Start out that he's trying to have a device reliably not corrupt data when unplugged hot, but he's using flash memory as the non-volatile storage. Flash writes are way too slow, so there's always the possibility that some of the last changes won't make it out in time.
Right. And the one solutiuon would be to set the kernel such that it flushes the write cache very often, so they will hopefully not pull it during a write event. Of course, doing this will likely burn up cycles on their flash media REAL quick.
If they want to serve me in-game ads... well... blizzard's been doing that for years with Diablo 2 (well when you're on battlenet in-between games at least) and you haven't seen any firestorm of complaints raised there.
Right, but Diablo II dosen't look at your activities to determine what ads they want to show you. It's just a regular old banner ad that sometimes displayes something of interest, and it works just like the rest of the internet. Here on slashdot, we get ads targeted towards IT professionals, simply because the industry knows that quite a few IT professionals read slashdot, and on Diablo we had ads targeted to gamers, because, well, we're playing a game (duh). Not many of us are complaining about this, because it's not particularly invasive.
The thing I'd like to see in BF2142 is if they keep track of how many times a billboard or monitor (or whatever) displaying an in game ad takes various kinds of ordnance, and then change the ad because they deterimine that the players don't like that particular product.
While you have a point, it is one I intentionaly disregard in most cases, as I don't think it's a useful distinction on the subject.
And you're possibly disregarding that point in error. When someone has a psychological addiction, endorphins are released when they participate in that activity, and it makes them feel good. If that action becomes associated with the good feelings, a cycle can start, resulting in a dependency on the chemicals associated with that activity. The lines between the physiological and psychological are not rigid, black and white areas, and everyone should understand that theories regarding this particular area change quite often.
Any of these psychological addictions can become what is in essence, a chemical addiction, characterized by a degree of physical dependence. As such, psychiatrists are finding that the treatment of some of these harmful behaviours is helped considerably if they recognize and treat the chemical aspect of the addiction.
I bet plenty of people here on slashdot know people who get mighty upset (depression, irritability, etc.) if they don't get to play their WoW (or other game) at the time they usually play. Heck, a good amount of people following that description may themselves be slashdotters. Also, if a particular game is playing host to more addicts than other games, how can you argue the game should not also be in strong focus? If it seems that a disproportionate amount of people become addicted to the grind style MMO than other games, then it has to be explained by one of a few things: 1) This particular type of game attracts people with addictive personalities, thus more of its players become addicted 2) Something in the game sets up a cycle that draws in otherwise nonaddictive people, and they become hooked.
My money is on #2, because I've been there and done that. I was hooked on Diablo 2 because of the way the game works, and I realized this some time later. The thing is, there is a clear economic incentive to create addictive games, and I believe they realized this in Diablo. Back then, Blizzard didn't gain anything from me being an addict. They got my cash up front, and for them it was downhill after that. However, you pay monthly to play WoW. The more people you hook, and the longer you hook them, the more millions you rake in profit. There's a reason that it's a felony for income tax accountants to charge a percentage of their client's income tax returns, and that's all I have to say about that.
How difficult would it be to modify melanin to produce electricity (or even sugar) from light? It sounds like it has a much wider absorption spectrum than chlorophyll, which could make things very interesting for genetic engineering and/or solar power!
Damnit, Jim, this must be how the Breatharians do it!
Their ability to live without eating must be offset by the fact that they will die of skin cancer before they starve!
No, I'd rather have a society where everyone is intelligent, logical, tolerant, disciplined, honourable and responsible. Darth Vader doesn't exactly fall into those categories.
What? Are you kidding? Darth Vader is the EPITOME of all the above! I mean, intelligence goes without explination, he's a fucking genius, period. Logic? Hey, I mean he's not Dr. Spock, but you know, nobody is, now are they? Tolerance? He's much more forgiving than the Emperor, so go ahead and tell me that's not tolerance personified. Not only that, Darth Vader is always honorable, even more so when you join his political party! I mean, he'll throw down his cloak on puddles, and he'll offer his arm to little old ladies crossing the street. Plus, he won't ever suck on your ear lobe in public. That's not only honor, that's goddamned chivalry! And have you ever met a more responsible overlord? I think not.
The thing is, they might not be able to open source the drivers, even if they really, really wanted to.
Do you know what kinds of extraneous copyrights and other forms of licensed intellectual property make their driver work? I sure don't.
I, more than anyone, wish that there could be a real, working, open source nvidia driver, whether or not it was an "official" driver. However, while it it might be unreasonable to expect them to open their code, it sure would be a nice thing for them to open up the stuff that might make it possible to develop a good, independent, open driver. I don't think that's too much to ask.
It would even give them a basic monopoly on Linux users.
Arabs being of semitic heritage themselves, I fail to see how such a thing is plausible. Ironically, your post illustrates my point; There's no way to have an intelligent debate when one of the parties dares to say that Jews don't have a monopoly over suffering. Emotions quickly take over and the word "anti-semite" is used as a wildcard.
You've clearly never met a self-loathing Jew. If a Jew can hate their own heritage, it's certianly plausible that one group like the Arabs can perpetrate the same feelings against another group, disjoint from their own. You can't deny that even moderate Arab governments frequently publish things that are discriminatory and hostile towards Jews. Oh, I guess that's just anti-zionist, and they don't really wish Jews harm; they just want to break the zionist conspiracy plots.
But in general, portables aren't really designed to be audiophile gear. They certainly could be, but the market really isn't large enough to justify the increased cost.
To me, audiophile is defined as "guys who get off with money". Sure, you can throw all kinds of money at stuff that only makes fleeting sense: $10,000 silver cables with pure gold connectors, little black boxes that do nothing but make your system sound worse, err "warmer", etc. It's 99% snake oil designed to do nothing more than seperate one from his wallet otherwise fat with benjamins. And here's the thing: How many of the recordings these people listen to were treated with such overzealous consideration? NONE. It's GIGO incarnate. Your recording can be only as good as the weakest link in the process of recording and playing it back.
I've read that iPod's audio stuffs are decent, but nothing to be excited about. But in the volumes that Apple deals with, it probably wouldn't cost much if, anything, more to take it from "merely decent" to "Pretty Damn Good". But then, since most iPods are filled with Britney Spears, it's not like it would even be noticed.
Those are two games. Two, out of thousands that don't. Any serious gamer will never consider Linux as a vaible platform. Also, what 'other games'? Those are the only two that I can think of off the top of my head.
Well, not to be a bitch, but I disagree in that respect. Back when I was playing Quake 3 and associated mods competitively (clan ladders and such), I played on Linux because it was advantageous for me. 1) the game performed better on my very limited budget system 2) I swear that Linux's network stack was tons faster because I usually had 5-7 ms smaller ping on the same servers than when I booted the same machine in windows. Also, I think Linux's virtual memory helped performance versus Win 98. Many people out there did the same thing. I was pretty serious, so were they.
I think the idea that gamers could experience performance gains on newer multiplayer games would lure many serious players over, and many less serious people might follow. But we'll never really know because of the simple fact that Linux users don't have much access to titles the masses play.
You say that the certification program certifies that the driver was written by some competent, security concious people.
I say that the cerfitication program certifies nothing more than the fact the driver writer understands how to start a corporate entity and/or exploit the Microsoft bureaucracy, and that he also has five hundred smackers, or alternatively 412 Euros.
And to say that there aren't non-WHQL signed drivers floating around is bulloney. For one, I think my SATA driver was not signed, and I think I've recently (in the last six months) installed a few nvidia drivers that had fixes which weren't WHQL signed, either.
Then there's the fact that this is being written by Microsoft, an entity that rarely qualifies as 'competant and security concious', so the entire thing is bound to be broken about a week and a half after Vista is shipped and out the door, and it's therefore going to be no sweat for the malicious programmers out there to bypass, anyway.
I hope this can help people with macular degeneration of their eyes.
I hope so too. My grandma is going through the routine... Though, apparently some drug that works on prostrate cancer works really well to stop the bleading when injected into the eye. Her sight was a bit better for it, until she had to get her aortic valve replaced, and they had to put her on blood thinners, causing more bleeding in the eyes.
Only evil people should be inflicted with macular degeneration.
Insidious, maybe. But "Buying Light" suggests it's only unidirectional, what's really happening is you're exchanging light, with a net of 0.
You know what I think? I think the Indian government should tax all light production, you know, just to be fair. I mean, there's what, a couple billion people running around producing infrared photons? That's a pretty damn good tax base.
Think of the advertising, software, and video servers they could have bought with that money.
Advertising? They don't need no stinking advertising. Heck, not too long ago, I heard "I'll google it later" come out of the mouth of a ~60 year old grandmother and cafe waitress named Fran in Wyoming. You know, it's one thing to hear that out of the mouth of a random college student. It's another thing to hear it out of the mouth of a random waitress in the middle of Wyoming. I've never known google to mass market its search services, outside of the search appliance, which isn't a service, strictly speaking. If there's anything that proves they don't need advertising, it's the fact that grandmother-waitresses in rural areas know your name. I wonder how many other technology names she knows? IBM? NCR? AOL?
Just making this deal has both Google's and YouTube's names plastered all over the evening news. Every grandma in America heard about Google. You could hardly do any better, and by golly, it's free.
You'll also get invaded if your enemies believe you aren't a rational actor.
You think so? Personally, I think that's precisely a good reason not to invade. Knowing ol' Kimmy, he'd nuke your invading forces inside of his borders, even if they occupied an area populated by a bunch of his people. He'd turn around and say that being vaporized 'brought happiness to the people of North Korea, and the patrriotic people enjoyed having their flesh melt off of their bones'
I'd give 'em credit for that kind of move, so long as he thought such a move wouldn't signifigantly disrupt his sphere of influence--his ability to make everyone do what he and his generals want them to do. I think he could easily get away with using a tactical size nuke to stop invading forces, even if it took out a few dozen villages, and only his generals would have a chance to dispose him afterwards.
Woah, this here hammer can be used to pound in nails to build an orphanage! That's pretty cool, huh? What? It can also be used to bash someone's skull in? Damn... Guess we should have thought about that before we handed 'em out to everyone.
Maybe. But in the event that he/they did plan on killing the series, he basically has to say that anyway, otherwise risk of alienating his fanbase--sort of like how mothers have to say their kids are handsome, even if their faces most resemble the south end of a northbound Shar Pei.
In SF/Comics world, he could have been saved unbeknownst to them, and returned at some point in a series or new movie.
Yeah. He could come back as a Reaver or some kind of undead and be saved somehow, or not... But whatever. As I've mentioned before, I'm not incredibly fond of deus ex machina type plot mechanics, unless they're used for comedic value, as in Life of Brian, for example. I guess we'll have to wait and see, my feeling is that we shouldn't hold our breath.
Just to make it clear, I don't think it was bad story telling, nor did I think it was a bad movie. I just didn't like the way it unfolded. I think it was designed to artifically put an end to the story all together, to make the masses of fans finally realize that it's not going any further. I sat there in the theatre and said exaclty this "Welp, so much for that. We'll never see Firefly again, no matter how well this movie does." I don't deny that there are many opportunities for story development despite or because of Wash's demise, it's just that I'm 99.9% sure that the story will not get the opportunity to grow outside of fan fiction. And that is basically the source of my disappointment.
That's also not to say that I expect everyone not in a red shirt should be a superman/woman. But on the other hand, it's science fiction. Protagonists, even secondary protagonists, should at least be a little exceptional. It's not real life, that's kinda' the point. Sucks that your brother died so young, though. Sorry.
How about: unexpectedly harpooning one of the much loved heroes through the heart for no good reason, while said character was gloating because he just saved the day not ten seconds prior, simultaneously slaughtering suspension of disbelief, depressing the audience, and ruining the ability of the hero to ever return in any future events in any possible sequel not featuring another lame deus ex machina-esque plot device to undo what had previously been done in a similar manner?
To anyone still wondering: watch the goddamn movie! It's pretty obvious that the event happened because they didn't want to do a sequel--ever.
You can reasonably try to argue that the Troll Tech - KDE relationship is mutually beneficial and that the price of Qt is acceptable relative to other development costs, but that's a separate issue, but those are different arguments from whether Qt is competitively priced.
You'll notice that I didn't argue that point, because it's tangential to the issue. The fact is, the developer version of Qt is not Free, nor is it Open Source. I don't know how the article writer can make the mistake of assuming that since one version of Qt is free to use in open projects, that makes the version you have to pay to use an Open Source product, too. Obviously, this is not the case, and for better or worse, Troll Tech went to a lot of work to make sure extraneous copyrights didn't make it into their product. I think Troll Tech/KDE relationship may be beneficial to both parties, as you mention, but it's besides the point. For one, Troll Tech allows licensees of their comercial version to modify their source as they see fit. LGPL products do allow for proprietary use, but they do not allow for proprietary modification, and I don't see a lot of mature BSD toolkits running around. For someone making an embedded application, like the submitter of this article, this might be a useful feature. But it depends on the scope of their project.
Maybe they're expensive, like you claim. But you can turn around and use the application you made on anything that'll run Linux. That's what makes Qt attractive to embedded developers. Sure, Microsofts' toolkit might be cheaper to start with, but then you have to use an embedded MS OS to run your app, and it's gonna cost you a lot more in the end. If I were a manufacturer of something that needed a well documented and well supported graphical toolkit, it would be much more attractive to me to pay $20k up front rather than pay $8k upfront AND $100k at the end. However, we can hardly comment on their dilema, because we know nothing about their situation. I don't want to know, either.
And like the article pointed out, these guys were looking for comercially supported stuff. ***commercial support is expensive*** It's up to the end user to decide if they need this support or not. In the case of an industrial machine, for example, it's totally worth paying $20k a year for when something breaks. Murphy's Law and all. You get service, and minimized downtime, and you get discount on parts. On some machines, that last part is worth it alone. If this company's programmers were real seasoned hackers, it probably wouldn't be an issue-they could go with totally free toolkits and Linux distrobutions, but it dosen't sound like they're terribly experienced, or even marginally confident in their abilities. If their company has newbie computer geeks, support is probably worth it to them.
My point was, and still is, that buying a Qt license might be worth it to some people. That's what ya call a niche market. It dosen't have to work for everyone, it dosen't have to be something you or I should be interested in; shouldn't be expected to be any of those things, either. If there's any profit to be made in the IT industry, it's a ton is certianly to be found in a niche market, unless you can revolutionize something instead of letting the big, entrenched players slowly evolve it... And the moment you do that, you're likely to be bought out.
I am shocked,sir. Shocked and deeply offended. It was Albino homosexual dwarves.
Well, I could have had a better view from the neighbors' maple tree, weren't it for that damned greased up yoda doll sitting right there in the way... But no!!!
You have a point here. You were in front of the computer learning. Most kids I knew growing up were on the computer just to play games and other less educational reasons.
Yeah... Well, I have it on good authority that the bulk of grashoppa's adolescent computer time was in fact spent learning about anatomy.
What could possibly be useful about so much learning on the anatomy of homosexual dwarves, I've no idea. However, if it turns out that such knowledge is somehow important--perhaps vital to the continuance of human existance, for example, he's your man.
Slashdot Mirror
Start out that he's trying to have a device reliably not corrupt data when unplugged hot, but he's using flash memory as the non-volatile storage. Flash writes are way too slow, so there's always the possibility that some of the last changes won't make it out in time.
Right. And the one solutiuon would be to set the kernel such that it flushes the write cache very often, so they will hopefully not pull it during a write event. Of course, doing this will likely burn up cycles on their flash media REAL quick.
If they want to serve me in-game ads... well... blizzard's been doing that for years with Diablo 2 (well when you're on battlenet in-between games at least) and you haven't seen any firestorm of complaints raised there.
Right, but Diablo II dosen't look at your activities to determine what ads they want to show you. It's just a regular old banner ad that sometimes displayes something of interest, and it works just like the rest of the internet. Here on slashdot, we get ads targeted towards IT professionals, simply because the industry knows that quite a few IT professionals read slashdot, and on Diablo we had ads targeted to gamers, because, well, we're playing a game (duh). Not many of us are complaining about this, because it's not particularly invasive.
The thing I'd like to see in BF2142 is if they keep track of how many times a billboard or monitor (or whatever) displaying an in game ad takes various kinds of ordnance, and then change the ad because they deterimine that the players don't like that particular product.
While you have a point, it is one I intentionaly disregard in most cases, as I don't think it's a useful distinction on the subject.
And you're possibly disregarding that point in error. When someone has a psychological addiction, endorphins are released when they participate in that activity, and it makes them feel good. If that action becomes associated with the good feelings, a cycle can start, resulting in a dependency on the chemicals associated with that activity. The lines between the physiological and psychological are not rigid, black and white areas, and everyone should understand that theories regarding this particular area change quite often.
Any of these psychological addictions can become what is in essence, a chemical addiction, characterized by a degree of physical dependence. As such, psychiatrists are finding that the treatment of some of these harmful behaviours is helped considerably if they recognize and treat the chemical aspect of the addiction.
I bet plenty of people here on slashdot know people who get mighty upset (depression, irritability, etc.) if they don't get to play their WoW (or other game) at the time they usually play. Heck, a good amount of people following that description may themselves be slashdotters. Also, if a particular game is playing host to more addicts than other games, how can you argue the game should not also be in strong focus? If it seems that a disproportionate amount of people become addicted to the grind style MMO than other games, then it has to be explained by one of a few things: 1) This particular type of game attracts people with addictive personalities, thus more of its players become addicted 2) Something in the game sets up a cycle that draws in otherwise nonaddictive people, and they become hooked.
My money is on #2, because I've been there and done that. I was hooked on Diablo 2 because of the way the game works, and I realized this some time later. The thing is, there is a clear economic incentive to create addictive games, and I believe they realized this in Diablo. Back then, Blizzard didn't gain anything from me being an addict. They got my cash up front, and for them it was downhill after that. However, you pay monthly to play WoW. The more people you hook, and the longer you hook them, the more millions you rake in profit. There's a reason that it's a felony for income tax accountants to charge a percentage of their client's income tax returns, and that's all I have to say about that.
How difficult would it be to modify melanin to produce electricity (or even sugar) from light? It sounds like it has a much wider absorption spectrum than chlorophyll, which could make things very interesting for genetic engineering and/or solar power!
Damnit, Jim, this must be how the Breatharians do it!
Their ability to live without eating must be offset by the fact that they will die of skin cancer before they starve!
So this is the Do Almost Whatever The Fuck You Want To Public License.
Well, you could change the liscense so that you don't have to change the name...
No, I'd rather have a society where everyone is intelligent, logical, tolerant, disciplined, honourable and responsible. Darth Vader doesn't exactly fall into those categories.
What? Are you kidding? Darth Vader is the EPITOME of all the above! I mean, intelligence goes without explination, he's a fucking genius, period. Logic? Hey, I mean he's not Dr. Spock, but you know, nobody is, now are they? Tolerance? He's much more forgiving than the Emperor, so go ahead and tell me that's not tolerance personified. Not only that, Darth Vader is always honorable, even more so when you join his political party! I mean, he'll throw down his cloak on puddles, and he'll offer his arm to little old ladies crossing the street. Plus, he won't ever suck on your ear lobe in public. That's not only honor, that's goddamned chivalry! And have you ever met a more responsible overlord? I think not.
You know, I find your lack of faith disturbing.
The thing is, they might not be able to open source the drivers, even if they really, really wanted to.
Do you know what kinds of extraneous copyrights and other forms of licensed intellectual property make their driver work? I sure don't.
I, more than anyone, wish that there could be a real, working, open source nvidia driver, whether or not it was an "official" driver. However, while it it might be unreasonable to expect them to open their code, it sure would be a nice thing for them to open up the stuff that might make it possible to develop a good, independent, open driver. I don't think that's too much to ask.
It would even give them a basic monopoly on Linux users.
Same thing that happens in every successful liberal democracy.
Eh? So you would rather have Darth Vader for president?
Arabs being of semitic heritage themselves, I fail to see how such a thing is plausible.
Ironically, your post illustrates my point; There's no way to have an intelligent debate when one of the parties dares to say that Jews don't have a monopoly over suffering. Emotions quickly take over and the word "anti-semite" is used as a wildcard.
You've clearly never met a self-loathing Jew. If a Jew can hate their own heritage, it's certianly plausible that one group like the Arabs can perpetrate the same feelings against another group, disjoint from their own. You can't deny that even moderate Arab governments frequently publish things that are discriminatory and hostile towards Jews. Oh, I guess that's just anti-zionist, and they don't really wish Jews harm; they just want to break the zionist conspiracy plots.
But in general, portables aren't really designed to be audiophile gear. They certainly could be, but the market really isn't large enough to justify the increased cost.
To me, audiophile is defined as "guys who get off with money". Sure, you can throw all kinds of money at stuff that only makes fleeting sense: $10,000 silver cables with pure gold connectors, little black boxes that do nothing but make your system sound worse, err "warmer", etc. It's 99% snake oil designed to do nothing more than seperate one from his wallet otherwise fat with benjamins. And here's the thing: How many of the recordings these people listen to were treated with such overzealous consideration? NONE. It's GIGO incarnate. Your recording can be only as good as the weakest link in the process of recording and playing it back.
I've read that iPod's audio stuffs are decent, but nothing to be excited about. But in the volumes that Apple deals with, it probably wouldn't cost much if, anything, more to take it from "merely decent" to "Pretty Damn Good". But then, since most iPods are filled with Britney Spears, it's not like it would even be noticed.
Those are two games. Two, out of thousands that don't. Any serious gamer will never consider Linux as a vaible platform. Also, what 'other games'? Those are the only two that I can think of off the top of my head.
Well, not to be a bitch, but I disagree in that respect. Back when I was playing Quake 3 and associated mods competitively (clan ladders and such), I played on Linux because it was advantageous for me. 1) the game performed better on my very limited budget system 2) I swear that Linux's network stack was tons faster because I usually had 5-7 ms smaller ping on the same servers than when I booted the same machine in windows. Also, I think Linux's virtual memory helped performance versus Win 98. Many people out there did the same thing. I was pretty serious, so were they.
I think the idea that gamers could experience performance gains on newer multiplayer games would lure many serious players over, and many less serious people might follow. But we'll never really know because of the simple fact that Linux users don't have much access to titles the masses play.
Wildcards are your friends.
You say that the certification program certifies that the driver was written by some competent, security concious people.
I say that the cerfitication program certifies nothing more than the fact the driver writer understands how to start a corporate entity and/or exploit the Microsoft bureaucracy, and that he also has five hundred smackers, or alternatively 412 Euros.
And to say that there aren't non-WHQL signed drivers floating around is bulloney. For one, I think my SATA driver was not signed, and I think I've recently (in the last six months) installed a few nvidia drivers that had fixes which weren't WHQL signed, either.
Then there's the fact that this is being written by Microsoft, an entity that rarely qualifies as 'competant and security concious', so the entire thing is bound to be broken about a week and a half after Vista is shipped and out the door, and it's therefore going to be no sweat for the malicious programmers out there to bypass, anyway.
I hope this can help people with macular degeneration of their eyes.
I hope so too. My grandma is going through the routine... Though, apparently some drug that works on prostrate cancer works really well to stop the bleading when injected into the eye. Her sight was a bit better for it, until she had to get her aortic valve replaced, and they had to put her on blood thinners, causing more bleeding in the eyes.
Only evil people should be inflicted with macular degeneration.
Insidious, maybe. But "Buying Light" suggests it's only unidirectional, what's really happening is you're exchanging light, with a net of 0.
You know what I think? I think the Indian government should tax all light production, you know, just to be fair. I mean, there's what, a couple billion people running around producing infrared photons? That's a pretty damn good tax base.
Free in the it cost $1.65 billion sense?
Well, in the sense that you can catch the flu because you want a stuffy nose, but the muscle aches and vomiting are just an added bonus.
Think of the advertising, software, and video servers they could have bought with that money.
Advertising? They don't need no stinking advertising. Heck, not too long ago, I heard "I'll google it later" come out of the mouth of a ~60 year old grandmother and cafe waitress named Fran in Wyoming. You know, it's one thing to hear that out of the mouth of a random college student. It's another thing to hear it out of the mouth of a random waitress in the middle of Wyoming. I've never known google to mass market its search services, outside of the search appliance, which isn't a service, strictly speaking. If there's anything that proves they don't need advertising, it's the fact that grandmother-waitresses in rural areas know your name. I wonder how many other technology names she knows? IBM? NCR? AOL?
Just making this deal has both Google's and YouTube's names plastered all over the evening news. Every grandma in America heard about Google. You could hardly do any better, and by golly, it's free.
You'll also get invaded if your enemies believe you aren't a rational actor.
You think so? Personally, I think that's precisely a good reason not to invade. Knowing ol' Kimmy, he'd nuke your invading forces inside of his borders, even if they occupied an area populated by a bunch of his people. He'd turn around and say that being vaporized 'brought happiness to the people of North Korea, and the patrriotic people enjoyed having their flesh melt off of their bones'
I'd give 'em credit for that kind of move, so long as he thought such a move wouldn't signifigantly disrupt his sphere of influence--his ability to make everyone do what he and his generals want them to do. I think he could easily get away with using a tactical size nuke to stop invading forces, even if it took out a few dozen villages, and only his generals would have a chance to dispose him afterwards.
Woah, this here hammer can be used to pound in nails to build an orphanage! That's pretty cool, huh? What? It can also be used to bash someone's skull in? Damn... Guess we should have thought about that before we handed 'em out to everyone.
Joss NEVER planned on killing the series.
Maybe. But in the event that he/they did plan on killing the series, he basically has to say that anyway, otherwise risk of alienating his fanbase--sort of like how mothers have to say their kids are handsome, even if their faces most resemble the south end of a northbound Shar Pei.
In SF/Comics world, he could have been saved unbeknownst to them, and returned at some point in a series or new movie.
Yeah. He could come back as a Reaver or some kind of undead and be saved somehow, or not... But whatever. As I've mentioned before, I'm not incredibly fond of deus ex machina type plot mechanics, unless they're used for comedic value, as in Life of Brian, for example. I guess we'll have to wait and see, my feeling is that we shouldn't hold our breath.
Just to make it clear, I don't think it was bad story telling, nor did I think it was a bad movie. I just didn't like the way it unfolded. I think it was designed to artifically put an end to the story all together, to make the masses of fans finally realize that it's not going any further. I sat there in the theatre and said exaclty this "Welp, so much for that. We'll never see Firefly again, no matter how well this movie does." I don't deny that there are many opportunities for story development despite or because of Wash's demise, it's just that I'm 99.9% sure that the story will not get the opportunity to grow outside of fan fiction. And that is basically the source of my disappointment.
That's also not to say that I expect everyone not in a red shirt should be a superman/woman. But on the other hand, it's science fiction. Protagonists, even secondary protagonists, should at least be a little exceptional. It's not real life, that's kinda' the point. Sucks that your brother died so young, though. Sorry.
Do elaborate on this trick.
How about: unexpectedly harpooning one of the much loved heroes through the heart for no good reason, while said character was gloating because he just saved the day not ten seconds prior, simultaneously slaughtering suspension of disbelief, depressing the audience, and ruining the ability of the hero to ever return in any future events in any possible sequel not featuring another lame deus ex machina-esque plot device to undo what had previously been done in a similar manner?
To anyone still wondering: watch the goddamn movie! It's pretty obvious that the event happened because they didn't want to do a sequel--ever.
You can reasonably try to argue that the Troll Tech - KDE relationship is mutually beneficial and that the price of Qt is acceptable relative to other development costs, but that's a separate issue, but those are different arguments from whether Qt is competitively priced.
You'll notice that I didn't argue that point, because it's tangential to the issue. The fact is, the developer version of Qt is not Free, nor is it Open Source. I don't know how the article writer can make the mistake of assuming that since one version of Qt is free to use in open projects, that makes the version you have to pay to use an Open Source product, too. Obviously, this is not the case, and for better or worse, Troll Tech went to a lot of work to make sure extraneous copyrights didn't make it into their product. I think Troll Tech/KDE relationship may be beneficial to both parties, as you mention, but it's besides the point.
For one, Troll Tech allows licensees of their comercial version to modify their source as they see fit. LGPL products do allow for proprietary use, but they do not allow for proprietary modification, and I don't see a lot of mature BSD toolkits running around. For someone making an embedded application, like the submitter of this article, this might be a useful feature. But it depends on the scope of their project.
Maybe they're expensive, like you claim. But you can turn around and use the application you made on anything that'll run Linux. That's what makes Qt attractive to embedded developers. Sure, Microsofts' toolkit might be cheaper to start with, but then you have to use an embedded MS OS to run your app, and it's gonna cost you a lot more in the end. If I were a manufacturer of something that needed a well documented and well supported graphical toolkit, it would be much more attractive to me to pay $20k up front rather than pay $8k upfront AND $100k at the end. However, we can hardly comment on their dilema, because we know nothing about their situation. I don't want to know, either.
And like the article pointed out, these guys were looking for comercially supported stuff. ***commercial support is expensive*** It's up to the end user to decide if they need this support or not. In the case of an industrial machine, for example, it's totally worth paying $20k a year for when something breaks. Murphy's Law and all. You get service, and minimized downtime, and you get discount on parts. On some machines, that last part is worth it alone. If this company's programmers were real seasoned hackers, it probably wouldn't be an issue-they could go with totally free toolkits and Linux distrobutions, but it dosen't sound like they're terribly experienced, or even marginally confident in their abilities. If their company has newbie computer geeks, support is probably worth it to them.
My point was, and still is, that buying a Qt license might be worth it to some people. That's what ya call a niche market. It dosen't have to work for everyone, it dosen't have to be something you or I should be interested in; shouldn't be expected to be any of those things, either. If there's any profit to be made in the IT industry, it's a ton is certianly to be found in a niche market, unless you can revolutionize something instead of letting the big, entrenched players slowly evolve it... And the moment you do that, you're likely to be bought out.
I am shocked,sir. Shocked and deeply offended. It was Albino homosexual dwarves.
Well, I could have had a better view from the neighbors' maple tree, weren't it for that damned greased up yoda doll sitting right there in the way... But no!!!
You have a point here. You were in front of the computer learning. Most kids I knew growing up were on the computer just to play games and other less educational reasons.
Yeah... Well, I have it on good authority that the bulk of grashoppa's adolescent computer time was in fact spent learning about anatomy.
What could possibly be useful about so much learning on the anatomy of homosexual dwarves, I've no idea. However, if it turns out that such knowledge is somehow important--perhaps vital to the continuance of human existance, for example, he's your man.