Because it is true.. Most computers or game consoles are so complicated to program that to tap the full power of the processor needs a lot of development time.
I got a master's degree in software engineering from the University of Bordeaux, in France (a relatively good university) while working full-time in the UK. I registered normally as a student then I told them I had a full-time job and couldn't attend classes. As a result I only needed to come for exams, which I passed without any issue whatsoever. I got my bachelor's degree in computer science the normal way, though.
I also looked whether it was possible to do a PhD thesis quickly, and apparently it is possible to do it in a single year assuming you have strong support, and of course enough material to write a good thesis in such a short time.
Graphics quality have little to do with the power of the hardware. It's how much time the devs spent optimizing for a particular console that defines how good the game looks.
Unlike you I don't really like a particular console. I just care about having a device to play games and have a good time.
You must be living in a different world, like Japan.
Games are designed first and foremost for the Xbox 360, and PC and PS3 versions, when they happen, are outsourced sub-par ports. Games released on multiple platforms usually have a better experience on the Xbox 360, especially graphics.
There are also many games which get DLC on Xbox 360 first. There are even some multi-platform games that only get DLC on the Xbox 360 version.
While the PS3 remains the best console for japanese games, the Xbox 360 is a much better console for western audiences. The Wii did sell better, but who is still playing their Wii? The console was just a gimmick.
I live in French, where american movies are usually shown dubbed. While the dub is usually "quite good", the original version, as played by the original actors, is always better, so I prefer watching films in their original language.
The problem is that now, with 3D, you either have the following choices: French in 3D, French in 2D, or English in 3D. I don't even know why, since 3D and subtitles hardly go well together.
For this reason I'm forced to either watch sub-par 3D, or listen to sub-par voice-over. Or just download from the pirate bay.
And here I thought live theather was less popular because you couldn't just massively project it everywhere, you actually needed people to act it every day in every theather.
I'm comparing arbitrary criteria that can be used for discrimination. I used jews as a referential since people have usually been indoctrinated that discrimination against jews is particularly bad.
Discriminating people based on religion or ethnicity makes as much sense as discriminating them based on what they own. (which is, in both cases, none).
They could be targeted by anti-gun zealots. It's like publishing a map which pinpoints where the jews are. Maybe they should put a star on their houses.
I was with my extended family this Christmas. I am a software developer, and as always, family asks me about tech or how to do things.
This year in particular I could feel how much of a different world of computers my aunts and uncles lived in. Explaining to them why something doesn't work, what options they can look into, that they need to find software that does this or that and where to find information is useless. They just want to press a button and have it do what they need. Since I haven't used Microsoft Windows since Windows XP, I cannot even help them with that. I'm realizing that even my mother that I consider computer illiterate is actually pretty good.
Computers are perfect for people that actually use them, but for "normal" people that just want to browse the web and share pictures, a tablet is perfect. Netbooks didn't really manage to make computers simpler for those people, but it looks like tablets really did.
My old grandmother who is still impressed by TVs believes I'm the only one in the family using a computer (despite everyone having laptops and smartphones). In retrospective, she may be right.
There is nothing about C++ that makes it proprietary. It's designed by a committee in which both companies and academia are very active.
As someone part of both the C and C++ standards committees, I can tell you that interest in evolving the C++ language is much higher than in evolving the C language. Some of that evolving is done by academia which do it for the pleasure of making programming languages better, while companies do it to better push their technologies. For a couple of examples IBM is interested in standardizing decimal floating-point, since their hardware natively supports it, while Intel and Microsoft are working on standardizing parallel features.
This reminded me of the latest project of ESR: a system to replace the CIA IRC bot that sends messages to IRC channel when people commits things to repositories. http://www.catb.org/esr/irker/ He chose to implement it in Python, probably because of distaste for C++.
After several days of trying to use it and running into severe bugs (random crashes, often locks up, doesn't deal well with unstable connections, excessive memory and CPU consumption, data races and general unreliability -- and of course it required latest python and some very svn version of some library dependency, no fun otherwise) I gave up on trying to fix it and rewrote it from scratch in C++ instead. In two hours I had a working lightweight and extremely robust implementation of the protocol he defined. I followed the project for a while and it seems it kept having major usability issues for weeks, to the point where many people were reporting bugs and contributing hacks to fix them.
All because it was poorly designed and overengineered. The guy actually made the whole thing multi-threaded (with no knowledge of how to synchronize things properly) even though it wasn't needed. I think one of the bad aspects of that old generation of notorious hackers is that they're not that good, but their name pulls people in.
Slashdot Mirror
This is temperature in the shade.
Good, America is first again.
AMERICA FUCK YEAH!
It's funny how they do not take into account the nationalist usian bias in the analysis.
It stands for "people different from you"
Turing is not getting knighted because he's dead, not because he was homosexual.
Because it is true..
Most computers or game consoles are so complicated to program that to tap the full power of the processor needs a lot of development time.
I got a master's degree in software engineering from the University of Bordeaux, in France (a relatively good university) while working full-time in the UK.
I registered normally as a student then I told them I had a full-time job and couldn't attend classes. As a result I only needed to come for exams, which I passed without any issue whatsoever.
I got my bachelor's degree in computer science the normal way, though.
I also looked whether it was possible to do a PhD thesis quickly, and apparently it is possible to do it in a single year assuming you have strong support, and of course enough material to write a good thesis in such a short time.
Graphics quality have little to do with the power of the hardware. It's how much time the devs spent optimizing for a particular console that defines how good the game looks.
Unlike you I don't really like a particular console. I just care about having a device to play games and have a good time.
You must be living in a different world, like Japan.
Games are designed first and foremost for the Xbox 360, and PC and PS3 versions, when they happen, are outsourced sub-par ports.
Games released on multiple platforms usually have a better experience on the Xbox 360, especially graphics.
There are also many games which get DLC on Xbox 360 first. There are even some multi-platform games that only get DLC on the Xbox 360 version.
While the PS3 remains the best console for japanese games, the Xbox 360 is a much better console for western audiences. The Wii did sell better, but who is still playing their Wii? The console was just a gimmick.
The Xbox 360 has clearly been dominating this generation, just like the PS2 did.
I live in French, where american movies are usually shown dubbed.
While the dub is usually "quite good", the original version, as played by the original actors, is always better, so I prefer watching films in their original language.
The problem is that now, with 3D, you either have the following choices: French in 3D, French in 2D, or English in 3D.
I don't even know why, since 3D and subtitles hardly go well together.
For this reason I'm forced to either watch sub-par 3D, or listen to sub-par voice-over. Or just download from the pirate bay.
And here I thought live theather was less popular because you couldn't just massively project it everywhere, you actually needed people to act it every day in every theather.
48fps made the 3D better, but the 2D version of the hobbit was still better.
I assumed it was badly contained. If it's correctly contained I don't care whether it's there or not.
Every relevance you attach to anything is arbitrary.
Owning guns can be done for ideologic reasons that are very much comparable to other spiritual beliefs.
This is different, radioactive (or pollutive) material is actively affecting me, their owning of whatever else isn't.
I'm comparing arbitrary criteria that can be used for discrimination.
I used jews as a referential since people have usually been indoctrinated that discrimination against jews is particularly bad.
Discriminating people based on religion or ethnicity makes as much sense as discriminating them based on what they own. (which is, in both cases, none).
They could be targeted by anti-gun zealots.
It's like publishing a map which pinpoints where the jews are. Maybe they should put a star on their houses.
I was with my extended family this Christmas.
I am a software developer, and as always, family asks me about tech or how to do things.
This year in particular I could feel how much of a different world of computers my aunts and uncles lived in. Explaining to them why something doesn't work, what options they can look into, that they need to find software that does this or that and where to find information is useless. They just want to press a button and have it do what they need. Since I haven't used Microsoft Windows since Windows XP, I cannot even help them with that.
I'm realizing that even my mother that I consider computer illiterate is actually pretty good.
Computers are perfect for people that actually use them, but for "normal" people that just want to browse the web and share pictures, a tablet is perfect. Netbooks didn't really manage to make computers simpler for those people, but it looks like tablets really did.
My old grandmother who is still impressed by TVs believes I'm the only one in the family using a computer (despite everyone having laptops and smartphones). In retrospective, she may be right.
It's like that with most ISPs worldwide. You can still use another SMTP server if you use one with SSL on another port though.
It's the Big Brother effect.
Women go crazy when on camera.
The SoC is.
There is nothing about C++ that makes it proprietary.
It's designed by a committee in which both companies and academia are very active.
As someone part of both the C and C++ standards committees, I can tell you that interest in evolving the C++ language is much higher than in evolving the C language.
Some of that evolving is done by academia which do it for the pleasure of making programming languages better, while companies do it to better push their technologies. For a couple of examples IBM is interested in standardizing decimal floating-point, since their hardware natively supports it, while Intel and Microsoft are working on standardizing parallel features.
This reminded me of the latest project of ESR: a system to replace the CIA IRC bot that sends messages to IRC channel when people commits things to repositories. http://www.catb.org/esr/irker/
He chose to implement it in Python, probably because of distaste for C++.
After several days of trying to use it and running into severe bugs (random crashes, often locks up, doesn't deal well with unstable connections, excessive memory and CPU consumption, data races and general unreliability -- and of course it required latest python and some very svn version of some library dependency, no fun otherwise) I gave up on trying to fix it and rewrote it from scratch in C++ instead.
In two hours I had a working lightweight and extremely robust implementation of the protocol he defined. I followed the project for a while and it seems it kept having major usability issues for weeks, to the point where many people were reporting bugs and contributing hacks to fix them.
All because it was poorly designed and overengineered. The guy actually made the whole thing multi-threaded (with no knowledge of how to synchronize things properly) even though it wasn't needed.
I think one of the bad aspects of that old generation of notorious hackers is that they're not that good, but their name pulls people in.
Let me fix that for you
All Intel/AMD CPUs sold in the past 6 years are 64-bit.