The keyboard case has a trackpad... how useful is that for a tablet really?
It would be great on Android, it would just work the same way a bluetooth trackpad works. I don't know about iPad, maybe the software support isn't there.
Microsoft cares about OpenGL to the extent that it allows users of non-Microsoft platforms to enjoy a high performance 3D gaming experience, and Microsoft hates that. Games are one of the few remaining areas where Microsoft is able to create a platform advantage, and that particular advantage is quickly eroding. So yes, Microsoft care about OpenGL, it is a strategic technology. Microsoft always knew that a healthy OpenGL would facilitate escape from its platform locking, and therefore tried very hard to kill it, and fortunately failed, but it was a close call. Microsoft never stopped caring about it, it just can't do anything about it, it already shot its multibillion dollar wad in the form of Xbox and now there are way way way more Angry Birds players than Halo players. Xbox just doesn't matter very much any more, and Microsoft killed its own PC gaming platform to try and make it matter.
You know, it's getting boring talking about tired old monopolist thug Microsoft and its ruined plans. Talk to yourself about it next time, I'm moving on to something that matters.
One more wall of fortress Microsoft crumbles. Game devs finally notice the way the wind is blowing, a DirextX-only strategy is suicide. OpenGL won and soon only the shrinking PC segment and money losing XBox will be left waving the DirectX flag. It's about time.
I can hardly wait for Slashdot to break the Microsoft Surface story so I can make fun of it.
They both use the Motorala trademark at the same time? How does that work out?
I would not be surprised to see Google promptly hand the Motorola Mobility trademark back to Motorla Solutions now that the deal has closed. It is a practical certainty there was a license agreement in place during the period of the acquisition. Google has no interest in the Motorola trademark, just the patent portfolio and to a lesser extent the handset/tablet business which most likely will be spun off to an Android partner after releasing a couple of concept products.
The presence of DirectX in the mobile space rounds to zero, and that is where the action is. Meanwhile, OpenGL has a foothold in or dominates every market except XBox, where Ballmer would rather eat a floppy disk than let anybody ship a game based on the graphics library he tried so hard to kill. Maybe Ballmer should have tried harder because failing in that evil project was a critical failure and no doubt will be the cause of much chair throwing in Redmond as the logical consequences play out.
It verges on comical to hear you protest that Microsoft does not actually care about this. Well go ahead, your delusions are not my problem.
Really? And you have reading comprehension issues. I said faux-open ->project model<-
And I see that not all Googlers possess sufficient moral spine to refrain from spinmodding on Slashdot. But of course I already knew that. Sadly, the don't be evil has left the building.
Go get any book on Operating System design. It will be entirely about the operating system kernel. Why? Because that is the operating system. Userspace and libraries are not the operating system, that is an operating system distribution. From Wikipedia: "An operating system (OS) is a set of software that manages computer hardware resources and provides common services for computer programs. The operating system is a vital component of the system software in a computer system. Application programs require an operating system to function." See, it's the kernel. In some cases some userspace support could be defined as part of the OS too, for example udev in Linux. But this idea that IOS or Android are operating systems because they come with some of their own branded different libaries... that is marketing newspeak, pure and simple.
One more wall of fortress Microsoft crumbles. Game devs finally notice the way the wind is blowing, a DirextX-only strategy is suicide. OpenGL won and soon only the shrinking PC segment and money losing XBox will be left waving the DirectX flag. It's about time.
And how does Microsoft respond? Sure, send in the Slashdot spinmods. Sheesh. Better you boys should do some honest work.
Hah, that's funny, Android is Linux. Anyway I said nothing about targeting Linux I talked about targeting OpenGL. Which has clearly got the high ground right now. Face it, DirectX is an oddity that is only walks the earth because Microsoft keeps pumping money into it, but that isn't enough.
Honestly, I don't see how XBox could be losing money with the annual subscription.
XBox had a few quarters running in the black, not doing nearly so well right now, and not remotely close to payback on the original investment. Meanwhile the product is well past what should have been its end of life and the whole kooky charade has to play out all over again. If not for Balmer's personal pride this vanity project would have stopped providing subsidized gaming consoles long ago.
Do you see it now? Not "losing money" but "already lost tons of money with no hope of getting it back now or ever".
Graphics is the most involved and expensive part of a game engine by far. OpenGL-everywhere is huge.
Also note: it's actually OpenGL ES 2 on Android which in general a subset of OpenGL 3 rather than classic OpenGL. In short, stick to DrawArrays and friends and you're good, which you should do anyway for performance reasons.
One more wall of fortress Microsoft crumbles. Game devs finally notice the way the wind is blowing, a DirextX-only strategy is suicide. OpenGL won and soon only the shrinking PC segment and money losing XBox will be left waving the DirectX flag. It's about time.
I have a high quality very solid entertainment center with reinforced glass doors, no sound escapes it.
Impossible. If heat can escape then sound can escape, unless you have a far more sophisticated setup than I think you have. I believe that our definitions of "no sound" differ. I can practically guarantee that my ears will detect the fan of your PS3 and be annoyed by it whenever the sound track becomes quiet.
A better solution for the videophile is to not use the PS3 as a crappy Blu-ray player, where "crappy" is the only technical term that accurately describes its performance in that regard.
My most recent purchase was a PS3, not for the games, for the bluray player.
Which has a nasty habit of ramping up its power supply fan to take-off speeds about 30 minutes into a movie and staying that way until powered off, sounding much like a vacuum cleaner with a wad a paper stuck in the nozzle. I don't know about you, but that's a killer flaw from where I sit.
Major structural elements of the trawler are losing their integrity. Enormous popping and wrenching noises are coming from inside as big pieces of Swiss-cheesed metal give way, and the superstructure is slowly collapsing down into the hull like a botched souffle.
It's a hand held gun. We're talking about ripping apart a good sized trawler with kinetic energy alone. That is magic, not physics. And please no baffegab about mv**2/2, it's debunked above in terms that are easy to understand. Executive summary: hypervelocity is a scam perpetrated on people with no arithmetic ability. It does not magically reduce recoil.
You seem to have trouble with the concept of multiplication. Oh well, that's you. Just remind me not to take seriously anything you say. Also note that the gun was hand held, which you would know if you had read the book or the thread. My apologies if this all sounds flip, but maybe you won't get that response if you post stuff that you spend a few nanoseconds reviewing for correctness.
Slashdot Mirror
The keyboard case has a trackpad... how useful is that for a tablet really?
It would be great on Android, it would just work the same way a bluetooth trackpad works. I don't know about iPad, maybe the software support isn't there.
Everybody gets out their wallet and buys an Android
Microsoft cares about OpenGL to the extent that it allows users of non-Microsoft platforms to enjoy a high performance 3D gaming experience, and Microsoft hates that. Games are one of the few remaining areas where Microsoft is able to create a platform advantage, and that particular advantage is quickly eroding. So yes, Microsoft care about OpenGL, it is a strategic technology. Microsoft always knew that a healthy OpenGL would facilitate escape from its platform locking, and therefore tried very hard to kill it, and fortunately failed, but it was a close call. Microsoft never stopped caring about it, it just can't do anything about it, it already shot its multibillion dollar wad in the form of Xbox and now there are way way way more Angry Birds players than Halo players. Xbox just doesn't matter very much any more, and Microsoft killed its own PC gaming platform to try and make it matter.
You know, it's getting boring talking about tired old monopolist thug Microsoft and its ruined plans. Talk to yourself about it next time, I'm moving on to something that matters.
One more wall of fortress Microsoft crumbles. Game devs finally notice the way the wind is blowing, a DirextX-only strategy is suicide. OpenGL won and soon only the shrinking PC segment and money losing XBox will be left waving the DirectX flag. It's about time.
I can hardly wait for Slashdot to break the Microsoft Surface story so I can make fun of it.
Where are the lawsuits?
They both use the Motorala trademark at the same time? How does that work out?
I would not be surprised to see Google promptly hand the Motorola Mobility trademark back to Motorla Solutions now that the deal has closed. It is a practical certainty there was a license agreement in place during the period of the acquisition. Google has no interest in the Motorola trademark, just the patent portfolio and to a lesser extent the handset/tablet business which most likely will be spun off to an Android partner after releasing a couple of concept products.
The presence of DirectX in the mobile space rounds to zero, and that is where the action is. Meanwhile, OpenGL has a foothold in or dominates every market except XBox, where Ballmer would rather eat a floppy disk than let anybody ship a game based on the graphics library he tried so hard to kill. Maybe Ballmer should have tried harder because failing in that evil project was a critical failure and no doubt will be the cause of much chair throwing in Redmond as the logical consequences play out.
It verges on comical to hear you protest that Microsoft does not actually care about this. Well go ahead, your delusions are not my problem.
Really? And you have reading comprehension issues. I said faux-open ->project model<-
And I see that not all Googlers possess sufficient moral spine to refrain from spinmodding on Slashdot. But of course I already knew that. Sadly, the don't be evil has left the building.
Go get any book on Operating System design. It will be entirely about the operating system kernel. Why? Because that is the operating system. Userspace and libraries are not the operating system, that is an operating system distribution. From Wikipedia: "An operating system (OS) is a set of software that manages computer hardware resources and provides common services for computer programs. The operating system is a vital component of the system software in a computer system. Application programs require an operating system to function." See, it's the kernel. In some cases some userspace support could be defined as part of the OS too, for example udev in Linux. But this idea that IOS or Android are operating systems because they come with some of their own branded different libaries... that is marketing newspeak, pure and simple.
One more wall of fortress Microsoft crumbles. Game devs finally notice the way the wind is blowing, a DirextX-only strategy is suicide. OpenGL won and soon only the shrinking PC segment and money losing XBox will be left waving the DirectX flag. It's about time.
And how does Microsoft respond? Sure, send in the Slashdot spinmods. Sheesh. Better you boys should do some honest work.
Hah, that's funny, Android is Linux. Anyway I said nothing about targeting Linux I talked about targeting OpenGL. Which has clearly got the high ground right now. Face it, DirectX is an oddity that is only walks the earth because Microsoft keeps pumping money into it, but that isn't enough.
Honestly, I don't see how XBox could be losing money with the annual subscription.
XBox had a few quarters running in the black, not doing nearly so well right now, and not remotely close to payback on the original investment. Meanwhile the product is well past what should have been its end of life and the whole kooky charade has to play out all over again. If not for Balmer's personal pride this vanity project would have stopped providing subsidized gaming consoles long ago.
Do you see it now? Not "losing money" but "already lost tons of money with no hope of getting it back now or ever".
Graphics is the most involved and expensive part of a game engine by far. OpenGL-everywhere is huge.
Also note: it's actually OpenGL ES 2 on Android which in general a subset of OpenGL 3 rather than classic OpenGL. In short, stick to DrawArrays and friends and you're good, which you should do anyway for performance reasons.
One more wall of fortress Microsoft crumbles. Game devs finally notice the way the wind is blowing, a DirextX-only strategy is suicide. OpenGL won and soon only the shrinking PC segment and money losing XBox will be left waving the DirectX flag. It's about time.
So you don't think disks should have any caching on them at all ?
No flash, and only a modest amount of ram for writeback cache, which must be backed by battery or supercaps.
Have you ever tried running a drive with all caching disabled ?
Have you ever tried recovering a filesystem where the power failed after the drive lied about committing its writeback cache to disk?
A spelling flame is to forum posting as a pun is to humor.
I have a high quality very solid entertainment center with reinforced glass doors, no sound escapes it.
Impossible. If heat can escape then sound can escape, unless you have a far more sophisticated setup than I think you have. I believe that our definitions of "no sound" differ. I can practically guarantee that my ears will detect the fan of your PS3 and be annoyed by it whenever the sound track becomes quiet.
A better solution for the videophile is to not use the PS3 as a crappy Blu-ray player, where "crappy" is the only technical term that accurately describes its performance in that regard.
Agreed. There is a strong argument for ram and nvram on the controller. Not on the drive.
Really? And you have ready comprehension issues. I said faux-open ->project model<-
My most recent purchase was a PS3, not for the games, for the bluray player.
Which has a nasty habit of ramping up its power supply fan to take-off speeds about 30 minutes into a movie and staying that way until powered off, sounding much like a vacuum cleaner with a wad a paper stuck in the nozzle. I don't know about you, but that's a killer flaw from where I sit.
I suspect its Google's fault or the wifi chipset manufacturer's fault.
Indeed, it is Google's fault for operating a faux-open project model.
Let's continue the book review:
Major structural elements of the trawler are losing their integrity. Enormous popping and wrenching noises are coming from inside as big pieces of Swiss-cheesed metal give way, and the superstructure is slowly collapsing down into the hull like a botched souffle.
It's a hand held gun. We're talking about ripping apart a good sized trawler with kinetic energy alone. That is magic, not physics. And please no baffegab about mv**2/2, it's debunked above in terms that are easy to understand. Executive summary: hypervelocity is a scam perpetrated on people with no arithmetic ability. It does not magically reduce recoil.
I said "not enough recoil" not "no recoil".
You seem to have trouble with the concept of multiplication. Oh well, that's you. Just remind me not to take seriously anything you say. Also note that the gun was hand held, which you would know if you had read the book or the thread. My apologies if this all sounds flip, but maybe you won't get that response if you post stuff that you spend a few nanoseconds reviewing for correctness.
Intel spinbot much?
Can't we all just stop bickering, and agree that "WinRT" is a HORRIBLE name?
Especially for a CONSUMER product?
The other shortlisted name was "Zune 2".