I used to build family and company PCs. I stopped when I realized they all expect lifetime service for free. Now my mom has a Dell, my sister has an Eee, my company has Macs, and they all have reasonably competent support organizations that aren't me.
I imagine weapon switching working along the lines of the scrolling seen in the video. You use one hand to aim and shoot and the other for "swishing" through your weapons. Activating the sniper scope could be your arms-in-a-different-position scenario.
It's the movement I'm tripping over. Would you lean to strafe? Twist at the hip to turn? Simply nod your head to change view angle? Voice commands would be good too, for things that are trivial with mouse & keyboard but would be ridiculously difficult with full-body motion. "180!" "Rocket jump!"
Mod parent up. This is exactly what's needed - especially for the smaller programming teams. More games period (and therefore, statistically, more good games) can be made if the team can focus on the game itself, and just plug in graphics, physics, AI, etc APIs.
Granted, it's sortta been done. Things like DMM, Euphoria... they're getting closer for sure, but wow, TFU was disappointing.
Re:Are they better, or just different?
on
eSATA Connectors
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· Score: 1
At some point, I set up a fileserver with what was technically SATA drives in an external enclosure. However, the backplanes involved converted the four SATA signals into a single Infiniband connector, which uses screws like a VGA connector. Disgustingly fast, and we've never been worried that anything's going to come undone.
I think, perhaps, you miss the point of TFA. Guilt-schmuilt! That negative financial impact now is positive later, as an indirect result of the initial pirating.
That questionable copy of Win2k I put on my mom's homebrew while I was living there? Now a legit copy of WinXP that came with her new Dell. That questionable copy of CS2 sitting in my taskbar? The microsecond I start making money with it, Adobe makes their guaranteed sale. (although apparently the CS2 license allows a copy at work and home, and since I'm the only one on a PC...)
You do have a very valid point. If I didn't have the desire to pirate and the means to pirate, my mom would be using a Mac, or possibly Linux. I would be using Linux, the Gimp, Kontour, and Scribus, complaining loudly that it's not Adobe the whole time. In both those situations, "I wouldn't have paid for it anyway." And in both cases, the companies actually benefit in the long run.
The thing about surveys is that you can't ask 350 million people the question. So you check with 500-2000 or so and extrapolate. That 24% figure probably comes from a higher-income demographic than the 5% figure. And your link is as accessible to me as the GP's lack thereof, since I ignore registration sites on principle.
For instance. Given everyone I know personally, exactly one has usable HDTV (less than 1% in that particular demographic) and he makes something like $130k at Intel. A couple others have an HDTV set, but one's used as a computer screen for a badly sighted person, and the other's only hooked up to an SD DVD player.
So to me, the 24% sounds like the weird figure. Here's a site with a 16% figure from this October. No registration required. Still seems high to me...
Ok, so here's where my NES geek cred comes into play.
The very first Final Fantasy was Square's last game. They were almost broke, and had pretty much exactly enough money to produce one more title. Lo and behold, it boomed! They were immediately able to bring themselves back out of debt and start making new titles. In homage to the title that brought them out of their slump, pretty much every subsequent game has been a "sequel" of the original Final Fantasy, despite huge differences in plot, location, and characters.
I realise your post was probably just a joke, but hey, I had the info.
8% profit over two years? Feh. Over here (bay area, California) you could easily make $100,000 a year just by buying and selling houses. I have a friend who owned an $800k house in Fremont for three months and made $60k off the sale.
Your 4200sf rancher on a hill would probably appraise to $1.8m and sell for $2.1m here. Of course, now I'm curious as to your values on it...
Hehe, I remember when I was allowed only a fraction of our 1GB drive, so I made a batch file that would unzip a game before running it, and update-zip back up afterwards.
City of Heroes/Villians does this great. I've got two 19" LCDs, and when in CoH/V, as long as I'm not mouse-looking, zipping over to the other screen for anything is super-easy. The graphics blip for a moment, but if you're paying attention to multiple apps anyway, that should be fine.
Also, IIRC, every Blizzard game I've played pulls off screen-switching just fine. The caveat is that they basically pause, but continue to use every free cycle while task-switched out.
"but if you're a graphics artist in a Mac only shop, your IT department will have to buy you Photoshop for Intel Mac, whenever your machine gets upgraded"
It's funny. I work in a printshop, and we have to upgrade the minute something new comes out anyway, since someone out there always has the newest version. Our main production machines have CS, CS2, AI8/10, PS6/7, PM6/7, InD2, and QXP4/6 all installed at the same time. Just sayin'.
Apple's already familiar with this marketing technique, actually. They used it on the iPod Shuffle. You see, not being able to see what's playing or to choose the song you hear next isn't a bad thing. It's a feature!
IIRC, (which I may not, Google doesn't seem to be supporting my case) at some point Motorola couldn't make enough G3s for iBooks, and Apple had IBM make a whole bunch. I suppose it's possible that they were really just Motorola-designed chips manufactured at an IBM plant, but I'm fairly certain they were IBM chips for a while.
A good quarter of the building appears to be completely stationary, in addition to the room in the center. The stairs, plumbing, and possibly an elevator are all in the rectangular section off the corner.
Ok, this is just one of those things that bothers my proofreading brain. What exactly is "two times less" supposed to mean? Literally, it means that they should be shoving as much power back into the grid as these comparable systems. 'Cause "one time less" would be zero.
Try "half as much." Damn, I hate grammar nazis like me.
Warning: this became much more of a rant than I expected.
To be honest, I know where you're coming from there. I never thought I'd get a Mac for a desktop. It's just that much cheaper to keep an x86 box updated.
That said, your offhand reference to the free Linux install doesn't hold water with probably 90% (statistic pulled out of my a**) of computer users. I will grant you that Linux distros have come a long way towards some small chance of hitting the average desktop. On the other hand, I adore something Linux finds difficult: Adobe products. Say what you like about Killustrator and the Gimp; I agree that what you can do with their Adobe gene-donors you can do with Linux tools. But it takes me half the time in the native apps. Time is money. In the long run, Photoshop is cheaper than the Gimp.
So I ended up using Windows. Which brought me to the virus-laden, popup-ridden, spyware-infested cesspool that is Windows. Now that loses me time, and therefore money. I also like the flexibility Unix variants (which notably have very few of the problems above) to run GPL and other open-source programs.
So. I want Adobe. I want lack of Windows-style security risks. I want GPL flexibility. I'd like to save money, but those three things will increase productivity enough to justify a certain amount of increased initial hardware cost. What combines all that? You guessed it - a Mac. Or, to be pedantic, a Linux PC with Wine - 'cept I'd rather be using my computer than configuring it. And like I said, time is money.
So to come full circle, your claim that a Mac is too expensive, at least for what I (and most of the print design world) use computers for, falls a little flat. The saved hours, days, weeks even, of production nets more income. Simple.
It occurs to me that though you didn't specify a use for your $600 Linux box, it's more likely a weblication development tool than a prepress tool. Thumbs up to you - that makes complete sense. I wouldn't get a BMW to haul cargo or pull trailers. But you probably wouldn't get a pickup truck to commute quickly, comfortably, and stylishly. Fitting the tool for the task, you see.
Anyway, that got a lot longer than anticipated. Thanks for watching.
Anyone with 350 bucks can have a Sempron 2800+ Compaq with 256 megs of RAM. I would have used pricewatch, but I wanted a quick example.
I'm not quite sure what you were getting at there. Except that perhaps/. readers have an obsession with making things harder for themselves in the pursuit of knowledge. But I do think I just effectively doubled the RAM and CPU on your linux media workstation, no?
Well, there was this racing game at some point that would toss your rear-view on the second screen. And, uhh, some game where you played a world-class thief, and you'd set up recon devices, and you could switch between them with the second screen.
But, I would imagine that since I don't remember the names of these games, that they must not have been all that great, huh?
I've kind of gotten used to having the time needed to Distill PostScript files be a fairly standard relation to the size of said PostScript file, and then the PDF is smaller by an amount depending on the amount of text vs. images.
This file totally blows that thoery out of the water. Of course, there are other fractal ps files somewhere in this thread that get bigger, but this file was so small for the end result that I just had to comment...
Slashdot Mirror
I used to build family and company PCs. I stopped when I realized they all expect lifetime service for free. Now my mom has a Dell, my sister has an Eee, my company has Macs, and they all have reasonably competent support organizations that aren't me.
I still roll my own though.
I imagine weapon switching working along the lines of the scrolling seen in the video. You use one hand to aim and shoot and the other for "swishing" through your weapons. Activating the sniper scope could be your arms-in-a-different-position scenario.
It's the movement I'm tripping over. Would you lean to strafe? Twist at the hip to turn? Simply nod your head to change view angle? Voice commands would be good too, for things that are trivial with mouse & keyboard but would be ridiculously difficult with full-body motion. "180!" "Rocket jump!"
Damn. Now I'm looking forward to a Natal FPS.
I honestly haven't seen a 60hz LCD for years. My four-year-old Samsungs are running at 75hz, and current nicer TVs run at 120hz.
/takes off pedantic hat
Mod parent up. This is exactly what's needed - especially for the smaller programming teams. More games period (and therefore, statistically, more good games) can be made if the team can focus on the game itself, and just plug in graphics, physics, AI, etc APIs.
Granted, it's sortta been done. Things like DMM, Euphoria... they're getting closer for sure, but wow, TFU was disappointing.
Did you boot an install, or just a livecd? I was under the impression that livecds generate a RAMdisk for things like /home and /tmp
Re your sig: wouldn't Solaris be the Sun?
At some point, I set up a fileserver with what was technically SATA drives in an external enclosure. However, the backplanes involved converted the four SATA signals into a single Infiniband connector, which uses screws like a VGA connector. Disgustingly fast, and we've never been worried that anything's going to come undone.
I think, perhaps, you miss the point of TFA. Guilt-schmuilt! That negative financial impact now is positive later, as an indirect result of the initial pirating.
That questionable copy of Win2k I put on my mom's homebrew while I was living there? Now a legit copy of WinXP that came with her new Dell. That questionable copy of CS2 sitting in my taskbar? The microsecond I start making money with it, Adobe makes their guaranteed sale. (although apparently the CS2 license allows a copy at work and home, and since I'm the only one on a PC...)
You do have a very valid point. If I didn't have the desire to pirate and the means to pirate, my mom would be using a Mac, or possibly Linux. I would be using Linux, the Gimp, Kontour, and Scribus, complaining loudly that it's not Adobe the whole time. In both those situations, "I wouldn't have paid for it anyway." And in both cases, the companies actually benefit in the long run.
The thing about surveys is that you can't ask 350 million people the question. So you check with 500-2000 or so and extrapolate. That 24% figure probably comes from a higher-income demographic than the 5% figure. And your link is as accessible to me as the GP's lack thereof, since I ignore registration sites on principle.
For instance. Given everyone I know personally, exactly one has usable HDTV (less than 1% in that particular demographic) and he makes something like $130k at Intel. A couple others have an HDTV set, but one's used as a computer screen for a badly sighted person, and the other's only hooked up to an SD DVD player.
So to me, the 24% sounds like the weird figure. Here's a site with a 16% figure from this October. No registration required. Still seems high to me...
Ok, so here's where my NES geek cred comes into play.
The very first Final Fantasy was Square's last game. They were almost broke, and had pretty much exactly enough money to produce one more title. Lo and behold, it boomed! They were immediately able to bring themselves back out of debt and start making new titles. In homage to the title that brought them out of their slump, pretty much every subsequent game has been a "sequel" of the original Final Fantasy, despite huge differences in plot, location, and characters.
I realise your post was probably just a joke, but hey, I had the info.
8% profit over two years? Feh. Over here (bay area, California) you could easily make $100,000 a year just by buying and selling houses. I have a friend who owned an $800k house in Fremont for three months and made $60k off the sale.
Your 4200sf rancher on a hill would probably appraise to $1.8m and sell for $2.1m here. Of course, now I'm curious as to your values on it...
Hehe, I remember when I was allowed only a fraction of our 1GB drive, so I made a batch file that would unzip a game before running it, and update-zip back up afterwards.
Ah... fun times.
City of Heroes/Villians does this great. I've got two 19" LCDs, and when in CoH/V, as long as I'm not mouse-looking, zipping over to the other screen for anything is super-easy. The graphics blip for a moment, but if you're paying attention to multiple apps anyway, that should be fine.
Also, IIRC, every Blizzard game I've played pulls off screen-switching just fine. The caveat is that they basically pause, but continue to use every free cycle while task-switched out.
Anyway. That's all for now.
You mean PC games, not PCs, right? 'Cause I've been using multiple screens on every system I've put together for... eight years? I can't go back.
Now games. Whoo! I would adore that! Bring 'em on!
"but if you're a graphics artist in a Mac only shop, your IT department will have to buy you Photoshop for Intel Mac, whenever your machine gets upgraded"
It's funny. I work in a printshop, and we have to upgrade the minute something new comes out anyway, since someone out there always has the newest version. Our main production machines have CS, CS2, AI8/10, PS6/7, PM6/7, InD2, and QXP4/6 all installed at the same time. Just sayin'.
I must say, even I'm impressed.
Apple's already familiar with this marketing technique, actually. They used it on the iPod Shuffle. You see, not being able to see what's playing or to choose the song you hear next isn't a bad thing. It's a feature!
IIRC, (which I may not, Google doesn't seem to be supporting my case) at some point Motorola couldn't make enough G3s for iBooks, and Apple had IBM make a whole bunch. I suppose it's possible that they were really just Motorola-designed chips manufactured at an IBM plant, but I'm fairly certain they were IBM chips for a while.
A good quarter of the building appears to be completely stationary, in addition to the room in the center. The stairs, plumbing, and possibly an elevator are all in the rectangular section off the corner.
Diagram of building on rotation control display.
Photo of building from the rectangle corner.
Word.
(waits nine seconds to try posting again)
Ok, this is just one of those things that bothers my proofreading brain. What exactly is "two times less" supposed to mean? Literally, it means that they should be shoving as much power back into the grid as these comparable systems. 'Cause "one time less" would be zero.
Try "half as much." Damn, I hate grammar nazis like me.
Warning: this became much more of a rant than I expected.
To be honest, I know where you're coming from there. I never thought I'd get a Mac for a desktop. It's just that much cheaper to keep an x86 box updated.
That said, your offhand reference to the free Linux install doesn't hold water with probably 90% (statistic pulled out of my a**) of computer users. I will grant you that Linux distros have come a long way towards some small chance of hitting the average desktop. On the other hand, I adore something Linux finds difficult: Adobe products. Say what you like about Killustrator and the Gimp; I agree that what you can do with their Adobe gene-donors you can do with Linux tools. But it takes me half the time in the native apps. Time is money. In the long run, Photoshop is cheaper than the Gimp.
So I ended up using Windows. Which brought me to the virus-laden, popup-ridden, spyware-infested cesspool that is Windows. Now that loses me time, and therefore money. I also like the flexibility Unix variants (which notably have very few of the problems above) to run GPL and other open-source programs.
So. I want Adobe. I want lack of Windows-style security risks. I want GPL flexibility. I'd like to save money, but those three things will increase productivity enough to justify a certain amount of increased initial hardware cost. What combines all that? You guessed it - a Mac. Or, to be pedantic, a Linux PC with Wine - 'cept I'd rather be using my computer than configuring it. And like I said, time is money.
So to come full circle, your claim that a Mac is too expensive, at least for what I (and most of the print design world) use computers for, falls a little flat. The saved hours, days, weeks even, of production nets more income. Simple.
It occurs to me that though you didn't specify a use for your $600 Linux box, it's more likely a weblication development tool than a prepress tool. Thumbs up to you - that makes complete sense. I wouldn't get a BMW to haul cargo or pull trailers. But you probably wouldn't get a pickup truck to commute quickly, comfortably, and stylishly. Fitting the tool for the task, you see.
Anyway, that got a lot longer than anticipated. Thanks for watching.
Anyone with 350 bucks can have a 1.4ghz XBox with 128 megs of RAM.
/. readers have an obsession with making things harder for themselves in the pursuit of knowledge. But I do think I just effectively doubled the RAM and CPU on your linux media workstation, no?
Anyone with 350 bucks can have a Sempron 2800+ Compaq with 256 megs of RAM. I would have used pricewatch, but I wanted a quick example.
I'm not quite sure what you were getting at there. Except that perhaps
Well, there was this racing game at some point that would toss your rear-view on the second screen. And, uhh, some game where you played a world-class thief, and you'd set up recon devices, and you could switch between them with the second screen.
But, I would imagine that since I don't remember the names of these games, that they must not have been all that great, huh?
Like mnemonic said, that is damned impressive.
I've kind of gotten used to having the time needed to Distill PostScript files be a fairly standard relation to the size of said PostScript file, and then the PDF is smaller by an amount depending on the amount of text vs. images.
This file totally blows that thoery out of the water. Of course, there are other fractal ps files somewhere in this thread that get bigger, but this file was so small for the end result that I just had to comment...