So don't do it that way. Use integer coordinates to reference terrain cells, then floating point to draw within the cell. Avoid subtracting from points that are far away, whether using floating point or integer.
That will work, and is often precisely what is done in practice. But now by constraining the floating point part to a certain range and adding an integer part what you have effectively accomplished is reinventing fixed point. After spending extra time coding and using twice as much space.
Fixed point has its limits with precision. It's not a brilliant scheme to be working with when it comes to 3d graphics. Most vendors have realised this, and any mobile GPU from since a few years before the iphone was introduced will have full floating point support, shaders and modern concepts available.
Actually, floating point has limits to its precision too. A 32-bit floating point number has a 23-digit significand, whereas 16:16 fixed point has a 32-digit significand, so fixed point is 128 times as precise as floating point. The main benefit of fixed point, however, is reliability; unlike floating point, your numbers don't become less accurate as you move away from the origin. The drawback of fixed point is range; unlike floating point, fixed point cannot sacrifice accuracy to allow for larger numbers, so the biggest number you can store is slightly less than 32768. That is enough to represent a 320x320 kilometer area with an consistant accuracy of ~1.5 millimeters, which makes fixed point attractive format for data representation. On the other hand, floating point would been fine near the middle, but have been accurate to only 0.8 meters near the edge, and you'd probably end up having to shrink the area to down to 4x4 kilometers to avoid problems.
I agree with you that a device with only floating point and integer support is far superior to one with only fixed and integer, but fixed point is indeed very good to have in 3D graphics for those situations where it is more appropriate.
I live in the third world, so I thought I should remark on your comment about us.
Not cheap 'droids that can survive in those environments. And define cheap? Remember, US smartphones are heavily subsidized by carriers, which doesn't happen nearly ever in third-world markets.
Unsubsidised Android phones are affordable here if that's what you want, but carriers do subsidise phones too. Most people get subsidised phones, and even those work with any carrier.
The battery life isn't 1/100th of what it needs to be (power outlets can be a week apart...Androids spend more time plugged in charging then not, which makes it hard to even call them "wireless devices").
Where do you get the idea that power outlets can be a week apart? Either you have access to electricity or you don't. Regarding your assertion that Android makes phones require more time being recharged than not, I'm afraid that I must ask you to provide a citation because I don't believe you.
The devices aren't anywhere near rugged enough. Sand, water, being thrown into rucksacks.
How rugged do they need to be? Are you under the impression that third-world cultures mistreat their phones? A phone doesn't need to be any tougher in Ethiopia than it does in the US. Anyway, Motorola makes some very tough phones that come with Android.
Android devices require support. Most of these people don't have computers...how do you patch an Android w/o a PC? Phones in these markets are bought on the street, they have to work with basically zero support from anyone, ever.
Are you telling me that Android devices need more support than any other phone? You don't need to patch Andoid phones at all. If you want to then you can take it to a cellphone shop. Didn't you know - here in the Third World we usually buy phones from shops, rather than on the street. You don't even need to take it to the same shop from which you bought the phone though - any one will be willing to patch your phone for you.
The world outside your comfort zone is not how you imagine it to be.
if you live near high voltage cables run cables beneath to tap of electricity by induction. People have been prosecuted in the UK for doing this.
How in the world do you prosecute someone for using an induction loop?
I mean, sure, you could prosecute them for trespass or something if you move your stuff onto their property/airspace, but if it's all on your own land, it's just EM waves flowing through the air. If the land owner has to put up with the radiation they didn't ask for, who is to say that they can't use it to induce a current?
Anyhow, I figure you might be trollin' seeing as how you'd have to get really close to get any measurable power via induction, but it is an interesting question in any case...
Those are good questions. Firstly, when you draw power using induction you are actually creating a load on the power supply. It's more-or-less the same as if you had spliced into the cable, but easier to hide and less likely to kill you. Secondly, building and using a coil for this purpose is a very deliberate theft of service with physical evidence (a coil, and usually a cable running to the thief's house). So yes, you can definately prosecute for this, even if there was no tresspassing.
As for distance, if you have a sufficiently large coil on the ground under powerlines then that is close enough to draw power.
This is actually a very common method to defraud electricity providers, particularly in informal settlements (squatter camps) where coils are easy to conceal.
Because of that process, advertisers and others could, experts say, see weeks or even months of personal data that could include a user's location, time zone, photographs, text from blogs, shopping cart contents, e-mails and a history of the Web pages visited.
Folks, I thought this isn't new at all. Don't cookies do the same thing? I have a cookie that will 'never' expire unless I delete it. What am I missing?
A cookie is something that is sent to the server every time you make an HTTP request. HTML5 local storage stays on the client and is accessed by client-side code (such as javascript).
While not being an expert, Islam in general expects at least modest dress for women that includes not having bare arms. So the definition of scantily clad is region dependent.
Thank God for the USA, where the right to bare arms is enshrined in the Consitution.
Core 2 Duo P9600 has 2 cores; we have moved much past that stage with six core CPUs and advancements in CPU architecture after C2D, and like mentioned, the code presented is pretty much an early alpha.
Supporting that, the article says that the 76fps was timed while using only 1 of those 2 cores, that the process is parallelisable across multiple cores, and that they believe that they can achieve 1080p at 30fps on a high-end dual core.
I sincerely hope that they didn't get hit too hard with credit card chargebacks when they dropped the site. That may have proven to be an expensive stunt.
Man, I'm glad that they are returning, and I like the countdown on the site; the sense of anticipation reminds me of back when they were starting the closed beta back in 2008. Can't wait to see what my favourite website will look like when it reopens tomorrow:)
1. Direct3D - OpenGL is OK. It's not the largest problem after all!
Agreed. OpenGL works very well, and Direct3D versions 10 and above are also top-notch APIs if you don't mind the fact that they don't work on XP.
2. DirectInput - what is the Linux analogy? Using X.Org shitty API? It's akin to using Windows' WM_KEYPRESS and similar messages to do keyboard interface, except it's even more cryptic. X.Org is OK for desktop apps, like Win32 API is OK for desktop apps, but that's about it.
Do you realise that xlib is not equivalent to using Windows' WM_KEYPRESS; it's more like using Windows' ntdll.dll. Either way, you're not actually supposed to use that.
On Windows, you should generally never use DirectInput ever. It's a pain to program with, it eats into performance far more than it should, it pollutes the registry, it returns incorrect data sometimes, it hasn't been updated since DirectX8, and even Microsoft advises strongly agains using it. Instead, Microsoft recomends that you should use the standard Windows message system (i.e. WM_KEYPRESS) and maybe the Raw Input functions from the standard Windows API, or alternatively use the newer XInput library if it is available. Many developers use other solutions, such as SDL.
On Linux SDL is very popular, but some developers choose to get input from frameworks Qt, KDE or GTK if they are using such a framework to build their app. The closest equivalent to DirectInput in Linux AFAIK is udev, except that udev is actively mantained and actually works properly.
3. DirectSound - let's not even get started on the horrendous crap ALSA has become.
Why are you comparing DirectSound to ALSA? ALSA is a driver. You don't write games using Windows Sound System do you? Why would you choose to work with ALSA? That's not what it's designed for.
In Windows you should avoid DirectSound because it has been discontinued for years (the last update was for DirectX8) and it doesn't even work on recent versions of Windows except in the form of an extremely poor software emulation which doesn't even allow 3D effects.
For Linux and Windows alike I'd recommend OpenAL. There's also XAudio2 for Windows.
If you live in the metro, own a home, and your wife stays at home with the kids - making $200,000 hardly qualifies you as "rich". Especially if you are a small business owner.
But then again, the government will stop at nothing to take all the money it can away from the people and organizations who create jobs.
I earn a reasonably comfortable salary that is quite a bit more than most people, but someone with a $200,000 salary is earning much more in a month than I make in a year. And that's before I pay income tax. And I pay 18% income tax. 5% is nothing. And $200,000 a year is definately "rich" - even if you feel that you need more; and yes, even if you are a small business owner.
I'd love to hear some opinions on this matter. I'm completely unsatisfied with Windows XP's firewall, but if I don't want to use ZoneAlarm then what other good options are out there? And regarding Windows 7: is its firewall decent enough that there's no need to replace it?
It might be real, but it certainly does look like a marketing stunt. A very stupid one indeed. I love GOG, but how many loyal customers are going to walk away now? How many credit card chargebacks will they have to pay? And is "we could disappear at any time" really the message you want to give when you're offering a download service? Unless they were planning to do some anti-Steam spin (e.g. "if it was Steam that went down, you'd be screwed") I think they might discover that there is such a thing as bad publicity.
Well, we'll find out on Wednesday if GOG will be back in some form which is at least as good as they were before. I certainly hope so.
Then they need to drop the childish name. "The Pirate Party" makes it sound like they are a bunch of rebellious kids flaunting how they like to break the law and get away with it.
If they want positive economic and legal reform, then they should adopt a name that is expressive of such reform, in a mature and positive light.
Maybe some thing like "the digital party" or "the free information party" or maybe pull a trick out of the other side's hat and choose something like "the information protection party" or "cultural preservation party."
I hope four years is enough time for them to grow up.
I agree. I vote that they should change their name to "The Privateer Party" to represent their concern for the rights of private individuals, and their goal of getting the government to support pirate activity. Uh - I mean "support fair use". Yes, that's what I meant to say. Support fair use.
This is called "prejudice". In most circles it's considered a negative thing.
I find it ironic that many people automatically consider prejudice to be a bad thing. Not that it isn't, but either way it is still a great irony.
However, GP has shown that his decision - whether right or wrong - is based on observance and careful consideration, not prejudice.
Why? You clearly have access to the Internet.
So? He can has access to a computer which has access to Slashdot. Is that sufficient to for him to play Steam games on his own computer? I can tell something about you. You posess the rare fortune of having adequate Internet access from the very same computer that you intend to use to play your games. Because others in your personal circle have the same privilege you presume that it is universal and that anybody who has experiencing severe inconvenience from DRM is simply being unreasonable. I apologise for getting personal, but you need a serious wakeup call.
Product activation is completely invisible and automatic. As for DRM, well, I realise some people hate it on religious grounds, but it's really not that bad.
DRM is a severe compromise. Some people are inconvenienced by it, others less so. Some of those who are inconvenienced are willing to deal with it, others aren't. Some are concerned with legitimate eventualities, while others don't mind the risk. Some were ok with it in principle, but got badly burnt by some aspect of service.
Steam, in particular, is a huge hassle for a lot of people in the world. It's obviously not a hassle for you or many of their regular customers, but it is for me and most people that I know. I bought 1 Steam game last year (Portal) and I so far the only way I have found to play it so far is by using a no-Steam cracked version.
I would be grateful if you refrain from using the word "religious" as a derogitory term whenever you feel like ignoring other people's arguments.
Sure, one day in the hypothetical future Valve's servers could disappear, leaving you unable to play your games any more. This is no different from non-DRM-encumbered games you own on physical media, which could stop working at any time due to loss of or damage to the CDs.
Denying yourself jam today and tomorrow because of the hypothetical possibility that you might only be able to get it today is just silly.
Scroll up to the top of this page. See the article about a major digital distrobution service being shut down? It is not some vague hypothetical worry - it happenned. I have bought 48 games from GOG, including 3 from the day before their site went down. If they were DRM-encumbered then I would have lost everything, but because they are DRM-free I have backups on my hard drive. If my hard drive should fail then I can get my games from my external drive. Should both somehow fail at the same time (or be simultaneously stolen from seperate locations) I would still be able to salvage copies from friends of mine who bought the same games.
If it turns out that GOG is really gone, and this is not a publicity stunt, then all that means to me is that I won't be able to buy more games from them in future.
By the way, I legally bought Alcohol 120%, which means not only do I have backups of my physical CD and DVD games, but I don't even need to be hassled with having to put discs in the drive when I want to play.
(Personally, I've actually bought copies on Steam of older games I also own on physical media. It's only a few bucks, and the convenience of being able to install the game at the click of a button -- instead of having to dig around for the disk and then hope it still works -- is well worth the money. Strange, really: this suppsoedly evil DRM platform means I can play games I own more easily than the DRM-free versions!)
All I can say is that I'm glad they were DRM-free, so my ability to buy the games I got from them is unaffected. That's one of the main reasons I bought more games from GOG than from anywhere else.
That being said, I think that this is a bad publicity stunt.
Oh, and another implementation of carrier pigeon data transfer, now in South Africa. Kinda blows that "there isn't a benchmark for pigeon data speeds" statement away...
That race happened almost exactly a year ago, I think. For those who don't want to follow the link, in 2009 a company called Unlimited IT set up a publicity stunt to demonstrate how terrible Internet is in South Africa. They asserted that a pidgeon could deliver 4GiB over 80km faster local broadband. Winston the pidgeon won, delivering the data in barely over 2 hours, while the ADSL line managed to get only 4% of the job done in that time. Of course, that was with upstream speeds, but even at downstream speeds it would not have been able to get more than 32% of the job done.
I believe they were using a the fastest line ADSL speed available in South Africa at the time: 4 megabits per second (max upstream 512kb/s) which costs roughly US$60 for line rental plus an additional $45 in ISP fees (depending on which ISP you choose) for a 2 gig cap plus $15 for every gig thereafter. Using a 4 meg line for the contest is generous, since most internet users in SA are on 384kb/s lines (which cost $20 a month excluding ISP).
The line rental fee goes directly to Telkom (the national telecom company), and most of the ISP fee ends up going to Telkom as well.
Now you know why South Africans are always complaining about the Internet.
Over the last year things have improved dramatically, as a new undersea cable has reduced the cost of traffic for ISPs, and ISPs now charge less than US$6 per gig. Telkom's line rentals are still the same price ($20 for 384kb, $40 for 512kb, $60 for 4mb) but some lucky 4mb subscribers are getting upgraded to 10mb.
From reading the information provided in the summary, it seems that Hurt Locker sold so well locally that the domestic gross profit alone was enough to completely repay the cost of production and even leave them with an additional million dollars in the bank. The international sales were somewhat less impressive - $24mil from the rest of the world combined, compared to $16mil domestic. If filesharing had an effect on sales, then it appears to be mainly an offshore problem. But at this point it's all pure profit, so we shouldn't complain too much.
Ultimately the film resulted in a 167% return on investment, and provided enough capital to almost completely fund two more projects of similar magnitude.
That being said, this is the first time I've ever heard of Hurt Locker. I guess their marketing could have been better. Is the movie it any good?
Maybe I just don't get net neutrality and what's being argued for, but how would it no affect how peering contracts are worked out, how QoS can be implemented, etc? All this "routing around damage" stuff people talk about seems to stop fairly swiftly at the border, where policy is used to determine where data goes, and not metrics.
The "routing around damage" principle does not apply to endpoints, because there is only one route. If you are connected to the Internet via AT&T then at some point ultimately everything must go through AT&T before it gets between your computer and the Internet proper, and there is no way around this. If are connected through a completely different carrier but are trying to connect to an AT&T customer, then the connection must also go through their chokepoint. There is no way around a wall between point A and B if it completely surrounds either of those points.
Regerding peering contracts and such, that's the way things have always worked in a neutral network, so that isn't a concern. QoS is also acceptible in general, as long as it isn't abused. Network neutrality is about defining what constitutes abuse. The ur-example: "paid prioritization" amounts to AT&T demanding that target non-customers "compensate" them for chosing one of their competitors over them by threatening to degrade their own customers' connections to the target (potentially causing severe damage to the target's business) unless the target pays them.
To begin with 99% of commercial games don't even have a Linux version, so there's nothing to sell to Linux gamers.
You don't get Linux games on Steam because there is no Steam client. Right now the Linux versions of games for which such versions exist aren't being sold through Steam, and Steam exclusive games don't have Linux versions because there is no point in making Linux versions until there is a Steam client. Make it possible to sell to Linux games and only then will you have something to sell.
You can't really rely on emulation either, if you sell the game as a Linux version you really have to do a native build.
Yes. If you want to sell game for a certain platform, it should work on that platform.
Then there are hundreds of different Linux distros and configurations which all work a little bit different.
From practical experience that is not actually much of a problem at all. Distribute the Steam client as an RPM package and an APT package. The games themselves are managed by Steam itself, just like on Windows, so they are insulated from OS differences. The problem is nontrivial, but not a showstopper by any means.
Also, just imagine the outcry about DRM and Valve not open sourcing Steam or it's games.
I imagine it would be more-or-less the same as it already is.
You can already read here on slashdot how some people refuse to use Steam because it might go down in 50 years. This thinking is 100x worse with Linux users.
That's hyperbole. Many people like Steam, many don't but tolerate it nonetheless, and many avoid it for a variety of reasons. I avoid because I'm not in a position where I can use it, not because I dislike it. Lots of people complain about having already lost Steam accounts. There are others who are nervous because they have heard about people losing their accounts. Some dislike the price shennanigans, some find the service frustrating, and some are concerned that it might disappear in 5 years. Don't paint people with the same brush. People have a variety of reasons - some pragmatic, some misguided, some subjective. The situation is the same for Linux users.
The whole open source and everything-must-be-free mentality goes against businesses.
World of Goo ran a pay-what-you-want special and sold 83250 copies over. 17% of sales were for Linux, 18 for Mac, and 65% were for Windows. So customers are definately there. What's more interesting is that Linux customers opted to pay ~$3.45 on average, whereas Windows customers payed ~$1.90 on average. Mac users payed $2.55. Ultimately, Windows market share is dominant, Mac and Linux similar to each other and individually very significant, and Windows earned only twice as much as Linux at the end of the day. They would have huge lot of money by not supporting Linux, because Linux users actually are willing to spend money.
I think the problem with Linux is that those who develop it push their philosophy too much and refuse to give room for other philosophies, along with way too much spread ecosystem (distros, configurations, all the problems).
Are you confusing Stallman with Torvalds? They are nothing alike. Novell is a Microsoft partner. Debian aims to be pure, Ubuntu aims to be compelling for those who don't know or care about the GNU Manifesto. Seriously, there is no shortage of room different philosophies.
Just to point, we are talking about American Football, not Football. It's not the same.
I think you mean to say that we are talking about American Football and not Association Football, known to some by its abbreviated name soccer and to others simply as football. American Football is a ball game played on foot, and thus is very much a type of football. In fact Rugby is also football - hence the Rugby Football Union.
Slashdot Mirror
So don't do it that way. Use integer coordinates to reference terrain cells, then floating point to draw within the cell. Avoid subtracting from points that are far away, whether using floating point or integer.
That will work, and is often precisely what is done in practice. But now by constraining the floating point part to a certain range and adding an integer part what you have effectively accomplished is reinventing fixed point. After spending extra time coding and using twice as much space.
Fixed point has its limits with precision. It's not a brilliant scheme to be working with when it comes to 3d graphics. Most vendors have realised this, and any mobile GPU from since a few years before the iphone was introduced will have full floating point support, shaders and modern concepts available.
Actually, floating point has limits to its precision too. A 32-bit floating point number has a 23-digit significand, whereas 16:16 fixed point has a 32-digit significand, so fixed point is 128 times as precise as floating point. The main benefit of fixed point, however, is reliability; unlike floating point, your numbers don't become less accurate as you move away from the origin. The drawback of fixed point is range; unlike floating point, fixed point cannot sacrifice accuracy to allow for larger numbers, so the biggest number you can store is slightly less than 32768. That is enough to represent a 320x320 kilometer area with an consistant accuracy of ~1.5 millimeters, which makes fixed point attractive format for data representation. On the other hand, floating point would been fine near the middle, but have been accurate to only 0.8 meters near the edge, and you'd probably end up having to shrink the area to down to 4x4 kilometers to avoid problems.
I agree with you that a device with only floating point and integer support is far superior to one with only fixed and integer, but fixed point is indeed very good to have in 3D graphics for those situations where it is more appropriate.
I live in the third world, so I thought I should remark on your comment about us.
Not cheap 'droids that can survive in those environments. And define cheap? Remember, US smartphones are heavily subsidized by carriers, which doesn't happen nearly ever in third-world markets.
Unsubsidised Android phones are affordable here if that's what you want, but carriers do subsidise phones too. Most people get subsidised phones, and even those work with any carrier.
The battery life isn't 1/100th of what it needs to be (power outlets can be a week apart...Androids spend more time plugged in charging then not, which makes it hard to even call them "wireless devices").
Where do you get the idea that power outlets can be a week apart? Either you have access to electricity or you don't. Regarding your assertion that Android makes phones require more time being recharged than not, I'm afraid that I must ask you to provide a citation because I don't believe you.
The devices aren't anywhere near rugged enough. Sand, water, being thrown into rucksacks.
How rugged do they need to be? Are you under the impression that third-world cultures mistreat their phones? A phone doesn't need to be any tougher in Ethiopia than it does in the US. Anyway, Motorola makes some very tough phones that come with Android.
Android devices require support. Most of these people don't have computers...how do you patch an Android w/o a PC? Phones in these markets are bought on the street, they have to work with basically zero support from anyone, ever.
Are you telling me that Android devices need more support than any other phone? You don't need to patch Andoid phones at all. If you want to then you can take it to a cellphone shop. Didn't you know - here in the Third World we usually buy phones from shops, rather than on the street. You don't even need to take it to the same shop from which you bought the phone though - any one will be willing to patch your phone for you.
The world outside your comfort zone is not how you imagine it to be.
How in the world do you prosecute someone for using an induction loop?
I mean, sure, you could prosecute them for trespass or something if you move your stuff onto their property/airspace, but if it's all on your own land, it's just EM waves flowing through the air. If the land owner has to put up with the radiation they didn't ask for, who is to say that they can't use it to induce a current?
Anyhow, I figure you might be trollin' seeing as how you'd have to get really close to get any measurable power via induction, but it is an interesting question in any case...
Those are good questions. Firstly, when you draw power using induction you are actually creating a load on the power supply. It's more-or-less the same as if you had spliced into the cable, but easier to hide and less likely to kill you. Secondly, building and using a coil for this purpose is a very deliberate theft of service with physical evidence (a coil, and usually a cable running to the thief's house). So yes, you can definately prosecute for this, even if there was no tresspassing.
As for distance, if you have a sufficiently large coil on the ground under powerlines then that is close enough to draw power.
This is actually a very common method to defraud electricity providers, particularly in informal settlements (squatter camps) where coils are easy to conceal.
Because of that process, advertisers and others could, experts say, see weeks or even months of personal data that could include a user's location, time zone, photographs, text from blogs, shopping cart contents, e-mails and a history of the Web pages visited.
Folks, I thought this isn't new at all. Don't cookies do the same thing? I have a cookie that will 'never' expire unless I delete it. What am I missing?
A cookie is something that is sent to the server every time you make an HTTP request. HTML5 local storage stays on the client and is accessed by client-side code (such as javascript).
I wouldn't even call her 'scantily clad'
While not being an expert, Islam in general expects at least modest dress for women that includes not having bare arms. So the definition of scantily clad is region dependent.
Thank God for the USA, where the right to bare arms is enshrined in the Consitution.
Nah, vi is better.
Real programmers use butterflies.
Indeed it does. It appears that they are using this tactic:
and collecting license fees from phone makers in the process
That would be quite a feat, as stealing ideas is just not possible.
If you have an idea, and someone patents it, then it is effectively taken from you. Does that count?
Core 2 Duo P9600 has 2 cores; we have moved much past that stage with six core CPUs and advancements in CPU architecture after C2D, and like mentioned, the code presented is pretty much an early alpha.
Supporting that, the article says that the 76fps was timed while using only 1 of those 2 cores, that the process is parallelisable across multiple cores, and that they believe that they can achieve 1080p at 30fps on a high-end dual core.
I sincerely hope that they didn't get hit too hard with credit card chargebacks when they dropped the site. That may have proven to be an expensive stunt.
Man, I'm glad that they are returning, and I like the countdown on the site; the sense of anticipation reminds me of back when they were starting the closed beta back in 2008. Can't wait to see what my favourite website will look like when it reopens tomorrow :)
1. Direct3D - OpenGL is OK. It's not the largest problem after all!
Agreed. OpenGL works very well, and Direct3D versions 10 and above are also top-notch APIs if you don't mind the fact that they don't work on XP.
2. DirectInput - what is the Linux analogy? Using X.Org shitty API? It's akin to using Windows' WM_KEYPRESS and similar messages to do keyboard interface, except it's even more cryptic. X.Org is OK for desktop apps, like Win32 API is OK for desktop apps, but that's about it.
Do you realise that xlib is not equivalent to using Windows' WM_KEYPRESS; it's more like using Windows' ntdll.dll. Either way, you're not actually supposed to use that.
On Windows, you should generally never use DirectInput ever. It's a pain to program with, it eats into performance far more than it should, it pollutes the registry, it returns incorrect data sometimes, it hasn't been updated since DirectX8, and even Microsoft advises strongly agains using it. Instead, Microsoft recomends that you should use the standard Windows message system (i.e. WM_KEYPRESS) and maybe the Raw Input functions from the standard Windows API, or alternatively use the newer XInput library if it is available. Many developers use other solutions, such as SDL.
On Linux SDL is very popular, but some developers choose to get input from frameworks Qt, KDE or GTK if they are using such a framework to build their app. The closest equivalent to DirectInput in Linux AFAIK is udev, except that udev is actively mantained and actually works properly.
3. DirectSound - let's not even get started on the horrendous crap ALSA has become.
Why are you comparing DirectSound to ALSA? ALSA is a driver. You don't write games using Windows Sound System do you? Why would you choose to work with ALSA? That's not what it's designed for.
In Windows you should avoid DirectSound because it has been discontinued for years (the last update was for DirectX8) and it doesn't even work on recent versions of Windows except in the form of an extremely poor software emulation which doesn't even allow 3D effects.
For Linux and Windows alike I'd recommend OpenAL. There's also XAudio2 for Windows.
If you live in the metro, own a home, and your wife stays at home with the kids - making $200,000 hardly qualifies you as "rich". Especially if you are a small business owner. But then again, the government will stop at nothing to take all the money it can away from the people and organizations who create jobs.
I earn a reasonably comfortable salary that is quite a bit more than most people, but someone with a $200,000 salary is earning much more in a month than I make in a year. And that's before I pay income tax. And I pay 18% income tax. 5% is nothing. And $200,000 a year is definately "rich" - even if you feel that you need more; and yes, even if you are a small business owner.
I'd love to hear some opinions on this matter. I'm completely unsatisfied with Windows XP's firewall, but if I don't want to use ZoneAlarm then what other good options are out there? And regarding Windows 7: is its firewall decent enough that there's no need to replace it?
It might be real, but it certainly does look like a marketing stunt. A very stupid one indeed. I love GOG, but how many loyal customers are going to walk away now? How many credit card chargebacks will they have to pay? And is "we could disappear at any time" really the message you want to give when you're offering a download service? Unless they were planning to do some anti-Steam spin (e.g. "if it was Steam that went down, you'd be screwed") I think they might discover that there is such a thing as bad publicity.
Well, we'll find out on Wednesday if GOG will be back in some form which is at least as good as they were before. I certainly hope so.
Then they need to drop the childish name. "The Pirate Party" makes it sound like they are a bunch of rebellious kids flaunting how they like to break the law and get away with it.
If they want positive economic and legal reform, then they should adopt a name that is expressive of such reform, in a mature and positive light.
Maybe some thing like "the digital party" or "the free information party" or maybe pull a trick out of the other side's hat and choose something like "the information protection party" or "cultural preservation party."
I hope four years is enough time for them to grow up.
I agree. I vote that they should change their name to "The Privateer Party" to represent their concern for the rights of private individuals, and their goal of getting the government to support pirate activity. Uh - I mean "support fair use". Yes, that's what I meant to say. Support fair use.
This is called "prejudice". In most circles it's considered a negative thing.
I find it ironic that many people automatically consider prejudice to be a bad thing. Not that it isn't, but either way it is still a great irony.
However, GP has shown that his decision - whether right or wrong - is based on observance and careful consideration, not prejudice.
Why? You clearly have access to the Internet.
So? He can has access to a computer which has access to Slashdot. Is that sufficient to for him to play Steam games on his own computer? I can tell something about you. You posess the rare fortune of having adequate Internet access from the very same computer that you intend to use to play your games. Because others in your personal circle have the same privilege you presume that it is universal and that anybody who has experiencing severe inconvenience from DRM is simply being unreasonable. I apologise for getting personal, but you need a serious wakeup call.
Product activation is completely invisible and automatic. As for DRM, well, I realise some people hate it on religious grounds, but it's really not that bad.
DRM is a severe compromise. Some people are inconvenienced by it, others less so. Some of those who are inconvenienced are willing to deal with it, others aren't. Some are concerned with legitimate eventualities, while others don't mind the risk. Some were ok with it in principle, but got badly burnt by some aspect of service.
Steam, in particular, is a huge hassle for a lot of people in the world. It's obviously not a hassle for you or many of their regular customers, but it is for me and most people that I know. I bought 1 Steam game last year (Portal) and I so far the only way I have found to play it so far is by using a no-Steam cracked version.
I would be grateful if you refrain from using the word "religious" as a derogitory term whenever you feel like ignoring other people's arguments.
Sure, one day in the hypothetical future Valve's servers could disappear, leaving you unable to play your games any more. This is no different from non-DRM-encumbered games you own on physical media, which could stop working at any time due to loss of or damage to the CDs.
Denying yourself jam today and tomorrow because of the hypothetical possibility that you might only be able to get it today is just silly.
Scroll up to the top of this page. See the article about a major digital distrobution service being shut down? It is not some vague hypothetical worry - it happenned. I have bought 48 games from GOG, including 3 from the day before their site went down. If they were DRM-encumbered then I would have lost everything, but because they are DRM-free I have backups on my hard drive. If my hard drive should fail then I can get my games from my external drive. Should both somehow fail at the same time (or be simultaneously stolen from seperate locations) I would still be able to salvage copies from friends of mine who bought the same games.
If it turns out that GOG is really gone, and this is not a publicity stunt, then all that means to me is that I won't be able to buy more games from them in future.
By the way, I legally bought Alcohol 120%, which means not only do I have backups of my physical CD and DVD games, but I don't even need to be hassled with having to put discs in the drive when I want to play.
(Personally, I've actually bought copies on Steam of older games I also own on physical media. It's only a few bucks, and the convenience of being able to install the game at the click of a button -- instead of having to dig around for the disk and then hope it still works -- is well worth the money. Strange, really: this suppsoedly evil DRM platform means I can play games I own more easily than the DRM-free versions!)
That is an advan
All I can say is that I'm glad they were DRM-free, so my ability to buy the games I got from them is unaffected. That's one of the main reasons I bought more games from GOG than from anywhere else.
That being said, I think that this is a bad publicity stunt.
I guess this explains the naming convention that Microsoft were using when they decided upon Office Open XML.
Oh, and another implementation of carrier pigeon data transfer, now in South Africa. Kinda blows that "there isn't a benchmark for pigeon data speeds" statement away...
That race happened almost exactly a year ago, I think. For those who don't want to follow the link, in 2009 a company called Unlimited IT set up a publicity stunt to demonstrate how terrible Internet is in South Africa. They asserted that a pidgeon could deliver 4GiB over 80km faster local broadband. Winston the pidgeon won, delivering the data in barely over 2 hours, while the ADSL line managed to get only 4% of the job done in that time. Of course, that was with upstream speeds, but even at downstream speeds it would not have been able to get more than 32% of the job done.
I believe they were using a the fastest line ADSL speed available in South Africa at the time: 4 megabits per second (max upstream 512kb/s) which costs roughly US$60 for line rental plus an additional $45 in ISP fees (depending on which ISP you choose) for a 2 gig cap plus $15 for every gig thereafter. Using a 4 meg line for the contest is generous, since most internet users in SA are on 384kb/s lines (which cost $20 a month excluding ISP).
The line rental fee goes directly to Telkom (the national telecom company), and most of the ISP fee ends up going to Telkom as well.
Now you know why South Africans are always complaining about the Internet.
Over the last year things have improved dramatically, as a new undersea cable has reduced the cost of traffic for ISPs, and ISPs now charge less than US$6 per gig. Telkom's line rentals are still the same price ($20 for 384kb, $40 for 512kb, $60 for 4mb) but some lucky 4mb subscribers are getting upgraded to 10mb.
From reading the information provided in the summary, it seems that Hurt Locker sold so well locally that the domestic gross profit alone was enough to completely repay the cost of production and even leave them with an additional million dollars in the bank. The international sales were somewhat less impressive - $24mil from the rest of the world combined, compared to $16mil domestic. If filesharing had an effect on sales, then it appears to be mainly an offshore problem. But at this point it's all pure profit, so we shouldn't complain too much.
Ultimately the film resulted in a 167% return on investment, and provided enough capital to almost completely fund two more projects of similar magnitude.
That being said, this is the first time I've ever heard of Hurt Locker. I guess their marketing could have been better. Is the movie it any good?
Maybe I just don't get net neutrality and what's being argued for, but how would it no affect how peering contracts are worked out, how QoS can be implemented, etc? All this "routing around damage" stuff people talk about seems to stop fairly swiftly at the border, where policy is used to determine where data goes, and not metrics.
The "routing around damage" principle does not apply to endpoints, because there is only one route. If you are connected to the Internet via AT&T then at some point ultimately everything must go through AT&T before it gets between your computer and the Internet proper, and there is no way around this. If are connected through a completely different carrier but are trying to connect to an AT&T customer, then the connection must also go through their chokepoint. There is no way around a wall between point A and B if it completely surrounds either of those points.
Regerding peering contracts and such, that's the way things have always worked in a neutral network, so that isn't a concern. QoS is also acceptible in general, as long as it isn't abused. Network neutrality is about defining what constitutes abuse. The ur-example: "paid prioritization" amounts to AT&T demanding that target non-customers "compensate" them for chosing one of their competitors over them by threatening to degrade their own customers' connections to the target (potentially causing severe damage to the target's business) unless the target pays them.
You could at least provide a link to this alleged quote of yours. How are we to know that you didn't just make all that up?!?
It's right there in TFA. The link is in the summary. Read the paragraph directly below the pictures of the new badges.
To begin with 99% of commercial games don't even have a Linux version, so there's nothing to sell to Linux gamers.
You don't get Linux games on Steam because there is no Steam client. Right now the Linux versions of games for which such versions exist aren't being sold through Steam, and Steam exclusive games don't have Linux versions because there is no point in making Linux versions until there is a Steam client. Make it possible to sell to Linux games and only then will you have something to sell.
You can't really rely on emulation either, if you sell the game as a Linux version you really have to do a native build.
Yes. If you want to sell game for a certain platform, it should work on that platform.
Then there are hundreds of different Linux distros and configurations which all work a little bit different.
From practical experience that is not actually much of a problem at all. Distribute the Steam client as an RPM package and an APT package. The games themselves are managed by Steam itself, just like on Windows, so they are insulated from OS differences. The problem is nontrivial, but not a showstopper by any means.
Also, just imagine the outcry about DRM and Valve not open sourcing Steam or it's games.
I imagine it would be more-or-less the same as it already is.
You can already read here on slashdot how some people refuse to use Steam because it might go down in 50 years. This thinking is 100x worse with Linux users.
That's hyperbole. Many people like Steam, many don't but tolerate it nonetheless, and many avoid it for a variety of reasons. I avoid because I'm not in a position where I can use it, not because I dislike it. Lots of people complain about having already lost Steam accounts. There are others who are nervous because they have heard about people losing their accounts. Some dislike the price shennanigans, some find the service frustrating, and some are concerned that it might disappear in 5 years. Don't paint people with the same brush. People have a variety of reasons - some pragmatic, some misguided, some subjective. The situation is the same for Linux users.
The whole open source and everything-must-be-free mentality goes against businesses.
World of Goo ran a pay-what-you-want special and sold 83250 copies over. 17% of sales were for Linux, 18 for Mac, and 65% were for Windows. So customers are definately there. What's more interesting is that Linux customers opted to pay ~$3.45 on average, whereas Windows customers payed ~$1.90 on average. Mac users payed $2.55. Ultimately, Windows market share is dominant, Mac and Linux similar to each other and individually very significant, and Windows earned only twice as much as Linux at the end of the day. They would have huge lot of money by not supporting Linux, because Linux users actually are willing to spend money.
I think the problem with Linux is that those who develop it push their philosophy too much and refuse to give room for other philosophies, along with way too much spread ecosystem (distros, configurations, all the problems).
Are you confusing Stallman with Torvalds? They are nothing alike. Novell is a Microsoft partner. Debian aims to be pure, Ubuntu aims to be compelling for those who don't know or care about the GNU Manifesto. Seriously, there is no shortage of room different philosophies.
Just to point, we are talking about American Football, not Football. It's not the same.
I think you mean to say that we are talking about American Football and not Association Football, known to some by its abbreviated name soccer and to others simply as football. American Football is a ball game played on foot, and thus is very much a type of football. In fact Rugby is also football - hence the Rugby Football Union.
See wikipedia's article on the word Football