...and that would be games, the one I work in. Of course when you tie in the low wages and shitty hours, clearly it isn't going to be many people's first choice. Which is OK, coz most of them couldn't do it anyway.
Open-source, free and shareware developers do make some good games, but its a bit like the movie industry at the moment - the big (and even fairly small) commercial studios are the ones living the high life off the profits. With the success of PS2 (and those other console thingies), its a good time to be a game developer...
If we stretch a rubber band around the surface of an apple, then we can shrink it down to a point by moving it slowly, without tearing it and without allowing it to leave the surface. On the other hand, if we imagine that the same rubber band has somehow been stretched in the appropriate direction around a doughnut, then there is no way of shrinking it to a point without breaking either the rubber band or the doughnut. We say the surface of the apple is "simply connected," but that the surface of the doughnut is not. Poincaré, almost a hundred years ago, knew that a two dimensional sphere is essentially characterized by this property of simple connectivity, and asked the corresponding question for the three dimensional sphere (the set of points in four dimensional space at unit distance from the origin). This question turned out to be extraordinarily difficult, and mathematicians have been struggling with it ever since.
Now, can someone tell me what practical applications there might be of this? Or is it strictly an abstract concept?
Perhaps part of the reason that Apple has a hold on these sectors of the market is that a lot of the software has (until now, apparently) been better on the Mac?
For what it's worth, I'd like to see properly optimised code run on both PC and Mac, to see which really is faster for Photoshop et al. Would be a nice real-world comparison, which is worth a lot more to me than a benchmark...
a new game machine that lowers the bar for entry and has a unique revenue model
Isn't this somewhere that open source is in theory already paving the way?
Stuff like SDL, even Java, have surely lowered the bar far enough that cross-platform home computer games can be made easily enough. Making for a console is a whole different ballgame of course, since they're essentially completely proprietary embedded systems (yes, I'm counting the PC-like Xbox here).
I suspect that revenue models are a bigger problem, combined with distribution. To earn enough from a game paid for in very small chunks (say a free demo, then paying for new levels), you'd need to be damn sure people would keep buying them. Also, you'd need to be sure that people were honest enough not to just slap then into their P2P apps...
In this regard, the game biz is much like the music biz.
Both have a huge thriving independent scene, which contains bucketloads of talent. This is where you tend to go to get technical innovation, new ideas, or just off-the-wall insanity. There's a fairly low initial requirement to do it, since all you really need is a computer, although other equipment (instruments/devkits) can make certain things much easier.
The alternative to this indie scene is to 'sell out' - join a player in the organised business-oriented world of AAA hit-driven titles, which make money often at the expense of creativity. There are exceptions to this (be they Radiohead or Rez/Ico), but most things fit that rule (Fifa 2000/1/2/3/etc).
I'm a sell-out. I didn't want to make indie games, particularly. I wanted to make a living doing stuff I liked...:)
Dunno how many of you have this problem, but I find that many ATMs are far too low to use comfortably. I'm 6' 2" tall, which isn't too huge for where I live (the UK), but I still find that most ATMs require me to bend fairly low in order to read the screen. There's one near my house that needs me to bend over like I'm about to take it up the ass. Hopefully when this takes off round here, the scanner will be placed in a nice and easy-to-use position for everyone (ha!)
So when someone walks up to the open window in your brick wall, or picks the lock in your front door and steals all your belongings, you'll wish you had home contents insurance.
Yes, and they don't make a great deal of money doing that - I've gigged with a few bands in my time. However, you can't make enough gigging (unless you're prepared to do that full-time) to do much studio recording, which is why many bands go for the explotative record deals in the first place. They don't just do it for fun!:(
But then, most open source programmers are, I would guess, full-time programmers. Which helps pay for all those neat toys. None of the professional musicians I know (and I know quite a few, session & orchestral players) would record music and give it away.
What does that leave us? Amateur musicians like myself pimping their home-grown stuff. Which in some cases will be as good as or better than the pros, but the vast majority of it will be as cruddy as all those non-updated open source projects on Sourceforge...
Its a lot better in many ways than OpenGL (at least I think so). Its certainly powerful and easy to code for. It was a load of poo up til at least DX6, but now its surprisingly nice and object-oriented. They are of course targetted at completely different uses: D3D is generally Retained Mode, whereas OpenGL is generally Immediate Mode. I can't be bothered explaining what those mean, so go look in Google, but it does mean that DX is probably better for games, whereas OGL is better for most other things.
I'd take with a BIG pinch of salt. Why? Well, lets see: the DVDs are encrypted, and the decoding is done in hardware (as far as I know). The GeForce 3 doesn't have the same hardware capabilities as the Xbox GPU, and grinds to a halt in a 1.7GHz system when trying to do similar effects to the ones I run fairly easily on an Xbox. And those two are just off the top of my head. I think this is fake. Even if its not, it'll run like a dog when the graphics card can't do the T&L and shaders in hardware...
I would have to say no. At least, I don't think of myself as an artist. Then again, I don't consider programming to be an art, its more of a craft for me.
However, art is an entirely personal thing. If you think they're art, I'm not going to say you're wrong! Especially if its not something I worked on:o)
For those who don't know much about it, VectorC is a compiler for targetting fairly specific types of system. Namely those with a bit of SIMD like your P3/P4/etc,or small-scale parallelism like the PS2 (is there an XBox-specific version to help with shaders yet? dunno).
Anyway, I can see this not going down hugely well on Linux. Apart from the commercial thing, which is a big turnoff to many of the free-as-in-beer users;o) Why? Well, I just don't see a huge market of Linux users with the type of processors which get the advantage from that kind of compiling. Cross-compiling for PS2 yeah, we do that in my office (though not from Linux). But one of the big selling points of Linux is that it works on lower-end processors, which don't have SIMD.
Anyway, its a good compiler, if you need it. Just think about whether you do or not...
Nah, I don't think so. Why? Because people pay Sony for a reason - PS2 development kits are a damn useful thing (for example: you *could* try coding your game on a consumer PS2, but wouldn't you like to debug it more easily? What if there are several people working on it, and they all want to debug it?).
Hardware aside, Sony also give you source code, processor manuals and guides, and all the stuff you need if you want to pump up your game so it blows the competition away. If you don't do that, you're pretty much making shareware, and I don't see shareware making commercial developers on any other platform fear for their revenues...
Before anyone asks, I'm a games programmer currently working on PS2. I do kinda know roughly what I'm talking about!:o)
I've spotted a few people slating the MS guy for saying that a single standard GUI is a good thing. Well, even though he explained why (sort of), I think I better say WHY its a good thing!
Well, firstyl it would be goot to have a unified interface for Linux which everyone could learn how to use, rather than trying to choose which one to learn. Its hard to choose when you don't know much about them, e.g. when I first installed RedHat, KDE was the default. I then tried to run some Gnome programs, and got some evil errors. This is the kind of thing that a single interface would help to avoid!
As well as this, it would provide the kind of target platform the MS guy talked about. Writing an application for Linux would become a hell of a lot simpler - target the standard GUI! This would attract more commercial apps for people like me who want to use Linux, but generally don't because of the absence or quality of the applications currently available.
Anyway, thats about all I have to say. Please remember to keep an open mind, or you're as bad as the people you hate...
Don't you think that 'indoctrinating' is slightly on the strong side? Seems far too much like pandering to the anti-MS-ites round here to me. Why not at least consider the fact that it might actually have some worth? A quick glance at the employment listings will show you how many MS-tech developers are being hired these days.
Surely it makes sense for people to be equipped to take these jobs? If they don't want them, they can go do something else. Schools should be educating for the mainstream, the most widespread and accessible technologies, not relatively niche and special interest technologies. Of course, these other subjects should be mentioned, and pupils helped where possible to find out about and explore these alternatives. But then, a totally *nix-based educational system wouldn't prepare people for programming in an MS-dominated IT world, which would be just as bad.
Until *nixes become a lot more user friendly, they won't become prevalent in the lower reaches of education. Remember, the teachers need to know the subject matter intimately to teach it well. If they need to spend a long time getting to grips with the operating system and programming tools, they will not use them. They need something that can be integrated quickly into the general learning environment of a school with the minimum of training time (they can't take time off to do it, and they don't have the spare time to learn on their own)
So, make *nix nice and easy to learn, and more user friendly, then the educators will take notice.
Surely its more important to have the best software tool for a given job, even if its closed source rather than open?
For example, hands up everyone who would rather not have Photoshop ported to Linux as closed source, and would rather use Gimp? Keep those hands up, so I know who to avoid giving professional work to later...
Kids are already protected from violence in films, interactive violence is more likely to affect kids (not that I think it does, but any reasonable person would admit it is more likely than passive images as in films), so should be subject to at least the same levels of access.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently, he was keeping quiet about it until the patent came through...
...and that would be games, the one I work in. Of course when you tie in the low wages and shitty hours, clearly it isn't going to be many people's first choice. Which is OK, coz most of them couldn't do it anyway.
Open-source, free and shareware developers do make some good games, but its a bit like the movie industry at the moment - the big (and even fairly small) commercial studios are the ones living the high life off the profits. With the success of PS2 (and those other console thingies), its a good time to be a game developer...
Now, can someone tell me what practical applications there might be of this? Or is it strictly an abstract concept?
Perhaps part of the reason that Apple has a hold on these sectors of the market is that a lot of the software has (until now, apparently) been better on the Mac?
For what it's worth, I'd like to see properly optimised code run on both PC and Mac, to see which really is faster for Photoshop et al. Would be a nice real-world comparison, which is worth a lot more to me than a benchmark...
Isn't this somewhere that open source is in theory already paving the way?
Stuff like SDL, even Java, have surely lowered the bar far enough that cross-platform home computer games can be made easily enough. Making for a console is a whole different ballgame of course, since they're essentially completely proprietary embedded systems (yes, I'm counting the PC-like Xbox here).
I suspect that revenue models are a bigger problem, combined with distribution. To earn enough from a game paid for in very small chunks (say a free demo, then paying for new levels), you'd need to be damn sure people would keep buying them. Also, you'd need to be sure that people were honest enough not to just slap then into their P2P apps...
I can only think of one Spector haunting the game industry.
Is he causing despair by making games that are too good?
IAAPGD (professional game developer)...
:)
In this regard, the game biz is much like the music biz.
Both have a huge thriving independent scene, which contains bucketloads of talent. This is where you tend to go to get technical innovation, new ideas, or just off-the-wall insanity. There's a fairly low initial requirement to do it, since all you really need is a computer, although other equipment (instruments/devkits) can make certain things much easier.
The alternative to this indie scene is to 'sell out' - join a player in the organised business-oriented world of AAA hit-driven titles, which make money often at the expense of creativity. There are exceptions to this (be they Radiohead or Rez/Ico), but most things fit that rule (Fifa 2000/1/2/3/etc).
I'm a sell-out. I didn't want to make indie games, particularly. I wanted to make a living doing stuff I liked...
Dunno how many of you have this problem, but I find that many ATMs are far too low to use comfortably. I'm 6' 2" tall, which isn't too huge for where I live (the UK), but I still find that most ATMs require me to bend fairly low in order to read the screen. There's one near my house that needs me to bend over like I'm about to take it up the ass. Hopefully when this takes off round here, the scanner will be placed in a nice and easy-to-use position for everyone (ha!)
Yes, they might be on the market in seven years. So might cold fusion and room-temperature superconductors.
And cloaking devices.
And an honest politician...
...I can run 2 copies at the same time? :)
So when someone walks up to the open window in your brick wall, or picks the lock in your front door and steals all your belongings, you'll wish you had home contents insurance.
See why this is useful now?
Assuming you're not joking, presumably you would mean Magrathea...?
Surely that would have been made by an evil MPAA member? And all you people will be boycotting it for that reason?
;o)
Ah, so it was posted here for protest purposes, so everyone knows what to avoid, and when to avoid it. My mistake
Yes, and they don't make a great deal of money doing that - I've gigged with a few bands in my time. However, you can't make enough gigging (unless you're prepared to do that full-time) to do much studio recording, which is why many bands go for the explotative record deals in the first place. They don't just do it for fun! :(
But then, most open source programmers are, I would guess, full-time programmers. Which helps pay for all those neat toys. None of the professional musicians I know (and I know quite a few, session & orchestral players) would record music and give it away.
What does that leave us? Amateur musicians like myself pimping their home-grown stuff. Which in some cases will be as good as or better than the pros, but the vast majority of it will be as cruddy as all those non-updated open source projects on Sourceforge...
Its a lot better in many ways than OpenGL (at least I think so). Its certainly powerful and easy to code for. It was a load of poo up til at least DX6, but now its surprisingly nice and object-oriented. They are of course targetted at completely different uses: D3D is generally Retained Mode, whereas OpenGL is generally Immediate Mode. I can't be bothered explaining what those mean, so go look in Google, but it does mean that DX is probably better for games, whereas OGL is better for most other things.
I'd take with a BIG pinch of salt. Why? Well, lets see: the DVDs are encrypted, and the decoding is done in hardware (as far as I know). The GeForce 3 doesn't have the same hardware capabilities as the Xbox GPU, and grinds to a halt in a 1.7GHz system when trying to do similar effects to the ones I run fairly easily on an Xbox. And those two are just off the top of my head. I think this is fake. Even if its not, it'll run like a dog when the graphics card can't do the T&L and shaders in hardware...
--
Sartori
However, art is an entirely personal thing. If you think they're art, I'm not going to say you're wrong! Especially if its not something I worked on :o)
For those who don't know much about it, VectorC is a compiler for targetting fairly specific types of system. Namely those with a bit of SIMD like your P3/P4/etc ,or small-scale parallelism like the PS2 (is there an XBox-specific version to help with shaders yet? dunno).
;o) Why? Well, I just don't see a huge market of Linux users with the type of processors which get the advantage from that kind of compiling. Cross-compiling for PS2 yeah, we do that in my office (though not from Linux). But one of the big selling points of Linux is that it works on lower-end processors, which don't have SIMD.
Anyway, I can see this not going down hugely well on Linux. Apart from the commercial thing, which is a big turnoff to many of the free-as-in-beer users
Anyway, its a good compiler, if you need it. Just think about whether you do or not...
Nah, I don't think so. Why? Because people pay Sony for a reason - PS2 development kits are a damn useful thing (for example: you *could* try coding your game on a consumer PS2, but wouldn't you like to debug it more easily? What if there are several people working on it, and they all want to debug it?).
:o)
Hardware aside, Sony also give you source code, processor manuals and guides, and all the stuff you need if you want to pump up your game so it blows the competition away. If you don't do that, you're pretty much making shareware, and I don't see shareware making commercial developers on any other platform fear for their revenues...
Before anyone asks, I'm a games programmer currently working on PS2. I do kinda know roughly what I'm talking about!
Well, firstyl it would be goot to have a unified interface for Linux which everyone could learn how to use, rather than trying to choose which one to learn. Its hard to choose when you don't know much about them, e.g. when I first installed RedHat, KDE was the default. I then tried to run some Gnome programs, and got some evil errors. This is the kind of thing that a single interface would help to avoid!
As well as this, it would provide the kind of target platform the MS guy talked about. Writing an application for Linux would become a hell of a lot simpler - target the standard GUI! This would attract more commercial apps for people like me who want to use Linux, but generally don't because of the absence or quality of the applications currently available.
Anyway, thats about all I have to say. Please remember to keep an open mind, or you're as bad as the people you hate...
Don't you think that 'indoctrinating' is slightly on the strong side? Seems far too much like pandering to the anti-MS-ites round here to me. Why not at least consider the fact that it might actually have some worth? A quick glance at the employment listings will show you how many MS-tech developers are being hired these days.
Surely it makes sense for people to be equipped to take these jobs? If they don't want them, they can go do something else. Schools should be educating for the mainstream, the most widespread and accessible technologies, not relatively niche and special interest technologies. Of course, these other subjects should be mentioned, and pupils helped where possible to find out about and explore these alternatives. But then, a totally *nix-based educational system wouldn't prepare people for programming in an MS-dominated IT world, which would be just as bad.
Until *nixes become a lot more user friendly, they won't become prevalent in the lower reaches of education. Remember, the teachers need to know the subject matter intimately to teach it well. If they need to spend a long time getting to grips with the operating system and programming tools, they will not use them. They need something that can be integrated quickly into the general learning environment of a school with the minimum of training time (they can't take time off to do it, and they don't have the spare time to learn on their own)
So, make *nix nice and easy to learn, and more user friendly, then the educators will take notice.
Surely its more important to have the best software tool for a given job, even if its closed source rather than open?
For example, hands up everyone who would rather not have Photoshop ported to Linux as closed source, and would rather use Gimp? Keep those hands up, so I know who to avoid giving professional work to later...
Kids are already protected from violence in films, interactive violence is more likely to affect kids (not that I think it does, but any reasonable person would admit it is more likely than passive images as in films), so should be subject to at least the same levels of access.