....in the original PSX construction, I think they used the CD spindle from the same line as the low/mid range Discman. Discmans, of course, don't spin at multiple speeds, and don't have to deal with high temperatures. The spindle section was therefore made of thermoplastic, and seated in thermoplastic. Of course, spinning at high speed, and having to deal with the heat of the electronics caused the spindle section to behave erratically, and in extreme cases warp, if the PSX was left on for a long time. Hence the PSX revision 1 had the plastic spindle seated in metal. I think that's what happened, anyway.
This is different, because while the previous fault surfaced only rarely, these errors occur in normal use, e.g, you can't save your Ridge Racer V game, because it will corrupt the memory card. That is a regular fundamental flaw that regular testing could have caught and solved before release.
"release buggy stuff and patch it" mentality that Netscape started.
Just a sec, we can't really hold Netscape responsible... just think.....
UNIX(tm)?.....AmigaDos?.....MS-DOS?....Windows?. ....These go back a lot further than Navigator, than the Web even, and they've all had numerous patch releases over time! It's just unfortunate that buggy first releases have become the de facto standard in the software industry.
But that's off topic. How are Sony going to go about patching/fixing these problems? I guess you could flash the firmware, but that won't solve fundamental hardware defects (heat problems etc.) Are these problems limited to the memory cards, or do they affect the console as a whole? Is this the end for a console/software packege developed in tandem?
As far as software/OS problems go, I suppose putting a well-known and tested OS on a console may have to become the future of console development if this keeps happening. Seems Sega may have got something right for once. (And before the flames start, I didn't say CE was any good..)
It seems that fundamental console design issues may need a radical overhaul here, as this is precisely the sort of headache that most people buy consoles (as opposed to computers) to avoid.
...for the Win32 and Mac versions of Communicator (Which, sad as it is, will be what most ppl are using), IIRC, since NC 4.0, all cookies are accepted by default. I disabled them while I was ResNetted at university, however, I have to use them now for work:-(
Which could be funny, because DoubleClick must think I'm really boring, as they have only ever tracked my work-relevant surfing. Seems their demographic has false information already!;-)
Theoretically they can still use the information that they obtained, I suppose. However, they have Michigan's Attorney-General up in arms about their tactics. If they used the information too freely, then would it not be possible for them to end up in court, have their process declared illegal (purely on the grounds of witholding information on what they were doing from the public), and hence not be allowed to use the information again on the grounds that it was obtained illegally?
I may be being idealistic about this, as I'm not sure about retroactive legality. However, even if that doesn't work, the PR stink that it would create would (hopefully) lead to a significant number of sites/net users blackholing, or simply not using them, their shareholders to balk at the lost revenue, and get a reversal on using the data too.
Again, I'd need someone to clarify the legal standpoint, but there _should_ be a way of getting this sort of corporate behaviour stopped.
Remember the words of the late, great Bill Hicks :
"If anyone here works in Marketing, or Advertising.....Kill yourselves." "There is no rationalisation for what you do, you are Satan's little helpers, KILL YOURSELVES!" - NB. Not Flamebait, just expressing a point, or as Bill would say "planting seeds".
Unfortunately, in the days of Elite (and also Zarch/Virus, to an extent), putting out a game with wireframe/flat-shaded graphics was acceptable. The gameplay on its own justified the release, simply because you didn't need an armada of artists to provide Joe Public with eye candy before a game could be released.
Braben/Bell/Crowther et al. had great ideas, and some phenomenal coding talent, but as much as I hate this, to the average punter who bought his PlayStation for evenings after/when he couldn't go to the pub, looking good, being bland and being advertised well is all that matters a lot of the time. If you showed Elite to a marketing department now (if it hadn't been written in the '80s), even with flashy graphics, it would be an uphill slog to get them to adopt it, simply because it doesn't cater to the demographic they are aiming at.
It seems to me that by finally pulling digital gaming into the mainstream, we may have done it the greatest disservice of all.
One thing I would like to see would be a chapter/article that deals with ways of communicating the ideas of gamers, programmers and those who do both, who for the most part, know what they want in a game, to the marketing types who will want to know how saleable a game is. Games can be technically advanced beyond the industry standard, but sometimes the marketers reject it out of hand, because it doesn't fit their demographic.
It worries me that there are fewer and fewer innovative games out there. Just as the market was saturated with scrolling shoot-em-ups 15 years ago, nowadays it seems that in order to convince the marketers, you need a Virtua Striker/Tomb Raider/Quake/Gran Turismo clone, or you can do a pinball game and aim for the 'quirky' dollar, in much the same way as the music industry is going formulaic with Britney/Backstreet/Puff Daddy-alikes. The customer is being told what to buy, rather than being asked.
Good programmers are being sucked up by companies that lack imagination, and the gamers that also program are generally not listened to at any level above their assigned project. Does anyone else get the feeling that those who play games should have at least some share of input?
Judging by the chapter titles, the book tells you how to build a software release team yourself. True, maverick software companies like id offer some solace, until they are fragmented by ego clashes (See also: ION Storm), and most large publishing companies just want to buck up revenue with variations on a theme (usually sports, in the UK at least). It just scares me that the truly innovative voices are being drowned out by the commerce, that within the games industry, the Industry is swamping the Games.
I may be stating the obvious here, but IIRC, wasn't Don Bluth originally a Disney animator? I seem to recall he lead the team on Pete's Dragon (Admittedly not one of the better films), and worked as a fairly high-ranking animator on a few other projects.
I know he left to form his own company in the '80s (Maybe because quite a few animators aren't happy about Disney's practices). I think his first standalone theatre feature was An American Tail.
...in the light of recent events in Holland, whether any of those bigots^H^H^H^H^H^Hpeople ever read a book as thought-provoking as this. I wonder if they could see, by looking into themselves, exactly how like Strorm* and his cohorts they are. It's also interesting to read because the focus of the book is also a deviation, but not physically, only in mind (not unlike the folks on WalkAway). It's really frightening to think how life imitates art sometimes.
It's also interesting to note that most of the Religious Right(tm) wish that the world could go back to the way it was in the 1950's, ironically the time that this book received mass notice.
*Strorm, IIRC was the name of the man who built Labrador community as a heavily Bible-oriented place.
Most kids, even young ones, have a certain degree of tech-savvy, simply because they'll have grown up with these technologies. They're used to them. Also, a lot of kids have a fairly good grasp of our favourite Anglo-Saxon nouns and verbs by the time they reach primary (US: read elementary) school. They may not necessarily know what it means, but it doesn't stop them from using it. I would be pretty horrified if my 5-year old stumbled upon teensexxx.com, or whatever, but it wouldn't exactly surprise me. So here's what you do:
Rule No. 1 : Don't assume anything. Odds on, they've reached the site by mistake, and you know for a fact that these pages spawn sub-windows like there's no tomorrow. (I was a newbie searching for warez once:-) They will probably either be oblivious to what they've seen, as nudity is rarely a problem for most small children, or, especially if they are slightly older, they may be frightened out of their wits. To them it can seem like the computer has completely taken over. Talk to them gently. Ask them what happened. They'll probably tell the truth first time, as they are still likely to be shocked.
Rule No. 2 : Tell it like it is. Explain that there are people who put this kind of thing up there (Call them 'bad' people if you want). Tell them that because of these people, they should be careful about using the computer, and that they can always come to you if it happens again. This is important, because if you go into fundamentalist mode, they won't learn anything from the experience, only that, to you, what they've done is shameful and wrong, which is almost as bad a thing to tell a child as the Religious Right spout. Growing up with a guilt complex doesn't help. Also explain that this is a thing that they will understand better later in life.
Rule No. 3 : DON'T LOSE IT! If you start screaming bloody murder at your child, you stand a better chance of frightening them much more than they already are. You may not be an advocate of porn, in fact you may harbour strong feelings about it, but don't express it in front of them. It's that kind of guilt-complex method of raising children, espoused by the Religious Right, that has been defeated here. Equally, violent reactions (Ripping cables out of the wall etc.) are a bad move for your kid to see (to say nothing of the state of your equipment). Just gently power down the monitor, or close the windows (shut the browser task down). The calmer you appear, the easier a child will listen to what you have to say.
I'm not saying that this is the best way of dealing with it, but I can't see that getting het up in front of your child will solve anything. Respect from your child is a good thing, but it must be respect attained without fear. The second a child is intimidated, you go down the same route as those just defeated.
Again, sorry if I sound preachy, it's just the way I feel.
The best will survive. If people like Windows better, they'll use Windows. If they like Linux better, they'll use Linux.
Nice thought, but it doesn't happen that way, does it? In the US especially, it would be far more accurate to say:
The most heavily advertised and marketed will survive. If people listen to the media, they'll use Windows. If they are allowed to make their own decision, they'll at least have made their own choice.
As a dual booter using NT4 at the moment, I can't complain too much about the technical issues. However to Joe Public the computer arena is still a new and bewildering place to be, and the fact that Microsoft deliberately propagate the image that their software is the only way, using the media (to keep people stupid - in the immortal words of Bill Hicks). Don't you think that the stranglehold should be lifted to at least allow an alternative to flourish? All the EU seems to be saying is 'give third parties access to your API's'. Seems more like common-sense than strongarming to me......
Microsoft is using it's dollar value and corporate weight to stop others from even writing decent applications for their own OS, let alone use their software protocols on other OS's. That is why I dislike them. Their idea of utopia is of an MS-certified PC, running MS Windows, running solely MS/MS-approved apps, with MS deciding the rate of pay for these systems. MS is not the only offender here, but this goes way beyond monopoly. This is almost totalitarian thinking. If the EU can come down hard on Austria for electing a far-right-wing government, surely it can at least try to protect itself from a totalitarian US software company.
Yeah, my (t)rusty old P200MMX ran it fine (if a little sluggishly)
To be fair though, VST is a bit buggy at the best of times. Being quite performance-intensive, it's possible that Steinberg exploited a hardware feature of the Pentium that wasn't quite implemented in the K6-2.
I think it has been more than Linux challenging MS recently tho.....More like the combined effort of millions of users, over the last decade, desperate to put Microsoft in their place, regardless of whether they run Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS, BeOS, AmigaOS or whatever.
Trick is, if and when MS are toppled, it's going to be a hard fight to try and stop it from happening again. Remember, we have a new Evil Empire every 15 years or so..... (IBM, MS et al....) You've got to stop these companies getting too big for their boots early on. We've also got to stop players like RedHat and Apple wanting to follow MS-type strategy as soon as they have achieved dominance one way or another (more a problem with the latter at the moment, but CEOs change......)
I have a k6-2 300. What would i be having compatibility issues with then?
My friend's K6-2-300 had problems with a lot of Steinberg software (Cubase VST and WaveLab 2 to be precise). Hopefully they've been sorted now (as I'm an *admittedly lousy* musician). I didn't say these problems would affect everyone, but they do exist. Don't get me wrong, I'm going for an Athlon this time round!
So I wonder when mainstream PC makers will quit considering AMD to be the cheapo alternative and realize that, at least for the present, they are the performance leaders.
There are still a few niggly compatibility errors which puts some people and organisations off, that added to the fact that Intel is using its corporate/marketing weight to convince Joe Public that AMD is not a viable alternative. The corporate world, it seems, just cannot come round to the idea that a monolith like Intel, which, through fair means or foul, has led the x86 CPU market for a decade, is suddenly under serious threat from a company that was considered relatively small-fry just a few years ago. They just can't understand that money, marketing and influence can't be on top all the time (I must admit that my jaded mind took a while to convince too).
I just hope that AMD continue with their tactic of consistently undercutting Intel's prices, even with superior equipment, and lower volume production. Now it would be all too easy for them to hike prices, simply because they have the better product.
If they up the production runs without adversely affecting prices, it will be interesting to note the colour of Intel exec's trousers in a few months......
And then there is const. How, in Java, do I make a method promise not to muck with the object referenced by the reference I pass it?
Call me an idiot, as I haven't done any real coding in a while (Sod's law.....) but surely by reasonable use of the scope declarations, and static you can do this somehow.....
Although as far as I'm concerned, it's best to be literate in as much as possible (which is why I'm learning still....)
If the planned break-up goes ahead, then there's nothing to stop the Multimedia or Internet division doing this, and no logical reason why they shouldn't. The whole point is that all of a sudden, having the one-OS, one-mission ethos that MS as a whole have worked under for years pulled out from under them, the new companies will HAVE to increase market share in other ways. They'll die if they don't.
The question is: Will what they write on other platforms be any good? The reason that WMP is a good viewing platform for Windows is because they have full access to and knowledge of the little bits of API that accelerate graphics under Windows. The same applies to Apple with QuickTime (especially QT2). Ever tried comparing speed between WMP/ActiveMovie's QT rendering under Windows with the QT2 program? ActiveMovie really flew, was more reliable, and far less clunky to operate.
By/.'s own admission, XWindows can be notoriously tricky to write for. The head start that MS programmers normally have (by writing solely for Windows) is gone, and WMP for Linux's only advantage will be the ability to play ASF files. It will certainly make interesting viewing if and when it dows show up.
Of course, later on DP5 added extra functionality to DP4AGA. Then EA decided to go mostly console.....:( Cloanto to the rescue with PersonalPaint (PPaint) which took DPaint's functionality a step further, with an awful lot of effects that wouldn't look out of place in Photoshop
It's just a shame that PC-based paint packages (With the exception of the DOS DPaint and DAnimator ports) seem to be fixated on ZSoft's PC Paintbrush, or the abysmal MS paintbrush (later Paint) program. Why this is, we'll never know. In fact, the PC graphics market owes a considerable favour to Apple in this regard. Without products like PhotoShop being ported to Windows, the ZSoft-kludge derivatives would still be in alarming number today........
Large, bloated, slow, unstable.... i think you`re thinking of the kind of program that made the PC famous?
Configurable, useful, extendable and easier than WB are the words I was thinking of. Yes, we (programmers) didn't have much call to use it, but Joe Public Amigans (and believe me, there were more than a few that I knew) found it useful, because it performed tasks that the 1.x Workbench made difficult, if not impossible. I had a souped-up 1200 on which it seemed everything was possible, but not everyone did. True, DOpus didn't hit nirvana until 5.x, but it was still a useful tool that quite a number of people use......
I just get upset when people start flaming'n'complaining without actually doing some reading. It's this refusal to learn that worries me most about/. thx
IIRC, Gateway did get a mention, but only in rounded terms. I'm talking about how Amiga was extracted from Gateway. First rumours simply means that it was from before Amiga was bought. I was just trying to make the point that some ppl consider Amiga news relevant, and I hope that Amino get their act together soon. Judging by those involved in the Amino project, we may see something soon. Sorry if it offends, I guess I let a flamewar get out of hand......
Mummy told me never to talk to trolls, but since you make that point, what do *you* consider relevant to be worthy of a hallowed/. page (Bearing in mind, as has been said, you *can* turn Amiga pages off in Preferences)
All right, let's do everything *YOU* want to do - Jim Carrey, The Truman Show
Hate to spread ill will, and all, but you have to understand that to some people (A lot of whom are Linux/Slashdot regulars) these things matter. Keeping alive memories of a time when MS were only king of the hill in the US, and different thinking was embraced.(not Apple's 'Different Thinking(tm, patent applied for)). That the ethos that made this possible (allowed international users the ability to hold off MS domination for 10 years) is still present, and those that share it are now doing something tangible about it, IS geek news. Geek news is about using technology for the good of more than a select few, NOT just restricted to x86/Linux issues.
Being in the majority does not automatically make you right. (Otherwise umpteen-million Windows users couldn't be wrong;-) )
I'd never agreed with the 'Open-Source, Closed-Minds' sig until today, but you have swung my ideas firmly in that direction. If you persist in this attitude, in a few hours, time and story posting will remove this story from the front page. Given that Amiga stories are a relatively few and far between occurrence, you will not have to worry about this until next month. But you're shutting off a world of experience if you discount everything beyond your own sphere of interest.
Man couldn't fly without studying birds. Evolving wings is an obsolete notion, but if you can build on that to make something new and good, surely that merits some attention?!
Look. The technology may be past it, but it wasn't the technology that made the machine really special. It was what sold the machine originally, but those who could be bothered to look below that saw that the heart that beat under the flashy pre-'multimedia' multimedia capabilities was a testament to good, frugal design, which ran unbelievably quickly for it's meagre 7Mhz clock speed, had a fully-featured integrated CLI/GUI operating system (note: *integrated* means they work as one. The CLI doesn't sit like a terminal program over the GUI (a la Win/XWin))
Yes I agree the technology is outdated, but in this current climate of bloatware, proprietary 'standards', and in-built obsolescence (I used my A500 for 6 years. My home PC clone is pretty much obsolete after 2) What I want to see emerge out of the ashes of Amiga is a system that is modern, but is not overexpensive (after the initial outlay), hardware and software designed and integrated WELL by people who care about technological and design excellence (As opposed to the 'If it ain't broke, add more features' mindset prevalent today). You have to admit that a G4 box with well-designed OpenGL hardware, studio-quality sound hardware and a PROPER INTEGRATED OS, written for the system, but open enough to allow easy porting (say, from Linux) could sound quite exciting. The addition of a home-user version (All hardware output, limited input(upgradeable)) for a couple hundred dollars completes the idea. Add to that the fact that you could build the box yourself and buy the software, if you were a real techie, and you'd have a pretty comprehensive range. Consoles are too limited, big box computers are too complex and expensive for Joe Public. It's time to take back the middle ground, ladies and gents!
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This is different, because while the previous fault surfaced only rarely, these errors occur in normal use, e.g, you can't save your Ridge Racer V game, because it will corrupt the memory card. That is a regular fundamental flaw that regular testing could have caught and solved before release.
Just a sec, we can't really hold Netscape responsible... just think.....
UNIX(tm)?.....AmigaDos?.....MS-DOS?....Windows?. ....These go back a lot further than Navigator, than the Web even, and they've all had numerous patch releases over time! It's just unfortunate that buggy first releases have become the de facto standard in the software industry.
But that's off topic. How are Sony going to go about patching/fixing these problems? I guess you could flash the firmware, but that won't solve fundamental hardware defects (heat problems etc.) Are these problems limited to the memory cards, or do they affect the console as a whole? Is this the end for a console/software packege developed in tandem?
As far as software/OS problems go, I suppose putting a well-known and tested OS on a console may have to become the future of console development if this keeps happening. Seems Sega may have got something right for once. (And before the flames start, I didn't say CE was any good..)
It seems that fundamental console design issues may need a radical overhaul here, as this is precisely the sort of headache that most people buy consoles (as opposed to computers) to avoid.
Which could be funny, because DoubleClick must think I'm really boring, as they have only ever tracked my work-relevant surfing. Seems their demographic has false information already! ;-)
Remember that the non tech-savvy users won't know about that feature. It's quite well hidden in NN, and practically invisible in IE!
I may be being idealistic about this, as I'm not sure about retroactive legality. However, even if that doesn't work, the PR stink that it would create would (hopefully) lead to a significant number of sites/net users blackholing, or simply not using them, their shareholders to balk at the lost revenue, and get a reversal on using the data too.
Again, I'd need someone to clarify the legal standpoint, but there _should_ be a way of getting this sort of corporate behaviour stopped.
Remember the words of the late, great Bill Hicks :
"If anyone here works in Marketing, or Advertising.....Kill yourselves." "There is no rationalisation for what you do, you are Satan's little helpers, KILL YOURSELVES!" - NB. Not Flamebait, just expressing a point, or as Bill would say "planting seeds".
Braben/Bell/Crowther et al. had great ideas, and some phenomenal coding talent, but as much as I hate this, to the average punter who bought his PlayStation for evenings after/when he couldn't go to the pub, looking good, being bland and being advertised well is all that matters a lot of the time. If you showed Elite to a marketing department now (if it hadn't been written in the '80s), even with flashy graphics, it would be an uphill slog to get them to adopt it, simply because it doesn't cater to the demographic they are aiming at.
It seems to me that by finally pulling digital gaming into the mainstream, we may have done it the greatest disservice of all.
It worries me that there are fewer and fewer innovative games out there. Just as the market was saturated with scrolling shoot-em-ups 15 years ago, nowadays it seems that in order to convince the marketers, you need a Virtua Striker/Tomb Raider/Quake/Gran Turismo clone, or you can do a pinball game and aim for the 'quirky' dollar, in much the same way as the music industry is going formulaic with Britney/Backstreet/Puff Daddy-alikes. The customer is being told what to buy, rather than being asked.
Good programmers are being sucked up by companies that lack imagination, and the gamers that also program are generally not listened to at any level above their assigned project. Does anyone else get the feeling that those who play games should have at least some share of input?
Judging by the chapter titles, the book tells you how to build a software release team yourself. True, maverick software companies like id offer some solace, until they are fragmented by ego clashes (See also: ION Storm), and most large publishing companies just want to buck up revenue with variations on a theme (usually sports, in the UK at least). It just scares me that the truly innovative voices are being drowned out by the commerce, that within the games industry, the Industry is swamping the Games.
I know he left to form his own company in the '80s (Maybe because quite a few animators aren't happy about Disney's practices). I think his first standalone theatre feature was An American Tail.
Can anyone shed any more light on this?
It's also interesting to note that most of the Religious Right(tm) wish that the world could go back to the way it was in the 1950's, ironically the time that this book received mass notice.
*Strorm, IIRC was the name of the man who built Labrador community as a heavily Bible-oriented place.
Rule No. 1 : Don't assume anything. Odds on, they've reached the site by mistake, and you know for a fact that these pages spawn sub-windows like there's no tomorrow. (I was a newbie searching for warez once :-) They will probably either be oblivious to what they've seen, as nudity is rarely a problem for most small children, or, especially if they are slightly older, they may be frightened out of their wits. To them it can seem like the computer has completely taken over. Talk to them gently. Ask them what happened. They'll probably tell the truth first time, as they are still likely to be shocked.
Rule No. 2 : Tell it like it is. Explain that there are people who put this kind of thing up there (Call them 'bad' people if you want). Tell them that because of these people, they should be careful about using the computer, and that they can always come to you if it happens again. This is important, because if you go into fundamentalist mode, they won't learn anything from the experience, only that, to you, what they've done is shameful and wrong, which is almost as bad a thing to tell a child as the Religious Right spout. Growing up with a guilt complex doesn't help. Also explain that this is a thing that they will understand better later in life.
Rule No. 3 : DON'T LOSE IT! If you start screaming bloody murder at your child, you stand a better chance of frightening them much more than they already are. You may not be an advocate of porn, in fact you may harbour strong feelings about it, but don't express it in front of them. It's that kind of guilt-complex method of raising children, espoused by the Religious Right, that has been defeated here. Equally, violent reactions (Ripping cables out of the wall etc.) are a bad move for your kid to see (to say nothing of the state of your equipment). Just gently power down the monitor, or close the windows (shut the browser task down). The calmer you appear, the easier a child will listen to what you have to say.
I'm not saying that this is the best way of dealing with it, but I can't see that getting het up in front of your child will solve anything. Respect from your child is a good thing, but it must be respect attained without fear. The second a child is intimidated, you go down the same route as those just defeated.
Again, sorry if I sound preachy, it's just the way I feel.
Nice thought, but it doesn't happen that way, does it? In the US especially, it would be far more accurate to say:
The most heavily advertised and marketed will survive. If people listen to the media, they'll use Windows. If they are allowed to make their own decision, they'll at least have made their own choice.
As a dual booter using NT4 at the moment, I can't complain too much about the technical issues. However to Joe Public the computer arena is still a new and bewildering place to be, and the fact that Microsoft deliberately propagate the image that their software is the only way, using the media (to keep people stupid - in the immortal words of Bill Hicks). Don't you think that the stranglehold should be lifted to at least allow an alternative to flourish? All the EU seems to be saying is 'give third parties access to your API's'. Seems more like common-sense than strongarming to me......
Microsoft is using it's dollar value and corporate weight to stop others from even writing decent applications for their own OS, let alone use their software protocols on other OS's. That is why I dislike them. Their idea of utopia is of an MS-certified PC, running MS Windows, running solely MS/MS-approved apps, with MS deciding the rate of pay for these systems. MS is not the only offender here, but this goes way beyond monopoly. This is almost totalitarian thinking. If the EU can come down hard on Austria for electing a far-right-wing government, surely it can at least try to protect itself from a totalitarian US software company.
To be fair though, VST is a bit buggy at the best of times. Being quite performance-intensive, it's possible that Steinberg exploited a hardware feature of the Pentium that wasn't quite implemented in the K6-2.
I think it has been more than Linux challenging MS recently tho.....More like the combined effort of millions of users, over the last decade, desperate to put Microsoft in their place, regardless of whether they run Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS, BeOS, AmigaOS or whatever.
Trick is, if and when MS are toppled, it's going to be a hard fight to try and stop it from happening again. Remember, we have a new Evil Empire every 15 years or so..... (IBM, MS et al....) You've got to stop these companies getting too big for their boots early on. We've also got to stop players like RedHat and Apple wanting to follow MS-type strategy as soon as they have achieved dominance one way or another (more a problem with the latter at the moment, but CEOs change......)
My friend's K6-2-300 had problems with a lot of Steinberg software (Cubase VST and WaveLab 2 to be precise). Hopefully they've been sorted now (as I'm an *admittedly lousy* musician). I didn't say these problems would affect everyone, but they do exist. Don't get me wrong, I'm going for an Athlon this time round!
There are still a few niggly compatibility errors which puts some people and organisations off, that added to the fact that Intel is using its corporate/marketing weight to convince Joe Public that AMD is not a viable alternative. The corporate world, it seems, just cannot come round to the idea that a monolith like Intel, which, through fair means or foul, has led the x86 CPU market for a decade, is suddenly under serious threat from a company that was considered relatively small-fry just a few years ago. They just can't understand that money, marketing and influence can't be on top all the time (I must admit that my jaded mind took a while to convince too).
I just hope that AMD continue with their tactic of consistently undercutting Intel's prices, even with superior equipment, and lower volume production. Now it would be all too easy for them to hike prices, simply because they have the better product.
If they up the production runs without adversely affecting prices, it will be interesting to note the colour of Intel exec's trousers in a few months......
Call me an idiot, as I haven't done any real coding in a while (Sod's law.....) but surely by reasonable use of the scope declarations, and static you can do this somehow.....
Although as far as I'm concerned, it's best to be literate in as much as possible (which is why I'm learning still....)
The question is: Will what they write on other platforms be any good? The reason that WMP is a good viewing platform for Windows is because they have full access to and knowledge of the little bits of API that accelerate graphics under Windows. The same applies to Apple with QuickTime (especially QT2). Ever tried comparing speed between WMP/ActiveMovie's QT rendering under Windows with the QT2 program? ActiveMovie really flew, was more reliable, and far less clunky to operate.
By /.'s own admission, XWindows can be notoriously tricky to write for. The head start that MS programmers normally have (by writing solely for Windows) is gone, and WMP for Linux's only advantage will be the ability to play ASF files. It will certainly make interesting viewing if and when it dows show up.
It's just a shame that PC-based paint packages (With the exception of the DOS DPaint and DAnimator ports) seem to be fixated on ZSoft's PC Paintbrush, or the abysmal MS paintbrush (later Paint) program. Why this is, we'll never know. In fact, the PC graphics market owes a considerable favour to Apple in this regard. Without products like PhotoShop being ported to Windows, the ZSoft-kludge derivatives would still be in alarming number today........
Configurable, useful, extendable and easier than WB are the words I was thinking of. Yes, we (programmers) didn't have much call to use it, but Joe Public Amigans (and believe me, there were more than a few that I knew) found it useful, because it performed tasks that the 1.x Workbench made difficult, if not impossible. I had a souped-up 1200 on which it seemed everything was possible, but not everyone did. True, DOpus didn't hit nirvana until 5.x, but it was still a useful tool that quite a number of people use......
I just get upset when people start flaming'n'complaining without actually doing some reading. It's this refusal to learn that worries me most about /. thx
IIRC, Gateway did get a mention, but only in rounded terms. I'm talking about how Amiga was extracted from Gateway. First rumours simply means that it was from before Amiga was bought. I was just trying to make the point that some ppl consider Amiga news relevant, and I hope that Amino get their act together soon. Judging by those involved in the Amino project, we may see something soon. Sorry if it offends, I guess I let a flamewar get out of hand......
All right, let's do everything *YOU* want to do - Jim Carrey, The Truman Show
REXX was a standard scriptiong language, dude. I'm sure an implementation for *nix should be around somewheres.....
Press release
Speculation
Hate to spread ill will, and all, but you have to understand that to some people (A lot of whom are Linux/Slashdot regulars) these things matter. Keeping alive memories of a time when MS were only king of the hill in the US, and different thinking was embraced.(not Apple's 'Different Thinking(tm, patent applied for)). That the ethos that made this possible (allowed international users the ability to hold off MS domination for 10 years) is still present, and those that share it are now doing something tangible about it, IS geek news. Geek news is about using technology for the good of more than a select few, NOT just restricted to x86/Linux issues.
Being in the majority does not automatically make you right. (Otherwise umpteen-million Windows users couldn't be wrong ;-) )
I'd never agreed with the 'Open-Source, Closed-Minds' sig until today, but you have swung my ideas firmly in that direction. If you persist in this attitude, in a few hours, time and story posting will remove this story from the front page. Given that Amiga stories are a relatively few and far between occurrence, you will not have to worry about this until next month. But you're shutting off a world of experience if you discount everything beyond your own sphere of interest.
Man couldn't fly without studying birds. Evolving wings is an obsolete notion, but if you can build on that to make something new and good, surely that merits some attention?!
Yes I agree the technology is outdated, but in this current climate of bloatware, proprietary 'standards', and in-built obsolescence (I used my A500 for 6 years. My home PC clone is pretty much obsolete after 2) What I want to see emerge out of the ashes of Amiga is a system that is modern, but is not overexpensive (after the initial outlay), hardware and software designed and integrated WELL by people who care about technological and design excellence (As opposed to the 'If it ain't broke, add more features' mindset prevalent today). You have to admit that a G4 box with well-designed OpenGL hardware, studio-quality sound hardware and a PROPER INTEGRATED OS, written for the system, but open enough to allow easy porting (say, from Linux) could sound quite exciting. The addition of a home-user version (All hardware output, limited input(upgradeable)) for a couple hundred dollars completes the idea. Add to that the fact that you could build the box yourself and buy the software, if you were a real techie, and you'd have a pretty comprehensive range. Consoles are too limited, big box computers are too complex and expensive for Joe Public. It's time to take back the middle ground, ladies and gents!