No, you didn't get mod bombed, the audience read your comment and rated it accordingly.
Here, I'll repost my response. It's already +5 Funny. Maybe I can double score on it.
Java scares companies like Microsoft and Apple because it has the potential to make their closed platforms irrelevant. If the promise of Java did take off - people would be free to choose their platform without having to worry about buying all new apps or learning new look-alike apps.
Did you just get off the boat from 1996 or something?
Java scares companies like Microsoft and Apple because it has the potential to make their closed platforms irrelevant. If the promise of Java did take off - people would be free to choose their platform without having to worry about buying all new apps or learning new look-alike apps.
Did you just get off the boat from 1996 or something?
'Cause frankly I don't believe it. A co-op to get DSL implemented on already laid dark cable is one thing. Most communities don't generally have dark fiber run to every residential address. If it's been laid it's being used. To create a co-op tasked with rolling out a community-wide installation of fiber to each doorstep, with or without the local government's help, would be an astronomically complex and time consuming task.
Instead of trying to convince a town to fund such a fool's errand why not try convincing the university to subsidize business-class broadband at home in case you need to work from there ("If the system(s) go down at 3am I can get them back up and running faster if I can just log in from home instead of driving across town." etc...).
It's not in the definition unless it's unsolicited pork-shoulder.
SPAM is a canned meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation that has entered into folklore. SPAM luncheon meat is also used as an artistic medium in SPAM carving contests.
A use for hacking disposable cameras: They're disposable. That is, they're cheap enough that if you break them, you haven't lost much.
A good use for redundant statements: They're redundant. That is, if you say the same thing two or three different ways, they still all convey the same message.
It doesn't matter how you format it, your post is still uneducated crap.
Why should some voice actor doing work-for-hire get residuals for their miniscule contribution to a game when the designers, level builders, programmers, and artists don't get any? So a voice actor puts in a few hours and gets a few hundred dollars, why should that contribution be considered more important than any of the work done by the people who designed and build the game? Games aren't movies. The members of SAC aren't the important ones in this industry. They need to get over their ingrained feelings of self-entitlement and realize that they are providing a commodity product. Not a face, not name recognition, but a product (that just happens to be a recording of their voice). Unlike movies they aren't vitally important.
Any of the above listed games industry workers puts in around 5000 hours making a game. I'm being a bit conservative with that number, too. That's 2 years of 50 hr weeks. Now who do you think should be first in line for residuals? The people who lost out on their family lives / personal time, the people who stayed late and came in on weekends, the people that created new emergent game design, ground breaking AI algorhythms, and gigabytes upon gigabytes of art/sound content; or some SAC member who owns a house in Brentwood, has four sports cars, is on the A-List in Hollywood, and probably doesn't know one thing about actually making a game? Here's a hint, Wil Weaton is wrong about who should get the money.
The games industry is not the movie industry. The voice actors aren't who make or break a title. It's the people toiling away behind their computers for pretty much nothing more than the love of making games.
Your argument about how letting SAC voice actors get residuals (not the spelling) will posibly help games industry people get residuals is total and utter crap. There are no altruisitic motives behind the SAC bs. They want money, pure and simple. We don't need them acting like their helping us. If they think we deserve residuals then they should be arguing that we get them first and then they get them. Helping us by cutting in line isn't helping, it's being selfish.
stunning visual and multimedia capabilities of Mac OS X,
You mean OpenGL and OpenAL, right? 'Cause that's what you're talking about. Those are available on pretty much all OS's
What it would take to "move PC gaming away from being a Microsoft OS-specific activity" (if that were true, which it isn't) is for a platform to come out that has as easy of a game development SDK, hardware and driver support from ISVs, and enough of an installed base for game development to look lucrative to developers.
The Mac has maybe one of those. No change in the CPU is going to magically grant it the other two.
The hardware is sold as a subsidy. It generally takes 10-12 games purchased before the manufacturer breaks even. People buying PS3s to run Linux as general computng devices for web surfing, email, hacking, etc... are not profit centers for Sony. You can think that you're a group worth noting, but you're not. The only people you're likely to evangelize this too are other geeks, and chances are they will already know about it.
If anyone were to tell me I should have a PS3 w/ Linux because of, you know, Freedom man, openness, it's not Microsoft, etc.. I'd not be swayed in the least. I have a general purpose computer. I can even put Linux on it if I so chose. If want to build another one I can probably do it, sans keyboard, mouse, and HD for about the price of PS3. So why would I be interested in the PS3? I doubt you'd get much better response standingout in front of Best Buy, Circuit City, or Wal*Mart and promoting the PS3 w/ Linux to people going in to buy PS3s. In other words, "No. People are not more likely to listen to you."
At best you're a self-promoting group unto yourself. As I said above, the size of that group is infinitesimal. If Sony were to market to you all they'd be doing is incresing their cost to manufacturer each PS3 and therefore increasing the # of games you'd have to buy before they break even. It's not a winning situation for them.
Just because it got you to spend your money on one of two non existent systems doesn't make it a good marketing strategy.
The people who value a PS3 with Linux on an HDD are a statistical anomoly so small that the number of significant digits required to express you as a percentage of potential PS3 buyers is beyond comprehension.
There's no marketing in this. You won't see Sony put giantic "Buy PS3 With That Linux Thing" bilboards up in Times Square. Outside of Ken's Reality Distortion Field comments and a few word of mouth web pages you're probably heard all you're going to about Linux on PS3.
Do you really think that PPC and OpenTransport are what make a Mac a Mac?
There are a lot of things that made a Mac a Mac long before those two technologies were introduced.
NuBus
Motorola 680xx CPUs
SCSI
1.44 MB Floppies
ADB
HyperCard
(and many others)
Did the Mac stop being a Mac when those technologies were replaced with other, better technologies or dropped altogether?
I'm completely confused by your assertation that if someone makes OS X run on beige boxes that development houses won't look at Carbon/Cocoa. In a word, "HUH???" How do those two statements have any correlation to each other whatsoever?
Apple needed to switch to a different chip supplier because IBM/Motorola will be spreading themselves thin filling supply contracts for all three next-generation consoles. Since those contracts are going to be bigger and more lucrative than Apple's purchasing commitments IBM/Motorola probably told them they'd be last in line.
Apple saw the writing on the wall and moved to a CPU supplier that can fulfill their needs. That they get a higher speeds, dual cores, and lower prices also is just icing on the cake to them.
How this change affects corporate adoption of the Macintosh platform is probably a great big, "not much". Those industries that have shown a predilection to Macs will continue to use them. Those that haven't, won't. Unlike geeks, most people don't care what chip runs their PC. They care about what tools are at their disposal.
If it quacks it's a duck. If it has minimalistic (not minimal) design esthetics, ease of use, runs OSX, and is sold by Steve Jobs it's a Macintosh. It's a Mac regardless of what collection of silicon and transistors makes it run.
In the press release Jobs is quoted as saying
"Our goal is to provide our customers with the best personal computers in the world, and looking ahead Intel has the strongest processor roadmap by far"
That's spin. While it may or may not be 100% true it's positive and that's all that matters to investors. Have you ever seen either party in an announced business collaboration say anything but glowing statements about them, their partners, and the deal they worked out?
It wouldn't look good for Steve to stand up and say, "Well, IBM told us we're small potatoes. So, we're going to switch to Intel so we have enough chips to ship our niche market computers."
Have to wonder if Apple couldn't get PPC chips.
on
Apple Switching to Intel
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm guessing that IBM/Motorolla told Apple that, due to the small # of Macintoshes made each year---as opposed to the # consoles manufactured, that they would be fulfilling Microsoft's, Sony's, and Nintendo's orders before Apples.
In actuality you don't have to put "Copyright 1999 Linda Jones" if you are only distributing your code in countries that signed the Berne treaty. Berne did away with formalties such as 100% proper copyright notices. Having such a line in your code certainly helps in determining who has copyright, but it isn't required. Copyright is assumed to be 100% granted to the author of a work from the time of creation, with our without any copyright notice.
You should also state "All rights reserved." If you don't then your copyright notice may not be valid in some countries. By reserving all rights, even if you are allowing a work to be copied, you retain the right(s) to prosecute anyone who uses your work in an improper way. If you don't state your reservation of rights then you might be leaving a door open for infringement.
That was amazing. In three sentences you completely changed the subject from, "LCDs suck for gaming" to...I think..."12 month old video cards hate the world" Of course, video card technology has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but we'll let that slide for now.
I'm not exactly sure why you think an LCD monitor would ever prevent you from adjusting the graphical detail levels in a game. Which monitor, exactly, can override the settngs screen in all games? Personally, I've always had the option of adjusting numerous settings besides screen resolution to help with the performance of a game. Maybe Dell is just nicer about that than most LCD manufacturers. I've only had a Dell LCD, so I can't say for sure (shrug).
When I first got this LCD monitor I had a 2-3 year old Radeon 9800 card. Most of the games I listed as playable on this monitor (with the exception of HL2) were played on the 9800.
Re:LCDs suck for gaming
on
Are CRTs History?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Why does someone always trot out this tired argurment against LCDs for gaming when there is a discussion about LCD monitors?
Yes, when the refresh time on LCDs was 25ms or more the ghosting in games made them a less than desireable choice. Finding an LCD with a refresh time greater than 16ms these days is becoming increasingly rare, though.
I have a Dell 2005FPW widescreen LCD. It has a native resolution of 1680x1050 and a refresh time of 12ms. There is absolutely no ghosting on it whatsoever. Doom3, FarCry, HL2, et al all look and play amazing on it. I've played most of those games on a high-quality (read "Dell", "Viewsonic" or "NEC") LCD with a 16ms refresh time and have not noticed any ghosting. The higher contrast ratio, more intense brightness levels, and digital signal and color of LCDs make games look better on them than on CRTs too.
I'm certain there are exceptions to every rule and some no-name Korean brand LCD you can get at Sam's Club for cheap will probably be less than optimal in games. But, by and large, LCDs are as good as, or better, than CRTs for gaming these days.
I always have to wonder, when someone uses the "LCDs suck for gaming" argument if they have even played a game on an LCD in the past 6-12 months. If they haven't, they shouldn't comment on it.
When companies claim they "lose money" on the hardware, it's always debatable. It cost alot less to build a console at the end of the console's generation.
That's only true if the console manufacturer has total control over the engineering of the hardware. Playstations and Nintendo consoles can be reengineered over the life of the hardware to maximize die space and minimize production costs only because Sony and Nintendo have total control over every transistor being used.
Microsoft, on the other hand, bought "off the shelf", so to speak. nVidia was never going to give Intel the designs for their GPU and motherboard chips. Likewise Intel wasn't going to share their CPU designs with nVidia. Microsoft had no way to get below the $180 price point because they couldn't combine any of the guts of the XBox to make it cheaper to manufacture.
The big question this leads to is, "Why doesn't Sony execute the knock-out blow and price the PS2 much lower than the XBox?"
Indeed
Why would they, though? If people are willing to pay $180 for an XBox then they are willing to pay $180 for a PS2. So, Sony probably isn't losing any money on PS2 boxes now. Instead they are probably laughing all the way to the bank with the (at least for consoles) incredibly high profit margins they are seeing....all thanks to Microsoft. This is probably why the PSP is $250 instead of a more reasonable $100 or $120. Why would Sony undercut the sales of their PS2s with a handheld when they can keep the price high (relative to the unwavering price of consoles over the past year) and rake in extra money.
Sony hasn't shown squat. All they've produced is some specifications (which are naturally biased) and a video of Killzone which has been admitted to be, at best, a CG rendering of what they expect the final game to look like.
Microsoft has, on the other hand, shown running games and let people actually play those games.
The 360 is arguably as "powerful" as the PS3. It also has one thing that Sony either isn't interested in, or can't fathom how to produce....XBox Live. The new Live service alone is enough to make me consider a 360 before a PS3.
Believe the Sony "Umpteen million times faster" hype if you want, but please remember that they pulled the same bait-and-switch shenanigans before the PS2 came out. "Super computers!", "Export controls because they're so powerful!", "The dancing from Final Fantasy 8 in *real time*!", "Sadam using them for TERRORISM!", etc... ad infinitum. Did you ever see a PS2 game that came close to following through on all of the pre-release promises/specs that Sony was spewing? I never did.
Here, I'll repost my response. It's already +5 Funny. Maybe I can double score on it.
Java scares companies like Microsoft and Apple because it has the potential to make their closed platforms irrelevant. If the promise of Java did take off - people would be free to choose their platform without having to worry about buying all new apps or learning new look-alike apps. Did you just get off the boat from 1996 or something?
Did you just get off the boat from 1996 or something?
$200 will net you somewhere around 2200 gold. The market is at about 10g per dollar at the moment.
'Cause frankly I don't believe it. A co-op to get DSL implemented on already laid dark cable is one thing. Most communities don't generally have dark fiber run to every residential address. If it's been laid it's being used. To create a co-op tasked with rolling out a community-wide installation of fiber to each doorstep, with or without the local government's help, would be an astronomically complex and time consuming task. Instead of trying to convince a town to fund such a fool's errand why not try convincing the university to subsidize business-class broadband at home in case you need to work from there ("If the system(s) go down at 3am I can get them back up and running faster if I can just log in from home instead of driving across town." etc...).
It's not in the definition unless it's unsolicited pork-shoulder. SPAM is a canned meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation that has entered into folklore. SPAM luncheon meat is also used as an artistic medium in SPAM carving contests.
A good use for redundant statements: They're redundant. That is, if you say the same thing two or three different ways, they still all convey the same message.
I really wish Slashcode would include moderator ratings for "Trite", "Cliche", "Overused", "Never was funny, and "No, really, it WAS NEVER FUNNY!"
No no no. The plural of "Lego engineer" is "Lego engineer".
Why should some voice actor doing work-for-hire get residuals for their miniscule contribution to a game when the designers, level builders, programmers, and artists don't get any? So a voice actor puts in a few hours and gets a few hundred dollars, why should that contribution be considered more important than any of the work done by the people who designed and build the game? Games aren't movies. The members of SAC aren't the important ones in this industry. They need to get over their ingrained feelings of self-entitlement and realize that they are providing a commodity product. Not a face, not name recognition, but a product (that just happens to be a recording of their voice). Unlike movies they aren't vitally important.
Any of the above listed games industry workers puts in around 5000 hours making a game. I'm being a bit conservative with that number, too. That's 2 years of 50 hr weeks. Now who do you think should be first in line for residuals? The people who lost out on their family lives / personal time, the people who stayed late and came in on weekends, the people that created new emergent game design, ground breaking AI algorhythms, and gigabytes upon gigabytes of art/sound content; or some SAC member who owns a house in Brentwood, has four sports cars, is on the A-List in Hollywood, and probably doesn't know one thing about actually making a game? Here's a hint, Wil Weaton is wrong about who should get the money.
The games industry is not the movie industry. The voice actors aren't who make or break a title. It's the people toiling away behind their computers for pretty much nothing more than the love of making games.
Your argument about how letting SAC voice actors get residuals (not the spelling) will posibly help games industry people get residuals is total and utter crap. There are no altruisitic motives behind the SAC bs. They want money, pure and simple. We don't need them acting like their helping us. If they think we deserve residuals then they should be arguing that we get them first and then they get them. Helping us by cutting in line isn't helping, it's being selfish.
You mean OpenGL and OpenAL, right? 'Cause that's what you're talking about. Those are available on pretty much all OS's
What it would take to "move PC gaming away from being a Microsoft OS-specific activity" (if that were true, which it isn't) is for a platform to come out that has as easy of a game development SDK, hardware and driver support from ISVs, and enough of an installed base for game development to look lucrative to developers.
The Mac has maybe one of those. No change in the CPU is going to magically grant it the other two.
If anyone were to tell me I should have a PS3 w/ Linux because of, you know, Freedom man, openness, it's not Microsoft, etc.. I'd not be swayed in the least. I have a general purpose computer. I can even put Linux on it if I so chose. If want to build another one I can probably do it, sans keyboard, mouse, and HD for about the price of PS3. So why would I be interested in the PS3? I doubt you'd get much better response standingout in front of Best Buy, Circuit City, or Wal*Mart and promoting the PS3 w/ Linux to people going in to buy PS3s. In other words, "No. People are not more likely to listen to you."
At best you're a self-promoting group unto yourself. As I said above, the size of that group is infinitesimal. If Sony were to market to you all they'd be doing is incresing their cost to manufacturer each PS3 and therefore increasing the # of games you'd have to buy before they break even. It's not a winning situation for them.
The people who value a PS3 with Linux on an HDD are a statistical anomoly so small that the number of significant digits required to express you as a percentage of potential PS3 buyers is beyond comprehension.
There's no marketing in this. You won't see Sony put giantic "Buy PS3 With That Linux Thing" bilboards up in Times Square. Outside of Ken's Reality Distortion Field comments and a few word of mouth web pages you're probably heard all you're going to about Linux on PS3.
There are a lot of things that made a Mac a Mac long before those two technologies were introduced.
NuBus
Motorola 680xx CPUs
SCSI
1.44 MB Floppies
ADB
HyperCard
(and many others)
Did the Mac stop being a Mac when those technologies were replaced with other, better technologies or dropped altogether?
I'm completely confused by your assertation that if someone makes OS X run on beige boxes that development houses won't look at Carbon/Cocoa. In a word, "HUH???" How do those two statements have any correlation to each other whatsoever?
Apple needed to switch to a different chip supplier because IBM/Motorola will be spreading themselves thin filling supply contracts for all three next-generation consoles. Since those contracts are going to be bigger and more lucrative than Apple's purchasing commitments IBM/Motorola probably told them they'd be last in line.
Apple saw the writing on the wall and moved to a CPU supplier that can fulfill their needs. That they get a higher speeds, dual cores, and lower prices also is just icing on the cake to them.
How this change affects corporate adoption of the Macintosh platform is probably a great big, "not much". Those industries that have shown a predilection to Macs will continue to use them. Those that haven't, won't. Unlike geeks, most people don't care what chip runs their PC. They care about what tools are at their disposal.
If it quacks it's a duck. If it has minimalistic (not minimal) design esthetics, ease of use, runs OSX, and is sold by Steve Jobs it's a Macintosh. It's a Mac regardless of what collection of silicon and transistors makes it run.
Those monkeys are always getting the breakthrough drugs before us!
That's spin. While it may or may not be 100% true it's positive and that's all that matters to investors. Have you ever seen either party in an announced business collaboration say anything but glowing statements about them, their partners, and the deal they worked out?
It wouldn't look good for Steve to stand up and say, "Well, IBM told us we're small potatoes. So, we're going to switch to Intel so we have enough chips to ship our niche market computers."
I'm guessing that IBM/Motorolla told Apple that, due to the small # of Macintoshes made each year---as opposed to the # consoles manufactured, that they would be fulfilling Microsoft's, Sony's, and Nintendo's orders before Apples.
When using a copyright notice (remember, not all nations are signatories to Berne)it is redunant to say "Copyright © 1999, blah blah blah", as "Copyright" and © are synonymous. One or the other will suffice.
You should also state "All rights reserved." If you don't then your copyright notice may not be valid in some countries. By reserving all rights, even if you are allowing a work to be copied, you retain the right(s) to prosecute anyone who uses your work in an improper way. If you don't state your reservation of rights then you might be leaving a door open for infringement.
Copyright <year(s)> <author(s)>. All rights reserved.
or
© <year(s)> <author(s)>. All rights reserved.
Are valid copyright statements for most all countries that require them. One of those should appear in your work somewhere if you expect your code to be used in countries that require a copyright notice.
You can read more about this at bamboweb.com and at CopyrightAuthority.com
I'm not exactly sure why you think an LCD monitor would ever prevent you from adjusting the graphical detail levels in a game. Which monitor, exactly, can override the settngs screen in all games? Personally, I've always had the option of adjusting numerous settings besides screen resolution to help with the performance of a game. Maybe Dell is just nicer about that than most LCD manufacturers. I've only had a Dell LCD, so I can't say for sure (shrug).
When I first got this LCD monitor I had a 2-3 year old Radeon 9800 card. Most of the games I listed as playable on this monitor (with the exception of HL2) were played on the 9800.
Yes, when the refresh time on LCDs was 25ms or more the ghosting in games made them a less than desireable choice. Finding an LCD with a refresh time greater than 16ms these days is becoming increasingly rare, though.
I have a Dell 2005FPW widescreen LCD. It has a native resolution of 1680x1050 and a refresh time of 12ms. There is absolutely no ghosting on it whatsoever. Doom3, FarCry, HL2, et al all look and play amazing on it. I've played most of those games on a high-quality (read "Dell", "Viewsonic" or "NEC") LCD with a 16ms refresh time and have not noticed any ghosting. The higher contrast ratio, more intense brightness levels, and digital signal and color of LCDs make games look better on them than on CRTs too.
I'm certain there are exceptions to every rule and some no-name Korean brand LCD you can get at Sam's Club for cheap will probably be less than optimal in games. But, by and large, LCDs are as good as, or better, than CRTs for gaming these days.
I always have to wonder, when someone uses the "LCDs suck for gaming" argument if they have even played a game on an LCD in the past 6-12 months. If they haven't, they shouldn't comment on it.
That's only true if the console manufacturer has total control over the engineering of the hardware. Playstations and Nintendo consoles can be reengineered over the life of the hardware to maximize die space and minimize production costs only because Sony and Nintendo have total control over every transistor being used.
Microsoft, on the other hand, bought "off the shelf", so to speak. nVidia was never going to give Intel the designs for their GPU and motherboard chips. Likewise Intel wasn't going to share their CPU designs with nVidia. Microsoft had no way to get below the $180 price point because they couldn't combine any of the guts of the XBox to make it cheaper to manufacture.
The big question this leads to is, "Why doesn't Sony execute the knock-out blow and price the PS2 much lower than the XBox?"
Indeed
Why would they, though? If people are willing to pay $180 for an XBox then they are willing to pay $180 for a PS2. So, Sony probably isn't losing any money on PS2 boxes now. Instead they are probably laughing all the way to the bank with the (at least for consoles) incredibly high profit margins they are seeing....all thanks to Microsoft. This is probably why the PSP is $250 instead of a more reasonable $100 or $120. Why would Sony undercut the sales of their PS2s with a handheld when they can keep the price high (relative to the unwavering price of consoles over the past year) and rake in extra money.
Microsoft has, on the other hand, shown running games and let people actually play those games.
The 360 is arguably as "powerful" as the PS3. It also has one thing that Sony either isn't interested in, or can't fathom how to produce....XBox Live. The new Live service alone is enough to make me consider a 360 before a PS3.
Believe the Sony "Umpteen million times faster" hype if you want, but please remember that they pulled the same bait-and-switch shenanigans before the PS2 came out. "Super computers!", "Export controls because they're so powerful!", "The dancing from Final Fantasy 8 in *real time*!", "Sadam using them for TERRORISM!", etc... ad infinitum. Did you ever see a PS2 game that came close to following through on all of the pre-release promises/specs that Sony was spewing? I never did.
So you're Scott Kurtz? 'Cause that's his joke.
To which you answer, Yes. Yes it can.
Joy!
My question still stands. Who's going to write the script.