Metrowerks Codewarrior is an IDE (and I believe has a commandline tool for processing the project file ala Make) that uses plugin based preprocessors, compilers, prelinkers, linkers, postlinkers, and other tools, which the master project controls execution of (and through a nice GUI, allows easy association of file extensions with their tools and build information). It's been doing this since at least '97.
It also makes sense given Apple's design philosophies - ease of use and style/form. It's all about their appearance - it's a very specific, unique style, that they want associated with their OS and software. People who make OS X-like themes for Windows and Linux want to scream bloody murder when they get Cease and Desist letters, trying to claim fair use. However, by making the theme and >distributing it, they're actively (although perhaps not intentionally) attempting to use Apple's designs and themes to subvert Apple's marketshare.
As an example - if someone made a car that looked very much like a Jaguar, but cost a third as much and had more commodity parts under the hood, and started selling it as the Panther. That's very obviously wrong, and even those theme-makers will probably agree.
What's the difference? One's a physical form of style, the other is a digital visual form of style. Nothing wrong with owning/restricting the use of a computerized form of artistic visual style. Even the GPL is a license that restricts the use of the licensed digital content.
In that case, I choose to justify them all by pointing out that I didn't earn or pay for the air that I breathe, but yet I still deserve it.
That is a completely different, and very asinine argument. There is a significant difference between music and movies, and water and air. The major distinction between necessity for survival and your mere wants and desires aside, there is fact that air is something that it is impossible to own and control and is something every human being needs. You can bet your entire MP3 collection that kids in west africa don't need that Celine Dion song you downloaded last night, but they sure as hell need air and water. At least the air they are guaranteed to.
If you cannot survive without your illegal copy of a song, movie, book, then you need serious help.
No, no they don't. They can forge the address easily, it doesn't require any access to anyones system, nor does it even require the forged address to exist. I have gotten spam from forged non-existant users on my system, and I, on rare occasions, also get bounces from spam sent with forged headers claiming my address, yet my mail server and home computers are quite secure, and have not been compromised.
I can unplug my DSL modem for 2 minutes from Verizon, and get a new IP address. Not all providers are as generous in their DHCP timeouts, and Verizon isn't one of the small providers.
The issue here is you are looking at MMORPGS. RPGs are traditionally turn based combat. I haven't seen many successful RPGs that required one to actually swing or fire their weapon manually.
There are two massively multiplayer games that feature realtime combat
* Planetside, which is an MMOFPS with RPG characteristics (levelling, improving your character by gaining extra implant slots and additional simultaneous skill sets)
* Neocron, which is an MMORPG/FPS (I may be wrong on this one, it was a while ago and I only played the offline trainer, which was supposed to simulate online play)
One of the biggest issues is lag; to reduce lag, which would get horrendous when there are many people in close promixity doing things, the client-side visual representation and simulation, and the server side simulation are never in sync with each other. The server is the final arbiter, but the client tries to the best of it's ability and available information to provide a visual representation of what is going on.
Planetside (and I assume Neocron) solves the lag issue by moving combat resolution for attacks to the attacker's client, and trusting the client's integrity. As a result, you can easily die 3-4 seconds after running behind cover; likewise you can run through an intersection, be in the clear on your end, yet be shot and killed 5 seconds later as someone sees you go through the gap 3 seconds earlier and shoots you.
Often, the wine's price gets a bump just for the name recognition factor, regardless of how good it is.
That's how it is in the wine world, period. Name defines the price. Region and quality of the harvest during that year determine quality far more than skill. That is to say, while it takes good skill to produce a good product, you can't produce a good product with poor materials even with a lot of skill. In the wine making business, most wineries have the skills necessary to produce a good wine given the good grapes. Even the best don't have the skills necessary to produce excellent wine if the harvest that year was very poor. The quality of the harvest tends to vary by region, and neighboring vineyards tend to have the same harvest quality.
This is why you can hear wine drinkers refer to a wine's year as a "good year".
When looking for a wine, you want to look more for the region and year, moreso than who made it. The smaller 'no-name' wineries can produce better product in a good year than the best wineries can in a poor year. And those no-name wineries can cost a fraction of the price.
Some folks I know worked at a tech company that earned such a poor reputation, they leave that time blank. When asked what they did during that time, they would rather say "Gay porn" than admit to the company they worked for. It's more respectable that way...
This evolution occured at the demand of the players. The majority of the game playing public - i.e, those who spend the majority of the money that the game industry sees - have developed an expectation that each new generation of games (about every 2 years) will become more involved and more in depth than the previous generation of games. That involvement and depth comes at the cost of complexity.
This expectation has come about because games were evolving, and the evolution is expected to continue, not cease on some happy medium of game play and complexity.
Very creative, however, if you had read the whole article, you would have realized that the chain of contractors - the university that received the original contract, the programmer they subcontracted, and the programmer that the subcontractor contracted, were all US citizens and/or organizations.
Just because a programmer is located in the US does not make him or her infallible and capable of doing perfect work.
Tactical and strategic use of vehicles and weapons are key in this game.
Agreed. It's the only game I know of where you can have a prolonged firefight from cover without dying (if you're lucky), or be pinned (or pin down) victims. There are plenty of times I've dived for cover after taking a hit from an enemy machine gunner or armor, then crawled to safety. Terrain makes a big difference, especially when it comes to tanks.
I usually get bored with games within a month, but I'm still playing DC since the day it came out, for at least an hour a day.
This could lead to more Anton Pilar order raids... perhaps larger companies raiding smaller companies and seizing equipment to drive them out of business.
I bought one of these. Not only is it good exercise (building up wrist, lower, and upper arm strength and soothes RSI and generally sore wrists), but it is also a conversation piece - every time someone at the office sees me using it, they want me to explain how it works. The conversation usually it ends up with "that's so cool, I have to get one, where did you get it?"
Considering the company I work at is a video game developer, any toy that can impress other engineers like that has to be cool.
The company that makes them, http://www.powerballs.com/, offers a lifetime guarantee, and the things are user servicable (they even guarantee it if you break it taking it apart). They'll ship replacement parts out at no cost.
The instructions - lwbrx (load word byte reversed index) and lhbrx (load half-word byte reversed index), as well as the store-variant versions - still exist, as part of the core PowerPC instruction set. I wrote plenty of well published Mac games that relied on it for reading in (PC-original) data files, and I haven't heard any reports of them suddenly not running.
These instructions load a 4 byte int or 2 byte short from memory into register, reversing the byteorder of the incoming data.
The other 'endian' issue of the PowerPC could be that the PowerPC was able to run in little endian or big endian mode, and I COULD see little-endian mode being removed for the 970 (whether it is or not I do not know, I stopped developing Mac games). However, I believe this wasn't a software adjustable mode but a chip-level signal line.
There are other legitimate uses, of course. For example, I run a server from which I give email accounts to my friends. The server uses POP-before-SMTP authentication, so they can send from anywhere with their mail clients without it being an open relay. But a couple of my friends use Earthlink, which blocks outgoing port 25. All Earthlink customers must send their email through Earthlink's mail servers (although Earthlink users can use any 'from' address they want). I don't think I really want to add all of Earthlink's IPs to an SPF block... but I don't want to stop offering mail to those friends who use it, either. Catch 22 for me if this system goes into full force and Earthlink continues this block.
Now, if Wikipedia had even just 2,000 entries that were worth reading, it might be more interesting. Considering the proliferation of useless entries on Wikipedia, this isn't all that important a milestone.
Too many entries are lacking in content, or filled with placeholders and outlines for future material that was never added.
The value per hour of Pay to Play games tends to be higher. Most $50 games tend to provide 20-30 hours of gameplay, even with replays. That means $2.50 to $1.66 per hour of gameplay. Pay-to-play games, however, tend to be ongoing with far more content and diversity in gameplay. Even with a $30 to $50 up front fee, and $13-$15 per month after the first month (Lets just say $50 and $15, which is the coming trend), if a person plays an average of 1 hour a day, after 2 months (60 hours and $65) they're already paying less per hour than a $50 game. Higher cost for a single game, but lower cost per hour, so greater value. Likely this 1 game will be played instead of 2 $50 games ($100 and 40-60 hours of play).
My case is a bit different from many others, as in addition to the concentration problems, I had (still have) strange mental and physical compulsions that I've never had diagnosed. It causes me to have strange ticks and to make strange sounds occasionally. As I've grown older I've learned to control these weird impulses so that they are now unnoticeable.
Now that you mention it, I have the same problem, but I never associated it with ADHD - perhaps I will have to investigate that.
However, teaching a 5 year old child, let alone one who can't sit still and focus for 5 minutes, the mental training to 'control' their symptoms, is damned near impossible.
And to all those people who say "5 year olds are supposed to be active"... BULLSHIT! I've seen plenty of non-medicated, normal 5 year olds who can calm down and sit still for a period of time - hours sometimes - and do something. The problem with true ADHD is you never get that respite. Whenever I wasn't sleeping, I was going from one thing to another every few minutes. I think the longest I could pay attention to something was about 5 to 10 minutes before I'd switch tracks to something else, and it was like that from waking up to bedtime. I couldn't sit still through a 30 minute tv show! Medication can work better... and in my case, I wouldn't mind having to set aside the mental tricks I use to try to focus at the times it gets most difficult yet is most critical.
I suffered from ADHD as a child as well, and believe I still do suffer from it in some form as an adult, although I have many of the problems under control through conditioning and strong willpower. I disagree very strongly with your statement that it is not a disease.
I also do not believe those stimulants (none of which I take) are a hindrance. As a child, I was on ritalin, and I was still in the gifted and talented program. In Kindegarten, I had ADHD issues so severely, I was originally suspected to be suffering from a mild form of mental retardation (ADHD didn't cross their minds at the time). As a result of this suspicion, I was given an IQ test. I was discovered to have a high IQ (~145 range at the time in Kindegarten), which ruled out mental retardation, and brought up suspicion of ADHD.
I couldn't sit still in class, I couldn't focus, I couldn't pay attention, I couldn't learn. What good is intelligence if one can't manage to focus long enough to learn how to read and write? What good is intelligence or brilliance without an educational foundation and the ability to focus and employ one's abilities?
Ritalin was a godsend for myself and my parents - I could finally focus in class, and my mother wasn't being driven crazy by an overactive 5 year old. I was in the gifted and talented program in elementary school, and began reading material well beyond my grade level.
Now, that is not to say I believe Ritalin is a wonder drug. I am merely stating my experience with it during my childhood. Misdiagnoses of ADHD IS a problem. Treatment of correct diagnoses is not.
You can listen to what this person has to say, not treat your daughter, and put her school years at risk of being wasted time. Or you can seek treatment for your daughter.
Slashdot Mirror
Metrowerks Codewarrior is an IDE (and I believe has a commandline tool for processing the project file ala Make) that uses plugin based preprocessors, compilers, prelinkers, linkers, postlinkers, and other tools, which the master project controls execution of (and through a nice GUI, allows easy association of file extensions with their tools and build information). It's been doing this since at least '97.
It also makes sense given Apple's design philosophies - ease of use and style/form. It's all about their appearance - it's a very specific, unique style, that they want associated with their OS and software. People who make OS X-like themes for Windows and Linux want to scream bloody murder when they get Cease and Desist letters, trying to claim fair use. However, by making the theme and >distributing it, they're actively (although perhaps not intentionally) attempting to use Apple's designs and themes to subvert Apple's marketshare.
As an example - if someone made a car that looked very much like a Jaguar, but cost a third as much and had more commodity parts under the hood, and started selling it as the Panther. That's very obviously wrong, and even those theme-makers will probably agree.
What's the difference? One's a physical form of style, the other is a digital visual form of style. Nothing wrong with owning/restricting the use of a computerized form of artistic visual style. Even the GPL is a license that restricts the use of the licensed digital content.
In that case, I choose to justify them all by pointing out that I didn't earn or pay for the air that I breathe, but yet I still deserve it.
That is a completely different, and very asinine argument. There is a significant difference between music and movies, and water and air. The major distinction between necessity for survival and your mere wants and desires aside, there is fact that air is something that it is impossible to own and control and is something every human being needs. You can bet your entire MP3 collection that kids in west africa don't need that Celine Dion song you downloaded last night, but they sure as hell need air and water. At least the air they are guaranteed to.
If you cannot survive without your illegal copy of a song, movie, book, then you need serious help.
Wow. I couldn't even consider them on a top 5 list...
How could you buy it on iTunes or Napster, unless you know the name?
Now, will their system overload if you try to get it to recognize Death Metal?
No, no they don't. They can forge the address easily, it doesn't require any access to anyones system, nor does it even require the forged address to exist. I have gotten spam from forged non-existant users on my system, and I, on rare occasions, also get bounces from spam sent with forged headers claiming my address, yet my mail server and home computers are quite secure, and have not been compromised.
I can unplug my DSL modem for 2 minutes from Verizon, and get a new IP address. Not all providers are as generous in their DHCP timeouts, and Verizon isn't one of the small providers.
- MaineCoon
The issue here is you are looking at MMORPGS. RPGs are traditionally turn based combat. I haven't seen many successful RPGs that required one to actually swing or fire their weapon manually.
There are two massively multiplayer games that feature realtime combat
* Planetside, which is an MMOFPS with RPG characteristics (levelling, improving your character by gaining extra implant slots and additional simultaneous skill sets)
* Neocron, which is an MMORPG/FPS (I may be wrong on this one, it was a while ago and I only played the offline trainer, which was supposed to simulate online play)
One of the biggest issues is lag; to reduce lag, which would get horrendous when there are many people in close promixity doing things, the client-side visual representation and simulation, and the server side simulation are never in sync with each other. The server is the final arbiter, but the client tries to the best of it's ability and available information to provide a visual representation of what is going on.
Planetside (and I assume Neocron) solves the lag issue by moving combat resolution for attacks to the attacker's client, and trusting the client's integrity. As a result, you can easily die 3-4 seconds after running behind cover; likewise you can run through an intersection, be in the clear on your end, yet be shot and killed 5 seconds later as someone sees you go through the gap 3 seconds earlier and shoots you.
- MaineCoon
The real question is, how much of the content is even worth existing?
Often, the wine's price gets a bump just for the name recognition factor, regardless of how good it is.
That's how it is in the wine world, period. Name defines the price. Region and quality of the harvest during that year determine quality far more than skill. That is to say, while it takes good skill to produce a good product, you can't produce a good product with poor materials even with a lot of skill. In the wine making business, most wineries have the skills necessary to produce a good wine given the good grapes. Even the best don't have the skills necessary to produce excellent wine if the harvest that year was very poor. The quality of the harvest tends to vary by region, and neighboring vineyards tend to have the same harvest quality.
This is why you can hear wine drinkers refer to a wine's year as a "good year".
When looking for a wine, you want to look more for the region and year, moreso than who made it. The smaller 'no-name' wineries can produce better product in a good year than the best wineries can in a poor year. And those no-name wineries can cost a fraction of the price.
- MaineCoon
Some folks I know worked at a tech company that earned such a poor reputation, they leave that time blank. When asked what they did during that time, they would rather say "Gay porn" than admit to the company they worked for. It's more respectable that way...
- MaineCoon
This evolution occured at the demand of the players. The majority of the game playing public - i.e, those who spend the majority of the money that the game industry sees - have developed an expectation that each new generation of games (about every 2 years) will become more involved and more in depth than the previous generation of games. That involvement and depth comes at the cost of complexity.
This expectation has come about because games were evolving, and the evolution is expected to continue, not cease on some happy medium of game play and complexity.
- MaineCoon
However, in this case, all the outsourcing was within US borders, as is evident from the contents of the article.
Very creative, however, if you had read the whole article, you would have realized that the chain of contractors - the university that received the original contract, the programmer they subcontracted, and the programmer that the subcontractor contracted, were all US citizens and/or organizations.
Just because a programmer is located in the US does not make him or her infallible and capable of doing perfect work.
Agreed. It's the only game I know of where you can have a prolonged firefight from cover without dying (if you're lucky), or be pinned (or pin down) victims. There are plenty of times I've dived for cover after taking a hit from an enemy machine gunner or armor, then crawled to safety. Terrain makes a big difference, especially when it comes to tanks.
I usually get bored with games within a month, but I'm still playing DC since the day it came out, for at least an hour a day.
This could lead to more Anton Pilar order raids... perhaps larger companies raiding smaller companies and seizing equipment to drive them out of business.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/5ea1/
I bought one of these. Not only is it good exercise (building up wrist, lower, and upper arm strength and soothes RSI and generally sore wrists), but it is also a conversation piece - every time someone at the office sees me using it, they want me to explain how it works. The conversation usually it ends up with "that's so cool, I have to get one, where did you get it?"
Considering the company I work at is a video game developer, any toy that can impress other engineers like that has to be cool.
The company that makes them, http://www.powerballs.com/, offers a lifetime guarantee, and the things are user servicable (they even guarantee it if you break it taking it apart). They'll ship replacement parts out at no cost.
- MaineCoon
I think I would prefer,
"Darl Gets Schooled"
- MaineCoon
This is somewhat incorrect and misleading.
The instructions - lwbrx (load word byte reversed index) and lhbrx (load half-word byte reversed index), as well as the store-variant versions - still exist, as part of the core PowerPC instruction set. I wrote plenty of well published Mac games that relied on it for reading in (PC-original) data files, and I haven't heard any reports of them suddenly not running.
These instructions load a 4 byte int or 2 byte short from memory into register, reversing the byteorder of the incoming data.
The other 'endian' issue of the PowerPC could be that the PowerPC was able to run in little endian or big endian mode, and I COULD see little-endian mode being removed for the 970 (whether it is or not I do not know, I stopped developing Mac games). However, I believe this wasn't a software adjustable mode but a chip-level signal line.
- MaineCoon
There are other legitimate uses, of course. For example, I run a server from which I give email accounts to my friends. The server uses POP-before-SMTP authentication, so they can send from anywhere with their mail clients without it being an open relay. But a couple of my friends use Earthlink, which blocks outgoing port 25. All Earthlink customers must send their email through Earthlink's mail servers (although Earthlink users can use any 'from' address they want). I don't think I really want to add all of Earthlink's IPs to an SPF block... but I don't want to stop offering mail to those friends who use it, either. Catch 22 for me if this system goes into full force and Earthlink continues this block.
- MaineCoon
Now, if Wikipedia had even just 2,000 entries that were worth reading, it might be more interesting. Considering the proliferation of useless entries on Wikipedia, this isn't all that important a milestone.
Too many entries are lacking in content, or filled with placeholders and outlines for future material that was never added.
- MaineCoon
The value per hour of Pay to Play games tends to be higher. Most $50 games tend to provide 20-30 hours of gameplay, even with replays. That means $2.50 to $1.66 per hour of gameplay. Pay-to-play games, however, tend to be ongoing with far more content and diversity in gameplay. Even with a $30 to $50 up front fee, and $13-$15 per month after the first month (Lets just say $50 and $15, which is the coming trend), if a person plays an average of 1 hour a day, after 2 months (60 hours and $65) they're already paying less per hour than a $50 game. Higher cost for a single game, but lower cost per hour, so greater value. Likely this 1 game will be played instead of 2 $50 games ($100 and 40-60 hours of play).
- MaineCoon
Now that you mention it, I have the same problem, but I never associated it with ADHD - perhaps I will have to investigate that.
However, teaching a 5 year old child, let alone one who can't sit still and focus for 5 minutes, the mental training to 'control' their symptoms, is damned near impossible.
And to all those people who say "5 year olds are supposed to be active"... BULLSHIT! I've seen plenty of non-medicated, normal 5 year olds who can calm down and sit still for a period of time - hours sometimes - and do something. The problem with true ADHD is you never get that respite. Whenever I wasn't sleeping, I was going from one thing to another every few minutes. I think the longest I could pay attention to something was about 5 to 10 minutes before I'd switch tracks to something else, and it was like that from waking up to bedtime. I couldn't sit still through a 30 minute tv show! Medication can work better... and in my case, I wouldn't mind having to set aside the mental tricks I use to try to focus at the times it gets most difficult yet is most critical.
- MaineCoon
I suffered from ADHD as a child as well, and believe I still do suffer from it in some form as an adult, although I have many of the problems under control through conditioning and strong willpower. I disagree very strongly with your statement that it is not a disease.
I also do not believe those stimulants (none of which I take) are a hindrance. As a child, I was on ritalin, and I was still in the gifted and talented program. In Kindegarten, I had ADHD issues so severely, I was originally suspected to be suffering from a mild form of mental retardation (ADHD didn't cross their minds at the time). As a result of this suspicion, I was given an IQ test. I was discovered to have a high IQ (~145 range at the time in Kindegarten), which ruled out mental retardation, and brought up suspicion of ADHD.
I couldn't sit still in class, I couldn't focus, I couldn't pay attention, I couldn't learn. What good is intelligence if one can't manage to focus long enough to learn how to read and write? What good is intelligence or brilliance without an educational foundation and the ability to focus and employ one's abilities?
Ritalin was a godsend for myself and my parents - I could finally focus in class, and my mother wasn't being driven crazy by an overactive 5 year old. I was in the gifted and talented program in elementary school, and began reading material well beyond my grade level.
Now, that is not to say I believe Ritalin is a wonder drug. I am merely stating my experience with it during my childhood. Misdiagnoses of ADHD IS a problem. Treatment of correct diagnoses is not.
You can listen to what this person has to say, not treat your daughter, and put her school years at risk of being wasted time. Or you can seek treatment for your daughter.
- MaineCoon
Just check to see if such donations might be taxable. They could always try to go after you again...