Wow.. Im replying to myself, since its pretty pointless to address the respondants seperately. Quite amazed at the response to be honest - especially since only few people actually talked about the question of balance. Most took up the content to start more commentry about the sample topics I noted.
I agree mostly with CarlinWeather comment, and thank you for the advice. I like to read peoples opinions about certain topics, but I think I'll start to steer clear of Slashdot posts, they are getting very inane.. or just plain pointless (much like this turned into?!!).
For others.. it wasnt about MS vs Apple.. or OSX vs Windows.. honestly.. I dont care about either. If someone asks me to write on OSX.. I write on it.. if I have to write on Windows or SGI Motif.. I write on it.. if I have to write on Symbian.. I write on it.. if I have to write on PS2 or GBA.. I write on it.. its that simple. I get paid to do a job and I do it. And this is the crux of my post - rather than a discussion about balanced slashdot posts, this ends up another slashdot 'crap shoot'.
I think _some_ of the respondants should re-read what theyve written. Honestly, slashdot is getting far too much like FatBabies became. Originally FatBabies was a brilliant place for games industry people to discuss interesting and reasonably balanced discussions. These were great, because as a reader, you can learn a great deal from informative discussions. But as FB became more and more well known.. its threads and forums went to pot in a similar manner that slashdot has started to turn. On slashdot it is rare now to get an interesting informed post for a topic - just look at all the highest ranked posts... they simply speak for themselves.
However, theres little more point about droning on about this anyway.. I can guess all the type of responses it'll bring.. I'll leave it lie..
Dont respond to this please. I hate pointless threads.. and this is already one (I wish I hadnt even bothered).
This is _not_ a troll. It is a very sincere post questioning the readers of slashdot - it makes me wonder about the level of slashdot criticism.
If this were a MS story of Bill Gates doing the same, there would be the usual crazy outbreak of 'MS evil empire' type banter. However, because its Apple , the response is a mild - 'oh its ok, hes the Apple man hes allowed to'. Where is the balance? I think somewhere in between to be honest - Jobs and Gates are simply very ruthless business persons, and yet here at Slashdot there is a decided overflow towards Apple.
Is it the OSX thing - its not a free OS.. its not Open, so why the fanaticism, is it because its most Linux like? Windows has cygwin.. and I know a large number of IT specialists whom use it, but Windows is always rated as poor and irrevlevant (by the slashdot community), yet it is the most used desktop, by a rediculous majority? So where is the balance? Where is the even levelled intelligent arguments for both sides, that usually make for a great discussion?
The more I visit here the more I see very common attitudes: - Apple and OSX rules, and every other platform/OS sux. - MS are evil and Windows sux.. but Xbox rules (this one has always been a bit of a conundrum - this must imply MS are less evil than Sony?).. - Sony are evil and PS2 is crap.. - Linux and all Unix's are above all the best OS's and everything else is crap.. - Any programming language that isnt C++ like or OO is crap..
The above is a mere sample of generalisations and these are the usual source of flame wars. But the important thing about these topics, is that taking an opposing stance usually means getting flamed, chastised, or ridiculed.. It is even more interesting that moderators dont try to keep the discussion balanced, Im sure it would result in much better (more interesting) discussions, and a lot less ' is crap, or it sux'.
This leads me to one fairly basic conclusion. Most of the people posting on Slashdot these days are young, easily impressionable males, that have little sense or understanding of two sides of a discussion and generally are very one-eyed about subjects with little or no flexibilty to gauge information as valid or relevant.
Wouldnt it be better if it worked. 'Just' working isnt quite enough imho. Something on the brink of not working.. well.. erm.. no thanks. Mind you, very descriptive of their products.
I have done upwards of 20-40 changes in our codebase in a day. A merge doesnt take long to do (seconds not minutes). And it shouldnt. Since darcs applies this as a patch (same as BK does). So even on a massive repository, merging should only take a few seconds. Unless hes merging the entire repository everytime, but even then BK aint gonna be quick anyway.
BTW our repository is only 10 weeks old from 0.. so I'd say it grows reasonably quick - even faster than the kernel at the moment;-) Id estimate the large amount of time in merging is in conflicts (as it is in most repository's). Merging is _so_ not an issue in terms of speed (even CVS and SVN are fine for merging or commits). My original concern was 'pulls' and 'intial checkouts' - if this is done often, then time is not your friend, and even BK is not wonderful on this (good, but not great - so far darcs has show to be as good, but again or repository is smaller than the kernel, so I dont know for certain how it scales.)
Gee.. this makes for an intelligent read. You were obviously sitting on Tridge's shoulder when he did this? "I heard".. get a brain.. using that as evidence to make such rediculous claims is totally stupid and lame. Hes keeping his mouth closed due to the stupid crap flying around - by people like yourself.
You keep using NFS.. I need to work with the other 90% of OS's in the world. You can live in your little 12 yr old "FUCK Windows shares" world.. but you'll get nothing done in the real world with that sad, and ignorant attitude.
What you suggest is plain incorrect - you are assuming Tridge had no 'good endgame'. Which is plain silly. His aim was simply to make a tool people could use in lieu of BitKeeper to help manage to source tree, without the use of BitKeepr? How is this _not_ a good endgame? Saving money for people working on open source project? The whole use of BitKeeper in the first place makes the management of a kernel source tree outrageous for an open source project. Initially the clients were free and now the BitKeeper owners want to charge for them - this is the _entire_ crux of the problem! Its the usual, 'oh sorry, there are too many people with BitKeeper clients now, and we think we should now be able to charge for them'. Tridge is doing what the Open Office people did - produce something that can manipulate the _data_ that BitKeeper produces and open source it so something like the open source kernel can be accessed by all. Why is this even vaguely wrong?!
You also assume the the BK people will change the protocol for handling the data - if this is so, then Tridge I would assume update his tool to suit. You also assume that the tool as a client would be useless? Why? This makes little sense - remember this is from the person who helped build samba, and that could hardly be called useless. So even based on previous efforts you are being ignorant and pretty rude to Tridges abilities and software. Id suggest you look at some of the things hes done.
You suggest Tridge writes a SCM, well there are many open source alternative, although none to Linus's liking and this is again the main issue. Its not about Tridge at all, hes simply trying to find a solution to the BK mess Linus has produced! If Linus chose an open source source management tool then _ALL_ of these problems would disappear. Its all because he has a friend who now wants to cash in on BK client licenses - which is more 'moral' for an open source.. well.. pretty damn obvious isnt it. Imho it wouldnt surprise me if Linus has even a slight cut for marketing BK clients - this is very common in commercial world, hire high profile users to promote your wares. It looks very much like this here.
In the long run this is all for an _open_source_ development project, and without a free/GPL or open source tool to manage it, you are going to get into all sorts of problems - and unless someone relents (preferably Linus and hit BK obsession) then its going to make a mess of what was originally a good open source project.
I didnt think there would be a way to stop this mindless slashpot website.. here it is.. although by then.. I suspect slashpot would have self imploded... I, for one, welcome our new asteroid masters..
You dont need to have BitKeepr software to reverse engineer the _data_ - and that _is_ the same as reverse engineering SMB. Since you dont have microsofts source code for the portocol stack, you only have the data. People have been reverse engineering data for as long as there has been computers.. data reverse engineering has occured for millions of software data structures.. from game data mods.. to document recreations.. to graphic data.. and so on.. the only problem here is that Linus believes that Larry owns the data.. he doesnt.. he can only own the source and the binaries derived from that source. If someone manages to make some code that happens to reproduce the same data - TUFF!! Take it on the chin and get the hell over it.
.. why not start another PC vs Mac flame war.. yeah.. havent had one for a week now..
One thing to note, is how defensive Mac people have to be to explain that you shouldnt need to run Linux on a Mac, because you already 'have the best OS out there'. Pretty much the usual 'Apple is best' mentality, and yet these are the same people that complain about companies forcing people to use Windows on their machines.. go figure..
I must admit, our current project only goes to 300 MB.. but it seems pretty much fine? records, and pushes/pulls only take a few minutes.. no longer than svn did in anycase. A fresh checkout (pull), for the whole repository is definitely not that slow. Id be surprised if say a 600MB kernel repository was much different in speed with darcs.. as with svn.. cvs and such? - I have previously worked on 1GB+ projects (up to 4GB) that were cvs based.. and they were astonishingly horrible for initial checkouts.. certainly much longer than 4x my current project pulls from darcs. I used to let it run overnight (on the 1GB cvs one).. and this is same machine.. with just differing codebases.
If anyone has some profile statistics for these sorts of test/claims Id be very interested. Id hate to get to 600MB and find out darcs falls over?
This is almost beautiful.. look at all the stuttering americans come out of the closet.. "um.. err.. but we are better.. erm.. our schooling is much better.. besides china won the ACM.. and.. and.. they are now all mafia.. and.. and.. their communism sucked and now they are crap.. and we all make more money.. and.. and.. we have the best uni's.. they dont.. erm.."
Its like watching a fat person trying to explain how they got fat without including "ate too much" in the sentence.
Not sure why anyone hasnt mentioned darcs - being very similar to bitkeeper and arch. And free.. and so on.. I personally use darcs over anything else, since changing from svn.. I wont be going back:-)
Its really this simple: 1. Steam means you only have a copy of the data - in 4 yrs time.. Steam may be something quite different and your original purchase has suddenely disappeared or you need to 'renew' your license for the data you had already purchased? This is the way MS is going... 2. With the boxed version, you have a physical copy - like the same reason people like backing up that physical copy. They bought it because they know they will play it for sometime to come.. Steam is not suited to this - tried making a backup? 3. FPS's are a pisstenth of the game market yet are the most clustered with products ranging from crap to mediocre. Steam and HL2 _does_not_ represent the majority of gamers.. they are mostly RTS, strategy and sims players. These people dont give a fat rats a-hole about new 'delivery' technology, some of those products have only just recently gone 3d!!! (Rollercoaster Tycoon!). These people (whom are the majority) are catered for by games that can span a wide range of platform performance solutions rather than just the HL2 "bleeding edge only" hardware. And guess what, most of these types of people prefer to have backups!!! 4. Steam is an impedance to the 'good' paying customers.. while pirates happily enjoy 'un-steamed' HL2 and not benefitting Valve in anyway. This is a common misuse of technology - when you annoy the customer that you are selling to, you are plainly doing something wrong for your cash.
HL2 and Steam for that matter are another marketing ploy to try and minimise the amount a developer has to fork out, yet still have roughly the same retail costs. The only people it is helping is Valve.. and like they dont have enough cash as it is? The consumer suffers in a multitude of ways.. and has hardly anything to do with Steam being beneficial to the customer.
Some additional notes: Steam doesnt _really_ bring anything new to a consumer. Other companies still release patches over the net, and easily download and install? Other companies have games that happily play online and have complex chat rooms and lobbies for their users without any sort of Steam software? If Valve _really_ wanted to sell their game online, why the hell just not sell it as a download, as many other companies already do? You see there is nothing about Steam that is new or even useful, it is all about Valve trying to make cash.. and sucker people into a system that will allow things like yearly license renewals and such alot easier to apply...
Sorry Sanity and Slashdot.. not your normal cocktail for a balanced dicussion. Would you spend time trying to explain problems like this to a class of 12yr olds?.. welcome to slashdot.
You are simply a minority - many surveys have been compiled and almost all find a very high percentages of PC users play games regularly (somewhere in the 80% region usually). Whether that be MS Hearts.. or Doom.. So the suggestion that games should be tested is quite valid, since thats what a high majority of PC users do. It would be odd _not_ to include games in _performance_ testing too - since games are most often the at the leading edge of PC performance boundaries.
It matter little that you spend more money - your products are also much more expensive. 3DSMax for example 4K +.. that would buy you 40+ games.. hence the reason why again you are in a minority of users not a majority. Remember these are performance tests too.. and most other applications have amuch slower turnover and release rate.. and thus rarely catering for 'bleeding edge' hardware.. usually catering for stability and wider platform usage (broad range of performing machines.)
How does Sony releasing all its movies relate to iPods in any way shape or form? The insecurity shown by iPod users is amazingly extreme. Sure the PSP will have some music, movie, web, email and gaming capabilities, but surely its not the same as the iPod market (since I dont know many you can play movies, games on). So why even have issues with this little news item? My guess, is that 200 odd dollars spent on an iPod seems a little rich compared to a 249 dollar PSP that has a few more features? Or is it just genuine Apple v Sony fan boy wars? In terms of hardware they are both so different in features..
If you read the patent - it is an extremely broad ranging patent. The descriptions are akin to "I have a thing that spins.. and I make it spin using software frequency".. I actually wonder whether an wheel balancer for a car would have to fall under this patent too - being frequency controlled off center weight balancing mechanism - watch out GM.
Like ALOT of patents this is pretty pointless - how it even managed to get though the wonderful US patent system boggles the mind. It reminds me alot of those web page and html link patents that were filed (and rejected).
Immersion didnt invent the dual-shock controller.. but they are essentially claiming that Sony stole their idea (and thus obviously they _were_ going to invent it) - looking at the products Immersion was making when the dual-shock came out seems a little like a money grab doesnt it. Especially with a company that is 111 million dollars in debt. http://www.forbes.com/home_asia/free_forbes /2005/0 228/050.html
I have seen alot of odd comments on slashdot but this just takes the cake:
on the other hand; what has France contributed to the world that makes them so special?
I was most way through elementary school before I could point out France on a map. Sure, I'd been told where it was, but France wasn't important enough to remember.
It really makes you feel better that somehow Americans are superior in some way? That.. your almighty 200 years of history.. far outweighs any sort of thousands of years history another country (lets say.. France for instance) has.. Is this really the sort of things Ameraicans think? I mean really??
If you were any more small minded, your brain would have disappeared.
Yeah it is, until you realise SP runs at 256 Gflops.. so even at a modest 25 Gflops it out performs most cores quite well. Cells are obviously built for clusters/multiple connected cores though.. theoretically then you only need 5,400 odd cores to get the same 136 Tflop caps.. (I refer to cores here, since most incarnations are going to have 2, 4, 8 or 16 cells onboard).. still a fairly decent improvement..
Obviously looked long and hard to find a less verbose language.. and found the most amazing solution that makes file opening a breeze. C FILE *f = fopen(filename,"rw") C++ fstream f(filename) Java OutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(filename) VB.NET OpenFile(F, filename) Lua io.open(filename, "rw")
.... etc.... etc... hardly seems a good way to determine language suitablility.
Totally agree - the VU(s) were way ahead of their time. I remember finding so many amazing instructions in it that you could reduce entire algorithms to a few simple VU calls. The NOP padding was totally a pain - but the fun was trying to use them up with interger ops:-)
Like everything, people get on the bandwagon about gear that is better marketed, rather than necessarily completely better.
Not sure about the AltiVec in the Cell - it does have some 'similar' componentry to the PowerPC but its a complete remake from scratch, so it will be interesting to see the what the instruction sets are like - I would bet a very high compatibility with PS2 like instruction sets (ie MIPS & VU based).
Agreed - Mac consumers are simply overdressed, hi salary Linux Geeks. And extreme fanatics on a quiet day - compared to Windows Users (who are generally forced disgruntled, but get-on-with-it individuals), and Linux users (freak show tech-heads who want to visit the moon) they are probably the most defensive of their own software/hardware. Very much like a crazy cult - this cult.. survives on rumours, as you so pointedly noted. And whether for right or wrong reasons Apple has seen fit to attack one of the primary sections of their community - quite an odd practice for a company, that really needs all the people onboard it can get.
Imho Apple is (as the original parent suggests) alot more devious and competition limiting that even the evil MS empire itself. The whole 'you must use this hardware' rings of IBM in the 80's. Its the abstraction away from hardware that brought PC's so far, so quickly (even Mac wouldnt be where it is now without the PC advances - vid cards, cpus, memory etc).
By forcing hardware solutions onto your customers you simply are limiting your customer scope - again silly for a company with such a small share.. one of the interesting things I have found very recently, is how insecure iPod owners defend their device when you talk about the PSP or other cheaper alternative (better) mp3/portable pc solutions. Its only a device (expensive for the components), but still.. just a device.. although.. talking to Apple lovers, youd think its a way of life.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow.. Im replying to myself, since its pretty pointless to address the respondants seperately. Quite amazed at the response to be honest - especially since only few people actually talked about the question of balance. Most took up the content to start more commentry about the sample topics I noted.
I agree mostly with CarlinWeather comment, and thank you for the advice. I like to read peoples opinions about certain topics, but I think I'll start to steer clear of Slashdot posts, they are getting very inane.. or just plain pointless (much like this turned into?!!).
For others.. it wasnt about MS vs Apple.. or OSX vs Windows.. honestly.. I dont care about either. If someone asks me to write on OSX.. I write on it.. if I have to write on Windows or SGI Motif.. I write on it.. if I have to write on Symbian.. I write on it.. if I have to write on PS2 or GBA.. I write on it.. its that simple. I get paid to do a job and I do it. And this is the crux of my post - rather than a discussion about balanced slashdot posts, this ends up another slashdot 'crap shoot'.
I think _some_ of the respondants should re-read what theyve written. Honestly, slashdot is getting far too much like FatBabies became. Originally FatBabies was a brilliant place for games industry people to discuss interesting and reasonably balanced discussions. These were great, because as a reader, you can learn a great deal from informative discussions. But as FB became more and more well known.. its threads and forums went to pot in a similar manner that slashdot has started to turn. On slashdot it is rare now to get an interesting informed post for a topic - just look at all the highest ranked posts... they simply speak for themselves.
However, theres little more point about droning on about this anyway.. I can guess all the type of responses it'll bring.. I'll leave it lie..
Dont respond to this please. I hate pointless threads.. and this is already one (I wish I hadnt even bothered).
This is _not_ a troll. It is a very sincere post questioning the readers of slashdot - it makes me wonder about the level of slashdot criticism.
If this were a MS story of Bill Gates doing the same, there would be the usual crazy outbreak of 'MS evil empire' type banter. However, because its Apple , the response is a mild - 'oh its ok, hes the Apple man hes allowed to'. Where is the balance? I think somewhere in between to be honest - Jobs and Gates are simply very ruthless business persons, and yet here at Slashdot there is a decided overflow towards Apple.
Is it the OSX thing - its not a free OS.. its not Open, so why the fanaticism, is it because its most Linux like? Windows has cygwin.. and I know a large number of IT specialists whom use it, but Windows is always rated as poor and irrevlevant (by the slashdot community), yet it is the most used desktop, by a rediculous majority? So where is the balance? Where is the even levelled intelligent arguments for both sides, that usually make for a great discussion?
The more I visit here the more I see very common attitudes:
- Apple and OSX rules, and every other platform/OS sux.
- MS are evil and Windows sux.. but Xbox rules (this one has always been a bit of a conundrum - this must imply MS are less evil than Sony?)..
- Sony are evil and PS2 is crap..
- Linux and all Unix's are above all the best OS's and everything else is crap..
- Any programming language that isnt C++ like or OO is crap..
The above is a mere sample of generalisations and these are the usual source of flame wars. But the important thing about these topics, is that taking an opposing stance usually means getting flamed, chastised, or ridiculed.. It is even more interesting that moderators dont try to keep the discussion balanced, Im sure it would result in much better (more interesting) discussions, and a lot less ' is crap, or it sux'.
This leads me to one fairly basic conclusion. Most of the people posting on Slashdot these days are young, easily impressionable males, that have little sense or understanding of two sides of a discussion and generally are very one-eyed about subjects with little or no flexibilty to gauge information as valid or relevant.
Wouldnt it be better if it worked. 'Just' working isnt quite enough imho. Something on the brink of not working.. well.. erm.. no thanks. Mind you, very descriptive of their products.
I have done upwards of 20-40 changes in our codebase in a day. A merge doesnt take long to do (seconds not minutes). And it shouldnt. Since darcs applies this as a patch (same as BK does). So even on a massive repository, merging should only take a few seconds. Unless hes merging the entire repository everytime, but even then BK aint gonna be quick anyway.
;-) Id estimate the large amount of time in merging is in conflicts (as it is in most repository's). Merging is _so_ not an issue in terms of speed (even CVS and SVN are fine for merging or commits). My original concern was 'pulls' and 'intial checkouts' - if this is done often, then time is not your friend, and even BK is not wonderful on this (good, but not great - so far darcs has show to be as good, but again or repository is smaller than the kernel, so I dont know for certain how it scales.)
BTW our repository is only 10 weeks old from 0.. so I'd say it grows reasonably quick - even faster than the kernel at the moment
Welcome to Slashpot.. the news for inane nerds.. stuff that _really_ matters...
Yep. Troll.. Flamebait.. MonkeySnot.. RedundantUselsessInfo.. and anything else people can think of.
Gee.. this makes for an intelligent read. You were obviously sitting on Tridge's shoulder when he did this? "I heard".. get a brain.. using that as evidence to make such rediculous claims is totally stupid and lame. Hes keeping his mouth closed due to the stupid crap flying around - by people like yourself.
You keep using NFS.. I need to work with the other 90% of OS's in the world. You can live in your little 12 yr old "FUCK Windows shares" world.. but you'll get nothing done in the real world with that sad, and ignorant attitude.
What you suggest is plain incorrect - you are assuming Tridge had no 'good endgame'. Which is plain silly. His aim was simply to make a tool people could use in lieu of BitKeeper to help manage to source tree, without the use of BitKeepr? How is this _not_ a good endgame? Saving money for people working on open source project? The whole use of BitKeeper in the first place makes the management of a kernel source tree outrageous for an open source project. Initially the clients were free and now the BitKeeper owners want to charge for them - this is the _entire_ crux of the problem! Its the usual, 'oh sorry, there are too many people with BitKeeper clients now, and we think we should now be able to charge for them'. Tridge is doing what the Open Office people did - produce something that can manipulate the _data_ that BitKeeper produces and open source it so something like the open source kernel can be accessed by all. Why is this even vaguely wrong?!
You also assume the the BK people will change the protocol for handling the data - if this is so, then Tridge I would assume update his tool to suit. You also assume that the tool as a client would be useless? Why? This makes little sense - remember this is from the person who helped build samba, and that could hardly be called useless. So even based on previous efforts you are being ignorant and pretty rude to Tridges abilities and software. Id suggest you look at some of the things hes done.
You suggest Tridge writes a SCM, well there are many open source alternative, although none to Linus's liking and this is again the main issue. Its not about Tridge at all, hes simply trying to find a solution to the BK mess Linus has produced! If Linus chose an open source source management tool then _ALL_ of these problems would disappear. Its all because he has a friend who now wants to cash in on BK client licenses - which is more 'moral' for an open source.. well.. pretty damn obvious isnt it. Imho it wouldnt surprise me if Linus has even a slight cut for marketing BK clients - this is very common in commercial world, hire high profile users to promote your wares. It looks very much like this here.
In the long run this is all for an _open_source_ development project, and without a free/GPL or open source tool to manage it, you are going to get into all sorts of problems - and unless someone relents (preferably Linus and hit BK obsession) then its going to make a mess of what was originally a good open source project.
I didnt think there would be a way to stop this mindless slashpot website.. here it is.. although by then.. I suspect slashpot would have self imploded... I, for one, welcome our new asteroid masters..
You dont need to have BitKeepr software to reverse engineer the _data_ - and that _is_ the same as reverse engineering SMB. Since you dont have microsofts source code for the portocol stack, you only have the data. People have been reverse engineering data for as long as there has been computers.. data reverse engineering has occured for millions of software data structures.. from game data mods.. to document recreations.. to graphic data .. and so on.. the only problem here is that Linus believes that Larry owns the data.. he doesnt.. he can only own the source and the binaries derived from that source. If someone manages to make some code that happens to reproduce the same data - TUFF!! Take it on the chin and get the hell over it.
Slashdot = Fatbabies
Started off good - then went to the dogs...
Troll.. Flamebait.. u name it.. all intended..
.. why not start another PC vs Mac flame war.. yeah.. havent had one for a week now..
One thing to note, is how defensive Mac people have to be to explain that you shouldnt need to run Linux on a Mac, because you already 'have the best OS out there'. Pretty much the usual 'Apple is best' mentality, and yet these are the same people that complain about companies forcing people to use Windows on their machines.. go figure..
I must admit, our current project only goes to 300 MB.. but it seems pretty much fine? records, and pushes/pulls only take a few minutes.. no longer than svn did in anycase. A fresh checkout (pull), for the whole repository is definitely not that slow. Id be surprised if say a 600MB kernel repository was much different in speed with darcs.. as with svn.. cvs and such? - I have previously worked on 1GB+ projects (up to 4GB) that were cvs based.. and they were astonishingly horrible for initial checkouts.. certainly much longer than 4x my current project pulls from darcs. I used to let it run overnight (on the 1GB cvs one).. and this is same machine.. with just differing codebases.
If anyone has some profile statistics for these sorts of test/claims Id be very interested. Id hate to get to 600MB and find out darcs falls over?
This is almost beautiful.. look at all the stuttering americans come out of the closet.. "um.. err.. but we are better.. erm.. our schooling is much better.. besides china won the ACM.. and .. and.. they are now all mafia.. and.. and.. their communism sucked and now they are crap.. and we all make more money.. and .. and .. we have the best uni's.. they dont.. erm.."
Its like watching a fat person trying to explain how they got fat without including "ate too much" in the sentence.
Not sure why anyone hasnt mentioned darcs - being very similar to bitkeeper and arch. And free.. and so on.. I personally use darcs over anything else, since changing from svn.. I wont be going back :-)
www.darcs.org
Its really this simple:
1. Steam means you only have a copy of the data - in 4 yrs time.. Steam may be something quite different and your original purchase has suddenely disappeared or you need to 'renew' your license for the data you had already purchased? This is the way MS is going...
2. With the boxed version, you have a physical copy - like the same reason people like backing up that physical copy. They bought it because they know they will play it for sometime to come.. Steam is not suited to this - tried making a backup?
3. FPS's are a pisstenth of the game market yet are the most clustered with products ranging from crap to mediocre. Steam and HL2 _does_not_ represent the majority of gamers.. they are mostly RTS, strategy and sims players. These people dont give a fat rats a-hole about new 'delivery' technology, some of those products have only just recently gone 3d!!! (Rollercoaster Tycoon!). These people (whom are the majority) are catered for by games that can span a wide range of platform performance solutions rather than just the HL2 "bleeding edge only" hardware. And guess what, most of these types of people prefer to have backups!!!
4. Steam is an impedance to the 'good' paying customers.. while pirates happily enjoy 'un-steamed' HL2 and not benefitting Valve in anyway. This is a common misuse of technology - when you annoy the customer that you are selling to, you are plainly doing something wrong for your cash.
HL2 and Steam for that matter are another marketing ploy to try and minimise the amount a developer has to fork out, yet still have roughly the same retail costs. The only people it is helping is Valve.. and like they dont have enough cash as it is? The consumer suffers in a multitude of ways.. and has hardly anything to do with Steam being beneficial to the customer.
Some additional notes:
Steam doesnt _really_ bring anything new to a consumer. Other companies still release patches over the net, and easily download and install? Other companies have games that happily play online and have complex chat rooms and lobbies for their users without any sort of Steam software? If Valve _really_ wanted to sell their game online, why the hell just not sell it as a download, as many other companies already do? You see there is nothing about Steam that is new or even useful, it is all about Valve trying to make cash.. and sucker people into a system that will allow things like yearly license renewals and such alot easier to apply...
Sorry Sanity and Slashdot.. not your normal cocktail for a balanced dicussion. Would you spend time trying to explain problems like this to a class of 12yr olds? .. welcome to slashdot.
Troll intended.
You are simply a minority - many surveys have been compiled and almost all find a very high percentages of PC users play games regularly (somewhere in the 80% region usually). Whether that be MS Hearts.. or Doom.. So the suggestion that games should be tested is quite valid, since thats what a high majority of PC users do. It would be odd _not_ to include games in _performance_ testing too - since games are most often the at the leading edge of PC performance boundaries.
.. that would buy you 40+ games.. hence the reason why again you are in a minority of users not a majority. Remember these are performance tests too.. and most other applications have amuch slower turnover and release rate.. and thus rarely catering for 'bleeding edge' hardware.. usually catering for stability and wider platform usage (broad range of performing machines.)
It matter little that you spend more money - your products are also much more expensive. 3DSMax for example 4K +
How does Sony releasing all its movies relate to iPods in any way shape or form? The insecurity shown by iPod users is amazingly extreme. Sure the PSP will have some music, movie, web, email and gaming capabilities, but surely its not the same as the iPod market (since I dont know many you can play movies, games on). So why even have issues with this little news item? My guess, is that 200 odd dollars spent on an iPod seems a little rich compared to a 249 dollar PSP that has a few more features? Or is it just genuine Apple v Sony fan boy wars? In terms of hardware they are both so different in features..
If you read the patent - it is an extremely broad ranging patent. The descriptions are akin to "I have a thing that spins.. and I make it spin using software frequency".. I actually wonder whether an wheel balancer for a car would have to fall under this patent too - being frequency controlled off center weight balancing mechanism - watch out GM.
s /2005/0 228/050.html
Like ALOT of patents this is pretty pointless - how it even managed to get though the wonderful US patent system boggles the mind. It reminds me alot of those web page and html link patents that were filed (and rejected).
Immersion didnt invent the dual-shock controller.. but they are essentially claiming that Sony stole their idea (and thus obviously they _were_ going to invent it) - looking at the products Immersion was making when the dual-shock came out seems a little like a money grab doesnt it. Especially with a company that is 111 million dollars in debt.
http://www.forbes.com/home_asia/free_forbe
I have seen alot of odd comments on slashdot but this just takes the cake:
on the other hand; what has France contributed to the world that makes them so special?
I was most way through elementary school before I could point out France on a map. Sure, I'd been told where it was, but France wasn't important enough to remember.
It really makes you feel better that somehow Americans are superior in some way? That.. your almighty 200 years of history.. far outweighs any sort of thousands of years history another country (lets say.. France for instance) has.. Is this really the sort of things Ameraicans think? I mean really??
If you were any more small minded, your brain would have disappeared.
Yeah it is, until you realise SP runs at 256 Gflops.. so even at a modest 25 Gflops it out performs most cores quite well. Cells are obviously built for clusters/multiple connected cores though.. theoretically then you only need 5,400 odd cores to get the same 136 Tflop caps.. (I refer to cores here, since most incarnations are going to have 2, 4, 8 or 16 cells onboard) .. still a fairly decent improvement..
Obviously looked long and hard to find a less verbose language.. and found the most amazing solution that makes file opening a breeze. .NET
.... etc .... etc ... hardly seems a good way to determine language suitablility.
C
FILE *f = fopen(filename,"rw")
C++
fstream f(filename)
Java
OutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(filename)
VB
OpenFile(F, filename)
Lua
io.open(filename, "rw")
Totally agree - the VU(s) were way ahead of their time. I remember finding so many amazing instructions in it that you could reduce entire algorithms to a few simple VU calls. The NOP padding was totally a pain - but the fun was trying to use them up with interger ops :-)
Like everything, people get on the bandwagon about gear that is better marketed, rather than necessarily completely better.
Not sure about the AltiVec in the Cell - it does have some 'similar' componentry to the PowerPC but its a complete remake from scratch, so it will be interesting to see the what the instruction sets are like - I would bet a very high compatibility with PS2 like instruction sets (ie MIPS & VU based).
Agreed - Mac consumers are simply overdressed, hi salary Linux Geeks. And extreme fanatics on a quiet day - compared to Windows Users (who are generally forced disgruntled, but get-on-with-it individuals), and Linux users (freak show tech-heads who want to visit the moon) they are probably the most defensive of their own software/hardware. Very much like a crazy cult - this cult.. survives on rumours, as you so pointedly noted. And whether for right or wrong reasons Apple has seen fit to attack one of the primary sections of their community - quite an odd practice for a company, that really needs all the people onboard it can get.
Imho Apple is (as the original parent suggests) alot more devious and competition limiting that even the evil MS empire itself. The whole 'you must use this hardware' rings of IBM in the 80's. Its the abstraction away from hardware that brought PC's so far, so quickly (even Mac wouldnt be where it is now without the PC advances - vid cards, cpus, memory etc).
By forcing hardware solutions onto your customers you simply are limiting your customer scope - again silly for a company with such a small share.. one of the interesting things I have found very recently, is how insecure iPod owners defend their device when you talk about the PSP or other cheaper alternative (better) mp3/portable pc solutions. Its only a device (expensive for the components), but still.. just a device.. although.. talking to Apple lovers, youd think its a way of life.
sounds of trumpets playing God Save America .. God save the rest of us from them..