There are two possibilities: - either KDE and Gnome are both slow - or X itself is not well adaptated to modern needs, so we could say that X is slow.
Check out XFce and you'll see that both KDE and Gnome are the bottleneck. It is definately possible to have a modern, sharp looking desktop that's easy on the memory and XFce provides this for me. It's very snappy on my p233 96 MB RAM laptop and uses GTK2 (the same toolkit Gnome uses). I've heard people with far slower boxes than mine say that XFce is snappy on their machines too.
"A vertical learning curve is NOT beautiful, by any stretch of the imagination. Only terminal *nix geeks and people enamored of their own inherent brilliance think a ludicrously steep learning curve is a good thing. The proper learning curve for gaming is more of a series of troughs and inclines, with very little actual vertical. You want to challenge, not frustrate. You want to progress the player through the game naturally, not be doing the same small thing over and over until they finally get it right, only to instantly meet another wall head-on as they must move 1 more step up the curve."
This is the beauty of indie games... They can afford to be unconventional and experiment because they don't need the mass market appeal that most commercial games require. Besides, I wouldn't mind a game with a good small community of devoted players. The larger a community becomes the more scum slips in under the door. MMORGs and Slashdot are perfect examples of this.
Mass market appeal isn't everything. In fact the publishing houses' unerring obedience to the mass market is a major reason we don't see much innovation in games nowadays.
You use a poor-man's motion capture. You video tape an actor (or a creature?) and anlyze its movements. How many frames does it take a step? What frame does it shift its weight?
Depending on what kind of critter you're looking for this work has already been done a long time ago by Eadweard Mubridge. You can get some of the motion shots online (click on the links in the right hand nav bar). There are also several Muybridge books you can purchase with all the motion capture shots (both for humans and Animals). I believe the books are called "Humans In Motion" and "Animals in Motion" respectively.
If Gimp was working satisfactory for you until now, then you don't need CMYK. Which is the only fine line difference between them, and user interface, yes.
Actually the GIMP has a CMKY plug-in now too. The author says it was a bit of a hack but it works. I haven't tried it myself as I have no need for that functionality. Still interesting though.
Speaking of the GIMP... What's been going on with GIMP development lately anyhow? It seems to be just crawling along. The GIMP used to be pretty close to Photoshop in funtionality but it's *really* starting to fall behind as of late. Even Paint Shop Pro is more featureful than the GIMP now. I'm not slamming the GIMP devs but I'm just wondering what has happened to this once prodigious project as of late?
Good replies, here are some more brief retorts: On cheap 3d engines: If they are so good, why isn't anyone using them? ATVI, EA, VU and the lot like to make the most money possible as well but they seem to stick to Quake3, Unreal, and to a lesser extent LithTech for FPS.
I think a big reason for this is that these low cost engines (I'd include a few others to the list like Torque and the much lesser known Fly3d) have only recently achieved a level of performance/features that would enable a dev team to produce a game of acceptable visual quality. Incidentally I'd almost place Q3 in the very inexpensive category now... You can license Q3+Radiant+Tools for $10,000.
On user created content: Its easy to make one good mod in your entire life. There are many functional (you say good, thats an opinion that I don't care to debate here) mods out there, but thats because there are a thousand dev teams working a thousand hours. Creating a good game on-time, on-budget is a totally different matter.
I could say the same thing about professional dev houses. There are a thousand dev houses producing a thousand games and yet only a couple are any good and are profitable. Is this a reflection on the level of professionalism of the dev houses or a statement about how hard it is to create a fun game? As for schedules this is just another skill to be learned and to be honest with you 90% of the dev houses out there aren't that great at least one of the areas you mentioned (good game, on-time, on-budget) and most are bad at two or even all three. The gaming industry has a bad case of Peter Pan Syndrome. Partly bc the type of personality the industry attracts but also because it hasn't even tried earnestly to but real discipline into the development process. If they had 80-100 hour work weeks would be shunned in all but the most rare circumstances. Right now they're almost glorified or worn as a badge of honor. If the industry had any sense at all it would realize that working these types of hours (no matter how fun the environment is) leaves their workers burnt out and their creativity drained. Of course there is also the subject of turn over which costs money as well.
I would be more interested in seeing what they come up with presented with nothing (presented with nothing? that doesn't make sense)and starting from scrath. No dis to any mod makers out there, but my guess is nothing.
This is a little unfair since a great many professional projects with big budgets *choose* not to develop their own engine but rather license an engine so they can focus on creating content right away. As these third party engines keep improving there will be more and more ppl who choose not to create their own engine but rather focus on other things.
To sum it up, if they were that good they would be professionals.
A couple of things about this...
A) The game industry isn't for everyone. It tends to chew ppl up and spit them out. Some people have a life and family outside their job. B) Some ppl I know don't want to get a job in the gaming indus. bc they just like making mods as a hobby and don't want to make a career out of it. They don't want to be stuck creating someone else's vision. C) Some are still acquiring the skills to produce professional level content and don't merit a professional gig.
On QA: I gotta tell ya you are mostly still wrong about publisher QA. Most games are NOT farmed out completely. The only game I ever heard of that was got ruled a disaster and they vowed never to do that again. Yes testers are often temps, and yes sometimes some work is sent to external labs, but its all run by a professional within corporate guidlines. And thats the difference.
I suppose it depends on the size of the dev house. I was under the impression that a lot of the mid-smaller dev houses farm out this labor while the really large dev houses do most of their testing through temporary employees. It's worth me
I'll just reply in brief since you post is so full of fallacy it defeats itself... On the CS issue: That did not begin as a retail product. If they had to license the engine in the first place it would never have gotten off the ground.
Cheap 3D engines that are "good enough" for commercial useage are quickly becoming commonplace. Most of the lower cost engines aren't bleeding edge when it comes to their featureset but certainly good enough to produce commercial games. Even if bleeding edge features are required they could easily be added on an ass needed basis by a small team of developers (like you would find at a very small dev house). Most of the heavy lifting required to create a 3D engine has already been done.
And you are right, hobbyists can't make a game of as high quality as professionals. CS is an inferior product. It was REALLY inferior UNTIL THE TEAM BECAME, AND WORKED WITH, PROFESSIONALS. Heh, look at an early version. Truly inferior.
Ok... Let's look at Neverwinter Nights as another example. Many of the user created modules are *far* superior to the campaign that came with the game. The user generated content is *far* better than anything Bioware has created to date. Let's keep in mind that creating content for a game is about 75-90% of the work nowadays. Sure, they used Bioware's engine but as I said earlier 3D engines aren't a major barrier to entry anymore.
On the QA issue: You are just incorrect about this. Entertainment software publishers all have in-house QA. Just look at the credits. Um, duh?
Yes, most big publishing houses do have their own QA departments but the following facts should be considered: A) 90% of these employees are seasonal in that they generally work on testing one game and then are let go. Game companies only retain a *very* small portion of the people that they hire for testing a game. B) Often times the entire process is farmed out to another company (the QA team still usually gets their name in the credits despite this).
Do a search on google and you'll find lots of companies that specialize in QA for the gaming industry.
On the Steam issue: I posted in another thread that Steam has even more questions that this method. To play you have to be online.
Basically you're tearing down Steam's implementation and not the general idea of content distribution. I agree that certainly there is some merit to having that paper manual and jewel case in front of you in your hot little hands (complete with cool artwork). For me if it comes down to a $50 packaged game (which I have to drive to the store for) or a game I can download and burn for $20-35 I know which one I would take. Also, how many people even bother to read the manual for most games? Inevitably the packaging for games largely end up in the trash.
I know you WANT to believe you can make money without money, and in the linux world, maybe you can(?).
I never said that making a game requires $0 but I am trying to make the point that fun and attractive games can be created for *much* less than they are now. One doesn't need a budget of 10's of millions of dollars to make a fun, acctractive and playable game (that's not bejeweled;). The music industry has a thriving indie scene and if you look around the same thing is beginning to happen to game development. The technology required to make games is becoming better understood and more widespread to more game developers.
But its not there yet for entertainment software. And when it is, the big publishers will just run to the consoles anyway.;)
And/Or a computer games that are more sophisticated than your typical video game (like MMORPGs). I'd agree that the market isn't there yet but I firmly believe we're beginning to see the genesis of this process.
Hey, what financial company do you work for? That hasn't been my experience with my investments, but I would definitel
Who do you think pays the developers while they make the game? Very few developers are in a position to publish a game without any outside funding. Web-based games are cheap to make, but does the world really need another Bejeweled rip-off? Who is going to pay for the 3 year development of a game and the engine license in the first place?
Who paid the ppl when they were working on Counterstrike in their spare time? No one? And yet CS is good enough to be a retail product. How can this be? Could it be that sufficiently motivated hobbyists can create content that is as good as or better than commercial games. Nah, that couldn't be it.:)
Then lets talk quality control. Its the publisher who does the QA. Now I know we all have different opinions about how well that works, but it is something.
Most publishers don't even do their own QA they farm it out to temporary workers. If there is 0 budget for QA then a reasonable level of QA can be performed by releasing their game to an expanding list of beta testers that gets larger as the devs feel more comfortable with the state of their game.
Along with quality control goes support. Who is to say there would even be a serious customer support webpage, let alone a call and email center?
Patches? See above for cash. Once the game is out the amount of money earned is basically set. The chance of extended support with patches is even more unlikely.
Broadband support is not ready. If you don't believe me, look how the Counter-strike population shot up once it became a retail product. That was a free game in the first place, but since it was a huge download it didn't REALLY blow up until someone could walk into a store and buy it at retail. Broadband is spreading but its just not there yet.
I think the fact that CS really blew up is somewhat a function of broadband not being pervasive but I would suggest to you that it is also a function of percieved value. I'm not sure of their numbers but the folks over at garagegames.com seem to be doing pretty well selling games w/o some huge publisher.
Is a couple thousand units sold enough to justify making a top quality game in the first place? Enemy Territory was recently released and even at the delicious price of 0 it only has less than 8000 users online at a time. Assuming TEN times that many have downloaded it, that is eighty thousand units. 80k units at $50 each (yeah right for an online buy) = 4 Large. Blizzard (chosen because I could easily find the info) has about 150 employees. The sales from that game would earn each employee an average of 27k per year. For exactly one year. They definitely need a larger base than that, even given the well rounded up and generous numbers.
You're totally missing the point. No one is saying that publishers are going away overnight and that all the big dev houses will switch over to online distribution next week. These things start with the smaller dev houses (and these guys are a portion of a small dev house) and graduates to the larger houses later. Why on earth do you think Valve has developed Steam.If it isn't a viable means of distributing content (which is all games really are today) why is Valve doing it? Valve mentions that 75% of their players are on broadband btw. Like any new technology online distribution will be tried and proven in the smaller dev houses and the graduate up to the big boys.
Then there is the physical product itself. There are so many questions there.
Other people in this thread have answered these questions.
Don't even think about publishers going away just yet. Wallstreet analysts will be the first to correctly predict that one.
You must to be joking? I work for a financial company and let me tell you that most wall street analysts are lazy, self centered, blue blooded morons who are only in their business for the cash. The moment you hear a wall street analyst predict the doom of publishers you can rest assured *it has already happened*.
Gee, 100K to 300K a year umps. Of course everyone else out there on the field is making 3 million to 300 million or more. Hard to feel like the umps are being overpaid.
I think you've been reading the sports headlines too much. The average baseball player makes about $200,000 a year... The avg. career length is about 2-3 years. Of course that doesn't sound like a bad deal but you do have to consider the following:
1) All the time the player spent developing their skill when they could be doing something else. 2) All the wages lost whenever a player languishes in the minor leagues or independent ball for years.
The media really tends to skew one's perspective (A. Rod is a good example) on exactly how much baseball players make.
Microsoft went into the console market with 2 billion dollars set iside... they said "ok, we got 2 billion, buy a cool console and sell it to as many people as possible, we can make money later"... the plan worked, and they are number 2 in the game market.
I'd say the plan worked once MS actually starts making money off of the XBox instead of losing boatloads of cash. The tombstones of console companies is written with the epitaph "We we were second place!" Sega comes to mind as an example.
You mentioned a lot of great schools but I haven't seen anyone talk about Grantham University (I'm currently a student there). It is a fully accreditted University (by an accrediting body recognized by the US Sec. of Education) which is focused on technical degrees such as CS and IS (among many others). It was founded in 1951 so Grantham is different than other distance education institutions who sprung up to cash in on the dot bomb craze. Also, Grantham's education is *very* affordable. For a bit under $2500 you get a full semester of courses, all of your books and any software that your courses require. Not bad! That's a heck of a lot better deal than what Univ. of Phoenix is offering IMO. Anyhow it's a nice little school and if you're looking for a good, reputable accredited distance learning program Grantham is a tough value to beat!
If you think that the IT world as a whole mistrusts Microsoft, you need to reevaluate your definition of what "the IT world" is. You and your buddies does not count. On a whole, I would say that Microsoft is, right or wrong, MORE trusted than OSS.
But you're dodging the arguement. The question wasn't whether or not MS was MORE trusted than OSS but whether it is really trusted by the general IT community. It's not really surprising in the risk averse world that MS is more trusted than OSS. In this type of conservative environment is it any shock that CIO's consider the devil you know preferable to the one you don't? MS is a safe bet in that you're sticking with what everyone else is using.
Now this is not to imply that Microsoft makes a better product or anything, but you do need to maintain a realistic assessment of their market penetration and perception.
I think the perception that most have of MS is made clear by the fact that MS even feels the need to start an initiative called "Trustworthy Computing" which implicitly states that their customers don't trust MS on security issues. There are few (except for the most devout fanboys) who would argue that MS' reputation for insecure software is a well earned one.
MS has previously focused their efforts in constantly adding features to their products instead of taking some of that focus and applying it to securing their product. I find it horrifying that a company the size of MS is just now getting around to employing full time code auditors and educating their staff on security issues. Better late than never I suppose.
The biggest problem I see for MS in the short and medium term is that security wasn't a main concern when designing most of their current line of software. Code auditors can help plug a good number of holes in today's code but if the design of the software is fundamentally broken from a security standpoint you're only sticking your thumb in a dike full of leaks. A better patch management system only treats the symptoms of this problem. The real solution would be to redesign their most broken API's and apps with heavy input (that's followed and listened to!) from security experts. MS probably won't do for business reasons. They would be hailed by security experts but their customers would likely scream bloody murder if things changed too much. After the last licensing fiasco where they *seriously* pissed off their largest customers they can't afford to anger their customers much more considering Linux is hot MS' heels.
IIRC a lot of "next-gen" DVD players will be using these mainboards, and they've started putting things like hardware mpeg decoding/etc. into them. They're ideal for digital jukebox/emulator/dvd player/pvr combo systems.
I don't know that these little boxes are quite powerful enough at this point to be ready for PVR applications. This is especially true if you're talking about encoding (recording a show) and decoding (watching a show) at the same time. Tom's had a nice little VIA ITX test a little while ago and the Via processors got drilled when trying to display MPEG-* and DivX movies even in medium resolutions. Obviously the hardware decoders and other improvements VIA has made should help out a good bit on the scores. Perhaps it will be possible now to run MythTV and view recorded shows on this box and offload recording duties to another box on the network. It will be really interesting to see what these new little boards can do. I'll pick one up once they're able encode and decode at the same time at high resolutions. I'll probably be waiting a while but that's ok.:)
Why would anyone spend 400-500$ on a video card. Unless you really NEED to be cutting edge for the next 6 month or so before the next batch comes out and the price of these cards becomes more reasonable.
You're assuming that everyone uses these cards to game on. Certainly there are lots of people and even industries who absolutely need to be on the cutting edge. One example would be animators who work for special effects companies like Industrial Light & Magic or Weta. Time is money to these companies and top flight animators don't come cheap. Paying an extra $300 for a card that's even 10% faster can mean a lot when you're constantly facing time pressures to get scenes done or trying to add one last detail to a scene. Having a card that operates 10% faster allows for 10% more eye candy in the next movie you will go see.:)
Also, anyone who says 3d drivers in Linux is irrelevant is smoking some good stuff. The 3D effects industry is rapidly standardizing on Linux and are moving away from propietary solutions like those expensive SGI boxes. Why do you think tasty proggies like Maya and X3D have made it to Linux? It's because 3D FX houses were screaming at them to port it. The same thing (but to a lesser extent) happened with 3D drivers for Linux. 3D FX houses pay for top of the line (high margin) stuff and the folks at nVidia/ATI generally listen when those folks are all speaking with one voice. I'm certainly not saying that the 3D FX industry was single handedly responsible bringing quality 3D acceleration to Linux but it was one factor.
In the book, you're going on a grand quest to save the Ring of Power from the clutches of Sauron.. in the game, you're going to be a peon, running around killing other equally useless peons. Same thing thats going to make Star Wars boring.
Very true... One thing that might fix this feeling of "I'm small and don't matter" would be if the game allowed for *massive* battles like in the book. Then ppl could say "I'm just one being but I did my part to influence things." Turbine could just schedule a night when the assault would take place and you could log in to a special "Tonight Only Orc/Human Big Battle Account." This would help solve the problem of getting everyone at the same place at the same time.
I wouldn't mind being a peon Orc trying to take the Hornburg or a human defender beating off the maurading orc hordes. Esp if they incorporated a cool innovative combat system like VSIM. That would be a huge rush! Turbine could then release the movies and announce who won and have the result effect the storyline. It probably won't happen but we can dream.:)
Record of Lodoss War - A Diablo clone and in some ways improves on Diablo. A very long game and fun game. A little difficult to find though. Daytona USA - This game is great fun! This is a spot on perfect arcade translation. Wacky Races - This one is great fun too. Racing around with Captain Caveman is just too cool to miss.:) Any of the Sega 2kx sports games... They're all pretty fun if you're into sports games. Try to get a 2k1 or 2k2 if you can though as it will have more features than older versions. Soul Caliber - I know someone already mentioned it before but it the best fighting game ever made for the console (IMO of course). Buy it. Don't even think about it. House of the Dead 2 - Requires the light gun but it's a ton of fun with another person. A bit short but it's still a lot of fun.
There are tons more great games for DC. I'd suggest browsing around and check out the reviews on gamefaqs.com to make sure you don't get a dud.
An email attachment that entices the user to run the script and executes. passwd somethingdifferentthatyoudontknowabout
Logged in as root: Congrats you've just been owned. You're making installing root kits very easy for script kiddies you know?
Logged in as a plain user: someone just changed your password. You can log in to your box as root and reclaim your account. This could be done via an easy to use Rescue Mode.
or how about...
rm -rf/
Logged in as root: you just lost your whole box.
Logged in as normal user: You lose your personal files and some config work you've done. If you keep backups anywhere you're ok. Heck, Lindows could even offer to backup your/home dir in a secure location if you have enough space on your HD or CD-R if need be.
Well, this isn't exactly getting rid of X but it would silence all the people who screaming about X's supposed bloat.
I just stumbled across Kdrive (not related to KDE) which is a _TINY_ X server written by well know X hacker Keith Packard.
Here's a listing of top from the RULE (another cool minimal Linux project) web site running Kdrive and Moz. Kind of a funny contrast really.:-)
792 mfratoni 15 0 22756 22M 12384 S 15.3 59.8 1:19 mozilla-bin 720 root 15 0 7192 3600 1148 S 10.0 9.5 0:27 X
Awww... look at the little X server. He's so cute!
Here's a pic
of kdrive running the Gimp, Xfce (svelt file manager), some random apps and some pagers. That's just very cool to have all those apps running in such a mimimalistic environment.
I can assure you that it is legit. Apparently they're doing a nationwide rolling tour as they stopped by the town I'm currently living in. To get fuel for the next stop they dropped by the local Chinese take-out place and relieved them of some of their waste grease. They pulled out of town leaving an exhaust trail that smelled like shrimp fried rice.:-)
Brands, in fact, have a very specific value, and are really the only thing in an increasingly digital economy that have a relatively strong chance of retaining a high value.
I think you're probably just trolling here, so I'll keep my reply short. In a marketplace where (just as an example) even you could fire up a GNU/Linux distribution and sell it in competition with RedHat, what does RedHat have other than their brand?
To put a more accessible face on the same point you're making....
Why is Heinz ketchup and Kleenux brand tissues able to dominate markets where the goods being sold are commodity items (ketchup and tissue paper in this instance)? Their products aren't better than the generic brands which they compete against. Heinz and Kleenux are also more expensive than the generics. How are they able to get away with this? It's because of their brand's value and brand recognition by the consumer. This brand recognition is obviously worth a lot of money to Heinz and Kleenux.
I could've made my points more clearly but I was in a rush to catch a bus to get home when I wrote it. Let me see if I can be a bit more clear...
The point is though that there is *nothing* you can do to a text file that can obscificate it - short of encrypting/weirdly encoding it - as throughly or easily as a binary file format.
Well sure you can. Could you tell me exactly what those nonesense looking tags I used stand for? No, because the naming convention isn't helpful and you don't have the DTD.
The point of XML is that is a tool to seperate content and presentation. That's the whole point. If MS joined XML so that it contained formatting + content there'd be righteous hell to pay for it.
Too true... What I meant to say was that a lot of the tags which would be responsible for defining the document are removed and only the core text of the document with *very few* XML tags remain. Much less than what would be needed to produce a similar looking document as the original even if one had the DTD. I found a nice link on the subject from ZDNET of all places. =P
That also brings up the topic of DTDs. If MS was truly attempting to be open then they would disclose these DTDs or even possibly use an industry standard DTD like DocBook or something. Of course MS will never do this while there is still value in keeping their.DOC format a big secret.
The point of XML is that is a tool to seperate content and presentation. That's the whole point. If MS joined XML so that it contained formatting + content there'd be righteous hell to pay for it.
Mainly they get their sales from all of their apps interacting with one another and making it difficult to switch to different apps. Also, there's value in keeping other Office Suites from interacting with MS Office perfectly (ie swapping word processor documents). While there is some limited value in interoperating with other office suites or other applications MS has a history of shying away from this while trying to lock in customers. I've heard talk like this coming out of Redmond before ("we love and support open standards and follow them to the letter!") so you'll excuse me if I'm a trifle skeptical by all this talk of openness.:)
The Office 11 beta is supposed to show a much stronger commitment to "openness" in the use of XML file formats than anything to come from MS before now.
From what I understand the default file format is still in binary form. I also seem to recall seeing that the XML export strips out all the formatting which makes the whole thing pretty useless. Finally, as others have rightly pointed out just having the XML to a file doesn't help a lot unless one also has the DTD. One can obfuscate text just as easily as one can a text file.
[fasdfdas]]Dear Sirs,[/fasdfdas]
The above tagging isn't very open and doesn't help *much* when trying to figure out how a file format works.:) Again, all this is second hand knowledge which I haven't seen for myself. YMMV
"How can you raise the slammer worm and then say that Microsoft doesn't respond quickly? The article makes clear that attacks on Microsoft products were an average of 305 days after Microsoft patched them, and this was famously the case with respect to slammer. People aren't applying the patches in spite of clear warnings."
Exactly how are system administrators supposed to keep up with the rate at which MS patches come out? It can take 6 to 8 months for very large organizations to properly test patches to make sure MS didn't break anything they need. MS surely can't expect people to maintain a constant cycle of test fixes... apply fixes... test fixes... etc. Also, when you factor in the fact that even if a sys admin finds time to apply *all* the fixes any new fixes applied in the future may very well break some of the old fixes you put in (argh!) leaving you vulnerable to exploits that you thought you patched! MS should make more of an effort to secure their products out of the box rather than focusing on new features and patching doggie chow code after its released. The OS patches are bad enough but when you couple that with IIS IMO their reputation for cranking out shoddy, insecure software is a well earned one.
Timeliness and getting MS to acknowledge vulnerabilities is at times an issue but of far greater concern for me is the sheer volume and rate that MS spews out patches.
Re:Not necessarily the war yet
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Strike on Iraq
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What will demoralize troops is a realization that the cause they're fighting for is unjust. If demonstrations cause the troops to realize that, it's not the fault of the demonstrations -- it's the fault of those who sent the troops to fight an unjust war.
I'm not saying that our soldiers would become demoralized because 'in a blinding flash of insight would realize that the protestors are so obviously right that they might as well quit.' I don't think that quite properly takes into account the military mind and the way a soldier thinks when they're at war. They're not as soft as that. I was speaking more of the protests being demotivating in the sense of 'we're over here risking life and limb and the country doesn't seem to be rallying around us. What's up with these people?'
Of course anyone is free to protest anything they want at any time. I just think it's more productive to focus our thoughts, prayers and energies into something more productive than trying to stop a war that's already started.
Slashdot Mirror
There are two possibilities:
- either KDE and Gnome are both slow
- or X itself is not well adaptated to modern needs, so we could say that X is slow.
Check out XFce and you'll see that both KDE and Gnome are the bottleneck. It is definately possible to have a modern, sharp looking desktop that's easy on the memory and XFce provides this for me. It's very snappy on my p233 96 MB RAM laptop and uses GTK2 (the same toolkit Gnome uses). I've heard people with far slower boxes than mine say that XFce is snappy on their machines too.
"A vertical learning curve is NOT beautiful, by any stretch of the imagination. Only terminal *nix geeks and people enamored of their own inherent brilliance think a ludicrously steep learning curve is a good thing. The proper learning curve for gaming is more of a series of troughs and inclines, with very little actual vertical. You want to challenge, not frustrate. You want to progress the player through the game naturally, not be doing the same small thing over and over until they finally get it right, only to instantly meet another wall head-on as they must move 1 more step up the curve."
This is the beauty of indie games... They can afford to be unconventional and experiment because they don't need the mass market appeal that most commercial games require. Besides, I wouldn't mind a game with a good small community of devoted players. The larger a community becomes the more scum slips in under the door. MMORGs and Slashdot are perfect examples of this.
Mass market appeal isn't everything. In fact the publishing houses' unerring obedience to the mass market is a major reason we don't see much innovation in games nowadays.
-Pato
You use a poor-man's motion capture. You video tape an actor (or a creature?) and anlyze its movements. How many frames does it take a step? What frame does it shift its weight?
Depending on what kind of critter you're looking for this work has already been done a long time ago by Eadweard Mubridge. You can get some of the motion shots online (click on the links in the right hand nav bar). There are also several Muybridge books you can purchase with all the motion capture shots (both for humans and Animals). I believe the books are called "Humans In Motion" and "Animals in Motion" respectively.
-Pato
If Gimp was working satisfactory for you until now, then you don't need CMYK. Which is the only fine line difference between them, and user interface, yes.
Actually the GIMP has a CMKY plug-in now too. The author says it was a bit of a hack but it works. I haven't tried it myself as I have no need for that functionality. Still interesting though.
Speaking of the GIMP... What's been going on with GIMP development lately anyhow? It seems to be just crawling along. The GIMP used to be pretty close to Photoshop in funtionality but it's *really* starting to fall behind as of late. Even Paint Shop Pro is more featureful than the GIMP now. I'm not slamming the GIMP devs but I'm just wondering what has happened to this once prodigious project as of late?
Good replies, here are some more brief retorts: On cheap 3d engines: If they are so good, why isn't anyone using them? ATVI, EA, VU and the lot like to make the most money possible as well but they seem to stick to Quake3, Unreal, and to a lesser extent LithTech for FPS.
I think a big reason for this is that these low cost engines (I'd include a few others to the list like Torque and the much lesser known Fly3d) have only recently achieved a level of performance/features that would enable a dev team to produce a game of acceptable visual quality.
Incidentally I'd almost place Q3 in the very inexpensive category now... You can license Q3+Radiant+Tools for $10,000.
On user created content: Its easy to make one good mod in your entire life. There are many functional (you say good, thats an opinion that I
don't care to debate here) mods out there, but thats because there are a thousand dev teams working a thousand hours. Creating a good game on-time, on-budget is a totally different matter.
I could say the same thing about professional dev houses. There are a thousand dev houses producing a thousand games and yet only a couple are any good and are profitable. Is this a reflection on the level of professionalism of the dev houses or a statement about how hard it is to create a fun game? As for schedules this is just another skill to be learned and to be honest with you 90% of the dev houses out there aren't that great at least one of the areas you mentioned (good game, on-time, on-budget) and most are bad at two or even all three. The gaming industry has a bad case of Peter Pan Syndrome. Partly bc the type of personality the industry attracts but also because it hasn't even tried earnestly to but real discipline into the development process. If they had 80-100 hour work weeks would be shunned in all but the most rare circumstances. Right now they're almost glorified or worn as a badge of honor. If the industry had any sense at all it would realize that working these types of hours (no matter how fun the environment is) leaves their workers burnt out and their creativity drained. Of course there is also the subject of turn over which costs money as well.
I would be more interested in seeing what they come up with presented with nothing (presented with nothing? that doesn't make sense)and starting from scrath. No dis to any mod makers out there, but my guess is nothing.
This is a little unfair since a great many professional projects with big budgets *choose* not to develop their own engine but rather license
an engine so they can focus on creating content right away. As these third party engines keep improving there will be more and more ppl who choose not to create their own engine but rather focus on other things.
To sum it up, if they were that good they would be professionals.
A couple of things about this...
A) The game industry isn't for everyone. It tends to chew ppl up and spit them out. Some people have a life and family outside their job.
B) Some ppl I know don't want to get a job in the gaming indus. bc they just like making mods as a hobby and don't want to make a career out of it. They don't want to be stuck creating someone else's vision.
C) Some are still acquiring the skills to produce professional level content and don't merit a professional gig.
On QA: I gotta tell ya you are mostly still wrong about publisher QA. Most games are NOT farmed out completely. The only game I ever heard of that was got ruled a disaster and they vowed never to do that again. Yes testers are often temps, and yes sometimes some work is sent to external labs, but its all run by a professional within corporate guidlines. And thats the difference.
I suppose it depends on the size of the dev house. I was under the impression that a lot of the mid-smaller dev houses farm out this labor while the really large dev houses do most of their testing through temporary employees. It's worth me
I'll just reply in brief since you post is so full of fallacy it defeats itself... On the CS issue: That did not begin as a retail product. If they had to license the engine in the first place it would never have gotten off the ground.
;). The music industry has a thriving indie scene and if you look around the same thing is beginning to happen to game development. The technology required to make games is becoming better understood and more widespread to more game developers.
;)
Cheap 3D engines that are "good enough" for commercial useage are quickly becoming commonplace. Most of the lower cost engines aren't bleeding edge when it comes to their featureset but certainly good enough to produce commercial games. Even if bleeding edge features are required they could easily be added on an ass needed basis by a small team of developers (like you would find at a very small dev house). Most of the heavy lifting required to create a 3D engine has already been done.
And you are right, hobbyists can't make a game of as high quality as professionals. CS is an inferior product. It was REALLY inferior UNTIL THE TEAM BECAME, AND WORKED WITH, PROFESSIONALS. Heh, look at an early version. Truly inferior.
Ok... Let's look at Neverwinter Nights as another example. Many of the user created modules are *far* superior to the campaign that came with the game. The user generated content is *far* better than anything Bioware has created to date. Let's keep in mind that creating content for a game is about 75-90% of the work nowadays. Sure, they used Bioware's engine but as I said earlier 3D engines aren't a major barrier to entry anymore.
On the QA issue: You are just incorrect about this. Entertainment software publishers all have in-house QA. Just look at the credits. Um, duh?
Yes, most big publishing houses do have their own QA departments but the following facts should be considered:
A) 90% of these employees are seasonal in that they generally work on testing one game and then are let go. Game companies only retain a *very* small portion of the people that they hire for testing a game.
B) Often times the entire process is farmed out to another company (the QA team still usually gets their name in the credits despite this).
Do a search on google and you'll find lots of companies that specialize in QA for the gaming industry.
On the Steam issue: I posted in another thread that Steam has even more questions that this method. To play you have to be online.
Basically you're tearing down Steam's implementation and not the general idea of content distribution. I agree that certainly there is some merit to having that paper manual and jewel case in front of you in your hot little hands (complete with cool artwork). For me if it comes down to a $50 packaged game (which I have to drive to the store for) or a game I can download and burn for $20-35 I know which one I would take. Also, how many people even bother to read the manual for most games? Inevitably the packaging for games largely end up in the trash.
I know you WANT to believe you can make money without money, and in the linux world, maybe you can(?).
I never said that making a game requires $0 but I am trying to make the point that fun and attractive games can be created for *much* less than they are now. One doesn't need a budget of 10's of millions of dollars to make a fun, acctractive and playable game (that's not bejeweled
But its not there yet for entertainment software. And when it is, the big publishers will just run to the consoles anyway.
And/Or a computer games that are more sophisticated than your typical video game (like MMORPGs). I'd agree that the market isn't there yet but I firmly believe we're beginning to see the genesis of this process.
Hey, what financial company do you work for? That hasn't been my experience with my investments, but I would definitel
Who do you think pays the developers while they make the game? Very few developers are in a position to publish a game without any outside funding. Web-based games are cheap to make, but does the world really need another Bejeweled rip-off? Who is going to pay for the 3 year development of a game and the engine license in the first place?
:)
.If it isn't a viable means of distributing content (which is all games really are today) why is Valve doing it? Valve mentions that 75% of their players are on broadband btw. Like any new technology online distribution will be tried and proven in the smaller dev houses and the graduate up to the big boys.
Who paid the ppl when they were working on Counterstrike in their spare time? No one? And yet CS is good enough to be a retail product. How can this be? Could it be that sufficiently motivated hobbyists can create content that is as good as or better than commercial games. Nah, that couldn't be it.
Then lets talk quality control. Its the publisher who does the QA. Now I know we all have different opinions about how well that works, but it is something.
Most publishers don't even do their own QA they farm it out to temporary workers. If there is 0 budget for QA then a reasonable level of QA can be performed by releasing their game to an expanding list of beta testers that gets larger as the devs feel more comfortable with the state of their game.
Along with quality control goes support. Who is to say there would even be a serious customer support webpage, let alone a call and email center?
Patches? See above for cash. Once the game is out the amount of money earned is basically set. The chance of extended support with patches is even more unlikely.
Broadband support is not ready. If you don't believe me, look how the Counter-strike population shot up once it became a retail product. That was a free game in the first place, but since it was a huge download it didn't REALLY blow up until someone could walk into a store and buy it at retail. Broadband is spreading but its just not there yet.
I think the fact that CS really blew up is somewhat a function of broadband not being pervasive but I would suggest to you that it is also a function of percieved value. I'm not sure of their numbers but the folks over at garagegames.com seem to be doing pretty well selling games w/o some huge publisher.
Is a couple thousand units sold enough to justify making a top quality game in the first place? Enemy Territory was recently released and even at the delicious price of 0 it only has less than 8000 users online at a time. Assuming TEN times that many have downloaded it, that is eighty thousand units. 80k units at $50 each (yeah right for an online buy) = 4 Large. Blizzard (chosen because I could easily find the info) has about 150 employees. The sales from that game would earn each employee an average of 27k per year. For exactly one year. They definitely need a larger base than that, even given the well rounded up and generous numbers.
You're totally missing the point. No one is saying that publishers are going away overnight and that all the big dev houses will switch over to online distribution next week. These things start with the smaller dev houses (and these guys are a portion of a small dev house) and graduates to the larger houses later. Why on earth do you think Valve has developed Steam
Then there is the physical product itself. There are so many questions there.
Other people in this thread have answered these questions.
Don't even think about publishers going away just yet. Wallstreet analysts will be the first to correctly predict that one.
You must to be joking? I work for a financial company and let me tell you that most wall street analysts are lazy, self centered, blue blooded morons who are only in their business for the cash. The moment you hear a wall street analyst predict the doom of publishers you can rest assured *it has already happened*.
Gee, 100K to 300K a year umps. Of course everyone else out there on the field is making 3 million to 300 million or more.
Hard to feel like the umps are being overpaid.
I think you've been reading the sports headlines too much. The average baseball player makes about $200,000 a year... The avg. career length is about 2-3 years. Of course that doesn't sound like a bad deal but you do have to consider the following:
1) All the time the player spent developing their skill when they could be doing something else.
2) All the wages lost whenever a player languishes in the minor leagues or independent ball for years.
The media really tends to skew one's perspective (A. Rod is a good example) on exactly how much baseball players make.
I would recommend "Learning Python" by Mark Lutz as a great starting reference.
Learning Python isn't too awful. Personally I like How to Think Like a Computer Scientist - Learning with Python far better. It's also available in bookstores if you like having a printed copy in front of you while you learn (I know I do).
Free high quality programming languages...
Great free reference and learning texts...
Kids today have it *so* easy!
Microsoft went into the console market with 2 billion dollars set iside... they said "ok, we got 2 billion, buy a cool console and sell it to as many people as possible, we can make money later"... the plan worked, and they are number 2 in the game market.
I'd say the plan worked once MS actually starts making money off of the XBox instead of losing boatloads of cash. The tombstones of console companies is written with the epitaph "We we were second place!" Sega comes to mind as an example.
You mentioned a lot of great schools but I haven't seen anyone talk about Grantham University (I'm currently a student there). It is a fully accreditted University (by an accrediting body recognized by the US Sec. of Education) which is focused on technical degrees such as CS and IS (among many others). It was founded in 1951 so Grantham is different than other distance education institutions who sprung up to cash in on the dot bomb craze. Also, Grantham's education is *very* affordable. For a bit under $2500 you get a full semester of courses, all of your books and any software that your courses require. Not bad! That's a heck of a lot better deal than what Univ. of Phoenix is offering IMO. Anyhow it's a nice little school and if you're looking for a good, reputable accredited distance learning program Grantham is a tough value to beat!
If you think that the IT world as a whole mistrusts Microsoft, you need to reevaluate your definition of what "the IT world" is. You and your buddies does not count. On a whole, I would say that Microsoft is, right or wrong, MORE trusted than OSS.
But you're dodging the arguement. The question wasn't whether or not MS was MORE trusted than OSS but whether it is really trusted by the general IT community. It's not really surprising in the risk averse world that MS is more trusted than OSS. In this type of conservative environment is it any shock that CIO's consider the devil you know preferable to the one you don't? MS is a safe bet in that you're sticking with what everyone else is using.
Now this is not to imply that Microsoft makes a better product or anything, but you do need to maintain a realistic assessment of their market penetration and perception.
I think the perception that most have of MS is made clear by the fact that MS even feels the need to start an initiative called "Trustworthy Computing" which implicitly states that their customers don't trust MS on security issues. There are few (except for the most devout fanboys) who would argue that MS' reputation for insecure software is a well earned one.
MS has previously focused their efforts in constantly adding features to their products instead of taking some of that focus and applying it to securing their product. I find it horrifying that a company the size of MS is just now getting around to employing full time code auditors and educating their staff on security issues. Better late than never I suppose.
The biggest problem I see for MS in the short and medium term is that security wasn't a main concern when designing most of their current line of software. Code auditors can help plug a good number of holes in today's code but if the design of the software is fundamentally broken from a security standpoint you're only sticking your thumb in a dike full of leaks. A better patch management system only treats the symptoms of this problem. The real solution would be to redesign their most broken API's and apps with heavy input (that's followed and listened to!) from security experts. MS probably won't do for business reasons. They would be hailed by security experts but their customers would likely scream bloody murder if things changed too much. After the last licensing fiasco where they *seriously* pissed off their largest customers they can't afford to anger their customers much more considering Linux is hot MS' heels.
IIRC a lot of "next-gen" DVD players will be using these mainboards, and they've started putting things like hardware mpeg decoding/etc. into them. They're ideal for digital jukebox/emulator/dvd player/pvr combo systems.
:)
I don't know that these little boxes are quite powerful enough at this point to be ready for PVR applications. This is especially true if you're talking about encoding (recording a show) and decoding (watching a show) at the same time. Tom's
had a nice little VIA ITX test a little while ago and the Via processors got drilled when trying to display MPEG-* and DivX movies even in medium resolutions. Obviously the hardware decoders and other improvements VIA has made should help out a good bit on the scores. Perhaps it will be possible now to run MythTV and view recorded shows on this box and offload recording duties to another box on the network. It will be really interesting to see what these new little boards can do. I'll pick one up once they're able encode and decode at the same time at high resolutions. I'll probably be waiting a while but that's ok.
Why would anyone spend 400-500$ on a video card. Unless you really NEED to be cutting edge for the next 6 month or so before the next batch comes out and the price of these cards becomes more reasonable.
:)
You're assuming that everyone uses these cards to game on. Certainly there are lots of people and even industries who absolutely need to be on the cutting edge. One example would be animators who work for special effects companies like Industrial Light & Magic or Weta. Time is money to these companies and top flight animators don't come cheap. Paying an extra $300 for a card that's even 10% faster can mean a lot when you're constantly facing time pressures to get scenes done or trying to add one last detail to a scene. Having a card that operates 10% faster allows for 10% more eye candy in the next movie you will go see.
Also, anyone who says 3d drivers in Linux is irrelevant is smoking some good stuff. The 3D effects industry is rapidly standardizing on Linux and are moving away from propietary solutions like those expensive SGI boxes. Why do you think tasty proggies like Maya and X3D have made it to Linux? It's because 3D FX houses were screaming at them to port it. The same thing (but to a lesser extent) happened with 3D drivers for Linux. 3D FX houses pay for top of the line (high margin) stuff and the folks at nVidia/ATI generally listen when those folks are all speaking with one voice. I'm certainly not saying that the 3D FX industry was single handedly responsible bringing quality 3D acceleration to Linux but it was one factor.
In the book, you're going on a grand quest to save the Ring of Power from the clutches of Sauron.. in the game, you're going to be a peon, running around killing other equally useless peons. Same thing thats going to make Star Wars boring.
:)
Very true... One thing that might fix this feeling of "I'm small and don't matter" would be if the game allowed for *massive* battles like in the book. Then ppl could say "I'm just one being but I did my part to influence things." Turbine could just schedule a night when the assault would take place and you could log in to a special "Tonight Only Orc/Human Big Battle Account." This would help solve the problem of getting everyone at the same place at the same time.
I wouldn't mind being a peon Orc trying to take the Hornburg or a human defender beating off the maurading orc hordes. Esp if they incorporated a cool innovative combat system like VSIM. That would be a huge rush! Turbine could then release the movies and announce who won and have the result effect the storyline. It probably won't happen but we can dream.
When you initially log in and get ganked by some loser playing a hobbit..
"d00d! I 0wn0rz3d y00!!!!! LMAO!!!!"
*cringe*
I'm not looking forward to hearing those words from a hobbit...
I think I need to go reread LoTRs just to get that picture out of my head.
Record of Lodoss War - A Diablo clone and in some ways improves on Diablo. A very long game and fun game. A little difficult to find though. :)
Daytona USA - This game is great fun! This is a spot on perfect arcade translation.
Wacky Races - This one is great fun too. Racing around with Captain Caveman is just too cool to miss.
Any of the Sega 2kx sports games... They're all pretty fun if you're into sports games. Try to get a 2k1 or 2k2 if you can though as it will have more features than older versions.
Soul Caliber - I know someone already mentioned it before but it the best fighting game ever made for the console (IMO of course). Buy it. Don't even think about it.
House of the Dead 2 - Requires the light gun but it's a ton of fun with another person. A bit short but it's still a lot of fun.
There are tons more great games for DC. I'd suggest browsing around and check out the reviews on gamefaqs.com to make sure you don't get a dud.
An email attachment that entices the user to run the script and executes.
/
/home dir in a secure location if you have enough space on your HD or CD-R if need be.
passwd somethingdifferentthatyoudontknowabout
Logged in as root: Congrats you've just been owned. You're making installing root kits very easy for script kiddies you know?
Logged in as a plain user: someone just changed your password. You can log in to your box as root and reclaim your account. This could be done via an easy to use Rescue Mode.
or how about...
rm -rf
Logged in as root: you just lost your whole box.
Logged in as normal user: You lose your personal files and some config work you've done. If you keep backups anywhere you're ok. Heck, Lindows could even offer to backup your
Well, this isn't exactly getting rid of X but it would silence all the people who screaming about X's supposed bloat.
:-)
I just stumbled across Kdrive (not related to KDE) which is a _TINY_ X server written by well know X hacker Keith Packard.
Here's a listing of top from the RULE (another cool minimal Linux project) web site running Kdrive and Moz. Kind of a funny contrast really.
792 mfratoni 15 0 22756 22M 12384 S 15.3 59.8 1:19 mozilla-bin
720 root 15 0 7192 3600 1148 S 10.0 9.5 0:27 X
Awww... look at the little X server. He's so cute!
Here's a pic
of kdrive running the Gimp, Xfce (svelt file manager), some random apps and some pagers. That's just very cool to have all those apps running in such a mimimalistic environment.
I can assure you that it is legit. Apparently they're doing a nationwide rolling tour as they stopped by the town I'm currently living in. To get fuel for the next stop they dropped by the local Chinese take-out place and relieved them of some of their waste grease. They pulled out of town leaving an exhaust trail that smelled like shrimp fried rice. :-)
Very cool...
Brands, in fact, have a very specific value, and are really the only thing in an increasingly digital economy that have a relatively strong chance of retaining a high value.
I think you're probably just trolling here, so I'll keep my reply short. In a marketplace where (just as an example) even you could fire up a GNU/Linux distribution and sell it in competition with RedHat, what does RedHat have other than their brand?
To put a more accessible face on the same point you're making....
Why is Heinz ketchup and Kleenux brand tissues able to dominate markets where the goods being sold are commodity items (ketchup and tissue paper in this instance)? Their products aren't better than the generic brands which they compete against. Heinz and Kleenux are also more expensive than the generics. How are they able to get away with this? It's because of their brand's value and brand recognition by the consumer. This brand recognition is obviously worth a lot of money to Heinz and Kleenux.
I could've made my points more clearly but I was in a rush to catch a bus to get home when I wrote it. Let me see if I can be a bit more clear...
s s/ story/0,2000023555,20270721,00.htm
.DOC format a big secret.
:)
The point is though that there is *nothing* you can do to a text file that can obscificate it - short of encrypting/weirdly encoding it - as throughly or easily as a binary file format.
Well sure you can. Could you tell me exactly what those nonesense looking tags I used stand for? No, because the naming convention isn't helpful and you don't have the DTD.
The point of XML is that is a tool to seperate content and presentation. That's the whole point. If MS joined XML so that it contained formatting + content there'd be righteous hell to pay for it.
Too true... What I meant to say was that a lot of the tags which would be responsible for defining the document are removed and only the core text of the document with *very few* XML tags remain. Much less than what would be needed to produce a similar looking document as the original even if one had the DTD. I found a nice link on the subject from ZDNET of all places. =P
http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/software/busine
That also brings up the topic of DTDs. If MS was truly attempting to be open then they would disclose these DTDs or even possibly use an industry standard DTD like DocBook or something. Of course MS will never do this while there is still value in keeping their
The point of XML is that is a tool to seperate content and presentation. That's the whole point. If MS joined XML so that it contained formatting + content there'd be righteous hell to pay for it.
Mainly they get their sales from all of their apps interacting with one another and making it difficult to switch to different apps. Also, there's value in keeping other Office Suites from interacting with MS Office perfectly (ie swapping word processor documents). While there is some limited value in interoperating with other office suites or other applications MS has a history of shying away from this while trying to lock in customers. I've heard talk like this coming out of Redmond before ("we love and support open standards and follow them to the letter!") so you'll excuse me if I'm a trifle skeptical by all this talk of openness.
The Office 11 beta is supposed to show a much stronger commitment to "openness" in the use of XML file formats than anything to come from MS before now.
:) Again, all this is second hand knowledge which I haven't seen for myself. YMMV
From what I understand the default file format is still in binary form. I also seem to recall seeing that the XML export strips out all the formatting which makes the whole thing pretty useless. Finally, as others have rightly pointed out just having the XML to a file doesn't help a lot unless one also has the DTD. One can obfuscate text just as easily as one can a text file.
[fasdfdas]]Dear Sirs,[/fasdfdas]
The above tagging isn't very open and doesn't help *much* when trying to figure out how a file format works.
"How can you raise the slammer worm and then say that Microsoft doesn't respond quickly? The article makes clear that attacks on Microsoft products were an average of 305 days after Microsoft patched them, and this was famously the case with respect to slammer. People aren't applying the patches in spite of clear warnings."
Exactly how are system administrators supposed to keep up with the rate at which MS patches come out? It can take 6 to 8 months for very large organizations to properly test patches to make sure MS didn't break anything they need. MS surely can't expect people to maintain a constant cycle of test fixes... apply fixes... test fixes... etc. Also, when you factor in the fact that even if a sys admin finds time to apply *all* the fixes any new fixes applied in the future may very well break some of the old fixes you put in (argh!) leaving you vulnerable to exploits that you thought you patched! MS should make more of an effort to secure their products out of the box rather than focusing on new features and patching doggie chow code after its released. The OS patches are bad enough but when you couple that with IIS IMO their reputation for cranking out shoddy, insecure software is a well earned one.
Timeliness and getting MS to acknowledge vulnerabilities is at times an issue but of far greater concern for me is the sheer volume and rate that MS spews out patches.
What will demoralize troops is a realization that the cause they're fighting for is unjust. If demonstrations cause the troops to realize that, it's not the fault of the demonstrations -- it's the fault of those who sent the troops to fight an unjust war.
I'm not saying that our soldiers would become demoralized because 'in a blinding flash of insight would realize that the protestors are so obviously right that they might as well quit.' I don't think that quite properly takes into account the military mind and the way a soldier thinks when they're at war. They're not as soft as that. I was speaking more of the protests being demotivating in the sense of 'we're over here risking life and limb and the country doesn't seem to be rallying around us. What's up with these people?'
Of course anyone is free to protest anything they want at any time. I just think it's more productive to focus our thoughts, prayers and energies into something more productive than trying to stop a war that's already started.