I think these guys should really demand some kind of profit sharing or a percentage of each game's revenues. Of course this probably won't work for the average code-monkey, but at least the lead engineers and game designers should have enough sway to be able to get it. The big game companies are making millions off of their backs so they should at least get some of it.
I imagine that behemoths like EA wouldn't give their workers this, but some of the senior developers should demand it. I've always been impressed with the OmniGroup's policy: (though they're not a game company)
Bonuses: We pay bonuses when our revenues and profitability allow it. Some years, it's a lot of money, and when we have an unprofitable year, it's not.
They seem to be a company that recognizes that their developers are important.
Apple's Airport Express has been the perfect solution to play music from my computer. It would be nice if you could play more than just stuff from iTunes, but it's a really great product and great for vacations too.
I'd love to see something like this that you could use to broadcast Video too, but for that I'll have to wait I guess.
SCO claims Linux is "legally scary" because no Linux vendor will provide indemnification. Linux vendors then provide indemnification (effectively saying SCO is full of it). SCO then says, "See Linux has legal problems, otherwise why would you need indemnification?"
If we then follow SCO's logic...
Microsoft's products must have legal problems, otherwise why do they need to indemnify their customers?
The three-year road map will help show that Bluetooth has staying power, Foley said.
Under the road map, the SIG plans to complete the Bluetooth Version 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) specification by the end of this year, increasing the data rate to 3Mbit/sec., up from 1Mbit/sec. in the current Version 1.2, Foley said. Products are expected to appear with the EDR as early as June 2005, he said. The newer-version products will also be backward-compatible with older versions.
So it will go from 1 Mbit/sec. to 3Mbit/sec which isn't too bad considering its uses. I mean, really, how much bandwidth does your keyboard and mouse need? Or your cell phone earpiece? I don't think anyone needs to show that Bluetooth has "staying power." It targets a particular market and particular applications and does its job very well. You don't need 1Gbit/sec of bandwidth (which you'll get with UWB) to use your keyboard, mouse, or earpiece.
I think the most interesting thing is the multicasting to seven other devices. That should allow a lot of fun and interesting applications.
I don't think anyone has suggested that bloggers are going to be replacing journalists anytime soon or that blogs are going to be taking over the media. But bloggers can be very good fact-checkers as was displayed in the CBS/Dan Rather memo flap.
That incident was a great example of a large group of volunteers rallying together experts that could show a news story to be false.
I was loading up on NOVL stock friday on that selloff over Chris Stone leaving.
With news of this big settlement comes the question: Why did Chris Stone leave?
Was it because of the terms of this settlement? What concessions did Microsoft get from Novell to make the settlement work for them? Will this now affect Novell's Linux strategy?
... now if only we could have respected him enough to elect him.
I respect him more as a person and statesman, but that doesn't mean I agree any more with his political views. I still would never vote for him, but I do respect him more than I did previously.
The more division the more it appears that America is rational despite this outcome.
Let me clarify a bit what I meant. It's not bad to have division, division and rational discussion is a good thing. However, it would be bad if Kerry didn't accept defeat and then the Democrats spent the next four years claiming that Bush stole another election. That kind of division is not healthy and doesn't help anybody.
It's being widely reported by the AP, CNN, Fox News, CSPAN, ABC News, CBS News and others that John Kerry has already called Pres. Bush to concede defeat. Apparently he'll speak to the nation at 1:00 PM EST.
I personally am glad that Kerry has done this. My opinion of him has gone up and I am glad that he will not try to divide the country further by dragging us through a contested election. Mr. Kerry, thank you for that.
It's being widely reported by the AP, CNN, Fox News, CSPAN, ABC News, CBS News and others that John Kerry has already called Pres. Bush to concede defeat.
I personally am glad that Kerry has done this. My opinion of him has gone up and I am glad that he will not try to divide the country further by dragging us through a contested election. Mr. Kerry, thank you for that.
No, you have no reason to bitch about it. If you want to bitch about it then vote for whoever you think won't blow up the world.
I, on the other hand, can complain about it if my guy didn't win and the other guy blew up the world. If, however, I vote for my guy and he wins and he does blow up the world...
Bush has done more to roll back our constitutional rights than any president in history.
It might pay to know a little bit of history before you spout off your ignorant blather. Anything that Bush has supposedly done pales in comparison to what Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) actually did during WWII. Look up United States Executive Order 9066 and read about the over 112,000 American Citizens that were detained during the Japanese American Internment.
If that's your stance then fine, do that. But don't come complaining and bitching to us (or anyone else) when whoever wins does something that you don't like.
But no, we were there for WMDs which didn't exist. That was the "reason". If history had nothing to do with it, wouldn't Iran have been a better (more threatening) target?
No it wasn't the "reason." Why don't you try reading what the guy wrote. The WMD angle is what the Democrats have chosen to latch onto now that we haven't found any. Before the WMD issue it was "Where is Saddam?" After we found Saddam it then became, "Where are the WMD?" If we had found WMD the Democrats and Kerry would have found something else to latch onto (like securing the peace).
It's an election year and Kerry has to be the anti-Bush. It doesn't matter what good news comes out in America the Democrats and Kerry have to spin it into bad news.
The most powerful part of this message is that it was sent on a video tape and not as Hijacked airplanes crashing into our buildings.
I have no doubt that if Bin Laden could attack us like he did on 9/11 that he would. The fact that he hasn't been able to do this for over three years is why I am voting for Bush
Do you have a credit card or debit card? Do you ever use them? Do you always get a receipt when you take money out? Do you use the Internet to purchase stuff online?
How many ATM transactions happen every day? How many credit card transactions happen every day? We know how to make electronic machines that can replace manual or mechanical processes. If these things weren't very secure (I'm not saying they're 100% secure) then we wouldn't use them nearly as much as we do. If they weren't more accurate than what they replaced then they wouldn't be very cost-effective.
The bottom line is that these electronic voting machines can be, and probably already are, many times more accurate than paper ballots. We know how to make ATMs, we can make them secure, reliable and even easy to use. Why are you so against doing the same thing for voting machines?
The fiber is there because the public (i.e., the government) enabled it.
Who the hell cares if the government enabled it, Verizon is spending the millions of dollars and putting in the time to make this possible. They should have monopoly rights on their investment and hard work. The government also "enables" stadiums to be built, large office buildings to be built, etc. The government doesn't then force the owners of Madison Square Garden to rent it out at a government-regulated rate. The government doesn't force the owners of the Empire State Building to lease out office space at a government-regulated rate.
The owners of these buildings (and other such properties or services) rent them out because it is in their financial interest to do so. The rate at which they are rented out is set by the fair market value. If it is in Verizon's interest to lease out their fiber lines then they will do so and the fair market value will determine the rate. We don't need the government stepping in to tell Verizon that XYZ is the rate that they can lease their fiber at and there's nothing they can do about it.
Why don't we just put term limits on Senators? Say 2 terms(12 years)? I mean really, 12 years in the Senate is plenty of time. Why should these guys be allowed to serve longer than the President? Of course this will never happen because the career politicians would never vote to limit their careers.
This would get rid of career politicians like Ted Kennedy, Orrin Hatch, Robert Byrd, the late Strom Thurmond, and needless to say John Kerry. It would get us back to what the Framers intended - to serve for a few years and then go back to your normal job and life.
Make these guys go back to what they normally do like driving drunk in the Chappaquiddick Bay, remotely blowing up computers, or vehemently maligning Vietnam Veterans and accusing them of war crimes while at the same time claiming to be a war hero. Make these guys actually try to run a business or have a real job.
What good does it do we, the people, to have these kinds of people representing us for 30 or 40 years?
Don't you see, this is SCO's next step in their vexatious litigation strategy. They're going to launch their Pro-SCO site and open up the forums. Then when the masses of FOSS supporters flock to the forums to debunk all of SCO's claims, SCO will be secretly recording their IP addresses, personal information, etc.
Then they'll take their newly acquired information and track you down so they can sue you! Then they'll be rich Rich RICH!
No one here is claiming that the G4 is superior to the P4. In fact, in many ways the P4 is superior to the G4. Now the G5 on the other hand is... (that story is for another day)
What people are claiming here is that emulating Altivec using SSE/SSE2/SSE3 could not result in 80% native Altivec performance. Altivec has always been superior to SSE/2/3 and your just not going to be able to emulate it very well given the limitations of SSE. SSE2 helps to bridge the gap, but it still isn't as rich and versatile as Altivec.
I have not worked with or even looked at either instruction set. Nonetheless your average application will spend only a small percentage of its time using Altivec...
Maybe you should go and get some experience or at least some knowledge before you start talking about something you know nothing about.
Altivec from its beginning introduced 162 vector instructions that have not changed from the initial G4 to the current G5. On the other hand, Intel's MMX/SSE/SSE2 instructions have evolved over time - roughly 57 in MMX, 78? in SSE and 144 in SSE2. Altivec has been a well-designed and versatile SIMD engine from its beginning while Intel has sort of hacked together their SIMD engine as they've evolved their processors. Intel's implementation is very troublesome for a programmer because he has to do many different things depending on what is available (MMX/SSE/SSE2). These instructions don't map 1:1 for the most part with Altivec. And while SSE2 is much better than SSE, it was only introduced with the Pentium 4.
Also, Altivec has 32 128-bit registers to only 8 128-bit registers for SSE/SSE2. I don't care what anyone says, trying to emulate 32 registers (when all you have is 8) in an SIMD engine is going to be a lot slower.
You say that only a small percentage of time will be spent using Altivec, but that's just not true. Apple has optimized a large part of Mac OS X to use Altivec, especially in Quartz (the windowing and compositing engine). This would result in a major slowdown for any emulator in pretty much every application (except for stuff like background daemons). You'd probably do better just to emulate a G3 so as to not run any Altivec code.
Why was no thought given to liberating anybody before 9/11?
There was: Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. This did not call for the direct involvement of the U.S. military, but for U.S. support for an Iraqi-led rebellion from within. Look at the Democrat party right now, after 9/11, in their opposition to and hate for our current president. How do you think they'd be reacting if 9/11 had never happened? How would they have reacted had we gone into Afghanistan pre-9/11?
You speak of overextending oneself; why, in the midst of trying to track down a world-wide terrorist organization, would you suddenly decide to 'liberate' Iraq?
We pretty much destroyed whatever part of Al-Queda we could in Afghanistan. Whatever is left is hiding in caves that we're trying to track down now with the help of Pakistan. Where were the survivors of Al-Queda likely to go? Iraq was among the nations where they might try to flee. Combine that with the fact that we were already in a quasi-war with Iraq. We had a no-fly zone over most of the country, we (Clinton) bombed them to disrupt potential weapons programs, there were vast economic sanctions against them that were starting to break down (look at the Oil-for-food scandal), and they were led by a genocidal maniac that was determined to build or acquire WMD.
The people of Iraq desperately needed to be liberated, but Hussein was also a major security threat to the U.S. and Iraq's neighbors. Remember it only took a few planes and a handful of hijackers on 9/11. Iraq didn't need WMD to inflict major damage on us or its neighbors.
Not to mention that using a military solution in Iraq to take out Saddam Hussein may allow us to easier seek a diplomatic solution elsewhere (Iran, North Korea, Syria, etc.). The example you gave of Libya supports this.
Hussein had violated, what was it, 17-19 U.N. resolutions without any major consequences. Other hostile nations like Iran and North Korea can look at that and think, "Look at Iraq, they can get away with anything and the U.N. won't do a thing. Why should we have to listen to them?" Well now somebody (the U.S.) has used force to backup resolutions and shown that there will be grave consequences for not following U.N. resolutions.
Now when we try to negotiate with these rogue nations to end their weapons programs, they will listen much more closely to us.
Slashdot Mirror
I think these guys should really demand some kind of profit sharing or a percentage of each game's revenues. Of course this probably won't work for the average code-monkey, but at least the lead engineers and game designers should have enough sway to be able to get it. The big game companies are making millions off of their backs so they should at least get some of it.
I imagine that behemoths like EA wouldn't give their workers this, but some of the senior developers should demand it. I've always been impressed with the OmniGroup's policy: (though they're not a game company)
Bonuses: We pay bonuses when our revenues and profitability allow it. Some years, it's a lot of money, and when we have an unprofitable year, it's not.
They seem to be a company that recognizes that their developers are important.
--
Sounds like a scam, but it works.
Free Flat Screens | Free iPod Photo |
Apple's Airport Express has been the perfect solution to play music from my computer. It would be nice if you could play more than just stuff from iTunes, but it's a really great product and great for vacations too.
I'd love to see something like this that you could use to broadcast Video too, but for that I'll have to wait I guess.
--
Free Flat Screens | Free iPod Photo | It really works!
To go a little further down that road...
SCO claims Linux is "legally scary" because no Linux vendor will provide indemnification.
Linux vendors then provide indemnification (effectively saying SCO is full of it).
SCO then says, "See Linux has legal problems, otherwise why would you need indemnification?"
If we then follow SCO's logic...
Microsoft's products must have legal problems, otherwise why do they need to indemnify their customers?
--
Free Flat Screens | Free iPod Photo | It really works!
From the article:
The three-year road map will help show that Bluetooth has staying power, Foley said.
Under the road map, the SIG plans to complete the Bluetooth Version 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) specification by the end of this year, increasing the data rate to 3Mbit/sec., up from 1Mbit/sec. in the current Version 1.2, Foley said. Products are expected to appear with the EDR as early as June 2005, he said. The newer-version products will also be backward-compatible with older versions.
So it will go from 1 Mbit/sec. to 3Mbit/sec which isn't too bad considering its uses. I mean, really, how much bandwidth does your keyboard and mouse need? Or your cell phone earpiece? I don't think anyone needs to show that Bluetooth has "staying power." It targets a particular market and particular applications and does its job very well. You don't need 1Gbit/sec of bandwidth (which you'll get with UWB) to use your keyboard, mouse, or earpiece.
I think the most interesting thing is the multicasting to seven other devices. That should allow a lot of fun and interesting applications.
Free iPod Photo | Free Flat Screens | It really works!
I don't think anyone has suggested that bloggers are going to be replacing journalists anytime soon or that blogs are going to be taking over the media. But bloggers can be very good fact-checkers as was displayed in the CBS/Dan Rather memo flap.
That incident was a great example of a large group of volunteers rallying together experts that could show a news story to be false.
Free iPod Photo|Free Flat Screens|It really works!
I was loading up on NOVL stock friday on that selloff over Chris Stone leaving.
With news of this big settlement comes the question: Why did Chris Stone leave?
Was it because of the terms of this settlement? What concessions did Microsoft get from Novell to make the settlement work for them? Will this now affect Novell's Linux strategy?
... now if only we could have respected him enough to elect him.
I respect him more as a person and statesman, but that doesn't mean I agree any more with his political views. I still would never vote for him, but I do respect him more than I did previously.
The more division the more it appears that America is rational despite this outcome.
Let me clarify a bit what I meant. It's not bad to have division, division and rational discussion is a good thing. However, it would be bad if Kerry didn't accept defeat and then the Democrats spent the next four years claiming that Bush stole another election. That kind of division is not healthy and doesn't help anybody.
It's being widely reported by the AP, CNN, Fox News, CSPAN, ABC News, CBS News and others that John Kerry has already called Pres. Bush to concede defeat. Apparently he'll speak to the nation at 1:00 PM EST.
I personally am glad that Kerry has done this. My opinion of him has gone up and I am glad that he will not try to divide the country further by dragging us through a contested election. Mr. Kerry, thank you for that.
And congratulations to Pres. Bush.
It's being widely reported by the AP, CNN, Fox News, CSPAN, ABC News, CBS News and others that John Kerry has already called Pres. Bush to concede defeat.
I personally am glad that Kerry has done this. My opinion of him has gone up and I am glad that he will not try to divide the country further by dragging us through a contested election. Mr. Kerry, thank you for that.
And congratulations to Pres. Bush.
Is the US at war now ? No.
Some people would disagree with you.
No, you have no reason to bitch about it. If you want to bitch about it then vote for whoever you think won't blow up the world.
I, on the other hand, can complain about it if my guy didn't win and the other guy blew up the world. If, however, I vote for my guy and he wins and he does blow up the world...
Happy days are here again!
Bush has done more to roll back our constitutional rights than any president in history.
It might pay to know a little bit of history before you spout off your ignorant blather. Anything that Bush has supposedly done pales in comparison to what Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) actually did during WWII. Look up United States Executive Order 9066 and read about the over 112,000 American Citizens that were detained during the Japanese American Internment.
Not voting is a perfectly reasonable stance.
If that's your stance then fine, do that. But don't come complaining and bitching to us (or anyone else) when whoever wins does something that you don't like.
But no, we were there for WMDs which didn't exist. That was the "reason". If history had nothing to do with it, wouldn't Iran have been a better (more threatening) target?
No it wasn't the "reason." Why don't you try reading what the guy wrote. The WMD angle is what the Democrats have chosen to latch onto now that we haven't found any. Before the WMD issue it was "Where is Saddam?" After we found Saddam it then became, "Where are the WMD?" If we had found WMD the Democrats and Kerry would have found something else to latch onto (like securing the peace).
It's an election year and Kerry has to be the anti-Bush. It doesn't matter what good news comes out in America the Democrats and Kerry have to spin it into bad news.
The most powerful part of this message is that it was sent on a video tape and not as Hijacked airplanes crashing into our buildings.
I have no doubt that if Bin Laden could attack us like he did on 9/11 that he would. The fact that he hasn't been able to do this for over three years is why I am voting for Bush
Do you have a credit card or debit card? Do you ever use them? Do you always get a receipt when you take money out? Do you use the Internet to purchase stuff online?
How many ATM transactions happen every day? How many credit card transactions happen every day? We know how to make electronic machines that can replace manual or mechanical processes. If these things weren't very secure (I'm not saying they're 100% secure) then we wouldn't use them nearly as much as we do. If they weren't more accurate than what they replaced then they wouldn't be very cost-effective.
The bottom line is that these electronic voting machines can be, and probably already are, many times more accurate than paper ballots. We know how to make ATMs, we can make them secure, reliable and even easy to use. Why are you so against doing the same thing for voting machines?
What the hell is wrong with the moderators?
The fiber is there because the public (i.e., the government) enabled it.
Who the hell cares if the government enabled it, Verizon is spending the millions of dollars and putting in the time to make this possible. They should have monopoly rights on their investment and hard work. The government also "enables" stadiums to be built, large office buildings to be built, etc. The government doesn't then force the owners of Madison Square Garden to rent it out at a government-regulated rate. The government doesn't force the owners of the Empire State Building to lease out office space at a government-regulated rate.
The owners of these buildings (and other such properties or services) rent them out because it is in their financial interest to do so. The rate at which they are rented out is set by the fair market value. If it is in Verizon's interest to lease out their fiber lines then they will do so and the fair market value will determine the rate. We don't need the government stepping in to tell Verizon that XYZ is the rate that they can lease their fiber at and there's nothing they can do about it.
What we need is less regulation, not more of it.
Why don't we just put term limits on Senators? Say 2 terms(12 years)? I mean really, 12 years in the Senate is plenty of time. Why should these guys be allowed to serve longer than the President? Of course this will never happen because the career politicians would never vote to limit their careers.
This would get rid of career politicians like Ted Kennedy, Orrin Hatch, Robert Byrd, the late Strom Thurmond, and needless to say John Kerry. It would get us back to what the Framers intended - to serve for a few years and then go back to your normal job and life.
Make these guys go back to what they normally do like driving drunk in the Chappaquiddick Bay, remotely blowing up computers, or vehemently maligning Vietnam Veterans and accusing them of war crimes while at the same time claiming to be a war hero. Make these guys actually try to run a business or have a real job.
What good does it do we, the people, to have these kinds of people representing us for 30 or 40 years?
Don't you see, this is SCO's next step in their vexatious litigation strategy. They're going to launch their Pro-SCO site and open up the forums. Then when the masses of FOSS supporters flock to the forums to debunk all of SCO's claims, SCO will be secretly recording their IP addresses, personal information, etc.
Then they'll take their newly acquired information and track you down so they can sue you! Then they'll be rich Rich RICH!
MWAHAHA MWAHAHAHA MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
No one here is claiming that the G4 is superior to the P4. In fact, in many ways the P4 is superior to the G4. Now the G5 on the other hand is... (that story is for another day)
What people are claiming here is that emulating Altivec using SSE/SSE2/SSE3 could not result in 80% native Altivec performance. Altivec has always been superior to SSE/2/3 and your just not going to be able to emulate it very well given the limitations of SSE. SSE2 helps to bridge the gap, but it still isn't as rich and versatile as Altivec.
I'm sorry but drinkypoo doesn't know what he's talking about. Follow this thread a bit more to see where he's wrong.
His comment is anything but informative or insightful.
I have not worked with or even looked at either instruction set. Nonetheless your average application will spend only a small percentage of its time using Altivec...
Maybe you should go and get some experience or at least some knowledge before you start talking about something you know nothing about.
Altivec from its beginning introduced 162 vector instructions that have not changed from the initial G4 to the current G5. On the other hand, Intel's MMX/SSE/SSE2 instructions have evolved over time - roughly 57 in MMX, 78? in SSE and 144 in SSE2. Altivec has been a well-designed and versatile SIMD engine from its beginning while Intel has sort of hacked together their SIMD engine as they've evolved their processors. Intel's implementation is very troublesome for a programmer because he has to do many different things depending on what is available (MMX/SSE/SSE2). These instructions don't map 1:1 for the most part with Altivec. And while SSE2 is much better than SSE, it was only introduced with the Pentium 4.
Also, Altivec has 32 128-bit registers to only 8 128-bit registers for SSE/SSE2. I don't care what anyone says, trying to emulate 32 registers (when all you have is 8) in an SIMD engine is going to be a lot slower.
You say that only a small percentage of time will be spent using Altivec, but that's just not true. Apple has optimized a large part of Mac OS X to use Altivec, especially in Quartz (the windowing and compositing engine). This would result in a major slowdown for any emulator in pretty much every application (except for stuff like background daemons). You'd probably do better just to emulate a G3 so as to not run any Altivec code.
Why was no thought given to liberating anybody before 9/11?
There was: Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. This did not call for the direct involvement of the U.S. military, but for U.S. support for an Iraqi-led rebellion from within. Look at the Democrat party right now, after 9/11, in their opposition to and hate for our current president. How do you think they'd be reacting if 9/11 had never happened? How would they have reacted had we gone into Afghanistan pre-9/11?
You speak of overextending oneself; why, in the midst of trying to track down a world-wide terrorist organization, would you suddenly decide to 'liberate' Iraq?
We pretty much destroyed whatever part of Al-Queda we could in Afghanistan. Whatever is left is hiding in caves that we're trying to track down now with the help of Pakistan. Where were the survivors of Al-Queda likely to go? Iraq was among the nations where they might try to flee. Combine that with the fact that we were already in a quasi-war with Iraq. We had a no-fly zone over most of the country, we (Clinton) bombed them to disrupt potential weapons programs, there were vast economic sanctions against them that were starting to break down (look at the Oil-for-food scandal), and they were led by a genocidal maniac that was determined to build or acquire WMD.
The people of Iraq desperately needed to be liberated, but Hussein was also a major security threat to the U.S. and Iraq's neighbors. Remember it only took a few planes and a handful of hijackers on 9/11. Iraq didn't need WMD to inflict major damage on us or its neighbors.
Not to mention that using a military solution in Iraq to take out Saddam Hussein may allow us to easier seek a diplomatic solution elsewhere (Iran, North Korea, Syria, etc.). The example you gave of Libya supports this.
Hussein had violated, what was it, 17-19 U.N. resolutions without any major consequences. Other hostile nations like Iran and North Korea can look at that and think, "Look at Iraq, they can get away with anything and the U.N. won't do a thing. Why should we have to listen to them?" Well now somebody (the U.S.) has used force to backup resolutions and shown that there will be grave consequences for not following U.N. resolutions.
Now when we try to negotiate with these rogue nations to end their weapons programs, they will listen much more closely to us.