But it's alive and well in Japan, the one market where the XBox is not doing well at all. The arcade scene is good enough in Japan that Sony and Nintendo also think it's an idea worth looking into.
I think the reaction here is "What the hell are they thinking?" instead of "M$ is a bunch of stupid poopy-heads and Bill Gate$ eats babies!" If you think of it, Sony, Nintendo, and Sega are all Japanese companies. They are an engrained part of that culture now, and they understand the Japanese mindset. Notice how everything by those companies is released in Japan first, and that some products you can't find anywhere but in Japan?
It's just funny to watch MS try to get into the market for arcade machines. It's like watching an Orc trying to fit in with the Elves, it just isn't going to happen. We don't know why MS is even trying this. If they tried to market a complete home entertainment system that centered around the XBox, they'd have a better go. It's a game machine that also does a myriad of other things, because it is a computer. Other consoles do not have that broad spread of abilities, the programming for the PS2 is very different than it is for an x86. There's already a wide variety of software out there for x86. I just don't get why they'd waste the money and the time to try to market a rather nice peice of equipment as a pure gaming machine.
Give me a break, it's up to the game developers to decide what graphics interface to use. If you want to get on someone's case, go ahead and get on theirs.
It wouldn't be "up to the developers" if the developers had a choice of "free" vs. "paying lisencing fees." This is something that MS would be very capable of doing.
Oh, and last time I checked, games such as UT, HL, WC3, DS all had options for graphics to be OpenGL. UT wouldn't be able to run on Linux if it were strictly DirectX.
Yeah, OpenGL has it's pros and cons, as does DirectX. The differences show up in where they arise. Every higher educational institution (read college) will teach a graphics class in OpenGL. OpenGL is very powerful, and rather easy to use. It's a simple matter to give it an array of vertex locations, an array of normals, and an array of colors, and have it chug out a polygon. It's been that way since OpenGL was concieved. DirectX, however, is not taught in colleges, it's history is a convoluted mass of crappy API and revision. DirectX is also not an industry standard, as OpenGL is.
OpenGL is the standard in graphics, but why is MS not supporting it, or even participating in it now?
I'd go a little further than just that. Actually, it's three words:
ID's John Carmack.
If people want Doom 3 on their computers, or any derivative thereof, or any derivative of Quake 3 (RTCW, Star Wars, etc), OpenGL is necessary. Once ID and John Carmack decide that DirectX is actually a *good* API to work with, then we'll see OpenGL die. The problem is that DirectX and Direct3D totally suck ass. In fact, every API that MS has come up with totally sucks.
I think that it would just be healthier for them to embrace OpenGL 2.0, instead of trying to stonewall it. Eventually, the gov't is gonna step in and smack them upside the head too. Using the broad install base of Windows to kill OpenGL progression would be considered anti-competitive.
I agree with this fully, but included with the need to design correctly before coding is the requirement to have flexibility in the design. That is something you can design as well, making all of the points about "changing designs" moot.
To me, it's all about how you think of things. It should be really easy, for instance, to add another collection of objects to an existing object type. It would take some chugging on the DB end for a bit, but it's no worse than clustering a table in and RDBMS. I think of everything in terms of objects, what they have, what they don't have.
I'm working on a contract-tracking system right now, using a relational DB. It's a little more complicated that I'd like it to be, having to use seperate tables to keep track of the relationships between contacts, contracts, offices, and everything else. It would be a whole lot simpler if I had an Office object that had a collection of contract objects. I could do a search on the branch by just cycling through that collection, because I know that all of the data there pertains to that object. In the RDBMS, I need to do a scan on two tables using a join. The method of usage is a little hairier than it has to be.
I feel that an OODBMS is a great tool for a job you do. There's no need to say "OODBMS for everything," just like there's no need to say "RDBMS for everything." They both work, although in different ways. Neither of them is going to cease to exist, should you choose the other one to work with for an application. There's no reason why you couldn't be running both of them at the same time (but not for the same data / structure / applications). It's a matter of choosing what the best tool for the given problem. If you want to do everything with an RDBMS, go ahead! You may find that there are some projects that you'll work on will become 10x easier to code, if you had used an OODBMS for the project instead.
This does make a lot of sense. Government (or some non-profit entity) should provide the infrastructure with which we do business. It is this way for the roadways, there's no reason why it can not apply to those things which things run upon (physical, or non-physical.
This goes right up there with a government mandated OS, one which would be maintained by a non-profit entity. This would eliminate any sort of leverage that a company may take advantage of (owning 98% of the cable in the U.S., owning 98% of the U.S's desktops). In effect, this would produce a 'fair game' effect, causing those utility companies to become service based companies, like they ought to be.
Baby-bell provides a service. Baby-bell should not be allowed to strictly control a market (DSL, Cable, whatever.) There isn't a thing that a company could do, if this actually was set into motion (with passage of a bill). I imagine that there would be mucho lobbying to disrupt this type of bill, just like there would be in the OS case. We just have to try to find those rare politicians who have eyes that are not turned by massive amounts of money.
I'd say that Germnay and the USSR have the dirtiest hands, still.
The US may have done things that have bitten us on the ass, but never has the US participated in genocide. Genocide, however, has been practiced by Iraq, Iran, USSR, Germany, Yugoslavia, China, etc.
The majority of weapons of mass destruction came from the USSR, and still do. Russia could give half a shit where their crap ends up.
Iraq does not have F-16's. As far as I know, Israel is the only other country to have them, and that's primarily a humanitarian effort on the part of the US. If Israel didn't have big honkin weapons, it would cease to exist as of yesterday. Every country in that area would give both testicles to see Israel fall.
That Google's name is unoriginal in the first place. I can understand the makers of Spam, for instance, because the word Spam did not exist in the language until the meat product came about. Google, on the other hand, is a math term that I've used in competitive shouting matches since I was in 2nd grade. Oh yeah? I'm going to have a google! No, I'm going to have a google-plex!
"In a sense, despite the market climate, everything, we need to be even more committed to charging in and helping out and building products in areas where we don't compete today... because that's what's really in the best interest of the customers," Ballmer said.
The last thing I want is for MS to be in new markets. They have a tendancy to move in to a market, play 'fairly', and manage to use Windows to kill everyone in the market.
The problem here is that they don't really make great products. They make mediocre products that 'look nice,' but nothing that's really spectacular. Shouldn't they be dedicating more of their time towards creating an OS that is not a security risk, and not in expansion to other markets?
In other words, their hypothesis is that it was impossible for anatomically correct humans lacking MANY SIMULTANEOUS mutated genes to develop complex languages and cultures, and have what we would consider a normal human psychology. And they claim that these mutations are probably recent.
And what's the probability of that happening? If there was some kind of direction that the genes were steered in, I could believe that creativity was born of mutation, and mutation alone. Otherwise, we've got a whole slew of genes just sitting around, having no distinct purpose, before or after mutation.
Creativity probably requires something near the 10,000 genes mark, and probably wouldn't work without them all mutating to what they should have been at nearly the same exact time. The more genes you have mutating at the same time, the more unprobable the whole thing becomes.
Another question that is formed by this is: "If we had mutations that led to creativity, and it all happened suddenly, why haven't we become exponentially developed in that area by now?"
I figure that there's no reason for us to stop evolving, so why don't we evolve at the rate that we supposedly used to?
Why is AMD lumped in with Nvidia? Don't you know that Nvidia is an evil megacorporation that hoardes IP and eats small companies? AMD is the small underdog, they will never be evil. They are leagues above Nvidia, just because of their underdoggishness.
That's why ATI is so great. Intel is evil. Down with the Monopoly! Microsoft is evil, and forces everyone to eat their product! Grrr...
How is it any different from correcting or offering a dissenting opinion?
Because you can get fired from your job for saying the "Un-PC" statement. With Political Correctness, you are no more free than the citizens of Communist Russia. There you couldn't speak your mind because you might end up in prison. Here, it's a slightly different story. You can't speak your mind (or even make a mistake in speech) without being crucified by society.
Atlantic Monthly had a nice list of words that have been stricken from school textbooks. Among them were 'Yacht' and 'Cassandra.' 'Yacht' was banned because it was "descriminant against non-wealthy persons," and 'Cassandra' was banned because it's "sexist."
Can anyone tell me how all this shit got to the rediculous level it is at right now? We have some froppish, underfed, vegetarian, neo-leftist leech telling the people of America which words are appropriate and which ones aren't! It is 100% pure, unadulturated bullshit, and you all know it.
All that aside, PC speech doesn't really fit into things of a really sensitive nature. It takes a lot of balls and insensitivity to make jokes about the holocaust, mostly because it just wasn't funny. The Trail of Tears was also a very serious matter, and thus should only be used when referring to the actual event.
Now, persuasive speech promotes the use of extremes, but that's where common sense comes into play. If there's a guy who doesn't have enough sense not to name a computer configuration article after an event that stands for unjust death, an informing of the seriousness is in order. It is inappropriate, however, to censor him, axe the article, or socially crucify him. Some people are just stupid.
There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to tie in security. It seems to me that Rendezvous is just another layer of abstraction on top of TCP/IP. Instead of configuring a machine with an IP address, or for DHCP, the machine is configured to talk to the network already.
The same thing would occur, for instance, if I brought my laptop in to work, enabled DHCP, and plugged it in to a jack. My laptop would then be able to ping the range of IP address in the network without a problem.
The applications that use Rendezvous can probably be changed to be used with a normal network (iTunes and such). The security model then becomes based on the security of the OS of the machines on the network. I understand that it is still necessary to log in to your machine before using, and Rendezvous probably has some way of incorporating that. If Joe-Schmoe user does not have permissions to my filesystem, then Joe-Schmoe user will not be able to listen to my mp3's. I'm sure the same goes for the printer stuff.
And there's no reason why you should trash the computer that you've got when you get a new one. You can use the one with all of the legacy stuff to do all of your configuring/print serving/palming/etc.
Older computers aren't just going to suddenly die, so you'll have something to work with these other technologies that require it.:shrug: Think in terms of... "What am I going to use my new machine for" instead of "Can this new machine do what my current one does." When you think in terms of the latter, you find that you won't go very far, your current machine should be more than sufficient for what you use it for.
New machines need to be different and edgy. You don't need a 3 ghz beast to run a terminal program to connect to a rack-mount. You'll need that 3 ghz machine to run the latest version of Doom 3, and whatever video editing stuff you want to do. Buying a new, beefy monster to replace machines that qualify as "good enough" at the same task is kinda retarded.
And no, there will be no shortage of parts for older machines either. If your machine dies, I'm sure you can pick up an ATA 100 HD cheap, or get a couple ISA serial ports for free from a business that is upgrading. I know I've seen about 100 go through the place that I work.
I find it interesting that the debate of "competition" even comes up.
The way I see it, Microsoft can only lose market share to Apple (MacOS X), Sun (Solaris), IBM (AIX), and other companies that decide to sell and operating system. OSS products aren't sold, as such there is no market for them. It's like air. Do we pay for air? Could there be a market for "commodity air?" --probably.
See, Microsoft fails to realize that Linux and it's ilk are not created by some company that can be smacked down. Sure, there's companies that assist in the development of OSS, but they're business philosophy does not revolve around the sale of the software. Microsoft, on the other hand, sinks or swims based on software sales.
Anything that is free will slowly undermine a market for the same type of product. It's only natural. The progression from non-free to free software may be slow, but it's an eventuality.
This is why Microsoft needs to change it's business plan. The hardware end is good. The 'web service' idea may have worked. The pushing of.NET probably won't get them anywhere, but if they offer unique services and products over it... they might do well.
The price of VB may pain individuals who cling to M$, but that individual pain does not collectivly match...
The risk associated with VB is that you will be assimilated. Those guys that get started with VB, and not with a real language are a royal pain in the ass to me. My boss seems to think that the only programmers out there to hire are ones that program with VB, so a decision to use a language like C#, Java, or Delphi is shadowed by that belief. There have been actual studies that show how resistant VB programmers are to real languages. I could have told anyone that without the need for money for a survey. VB peeps just don't get the whole programming thing.
What I really would love (although I would be in danger of not associating with anyone real...) is if the dialogue were not pre-scripted and truly intelligent. If I could have a conversation with them, I would get completely lost in the game.
Fortunately for my social life, this type of technology will probably only be existant when we can stick a human brain (or equivalent) in the circuitry.
Unfortunately, natural languages have almost nothing in common with computer languages. Computer languages are for the most part 1:1 codes - the same command means the same thing in whatever context it appears in a particular language. Natural languages are not codes; an idiom means different things in different contexts. That's part of the problem comparing the two.
Unfortunately, this rather intelligent statement is based upon a lack of knowledge of fact. This was alluded to earlier in the parent.
The only languages that I know that are 1:1 are those crazy assembler/machine languages. Everything else has a decidedly human slant to them. Having studied languages, including syntatical definitions as well as symantics, I could say that natural languages are bound by the same exact rules that artificial languages are bound by. Of course, the symantics change over time, this is influenced much by the sheer complexity of the language, and the nature of humanity to use the incorrect words.
Languages change because the human mind changes rapidly. It's almost fluid in that way. Machine languages do not change, because the machines do not change. The way we communicate with machines is set in stone, limited by the hardware. After many layers of abstraction, we still have something that's decidedly simple (compared to natural languages).
Why? Because. If you keep a language simple, there will be fewer possibilities to accomplish a task. It would not be a good thing if variables changed value because the computer decided that it would fit better in a certain context. The programmer therefore exerts control over the computer through the use of the programming language. This is the exact opposite of natural language. These languages tend to have a control over the people using it, forming the way they think and interact, sometimes even shaping their beliefs.
Compare the number of those peeps that actually are successful to the number of college grads with those degrees. If you had majored in one of those degrees, I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't comprehend what the ratio means.
There are far more engineering majors that have a direct impact on everyday life, you just don't see them. Every screw in your office chair, every bolt in your automobile, every mold that shaped your garbage can was designed by some engineer.
If you asked me, though, that's how I'd like it to be. I don't want liberal arts people having such a direct impact on my everyday life. I don't want to worry about my car being able to start every day. I know that I would if the engineering degrees were as simple and subjective as the liberal arts degrees. We all prefer to have the stupids right out in the open, where we can make sure that they aren't affecting our lives too much, yet letting them feel important.
Slashdot Mirror
Green with purple polka dots! Can CSS handle it yet?
Polka dots! Polka dots! Polka dots!
Come on everybody, give it up for Polka dots!
Big deal. If anyone wants to know my ssn, it's "336721433".
SSN's are public information.
But it's alive and well in Japan, the one market where the XBox is not doing well at all. The arcade scene is good enough in Japan that Sony and Nintendo also think it's an idea worth looking into.
I think the reaction here is "What the hell are they thinking?" instead of "M$ is a bunch of stupid poopy-heads and Bill Gate$ eats babies!" If you think of it, Sony, Nintendo, and Sega are all Japanese companies. They are an engrained part of that culture now, and they understand the Japanese mindset. Notice how everything by those companies is released in Japan first, and that some products you can't find anywhere but in Japan?
It's just funny to watch MS try to get into the market for arcade machines. It's like watching an Orc trying to fit in with the Elves, it just isn't going to happen. We don't know why MS is even trying this. If they tried to market a complete home entertainment system that centered around the XBox, they'd have a better go. It's a game machine that also does a myriad of other things, because it is a computer. Other consoles do not have that broad spread of abilities, the programming for the PS2 is very different than it is for an x86. There's already a wide variety of software out there for x86. I just don't get why they'd waste the money and the time to try to market a rather nice peice of equipment as a pure gaming machine.
I think Morrowind is on the XBox. It's the must-have game for RPG, but it's not the type of game that would make it in an arcade.
I could imagine having a 70 hour marathon of continuous quarter feeding, and it's not pretty.
It wouldn't be "up to the developers" if the developers had a choice of "free" vs. "paying lisencing fees." This is something that MS would be very capable of doing.
Oh, and last time I checked, games such as UT, HL, WC3, DS all had options for graphics to be OpenGL. UT wouldn't be able to run on Linux if it were strictly DirectX.
Yeah, OpenGL has it's pros and cons, as does DirectX. The differences show up in where they arise. Every higher educational institution (read college) will teach a graphics class in OpenGL. OpenGL is very powerful, and rather easy to use. It's a simple matter to give it an array of vertex locations, an array of normals, and an array of colors, and have it chug out a polygon. It's been that way since OpenGL was concieved. DirectX, however, is not taught in colleges, it's history is a convoluted mass of crappy API and revision. DirectX is also not an industry standard, as OpenGL is.
OpenGL is the standard in graphics, but why is MS not supporting it, or even participating in it now?
I'd go a little further than just that. Actually, it's three words:
ID's John Carmack.
If people want Doom 3 on their computers, or any derivative thereof, or any derivative of Quake 3 (RTCW, Star Wars, etc), OpenGL is necessary. Once ID and John Carmack decide that DirectX is actually a *good* API to work with, then we'll see OpenGL die. The problem is that DirectX and Direct3D totally suck ass. In fact, every API that MS has come up with totally sucks.
I think that it would just be healthier for them to embrace OpenGL 2.0, instead of trying to stonewall it. Eventually, the gov't is gonna step in and smack them upside the head too. Using the broad install base of Windows to kill OpenGL progression would be considered anti-competitive.
I agree with this fully, but included with the need to design correctly before coding is the requirement to have flexibility in the design. That is something you can design as well, making all of the points about "changing designs" moot.
To me, it's all about how you think of things. It should be really easy, for instance, to add another collection of objects to an existing object type. It would take some chugging on the DB end for a bit, but it's no worse than clustering a table in and RDBMS. I think of everything in terms of objects, what they have, what they don't have.
I'm working on a contract-tracking system right now, using a relational DB. It's a little more complicated that I'd like it to be, having to use seperate tables to keep track of the relationships between contacts, contracts, offices, and everything else. It would be a whole lot simpler if I had an Office object that had a collection of contract objects. I could do a search on the branch by just cycling through that collection, because I know that all of the data there pertains to that object. In the RDBMS, I need to do a scan on two tables using a join. The method of usage is a little hairier than it has to be.
I feel that an OODBMS is a great tool for a job you do. There's no need to say "OODBMS for everything," just like there's no need to say "RDBMS for everything." They both work, although in different ways. Neither of them is going to cease to exist, should you choose the other one to work with for an application. There's no reason why you couldn't be running both of them at the same time (but not for the same data / structure / applications). It's a matter of choosing what the best tool for the given problem. If you want to do everything with an RDBMS, go ahead! You may find that there are some projects that you'll work on will become 10x easier to code, if you had used an OODBMS for the project instead.
Just my $.02
This does make a lot of sense. Government (or some non-profit entity) should provide the infrastructure with which we do business. It is this way for the roadways, there's no reason why it can not apply to those things which things run upon (physical, or non-physical.
This goes right up there with a government mandated OS, one which would be maintained by a non-profit entity. This would eliminate any sort of leverage that a company may take advantage of (owning 98% of the cable in the U.S., owning 98% of the U.S's desktops). In effect, this would produce a 'fair game' effect, causing those utility companies to become service based companies, like they ought to be.
Baby-bell provides a service. Baby-bell should not be allowed to strictly control a market (DSL, Cable, whatever.) There isn't a thing that a company could do, if this actually was set into motion (with passage of a bill). I imagine that there would be mucho lobbying to disrupt this type of bill, just like there would be in the OS case. We just have to try to find those rare politicians who have eyes that are not turned by massive amounts of money.
I'd say that Germnay and the USSR have the dirtiest hands, still.
The US may have done things that have bitten us on the ass, but never has the US participated in genocide. Genocide, however, has been practiced by Iraq, Iran, USSR, Germany, Yugoslavia, China, etc.
The majority of weapons of mass destruction came from the USSR, and still do. Russia could give half a shit where their crap ends up.
Iraq does not have F-16's. As far as I know, Israel is the only other country to have them, and that's primarily a humanitarian effort on the part of the US. If Israel didn't have big honkin weapons, it would cease to exist as of yesterday. Every country in that area would give both testicles to see Israel fall.
That Google's name is unoriginal in the first place. I can understand the makers of Spam, for instance, because the word Spam did not exist in the language until the meat product came about. Google, on the other hand, is a math term that I've used in competitive shouting matches since I was in 2nd grade. Oh yeah? I'm going to have a google! No, I'm going to have a google-plex!
Google needs to get off of the crack.
Except that we Americans will foot the bill for that.
A better idea would be to completely remove the staff of the USPO and start fresh, once they get to... say 500 bogus patents granted.
It's like the local judges... I always vote against keeping them in office, just to keep them on their toes.
Or, conversely
I don't think that I've seen patents go through /. and not read examples of prior art in the commentary.
"In a sense, despite the market climate, everything, we need to be even more committed to charging in and helping out and building products in areas where we don't compete today ... because that's what's really in the best interest of the customers," Ballmer said.
The last thing I want is for MS to be in new markets. They have a tendancy to move in to a market, play 'fairly', and manage to use Windows to kill everyone in the market.
The problem here is that they don't really make great products. They make mediocre products that 'look nice,' but nothing that's really spectacular. Shouldn't they be dedicating more of their time towards creating an OS that is not a security risk, and not in expansion to other markets?
In other words, their hypothesis is that it was impossible for anatomically correct humans lacking MANY SIMULTANEOUS mutated genes to develop complex languages and cultures, and have what we would consider a normal human psychology. And they claim that these mutations are probably recent.
And what's the probability of that happening? If there was some kind of direction that the genes were steered in, I could believe that creativity was born of mutation, and mutation alone. Otherwise, we've got a whole slew of genes just sitting around, having no distinct purpose, before or after mutation.
Creativity probably requires something near the 10,000 genes mark, and probably wouldn't work without them all mutating to what they should have been at nearly the same exact time. The more genes you have mutating at the same time, the more unprobable the whole thing becomes.
Another question that is formed by this is: "If we had mutations that led to creativity, and it all happened suddenly, why haven't we become exponentially developed in that area by now?" I figure that there's no reason for us to stop evolving, so why don't we evolve at the rate that we supposedly used to?
You underestimate the power of pr0n.
Me prints up an Adobe e-book, then heads to the photocopier...
Actually, It's more like...
Why is AMD lumped in with Nvidia? Don't you know that Nvidia is an evil megacorporation that hoardes IP and eats small companies? AMD is the small underdog, they will never be evil. They are leagues above Nvidia, just because of their underdoggishness.
That's why ATI is so great. Intel is evil. Down with the Monopoly! Microsoft is evil, and forces everyone to eat their product! Grrr...
How is it any different from correcting or offering a dissenting opinion?
Because you can get fired from your job for saying the "Un-PC" statement. With Political Correctness, you are no more free than the citizens of Communist Russia. There you couldn't speak your mind because you might end up in prison. Here, it's a slightly different story. You can't speak your mind (or even make a mistake in speech) without being crucified by society.
Atlantic Monthly had a nice list of words that have been stricken from school textbooks. Among them were 'Yacht' and 'Cassandra.' 'Yacht' was banned because it was "descriminant against non-wealthy persons," and 'Cassandra' was banned because it's "sexist."
Can anyone tell me how all this shit got to the rediculous level it is at right now? We have some froppish, underfed, vegetarian, neo-leftist leech telling the people of America which words are appropriate and which ones aren't! It is 100% pure, unadulturated bullshit, and you all know it.
All that aside, PC speech doesn't really fit into things of a really sensitive nature. It takes a lot of balls and insensitivity to make jokes about the holocaust, mostly because it just wasn't funny. The Trail of Tears was also a very serious matter, and thus should only be used when referring to the actual event.
Now, persuasive speech promotes the use of extremes, but that's where common sense comes into play. If there's a guy who doesn't have enough sense not to name a computer configuration article after an event that stands for unjust death, an informing of the seriousness is in order. It is inappropriate, however, to censor him, axe the article, or socially crucify him. Some people are just stupid.
There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to tie in security. It seems to me that Rendezvous is just another layer of abstraction on top of TCP/IP. Instead of configuring a machine with an IP address, or for DHCP, the machine is configured to talk to the network already.
The same thing would occur, for instance, if I brought my laptop in to work, enabled DHCP, and plugged it in to a jack. My laptop would then be able to ping the range of IP address in the network without a problem.
The applications that use Rendezvous can probably be changed to be used with a normal network (iTunes and such). The security model then becomes based on the security of the OS of the machines on the network. I understand that it is still necessary to log in to your machine before using, and Rendezvous probably has some way of incorporating that. If Joe-Schmoe user does not have permissions to my filesystem, then Joe-Schmoe user will not be able to listen to my mp3's. I'm sure the same goes for the printer stuff.
And there's no reason why you should trash the computer that you've got when you get a new one. You can use the one with all of the legacy stuff to do all of your configuring/print serving/palming/etc.
Older computers aren't just going to suddenly die, so you'll have something to work with these other technologies that require it. :shrug: Think in terms of ... "What am I going to use my new machine for" instead of "Can this new machine do what my current one does." When you think in terms of the latter, you find that you won't go very far, your current machine should be more than sufficient for what you use it for.
New machines need to be different and edgy. You don't need a 3 ghz beast to run a terminal program to connect to a rack-mount. You'll need that 3 ghz machine to run the latest version of Doom 3, and whatever video editing stuff you want to do. Buying a new, beefy monster to replace machines that qualify as "good enough" at the same task is kinda retarded.
And no, there will be no shortage of parts for older machines either. If your machine dies, I'm sure you can pick up an ATA 100 HD cheap, or get a couple ISA serial ports for free from a business that is upgrading. I know I've seen about 100 go through the place that I work.
I find it interesting that the debate of "competition" even comes up.
The way I see it, Microsoft can only lose market share to Apple (MacOS X), Sun (Solaris), IBM (AIX), and other companies that decide to sell and operating system. OSS products aren't sold, as such there is no market for them. It's like air. Do we pay for air? Could there be a market for "commodity air?" --probably.
See, Microsoft fails to realize that Linux and it's ilk are not created by some company that can be smacked down. Sure, there's companies that assist in the development of OSS, but they're business philosophy does not revolve around the sale of the software. Microsoft, on the other hand, sinks or swims based on software sales.
Anything that is free will slowly undermine a market for the same type of product. It's only natural. The progression from non-free to free software may be slow, but it's an eventuality.
This is why Microsoft needs to change it's business plan. The hardware end is good. The 'web service' idea may have worked. The pushing of .NET probably won't get them anywhere, but if they offer unique services and products over it... they might do well.
The price of VB may pain individuals who cling to M$, but that individual pain does not collectivly match...
The risk associated with VB is that you will be assimilated. Those guys that get started with VB, and not with a real language are a royal pain in the ass to me. My boss seems to think that the only programmers out there to hire are ones that program with VB, so a decision to use a language like C#, Java, or Delphi is shadowed by that belief. There have been actual studies that show how resistant VB programmers are to real languages. I could have told anyone that without the need for money for a survey. VB peeps just don't get the whole programming thing.
:end rant:
I agree, Morrowind is fantastic.
What I really would love (although I would be in danger of not associating with anyone real...) is if the dialogue were not pre-scripted and truly intelligent. If I could have a conversation with them, I would get completely lost in the game.
Fortunately for my social life, this type of technology will probably only be existant when we can stick a human brain (or equivalent) in the circuitry.
Unfortunately, natural languages have almost nothing in common with computer languages. Computer languages are for the most part 1:1 codes - the same command means the same thing in whatever context it appears in a particular language. Natural languages are not codes; an idiom means different things in different contexts. That's part of the problem comparing the two.
Unfortunately, this rather intelligent statement is based upon a lack of knowledge of fact. This was alluded to earlier in the parent.
The only languages that I know that are 1:1 are those crazy assembler/machine languages. Everything else has a decidedly human slant to them. Having studied languages, including syntatical definitions as well as symantics, I could say that natural languages are bound by the same exact rules that artificial languages are bound by. Of course, the symantics change over time, this is influenced much by the sheer complexity of the language, and the nature of humanity to use the incorrect words.
Languages change because the human mind changes rapidly. It's almost fluid in that way. Machine languages do not change, because the machines do not change. The way we communicate with machines is set in stone, limited by the hardware. After many layers of abstraction, we still have something that's decidedly simple (compared to natural languages).
Why? Because. If you keep a language simple, there will be fewer possibilities to accomplish a task. It would not be a good thing if variables changed value because the computer decided that it would fit better in a certain context. The programmer therefore exerts control over the computer through the use of the programming language. This is the exact opposite of natural language. These languages tend to have a control over the people using it, forming the way they think and interact, sometimes even shaping their beliefs.
Compare the number of those peeps that actually are successful to the number of college grads with those degrees. If you had majored in one of those degrees, I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't comprehend what the ratio means.
There are far more engineering majors that have a direct impact on everyday life, you just don't see them. Every screw in your office chair, every bolt in your automobile, every mold that shaped your garbage can was designed by some engineer.
If you asked me, though, that's how I'd like it to be. I don't want liberal arts people having such a direct impact on my everyday life. I don't want to worry about my car being able to start every day. I know that I would if the engineering degrees were as simple and subjective as the liberal arts degrees. We all prefer to have the stupids right out in the open, where we can make sure that they aren't affecting our lives too much, yet letting them feel important.