The SDK etc. is all free, as are quite a lot of the testing tools. You can pay for higher levels of access, but that's really not necessary. If you want to get Symbian Signed certification, which removes the "This application is not signed" warnings on install, that costs money too.
GIMP is zero-cost software, why would anyone expect it to rival a $600 piece of software? I think the Free software community should really tone down the "replace all non-free software" rhetoric a bit (and yes, I am a free software developer). In general, people buy software because the value it gives them is greater than its cost. If Photoshop saves the user a few hours a week over a free alternative, it pays for itself very quickly. And, in general, the commercial alternative will, because they can afford to hire UI designers and product teams.
I gave up playing BF2 a while back because of all the problems I had with it: crashes, poor performance, lag, bugs. When I heard about the paid expansions I vowed to never go back to the game again. Wizards of the Coast etc. have been getting away with that kind of crap for years, I won't support it in video games as well.
In five years of console gaming I haven't had to suffer a single bug - why should PC gamers put up with it?
Working with many products of the British state comprehensive education system at uni, I was frequently reminded of that scene in Brave New World:
"The - Nile - is - the - longest - river - in - Africa - and - the - second - in - length - of - all - the - rivers - of - the - globe..." "Well now, which is the longest river in Africa?" The eyes are blank. "I don't know."
There were all these students who could get great marks on problem sheets and exams, but once you asked them something that actually required thought, they were stumped.
If you're a Mac user who thinks MS Office for Mac is horrible, Openoffice will probably give you a heart attack. It's user-unfriendly even by Linux desktop standards.
This isn't really that surprising. Disgusting, yes, surprising, no. It's mostly poor education: people don't actually understand evolution. Hell, I know many sensible Britons whose understanding of basic physics is pre-Newtonian. Look at the number of homeopathy or Reki massage centres and other crap in this country.
That said, I am always a little suspicious of these polls, because there is a selection bias inherent in the type of people who actually bother to stop and answer the question.
I just bought the boxed set of series 1 and am currently 3/4 of the way through. I thought the pilot was excellent and the first few episodes of the series were good, but it definitely starts to tail off after that. It's still not bad - better than drek like SG1, Enterprise and B5 - but it could do with improvement in the scripts, a lot less of Gaius's Cylon woman and for them to stop Adama whispering the whole time.
But MAC addresses can be spoofed too - just get the MAC of a trusted machine, unplug it from the network and plug in a laptop with the other machine's MAC set.
I'm not a sysadmin, but I never got how NFS prevented a user plugging a computer which they have root access on into the network, mounting a common NFS mount, "su"ing to somebody's UID and then deleting their files. AFAICS, SMB handles this by requiring credentials of some kind from the computer. Can anyone explain this?
I doubt many people really do care that much about HDTV. I'm writing from PAL-land, but here I can point out to people terrible encoding errors on digital TV and they just can't see them.
I can't see Blu-ray/HDDVD catching on very quickly at all unless Sony can come up with some absolute killer feature. DVD was a big leap from VHS and offered very clear advantages: no rewinding, no tape jamming, smaller and simpler form factor, more reliable, doesn't wear out and last (and least) better image quality.
It's like Joel Spolsky says: "Don't start a business if you can't explain what pain it solves, for whom, and why your product will eliminate this pain". I can't see what pain Bluray is going to solve.
I didn't really mean 'yet' from a techonological progress perspective, just that games are still fairly young, in the same way that I doubt anyone would call the early films of moving trains 'art'. (Cue Annie Hall-style subtitles)
I definitely agree about realism in graphics: a consistent and attractive art style is far better than dull realistic graphics. I think Zelda:WindWaker looks much better than many more graphically advances titles.
I don't think the perceived quality of modern housing is the whole issue. Take the average Victorian terrace, they aren't designed for modern living. The rooms are divded up too small so they feel cramped, sound insulation is poor, they often suffer with poorly constructed extensions added over the years and storage is poorly designed. Yet around here they are still going for £130k-£150k - people love them because they have 'character'. Every TV property programme waffles on about how wonderful period features like fireplaces, sash windows, belfast sinks etc. are, despite the fact that they are mostly impractical and have been replaced with better alternatives.
Does anyone really know what art is? Architecture can be art or it can be a 'service', bricklaying can be art or housebuilding. The reason there's so much controversy over this point is that even the terms themselves aren't clearly defined. Personally, I think there is clearly artistry involved in the design of some great games (Mario64, RE:4 for example) and a great game can have an emotional impact in the same way as a movie or book. I'm not sure if I would go so far as to describe games as art yet, though.
There is a some decent new housing out there, but I agree that a lot of it was thrown up quickly without thought in order to cash in on the house price boom. I know of a nearby development of three to four bedroom family houses that are built so close together they have any garden, just a car port. What family with kids wants to buy a house with no garden?
But then, I'm typing this from a poorly made, badly laid out, cold, draughty Victorian terrace with a large garden that's going to cost ~£20k to make as habitable as my previous house, built in the 80s.
Engine size is not generally an indicator of efficiency, g CO2/mile is. Most people who care look that number up before buying a car. 1.9L VW TDIs, for example, are more efficient than the 1.2L petrol version while being significantly more powerful.
The UK has a lot of old houses (Victorian/Edwardian) and there is a snobbery against new houses and an obsession with 'period' features of old houses like fireplaces and sash windows. I don't get it, personally, but I think it is at least partly due to the crap 'new' housing built during the 1960's.
Personally, I wouldn't put GTA3 anywhere near RE:4 in a best games list. I bought the GTA3 and Vice city boxed set. After a coupld of hours of GTA3, I switched to VC thinking "maybe the second one is more interesting". But then I drifted away from GTA3:VC after a couple of hours because it was also basically dull - no involvement, no excitement. It was like they spent all their time creating this huge world to run around in, but forgot to write a game as well. RE:4 kept me playing long into the night.
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You've obviously never used an SE p910 - the UI is pretty poor. It's meant to be a flagship Symbian UIQ phone, as well.
The SDK etc. is all free, as are quite a lot of the testing tools. You can pay for higher levels of access, but that's really not necessary. If you want to get Symbian Signed certification, which removes the "This application is not signed" warnings on install, that costs money too.
"Firefox can't find the server at cinepaint.movieeditor.com"
GIMP is zero-cost software, why would anyone expect it to rival a $600 piece of software? I think the Free software community should really tone down the "replace all non-free software" rhetoric a bit (and yes, I am a free software developer). In general, people buy software because the value it gives them is greater than its cost. If Photoshop saves the user a few hours a week over a free alternative, it pays for itself very quickly. And, in general, the commercial alternative will, because they can afford to hire UI designers and product teams.
I gave up playing BF2 a while back because of all the problems I had with it: crashes, poor performance, lag, bugs. When I heard about the paid expansions I vowed to never go back to the game again. Wizards of the Coast etc. have been getting away with that kind of crap for years, I won't support it in video games as well.
In five years of console gaming I haven't had to suffer a single bug - why should PC gamers put up with it?
Most modern TVs store that data in non-volatile storage these days, I think.
Working with many products of the British state comprehensive education system at uni, I was frequently reminded of that scene in Brave New World:
..." "Well now, which is the longest river in Africa?" The eyes are blank. "I don't know."
"The - Nile - is - the - longest - river - in - Africa - and - the - second - in - length - of - all - the - rivers - of - the - globe
There were all these students who could get great marks on problem sheets and exams, but once you asked them something that actually required thought, they were stumped.
If you're a Mac user who thinks MS Office for Mac is horrible, Openoffice will probably give you a heart attack. It's user-unfriendly even by Linux desktop standards.
Wow, 544 characters in a post and no full stop.
This isn't really that surprising. Disgusting, yes, surprising, no. It's mostly poor education: people don't actually understand evolution. Hell, I know many sensible Britons whose understanding of basic physics is pre-Newtonian. Look at the number of homeopathy or Reki massage centres and other crap in this country.
That said, I am always a little suspicious of these polls, because there is a selection bias inherent in the type of people who actually bother to stop and answer the question.
I just bought the boxed set of series 1 and am currently 3/4 of the way through. I thought the pilot was excellent and the first few episodes of the series were good, but it definitely starts to tail off after that. It's still not bad - better than drek like SG1, Enterprise and B5 - but it could do with improvement in the scripts, a lot less of Gaius's Cylon woman and for them to stop Adama whispering the whole time.
But MAC addresses can be spoofed too - just get the MAC of a trusted machine, unplug it from the network and plug in a laptop with the other machine's MAC set.
That doesn't help when the root user creates a user account with the correct UID and then logs in as that user, does it?
I'm not a sysadmin, but I never got how NFS prevented a user plugging a computer which they have root access on into the network, mounting a common NFS mount, "su"ing to somebody's UID and then deleting their files. AFAICS, SMB handles this by requiring credentials of some kind from the computer. Can anyone explain this?
I doubt many people really do care that much about HDTV. I'm writing from PAL-land, but here I can point out to people terrible encoding errors on digital TV and they just can't see them.
I can't see Blu-ray/HDDVD catching on very quickly at all unless Sony can come up with some absolute killer feature. DVD was a big leap from VHS and offered very clear advantages: no rewinding, no tape jamming, smaller and simpler form factor, more reliable, doesn't wear out and last (and least) better image quality.
It's like Joel Spolsky says: "Don't start a business if you can't explain what pain it solves, for whom, and why your product will eliminate this pain". I can't see what pain Bluray is going to solve.
Around $550-$600 according to Froogle. Or, in more sensible units: 6 Gamecubes, 4 PS2s or 1.5 XBox 360s.
I didn't really mean 'yet' from a techonological progress perspective, just that games are still fairly young, in the same way that I doubt anyone would call the early films of moving trains 'art'. (Cue Annie Hall-style subtitles)
I definitely agree about realism in graphics: a consistent and attractive art style is far better than dull realistic graphics. I think Zelda:WindWaker looks much better than many more graphically advances titles.
I don't think the perceived quality of modern housing is the whole issue. Take the average Victorian terrace, they aren't designed for modern living. The rooms are divded up too small so they feel cramped, sound insulation is poor, they often suffer with poorly constructed extensions added over the years and storage is poorly designed. Yet around here they are still going for £130k-£150k - people love them because they have 'character'.
Every TV property programme waffles on about how wonderful period features like fireplaces, sash windows, belfast sinks etc. are, despite the fact that they are mostly impractical and have been replaced with better alternatives.
Does anyone really know what art is? Architecture can be art or it can be a 'service', bricklaying can be art or housebuilding. The reason there's so much controversy over this point is that even the terms themselves aren't clearly defined.
Personally, I think there is clearly artistry involved in the design of some great games (Mario64, RE:4 for example) and a great game can have an emotional impact in the same way as a movie or book. I'm not sure if I would go so far as to describe games as art yet, though.
There is a some decent new housing out there, but I agree that a lot of it was thrown up quickly without thought in order to cash in on the house price boom. I know of a nearby development of three to four bedroom family houses that are built so close together they have any garden, just a car port. What family with kids wants to buy a house with no garden?
But then, I'm typing this from a poorly made, badly laid out, cold, draughty Victorian terrace with a large garden that's going to cost ~£20k to make as habitable as my previous house, built in the 80s.
Engine size is not generally an indicator of efficiency, g CO2/mile is. Most people who care look that number up before buying a car. 1.9L VW TDIs, for example, are more efficient than the 1.2L petrol version while being significantly more powerful.
The UK has a lot of old houses (Victorian/Edwardian) and there is a snobbery against new houses and an obsession with 'period' features of old houses like fireplaces and sash windows. I don't get it, personally, but I think it is at least partly due to the crap 'new' housing built during the 1960's.
So that by the time you have got up off the couch and reached the DVD player, the tray is already ejected.
Personally, I wouldn't put GTA3 anywhere near RE:4 in a best games list. I bought the GTA3 and Vice city boxed set. After a coupld of hours of GTA3, I switched to VC thinking "maybe the second one is more interesting". But then I drifted away from GTA3:VC after a couple of hours because it was also basically dull - no involvement, no excitement. It was like they spent all their time creating this huge world to run around in, but forgot to write a game as well. RE:4 kept me playing long into the night.