It is apparent that the only clear choice for game development is still well-written C. It's fast, clean and, if well-written, far more portable than Java could ever hope to be.
Presumably, what you MEANT to say, was
"... is well-written C, using a consistant, stable graphics API that is available on all platforms".
And even once that is satisfied, you STILL have to convince the software makers to RECOMPILE FOR YOUR PLATFORM.
You gonna go bug them all to recompile for OpenBSD?
hahaha.
Whereas if it was java based, "all" you have to do is catch up to the other *BSDs, and get java working properly on your platform of choice.
People are forgetting that when it comes to the "core bits that need to be written in ASM to be faster", it doesnt have to be either-or. You can have that routine originally written in java, and then load platform-specific optimized bits IF AVAILABLE.
Kinda similar to the various quake display options: generic software rendering, generic OpenGL (if available), or [seriously tweaked for custom card version]
If you ever finish a project without crunch time, the marketing guys will find out and have your schedules shortened appropriately.
This also fits in the original premise of "you[r company] arent doing programmer management correctly.
A good manager will get a ludicrous schedule from marketing, and tell them in business language, "screw you, it cant be done in that amount of time".
If the manager ever lets something like that slide, then he will get more outrageous demands the next time.
One of the functions of a good manager, is to protect his underlings from stupidity from higher up.
I'm sorry, but how is that Microsoft's fault? Isn't that like Sega suing Sony for having a 'monopoly' on the console market?
Arrg. They're not suing microsoft "for having a monopoly". they're suing microsoft "for abusing monopoly power".
Said abuse falls under categories outlined by the sherman anti-trust act.
I don't want to promise numbers (I've forgotten how slow Sun's javac is) but I'd bet you're looking at 5-10 times faster.
Potentially even faster. Javac takes at LEAST 2 seconds to run. First time I typed "jikes test.java", I blinked, and thought something was wrong, because it came back pretty much immediately, with no output. I thought it was broken, but it had just compiled it immediately.
Thanks for the plug. And you can use pkgadm, the menu-driven version of pkg-get, in conjunction with a locally mounted or copied version of the
"companion CD".
But no, it's not ON the companion CD:-)
You can get pkg-get and pkgadm from my website.
(it's not actually "from" sunfreeware, just linked to from there. I wrote it)
But you can get the same level of reliability with a x86 based Unisys ES7000 server. Those machines are incredible - tell me if you're sun SMP machine can scale linearly!
sun's ultrasparcs scale better than intel-based systems. sparc was DESIGNED for SMP scalability.
intel x86 chips were not.
[blah blah split and combine cpus]
You werent paying attention. That's what
" fully fault isolated Dynamic System Domains. " means in the sun 4800 spec. And when it says "FULLY ISOLATED", it means it. HARDWARE isolated. Whereas other vendors' dynamic domain solutions are commonly only software based - an electrical fault can screw up the whole machine.
Also massive single point of failure exists in the School Sun solution - if the server goes, then you have 500
paper weights!
Name them.
There arent too many single points of failure.
If you get the 4800 line ( at similar cost), then there are even fewer.
(Assuming you are getting multiple CPU boards, etc)
Excerpt from marketing shpiel:
Additionally, this system offers mainframe-class resource management with fully fault isolated Dynamic System Domains.
The small car companies at the time said, "But
most people will always want hand-built cars, because they are custom built and better
quality." They were of course wrong - the more efficient process won in the end.
They were RIGHT, but about the wrong side.
Mass production using appropriate methods can produce a better quality car than a hand-built one, unless the hand-built one is made by true masters of the art.
"Efficiency" wasnt the deciding factor. It was the combination of giving a better product for a lower price. Or at least a "good enough" product.
If mass-production was somehow much less efficient, but still put out a reasonable product at a good price... it still would have won.
This is exactly how microsoft won its current position. The trouble is, they have now raised the bar on "good enough" from a consumer perspective.
100% Open source, "free" software would have had a much better chance of destroying microsoft when windows 3.1 was out. Now it's a much greater battle. The only reason there is a possibility of "Open Source" winning the office war, is because of decidedly NON-open, FOR-PROFIT company wrote star-office, and then another NON-open, FOR PROFIT company decided to buy and then "open" up the product. I dont think this would ever have happened if there wasnt an initial set of paid programmers working full-time on it. (for a LONG time).
I hate to say it, but all these little projects like Linux and others will never have enough software developed for them to actually make them profitable.
You mean that as sarcasm, but it is actually true. No-one is making a profit "from linux". Even the various hardware vendors built "around linux" are going under, if they havent already.
The only company that comes even vaguely close to "making a profit on linux" (in the US, anyway)
seems to be RedHat, and I'm not sure exactly how much money they are making from reselling free code (as balanced by the costs of bandwidth leeches grabbing it for free from their site).
They MIGHT be making a little money from support services. But last I heard, most "linux support" companies were going under also.
The greatest financial *BENEFIT* from linux, would seem to be in companies that save themselves money by installing linux, vs something that would cost them money. But note two things here:
1. "saving money" is NOT the same as "making a profit"
2. note that the benefit to them is simply the "free beer" aspect, not the "free speech" aspect.
99 out of 100 companies are not contributing new and important code to linux. They are simply benefiting from the fact that it is free for them to use.
Sun very much believes the old Perl maxim "there's more than one
way to do it" and appends "Our way is better."
Uh, no, sun believes in sticking to STANDARDS whereever possible. It sticks to the SVR4 standard filesystem layout. It tracks the various POSIX/UNIX## standards very closely.
if you came to solaris from a non-standardized OS, and got lost, that's your fault, not sun picking "its own way".
The exception to this is of course when there were no pre-existing standards. So sun HAD to invent stuff like NIS,which then became the new standard for everyone else for a decade.
Well the problem is...most of the (enlisted) guys I've come across have trouble enough getting windows to do what they want. [...]
otherwise you might see a high incidence of 'rm -rf/' style mistakes
Just because they're running unix, does NOT mean they have to have a command prompt.
One of the
reasons I left DoD a few years ago for the private sector was because nobody
seemed interested in thinking outside the box and everyone was perfectly content
letting the vendors and contractors ram Microsoft, Solaris, and other
proprietary stuff down their throats,
Err, hello?
Last time I checked, Solaris was a "*nix". Given the title of this article,why are you complaining?
Or did you REALLY mean the topic to mean, "Which Government Agencies are open-source -Friendly?"
It should also be noted that the whole "Trusted BSD" thing is just an attempt at imitating the long-standing "Trusted Solaris" B1-level operating system.
Slashdot Mirror
Presumably, what you MEANT to say, was
"... is well-written C, using a consistant, stable graphics API that is available on all platforms".
And even once that is satisfied, you STILL have to convince the software makers to RECOMPILE FOR YOUR PLATFORM.
You gonna go bug them all to recompile for OpenBSD? hahaha.
Whereas if it was java based, "all" you have to do is catch up to the other *BSDs, and get java working properly on your platform of choice.
Err, no, it just shows that microsoft wants to kill java.
Actually, I believe linux-for-PS2 has an OpenGL implementation that ships with it.
People are forgetting that when it comes to the "core bits that need to be written in ASM to be faster", it doesnt have to be either-or. You can have that routine originally written in java, and then load platform-specific optimized bits IF AVAILABLE.
Kinda similar to the various quake display options:
generic software rendering, generic OpenGL (if available), or [seriously tweaked for custom card version]
This also fits in the original premise of "you[r company] arent doing programmer management correctly.
A good manager will get a ludicrous schedule from marketing, and tell them in business language, "screw you, it cant be done in that amount of time". If the manager ever lets something like that slide, then he will get more outrageous demands the next time.
One of the functions of a good manager, is to protect his underlings from stupidity from higher up.
Arrg. They're not suing microsoft "for having a monopoly". they're suing microsoft "for abusing monopoly power". Said abuse falls under categories outlined by the sherman anti-trust act.
As I recently described to someone, there are
"people whose profession is programming", and then there are "professional programmers"
The two are not interchangable in my book.
"Pros" understand the value of comments. Weenies dont.
How many 'open source' projects have decent comments? Not a lot.
Potentially even faster. Javac takes at LEAST 2 seconds to run. First time I typed "jikes test.java", I blinked, and thought something was wrong, because it came back pretty much immediately, with no output. I thought it was broken, but it had just compiled it immediately.
But no, it's not ON the companion CD :-)
You can get pkg-get and pkgadm from my website. (it's not actually "from" sunfreeware, just linked to from there. I wrote it)
http://www.bolthole.com/solaris/pkg-get.html
http://www.bolthole.com/solaris/pkgadm.html
If people want to port the sun implementation of java to another platform... they can do it right now. Proof: java on BSD.
That was the problem. Too many people involved.
sun's ultrasparcs scale better than intel-based systems. sparc was DESIGNED for SMP scalability. intel x86 chips were not.
[blah blah split and combine cpus]
You werent paying attention. That's what " fully fault isolated Dynamic System Domains. " means in the sun 4800 spec. And when it says "FULLY ISOLATED", it means it. HARDWARE isolated. Whereas other vendors' dynamic domain solutions are commonly only software based - an electrical fault can screw up the whole machine.
Name them. There arent too many single points of failure. If you get the 4800 line ( at similar cost), then there are even fewer. (Assuming you are getting multiple CPU boards, etc)
Excerpt from marketing shpiel: Additionally, this system offers mainframe-class resource management with fully fault isolated Dynamic System Domains.
http://www.sun.com/servers/midrange/sunfire4800/
The cost of solaris-on-intel at work, compared to the cost of linux-on-intel at work, is essentially the same.
The cost of solaris-sparc at work is still zero for the OS itself.
They were RIGHT, but about the wrong side. Mass production using appropriate methods can produce a better quality car than a hand-built one, unless the hand-built one is made by true masters of the art.
"Efficiency" wasnt the deciding factor. It was the combination of giving a better product for a lower price. Or at least a "good enough" product. If mass-production was somehow much less efficient, but still put out a reasonable product at a good price... it still would have won.
This is exactly how microsoft won its current position. The trouble is, they have now raised the bar on "good enough" from a consumer perspective.
100% Open source, "free" software would have had a much better chance of destroying microsoft when windows 3.1 was out. Now it's a much greater battle. The only reason there is a possibility of "Open Source" winning the office war, is because of decidedly NON-open, FOR-PROFIT company wrote star-office, and then another NON-open, FOR PROFIT company decided to buy and then "open" up the product. I dont think this would ever have happened if there wasnt an initial set of paid programmers working full-time on it. (for a LONG time).
]and isn't as well thought out as any other unix,
Examples please!
Gee, I thought he just gave you one. "The ABI changes every 6 months."
You mean that as sarcasm, but it is actually true. No-one is making a profit "from linux". Even the various hardware vendors built "around linux" are going under, if they havent already.
The only company that comes even vaguely close to "making a profit on linux" (in the US, anyway) seems to be RedHat, and I'm not sure exactly how much money they are making from reselling free code (as balanced by the costs of bandwidth leeches grabbing it for free from their site).
They MIGHT be making a little money from support services. But last I heard, most "linux support" companies were going under also.
The greatest financial *BENEFIT* from linux, would seem to be in companies that save themselves money by installing linux, vs something that would cost them money. But note two things here:
1. "saving money" is NOT the same as "making a profit"
2. note that the benefit to them is simply the "free beer" aspect, not the "free speech" aspect. 99 out of 100 companies are not contributing new and important code to linux. They are simply benefiting from the fact that it is free for them to use.
HUH? That's a BSD-ism, not solaris. ping is in /usr/sbin, along with most other admin-type tools. There are no executables in /etc
No, the reason sun has a license, is that I believe Sun is a member of the board that CONTROLS CDE.
Uh, no, sun believes in sticking to STANDARDS whereever possible. It sticks to the SVR4 standard filesystem layout. It tracks the various POSIX/UNIX## standards very closely.
if you came to solaris from a non-standardized OS, and got lost, that's your fault, not sun picking "its own way".
The exception to this is of course when there were no pre-existing standards. So sun HAD to invent stuff like NIS ,which then became the new standard for everyone else for a decade.
That's why you need to ask their name and company name before asking to be put on their no-call list.
It both makes them more likely to do something, AND gives you something to write down to sue them later
well, I wasnt really meaning sun completely invented the idea of a lightweight process. More of the "Hey, solaris has it, we should add it too" trend.
Just because they're running unix, does NOT mean they have to have a command prompt.
MacOS X is a prime example of this.
Err, hello? Last time I checked, Solaris was a "*nix". Given the title of this article,why are you complaining?
Or did you REALLY mean the topic to mean, "Which Government Agencies are open-source -Friendly?"
It should also be noted that the whole "Trusted BSD" thing is just an attempt at imitating the long-standing "Trusted Solaris" B1-level operating system.