to come out this year, but:
* Those silly sound card problems (Glad I move to an AC97 sound chip and ditched my SB Live just before this came out) * Bot AI: Atrocious. * That goofy copy protection thing that reboots the client after every game...
At least 2 of these probably (1 definitely) wouldn't happen in the console world, and supposedly it IS coming to Xbox eventually... sooo....
Everquest for the PS2 will allow use of a keyboard, for instance, and all the major consoles have/will have broadband adapters. I'll admit Halos controls are a bit of a pain, and not nearly as nice as mouse look, but if they came out with some sort of thumb trackball as a console controller that issue would go away for me (I use trackballs over mice, usually)...
And RTS's may use the keyboard for shortcuts, but that's more of a call to include some sort of shortcut system in console RTSs. Goodness knows they have enough buttons for that now. I don't know that you really need QWERTY boards in particular, just a lot of shortcut buttons, and keyboards have lots of buttons.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it was made from "The Castle of Cagliostro" (at least in English) one of the bazillion Lupin III movies, which was one of the first projects of Hayao Miyazaki, of Princess Mononoke, Laputa: Castlie in the Wind, Nadia: Secret of Blue Water, Kiki's Delivery Service, Nausicaa, etc etc fame.
This comment is (probably) unintentionally funny.
Heh, the original Dragon's Lair was ALL about eye-candy. That was its ONLY selling point. A knee-jerk reaction about how "all the old games were good because they were about gameplay and not graphics" falls on its face and HARD when applied to that game.
Extraordinarily astute. Almost gives me hope for Slashdot. Heh.
Well, I was an admin at UCR's CS department, and a student (graduate) at one point.
Mr Hyde IS a bit strident, to be sure, and he did personally tell me once (when I had to go fix something wrong with the web server that at the time hosted AoA) that system administrators were simply the janitors of the internet, and hardly real computer scientists, but for the most part, I found him reasonable to get along with, certainly on-par-with/better-than your average professor.
Of course, I do remember some of his "flunking large numbers of students" occurences. On the brighter side, he usually did (at the time at least) let students work over the summer to complete the course.
I took the undergraduate compiler class from him (since I never took a compiler class at UCLA) and I really do feel I learned a lot in that class.
Nah, the NEC PC-Engine was what ended up the TurboGrafix-16 over here in the US. Very popular there, not so much here.
But I could see them abandoning the Xbox completely if it doesn't make them money. In fact, they probably WILL do that. That's only common sense.
And I could also definitely see console companies going away completely if for (in the perhaps ridiculous) example they all realize their margins are far less than what they could be getting doing something else, or if in the perhaps even more unlikely example that they AREN'T making any profit, just not doing business. I'm not privy to the exact margins of the industry, but I'd bet that even 10% piracy rates could make it unattractive to play in that field.
I wouldn't consider it entirely unlikely, if in the event that these business models are "outmoded" as everyone seems to think they are, that there really isn't any mass-market method to replace them, and the future will consist of very little games in general.
Of course, the more likely example is that the games market will be the PC market, since that's a relatively easy market in which to (alt.binaries.warez) engage in piracy, and its more or less done "OK" (but not great) for the past 15 years. I'd be comfortable with that, with video gaming remaining a niche market that supported a few people. Of course, losing the ability to "just play it" and ALWAYS having to deal with the annoyances of PC gaming for all video-gaming WOULD be a set-back for the consumer, I think.
Fundamentally, no.
You're never going to get a DOS-box, especially one you keep changing to the level of simplicity of a console. The Xbox practically IS commodity PC-hardware, but its still standardized, and that level of standarization is one of the big reasons that console game sales kick the crap out of PC game sales. Because somebody who bought a PS2 2 years ago knows that if a PS2 game comes out tomorrow, it will work perfectly OK with his PS2, and won't run poorly because it needs the latest DirectEcks Video card, or will crash because he's using the wrong sound drivers. Nor will he have to frequently "defrag" his hard drive to make sure that things run well, nor does he have to wonder if this time "SuperCrappy.DLL" will randomly go missing because the OS is feeling a bit mischevious today.
I'd like to see games drop to $20-40US too... Of course, wait, if you're willing to wait a few months and not buy them the day they come out, they do. And DVDs probably "should" be 15 bucks at most, and not the $20-24US they usually are (unless its a promotional deal).
Actually, isn't all they (Steve) really done here is whine a little bit? Some people are calling it "threats" but they really need to look up the word. Yeah, MS is pretty much just moaning a little bit, and trying to make it petulant enought that Australia will listen. Of course, they won't, because I've never met an Australian who'll listen to even 5 seconds of whining, but oh well.
How about all those people who clog the pipe trying to download new RedHat ISOs the minute they're released. Or people who will religiously download the latest kernel from kernel.org, only to basically copy over their .config, set up the exact same options they've been using for the past 30 or so revisions, and probably would have been better off sticking with one kernel that they got good uptime out of.
Just saying that the irrational "latest and greatest" syndrome is pretty much endemic to the human species, or at least the computer using portion of it.
Heck it got mine, and I fussed and fumed at the doorway to thefreeworld.net trying to justify why I should click yes. Eventually though I decided to be a good little corporate citizen and go back to my hole. Then somebody posted it on Slashdot as a comment.
Thanks, whoever did that.
Heh. I never learned Pascal in my CS classes. I think they reserved that for engineers who just wanted to learn "programming" My first academic computer program was a Turing machine, which as I remember we'd test on a little program that ran on Mac II's. My last program for that course filled a couple of huge plotter pages at a really really tiny font. The circles for states weren't much larger than a capital O is on my screen right now. At least the little Turing machine emulator thing allowed you to build and reuse modules that could be encapsulated as single states in a larger program. It was an odd lesson in forcing students to program modularly when if you didn't, it simply would not fit on the screen.
When the 2nd quarter class started, I still remember the professor saying "Alright, you're going to need to know how to program C in 2 weeks, but we aren't teaching that in class. Tutoring sessions are available starting at 11pm tonight." Those were a crazy couple of weeks, but at least it taught me never to get too attached to any language.
I learned OSes on Minix, and I have to be thankful that I learned on it. Everything was abstracted enough that I didn't have to worry about the fundamentals of how tricky x86 instructions can sometimes be when all I wanted to do was just UNDERSTAND how file systems and virtual memory worked and interacted...
A few years later, I helped in the lab for a class that was using Linux (probably 1.2 or 1.3 at the time) to do OS education, and while some students did some pretty neat things, there was a lot more struggle just to understand how it all fitted together and to fight with whatever strange bugs the current path release had.
I never really wanted to use Minix as my OS of getting work done (although, for 2 quarters, it was all that was on my PC, so to a degree, I had to) but I was glad to learn under it. Sure, the message passing microkernel may not be the way things are done now, but at least I could write a system call, build a bitmap for marking off inode use, etc etc.
People who like the GPL and its "must disclose source code" clause probably shouldn't go throwing stones. Of course, you don't think its unreasonable (and niether do I) but that's not to say that other individuals wouldn't and haven't.
It's probably best, if you don't like Bitkeeper's license, to not like Bitkeeper either.
$5800US for a single license isn't it? This is from leaks of the price sheet, as far as I know, so its 2nd hand information and could be wrong.
If that's the case, I think we have differing opinions on cheap. Actually, I think you and 99.99999999999999% of the rest of the world have differing opinions on what is cheap.
Oh come on, at some point, nearly ALL of us have worked at a fast food restaurant, and while I did, I could never stomach eating there, but I still eat fast food OCASSIONALLY, as long as I don't have to look in the back.
Remember, as Cypher from the Matrix says "Ignorance is bliss"
It is mildly funny to just lump the whole of "business end of things" into one small category... And not just for the unintentional pun that is implied by it.
The "business end of things" comprises probably 80% of the reason why computers are used on a daily basis.
Whether Windows is the BEST choice for it remains debatable, but in many cases it IS good enough.
UC Riverside certainly didn't have anything like an OC-12 when I was admining there, of course, that was a few years ago and i2 and the like were JUST starting to be deployed.
The logical conclusion to this is that everyone stops using NIX (since if it listens to NO criticism, then it does NOT improve in any tangible way).
Seriously, the ability to accept criticism is one of those socialization skills you're supposed to pick up by the 3rd-4th grade. It's a fairly telling remark if you say "Don't tell those developers what's wrong with their system, they won't like it."
The "go-do-it-yourself" arguement is also of only minor merit and breaks down in the absolutist sense in which many seem to want to appy it.. Don't like your car... BUILD ONE YOURSELF! Don't like your country's road infrastructure? MAKE SURE YOUR CAR THAT YOU'RE BUILDING IS ALL-TERRAIN AND CAN FLY!
In closing, here's a silly reactionary statement to provide counterbalance to the "don't like it? Do your own" arguements: "Don't like hearing/reading criticism regarding something you've done? Drive nails into your ears and eyes!" Yeah, THAT makes sense.
That "something" is the move to the 3.x versions of DHCPD...
Fortunately, I did that a few months ago (with rawhide RPMS) on my 7.3 box, so things should be pretty smooth there.
I DO like having all my systems register their names in DNS when they get an IP. Its great fun to be able to ping ps2.gaastra.net.
There is one line in this review that bothered me: The last one.
"Thanks to Ed Boyce for going through the pain of proof reading this article."
Because the article really didn't feel proof-read to me.
Examples like "So, there are two questions remain:" and such made the article sound a good deal more stilted than it really was. I thought it was a pretty good "practical" review of RedHat 8, even if it delved into the specific details of problems (the back and forth of all the things tried to get a working mode line) a bit much at times (we're all bound to have our own unique "experiences" with it as we try to deploy it).
Well, technically "con" is not "and", its "with"
I.E. its GNU with Linux.
Papas y cerveza (papas and beer)...
Chile con carne (chili with meat)...
Just being your friendly neighborhood pedant.
Of course, it DOES have philosophical implications, as "GNU con Linux" enforces the "Linux is secondary" position.
GNU y Linux would just sound odd though...
"Ngyuee Leenucks."
What is the point of this story, if not to flame?
What is the point of the FAQ, if not to flame?
PERHAPS it was intended to get people to think, and change their opinions, but I think based on the level of comments here its been a glorious failure.
It is occasionaly cogent in its arguements, and occasionally quite inflammatory (the side digs at Linux regarding the atom bomb are in my opinion both uncalled for and unethical.)
OK, to prove I'm the biggest pedant in the bunch, his fault really wasn't grammar, it was spelling. Technically, grammar doesn't include spelling.
Now I just hope that people finally figure out its spelled "ridiculous" as in an expansion of ridicule. Sigh.
Preface: I love BF1942 and truly think its one of the neater games to come out this year, but:
* Those silly sound card problems (Glad I move to an AC97 sound chip and ditched my SB Live just before this came out)
* Bot AI: Atrocious.
* That goofy copy protection thing that reboots the client after every game...
At least 2 of these probably (1 definitely) wouldn't happen in the console world, and supposedly it IS coming to Xbox eventually... sooo....
But a lot of these arguments are being obviated.
Everquest for the PS2 will allow use of a keyboard, for instance, and all the major consoles have/will have broadband adapters. I'll admit Halos controls are a bit of a pain, and not nearly as nice as mouse look, but if they came out with some sort of thumb trackball as a console controller that issue would go away for me (I use trackballs over mice, usually)...
And RTS's may use the keyboard for shortcuts, but that's more of a call to include some sort of shortcut system in console RTSs. Goodness knows they have enough buttons for that now. I don't know that you really need QWERTY boards in particular, just a lot of shortcut buttons, and keyboards have lots of buttons.