Life is all about consuming resources. It's one of the defining elements of it. Humans are merely one of the most efficient life forms we have encountered thus far.
The distributing their own copy thing was just the simplest solution to the versioning issue: yes, DirectX is technically backwards compatible, but if the computer only has older versions than what you're using, you need to install the new version. Therefore, all games just decided to bundle DirectX and install it regardless.
OpenGL works just fine for games. The bigger hurdle is the rather lackluster documentation and Khronos Group's slow update cycle and lack of focus on games. I'm also not a fan of the API coding style, but that's more up to personal preference.
The vast majority of PC games use DirectX. DirectX has more than driven the market for the past decade, it's defined it. All major GPUs' feature set were defined by DirectX, with OpenGL largely trailing behind. OGL is catching up these days, but most games are still focused exclusively for DirectX.
You're saying that like the whole Apple-Moto spat started in January last year... It's been going on for way longer than that, and it's an unending war of suit and countersuit which originated from Apple's bullying.
The physics simulations are usually pretty accurate. They're limited by a few factors:
-Developer incompetence: the framework you use may be good, but if you botch it up when integrating or give it insane values like huge boulders weighting a gram, it's not gonna look realistic.
-Real-time limitations: physics is largely simulated iteratively, and thus the larger the step the worse the simulation as errors tend to appear and propagate more when the system is infrequently simulated; if the step is lowered, many problems entirely go away.
-Networking limitations: many games these days are built with the idea of a multiplayer mode, so the engine is geared towards minimizing data transmission and latency at the cost of accuracy.
-Game focus: the physics engine isn't the focus, so it's usually not given a whole lot of processing power, which once again forces approximations; it's also not unusual for things to be tweaked so that they look good, even if that makes them inaccurate, because it's a game.
I'm pretty sure you can get some fairly nice results from the better physics engines if you tweak them to match your needs.
Too bad you can't actually communicate with quantum entanglement, huh?
The most basic variant of quantum entanglement is two particles have opposite states (they could be photons with different polarizations, for instance) which are entangled. When one particle takes a state, the other particle takes the opposite state instantaneously.
The problem's that in order to make a particle "take" a state, we have to measure it. Measuring the particle will collapse the particle's wavefunction into one of its two possible states, but we can't select which. Hence, the particle will randomly take one state, and its paired particle the other. Since the selection is random, no information is gained.
Now, you say, we could just look for a state change in the particle! How? "Looking" for a state change involves measuring the particle, which collapses it, thus destroying the entanglement. We can't have a before/after check. Again, no information is gained.
With that said, entanglement still allows some pretty spiffy stuff, just not general purpose communication. One such example is called "quantum pseudo-telepathy", and it's one of the closest things to FTL communications we know of, allowing impressively high success rates at certain games for two players unable to communicate with one another in traditional ways. Note however that this doesn't allow to communicate so much as it allows for certain probabilistic events to be skewed.
The manufacturers give themselves a lot of headroom. The last thing they want is for you to start whining at them because the PSU you've bought isn't powerful enough.
Keep in mind that unlike laptops, the motherboard manufacturer's got no idea of what you'll be pairing the board with. A low-end, cheap PSU at terrible efficiency may be "rated" at 200W but only give out 100W before crapping out. They also give themselves headroom for people who think the motherboard's rated power requirements also include everything else (ie. RAM, CPU, hard drives, etc.).
Actual power usage is far, far below the recommended power output. My computer's sitting idle at a little above 200W, and that's an i5-2500K overclocked with 16GB of RAM, two Radeon HD6950 2GB GPUs, two 7500RPM 3.5" HDDs plus a Vertex 3 SSD, an optical drive, a mouse, a mechanical keyboard requiring double USB ports, a phone recharging, an external eSATA HDD, all running on a full ATX motherboard geared towards power and not efficiency. Oh, and the reading includes two 23" IPS screens with non-LED backlighting (so much more power hungry).
If I remember well, full load (prime95 torture test and furmark running at the same time) topped at around 550W, again with a bunch of peripherals plugged in, a 1GHz overclock above normal, and 2 screens counted in the total. I'd say that that kind of power is very much in line with your laptop, considering just how ridiculously more powerful it is.
Google specifically doesn't do it, so I don't know why you're lumping them in the same basket. You can get applications from non-official sources straight off, no rooting or hacking involved. Alternative markets? Sure, there's plenty. Plain and simply download and install an app? Yep, that too. If there's one thing you can't accuse Google of, it's trying to make a walled garden. At worst, it's a slightly overgrown garden with the sign "beware of the leopard" on the unbarred exit.
If the hardware actually is interesting, you'll be able to root and install your favorite ROM a month after release, tops. You'd still have the facebook branding on the hardware though...
Things like 3D assets, textures, etc. don't suddenly need to be duplicated. In fact, the 3D scene itself needs very little changes, just having two cameras instead of one. It's once the movie's rendered that things double in size, but that's only a subset of the total movie's required space.
The trailer was so incredibly obnoxious (and that's coming from someone who usually doesn't mind most trailers, even the dumb ones) that I don't think the rest of the movie matters. They thought the trailer was a good representation of the movie: imagine the rest.
There used to be a time where yes, detecting the browser through the user agent string was pretty much the only way to fix inconsistencies.
Nowadays, there really isn't much of an excuse for it. The good practice is to make a standards-compliant website, even going as far as using CSS3 and HTML5 gimmicks (they degrade gracefully if unsupported) if you want.
If a significant proportion of your expected users have a non-compliant browser, or if you're using something that's fairly cutting-edge and necessary for your website, the way around it is not browser sniffing. Browsers can change, and you don't want to end up having a fix break things in newer versions. Instead, you'll use something like Modernizr, which detects features. It's a much more logical thing to do, too: instead of, say, implementing an IE sniffing because drop shadow doesn't work on it, why not just detect whether drop shadow is supported, and bypass the logical leap of assuming IE doesn't? This future-proofs your website and often simplifies things, as you don't have to check for all possible browser variants that don't support a feature you want.
If the user doesn't have JavaScript enabled, he/she is either using an extremely old or locked down browser, in which case it probably wouldn't render well anyway, or he/she is tech savvy enough to know how to do that and thus likely runs a modern browser, in which case it'll render fine since it's standards-compliant in the first place.
Most companies don't ever bother showing up to small claims. Unless the item you're claiming a replacement/repair on is really, really expensive, it's usually more cost-effective for them to get the default decision and pay up than to get a representative in court.
They largely do this because few people go through the hassle of using small claims court in the first place. It's a bit more complicated than just paying a nominal fee, though that depends on your country's laws, but it's usually worth it.
Integrated controller usually means a lot less clutter. For something that's supposed to be portable, that's a huge selling point. I could take my phone and use a Sixaxis controller with it, but that's bulky. I've not heard of a smaller controller designed for it, and most that I have seen are fairly limited, going for the "retro" gaming style with few buttons and no analog sticks.
With an integrated controller, you're looking at something that competes with portable game consoles like the 3DS or PS Vita. That could be a very interesting proposition provided the whole thing isn't too bulky and can still work as a general purpose device.
The problem with Archos is that they usually have good core ideas, but poor execution. Cheap building materials, skimping on components to shave off a few cents (they stuck with resistive touchscreens for way too long), poor ergonomics, you name it. It would appear that this is once more the same kind of deal. It doesn't help that for some reason I can't fathom, Google's not very good at supporting games on Android. They exist, but they have poor visibility and little support, so the Play store usually ends up showcasing cheap freemium games and fucking Angry Birds.
The one combined device that people should keep an eye on is Nvidia's Project Shield. If there's one company out there who's fairly savvy about games and gaming hardware, it's them, and the prospect of Shield looks really interesting.
That's basically what a friend of mine puts himself through every few months when he braces himself and updates his Gentoo laptop. I find some of the stuff he uses neat, most of it pointless, some of it patently insane. Nothing of it makes me want to go through the all-too-frequent "week of reinstall" where he needs to recompile everything from scratch because an update fucked it all up.
Start with something a little bit more user friendly and if you like it, move up the ladder.
1) You're buying the device. What you're essentially doing is paying in small increments over a certain period of time, but the device is still yours. If you terminate the contract at any point, you have to pay the remaining balance (in the US, it's usually even more than that). It's more some sort of loan that the telecom provider is giving you to lock you into their service than anything else.
2) Even after the phone has been "paid back", you're still disallowed to unlock it. Even if you buy the phone in full straight off, you're still disallowed to unlock it.
Slashdot Mirror
Life is all about consuming resources. It's one of the defining elements of it. Humans are merely one of the most efficient life forms we have encountered thus far.
When has being a geek involved "feeling pain of having to learn something new"? I am appalled that we are even thinking like that.
The distributing their own copy thing was just the simplest solution to the versioning issue: yes, DirectX is technically backwards compatible, but if the computer only has older versions than what you're using, you need to install the new version. Therefore, all games just decided to bundle DirectX and install it regardless.
OpenGL works just fine for games. The bigger hurdle is the rather lackluster documentation and Khronos Group's slow update cycle and lack of focus on games. I'm also not a fan of the API coding style, but that's more up to personal preference.
The vast majority of PC games use DirectX. DirectX has more than driven the market for the past decade, it's defined it. All major GPUs' feature set were defined by DirectX, with OpenGL largely trailing behind. OGL is catching up these days, but most games are still focused exclusively for DirectX.
You're saying that like the whole Apple-Moto spat started in January last year... It's been going on for way longer than that, and it's an unending war of suit and countersuit which originated from Apple's bullying.
So, in order to be happy, a boat owner should sell himself his boat every day?
OSM has satellite images?
Suing wouldn't bring back your dead family members. Money can't replace that.
The physics simulations are usually pretty accurate. They're limited by a few factors:
-Developer incompetence: the framework you use may be good, but if you botch it up when integrating or give it insane values like huge boulders weighting a gram, it's not gonna look realistic.
-Real-time limitations: physics is largely simulated iteratively, and thus the larger the step the worse the simulation as errors tend to appear and propagate more when the system is infrequently simulated; if the step is lowered, many problems entirely go away.
-Networking limitations: many games these days are built with the idea of a multiplayer mode, so the engine is geared towards minimizing data transmission and latency at the cost of accuracy.
-Game focus: the physics engine isn't the focus, so it's usually not given a whole lot of processing power, which once again forces approximations; it's also not unusual for things to be tweaked so that they look good, even if that makes them inaccurate, because it's a game.
I'm pretty sure you can get some fairly nice results from the better physics engines if you tweak them to match your needs.
Too bad you can't actually communicate with quantum entanglement, huh?
The most basic variant of quantum entanglement is two particles have opposite states (they could be photons with different polarizations, for instance) which are entangled. When one particle takes a state, the other particle takes the opposite state instantaneously.
The problem's that in order to make a particle "take" a state, we have to measure it. Measuring the particle will collapse the particle's wavefunction into one of its two possible states, but we can't select which. Hence, the particle will randomly take one state, and its paired particle the other. Since the selection is random, no information is gained.
Now, you say, we could just look for a state change in the particle! How? "Looking" for a state change involves measuring the particle, which collapses it, thus destroying the entanglement. We can't have a before/after check. Again, no information is gained.
With that said, entanglement still allows some pretty spiffy stuff, just not general purpose communication. One such example is called "quantum pseudo-telepathy", and it's one of the closest things to FTL communications we know of, allowing impressively high success rates at certain games for two players unable to communicate with one another in traditional ways. Note however that this doesn't allow to communicate so much as it allows for certain probabilistic events to be skewed.
The manufacturers give themselves a lot of headroom. The last thing they want is for you to start whining at them because the PSU you've bought isn't powerful enough.
Keep in mind that unlike laptops, the motherboard manufacturer's got no idea of what you'll be pairing the board with. A low-end, cheap PSU at terrible efficiency may be "rated" at 200W but only give out 100W before crapping out. They also give themselves headroom for people who think the motherboard's rated power requirements also include everything else (ie. RAM, CPU, hard drives, etc.).
Actual power usage is far, far below the recommended power output. My computer's sitting idle at a little above 200W, and that's an i5-2500K overclocked with 16GB of RAM, two Radeon HD6950 2GB GPUs, two 7500RPM 3.5" HDDs plus a Vertex 3 SSD, an optical drive, a mouse, a mechanical keyboard requiring double USB ports, a phone recharging, an external eSATA HDD, all running on a full ATX motherboard geared towards power and not efficiency. Oh, and the reading includes two 23" IPS screens with non-LED backlighting (so much more power hungry).
If I remember well, full load (prime95 torture test and furmark running at the same time) topped at around 550W, again with a bunch of peripherals plugged in, a 1GHz overclock above normal, and 2 screens counted in the total. I'd say that that kind of power is very much in line with your laptop, considering just how ridiculously more powerful it is.
Google specifically doesn't do it, so I don't know why you're lumping them in the same basket. You can get applications from non-official sources straight off, no rooting or hacking involved. Alternative markets? Sure, there's plenty. Plain and simply download and install an app? Yep, that too. If there's one thing you can't accuse Google of, it's trying to make a walled garden. At worst, it's a slightly overgrown garden with the sign "beware of the leopard" on the unbarred exit.
If the hardware actually is interesting, you'll be able to root and install your favorite ROM a month after release, tops. You'd still have the facebook branding on the hardware though...
Success elicits veneration.
Things like 3D assets, textures, etc. don't suddenly need to be duplicated. In fact, the 3D scene itself needs very little changes, just having two cameras instead of one. It's once the movie's rendered that things double in size, but that's only a subset of the total movie's required space.
The trailer was so incredibly obnoxious (and that's coming from someone who usually doesn't mind most trailers, even the dumb ones) that I don't think the rest of the movie matters. They thought the trailer was a good representation of the movie: imagine the rest.
And this, dear friends, is why geeks are often considered to be antisocial.
There used to be a time where yes, detecting the browser through the user agent string was pretty much the only way to fix inconsistencies.
Nowadays, there really isn't much of an excuse for it. The good practice is to make a standards-compliant website, even going as far as using CSS3 and HTML5 gimmicks (they degrade gracefully if unsupported) if you want.
If a significant proportion of your expected users have a non-compliant browser, or if you're using something that's fairly cutting-edge and necessary for your website, the way around it is not browser sniffing. Browsers can change, and you don't want to end up having a fix break things in newer versions. Instead, you'll use something like Modernizr, which detects features. It's a much more logical thing to do, too: instead of, say, implementing an IE sniffing because drop shadow doesn't work on it, why not just detect whether drop shadow is supported, and bypass the logical leap of assuming IE doesn't? This future-proofs your website and often simplifies things, as you don't have to check for all possible browser variants that don't support a feature you want.
If the user doesn't have JavaScript enabled, he/she is either using an extremely old or locked down browser, in which case it probably wouldn't render well anyway, or he/she is tech savvy enough to know how to do that and thus likely runs a modern browser, in which case it'll render fine since it's standards-compliant in the first place.
Most companies don't ever bother showing up to small claims. Unless the item you're claiming a replacement/repair on is really, really expensive, it's usually more cost-effective for them to get the default decision and pay up than to get a representative in court.
They largely do this because few people go through the hassle of using small claims court in the first place. It's a bit more complicated than just paying a nominal fee, though that depends on your country's laws, but it's usually worth it.
Integrated controller usually means a lot less clutter. For something that's supposed to be portable, that's a huge selling point. I could take my phone and use a Sixaxis controller with it, but that's bulky. I've not heard of a smaller controller designed for it, and most that I have seen are fairly limited, going for the "retro" gaming style with few buttons and no analog sticks.
With an integrated controller, you're looking at something that competes with portable game consoles like the 3DS or PS Vita. That could be a very interesting proposition provided the whole thing isn't too bulky and can still work as a general purpose device.
The problem with Archos is that they usually have good core ideas, but poor execution. Cheap building materials, skimping on components to shave off a few cents (they stuck with resistive touchscreens for way too long), poor ergonomics, you name it. It would appear that this is once more the same kind of deal. It doesn't help that for some reason I can't fathom, Google's not very good at supporting games on Android. They exist, but they have poor visibility and little support, so the Play store usually ends up showcasing cheap freemium games and fucking Angry Birds.
The one combined device that people should keep an eye on is Nvidia's Project Shield. If there's one company out there who's fairly savvy about games and gaming hardware, it's them, and the prospect of Shield looks really interesting.
That's basically what a friend of mine puts himself through every few months when he braces himself and updates his Gentoo laptop. I find some of the stuff he uses neat, most of it pointless, some of it patently insane. Nothing of it makes me want to go through the all-too-frequent "week of reinstall" where he needs to recompile everything from scratch because an update fucked it all up.
Start with something a little bit more user friendly and if you like it, move up the ladder.
Wait, discontinuing cloud apps is now evil? Damn, I knew English was a "living language", but I hadn't quite caught on about this one.
Alternatively, hacking what is largely considered to be a reputable news organization is going to make you look like a bunch of dicks.
1) You're buying the device. What you're essentially doing is paying in small increments over a certain period of time, but the device is still yours. If you terminate the contract at any point, you have to pay the remaining balance (in the US, it's usually even more than that). It's more some sort of loan that the telecom provider is giving you to lock you into their service than anything else.
2) Even after the phone has been "paid back", you're still disallowed to unlock it. Even if you buy the phone in full straight off, you're still disallowed to unlock it.