In an era where there were no computer graphics at all, text was the only thing available. And it was a lot of fun as well.
The original Zork games, as well as the rest of the Infocom games were inspired by Adventure to a large degree. It should be noted that because they were text based, some things that would be considered obvious were not necessarily obvious in those days, which added to the puzzle solving aspect of the game.
These days, everything is made almost too obvious, because too many potential customers don't like a challenge(note that many games can be beaten straight out of the box in under 24 hours of playing). Back in those days, a game could take weeks of playing to figure out what to do, beating your head against a problem for several days before a solution would present itself wasn't uncommon.
Then again, it seems that too many people never bother to pick up a book when movies are available, and never realize how horribly the film makers have screwed up a great story, so it's no wonder some people would never understand why text adventures were fun.
This question comes up a LOT, and the answer is history(which is the same reason why some industries are heavily Mac but most aren't).
Back before DirectX came out, games needed to support each different video card. There WAS no API at that point for developers to write for. So, DirectX was a way for developers to write for Windows, without needing to support the different video card chipsets. In most ways, it saved developers a LOT of headaches since they didn't need to worry about support for every video chipset on the market.
If you had code in place to support DirectX(and keep in mind that there were no alternatives initially), there was very little reason to switch APIs, since it would require additional development time to learn the new API. DirectX was also evolving at least as fast as any alternatives, so under Windows at least, there wasn't much of a reason to support other APIs.
So, at this point it really is a function of development cost vs. reward. If a developer doesn't have experience programming for MacOS, and the number of people who will buy your product who have a Mac is small, is the increased cost of developing for both PC and Mac worth it? How about Linux then. Many people go with Linux because of the cost, and are very comfortable with free software. With free software being a big attraction for Linux users, how much money would a developer get by making their software run on Linux? Would it be close to the costs in developing for both Windows and Linux?
It would cost a significant amount of money to develop for multiple operating systems, and if the increased revenue from the additional platforms doesn't make up for the increased development costs, then it's BAD to support multiple platforms. It is that simple, and also explains why porting is done by other companies besides the original developer.
Back to the original issue then, aside from multi-platform support, does OpenGL really have any benefits over DirectX on a Windows platform? If the answer is no, then you can understand why game developers as a group don't support it if they don't plan to support multiple platforms. Many publishers also don't want to support multiple platforms, so there is even less of a reason to support OpenGL.
I want to know what bubble they are talking about here. There are some huge players that keep going up and up, but there isn't a huge surge in the industry where everything is going strong. To be honest, the tech sector has NOT recovered from the stock market tech crash of 2000, with the following tech sector crash of 2001-2002 where many companies went under.
For those who missed it, the stock market took a dive in 2000, in part because the whole Y2K(Year 2000) issue ended up being uneventful, and many people who were working because companies were spending money to make sure Y2K didn't hurt them suddenly were out of a job. The other reason for the crash really deserves to be looked at.
As many are aware, the Internet came into the public eye in the 1994-1996 period. Before that, the general public was not aware of the Internet, and public access was very difficult to find, with colleges/universities being the way to get connected for the most part. By the middle of 1996, more and more non-technical people were discovering the Internet, and so the start of the bubble began. Those with business degrees started to look at the Internet as a way to make money(not to be confused with the technical people who started tech companies).
Those with a business degree and no real technical knowledge really had no business starting a high-profile tech company, but, there was hype about the Internet, and those with business degrees tend to know people who have money. So, these business people would get financing for an idea that wasn't even developed yet. For the worst offenders of the.com bubble, we saw a president with a business degree and no knowledge or product then go on to hire somewhat more technical people as vice presidents, but they too were not very technical. So you have a group of 3-10 people without any ability to develop a product going out to hire directors and managers who DID have a clue. So, the next step was to hire the real talent to develop the product. By this time, you have no product, and perhaps 30-50 people trying to develop a product.
With the initial money, these companies might go for around 2-3 years or so before the money ran out. This puts us right at the 1999 or so timeframe. What happens when you have dozens of companies, each one having gotten several millions of dollars each running out of venture money at the same time without any positive income? Suddenly the venture capitalists realized their mistakes, and they put the breaks on funding these go-nowhere fluff companies that were based on an idea but without the skills or products to allow for a payoff.
Boom, the stock market took it hard, and the.com bubble burst. At that point, you really had two big classifications of tech companies, those with products that could make money, and the companies that were founded based on hype and not much else.
Over the 2000-2001 time period, with venture money not being available, many of the smaller companies that had products started to run into trouble. Their customer base was shrinking, and even with a good product, too many companies were going into defense mode and not spending, even on good ideas or products. This caused the larger companies like Cisco and Sun Microsystems to run into problems because they grew huge based on the demands of the smaller companies that were now dropping like flies. They were not in danger of folding, but downsizing was needed. Of course, all of these unemployed technical people suddenly could not buy the tech products, so the rest of the tech sector slowed down a lot.
The downturn in the tech sector as a whole continued through the end of 2002 into the beginning of 2003. By then, the sector had hit it's bottom and was slowly recovering. The survivors started to see a recovery in their business, but the sector as a whole STILL has yet to fully recover. The promise of what the Internet has to offer is still there, but many lenders and investors
Draco was supposed to kill Dumbledore, but couldn't bring himself to do it. Snape showed up and did it, but for whatever reason, the wand decided that it should go to Draco.
You bought a Dell and are complaining? Dell only has ONE thing that makes it worth looking at, good finance options for those who need a computer right now and can't afford it. Dell does NOTHING better than the competition, and any benefits are offset by negatives.
You could say then, that math is used in so many different areas in life, that it is foolish to try to ignore it.
On the subject at hand though, the real key to why math is needed in Computer Science is due to the analytical nature of the subject. If you do not know how to solve problems, then you will hit many dead-ends in Computer Science. Math isn't just about solving mathematical problems, it is about looking at a problem and working out a solution. Computer Science is about looking at a problem and working out a solution.
So, you can take the math out of Computer Science, but the training that you get from learning how to solve math problems can be applied directly to computer science. As a major, Computer Science is or should be as much about how to come up with solutions as it is about knowing how to do this and that.
So, you can have one person who takes the same computer subjects as a computer science major, but the computer science major will tend to be able to figure out how to break a problem down better due to the math that is a part of the requirements of the major.
There are some interesting aspects to this one though. Taking of physical property without permission of the owner is illegal, no question about it. In the case of downloading of copyrighted materials, if the copyright holder gives away a copy for free and doesn't indicate that it is an illegal copy, that is fully legal.
The real illegal activity is when those who download music UPLOAD it as well. It is VERY VERY difficult to convict someone of illegal downloading, but if you are also uploading it, you are an active part of copyright violation, and that is where they will nail you to the wall. There are enough legal sources of MUSIC downloads to make the issue very complex, but when it comes to movie downloads, there are so few places to download movies and other videos legally that the MPAA can catch you.
A person is allowed to mod their own console, but to sell a modified console breaks a number of rules, which I can sort of understand. It may also be illegal to sell the service to modify the console of others, since the mods in question really are ONLY intended to encourage software piracy.
There are similar laws about other products out there when it comes to fair use. Doing a mod to eliminate the copy protection system for VCR tapes and DVDs can't realistically be stopped for many reasons, but the sale of modified products, especially as a business offering is CLEARLY against the law.
There is a large difference between supporting an API and having it accelerated by the hardware. This is a big reason why Intel GPUs have been shown to be so bad when it comes to games. Without hardware acceleration, the drivers need to do more to allow the API to talk to the video card(s). At this point, I am not sure how much acceleration there is for OpenGL on the video cards produced by AMD/ATI and NVIDIA.
This issue is why there is a lot of confusion on the part of many people out there. They install DirectX 9 for example, but their video card only handles DirectX 8 in hardware. They don't understand that to get decent performance, you need the video card to be able to handle DirectX 9 in hardware to get the performance and in many cases the features that games have to offer today.
As for why companies went with DirectX, from what I have read, when DirectX first came out, Windows itself was a HORRIBLE platform for games. At that point, you had the option to write DOS apps(and support the video cards yourself, needing different drivers for each one), or you could go for a native Windows application, where DirectX was a HUGE improvement in many ways. As time went on, and Windows native applications became more and more appropriate, programming for Windows performance was more important.
Once a company was working with DirectX, future projects went DirectX as well, just because the API was known. Even when OpenGL started to catch on, for a Windows-only application, why go OpenGL at that point? Linux wasn't really on the radar, and MacOS had more issues than just the graphics API as a reason not to be concerned with the Mac environment.
As a side effect of this, ATI had never come up with a great OpenGL driver for their cards, and there was never much pressure to do so for most of the user base(CAD and a handful of other applications the only exception). So, if your ATI users will encounter lower performance, and there is no serious benefit to making your application multi-platform, then why NOT go DirectX?
To make an application that is multi-platform, aside from the graphics angle, the company needs to consider the following question: Will the number of sales from each additional platform compensate for the additional development costs for that platform?
Linux users, due to the free nature of the operating system, tend to look for other free applications. Paying money for an application would be seen as unusual, and is even frowned on by those who are into the whole "Open Source" movement. This implies that even if there were 10,000,000 Linux users out there(not installed machines worth), there might be only 10,000 of them who might BUY a game. Not everyone enjoys the same types of games, so you now have the problem of how many copies will be sold. This is why the emulators you see for Linux and MacOS have gained the popularity they have, because unless your application is a high end/expensive application, there is very little to be gained from making a multi-platform application. $60/copy just won't cover the cost of development of new ports.
Out where I am, a new CD costs in the neighborhood of $18-$22. Considering that most CDs have perhaps one or two songs that people know about, and even after purchase it may go as high as 5 songs on a CD, that $18 price seems very high. A large part of this price comes from the high costs of distribution, and also needs to cover the need for the retailers to make some profit on each sale, but in general, that is a huge part of the reason there are fewer sales.
That really is the problem with the industry, higher and higher costs due to inflation and gas/energy prices(gas for distribution, and energy prices causing the price of everything to go up). When you can download tracks legally, and get only the tracks you want without paying for songs you don't want, you end up better off with a music download. The quality of a CD will be higher in most cases, but why pay $18 for what may be one good track on a CD that you otherwise don't know anything about. As a result of this, you have the people who will download the CD illegally to see if it's worth buying in the first place, but in sampling the music, they find the quality is acceptable, and may not go out to buy the CD.
Perhaps a better model for the record companies to go into is to push for a change, where customers can walk into a "record" store, and request a bunch of different tracks, which can then be burned to a legal CD for the price. You may end up paying the same $18 for 8-10 tracks, but at least you get a set of songs you actually want, so don't feel ripped off. In addition to this, the store is providing a service(making a mix CD for you), so you feel you get your money's worth.
From what I have seen, the "slowness" is caused by two things, the hard drive controller not having mature drivers, and the video drivers plus Aeroglass causing the machine to feel a bit slower.
Now, it is possible that the hard drive in your new machine is one of those slow hard drives(I dealt with a lot of notebook machines with slow hard drives under XP as well). If it's a 4200 RPM hard drive, that would explain a part of the slowness. The extra features for the UI, from preview windows for minimized tasks to the stupid clock with widgets slowing things down a LOT could also be a part of the problem.
One test I need to make one of these days would be to turn off Aeroglass and see if the machine feels any faster.
A 2.4GHz Athlon 64 would blow the doors off that P4 2.4GHz machine in terms of processing power. A 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo based machine would also run quite a bit better overall. By saying processors haven't gotten all that much faster, it shows that you either have been dealing with low end machines , or machines that were screwed up or had one or more components that are sub-standard.
I am NOT saying you should replace your computer or anything like that, I just disagree with people who don't realize that just because they are satisfied with their older machine does NOT mean that progress has not been made. For the most part, new machines have dual-core processors, each core being at least as fast as your 2.4GHz Pentium 4, generally faster. For most applications, dual-core won't make a difference, but if the OS has placed a higher demand on the machine, the second core will make sure all the extras in Vista won't slow down the application you care about.
Now, I agree with you that if you have a machine that works well, there isn't a good reason to upgrade to Vista. I also was a bit annoyed with HP for not properly supporting the Officejet 6110 under Vista as well. My point is that Microsoft has been trying to claim that hardware compatibility isn't the problem that many people have been saying it is, but the Officejet 6110 is a clear example that Vista should not be approached with the assumption that older machines will work with it.
For the record, my Athlon 64 3200+(socket 754 version running at 2.2GHz) with 2 gigs of system memory runs fine under XP, and does what I need it to, but I won't upgrade it to Vista. If it isn't broken, then why replace the OS?
My point wasn't that older machines need to be replaced, just that since Vista has more overhead, there is no reason to upgrade. Also, while your machine may be up to the task of running Vista, most computers that are four years old or older are a bit lower end than that. In many cases, there are driver issues(a lack of drivers or buggy drivers with limited features) on Vista because older equipment will not get the same level of attention by hardware companies as newer equipment.
Vista is NOT faster for the majority of people, who in many cases only have 512 megs of system memory to begin with. I still run into people who have old Dell computers that came with only 128 megs of memory and were never upgraded, or they have 256 megs of memory in their old machines. So, doing an upgrade to Vista really should require that customers KNOW that Vista demands more out of a computer than Windows XP, and if a computer isn't running Windows XP well, going to Vista will be a BAD idea.
I have a customer with several HP Officejet 6110 all-in-one printers. They work perfectly, but features such as the scan-to button on the printers will NOT work under Vista while they do work under XP. HP has indicated that they will not be adding this feature to their Vista drivers for the 6110, and that customers will need to buy a newer model to add the features that do not work under Vista.
So, people SHOULD be concerned about compatibility with 3+ year old equipment. Then again, if you have a computer that is 4 or more years old to begin with, then it would make more sense to replace the computer than to upgrade their older machine to Vista.
Vista isn't bad if you are dealing with new equipment that is supported by the manufacturer, but it's NOT a good idea if your machine is older. Needing to add more system memory and/or replace the video card to run Vista "properly" would be a good reason not to upgrade the OS.
Check the hospitals on Long Island, NY for an example of this in action. A resident of the area who speaks English, has ID, and everything has to jump through a LOT of hoops while those who don't speak English and has no ID gets pushed through. State law forces the hospitals to accept EVERYONE who shows up, but in many cases, those with ID and who WILL pay the bill at the end get sub-par service from the hospitals.
On the east end of Long Island, those "undocumented workers" also get paid decently for landscaping work, and even those who are here legally and on the books don't get paid any less. There have also been cases of English speaking people not being hired because they don't speak Spanish because most of the other employees don't speak English.
It will take another 15 to 20 years before the people in this country are ready to fight for the freedoms that this country was founded on. The people are happy enough NOT to fight, but at the rate things are going, it will take a bit longer.
We see illegal immigrants getting more services(including health care that they never plan to pay the bill for) than those who were born here and have been paying taxes and generally following the rules. We see a continual degradation of our rights to privacy while protection goes out the window. We see no fundamental changes to the education system that would really help solve the problems. We also see more of a focus on helping those in other countries than in helping the lower and middle class citizens improve their lives(which would help the economy more than giving 2 billion dollars to oil companies).
So, they focus on stupid resolutions about the Internet, because they really have no clue about how to fix the REAL problems in this country.
1 gig of RAM is similar under Vista to what 512 megs did under XP. As a result, since most new computers had been getting 1 gig of RAM prior to Vista's release, Vista itself would not be a reason to boost the amount of system memory in new computers.
So, since most people were already at 1 gig on reasonably modern machines, and older machines just didn't have the CPU and GPU power to run Vista well, there hasn't been a real NEED to upgrade. Many of us moved to 2 gigs of memory over a year ago, not for Vista, but for games and other applications.
This comes up as a topic several times a year, and the reason people keep asking is because there have been few titles that are multi-threaded being released. It all comes down to the question asked.
So, is it really all that difficult to write a multi-threaded application? It depends on if you are the type of person who just sits down and hacks the code together, or if you design first, and then code. In order to write a multi-threaded application, you need to decide at the start to make the program multi-threaded. Can you split the program up into pieces that can run independently, while still communicating between the pieces?
Since this is a design decision that needs to be made VERY early in development, it seems that most of the big development houses out there just can't do it. Too many programs take too much code from previous applications, and that makes it overly difficult to fit into a multi-threaded design. These companies just don't seem to be willing to write anything from scratch at this point. They use engines from previous titles, or that they purchase that were never multi-threaded, and so, you don't see much in the way of change.
Look at Electronic Arts, they have sports games they release year after year that really don't change, EVER. They add new data, but the game fundamentally doesn't get updated from year to year. The fact that they can get away with releasing the same thing year after year and make tons of money has made them lazy, and they just don't seem to be willing to devote serious effort into new code.
It takes a developer around 5 years to develop a game fully from scratch if they need to come up with the engine themselves. That involves engine development, storyline(for a game that has a storyline), voice acting, etc. So, if a title takes 3 years, then the engine is probably taken from another project, and is probably single-threaded.
Now, I have my hopes that Dragon Age(Bioware has it under development right now) will be multi-threaded by design, and it will be very well designed with multi-threading in mind. Being able to take advantage of more than 4 or more cores would be a good thing.
This is something that has annoyed me for a long time now. Those who own homes get tax deductions from the interest on their home loans. As a result, not only do home owners see the value of their home increase over time, but they get tax deductions on the interest from their home loans, so the cost of living for homeowners will end up being lower in the long term.
Those who rent tend to pay more in rent, get nothing for it, and in the long run have nothing to show for their cost of living. There are no tax breaks in any way for those who rent, which makes the cost of living higher, while having less to show for it. If the majority of people are living in an urban environment, that implies that the majority of people are renting, not owning where they live. So, why is the attitude of government always focused on things that would help home owners, rather than on the majority, which ends up renting?
If the government wanted to really boost the economy(which would improve tax revenues), there would be a shift to provide tax deductions for those who rent. The money people save would allow them to save up for a house, which would help reduce the NEED for social security(in the long run). Help raise the social standing of the low and middle income people, and there will be more non-credit spending. Renters need tax breaks too.
The vast majority of people who like PalmOS are the users. From the perspective of a user, the UI is the most important element, and having access to a command line, file system on the device, or whatever really are NOT important. Sure, there is a market for people who want a command line or low-level access to EVERYTHING they own, but again, that isn't a huge number of people compared to the size of the PDA/Smartphone market as a whole.
The problem that Palm had was that they spun off PalmOS under it's own company. Once that happened, and Access bought out the OS company, development and hope for improvements to PalmOS died. Any piece of software, no matter how good or bad that gets neglected will survive for long.
As for your primary complaint about lack of a filesystem, unless your focus is on software development, it's really not a big deal, and in many ways opens the door to more problems that are caused by user error.
Palm made a huge mistake when they set up the OS development as it's own company(which was purchased by Access). The result was a lack of updates to the OS for ages, and the Access Linux OS, which was their idea for a replacement for PalmOS has only recently gotten to the point of being useful. I don't know if the new Linux based OS is the one from Access or not, so I'll have to take a look.
Many people would have liked to see a GREAT PalmOS based device before the old PalmOS was retired in favor of the new Linux based OS. I don't see a problem here as well since there will be a compatibility layer for the current PalmOS apps.
I don't think that viewership is dropping as much as the idiotic method of tracking how many people are watching just doesn't work anymore. If someone records a show because they can't be home, that in no way means that people don't end up watching. There seems to be progress in getting away from the current system, but who knows if it will ever happen.
A big problem I see with the different distribution methods out there is how to fund the production of the good shows. Honestly, if the TV distribution method is going to change, and advertisements change as well, a better way for these shows to generate money will be needed, and the possibilities are scary. Will we have running advertisements along the bottom and/or top of the screen as we watch? Will the users be required to pay to view the content without advertisements? If we are given a choice(pay and get no advertisements, or get it for free with advertisements), the peer to peer downloads will hurt the chances for good shows to be renewed.
Remember, money is the reason we get ANYTHING on TV in the first place. If the production studios don't make money on the development of the shows/movies, they will NOT continue to make the shows we care about. So, how do we make sure that the good shows continue while the crap is dropped?
Well, we are talking about a platform, which is very much like a combination of different parts put together by magic. Chimera, Sphinx, Manticore, the list goes on for good code names for a project that involves multiple elements.
I would like to see AMD work on audio technology as something to add. I still miss the old days of NVIDIA's Soundstorm.
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In an era where there were no computer graphics at all, text was the only thing available. And it was a lot of fun as well.
The original Zork games, as well as the rest of the Infocom games were inspired by Adventure to a large degree. It should be noted that because they were text based, some things that would be considered obvious were not necessarily obvious in those days, which added to the puzzle solving aspect of the game.
These days, everything is made almost too obvious, because too many potential customers don't like a challenge(note that many games can be beaten straight out of the box in under 24 hours of playing). Back in those days, a game could take weeks of playing to figure out what to do, beating your head against a problem for several days before a solution would present itself wasn't uncommon.
Then again, it seems that too many people never bother to pick up a book when movies are available, and never realize how horribly the film makers have screwed up a great story, so it's no wonder some people would never understand why text adventures were fun.
This question comes up a LOT, and the answer is history(which is the same reason why some industries are heavily Mac but most aren't).
Back before DirectX came out, games needed to support each different video card. There WAS no API at that point for developers to write for. So, DirectX was a way for developers to write for Windows, without needing to support the different video card chipsets. In most ways, it saved developers a LOT of headaches since they didn't need to worry about support for every video chipset on the market.
If you had code in place to support DirectX(and keep in mind that there were no alternatives initially), there was very little reason to switch APIs, since it would require additional development time to learn the new API. DirectX was also evolving at least as fast as any alternatives, so under Windows at least, there wasn't much of a reason to support other APIs.
So, at this point it really is a function of development cost vs. reward. If a developer doesn't have experience programming for MacOS, and the number of people who will buy your product who have a Mac is small, is the increased cost of developing for both PC and Mac worth it? How about Linux then. Many people go with Linux because of the cost, and are very comfortable with free software. With free software being a big attraction for Linux users, how much money would a developer get by making their software run on Linux? Would it be close to the costs in developing for both Windows and Linux?
It would cost a significant amount of money to develop for multiple operating systems, and if the increased revenue from the additional platforms doesn't make up for the increased development costs, then it's BAD to support multiple platforms. It is that simple, and also explains why porting is done by other companies besides the original developer.
Back to the original issue then, aside from multi-platform support, does OpenGL really have any benefits over DirectX on a Windows platform? If the answer is no, then you can understand why game developers as a group don't support it if they don't plan to support multiple platforms. Many publishers also don't want to support multiple platforms, so there is even less of a reason to support OpenGL.
I want to know what bubble they are talking about here. There are some huge players that keep going up and up, but there isn't a huge surge in the industry where everything is going strong. To be honest, the tech sector has NOT recovered from the stock market tech crash of 2000, with the following tech sector crash of 2001-2002 where many companies went under.
.com bubble, we saw a president with a business degree and no knowledge or product then go on to hire somewhat more technical people as vice presidents, but they too were not very technical. So you have a group of 3-10 people without any ability to develop a product going out to hire directors and managers who DID have a clue. So, the next step was to hire the real talent to develop the product. By this time, you have no product, and perhaps 30-50 people trying to develop a product.
.com bubble burst. At that point, you really had two big classifications of tech companies, those with products that could make money, and the companies that were founded based on hype and not much else.
For those who missed it, the stock market took a dive in 2000, in part because the whole Y2K(Year 2000) issue ended up being uneventful, and many people who were working because companies were spending money to make sure Y2K didn't hurt them suddenly were out of a job. The other reason for the crash really deserves to be looked at.
As many are aware, the Internet came into the public eye in the 1994-1996 period. Before that, the general public was not aware of the Internet, and public access was very difficult to find, with colleges/universities being the way to get connected for the most part. By the middle of 1996, more and more non-technical people were discovering the Internet, and so the start of the bubble began. Those with business degrees started to look at the Internet as a way to make money(not to be confused with the technical people who started tech companies).
Those with a business degree and no real technical knowledge really had no business starting a high-profile tech company, but, there was hype about the Internet, and those with business degrees tend to know people who have money. So, these business people would get financing for an idea that wasn't even developed yet. For the worst offenders of the
With the initial money, these companies might go for around 2-3 years or so before the money ran out. This puts us right at the 1999 or so timeframe. What happens when you have dozens of companies, each one having gotten several millions of dollars each running out of venture money at the same time without any positive income? Suddenly the venture capitalists realized their mistakes, and they put the breaks on funding these go-nowhere fluff companies that were based on an idea but without the skills or products to allow for a payoff.
Boom, the stock market took it hard, and the
Over the 2000-2001 time period, with venture money not being available, many of the smaller companies that had products started to run into trouble. Their customer base was shrinking, and even with a good product, too many companies were going into defense mode and not spending, even on good ideas or products. This caused the larger companies like Cisco and Sun Microsystems to run into problems because they grew huge based on the demands of the smaller companies that were now dropping like flies. They were not in danger of folding, but downsizing was needed. Of course, all of these unemployed technical people suddenly could not buy the tech products, so the rest of the tech sector slowed down a lot.
The downturn in the tech sector as a whole continued through the end of 2002 into the beginning of 2003. By then, the sector had hit it's bottom and was slowly recovering. The survivors started to see a recovery in their business, but the sector as a whole STILL has yet to fully recover. The promise of what the Internet has to offer is still there, but many lenders and investors
Draco was supposed to kill Dumbledore, but couldn't bring himself to do it. Snape showed up and did it, but for whatever reason, the wand decided that it should go to Draco.
You bought a Dell and are complaining? Dell only has ONE thing that makes it worth looking at, good finance options for those who need a computer right now and can't afford it. Dell does NOTHING better than the competition, and any benefits are offset by negatives.
You could say then, that math is used in so many different areas in life, that it is foolish to try to ignore it.
On the subject at hand though, the real key to why math is needed in Computer Science is due to the analytical nature of the subject. If you do not know how to solve problems, then you will hit many dead-ends in Computer Science. Math isn't just about solving mathematical problems, it is about looking at a problem and working out a solution. Computer Science is about looking at a problem and working out a solution.
So, you can take the math out of Computer Science, but the training that you get from learning how to solve math problems can be applied directly to computer science. As a major, Computer Science is or should be as much about how to come up with solutions as it is about knowing how to do this and that.
So, you can have one person who takes the same computer subjects as a computer science major, but the computer science major will tend to be able to figure out how to break a problem down better due to the math that is a part of the requirements of the major.
There are some interesting aspects to this one though. Taking of physical property without permission of the owner is illegal, no question about it. In the case of downloading of copyrighted materials, if the copyright holder gives away a copy for free and doesn't indicate that it is an illegal copy, that is fully legal.
The real illegal activity is when those who download music UPLOAD it as well. It is VERY VERY difficult to convict someone of illegal downloading, but if you are also uploading it, you are an active part of copyright violation, and that is where they will nail you to the wall. There are enough legal sources of MUSIC downloads to make the issue very complex, but when it comes to movie downloads, there are so few places to download movies and other videos legally that the MPAA can catch you.
A person is allowed to mod their own console, but to sell a modified console breaks a number of rules, which I can sort of understand. It may also be illegal to sell the service to modify the console of others, since the mods in question really are ONLY intended to encourage software piracy.
There are similar laws about other products out there when it comes to fair use. Doing a mod to eliminate the copy protection system for VCR tapes and DVDs can't realistically be stopped for many reasons, but the sale of modified products, especially as a business offering is CLEARLY against the law.
There is a large difference between supporting an API and having it accelerated by the hardware. This is a big reason why Intel GPUs have been shown to be so bad when it comes to games. Without hardware acceleration, the drivers need to do more to allow the API to talk to the video card(s). At this point, I am not sure how much acceleration there is for OpenGL on the video cards produced by AMD/ATI and NVIDIA.
This issue is why there is a lot of confusion on the part of many people out there. They install DirectX 9 for example, but their video card only handles DirectX 8 in hardware. They don't understand that to get decent performance, you need the video card to be able to handle DirectX 9 in hardware to get the performance and in many cases the features that games have to offer today.
As for why companies went with DirectX, from what I have read, when DirectX first came out, Windows itself was a HORRIBLE platform for games. At that point, you had the option to write DOS apps(and support the video cards yourself, needing different drivers for each one), or you could go for a native Windows application, where DirectX was a HUGE improvement in many ways. As time went on, and Windows native applications became more and more appropriate, programming for Windows performance was more important.
Once a company was working with DirectX, future projects went DirectX as well, just because the API was known. Even when OpenGL started to catch on, for a Windows-only application, why go OpenGL at that point? Linux wasn't really on the radar, and MacOS had more issues than just the graphics API as a reason not to be concerned with the Mac environment.
As a side effect of this, ATI had never come up with a great OpenGL driver for their cards, and there was never much pressure to do so for most of the user base(CAD and a handful of other applications the only exception). So, if your ATI users will encounter lower performance, and there is no serious benefit to making your application multi-platform, then why NOT go DirectX?
To make an application that is multi-platform, aside from the graphics angle, the company needs to consider the following question: Will the number of sales from each additional platform compensate for the additional development costs for that platform?
Linux users, due to the free nature of the operating system, tend to look for other free applications. Paying money for an application would be seen as unusual, and is even frowned on by those who are into the whole "Open Source" movement. This implies that even if there were 10,000,000 Linux users out there(not installed machines worth), there might be only 10,000 of them who might BUY a game. Not everyone enjoys the same types of games, so you now have the problem of how many copies will be sold. This is why the emulators you see for Linux and MacOS have gained the popularity they have, because unless your application is a high end/expensive application, there is very little to be gained from making a multi-platform application. $60/copy just won't cover the cost of development of new ports.
Out where I am, a new CD costs in the neighborhood of $18-$22. Considering that most CDs have perhaps one or two songs that people know about, and even after purchase it may go as high as 5 songs on a CD, that $18 price seems very high. A large part of this price comes from the high costs of distribution, and also needs to cover the need for the retailers to make some profit on each sale, but in general, that is a huge part of the reason there are fewer sales.
That really is the problem with the industry, higher and higher costs due to inflation and gas/energy prices(gas for distribution, and energy prices causing the price of everything to go up). When you can download tracks legally, and get only the tracks you want without paying for songs you don't want, you end up better off with a music download. The quality of a CD will be higher in most cases, but why pay $18 for what may be one good track on a CD that you otherwise don't know anything about. As a result of this, you have the people who will download the CD illegally to see if it's worth buying in the first place, but in sampling the music, they find the quality is acceptable, and may not go out to buy the CD.
Perhaps a better model for the record companies to go into is to push for a change, where customers can walk into a "record" store, and request a bunch of different tracks, which can then be burned to a legal CD for the price. You may end up paying the same $18 for 8-10 tracks, but at least you get a set of songs you actually want, so don't feel ripped off. In addition to this, the store is providing a service(making a mix CD for you), so you feel you get your money's worth.
Yea, the series opener for "Sliders" really starts to hit home, where more and more jobs that we might want are only found in other countries.
From what I have seen, the "slowness" is caused by two things, the hard drive controller not having mature drivers, and the video drivers plus Aeroglass causing the machine to feel a bit slower.
Now, it is possible that the hard drive in your new machine is one of those slow hard drives(I dealt with a lot of notebook machines with slow hard drives under XP as well). If it's a 4200 RPM hard drive, that would explain a part of the slowness. The extra features for the UI, from preview windows for minimized tasks to the stupid clock with widgets slowing things down a LOT could also be a part of the problem.
One test I need to make one of these days would be to turn off Aeroglass and see if the machine feels any faster.
A 2.4GHz Athlon 64 would blow the doors off that P4 2.4GHz machine in terms of processing power. A 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo based machine would also run quite a bit better overall. By saying processors haven't gotten all that much faster, it shows that you either have been dealing with low end machines , or machines that were screwed up or had one or more components that are sub-standard.
I am NOT saying you should replace your computer or anything like that, I just disagree with people who don't realize that just because they are satisfied with their older machine does NOT mean that progress has not been made. For the most part, new machines have dual-core processors, each core being at least as fast as your 2.4GHz Pentium 4, generally faster. For most applications, dual-core won't make a difference, but if the OS has placed a higher demand on the machine, the second core will make sure all the extras in Vista won't slow down the application you care about.
Now, I agree with you that if you have a machine that works well, there isn't a good reason to upgrade to Vista. I also was a bit annoyed with HP for not properly supporting the Officejet 6110 under Vista as well. My point is that Microsoft has been trying to claim that hardware compatibility isn't the problem that many people have been saying it is, but the Officejet 6110 is a clear example that Vista should not be approached with the assumption that older machines will work with it.
For the record, my Athlon 64 3200+(socket 754 version running at 2.2GHz) with 2 gigs of system memory runs fine under XP, and does what I need it to, but I won't upgrade it to Vista. If it isn't broken, then why replace the OS?
My point wasn't that older machines need to be replaced, just that since Vista has more overhead, there is no reason to upgrade. Also, while your machine may be up to the task of running Vista, most computers that are four years old or older are a bit lower end than that. In many cases, there are driver issues(a lack of drivers or buggy drivers with limited features) on Vista because older equipment will not get the same level of attention by hardware companies as newer equipment.
Vista is NOT faster for the majority of people, who in many cases only have 512 megs of system memory to begin with. I still run into people who have old Dell computers that came with only 128 megs of memory and were never upgraded, or they have 256 megs of memory in their old machines. So, doing an upgrade to Vista really should require that customers KNOW that Vista demands more out of a computer than Windows XP, and if a computer isn't running Windows XP well, going to Vista will be a BAD idea.
I have a customer with several HP Officejet 6110 all-in-one printers. They work perfectly, but features such as the scan-to button on the printers will NOT work under Vista while they do work under XP. HP has indicated that they will not be adding this feature to their Vista drivers for the 6110, and that customers will need to buy a newer model to add the features that do not work under Vista.
So, people SHOULD be concerned about compatibility with 3+ year old equipment. Then again, if you have a computer that is 4 or more years old to begin with, then it would make more sense to replace the computer than to upgrade their older machine to Vista.
Vista isn't bad if you are dealing with new equipment that is supported by the manufacturer, but it's NOT a good idea if your machine is older. Needing to add more system memory and/or replace the video card to run Vista "properly" would be a good reason not to upgrade the OS.
Check the hospitals on Long Island, NY for an example of this in action. A resident of the area who speaks English, has ID, and everything has to jump through a LOT of hoops while those who don't speak English and has no ID gets pushed through. State law forces the hospitals to accept EVERYONE who shows up, but in many cases, those with ID and who WILL pay the bill at the end get sub-par service from the hospitals.
On the east end of Long Island, those "undocumented workers" also get paid decently for landscaping work, and even those who are here legally and on the books don't get paid any less. There have also been cases of English speaking people not being hired because they don't speak Spanish because most of the other employees don't speak English.
It will take another 15 to 20 years before the people in this country are ready to fight for the freedoms that this country was founded on. The people are happy enough NOT to fight, but at the rate things are going, it will take a bit longer.
We see illegal immigrants getting more services(including health care that they never plan to pay the bill for) than those who were born here and have been paying taxes and generally following the rules. We see a continual degradation of our rights to privacy while protection goes out the window. We see no fundamental changes to the education system that would really help solve the problems. We also see more of a focus on helping those in other countries than in helping the lower and middle class citizens improve their lives(which would help the economy more than giving 2 billion dollars to oil companies).
So, they focus on stupid resolutions about the Internet, because they really have no clue about how to fix the REAL problems in this country.
1 gig of RAM is similar under Vista to what 512 megs did under XP. As a result, since most new computers had been getting 1 gig of RAM prior to Vista's release, Vista itself would not be a reason to boost the amount of system memory in new computers.
So, since most people were already at 1 gig on reasonably modern machines, and older machines just didn't have the CPU and GPU power to run Vista well, there hasn't been a real NEED to upgrade. Many of us moved to 2 gigs of memory over a year ago, not for Vista, but for games and other applications.
This comes up as a topic several times a year, and the reason people keep asking is because there have been few titles that are multi-threaded being released. It all comes down to the question asked.
So, is it really all that difficult to write a multi-threaded application? It depends on if you are the type of person who just sits down and hacks the code together, or if you design first, and then code. In order to write a multi-threaded application, you need to decide at the start to make the program multi-threaded. Can you split the program up into pieces that can run independently, while still communicating between the pieces?
Since this is a design decision that needs to be made VERY early in development, it seems that most of the big development houses out there just can't do it. Too many programs take too much code from previous applications, and that makes it overly difficult to fit into a multi-threaded design. These companies just don't seem to be willing to write anything from scratch at this point. They use engines from previous titles, or that they purchase that were never multi-threaded, and so, you don't see much in the way of change.
Look at Electronic Arts, they have sports games they release year after year that really don't change, EVER. They add new data, but the game fundamentally doesn't get updated from year to year. The fact that they can get away with releasing the same thing year after year and make tons of money has made them lazy, and they just don't seem to be willing to devote serious effort into new code.
It takes a developer around 5 years to develop a game fully from scratch if they need to come up with the engine themselves. That involves engine development, storyline(for a game that has a storyline), voice acting, etc. So, if a title takes 3 years, then the engine is probably taken from another project, and is probably single-threaded.
Now, I have my hopes that Dragon Age(Bioware has it under development right now) will be multi-threaded by design, and it will be very well designed with multi-threading in mind. Being able to take advantage of more than 4 or more cores would be a good thing.
This is something that has annoyed me for a long time now. Those who own homes get tax deductions from the interest on their home loans. As a result, not only do home owners see the value of their home increase over time, but they get tax deductions on the interest from their home loans, so the cost of living for homeowners will end up being lower in the long term.
Those who rent tend to pay more in rent, get nothing for it, and in the long run have nothing to show for their cost of living. There are no tax breaks in any way for those who rent, which makes the cost of living higher, while having less to show for it. If the majority of people are living in an urban environment, that implies that the majority of people are renting, not owning where they live. So, why is the attitude of government always focused on things that would help home owners, rather than on the majority, which ends up renting?
If the government wanted to really boost the economy(which would improve tax revenues), there would be a shift to provide tax deductions for those who rent. The money people save would allow them to save up for a house, which would help reduce the NEED for social security(in the long run). Help raise the social standing of the low and middle income people, and there will be more non-credit spending. Renters need tax breaks too.
The vast majority of people who like PalmOS are the users. From the perspective of a user, the UI is the most important element, and having access to a command line, file system on the device, or whatever really are NOT important. Sure, there is a market for people who want a command line or low-level access to EVERYTHING they own, but again, that isn't a huge number of people compared to the size of the PDA/Smartphone market as a whole.
The problem that Palm had was that they spun off PalmOS under it's own company. Once that happened, and Access bought out the OS company, development and hope for improvements to PalmOS died. Any piece of software, no matter how good or bad that gets neglected will survive for long.
As for your primary complaint about lack of a filesystem, unless your focus is on software development, it's really not a big deal, and in many ways opens the door to more problems that are caused by user error.
Palm made a huge mistake when they set up the OS development as it's own company(which was purchased by Access). The result was a lack of updates to the OS for ages, and the Access Linux OS, which was their idea for a replacement for PalmOS has only recently gotten to the point of being useful. I don't know if the new Linux based OS is the one from Access or not, so I'll have to take a look.
Many people would have liked to see a GREAT PalmOS based device before the old PalmOS was retired in favor of the new Linux based OS. I don't see a problem here as well since there will be a compatibility layer for the current PalmOS apps.
I don't think that viewership is dropping as much as the idiotic method of tracking how many people are watching just doesn't work anymore. If someone records a show because they can't be home, that in no way means that people don't end up watching. There seems to be progress in getting away from the current system, but who knows if it will ever happen.
A big problem I see with the different distribution methods out there is how to fund the production of the good shows. Honestly, if the TV distribution method is going to change, and advertisements change as well, a better way for these shows to generate money will be needed, and the possibilities are scary. Will we have running advertisements along the bottom and/or top of the screen as we watch? Will the users be required to pay to view the content without advertisements? If we are given a choice(pay and get no advertisements, or get it for free with advertisements), the peer to peer downloads will hurt the chances for good shows to be renewed.
Remember, money is the reason we get ANYTHING on TV in the first place. If the production studios don't make money on the development of the shows/movies, they will NOT continue to make the shows we care about. So, how do we make sure that the good shows continue while the crap is dropped?
Well, we are talking about a platform, which is very much like a combination of different parts put together by magic. Chimera, Sphinx, Manticore, the list goes on for good code names for a project that involves multiple elements.
I would like to see AMD work on audio technology as something to add. I still miss the old days of NVIDIA's Soundstorm.