I'd like to know why this guy is so angry about the game industry?
Personally, I still enjoy playing games. I played games as a kid, and I'm still playing games now. The types of games have changed, but I still enjoy them. It's just like reading books. When I was a child, I read easier, less-involved books with pretty pictures. Now I like deeper, more meaningful literature, with a great plot and deep characters.
Why should games be any different? I think this guys next editorial should be about the death of the book industry, followed by the film industry, followed by the television industry. Everything changes, but I doubt that "interactive fiction" like computer and video games are going away anytime soon.
The only thing I hate about my Tivo remote is the arrow "pad." Putting all the arrows on one button means I invariably hit "right" when I meant to hit "down."
I've got an older Tivo, so maybe this problem has been resolved in later remotes.
$200 off a 6 month old used computer? You've got to be joking, right? You get that in rebates on most brand new computers these days.
This kind of shit is exactly why I have never bought from MacMall. They have the markup from hell. I'm surprised they can stay in business. The only thing I can figure is that the average Mac user is not computer saavy (i.e. not a Slashdot reader) and has no clue he's being overcharged 50-100%. Some Mac users out there explain to me why you frequent MacMall over the Apple Store or CompUSA?
As an aside, I would love someone to do an in-depth study and research the logic behind mail-in rebates (or, if it's been done, point me to it). I know we all have our ideas, but what is the real reason an online company like Dell or MacMall would sell you a computer and then have you send in a mail-in rebate?
The commentator (not OSNews) ran his benchmarks with the -server flag in Java. That's a terrible flag to use for short-term client applications, such as these benchmarks. Running the test without the -server flag, and the times will probably improve a little (just a guess).
That said, I have found Java on Windows to run noticeably faster that Linux or even Solaris. Not terribly so, but such that you can tell the difference. Wish they'd optimize it for Linux a tad more.
I've done a ton of both Swing coding and SWT coding. True, with Swing you can do some great/goofy stuff to your UIs, but you can only do that because you're basically drawing graphics on top of a blank slate.
SWT uses OS widgets natively where possible. No, it can't do everything that Swing can, but it is extremely robust. Add JFace on top of that, and I can do everything I need to in SWT/JFace, without the horrible overhead of Swing GUIs. Plus, SWT's design is much, much cleaner than Swing.
As an example, it took around 40 lines of code in a single class to implement my drag and drop routines in SWT/JFace. The same functionality took three classes, several "cheats," and hundreds of lines of code under Swing.
And it really, truly does run well. Users always complained about the responsiveness of the Swing apps. Not a peep about the SWT/JFace ones. And they run much faster.
I work for a small company, and am very much in a position to influence the technology purchases in my company. Why don't we, the consumers, just stop buying from these companies? We were considering buying a number of HP switches, but after that comment from HP, the hell if we're going to do that! I'll look instead at companies who support U.S. products and U.S. labor.
We didn't buy Dell laptops for the same reason (that, and I've watched three Dell laptops owned by friends die from bad motherboards in the past few months).
I bought a new laptop for work about four or five months ago, and I looked seriously at the TabletPCs. I'm a developer, and spend way too much time in meetings, writing on my little Palm Pilot. A TabletPC would have been great. But...
I also need it for development work, and the damn things are just to friggin' weak! I wound up buying a 2.8 Ghz P4 laptop with 512MB RAM and a 40GB HD for less than the cheapest TabletPC. I haven't seen a TabletPC with a decent processor, RAM or hard drive yet. The ones around when I bought my laptop were all P3s.
No wonder they're having a hard time selling them. Your average business consumer is going to look at the two laptops and say, "Wow, I can write on the screen! That's great! But why are you trying to sell me this old P3 laptop when there's a nice P4 sitting right next to it that's cheaper?"
Not to be a troll, but how exactly can Dell and HP come out with Pocket PC handhelds for $200, while every Palm and Linux handheld out there is $300+ (most typically $500-600)? I don't get it. These guys have to pay Microsoft a license fee for Pocket PC 2003, right? So how come the Linux handhelds cost so much more?
I really don't want to pump money into Microsoft, but until Palm or any Linux company can give me a decent quality color handheld for under $250, I ain't buying.
I think everyone out there crying "Java, Perl, Python, Linux" is missing the point of the article. We used to be able to flip on our Apples, Commodores, and TI-99s and start typing away in BASIC. In a few lines, we could draw something on the screen, maybe move it around with the keyboard or joystick. Today, trying to get a GUI or some other type of graphical application going in Windows or Linux is not the easiet of things for a kid starting out. He or she probably won't get callbacks, event handling, etc. Forget Java: classpaths can drive an adult crazy, let alone a kid. A child's attention span is going to be pretty short, so they need to get going quickly.
Somebody mentioned RoboCode, and someone else Neverwinter Nights--I think that's an awesome idea. Another one is DarkBasic (http://www.darkbasic.com). In just a few lines of code even a beginning programmer can have a 3D game up and running on the screen.
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I'd like to know why this guy is so angry about the game industry?
Personally, I still enjoy playing games. I played games as a kid, and I'm still playing games now. The types of games have changed, but I still enjoy them. It's just like reading books. When I was a child, I read easier, less-involved books with pretty pictures. Now I like deeper, more meaningful literature, with a great plot and deep characters.
Why should games be any different? I think this guys next editorial should be about the death of the book industry, followed by the film industry, followed by the television industry. Everything changes, but I doubt that "interactive fiction" like computer and video games are going away anytime soon.
The only thing I hate about my Tivo remote is the arrow "pad." Putting all the arrows on one button means I invariably hit "right" when I meant to hit "down."
I've got an older Tivo, so maybe this problem has been resolved in later remotes.
$200 off a 6 month old used computer? You've got to be joking, right? You get that in rebates on most brand new computers these days.
This kind of shit is exactly why I have never bought from MacMall. They have the markup from hell. I'm surprised they can stay in business. The only thing I can figure is that the average Mac user is not computer saavy (i.e. not a Slashdot reader) and has no clue he's being overcharged 50-100%. Some Mac users out there explain to me why you frequent MacMall over the Apple Store or CompUSA?
As an aside, I would love someone to do an in-depth study and research the logic behind mail-in rebates (or, if it's been done, point me to it). I know we all have our ideas, but what is the real reason an online company like Dell or MacMall would sell you a computer and then have you send in a mail-in rebate?
The commentator (not OSNews) ran his benchmarks with the -server flag in Java. That's a terrible flag to use for short-term client applications, such as these benchmarks. Running the test without the -server flag, and the times will probably improve a little (just a guess).
That said, I have found Java on Windows to run noticeably faster that Linux or even Solaris. Not terribly so, but such that you can tell the difference. Wish they'd optimize it for Linux a tad more.
I've done a ton of both Swing coding and SWT coding. True, with Swing you can do some great/goofy stuff to your UIs, but you can only do that because you're basically drawing graphics on top of a blank slate.
SWT uses OS widgets natively where possible. No, it can't do everything that Swing can, but it is extremely robust. Add JFace on top of that, and I can do everything I need to in SWT/JFace, without the horrible overhead of Swing GUIs. Plus, SWT's design is much, much cleaner than Swing.
As an example, it took around 40 lines of code in a single class to implement my drag and drop routines in SWT/JFace. The same functionality took three classes, several "cheats," and hundreds of lines of code under Swing.
And it really, truly does run well. Users always complained about the responsiveness of the Swing apps. Not a peep about the SWT/JFace ones. And they run much faster.
I work for a small company, and am very much in a position to influence the technology purchases in my company. Why don't we, the consumers, just stop buying from these companies? We were considering buying a number of HP switches, but after that comment from HP, the hell if we're going to do that! I'll look instead at companies who support U.S. products and U.S. labor.
We didn't buy Dell laptops for the same reason (that, and I've watched three Dell laptops owned by friends die from bad motherboards in the past few months).
That must be why it took several years and millions of dollars to get Hotmail off of BSD.
Isn't this what rsync is for? CVS seems to be the wrong tool for this job.
I bought a new laptop for work about four or five months ago, and I looked seriously at the TabletPCs. I'm a developer, and spend way too much time in meetings, writing on my little Palm Pilot. A TabletPC would have been great. But...
I also need it for development work, and the damn things are just to friggin' weak! I wound up buying a 2.8 Ghz P4 laptop with 512MB RAM and a 40GB HD for less than the cheapest TabletPC. I haven't seen a TabletPC with a decent processor, RAM or hard drive yet. The ones around when I bought my laptop were all P3s.
No wonder they're having a hard time selling them. Your average business consumer is going to look at the two laptops and say, "Wow, I can write on the screen! That's great! But why are you trying to sell me this old P3 laptop when there's a nice P4 sitting right next to it that's cheaper?"
I'm waiting for a calculator with a camera, MP3 player, and a GPS built in. Then I'll be happy.
Not to be a troll, but how exactly can Dell and HP come out with Pocket PC handhelds for $200, while every Palm and Linux handheld out there is $300+ (most typically $500-600)? I don't get it. These guys have to pay Microsoft a license fee for Pocket PC 2003, right? So how come the Linux handhelds cost so much more?
I really don't want to pump money into Microsoft, but until Palm or any Linux company can give me a decent quality color handheld for under $250, I ain't buying.
You obviously haven't tried IntelliJ Idea. Idea is what Java IDE's are supposed to be. Idea is what Eclipse wants to be.
I think everyone out there crying "Java, Perl, Python, Linux" is missing the point of the article. We used to be able to flip on our Apples, Commodores, and TI-99s and start typing away in BASIC. In a few lines, we could draw something on the screen, maybe move it around with the keyboard or joystick. Today, trying to get a GUI or some other type of graphical application going in Windows or Linux is not the easiet of things for a kid starting out. He or she probably won't get callbacks, event handling, etc. Forget Java: classpaths can drive an adult crazy, let alone a kid. A child's attention span is going to be pretty short, so they need to get going quickly.
Somebody mentioned RoboCode, and someone else Neverwinter Nights--I think that's an awesome idea. Another one is DarkBasic (http://www.darkbasic.com). In just a few lines of code even a beginning programmer can have a 3D game up and running on the screen.