The difference is this:
- seti requires constant server interaction as a basic requirement of how it works. I'm not aware of any invasive data that it uses, but then again I can't say since I don't use it.
- Steam/WoW, etc.. are supposed to be used for anti-cheater technology. They're protecting your game experience by catching cheaters. Its tech that benefits you for having it run.
Windows and many other retail offerings on the other hand include this technology purely as a benefit to Microsoft. In fact by all accounts it negatively impacts the end user's experience albeit not severely in most cases.
There -was- a big stink when Linux WoW players were banned for being 'hackers' when in reality it was just false positives in their hack detection.
You're ignorant or manipulative if you try to make that parallel. X uses a lot of memory because the count includes the the video card's framebuffer. Look into the/proc entry for the process and you'll see plenty of interesting information. ('maps' for memory maps)
If (as the grandparent) you have to spend 75% of your ram to just start with OS without anything productive running, there's something seriously wrong with your setup. In this case, it'd be because the OS is way too wasteful.
I spend a few hours a month fool around with the AIGLX window manager of choice to see the cool prettiness of it all. When I want to do my real work again, back to metacity I go.
Why?: 1. Too slow 2. Distracting visuals 3. Limited screen limits (2 monitors limits me to 1024x768) 4. Less stable - I've seen creeping little things that just aren't right
Basically I like to poke around with it and eventually a 'plain' version of them may win me over, but as it stands today, I won't use any of them for when I code.
The fact that patents can and will be enforced seemingly at will indicates that the system is broken beyond all control. A better approach would be something a little closer aligned to the trademarks.
In my ideal word, when someone invents a new technology they should be able to publish the entire specification to a published channel for open scrutiny. Then, there is a fixed amount of time that any patent holders can come forward and say "you're using process X which I've patented". After that set amount of time, the holders patents who don't declare the patent's applicability can never be enforced. They've effectively lost the right to enforce their patent since their window of opportunity to respond lapsed.
There are three important things that make this effective: 1. The parents claimed to be infringing doesn't need to be court confirmed, just voiced. This eliminates the 'stealth' patent claims since all enforcible patents are on the table.
2. It allows for a very very simple process of innovation while leaving the burden of enforcing the patents completely on the patent holders, where I think it should be anyways.
3. The entire process is an opt-in affair to the innovator because if they choose not to 'publish' their technology, they don't have to share their secrets, but they are not protected from the patent attacks that would surely follow.
I could've been miss-informed, but I believe most if not all ISPs are considered common carrier. If they weren't, every single illegal download that the RIAA could sue for could also be enacted against the ISP, since they 'allowed' the infringement to take place, or some such.
I don't live in the US, so don't blame me for not having a perfect understanding of your legal system =)
What a well prepared talk piece. I however take the other approach.
If I'm offered 5Mits/s from my cable provider, that is an obligation for them to fill my order. If they can't fulfill my expectations, then they shouldn't have offered the service to begin with. If telco XYZ is getting bitten for overselling their lines that sure as hell isn't my problem as a consumer. What I do with my 5Mbits/s is my own business. I could use the internet to check my email (10kb), or surf the web a while (2MB), or download a YouTube video (200M?).
Why should my internet operator, the guys protected up the ass by common carrier protections dictate my internet surfing activities?
Looks like I'll stick it out with Win2k, nothing interesting here =)
Reboots: I reboot my 2k media PC once a month maybe
GUI: I still can't find a person that can point out why XP was so much better than 2000. If you can convince me, please do. There just aren't any productivity advances that I can see. The article author pointed out the vast productivity benefits from the start menu, but honestly, if you're spending more than 1% of your time in the start menu you're not being productive period.
I think everyone who upgrades and claims it substantially better are under self-hypnosis. The 'beautiful graphics' are deluding you into believing the OS is so much better. If Microsoft had updated their driver compatibility layer like they did in XP, I don't think there'd be a single justification to ever buy XP. But like I said, I dare the community to say differently. Give me a reason to enter graphics country!
When I mouse over the '90%' (image size?) I get it flashing between 90% visible and not. Probably something small to fix like making sure the 90% is visible when IT is the focus.
1. She (love her or hate her) wasn't around when the kid was 2, 5, maybe 7.
2. If one of the kids turned out fine and one blew a screw, one can't exclusively blame the parents, maybe the 'bad' kid acted up so much to get attention from his parents and instead of ever getting solved, it turned into a personality deficiency. I don't know, but I'd hope the counselors that analyzed him would've taken all sides when dealing with him.
3. The "This kid seems to have been tossed back and forth between the "father" and the mother." argument makes absolutely no sense since the article described the boy moved a single time from the fathers to the mothers and furthermore, it was described that the boy -chose- to move. Its not like he was 'tossed'.
What I'm trying to say in a nutshell is that assuming the author is being honest, she talks curtly about the boy now because she's been through the worst of it. If she'd written an article 5 years ago about the boy I bet you'd find a very different tone. If you really 'hate' your future step-kids, you generally don't get married.
You're point is as moot as mine since we have no context to base our opinions except for the media which most of the people on Slashdot will say auto-vilify games, or we can believe the anon-post by the step-mother who may or may not have her reasons to stretch the truth to make her point had.
I hope the letter was legit and I hope people do take notice to it because it would be a beacon of resistance to the constant onslaught of media villainy towards promiscuity, rock & roll, video games, and everything else thats 'evil' in the world.
1. Well written Java programs aren't slow 2. Poor programmers don't know how to optimize their code to run well 3. Java makes it easy for even poor programmers to do their job
Take these three statements and you have your truth on Java. Any single piece of code can be made to grind your system to a halt. Its nothing special to Java, but since the only client-side Java apps you've been exposed to are apparently ass, then you'll never know.
What Java and any other modern high level language allows for are people who aren't necessarily the best programmers to still do their jobs. Do I see you wanting to go out and build business apps, or are you more likely to make super-cool widget X? Since you're choosing to do the more interesting widget, someone's left to build that business app. If all there were only 'good' programmers in our industry, only a very very few things would ever be done. Since we don't live in that world, we have to make less optimal programmers as effective as possible.
I think you're missing the big picture. Blizzard will never address your grievances on this issue because in the end it makes them money to not implement your change.
As a wow player, here's how I see it. Most people will fall into two camps: 1. Will make one character and play them all the way to level cap 2. Will muddle around with a whole bunch of characters not really advancing quickly with any particular character
The second group isn't a problem for Blizzard at all, because the creation of content is reused over and over for every one of that player's characters. It is the group 1's that causes Blizzard so much angst.
To keep group 1's happy, Blizzard has:
- Added more content. Most of it was better gear and not so much story driven, though the caverns of time looks promising (haven't been yet)
- Extended the level cap simply extending the period of time before there's nothing left to do
- Introduced end-game PvP as an incentive to keep playing instead of just a small pastime from grinding, item hunting, raiding dungeons
The one thing they never needed to add was the drive for people (once level capped) to roll new characters. Because of the large amount of time to get to the high levels, thats a large amount of time that you're not 'bored' at max level with nothing to do. Bored players are unhappy players, and if they're so unhappy playing the game, they're more likely to quit.
Personally, I really enjoy playing through the entire content over again. It isn't so 'griding' back up to with new chars since after the first or second character, you should know the best, most fun ways to level up. I don't grind levels often because I play new characters to -enjoy- the content, not to be king-o-the-hill.
--rant-- My biggest pet peeve is people in game talking about how bored they are. This is supposed to be entertaining. If it isn't entertaining anymore please quit and find something else to do!
An even better reason to build in a deterrent. A 'dumb user' may see a laptop and not know the kill switch exists but you can be sure the middle men know what they're buying.
Yes, some thieves are idiots but I'd presuppose that most are just desperate to make any kind of money in order to support substance abuse.
The parent is more of an extreme cynic than a troll and as such, I'll chime in to rebuke.
Ways that computer educated masses will help their more unfortunate brethren:
1. Some societies actually -help- one another if they have the means. I know it may seem like an alien concept, but it does happen.
2. Forget the altruism If you have a bunch of kids that were never trained in computers during adolescence, they're less likely to develop computer skills that could actually get them employed in the future. Even if they got into the lowest of low end IT jobs, they'd still be making a lot more money than if they hadn't.
Now if some of those kids do end up getting computer literate and end up occupying better jobs than they could previously, a portion of their hard earned cash will flow into the government's coffers. One would hope (though not guaranteed) that this influx of money will be used to benefitting their country as a whole. So even if an individual has no interest at helping someone worse off than themselves, they're still locked into a system of helping them, though indirectly.
The only 'losers' in the whole struggle are those that compete for the same jobs. That of course feeds into the gigantic and very twisted discussion about globalism which I dare not enter without flame protection!
The problem YOU see is that when an architect makes a development decision, you pay the price possibly years down the line. Just imagine YOU being tasked with making a software development decision that could easily last a half decade. I'm hoping most architects don't eagerly to jump into development methodology/technology, but sadly some architects do. For those that take a more regimented path, the decisions can involve a large amount of 'wasted time' as you've described in your post, but ultimately most they're trying to make the best system for everyone involved, not just the single facet of development.
Also, I've been a coder in a general sense for 7 years, but a Java coder for maybe 3 or them. I'm not a language expert by any means, but I know the difference between people who code Java and people that know the Java mindset (more broadly OOP mindset). Too many peers have written unmaintainable single-use objects; Or worse, they appended hacks onto decent multi-use objects which end up breaking everyone else's implementation! Being a smart coder means taking -any- time to look at the impact of any given change. Spend just 5 minutes to look around and I'll give you a merit badge.
Don't forget to extend, reuse, and refactor either. They aren't just marketing buzz words, they're words to live by in whatever language/software you're working on. If you're one of the many trapped in the copy-paste paradigm, please seek help!
1. Hello? Since starting out with java 1.4 (maybe some unprofessional university work on 1.2) I've never ever seen any JVM based incompatibilities besides the full open source version, which I love in concept isn't quite there.
2. Although this is probably the largest adoption issue, the JVM can in fact be fast to start, at least with current generation hardware. This is more a problem that many people developing java apps don't have their end users at heart. Some apps can be written quickly display loading screens like so many flash pages do, or it could rely on leaving most of the data post-startup downloads like any decent flash movie downloader does. Thats not necessarily a weakness in the language but a disconnect in the people who develop them.
3. "programmers don't have to change the language they are used to" You're on drugs if you think that managed doesn't change the environment. Managed C++ -may- be an exception (haven't tried it personally), but I doubt you'll find many other language programmers singing the praises of the.NET conversion process (VB6 anyone?). Java is married to the JVM. Wow, what a concept. Its almost as stupid as saying AJAX is married to HTML, ha!
If you do want to use your scripting language of choice in the Java universe, you have choices: https://scripting.dev.java.net/
I'd be truly amazed if you could tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p (while watching a movie, and not pausing).
The difference the two formats is incredibly small while watching the movie that its truly turning the term 'Videophile' (People who assume their overpriced equipment makes them important) into a reality.
All that said, you will notice a gigantic difference with your PC experience. I've got a 50" Sony with an incredibly nice video renderer and I can say even though it supports 1080i, I still view everything but games at 1152x648 (overscan correction) because the 'i' makes all the difference in the world with -still- images.
I think that people have the big buzz word push on the brain and think that somehow they're getting less data on a 1080i vs. 1080p. You're not. In the background, its still rendering the gigantic 1920x1080 frame buffer and both formats display the equivalent of 30 full frames a second, the only difference is that it sends that picture at 1/2 full frame increments for the 'i'.
I'm sure that there must be a web site that actually explains the reason you notice static interlacing more than and dynamic, but my best guess is simply that when there's a dynamic image, our brains automatically do a pseudo-anti-alias of the stimuli in to make better sense of the rapid information change.
A lot has to do with how the event is presented to the person's interested.
1. Firstly, you really need people that are interested in the sport. If there are 5 people that still play doom, it may not be the best candidate for a media event.
2. Once you have a loyal throng of fanbois just waiting to absorb all the godliness of the event, you still need to present the event in a way that attracts them to it.
A very classic example of how NOT to present sports coverage was when Fox started to broadcast hockey. If there are any Hockey fans out there, you know what kind of unmitigated disaster that was. The camera work was bad, the glowing puck was really annoying and it just didn't have the same feel that more traditional hockey broadcasters had already learned to do right (at least in Canada, eh?).
Find a format that people seem to like. Be flexible in the beginning allowing for glaring problems that fans may have. Once you get that winning format, tighten it up so that people watching from event to event will feel comfortable with how the program flows. This will go a long way in encouraging existing viewers to tune in again, and it allows those viewers to effectively talk about whats going on without them having to second guess themselves.
3. Choose your medium carefully Can anyone here see a problem with video game championhips being broadcasted over the internet? Wouldn't one assume that it is: 1. cheaper, 2. reachable by nearly 100% of anyone that would care to watch it anyways.
Just putting it on the idiot box doesn't automatically make the event any more attractive to watch. I tuned into the spike VG awards one time and I couldn't watch 5 minutes of it before being so repulsed I had to kill it. It just seems that the plain text end-of-year awards on web pages holds my attention longer than their monkey show.
Thats about all I have to say about that. In conclusion, yes it -can- be a good idea, but make damn sure that what you're selling is something that your fans would actually watch.
But, the movie companies make a hell of a lot more money off overcharging Americans and if that revenue stream dries up they'd have to start making good movies again!
PS: Some good movies do slip through in the Hollywood crap factory, like Children of Men. That movie was great.
Good luck with that. Maybe it could come true, but the only way that'll happen is if the content companies dump the format.
If any of these formats is lucky enough to be blessed by the public, they still won't be affordable until well after demand was on the rise. A few hundred thousand units (some not even used for video) doesn't dictate that you're anywhere near the end of early-adopter status.
Media companies: If you really really want to make this format stick, you'll demand that any company you deal with supports 100% all formts. The device makers will have to play nice and negotiate very cheap licensing of technologies and everyone will HAVE to support everyone's format.
Looking back at the last big war: DVD+/-R, the formats were both laughed out of any type of market share until combined units started shipping. At least then a consumer just has to decide to buy the thing instead of having to decide which type to buy.
How often do you download 30GB files, and how long does it take for you? Personally, if I'm allowed to receive 100% of my pipe dedicated to downloading that 30GB hi-def movie, it'll still take 13 hours at 5Mbs. Unacceptible.
For that hassle, I'd have no problem:
1. Buying a movie I really like
2. Walk 2 minutes away and renting it
That is what I do now for regular DVD's, and if by chance Hi-def formats survive as a Video medium, then I'll do the same when they're on top.
Downloading has the amazing ability to supply avaiability to things that are hard or impossible to find. The internet is also really good at allowing for fast access to less-than-perfect content, but its definitly not even close to ready for High-quality, fast access content like what they're packaging on these discs.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference is this:
- seti requires constant server interaction as a basic requirement of how it works. I'm not aware of any invasive data that it uses, but then again I can't say since I don't use it.
- Steam/WoW, etc.. are supposed to be used for anti-cheater technology. They're protecting your game experience by catching cheaters. Its tech that benefits you for having it run.
Windows and many other retail offerings on the other hand include this technology purely as a benefit to Microsoft. In fact by all accounts it negatively impacts the end user's experience albeit not severely in most cases.
There -was- a big stink when Linux WoW players were banned for being 'hackers' when in reality it was just false positives in their hack detection.
You're ignorant or manipulative if you try to make that parallel. X uses a lot of memory because the count includes the the video card's framebuffer. Look into the /proc entry for the process and you'll see plenty of interesting information. ('maps' for memory maps)
If (as the grandparent) you have to spend 75% of your ram to just start with OS without anything productive running, there's something seriously wrong with your setup. In this case, it'd be because the OS is way too wasteful.
I spend a few hours a month fool around with the AIGLX window manager of choice to see the cool prettiness of it all. When I want to do my real work again, back to metacity I go.
Why?:
1. Too slow
2. Distracting visuals
3. Limited screen limits (2 monitors limits me to 1024x768)
4. Less stable - I've seen creeping little things that just aren't right
Basically I like to poke around with it and eventually a 'plain' version of them may win me over, but as it stands today, I won't use any of them for when I code.
I found that old friends I used to play with were still active. Now I can reconnect!
I agree, basically one gigantic pivot chart would be where its at.
The fact that patents can and will be enforced seemingly at will indicates that the system is broken beyond all control. A better approach would be something a little closer aligned to the trademarks.
In my ideal word, when someone invents a new technology they should be able to publish the entire specification to a published channel for open scrutiny. Then, there is a fixed amount of time that any patent holders can come forward and say "you're using process X which I've patented". After that set amount of time, the holders patents who don't declare the patent's applicability can never be enforced. They've effectively lost the right to enforce their patent since their window of opportunity to respond lapsed.
There are three important things that make this effective:
1. The parents claimed to be infringing doesn't need to be court confirmed, just voiced. This eliminates the 'stealth' patent claims since all enforcible patents are on the table.
2. It allows for a very very simple process of innovation while leaving the burden of enforcing the patents completely on the patent holders, where I think it should be anyways.
3. The entire process is an opt-in affair to the innovator because if they choose not to 'publish' their technology, they don't have to share their secrets, but they are not protected from the patent attacks that would surely follow.
I could've been miss-informed, but I believe most if not all ISPs are considered common carrier. If they weren't, every single illegal download that the RIAA could sue for could also be enacted against the ISP, since they 'allowed' the infringement to take place, or some such.
I don't live in the US, so don't blame me for not having a perfect understanding of your legal system =)
What a well prepared talk piece. I however take the other approach.
If I'm offered 5Mits/s from my cable provider, that is an obligation for them to fill my order. If they can't fulfill my expectations, then they shouldn't have offered the service to begin with. If telco XYZ is getting bitten for overselling their lines that sure as hell isn't my problem as a consumer. What I do with my 5Mbits/s is my own business. I could use the internet to check my email (10kb), or surf the web a while (2MB), or download a YouTube video (200M?).
Why should my internet operator, the guys protected up the ass by common carrier protections dictate my internet surfing activities?
Looks like I'll stick it out with Win2k, nothing interesting here =)
Reboots: I reboot my 2k media PC once a month maybe
GUI: I still can't find a person that can point out why XP was so much better than 2000. If you can convince me, please do. There just aren't any productivity advances that I can see. The article author pointed out the vast productivity benefits from the start menu, but honestly, if you're spending more than 1% of your time in the start menu you're not being productive period.
I think everyone who upgrades and claims it substantially better are under self-hypnosis. The 'beautiful graphics' are deluding you into believing the OS is so much better. If Microsoft had updated their driver compatibility layer like they did in XP, I don't think there'd be a single justification to ever buy XP. But like I said, I dare the community to say differently. Give me a reason to enter graphics country!
Price: How much for media center edition? Ouch.
Thank you so much for your authoritative opinion.
I'll think less of those deluded underlings from now on!
When I mouse over the '90%' (image size?) I get it flashing between 90% visible and not. Probably something small to fix like making sure the 90% is visible when IT is the focus.
Welcome to ever MMOG. Their only purpose is to waste as much time as possible, by definition!
1. She (love her or hate her) wasn't around when the kid was 2, 5, maybe 7.
2. If one of the kids turned out fine and one blew a screw, one can't exclusively blame the parents, maybe the 'bad' kid acted up so much to get attention from his parents and instead of ever getting solved, it turned into a personality deficiency. I don't know, but I'd hope the counselors that analyzed him would've taken all sides when dealing with him.
3. The "This kid seems to have been tossed back and forth between the "father" and the mother." argument makes absolutely no sense since the article described the boy moved a single time from the fathers to the mothers and furthermore, it was described that the boy -chose- to move. Its not like he was 'tossed'.
What I'm trying to say in a nutshell is that assuming the author is being honest, she talks curtly about the boy now because she's been through the worst of it. If she'd written an article 5 years ago about the boy I bet you'd find a very different tone. If you really 'hate' your future step-kids, you generally don't get married.
All said being true... unless he was lying.
You're point is as moot as mine since we have no context to base our opinions except for the media which most of the people on Slashdot will say auto-vilify games, or we can believe the anon-post by the step-mother who may or may not have her reasons to stretch the truth to make her point had.
I hope the letter was legit and I hope people do take notice to it because it would be a beacon of resistance to the constant onslaught of media villainy towards promiscuity, rock & roll, video games, and everything else thats 'evil' in the world.
1. Well written Java programs aren't slow
2. Poor programmers don't know how to optimize their code to run well
3. Java makes it easy for even poor programmers to do their job
Take these three statements and you have your truth on Java. Any single piece of code can be made to grind your system to a halt. Its nothing special to Java, but since the only client-side Java apps you've been exposed to are apparently ass, then you'll never know.
What Java and any other modern high level language allows for are people who aren't necessarily the best programmers to still do their jobs. Do I see you wanting to go out and build business apps, or are you more likely to make super-cool widget X? Since you're choosing to do the more interesting widget, someone's left to build that business app. If all there were only 'good' programmers in our industry, only a very very few things would ever be done. Since we don't live in that world, we have to make less optimal programmers as effective as possible.
I think you're missing the big picture. Blizzard will never address your grievances on this issue because in the end it makes them money to not implement your change.
As a wow player, here's how I see it. Most people will fall into two camps:
1. Will make one character and play them all the way to level cap
2. Will muddle around with a whole bunch of characters not really advancing quickly with any particular character
The second group isn't a problem for Blizzard at all, because the creation of content is reused over and over for every one of that player's characters. It is the group 1's that causes Blizzard so much angst.
To keep group 1's happy, Blizzard has:
- Added more content. Most of it was better gear and not so much story driven, though the caverns of time looks promising (haven't been yet)
- Extended the level cap simply extending the period of time before there's nothing left to do
- Introduced end-game PvP as an incentive to keep playing instead of just a small pastime from grinding, item hunting, raiding dungeons
The one thing they never needed to add was the drive for people (once level capped) to roll new characters. Because of the large amount of time to get to the high levels, thats a large amount of time that you're not 'bored' at max level with nothing to do. Bored players are unhappy players, and if they're so unhappy playing the game, they're more likely to quit.
Personally, I really enjoy playing through the entire content over again. It isn't so 'griding' back up to with new chars since after the first or second character, you should know the best, most fun ways to level up. I don't grind levels often because I play new characters to -enjoy- the content, not to be king-o-the-hill.
--rant--
My biggest pet peeve is people in game talking about how bored they are. This is supposed to be entertaining. If it isn't entertaining anymore please quit and find something else to do!
An even better reason to build in a deterrent. A 'dumb user' may see a laptop and not know the kill switch exists but you can be sure the middle men know what they're buying.
Yes, some thieves are idiots but I'd presuppose that most are just desperate to make any kind of money in order to support substance abuse.
The parent is more of an extreme cynic than a troll and as such, I'll chime in to rebuke.
Ways that computer educated masses will help their more unfortunate brethren:
1. Some societies actually -help- one another if they have the means. I know it may seem like an alien concept, but it does happen.
2. Forget the altruism
If you have a bunch of kids that were never trained in computers during adolescence, they're less likely to develop computer skills that could actually get them employed in the future. Even if they got into the lowest of low end IT jobs, they'd still be making a lot more money than if they hadn't.
Now if some of those kids do end up getting computer literate and end up occupying better jobs than they could previously, a portion of their hard earned cash will flow into the government's coffers. One would hope (though not guaranteed) that this influx of money will be used to benefitting their country as a whole. So even if an individual has no interest at helping someone worse off than themselves, they're still locked into a system of helping them, though indirectly.
The only 'losers' in the whole struggle are those that compete for the same jobs. That of course feeds into the gigantic and very twisted discussion about globalism which I dare not enter without flame protection!
The problem YOU see is that when an architect makes a development decision, you pay the price possibly years down the line. Just imagine YOU being tasked with making a software development decision that could easily last a half decade. I'm hoping most architects don't eagerly to jump into development methodology/technology, but sadly some architects do. For those that take a more regimented path, the decisions can involve a large amount of 'wasted time' as you've described in your post, but ultimately most they're trying to make the best system for everyone involved, not just the single facet of development.
Also, I've been a coder in a general sense for 7 years, but a Java coder for maybe 3 or them. I'm not a language expert by any means, but I know the difference between people who code Java and people that know the Java mindset (more broadly OOP mindset). Too many peers have written unmaintainable single-use objects; Or worse, they appended hacks onto decent multi-use objects which end up breaking everyone else's implementation! Being a smart coder means taking -any- time to look at the impact of any given change. Spend just 5 minutes to look around and I'll give you a merit badge.
Don't forget to extend, reuse, and refactor either. They aren't just marketing buzz words, they're words to live by in whatever language/software you're working on. If you're one of the many trapped in the copy-paste paradigm, please seek help!
1. Hello? Since starting out with java 1.4 (maybe some unprofessional university work on 1.2) I've never ever seen any JVM based incompatibilities besides the full open source version, which I love in concept isn't quite there.
2. Although this is probably the largest adoption issue, the JVM can in fact be fast to start, at least with current generation hardware. This is more a problem that many people developing java apps don't have their end users at heart. Some apps can be written quickly display loading screens like so many flash pages do, or it could rely on leaving most of the data post-startup downloads like any decent flash movie downloader does. Thats not necessarily a weakness in the language but a disconnect in the people who develop them.
3. "programmers don't have to change the language they are used to" You're on drugs if you think that managed doesn't change the environment. Managed C++ -may- be an exception (haven't tried it personally), but I doubt you'll find many other language programmers singing the praises of the
If you do want to use your scripting language of choice in the Java universe, you have choices: https://scripting.dev.java.net/
I'd be truly amazed if you could tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p (while watching a movie, and not pausing).
The difference the two formats is incredibly small while watching the movie that its truly turning the term 'Videophile' (People who assume their overpriced equipment makes them important) into a reality.
All that said, you will notice a gigantic difference with your PC experience. I've got a 50" Sony with an incredibly nice video renderer and I can say even though it supports 1080i, I still view everything but games at 1152x648 (overscan correction) because the 'i' makes all the difference in the world with -still- images.
I think that people have the big buzz word push on the brain and think that somehow they're getting less data on a 1080i vs. 1080p. You're not. In the background, its still rendering the gigantic 1920x1080 frame buffer and both formats display the equivalent of 30 full frames a second, the only difference is that it sends that picture at 1/2 full frame increments for the 'i'.
I'm sure that there must be a web site that actually explains the reason you notice static interlacing more than and dynamic, but my best guess is simply that when there's a dynamic image, our brains automatically do a pseudo-anti-alias of the stimuli in to make better sense of the rapid information change.
A lot has to do with how the event is presented to the person's interested.
1. Firstly, you really need people that are interested in the sport. If there are 5 people that still play doom, it may not be the best candidate for a media event.
2. Once you have a loyal throng of fanbois just waiting to absorb all the godliness of the event, you still need to present the event in a way that attracts them to it.
A very classic example of how NOT to present sports coverage was when Fox started to broadcast hockey. If there are any Hockey fans out there, you know what kind of unmitigated disaster that was. The camera work was bad, the glowing puck was really annoying and it just didn't have the same feel that more traditional hockey broadcasters had already learned to do right (at least in Canada, eh?).
Find a format that people seem to like. Be flexible in the beginning allowing for glaring problems that fans may have. Once you get that winning format, tighten it up so that people watching from event to event will feel comfortable with how the program flows. This will go a long way in encouraging existing viewers to tune in again, and it allows those viewers to effectively talk about whats going on without them having to second guess themselves.
3. Choose your medium carefully
Can anyone here see a problem with video game championhips being broadcasted over the internet? Wouldn't one assume that it is: 1. cheaper, 2. reachable by nearly 100% of anyone that would care to watch it anyways.
Just putting it on the idiot box doesn't automatically make the event any more attractive to watch. I tuned into the spike VG awards one time and I couldn't watch 5 minutes of it before being so repulsed I had to kill it. It just seems that the plain text end-of-year awards on web pages holds my attention longer than their monkey show.
Thats about all I have to say about that. In conclusion, yes it -can- be a good idea, but make damn sure that what you're selling is something that your fans would actually watch.
But, the movie companies make a hell of a lot more money off overcharging Americans and if that revenue stream dries up they'd have to start making good movies again!
PS: Some good movies do slip through in the Hollywood crap factory, like Children of Men. That movie was great.
Good luck with that. Maybe it could come true, but the only way that'll happen is if the content companies dump the format.
If any of these formats is lucky enough to be blessed by the public, they still won't be affordable until well after demand was on the rise. A few hundred thousand units (some not even used for video) doesn't dictate that you're anywhere near the end of early-adopter status.
Media companies: If you really really want to make this format stick, you'll demand that any company you deal with supports 100% all formts. The device makers will have to play nice and negotiate very cheap licensing of technologies and everyone will HAVE to support everyone's format.
Looking back at the last big war: DVD+/-R, the formats were both laughed out of any type of market share until combined units started shipping. At least then a consumer just has to decide to buy the thing instead of having to decide which type to buy.
How often do you download 30GB files, and how long does it take for you? Personally, if I'm allowed to receive 100% of my pipe dedicated to downloading that 30GB hi-def movie, it'll still take 13 hours at 5Mbs. Unacceptible.
For that hassle, I'd have no problem:
1. Buying a movie I really like
2. Walk 2 minutes away and renting it
That is what I do now for regular DVD's, and if by chance Hi-def formats survive as a Video medium, then I'll do the same when they're on top.
Downloading has the amazing ability to supply avaiability to things that are hard or impossible to find. The internet is also really good at allowing for fast access to less-than-perfect content, but its definitly not even close to ready for High-quality, fast access content like what they're packaging on these discs.