I didn't see anything in the.PDF about armoring the elevator against Vermicious Knids. It's just that sort of oversight that will be their undoing. Mark my words. Or Roald Dahl's.
My first Linux install was RedHat 5.0, and I worked my way up to 6.2. I started tinkering with web, email & ftp servers, and found that RedHat's defaults (sendmail and wuftp) were among the more insecure choices.
I tried RH 7.0, but they shipped with an unofficial version of gcc (which broke my OS project) and trying to replace sendmail with postfix was a an absolute bitch.
I decided to give Mandrake a try, and I have been very pleased. IMHO, no linux distro is perfect, but Mandrake just does more things right than anybody else. And they don't insist on being so bleeding edge that they fsck things up. Bundling a useful version of gcc, postfix for email, and proftp for file transfer were exactly the bullet points I was looking for at the time. It was a good switch.
The review states that NVidia has vendors lined up. Yeah, right. Who are they, and why aren't they listed in plain view on the website? The problem with the GeForce2 Go right now is that nobody bloody sells it. Toshiba, yeah, but with dinky 1024 x 768 screens. Dell, yeah, but they're, like, Dell, and their hardware reliability is questionable. I acknowledge that high performance mobile graphics is a small niche market, but it's unfortunate to have so few choices when shopping for this type of device. And it's only gonna be worse for the next gen graphics chipset.
Now, if IBM would offer me a PIII-M laptop with 1600 x 1200 display and a GeForce 2 Go (or one of these NV17M chips), I would happily pay for it. It would be very beneficial to me.
Everybody debates back and forth about how close OGG and MP3 files may or may not be in terms of perceived audio quality, but nobody really seems to address performance issues.
I work for a game company where we have used MP3 in several recent titles. I suggested that we consider using Ogg Vorbis in the future, and did some subsequent playback tests. For my "testbed" I used Winamp to play both MP3s and OGGs created at different bitrates from the same song (Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls, for the curious). On an otherwise unloaded system (Win2K, P3 550MHz, SBLive! Value), MP3 playback used 1-4% of the CPU time, and OGG files used 10-15% (according to the all-knowing taskmgr.exe:-)
In an environment (such as games) where the consumer's low-end machine is often pushed to the limit, an extra 10% CPU usage is too much to dedicate to music playback.
Disclaimer: I realize that this testing method is not exact, but it is an off-the-shelf comparison, and I furthermore realize that performance doesn't matter to folks who aren't utilizing 100% of their system or are using a dedicated playback device. You can flame all you want, but in many situations, OGG may sound great, but it is not yet ready for prime time.
Isn't the Chinese government in the process of deploying Linux on a ton of PCs? Although from what I've seen and heard WRT the availability of pirated Micro$oft applications there, TCO is not really the issue...
Which part do you envy? I write games for a living. I generally work 20-40% more hours than my friends in "corporate" programming jobs, and my salary is about 20% less... The company that I worked for most recently just folded. This is the fifth game company that I've worked for in the last 6 years that's gone under. Now, it's entirely possible that I'm just really good at picking shitty companies to work for, but I don't think my experiences are all that unusual. So for all of you that wistfully dream of jobs making games... don't stop dreaming--but do go into it with both eyes open.
Game programming is the most rewarding job I've done, and I have no plans to leave the industry. But it's also the most volatile and stressful environment I've ever been in.
I realize this is off-topic. Sorry.
And, sigh, I'd love to be working for Blizzard, too.;-)
And what about the music I do own? Maybe I don't wanna rip all my CDs when someone else has gone to the trouble. Maybe I have cassettes or vinyl that I don't have the equipment to convert to MP3. Who the heck are you to assume I and everyone else like me is a h4x0r-p1r4t3?
Why is it ok for the Industry to dictate where, when, and how I use music I have purchased? (Not leased, not licensed, PURCHASED!)
A company I worked for a few years ago got hit with the 'hemp' virus (despite having some anti-virus software installed, I guess we just weren't practicing safe software).
Anyway, it took a week to recover. We lost a week of development (probably the worst thing for an already tight console game schedule) and discovered that a lot of our backups were corrupted. Luckily we were able to find a fairly recent viable one and didn't lose a lot of code or artwork. But we did have to reformat and reinstall every system we had.
So let's see, we had 6 engineers @ $50k/yr. (yeah yeah, we were all entry-level), 10 artists @ 40k/yr., one IT person, let's say 70k. That's about 6000 + 8000 + 1400 = $15,000 in the weekly salaries of the grunts alone. Not to mention building rent or management overhead, and loss of morale.
On a personal note, I lost 2 GB of MP3 files. It was not a tragedy, since I do own CDs for most of my music and could re-encode them, but what a pain! From an engineer's point of view, however, I have to say that it was fascinating to watch the little bugger do its work and change its "gotcha!" message every few hours...
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I didn't see anything in the .PDF about armoring the elevator against Vermicious Knids. It's just that sort of oversight that will be their undoing. Mark my words. Or Roald Dahl's.
My first Linux install was RedHat 5.0, and I worked my way up to 6.2. I started tinkering with web, email & ftp servers, and found that RedHat's defaults (sendmail and wuftp) were among the more insecure choices.
I tried RH 7.0, but they shipped with an unofficial version of gcc (which broke my OS project) and trying to replace sendmail with postfix was a an absolute bitch.
I decided to give Mandrake a try, and I have been very pleased. IMHO, no linux distro is perfect, but Mandrake just does more things right than anybody else. And they don't insist on being so bleeding edge that they fsck things up. Bundling a useful version of gcc, postfix for email, and proftp for file transfer were exactly the bullet points I was looking for at the time. It was a good switch.
The review states that NVidia has vendors lined up. Yeah, right. Who are they, and why aren't they listed in plain view on the website? The problem with the GeForce2 Go right now is that nobody bloody sells it. Toshiba, yeah, but with dinky 1024 x 768 screens. Dell, yeah, but they're, like, Dell, and their hardware reliability is questionable. I acknowledge that high performance mobile graphics is a small niche market, but it's unfortunate to have so few choices when shopping for this type of device. And it's only gonna be worse for the next gen graphics chipset.
Now, if IBM would offer me a PIII-M laptop with 1600 x 1200 display and a GeForce 2 Go (or one of these NV17M chips), I would happily pay for it. It would be very beneficial to me.
sigh...
Phone: "Are you looking for hot [chicks|sex|pussy|love]?"
Wife: "um... what was that, honey?"
Phone: "Get your University diploma!"
Wife: "What, I'm not good enough the way I am?"
Phone: "Get out of debt now!"
Wife: "Okay, you know what? That's your birthday present on the Credit card, bucko. That's it. I'm leaving..."
Everybody debates back and forth about how close OGG and MP3 files may or may not be in terms of perceived audio quality, but nobody really seems to address performance issues.
:-)
I work for a game company where we have used MP3 in several recent titles. I suggested that we consider using Ogg Vorbis in the future, and did some subsequent playback tests. For my "testbed" I used Winamp to play both MP3s and OGGs created at different bitrates from the same song (Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls, for the curious). On an otherwise unloaded system (Win2K, P3 550MHz, SBLive! Value), MP3 playback used 1-4% of the CPU time, and OGG files used 10-15% (according to the all-knowing taskmgr.exe
In an environment (such as games) where the consumer's low-end machine is often pushed to the limit, an extra 10% CPU usage is too much to dedicate to music playback.
Disclaimer: I realize that this testing method is not exact, but it is an off-the-shelf comparison, and I furthermore realize that performance doesn't matter to folks who aren't utilizing 100% of their system or are using a dedicated playback device. You can flame all you want, but in many situations, OGG may sound great, but it is not yet ready for prime time.
Well... there's China
Isn't the Chinese government in the process of deploying Linux on a ton of PCs? Although from what I've seen and heard WRT the availability of pirated Micro$oft applications there, TCO is not really the issue...
Windows == $free, Linux == $free
Game programming is the most rewarding job I've done, and I have no plans to leave the industry. But it's also the most volatile and stressful environment I've ever been in.
I realize this is off-topic. Sorry.
And, sigh, I'd love to be working for Blizzard, too. ;-)
What it really proves is that Monty Python's material ain't as original as we'd believed. oh well...
so there!
Anyway, it took a week to recover. We lost a week of development (probably the worst thing for an already tight console game schedule) and discovered that a lot of our backups were corrupted. Luckily we were able to find a fairly recent viable one and didn't lose a lot of code or artwork. But we did have to reformat and reinstall every system we had.
So let's see, we had 6 engineers @ $50k/yr. (yeah yeah, we were all entry-level), 10 artists @ 40k/yr., one IT person, let's say 70k. That's about 6000 + 8000 + 1400 = $15,000 in the weekly salaries of the grunts alone. Not to mention building rent or management overhead, and loss of morale.
On a personal note, I lost 2 GB of MP3 files. It was not a tragedy, since I do own CDs for most of my music and could re-encode them, but what a pain! From an engineer's point of view, however, I have to say that it was fascinating to watch the little bugger do its work and change its "gotcha!" message every few hours...