Big companies have been eating little companies for as long as I can remember. The game industry is no different. Developers need additional resources to market and distribute their games, as well as cover their production expenses. It makes sense to ally or merge with larger companies with more resources.
Look at the movie industry. Tons of independent films are made every year by small companies. There is a market for these movies because the big studios are too conservative to satisfy everyone. I think the games industry uses the same model.
The parent post is NOT saying that you can "design away bugs". In fact, the parent specifically says that bugs cannot be eliminated. The idea is to contain bugs and malicious code so that they can do a minimum of damage.
I can download a malicious or buggy Java applet through a web page. The amount of damage it can do is minimal since it has to ask permission to access my system and it runs in a user-level managed environment.
If I download a malicious or buggy Windows executable and run it then I am basically screwed. By default Windows provides no containment for native code. An application can erase my hard drive or crash my OS.
The Pentium Pro ran 16 bit code slowly; 32 bit code ran quite well. However at the time Windows still had a lot of 16 bit code, and so did most major apps. The Pentium Pro did not run faster than the much cheaper Pentium processors that were also available at the time.
The Athlon 64 architecture currently runs many or most 32 bit applications faster than comparable Intel processors, and is competitively priced. The ability to run 64 bit code is more like a bonus. This seems more comparable to the Pentium II, which was an extremely successful CPU architecture.
IA64 is basically irrelevant because the Itanic really is identical to the Pentium Pro. It can't run 32 bit code very well and it costs a fortune.
I think the reason why fundamentalism continues to enjoy strong support is that acknowledging flaws in your scriptures of choice is a slippery slope. If there are a few passages that are just plain wrong then the validity of the entire work is challenged.
One might argue that the spirit of work is the important part. In that case it would be prudent to distill the various scriptures into a pamphlet with the essentials; a higher power, Golden Rule, etc. This would enjoy much broader support. But I guess a lot of people enjoy taking a stand on stuff like a 6000 year old Earth, homophobia, contraception, submissive women, and other obsolete mores of ages past.
When I was a kid I had a lot of free time because I couldn't drive a car. I rode in the family car on trips. I rode the bus. I waited for the bus. I waited for the rest of the family to do a thousand other things. This is why kids are the best market for portable game machines.
Now that I am an adult I don't usually have more than a few minutes of downtime while waiting for something or other. My phone is perfectly capable of playing the types of games that are possible during these short breaks.
The original Playstation was immensely popular because Sony marketed it to teens and twenty-something students. I think it is a gamble that this core Sony market will have the time and the inclination to use this rather large and expensive gaming system.
When I was a kid they didn't have that shit, and we couldn't afford it anyway. You better believe my parents were stoked when my sister and I learned to read and got walkmans though:)
The test case of hooking up a Windoze PC to the internet unpatched is irrelevant since Gates was specifically asked about IE. Also Gates has a valid point about anti-virus/spyware protection. A subscription pricing model would be necessary to support continuing anti-virus protection. There are several companies that provide this service for Windoze, which means that MS is not obligated to do so themselves.
That said I think the real problem is actually the interaction between MS and 3rd party developers. MS builds convenient, easily compromised interfaces (like ActiveX). Companies develop real software based on these interfaces. Black hats exploit these interfaces. MS is then caught between legitimate business usage and illegal exploitation of their wide-open APIs.
The only way we can make MS fix their mess is to stop using their products. They will fix things when they start losing market share to Mac OS, FireFox, Thunderbird, Linux, etc.
Intel is just admitting what the rest of the processor industry has known for years. AMD stopped playing the Mhz game with their 64 bit chips. IBM, and Sun have had 64 bit chips for years and are already shipping multicore CPUs. Sun has plans for dozens of cores per die. Intel will have to work overtime to catch up with these other companies.
True dat. My dad works for the State of California, and there is a significant difference in benefits if you retire at the age of 60 instead of 65. Actually the only benefit of working for the State is the benefits; the private sector consistently pays more. Benefits in CA are awesome; 50-90% of your pay for the rest of your LIFE! This guy should definitely sue for age discriminination.
There are emulators for just about every historic piece of gaming hardware. Some of them even run in Linux:) Getting the ROMs is more difficult (and often illegal), but possible.
The problem with the Japanese corporate culture of the late 80's and early 90's was not the focus on long-term R&D. The problem was that these companies were funding this R&D with profits from real estate speculation. This speculation created a bubble that totally hosed the entire Japanese economy when it burst. When these companies went bankrupt they not only lost their R&D investment, they also put people out of work.
If you spend six hours a day watching TV and I am your friend then I am going to tell you to get out more. I don't consider that normal. If you spend six hours a day reading Slashdot then not only am I going to tell you to get out more but you are also a good candidate for one of those internet addiction programs. In fact the only situation I can think of where it is considered normal to sit there like a vegetable for six hours or more is work:)
This is different than someone who goes to LAN parties, which is basically a social function. Like you said, you went to a LAN party and then went to work the next day. This is like a late night party with a lot of drinking. It doesn't necessarily indicate a drinking problem because there is no pattern and it isn't necessarily interfering with the rest of your life.
Kids who spend six hours a day playing video games are missing real life experiences. I know this from experience, because I was a compulsive gamer when I was young. I think this problem should be recognized so that kids and their parents can starting doing something about this problem.
I love watching Open Source advocates rip into a licensing patent. It's like complaining that the food is bad and the portions are small. If the food is bad then what do you care how big the portions are? If proprietary software is wrong, then who cares what method is used to determine the cost?
At this point it isn't even a proven business model. Microsoft sold >30 billion dollars worth of per-CPU, per-machine, and per-install licenses last year. Sun probably didn't sell more than a 1% of that total. I think the patent is silly, but it won't even be an issue unless it is proven successful.
OOP can be less efficient to work with if you are talking about a project with one programmer who knows everything about the codebase and the platform.
Real projects have multiple contributors, multiple phases, and use external libraries. OOP makes interfacing with unknown code easier. Java in particular enforces code naming and library placement rules that guarantee you can always find a bit of code you are trying to use.
You could reproduce this structure with a non-OOP language like C, but since it takes time and effort developers often don't, and therfore create code that is hard to add to and hard to maintain. Obviously there are exceptions to this rule; a handful of large open-source projects come to mind.
PS: the parent comment is a troll, but it is also a perfectly valid opinion and therefore should .
Eye candy sells. A fun game with good graphics will outsell a fun game with not as good graphics. An OK game with good graphics will sell while that same game with OK graphics will not.
Each new generation of 3D game graphics really does immerse one more deeply into the game. I catch myself ducking and dodging while playing Far Cry, or stopping and staring at a tropical bird.
Initially I was going to argue that secular humanism has theological implications, but I see your point that it is actually a belief system since it generally displaces other more traditional beliefs.
That said secular humanism is gaining in popularity because there are so few arbitrary moral positions that alienate potential believers. Many popular religions have issues with gender and sexuality that drive potential believers away. If I were gay why would I choose to believe in a god that tells me I am doing wrong?
There are still morals in secular humanism, but they are based on observations of results rather than dogma written by cult leaders thousands of years ago. Murder is wrong because it violates the rights of the individual. Homosexuality is not wrong because it doesn't hurt anyone at all.
If people got the opportunity to choose their beliefs then secular humanism would be in the majority worldwide. Sadly most people don't really choose; they go along with their family beliefs.
Old folks depend on their kids to support them in developing nations. So they have as many kids as possible, which results in alarming population growth. This is not the answer.
The problem is that very few companies match the profile of X. Most corps already have a bunch of Windows servers and desktops, and a bunch of Office users. They cannot rebuild their infrastructure from scratch. They need to keep their business running with a minimum of interruptions.
I see similar situations all the time at my company. An existing software system sucks and needs to be replaced. But the cost is high and the system we have is barely working, so nothing is done.
The vast supply of Windows administrators brings prices down. But I don't know if I agree with your assertion that more people "know" Windows, or that less administrators are required.
Just about all computer professionals and many lusers are familiar with Windows. But the plethora of wizards, self-installing software, and other niceties prevent users from learning much about their OS. OTOH Linux users have to be dedicated in order to plow through the initially steep learning curve. Linux users have to know more about their OS in order to keep their system working.
The vast majority of marginally gifted computer professionals are working with Windows, because demand is strong. This waters down the overall quality of Windows administrators. Linux skills are enhanced by the popularity of Unix in major universities and the cultlike status of this OS.
These facts support the hypothesis that the average Windows admin is not as skilled as the average Linux admin. A more skilled admin is more capable, which means that a Linux installation generally requires fewer admins.
Sounds like pretty good evidence of a quality vs. quantity (of pixels) difference between the Quadro and the Geforce. I read some time ago that Quadros are also tweaked to deliver improved performance in one category - anti-aliased wireframes. This would be quite beneficial in CAD systems.
There are Quadro cards that use very old Nvidia chipset architectures. No amount of additional memory is going to make an NV25 (Geforce4 - 4x2 texel pipelines @ 300Mhz, ~10GB/s memory bandwidth, DX8 features) perform like an NV40 (Geforce6800 - 16 pixel pipelines @ 400Mhz, ~35GB/s memory bandwidth, DX9 compatible). Newer chips have more pipelines, more memory bandwidth, more advanced geometry engines, and run at higher speeds.
Windows 3.1 didn't have much competition. MacOS was more mature, but it cost more since you had to buy Apple hardware. And X Windows only ran on expensive Unix workstations.
M$ also illegally charged PC manufacturers for every PC they sold, regardless of whether it had Windows or not. Manufacturers in turn used Windows whether the customer asked for it or not, since they were paying for it anyway.
These conditions no longer exist, which makes Windows XP Starter Edition a non-starter.
Everyone should know how to type; it is the most effective way to use a keyboard, and the keyboard is the most effective input device to the best communication device, the networked computer. The real question is whether a formal touch typing class is necessary.
I have watched a number of hunt-and-peck typists; they don't type very quickly. You Slashdot freaks that say you can do 100wpm must be typing very short words:) Everyone I know that types well touch-types. I don't know anyone that picked up touch-typing without taking a class.
This leads me to believe that touch typing is a valuable skill that should be taught in our schools. It should be taught early; I think many kids would be able to use it even in elementary school. If typing classes were taught on computers it would drive computer literacy as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Big companies have been eating little companies for as long as I can remember. The game industry is no different. Developers need additional resources to market and distribute their games, as well as cover their production expenses. It makes sense to ally or merge with larger companies with more resources.
Look at the movie industry. Tons of independent films are made every year by small companies. There is a market for these movies because the big studios are too conservative to satisfy everyone. I think the games industry uses the same model.
Nautilus gives me a side pain by default :)
The parent post is NOT saying that you can "design away bugs". In fact, the parent specifically says that bugs cannot be eliminated. The idea is to contain bugs and malicious code so that they can do a minimum of damage.
I can download a malicious or buggy Java applet through a web page. The amount of damage it can do is minimal since it has to ask permission to access my system and it runs in a user-level managed environment.
If I download a malicious or buggy Windows executable and run it then I am basically screwed. By default Windows provides no containment for native code. An application can erase my hard drive or crash my OS.
The Pentium Pro ran 16 bit code slowly; 32 bit code ran quite well. However at the time Windows still had a lot of 16 bit code, and so did most major apps. The Pentium Pro did not run faster than the much cheaper Pentium processors that were also available at the time.
The Athlon 64 architecture currently runs many or most 32 bit applications faster than comparable Intel processors, and is competitively priced. The ability to run 64 bit code is more like a bonus. This seems more comparable to the Pentium II, which was an extremely successful CPU architecture.
IA64 is basically irrelevant because the Itanic really is identical to the Pentium Pro. It can't run 32 bit code very well and it costs a fortune.
I think the reason why fundamentalism continues to enjoy strong support is that acknowledging flaws in your scriptures of choice is a slippery slope. If there are a few passages that are just plain wrong then the validity of the entire work is challenged.
One might argue that the spirit of work is the important part. In that case it would be prudent to distill the various scriptures into a pamphlet with the essentials; a higher power, Golden Rule, etc. This would enjoy much broader support. But I guess a lot of people enjoy taking a stand on stuff like a 6000 year old Earth, homophobia, contraception, submissive women, and other obsolete mores of ages past.
When I was a kid I had a lot of free time because I couldn't drive a car. I rode in the family car on trips. I rode the bus. I waited for the bus. I waited for the rest of the family to do a thousand other things. This is why kids are the best market for portable game machines.
Now that I am an adult I don't usually have more than a few minutes of downtime while waiting for something or other. My phone is perfectly capable of playing the types of games that are possible during these short breaks.
The original Playstation was immensely popular because Sony marketed it to teens and twenty-something students. I think it is a gamble that this core Sony market will have the time and the inclination to use this rather large and expensive gaming system.
When I was a kid they didn't have that shit, and we couldn't afford it anyway. You better believe my parents were stoked when my sister and I learned to read and got walkmans though :)
The test case of hooking up a Windoze PC to the internet unpatched is irrelevant since Gates was specifically asked about IE. Also Gates has a valid point about anti-virus/spyware protection. A subscription pricing model would be necessary to support continuing anti-virus protection. There are several companies that provide this service for Windoze, which means that MS is not obligated to do so themselves.
That said I think the real problem is actually the interaction between MS and 3rd party developers. MS builds convenient, easily compromised interfaces (like ActiveX). Companies develop real software based on these interfaces. Black hats exploit these interfaces. MS is then caught between legitimate business usage and illegal exploitation of their wide-open APIs.
The only way we can make MS fix their mess is to stop using their products. They will fix things when they start losing market share to Mac OS, FireFox, Thunderbird, Linux, etc.
Intel is just admitting what the rest of the processor industry has known for years. AMD stopped playing the Mhz game with their 64 bit chips. IBM, and Sun have had 64 bit chips for years and are already shipping multicore CPUs. Sun has plans for dozens of cores per die. Intel will have to work overtime to catch up with these other companies.
True dat. My dad works for the State of California, and there is a significant difference in benefits if you retire at the age of 60 instead of 65. Actually the only benefit of working for the State is the benefits; the private sector consistently pays more. Benefits in CA are awesome; 50-90% of your pay for the rest of your LIFE! This guy should definitely sue for age discriminination.
Disclaimer IAADP
There are emulators for just about every historic piece of gaming hardware. Some of them even run in Linux :) Getting the ROMs is more difficult (and often illegal), but possible.
The problem with the Japanese corporate culture of the late 80's and early 90's was not the focus on long-term R&D. The problem was that these companies were funding this R&D with profits from real estate speculation. This speculation created a bubble that totally hosed the entire Japanese economy when it burst. When these companies went bankrupt they not only lost their R&D investment, they also put people out of work.
If you spend six hours a day watching TV and I am your friend then I am going to tell you to get out more. I don't consider that normal. If you spend six hours a day reading Slashdot then not only am I going to tell you to get out more but you are also a good candidate for one of those internet addiction programs. In fact the only situation I can think of where it is considered normal to sit there like a vegetable for six hours or more is work :)
This is different than someone who goes to LAN parties, which is basically a social function. Like you said, you went to a LAN party and then went to work the next day. This is like a late night party with a lot of drinking. It doesn't necessarily indicate a drinking problem because there is no pattern and it isn't necessarily interfering with the rest of your life.
Kids who spend six hours a day playing video games are missing real life experiences. I know this from experience, because I was a compulsive gamer when I was young. I think this problem should be recognized so that kids and their parents can starting doing something about this problem.
I love watching Open Source advocates rip into a licensing patent. It's like complaining that the food is bad and the portions are small. If the food is bad then what do you care how big the portions are? If proprietary software is wrong, then who cares what method is used to determine the cost?
At this point it isn't even a proven business model. Microsoft sold >30 billion dollars worth of per-CPU, per-machine, and per-install licenses last year. Sun probably didn't sell more than a 1% of that total. I think the patent is silly, but it won't even be an issue unless it is proven successful.
OOP can be less efficient to work with if you are talking about a project with one programmer who knows everything about the codebase and the platform.
Real projects have multiple contributors, multiple phases, and use external libraries. OOP makes interfacing with unknown code easier. Java in particular enforces code naming and library placement rules that guarantee you can always find a bit of code you are trying to use.
You could reproduce this structure with a non-OOP language like C, but since it takes time and effort developers often don't, and therfore create code that is hard to add to and hard to maintain. Obviously there are exceptions to this rule; a handful of large open-source projects come to mind.
PS: the parent comment is a troll, but it is also a perfectly valid opinion and therefore should .
Eye candy sells. A fun game with good graphics will outsell a fun game with not as good graphics. An OK game with good graphics will sell while that same game with OK graphics will not.
Each new generation of 3D game graphics really does immerse one more deeply into the game. I catch myself ducking and dodging while playing Far Cry, or stopping and staring at a tropical bird.
Initially I was going to argue that secular humanism has theological implications, but I see your point that it is actually a belief system since it generally displaces other more traditional beliefs.
That said secular humanism is gaining in popularity because there are so few arbitrary moral positions that alienate potential believers. Many popular religions have issues with gender and sexuality that drive potential believers away. If I were gay why would I choose to believe in a god that tells me I am doing wrong?
There are still morals in secular humanism, but they are based on observations of results rather than dogma written by cult leaders thousands of years ago. Murder is wrong because it violates the rights of the individual. Homosexuality is not wrong because it doesn't hurt anyone at all.
If people got the opportunity to choose their beliefs then secular humanism would be in the majority worldwide. Sadly most people don't really choose; they go along with their family beliefs.
Old folks depend on their kids to support them in developing nations. So they have as many kids as possible, which results in alarming population growth. This is not the answer.
The problem is that very few companies match the profile of X. Most corps already have a bunch of Windows servers and desktops, and a bunch of Office users. They cannot rebuild their infrastructure from scratch. They need to keep their business running with a minimum of interruptions.
I see similar situations all the time at my company. An existing software system sucks and needs to be replaced. But the cost is high and the system we have is barely working, so nothing is done.
The vast supply of Windows administrators brings prices down. But I don't know if I agree with your assertion that more people "know" Windows, or that less administrators are required.
Just about all computer professionals and many lusers are familiar with Windows. But the plethora of wizards, self-installing software, and other niceties prevent users from learning much about their OS. OTOH Linux users have to be dedicated in order to plow through the initially steep learning curve. Linux users have to know more about their OS in order to keep their system working.
The vast majority of marginally gifted computer professionals are working with Windows, because demand is strong. This waters down the overall quality of Windows administrators. Linux skills are enhanced by the popularity of Unix in major universities and the cultlike status of this OS.
These facts support the hypothesis that the average Windows admin is not as skilled as the average Linux admin. A more skilled admin is more capable, which means that a Linux installation generally requires fewer admins.
Sounds like pretty good evidence of a quality vs. quantity (of pixels) difference between the Quadro and the Geforce. I read some time ago that Quadros are also tweaked to deliver improved performance in one category - anti-aliased wireframes. This would be quite beneficial in CAD systems.
There are Quadro cards that use very old Nvidia chipset architectures. No amount of additional memory is going to make an NV25 (Geforce4 - 4x2 texel pipelines @ 300Mhz, ~10GB/s memory bandwidth, DX8 features) perform like an NV40 (Geforce6800 - 16 pixel pipelines @ 400Mhz, ~35GB/s memory bandwidth, DX9 compatible). Newer chips have more pipelines, more memory bandwidth, more advanced geometry engines, and run at higher speeds.
All I know is I'm not drinking the water at work anymore!
Windows 3.1 didn't have much competition. MacOS was more mature, but it cost more since you had to buy Apple hardware. And X Windows only ran on expensive Unix workstations.
M$ also illegally charged PC manufacturers for every PC they sold, regardless of whether it had Windows or not. Manufacturers in turn used Windows whether the customer asked for it or not, since they were paying for it anyway.
These conditions no longer exist, which makes Windows XP Starter Edition a non-starter.
Everyone should know how to type; it is the most effective way to use a keyboard, and the keyboard is the most effective input device to the best communication device, the networked computer. The real question is whether a formal touch typing class is necessary.
:) Everyone I know that types well touch-types. I don't know anyone that picked up touch-typing without taking a class.
I have watched a number of hunt-and-peck typists; they don't type very quickly. You Slashdot freaks that say you can do 100wpm must be typing very short words
This leads me to believe that touch typing is a valuable skill that should be taught in our schools. It should be taught early; I think many kids would be able to use it even in elementary school. If typing classes were taught on computers it would drive computer literacy as well.