All other reasons aside, the Navy doesn't want prop-job Predator B's on their carriers and the Predator C is at least a year away from deployment to land based forces. Whether or not the Navy adopts the C is still an open question.
Except for the terms "F-22" and "drones" your paragraph almost directly mimics what the Navy and Air Force brass thought in the years before the Vietnam war. That's why the F-4 Phantom II was designed without an onboard gun. Unfortunately we lost a lot of pilots early on in Vietnam because missile only airplanes weren't what was needed. Eventually the brass capitulated and an F-4 variant with a gun was introduced. Once our pilots could again engage in the art of the dogfight their kills went up and their losses went down.
I'm not the one calling any other poster in this thread "misguided" or a "naive fool". I usually find that the first person in a debate that resorts to directed personal attacks is usually covering up for the inability to field a rational argument in defense of their position.
The justice department is beholden by laws. In this case they are beholden by laws that Bush, Clinton, and the Congresses that were in session during the previous twelve years enacted. Regardless of how the previous President chose to ignore laws and/or craft signing letters that essentially negated the very laws he was signing, Obama can not just ignore those same laws and tell the Justice Department to stop enforcing them. While you may feel justified and oddly empowered by your ability to continually repeat your opinion that Obama's inaction in this one instance points to him being ineffectual it's not valid. The people responsible are Clinton & the 105th US Congress for enacting DMCA, Bush & the 107th US Congress for enacting PATRIOT, and the 106th, 108th, 109th, and 110th US Congresses for not doing anything to limit or repeal those laws. I'm giving the 111th US Congress a pass on this currently since they've only been seated for three months.
People need to hold the Senators/Representatives who never read the PATRIOT act and voted it into law without realized what they were doing responsible. People need to hold the Senators/Representatives who voted the DMCA into law responsible. People need to hold Bush responsible for signing PATRIOT and Clinton responsible for signing DMCA. The laws that led to this state of affairs were enacted long before Obama took office. He has no more ability to unilaterally repeal these laws than he does to just make laws up. We have a three party government that is (nominally) a representative democracy. To stop these sorts of situations people need to hammer on their Senators/Representatives to draft legislature to repeal or amend the laws that got us here. Trying to blame president Obama for inaction in this particular instance is at best ignorant and at worst an attempt at revisionist history to deflect blame away from the congressmen who are truly responsible for this mess.
but that strikes me as very similar to the way Microsoft makes it possible to use OpenGL, but does everything they can to get people to use DirectX.
Really, the OpenGl working group does everything they can to get people to use DirectX. If they would be more nimble in adding new features to the spec things would be a different place. Instead, they move along at a glacial pace and the standard method of spec evolution goes something like this:
* Microsoft announces DirectX n with new features XYZ
* nVidia and ATi release cards that support DirectX n
* A few years later game developers release games that support DirectX n. Some game developers, like iD, work with ATi and nVidia to get OpenGL extensions running on hardware from both IHVs that support the features of DirectX n
* A few years later the OpenGL working group ratifies OpenGL version++ that unifies support for the features of all of the various OpenGL extensions that have been written since the current OpenGL spec was ratified.
While Microsoft's method might be more autocratic than the OGL working group's method it does tend to get new features in the hands of ISVs and consumers more quickly. Plus, it's not like Microsoft dictates everything that goes in to a given DirectX release. They work with numerous ISVs and IHVs to find out what features are being requested.
Is there anything in the linked article that says that WINE with DX10 support will convert DX10 calls to DX9 or OpenGL? If so, I missed it. I'd guess that in order to use DX10 in WINE you'll need a DX10 card.
So I should spend my money on an inferior product even though I know of a product that performs better and gives me the same entertainment? No, just no. That's now how it works. If the people who create Linux want Linux to be more widely adopted they should determine why a product or class of products runs poorly on their code and work to fix those inadequacies. I shouldn't be expected to pay to suffer.
I find it very interesting that your comment and my comment are being voted down. Avoiding the PS3, especially in light of Sony's admission that the games that really make use of the hardware won't come any time soon is valid thinking. Why should I spend $400+ (US) on a PS3 now and potentially only have lackluster games to carry me through. If I wait until the end of the PS3's life cycle it will have gone through many hardware revisions and probably quite a number of price drops. If Sony is openly telling me the compelling games won't come until then why should I give them any money now?
Right...so you actually think the 360 will die out because games may at some point look better on the PS3. Outside of platform exclusives, which are a dying breed of game anyway, no developer will ever utilize that extra oomph that they may be able to eek out of the PS3. There will never be enough ROI on PS3 only game sales to justify having one set of art assets for the 360 version of the game and a different set of art assets for the PS3 version.
People don't care that game X has 20% more polygons than game Y. What they care about is owning a fun game that looks good. Developers care about being able to develop a game quickly, easily and on/under budget. The 360 provides all of that currently and will continue to do so. The PS3 is a PITA to work with now (yes, I am a dev), and it will continue to be a PITA to work with in the future. Whatever untapped potential the PS3 may have that is yet to be unlocked is not worth the time/expense it will take to find it. Especially not in this economy and especially not since the ratio of potential sales 360:PS3 is heavily weighted against the PS3 currently.
So I'll enjoy my 360 now and in 8-9 years when the, by Sony's own admission, good games come out on the PS3 I'll consider buying one. I sure hope Sony can survive 8-9 years without appreciable console sales since no one would want to waste their money on a piece of hardware that doesn't have an excellent game library for it.
Of course, by then, there's a good chance the next XBox, with it's easy to program for mentality and new powerful features, will be out and I may just be inclined to get that instead.
Ballmer has apparently forgotten his company's own efforts to vertically integrate hardware and software (Zune, XBox)...
Go download Blender (or XSI Mod Tool or any other free 3D editor of choice), GIMP (or Paint.NET or any other free 2D image editor of choice), XNA Game Studio 3.0, and Visual C# Express 2008. Total cost so far $0.00 (not counting your ISP bill). Now make a game. Now be amazed that you, yes you, can distribute that game on the 360 and/or the Zune and/or Windows, for free.
Of all of the consoles, both current and historical, The XBox 360 is the least vertically oriented. Microsoft wants people to make games, lots of games, and are doing an admirable job of making that happen. Compare Microsoft's stance to Sony's recent comment of "We want the PS3 to be hard to program for and understand so that the only really good games for the platform will come out years from now after people have struggled to learn how to make it work".
Is it perfect? Can I buy a 360 from any number of manufacturers? Will the code I write run on the 360, PS3, and Wii? No, no and no, of course. But, these are game consoles. People pay for the convenience of sticking a disc in and having it work. That Microsoft has opened their platform up to free hobbiest development should be applauded.
Last fall's price hikes were caused by trading speculators, the oil industry seeing what the market would reasonably bare in terms of prices, and artificially reduced production. The quantity of raw crude in the ground had nothing to do with it. If price was supposedly some magic quantity predictor for oil we should've run out some time in the 80's. The late 70s/early 80's price hikes at the gas pumps were, when adjusted for inflation, far worse than what we went through the past 12-18 months.
If, as by your assertion, 'peak oil' was reached last November then how do you explain the price drops since then? If we have really passed 'peak oil' then the price should continually rise as the supply diminishes.
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Lignin.
Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in lignin. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Yeah, that will happen. Because it's pretty easy to see that nVidia is investing all of this time and money in a simple self-masturbatory endeavor to make a cpu, any cpu.
Or..it could be that they want to make a chip that runs every major OS and application that already exists...you know...go where the money is.
In the words of Jeremy Clarkson as he commented on the engine note while he threw a super car around the Top Gear test track one episode, "That's the sound of money exploding!"
If both of them did it, then I'm imagining The Year of Linux on the Desktop finally coming to pass! =D
No, it would be either be the year of everyone running P2P apps on their router or the year of people using Linux under a VM on their Macs and Windows machines. Seriously, who would give up Mac and/or Windows app of choice for approximate, but sadly lacking Linux alternative just because BitTorrent dies?
...but that sample conversation at the end of the video may have well been between two drunken epilepsy sufferers on boats in the North Atlantic. Who moves around like that while they are talking?
You haven't had to restart Windows due to a networking configuration change in almost 7.5 years. You haven't had to restart Windows due to a driver change for almost 3.5 years now. Please get your facts correct.
Your museum donation analogy is flawed, as you have incurred zero upfront costs to enter that museum. As I said in my original post I'm paying full fee for my internet connection and I do not own an advertising subsidized computer. The contract between the ad placment company and the web page I am viewing does not financially benefit me. Therefore I am under no obligation to view those advertisements.
Using AdBlock is as immoral as going to the bathroom during commercial breaks, thumbing through magazines in a bookstore without buying them, and not reading billboards as you drive by. Unless you have agreed to view ads as part of some subscription service then you don't have to look at them. I pay for my internet connection and I own my computer. I have every right to control what does and doesn't come down my connection and get displayed on my monitor.
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The plural of, "I don't care." is "We don't care."
All other reasons aside, the Navy doesn't want prop-job Predator B's on their carriers and the Predator C is at least a year away from deployment to land based forces. Whether or not the Navy adopts the C is still an open question.
Except for the terms "F-22" and "drones" your paragraph almost directly mimics what the Navy and Air Force brass thought in the years before the Vietnam war. That's why the F-4 Phantom II was designed without an onboard gun. Unfortunately we lost a lot of pilots early on in Vietnam because missile only airplanes weren't what was needed. Eventually the brass capitulated and an F-4 variant with a gun was introduced. Once our pilots could again engage in the art of the dogfight their kills went up and their losses went down.
I'm not the one calling any other poster in this thread "misguided" or a "naive fool". I usually find that the first person in a debate that resorts to directed personal attacks is usually covering up for the inability to field a rational argument in defense of their position. The justice department is beholden by laws. In this case they are beholden by laws that Bush, Clinton, and the Congresses that were in session during the previous twelve years enacted. Regardless of how the previous President chose to ignore laws and/or craft signing letters that essentially negated the very laws he was signing, Obama can not just ignore those same laws and tell the Justice Department to stop enforcing them. While you may feel justified and oddly empowered by your ability to continually repeat your opinion that Obama's inaction in this one instance points to him being ineffectual it's not valid. The people responsible are Clinton & the 105th US Congress for enacting DMCA, Bush & the 107th US Congress for enacting PATRIOT, and the 106th, 108th, 109th, and 110th US Congresses for not doing anything to limit or repeal those laws. I'm giving the 111th US Congress a pass on this currently since they've only been seated for three months.
No,
People need to hold the Senators/Representatives who never read the PATRIOT act and voted it into law without realized what they were doing responsible. People need to hold the Senators/Representatives who voted the DMCA into law responsible. People need to hold Bush responsible for signing PATRIOT and Clinton responsible for signing DMCA. The laws that led to this state of affairs were enacted long before Obama took office. He has no more ability to unilaterally repeal these laws than he does to just make laws up. We have a three party government that is (nominally) a representative democracy. To stop these sorts of situations people need to hammer on their Senators/Representatives to draft legislature to repeal or amend the laws that got us here. Trying to blame president Obama for inaction in this particular instance is at best ignorant and at worst an attempt at revisionist history to deflect blame away from the congressmen who are truly responsible for this mess.
Really, the OpenGl working group does everything they can to get people to use DirectX. If they would be more nimble in adding new features to the spec things would be a different place. Instead, they move along at a glacial pace and the standard method of spec evolution goes something like this:
* Microsoft announces DirectX n with new features XYZ
* nVidia and ATi release cards that support DirectX n
* A few years later game developers release games that support DirectX n. Some game developers, like iD, work with ATi and nVidia to get OpenGL extensions running on hardware from both IHVs that support the features of DirectX n
* A few years later the OpenGL working group ratifies OpenGL version++ that unifies support for the features of all of the various OpenGL extensions that have been written since the current OpenGL spec was ratified.
While Microsoft's method might be more autocratic than the OGL working group's method it does tend to get new features in the hands of ISVs and consumers more quickly. Plus, it's not like Microsoft dictates everything that goes in to a given DirectX release. They work with numerous ISVs and IHVs to find out what features are being requested.
Start celebrating the years when someone says, "This will be the year that Linux will take over the desktop."
Is there anything in the linked article that says that WINE with DX10 support will convert DX10 calls to DX9 or OpenGL? If so, I missed it. I'd guess that in order to use DX10 in WINE you'll need a DX10 card.
So I should spend my money on an inferior product even though I know of a product that performs better and gives me the same entertainment? No, just no. That's now how it works. If the people who create Linux want Linux to be more widely adopted they should determine why a product or class of products runs poorly on their code and work to fix those inadequacies. I shouldn't be expected to pay to suffer.
I find it very interesting that your comment and my comment are being voted down. Avoiding the PS3, especially in light of Sony's admission that the games that really make use of the hardware won't come any time soon is valid thinking. Why should I spend $400+ (US) on a PS3 now and potentially only have lackluster games to carry me through. If I wait until the end of the PS3's life cycle it will have gone through many hardware revisions and probably quite a number of price drops. If Sony is openly telling me the compelling games won't come until then why should I give them any money now?
People don't care that game X has 20% more polygons than game Y. What they care about is owning a fun game that looks good. Developers care about being able to develop a game quickly, easily and on/under budget. The 360 provides all of that currently and will continue to do so. The PS3 is a PITA to work with now (yes, I am a dev), and it will continue to be a PITA to work with in the future. Whatever untapped potential the PS3 may have that is yet to be unlocked is not worth the time/expense it will take to find it. Especially not in this economy and especially not since the ratio of potential sales 360:PS3 is heavily weighted against the PS3 currently.
So I'll enjoy my 360 now and in 8-9 years when the, by Sony's own admission, good games come out on the PS3 I'll consider buying one. I sure hope Sony can survive 8-9 years without appreciable console sales since no one would want to waste their money on a piece of hardware that doesn't have an excellent game library for it.
Of course, by then, there's a good chance the next XBox, with it's easy to program for mentality and new powerful features, will be out and I may just be inclined to get that instead.
Company makes product, plans to sell it to make money. Seriously, how is this news?
Go download Blender (or XSI Mod Tool or any other free 3D editor of choice), GIMP (or Paint.NET or any other free 2D image editor of choice), XNA Game Studio 3.0, and Visual C# Express 2008. Total cost so far $0.00 (not counting your ISP bill). Now make a game. Now be amazed that you, yes you, can distribute that game on the 360 and/or the Zune and/or Windows, for free.
Of all of the consoles, both current and historical, The XBox 360 is the least vertically oriented. Microsoft wants people to make games, lots of games, and are doing an admirable job of making that happen. Compare Microsoft's stance to Sony's recent comment of "We want the PS3 to be hard to program for and understand so that the only really good games for the platform will come out years from now after people have struggled to learn how to make it work".
Is it perfect? Can I buy a 360 from any number of manufacturers? Will the code I write run on the 360, PS3, and Wii? No, no and no, of course. But, these are game consoles. People pay for the convenience of sticking a disc in and having it work. That Microsoft has opened their platform up to free hobbiest development should be applauded.
Last fall's price hikes were caused by trading speculators, the oil industry seeing what the market would reasonably bare in terms of prices, and artificially reduced production. The quantity of raw crude in the ground had nothing to do with it. If price was supposedly some magic quantity predictor for oil we should've run out some time in the 80's. The late 70s/early 80's price hikes at the gas pumps were, when adjusted for inflation, far worse than what we went through the past 12-18 months.
If, as by your assertion, 'peak oil' was reached last November then how do you explain the price drops since then? If we have really passed 'peak oil' then the price should continually rise as the supply diminishes.
"Peak Oil" has been projected to come within a decade for the past three decades.
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Benjamin: Yes, sir. Mr. McGuire: Are you listening? Benjamin: Yes, I am. Mr. McGuire: Lignin. Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean? Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in lignin. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Yeah, that will happen. Because it's pretty easy to see that nVidia is investing all of this time and money in a simple self-masturbatory endeavor to make a cpu, any cpu.
Or..it could be that they want to make a chip that runs every major OS and application that already exists...you know...go where the money is.
In the words of Jeremy Clarkson as he commented on the engine note while he threw a super car around the Top Gear test track one episode, "That's the sound of money exploding!"
No, it would be either be the year of everyone running P2P apps on their router or the year of people using Linux under a VM on their Macs and Windows machines. Seriously, who would give up Mac and/or Windows app of choice for approximate, but sadly lacking Linux alternative just because BitTorrent dies?
...but that sample conversation at the end of the video may have well been between two drunken epilepsy sufferers on boats in the North Atlantic. Who moves around like that while they are talking?
You haven't had to restart Windows due to a networking configuration change in almost 7.5 years. You haven't had to restart Windows due to a driver change for almost 3.5 years now. Please get your facts correct.
Your museum donation analogy is flawed, as you have incurred zero upfront costs to enter that museum. As I said in my original post I'm paying full fee for my internet connection and I do not own an advertising subsidized computer. The contract between the ad placment company and the web page I am viewing does not financially benefit me. Therefore I am under no obligation to view those advertisements.
Using AdBlock is as immoral as going to the bathroom during commercial breaks, thumbing through magazines in a bookstore without buying them, and not reading billboards as you drive by. Unless you have agreed to view ads as part of some subscription service then you don't have to look at them. I pay for my internet connection and I own my computer. I have every right to control what does and doesn't come down my connection and get displayed on my monitor.
already created Excel for mobile devices.