Say what you will, I've played this game off and on for ten years and it's still lots of fun.
What I've found interesting about the game is that it doesn't have a retro feel, or make me long for the "good ol' days"; because all the levels are randomly generated it's always fresh and new as if playing for the first time.
I use the Linux version of VMWare, and because of remote X, I simply run Windows under Linux displayed on my Mac. It can't run full screen, but it does allow for seamless mouse movement off of Windows to OSX. VMWare even popped up a couple of helpful messages when it detected that it was running remotely.
For this reason alone makes VMWare worth it over VirtualPC. Remote X + VMWare + Linux rocks!
While you have valid points, what I like about the way VMS does it is its universality; it's just *there*; no scripts to run, and no silent purging a la Netware. Frankly, I didn't know Netware even had this feature, being an end-user of it for years and years (never as an Admin). I was actually told that once a file was deleted or changed somehow on a Netware box, it was permanant (I was asking how come there isn't Norton Undelete for Netware).
I theoretically like the idea of using diffs as a way to conserve disk space, but needing tools makes it a non-starter for me. I mean, I could probably cobble something together that looked like a journaled file system, or a RAID disk, using scripts, but relying on the script makes it not assured.
This is one point where I'm willing to throw hardware at by simply getting bigger disks.:)
As someone who still uses VMS, I can assure you that versioning is the greatest thing in the world. You can always reference foo.c and get the latest and greatest, but should you screw it up so badly that it beyond salvaging (not that this has ever happened to me...;) ) it's nice that the previous version is always there.
File versioning is like dual monitors; until you've experienced it you won't "get" it. Why this feature hasn't been implemented already, I don't know, but I would presume that it isn't easy.
This sounds like Intel's Overdrive functionality that came on some 486 mbs...it had that extra socket that I *think* would take an early Pentium chip (or was it something special?) and would get you an effective speed boost without replacing your machine. I remember seeing a fair number of these mbs, but I don't remember if Intel even shipped anything to put in it.
I wonder if it backfired on them at all, I know a friend of mine had a mb with it and by the time Pentiums were all the rage he still had this 486 mb with this extra space that was nothing but promises and hype. I think he ended up getting an AMD-based machine because he was so angry at Intel.
I was really burned when Oracle failed to deliver a production quality "we stand behind it" version of 9i for OSX. I had been trying to convince my bosses that OSX could be a real contender for our back-office apps because not only was it an industrial-strength Unix, but that it also had Oracle (which is our DB).
They said they'd wait till it actually shipped, but it never did. There's a ton of stuff Apple provides with the XServe that we could use (XSan definately springs to mind), but whereas we don't do cool rendering or whatnot, we want the boxes for more mundane, database-driven stuff.
On this I sort of blame Apple too, they seem to push the XServes as great for scientific or graphics crunching, but seem to neglect the possibility that their hardware could be used for decidely less sexy roles like serving up text-based data to thousands of users. I am *this* close to convincing the powers-that-be that not every Mac has to run Photoshop, but without the database (specifically Oracle), it won't even be considered.
Who is going to these roadshows? And why aren't there similar roadshows mounted by some of the bigger Linux players (IBM comes to mind)? I think they should get a copy of the road show itinerary and simply book the same space for the next day or week.
Imagine the marquee: Tuesday - Microsoft Corp explains why Linux is bad. Wednesday - IBM/Red Hat/Suse/et al explains why Linux rocks.
I'm curious...did they remove anything from the rocket when they set it on its side, like remove equipment from the capsule, etc? Was it ready to fly in that it could have been fueled up and fired, or was it just put together for display purposes?
As much as I have enjoyed watching this slow-motion train wreck, I am starting to wonder what will happen to the actual Unix rights SCO has, presuming that they will need to sell everything at some point to pay off their creditors.
Though I have to imagine the government couldn't *possibly* agree to this, can you imagine them selling the rights to Microsoft? Because of all the insanity this company has been willing to wallow in, I can't, for one, imagine them selling the rights to some benevolant organization; I'd think they'd rather do something to screw Linux over "just one more time".
I doubt that, even with this latest rebuttal, the book will change its "Linux is the devil" tone, and will go on to sell probably a *dozen* copies, unfortuantly all to people in the government.
So how can we get the message out to them that this is all propaganda? Is there a similar organization that can put out a fair and balanced version and get it into the same hands of those who would read this book?
Seriously, why is it that jerks like this can write stuff that suggests that using Linux causes cancer, and then nothing is done to prove otherwise? If the politicians are given only one side of the argument, that's the only side they'll know.
How does all this affect X as distributed on non-x86 platforms? Apple's X11 app is based on XFree86, but what about X as it comes with Solaris, AIX, et al. Does IBM, Sun, etc. write their own, which conforms to the X spec, or are they in some way beholden to what happens with the XFree86 project? I don't know why I thought this, but I was under the assumption that the XFree86 project represented "official" development of X going forward, after MIT stopped working on it.
I had made a suggestion to Apple that the iCal icon should always show the current day when the program is running; it switches from the default July 17 (or whatever it is) to the current day *when you start the program*, but the icon never changes again, and it was a habit I got into very quickly to look at the dock to see what the date was instead of clicking on the time in the menu bar.
There clearly exists code to update the icon while the program is running (the 9 fills from the bottom to the top when starting classic, quicktime movies keep playing in the dock, etc.) so I would naively think it would be easy to add another thread to update the icon.
But other than that I'm quite pleased.
Re:Damn you Square!
on
Shrek 2 How-To
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
While I agree with you, I think that a realistic looking CG movie is still a ways off. I saw the FF movie, and though the details of the face, etc., were pretty realistic, the movements were just awkward enough to prevent me from believing that this could have been, in some way, real.
Audiences are very forgiving of a make-believe world in terms of character movement, but in a "real" movie (a world populated by humans in real human environments), any amount of unintential stilted movement is suspect, and I think keeps you from totally believing that this is real, not memorex.
I'm not arguing that they shouldn't try and make a decent movie that uses CG human characters; it is, after all, all about the story. But if one of the goals of your movie is to make it seem 100% "real" (filmed, not CG), then you will have to spend a *lot* of time making sure that they walk like the real thing.
I propose to anyone interested the "iPod Dance Test", named after those commercials that show profiled people dancing, listening to their iPods. Can you create a clip that reproduces that commercial, using only CG, *exactly*. What I mean by exactly is that it would look completely indistinguishable from the real thing. In theory, it's easy...you don't have to concentrate on what the character looks like. You only have to make him or her dance. I think doing even that would be very very very hard and make it absolutely realistic.
Easy moderators: The title is meant to be provocative, not an endorsement. Please read further.
It's good IBM is spending the resources to make Linux a more viable competitor to M$. Go IBM Go!
That said, what is it that keeps "Windows" synonymous with "computer" in the minds of the important people (CIOs, managers, grandmas)? Marketing. Remember, it's not Outlook, it's *Microsoft* Outlook. It's not Exchange2003, it's *Microsoft* Exchange2003. Microsoft made an important decision to have their products be inseperable from the Microsoft brand. It's all Microsoft, regardless of what you're using. Got a PC? Unless you built it yourself, you probably have (or had) a "Designed for Windows" sticker on there somewhere. And notice that on those dark cases that Dell, IBM, etc. are using now, what do you see? A big dark box with a colorful sticker. It's like the seal of quality, an assurance that you're getting something easy and familar (actual experience may differ from promise).
What we need, and what IBM's endorsement has not yet brought, is that same "promise of quality" that can be readily understood by anyone and *trusted* by everyone. Face it, with Windows, you know what you're getting, for good or ill. Linux just doesn't have that yet. Maybe it's the fragmentation of distros (Suse likes KDE, Redhat likes Gnome, etc.) As we can see over and over again, people don't buy the superior product, they buy the product they have been convinced into buying.
As an analogy, I offer this from my own life: I was in the store buying groceries. I needed peanut butter for sandwiches. I've been a lifelong JIF user, but JIF is kind of expensive. So I'm checking out the generics and store brands. All a bit cheaper, but not too much, and frankly, I don't know anything about them. They could taste better than JIF, but I don't want to be stuck with an open jar of crap peanut butter if it doesn't. The price isn't much different, so I suck it up and buy the JIF; I just don't want to run the risk of being disappointed. In my mind, JIF is the gold standard and until I am convinced otherwise *by external forces* I am probably not going to change. It's not that I don't want to, it's just that I am afraid of being disappointed and out some $ for a failed experiment.
Thus, I believe we need something, someone, to create that buzz that will usurp the idea that Windows is the good, safe choice. If I can get my grandma to ask for a pc and know that she wants Linux, and not Windows, then I think we will truly have succeeded.
The WTL proves that there are some *very* good people at MS: They basically took MFC and redesigned it around templates and the STL; no MFC runtime dlls and even VC6 produces tiny exes that run wickedly fast. They even wrote a VC6/7 addin so you can use the project wizard to create a boilerplate project as a starting point. And to top it off, the two developers were (are?) very active on the ATL mailing list and responded to questions/complaints/bug reports. Way to go guys!
That all said, Microsoft did practically everything they could to squash this project; it was originally installed as an "oh, by the way" in their SDK package (and not enabled by default...you had to go hunting for it) and then they removed it entirely. Official communcations always seemed to revolve around the message that "We acknowledge that it exists, we would prefer you not use it, and no we're not going to tell you why." I guess they had some fear that everyone was going to dump the millions of lines of existing MFC code for much better written code that... has the same interface. Go figure.
Trust me from one who has used this library in apps that reached production: this is a true gem amist all the cubic zirconia that MS puts out.
This is total tin-foil-hat speculation, but hear me out:
Considering the enormous amount of resources Microsoft is going to have to keep pouring into Windows development, I can't imagine they are going to want to keep spending the $$$ on maintaining multiple versions for various CPU types, now down to basically two: x86 and Itanium. They saw that NT on Mips, PowerPC and that NEC chip (forget what it's called) were lousy sellers, and you've got to imagine that though NT on the Alpha was probably going to be a big seller, the implosion of DEC pretty much put the lid on its future and Microsoft decided quickly it wasn't going to be spending the time and resources to keep up an Alpha port, no matter how good it probably was.
Even though Intel says otherwise, you have to think that they see the Itanium as not the future for Windows; people don't really trust Windows to operate well on the x86, why should they think it'll run better on the Itanium? I predict that the server version of Longhorn will be an x86-only product (of course, probably *requiring* 2 or more of those as-yet produced multi-core cpus).
So let's presume that Windows won't run on the Itanium in the future. What's left? Solaris, AIX, or Irix on the Itanum? Nope (3rd paragraph) That leaves only one OS that already runs on the chip, our friend the penguin.
So what will Intel do with it? Seems like the future points to a processor that runs Linux (probably NetBSD too) and little else. If Intel doesn't can the thing altogether (which is unlikely given the huge resources spent, and the serious black eye it would give them), then presumably we would have a cpu to call our own: a machine built with nothing but Linux in mind. Combine this hardware with all the software that's a little more than a recompile away, and you'd have a pretty sweet setup to counter the Windows juggernaut.
Actually, I do care, but I think I can see why there isn't much focus on either of these today. We're surrounded by devices that make use of math and science, but abstracted away to the point where it's completely invisible (read: computers). Computers have become synonymous with "Windows", "browsers", watching movies, playing games, etc. To the Slashdot crowd, all of these things obviously require knowledge of math and science to be able to create these programs, but the one-click interface of most of these programs require practically no knowledge of, well, anything.
I think about how my daughter is growing up; she always wants to see the back of the camera because she thinks she'll see the picture I just took of her immediately. Everywhere I look, we've developed a one-click or single button solution to the "problem" because we want it now Now NOW! And when it's all abstracted away, you really have no idea how it works, and because you're so used to it, you don't really care.
So I can see that our zeal for instant gratification, ease-of-use, and a rather arrogant demand that everything be, above all else, as simple as possible will lead more and more to think of math and science as "the hard stuff" that they are simply incapable of dealing with because it requires thought and concentration, with no "reward" being given at the end, and no understanding of how it affects their daily lives. It's like schools that teach latin with the presumption that if you know how languages are put together, you will learn the derivations easier. Most simply complain that latin isn't a good language to impress chicks with, and study something else instead.
You are in luck...I was able to get 10g running on a stock Suse 9 installation...all I downloaded was the boot.iso and did the installation via ftp from a mirror.
The instructions on getting Oracle running on Linux are on the OTN site (something along the lines of "Installing on Linux"...sorry, don't have the time right now to find the exact URL). Just follow the instructions and you're set, presuming that the box has at least 512meg of ram (it affects kernel parameters which Oracle wants set).
The only real trick is when you actually get to the Java part of the setup...there is a flag you have to pass to the installer to ignore the supported version check. If you pass -? to the installer program it'll be there...just pass that and it will install.
I've had 10g up and running for a few weeks now and have had no problems...it's not a rocket (my machine only has 512meg of ram), but certainly usable for development and has even had a couple of other users testing it.
Good luck...it works. I'm looking forward to getting my copy of 9.1 so I can see if the speed increases they report in the kernel will have any effect on Oracle.
What I find amusing is that "No maintenance, no technical support" is worthy of the limited amount of text, instead of being omitted entirely and buried in the eula. They almost make it sound like a feature:
And now with No Maintenance! And even No Technical Support!
The first time I saw Soul Calibur I literally missed my mouth and spilled my drink a la Airplane! Crazy Taxi was an early and more gentle GTA. I left Ecco on the screen as background "art" at a party that had some kids at it...they went nuts moving the dolphin around the screen (and the graphics caused a lot of the adults to beg for turns too). Playing Shenmue inspired me enough to take a trip to Japan (though I didn't get to the area Shenmue takes place in).
This console was my introduction to Lik-Sang as I bought the ethernet adapter, two DC-2-PS2 adapters so I could use a mouse/keyboard with the webbrowser. Hell, I even bought the soundtrack to Jet Set Radio.
I could go on and on about great moments I've had with this console. It "felt" right...I never had a problem with the controller as some people did, and even played Tetris on the memory unit (thanks Marcus!)
To me, this was the first console that got everything right; great graphics, great controller (to me), and an online community through the console itself (modem then ethernet). Though I have an Xbox, it feels like a bit of a warmed over Dreamcast and I still think the graphics on the DC are better than the PS2 (my opinion based on games I've seen).
Okay, I'm sure there's a valid reason, probably legal, but to make porting easier to another OS, like Linux, why hasn't anyone tried to port the Win32 APIs? Put them on top of a windowing toolkit (or just use the raw XLib) and make all the appropriate changes under the hood, so to speak. Mono's doing something similar with the whole.NET libraries, but presumably even.NET on Windows is making Win32 API calls underneith all that wrapping.
I'm not saying this is easy, or even necessarily desirable (see: slipperly slope) but since Microsoft has tried making it "easy" to port apps to Windows, why hasn't anyone turned around and make it easy to port Windows apps to Linux (we'll leave MFC & ATL for later.:) ).
I have, since 1984, written all my school papers, letters to friends, etc., on a computer, starting with WordStar 3.3. I thought I had a foolproof method of preserving them...every time I got a new machine, I just copied all the documents over to the new machine (first using laplink cables, later ethernet). Now, 20 years(!) later, I have my documents on my shiny new dual G5. And guess what! I can read maybe a 4th of them as no program understands the WS format, later WP4, WP5, etc. etc. Sure I have all the documents, but the all I can show off to my grandkids is a random collection of bytes that was "Why are oceans necessary?" from 1984.
But it doesn't end there...people talk about magnetic tape as being a viable medium; I have plenty of tapes that don't play right because they were recorded with a different speed recorder than what is available today. My little piano recital sounds like a Keystone Kops tune on acid.
And how about all those betamax tapes I've got of me playing tackle football when I was 11 years old? Still got 'em. Wish I still had a Betamax to play 'em on.
And then, I have a bajillion slides, taken by me and my family, on Kodachrome25. Stuff lasts forever. They've faded a bit, but I can still view them if I hold them up to the light. Wish I could show 'em to my grandkids but I don't have a slide projector. I suppose I could scan them into the computer......
You might feel safe in thinking that Java's sandbox protects from this kind of thing, but don't be too sure...what is a JVM written in? Those very unsafe languages you talk about.
The fact is, at some point, *somebody's* gotta manipulate the memory directly; somebody's gotta keep track of what's been alloc'ed and what's been free'd, and whether that's at an application level, or at the OS level, you're going to find the very languages that you deem as unsafe.
Abstract away and bytecode your way to a false sense of security, and you've done nothing but put up another curtain to lull you into a false sense of security. The fact is, this kind of thing is *always* going to be with us, whether intentional or by accident (Microsoft's whole KB).
Think of it this way: cars are too dangerous for people to use because there's no way to stop them from running into the ditch. So we're going to develop a system by which everyone's car runs on rails, with all the latest safety systems to make sure everything is safe and secure and drive the way we think they should drive. Now you don't have to trust your own abilities, just us. And we know what's right, right?
Slashdot Mirror
Say what you will, I've played this game off and on for ten years and it's still lots of fun.
What I've found interesting about the game is that it doesn't have a retro feel, or make me long for the "good ol' days"; because all the levels are randomly generated it's always fresh and new as if playing for the first time.
Forklift races.
I use the Linux version of VMWare, and because of remote X, I simply run Windows under Linux displayed on my Mac. It can't run full screen, but it does allow for seamless mouse movement off of Windows to OSX. VMWare even popped up a couple of helpful messages when it detected that it was running remotely.
For this reason alone makes VMWare worth it over VirtualPC. Remote X + VMWare + Linux rocks!
While you have valid points, what I like about the way VMS does it is its universality; it's just *there*; no scripts to run, and no silent purging a la Netware. Frankly, I didn't know Netware even had this feature, being an end-user of it for years and years (never as an Admin). I was actually told that once a file was deleted or changed somehow on a Netware box, it was permanant (I was asking how come there isn't Norton Undelete for Netware).
:)
I theoretically like the idea of using diffs as a way to conserve disk space, but needing tools makes it a non-starter for me. I mean, I could probably cobble something together that looked like a journaled file system, or a RAID disk, using scripts, but relying on the script makes it not assured.
This is one point where I'm willing to throw hardware at by simply getting bigger disks.
As someone who still uses VMS, I can assure you that versioning is the greatest thing in the world. You can always reference foo.c and get the latest and greatest, but should you screw it up so badly that it beyond salvaging (not that this has ever happened to me ... ;) ) it's nice that the previous version is always there.
File versioning is like dual monitors; until you've experienced it you won't "get" it. Why this feature hasn't been implemented already, I don't know, but I would presume that it isn't easy.
This sounds like Intel's Overdrive functionality that came on some 486 mbs...it had that extra socket that I *think* would take an early Pentium chip (or was it something special?) and would get you an effective speed boost without replacing your machine. I remember seeing a fair number of these mbs, but I don't remember if Intel even shipped anything to put in it.
I wonder if it backfired on them at all, I know a friend of mine had a mb with it and by the time Pentiums were all the rage he still had this 486 mb with this extra space that was nothing but promises and hype. I think he ended up getting an AMD-based machine because he was so angry at Intel.
I was really burned when Oracle failed to deliver a production quality "we stand behind it" version of 9i for OSX. I had been trying to convince my bosses that OSX could be a real contender for our back-office apps because not only was it an industrial-strength Unix, but that it also had Oracle (which is our DB).
They said they'd wait till it actually shipped, but it never did. There's a ton of stuff Apple provides with the XServe that we could use (XSan definately springs to mind), but whereas we don't do cool rendering or whatnot, we want the boxes for more mundane, database-driven stuff.
On this I sort of blame Apple too, they seem to push the XServes as great for scientific or graphics crunching, but seem to neglect the possibility that their hardware could be used for decidely less sexy roles like serving up text-based data to thousands of users. I am *this* close to convincing the powers-that-be that not every Mac has to run Photoshop, but without the database (specifically Oracle), it won't even be considered.
Who is going to these roadshows? And why aren't there similar roadshows mounted by some of the bigger Linux players (IBM comes to mind)? I think they should get a copy of the road show itinerary and simply book the same space for the next day or week.
Imagine the marquee:
Tuesday - Microsoft Corp explains why Linux is bad.
Wednesday - IBM/Red Hat/Suse/et al explains why Linux rocks.
I'm curious...did they remove anything from the rocket when they set it on its side, like remove equipment from the capsule, etc? Was it ready to fly in that it could have been fueled up and fired, or was it just put together for display purposes?
They already did it.
Though it was IBM, not Univac equipment.
As much as I have enjoyed watching this slow-motion train wreck, I am starting to wonder what will happen to the actual Unix rights SCO has, presuming that they will need to sell everything at some point to pay off their creditors.
Though I have to imagine the government couldn't *possibly* agree to this, can you imagine them selling the rights to Microsoft? Because of all the insanity this company has been willing to wallow in, I can't, for one, imagine them selling the rights to some benevolant organization; I'd think they'd rather do something to screw Linux over "just one more time".
I doubt that, even with this latest rebuttal, the book will change its "Linux is the devil" tone, and will go on to sell probably a *dozen* copies, unfortuantly all to people in the government.
So how can we get the message out to them that this is all propaganda? Is there a similar organization that can put out a fair and balanced version and get it into the same hands of those who would read this book?
Seriously, why is it that jerks like this can write stuff that suggests that using Linux causes cancer, and then nothing is done to prove otherwise? If the politicians are given only one side of the argument, that's the only side they'll know.
How does all this affect X as distributed on non-x86 platforms? Apple's X11 app is based on XFree86, but what about X as it comes with Solaris, AIX, et al. Does IBM, Sun, etc. write their own, which conforms to the X spec, or are they in some way beholden to what happens with the XFree86 project? I don't know why I thought this, but I was under the assumption that the XFree86 project represented "official" development of X going forward, after MIT stopped working on it.
I had made a suggestion to Apple that the iCal icon should always show the current day when the program is running; it switches from the default July 17 (or whatever it is) to the current day *when you start the program*, but the icon never changes again, and it was a habit I got into very quickly to look at the dock to see what the date was instead of clicking on the time in the menu bar.
There clearly exists code to update the icon while the program is running (the 9 fills from the bottom to the top when starting classic, quicktime movies keep playing in the dock, etc.) so I would naively think it would be easy to add another thread to update the icon.
But other than that I'm quite pleased.
While I agree with you, I think that a realistic looking CG movie is still a ways off. I saw the FF movie, and though the details of the face, etc., were pretty realistic, the movements were just awkward enough to prevent me from believing that this could have been, in some way, real.
Audiences are very forgiving of a make-believe world in terms of character movement, but in a "real" movie (a world populated by humans in real human environments), any amount of unintential stilted movement is suspect, and I think keeps you from totally believing that this is real, not memorex.
I'm not arguing that they shouldn't try and make a decent movie that uses CG human characters; it is, after all, all about the story. But if one of the goals of your movie is to make it seem 100% "real" (filmed, not CG), then you will have to spend a *lot* of time making sure that they walk like the real thing.
I propose to anyone interested the "iPod Dance Test", named after those commercials that show profiled people dancing, listening to their iPods. Can you create a clip that reproduces that commercial, using only CG, *exactly*. What I mean by exactly is that it would look completely indistinguishable from the real thing. In theory, it's easy...you don't have to concentrate on what the character looks like. You only have to make him or her dance. I think doing even that would be very very very hard and make it absolutely realistic.
Easy moderators: The title is meant to be provocative, not an endorsement. Please read further.
It's good IBM is spending the resources to make Linux a more viable competitor to M$. Go IBM Go!
That said, what is it that keeps "Windows" synonymous with "computer" in the minds of the important people (CIOs, managers, grandmas)? Marketing. Remember, it's not Outlook, it's *Microsoft* Outlook. It's not Exchange2003, it's *Microsoft* Exchange2003. Microsoft made an important decision to have their products be inseperable from the Microsoft brand. It's all Microsoft, regardless of what you're using. Got a PC? Unless you built it yourself, you probably have (or had) a "Designed for Windows" sticker on there somewhere. And notice that on those dark cases that Dell, IBM, etc. are using now, what do you see? A big dark box with a colorful sticker. It's like the seal of quality, an assurance that you're getting something easy and familar (actual experience may differ from promise).
What we need, and what IBM's endorsement has not yet brought, is that same "promise of quality" that can be readily understood by anyone and *trusted* by everyone. Face it, with Windows, you know what you're getting, for good or ill. Linux just doesn't have that yet. Maybe it's the fragmentation of distros (Suse likes KDE, Redhat likes Gnome, etc.) As we can see over and over again, people don't buy the superior product, they buy the product they have been convinced into buying.
As an analogy, I offer this from my own life: I was in the store buying groceries. I needed peanut butter for sandwiches. I've been a lifelong JIF user, but JIF is kind of expensive. So I'm checking out the generics and store brands. All a bit cheaper, but not too much, and frankly, I don't know anything about them. They could taste better than JIF, but I don't want to be stuck with an open jar of crap peanut butter if it doesn't. The price isn't much different, so I suck it up and buy the JIF; I just don't want to run the risk of being disappointed. In my mind, JIF is the gold standard and until I am convinced otherwise *by external forces* I am probably not going to change. It's not that I don't want to, it's just that I am afraid of being disappointed and out some $ for a failed experiment.
Thus, I believe we need something, someone, to create that buzz that will usurp the idea that Windows is the good, safe choice. If I can get my grandma to ask for a pc and know that she wants Linux, and not Windows, then I think we will truly have succeeded.
The WTL proves that there are some *very* good people at MS: They basically took MFC and redesigned it around templates and the STL; no MFC runtime dlls and even VC6 produces tiny exes that run wickedly fast. They even wrote a VC6/7 addin so you can use the project wizard to create a boilerplate project as a starting point. And to top it off, the two developers were (are?) very active on the ATL mailing list and responded to questions/complaints/bug reports. Way to go guys!
... has the same interface. Go figure.
That all said, Microsoft did practically everything they could to squash this project; it was originally installed as an "oh, by the way" in their SDK package (and not enabled by default...you had to go hunting for it) and then they removed it entirely. Official communcations always seemed to revolve around the message that "We acknowledge that it exists, we would prefer you not use it, and no we're not going to tell you why." I guess they had some fear that everyone was going to dump the millions of lines of existing MFC code for much better written code that
Trust me from one who has used this library in apps that reached production: this is a true gem amist all the cubic zirconia that MS puts out.
This is total tin-foil-hat speculation, but hear me out:
Considering the enormous amount of resources Microsoft is going to have to keep pouring into Windows development, I can't imagine they are going to want to keep spending the $$$ on maintaining multiple versions for various CPU types, now down to basically two: x86 and Itanium. They saw that NT on Mips, PowerPC and that NEC chip (forget what it's called) were lousy sellers, and you've got to imagine that though NT on the Alpha was probably going to be a big seller, the implosion of DEC pretty much put the lid on its future and Microsoft decided quickly it wasn't going to be spending the time and resources to keep up an Alpha port, no matter how good it probably was.
Even though Intel says otherwise, you have to think that they see the Itanium as not the future for Windows; people don't really trust Windows to operate well on the x86, why should they think it'll run better on the Itanium? I predict that the server version of Longhorn will be an x86-only product (of course, probably *requiring* 2 or more of those as-yet produced multi-core cpus).
So let's presume that Windows won't run on the Itanium in the future. What's left? Solaris, AIX, or Irix on the Itanum? Nope (3rd paragraph) That leaves only one OS that already runs on the chip, our friend the penguin.
So what will Intel do with it? Seems like the future points to a processor that runs Linux (probably NetBSD too) and little else. If Intel doesn't can the thing altogether (which is unlikely given the huge resources spent, and the serious black eye it would give them), then presumably we would have a cpu to call our own: a machine built with nothing but Linux in mind. Combine this hardware with all the software that's a little more than a recompile away, and you'd have a pretty sweet setup to counter the Windows juggernaut.
Actually, I do care, but I think I can see why there isn't much focus on either of these today. We're surrounded by devices that make use of math and science, but abstracted away to the point where it's completely invisible (read: computers). Computers have become synonymous with "Windows", "browsers", watching movies, playing games, etc. To the Slashdot crowd, all of these things obviously require knowledge of math and science to be able to create these programs, but the one-click interface of most of these programs require practically no knowledge of, well, anything.
.sig for rent.
I think about how my daughter is growing up; she always wants to see the back of the camera because she thinks she'll see the picture I just took of her immediately. Everywhere I look, we've developed a one-click or single button solution to the "problem" because we want it now Now NOW! And when it's all abstracted away, you really have no idea how it works, and because you're so used to it, you don't really care.
So I can see that our zeal for instant gratification, ease-of-use, and a rather arrogant demand that everything be, above all else, as simple as possible will lead more and more to think of math and science as "the hard stuff" that they are simply incapable of dealing with because it requires thought and concentration, with no "reward" being given at the end, and no understanding of how it affects their daily lives. It's like schools that teach latin with the presumption that if you know how languages are put together, you will learn the derivations easier. Most simply complain that latin isn't a good language to impress chicks with, and study something else instead.
This
You are in luck...I was able to get 10g running on a stock Suse 9 installation...all I downloaded was the boot.iso and did the installation via ftp from a mirror.
The instructions on getting Oracle running on Linux are on the OTN site (something along the lines of "Installing on Linux"...sorry, don't have the time right now to find the exact URL). Just follow the instructions and you're set, presuming that the box has at least 512meg of ram (it affects kernel parameters which Oracle wants set).
The only real trick is when you actually get to the Java part of the setup...there is a flag you have to pass to the installer to ignore the supported version check. If you pass -? to the installer program it'll be there...just pass that and it will install.
I've had 10g up and running for a few weeks now and have had no problems...it's not a rocket (my machine only has 512meg of ram), but certainly usable for development and has even had a couple of other users testing it.
Good luck...it works. I'm looking forward to getting my copy of 9.1 so I can see if the speed increases they report in the kernel will have any effect on Oracle.
Wanda
What I find amusing is that "No maintenance, no technical support" is worthy of the limited amount of text, instead of being omitted entirely and buried in the eula. They almost make it sound like a feature:
And now with No Maintenance! And even No Technical Support!
The first time I saw Soul Calibur I literally missed my mouth and spilled my drink a la Airplane! Crazy Taxi was an early and more gentle GTA. I left Ecco on the screen as background "art" at a party that had some kids at it...they went nuts moving the dolphin around the screen (and the graphics caused a lot of the adults to beg for turns too). Playing Shenmue inspired me enough to take a trip to Japan (though I didn't get to the area Shenmue takes place in).
This console was my introduction to Lik-Sang as I bought the ethernet adapter, two DC-2-PS2 adapters so I could use a mouse/keyboard with the webbrowser. Hell, I even bought the soundtrack to Jet Set Radio.
I could go on and on about great moments I've had with this console. It "felt" right...I never had a problem with the controller as some people did, and even played Tetris on the memory unit (thanks Marcus!)
To me, this was the first console that got everything right; great graphics, great controller (to me), and an online community through the console itself (modem then ethernet). Though I have an Xbox, it feels like a bit of a warmed over Dreamcast and I still think the graphics on the DC are better than the PS2 (my opinion based on games I've seen).
Okay, I'm sure there's a valid reason, probably legal, but to make porting easier to another OS, like Linux, why hasn't anyone tried to port the Win32 APIs? Put them on top of a windowing toolkit (or just use the raw XLib) and make all the appropriate changes under the hood, so to speak. Mono's doing something similar with the whole .NET libraries, but presumably even .NET on Windows is making Win32 API calls underneith all that wrapping.
:) ).
I'm not saying this is easy, or even necessarily desirable (see: slipperly slope) but since Microsoft has tried making it "easy" to port apps to Windows, why hasn't anyone turned around and make it easy to port Windows apps to Linux (we'll leave MFC & ATL for later.
I have, since 1984, written all my school papers, letters to friends, etc., on a computer, starting with WordStar 3.3. I thought I had a foolproof method of preserving them...every time I got a new machine, I just copied all the documents over to the new machine (first using laplink cables, later ethernet). Now, 20 years(!) later, I have my documents on my shiny new dual G5. And guess what! I can read maybe a 4th of them as no program understands the WS format, later WP4, WP5, etc. etc. Sure I have all the documents, but the all I can show off to my grandkids is a random collection of bytes that was "Why are oceans necessary?" from 1984.
But it doesn't end there...people talk about magnetic tape as being a viable medium; I have plenty of tapes that don't play right because they were recorded with a different speed recorder than what is available today. My little piano recital sounds like a Keystone Kops tune on acid.
And how about all those betamax tapes I've got of me playing tackle football when I was 11 years old? Still got 'em. Wish I still had a Betamax to play 'em on.
And then, I have a bajillion slides, taken by me and my family, on Kodachrome25. Stuff lasts forever. They've faded a bit, but I can still view them if I hold them up to the light. Wish I could show 'em to my grandkids but I don't have a slide projector. I suppose I could scan them into the computer......
You sound hungry, so I'll step up.
You might feel safe in thinking that Java's sandbox protects from this kind of thing, but don't be too sure...what is a JVM written in? Those very unsafe languages you talk about.
The fact is, at some point, *somebody's* gotta manipulate the memory directly; somebody's gotta keep track of what's been alloc'ed and what's been free'd, and whether that's at an application level, or at the OS level, you're going to find the very languages that you deem as unsafe.
Abstract away and bytecode your way to a false sense of security, and you've done nothing but put up another curtain to lull you into a false sense of security. The fact is, this kind of thing is *always* going to be with us, whether intentional or by accident (Microsoft's whole KB).
Think of it this way: cars are too dangerous for people to use because there's no way to stop them from running into the ditch. So we're going to develop a system by which everyone's car runs on rails, with all the latest safety systems to make sure everything is safe and secure and drive the way we think they should drive. Now you don't have to trust your own abilities, just us. And we know what's right, right?