In the modern day that is, sadly, merely a semantic difference. If someone has a royalty-free licence to do anything with something they might as well own it and it woudln't make any difference to them or the author.
You might want to look up 'semantic' in a dictionary. It means the opposite of what you think it means.
That encounted is heavily scripted, and the script tends to... well, fail. I assume you've read somewhere what you're supposed to do (if not, SPOILERS: go to the tunnel, Aard the support beam behind you, pick up the rune from the body, run as fast as you can, killing as few kikimores as possible (stick to the right) and then at the right time turn around and Aard the beams twice or thrice). So, just keep going - the important bit is not to get bogged down fighting all the kikimores, as the queen will catch you.
I've played the game through five times on medium, so I know how to do it. I've tried it once before on hard before but got fed up trying to beat the Beast (the chapter one end of chapter monster). This time I decided I'd try on 'Hard' right through...
And since posting that I've got past the Kikkimore queen (twice, actually, since the first time the game crashed at the Adda cut-scene...) When you get the timing just right that Kikkimore Queen sequence seems easy, but getting it just right is the trick.
But this comes back to what I said before about immersion. The Witcher's great strength is its story telling and immersivity - you really get into the character. Therefore, things which break immersion are much more disruptive in The Witcher than they are in less immersive, more puzzle oriented games.
I'm just on my twelth attempt this afternoon to get past the Kikimore Queen in The Witcher. OK, she's a 'level boss...', an end of chapter monster (and yes, I do know about collapsing the cieling on her - I just haven't yet timed it right).
But there is a critical difference between 'game design' and 'story telling'. In a game, it's OK to set a challenge that the player may repeatedly fail to get past. But in story telling, if you break immersion you have failed. And every time the player dies - or even has to explicitly save - you are revealing the artifice, breaking the immersion, failing.
In a good game, the player may try again, repeatedly. In a good story, he must never die. When designing an RPG, you have to make up your mind whether you're designing a game or telling a story, because the needs of the two objectives are very divergent.
IE7 is a good browser. IE8 will be a better browser. This article is ridiculous. Not having standards mode for intranet is hardly breaking a promise.
I'm looking at that statement and I simply cannot believe that anyone said it. I work, these days, for my sins, in a Microsoft shop; everything we build is for Microsoft platforms, practically every tool we use is a Microsoft tool. But the one Microsoft product that no-one in the building will use except for testing is IE. Most people use Firefox, some people use Safari, I use Opera.
So why not? Is it because we care about standards? Well, a few of us do. But mainly, it's the dreadful 'lets hide all the controls' user interface, the 'helpful' 'we know what you want' features, and the slug-like performance.
IE is so bad that even brainwashed pro-Microsoft zealots won't use it.... and that's a good browser?
Lenovo Thinkpad = erm, it's a Laptop
iPhone = erm, it's NOT (FAIL)
Logitech MX1000 = erm, it's a Mouse
iPhone = erm, it's NOT (FAIL)
Nintendo DS = erm, it's a good little games console
iPhone = erm, it's NOT (FAIL)
To be honest, I can't think of a single, sensible reason to buy an iPhone. It is jack of all trades and master of none.
You're missing the point. I currently run an HP IPAQ 6515. The camera is not as good as I'd like; the keyboard is not as good as I'd like; the screen is not as good as I'd like; and it currently runs Windows Mobile, which I don't much like. But it does everything, and it fits in one (count them, one) pocket. It also only needs to be recharged once a week, so I don't need to carry a charger with me unless I'm going to be on the road for more than a week.
With modern mobile devices, most people don't need a laptop (although they may need a better keyboard - I definitely can't touch type on the IPAQ). And if you don't need the laptop you don't need the mouse. And if the choice is between a less than perfect camera or audio player or word processor on the one hand and carrying around a heavy bag on the other, I'll take portability!
Nokia N810 + Canon Powershot SD1000 + Cowan iAudio X5L + Lenovo Thinkpad + Logitech MX1000 do not fit in one pocket, FAIL.
Are you kidding me? You clearly do not work with physicists. Granted we don't wear suits often but it's still a PROFESSION where we have to look PROFESSIONAL.
If you're working in a physics lab and the management care more about the state of your wardrobe than about the science you're doing, you're working in the wrong lab. CERN (or Rutherford Appleton) are thataway --->
If you pay more money, you should be able to hire more hirelings.
Having done work in both AI and game physics, I have the suspicion that the first true
AI entity will be an NPC. There's ongoing demand for smarter NPCs, they have a world
with which they can interact, they're physical within that world, not abstract
intelligences, and they compete. That's the space in which we can make progress.
Laugh now, but someday we'll be in charge - an NPC.
Sadly, I don't have any mod points. However, they'd be redundent because you've already (deservedly) maxed out your 'Interesting' score on that post.... As it happens, ten minutes before I read that I had written, in a design document I'm drafting:
Bioware and CDPR both talk to some extent about 'Game AI', but in practice the characters in Aurora-based games have virtually no agency; they have tightly scripted behaviour. The appearance of agency is a consequence of tight scripting. I'm looking for an environment in which NPCs have a degree of real agency - where their behaviour is based on appetites, beliefs and attitudes, and is not tightly scripted. Obviously, 'Plot' characters may need tighter scripting so that they are in the right places and doing the right things at the right times.
You're lying. The network/file copy issues are resolved in SP1. Your English is also crap, not like "I'm learning English" but more like "I'm and uneducated American."
My, my, grammar flames. You need to be careful with those.
In Silicon Valley I can't imagine the thought of biking to work. It's way too dangerous, the bike lanes are often missing, and there's no easy way to change lanes...
As an alternative, walking is easy to do.
Statistically, cycling is approximately twice as safe as walking. Counter-intuitive, but true.
(and what's with the idiot bike riders who don't even follow traffic rules?)
(sigh) They're selfish idiots. There are selfish idiots in all groups of people.
I really hate the holier than thou attitude as well. I'll gladly share the road with cyclists... when they start going the speed limit instead of doing 20mph in the middle of the road with a posted 30 mph speed limit - thus holding everyone behind them up.
This is a nonsense argument anyway, because in urban traffic a cyclist is almost always faster than a car. What's slowing you down is not cyclists, it's congestion. A cyclist uses a lot less road space than a car, so if everyone got out of their cars and onto bikes there would be a lot less congestion and everyone would get to their destinations faster (and in better temper).
But - at least in the UK and most other English-speaking countries - cyclists use the road by right while motorists use it by license. The point about a license is you don't have a right - that it can be taken away from you.
Motorists are allowed on the road as long as they play nice with the people who have a right to be there - and no longer.
Where do you live that you can bike to work without nearly getting run over on a constant basis?
Anywhere. Cycling is not dangerous. According to the UK National Statistics Office, there is on average one fatal accident for every twenty one and a half million miles cycled. If you were to cycle ten miles every single day, it would be nearly six thousand years before you had a fatal accident. The UK isn't a particularly safe place to cycle - in Holland you're three times safer than that.
What's more, cycling is twice as safe per thousand kilometers as walking - but you don't think walking is unacceptably dangerous, do you?
I've personally cycled something like a quarter of a million miles, and I've never been hit by a car.
Obviously, there are things you can do which make your cycling safer. They're mostly obvious -
Don't cycle in the doorzone near parked cars (a third of all cycling fatalities in London are caused by a cyclist being hit by an opened car door and being thrown into traffic).
Never cycle up the inside of a large vehicle waiting at traffic lights - another major cause of fatal accidents is when a large vehicle turns on a junction with roadside barriers, catching the cyclist between the vehicle and the barrier.
Don't cycle in the gutter or very close to the edge of the road - if you do, motor vehicles will try to pass you without changing lane, and you have nowhere to go when they get too close. Normally cycle in the 'primary position' - the centre of the lane - where drivers can see you clearly and where they have to change lanes to overtake you. That way, they don't pass you so close.
Cycling is the ideal way for a geek to exercise. I can never be bothered to do exercises just for the sake of, and the idea of going to a gym leaves me completely cold. But cycling to work is fun, and gets the blood flowing.
Social Security? IRS? Medicare? Please... there is nothing transparent about government waste. If it weren't for market based funding there would be no improvements in the health care system. Who do you think is going to do drug research for free?
Try Europe where you can get 35 hour work weeks and 35% unemployment. There everyone has the same mediocre health care and they STILL have to have insurance if they want any care beyond antibiotics or the setting of a broken bone.
Just a few minor corrections:
No country in Europe spends a higher proportion of GDP on health care than the US does. Yet most countries in Europe have better health care than the US does. So the public systems get better health care for less money...
I don't know anyone who has health insurance. Why should you, when world-class care is available for free?
Most drug research is paid for by charities and governments anyway.
If Europe had 35% unemployment, how the heck would we afford the standards of living we have?
Why yes, who could possibly have any use for a high-quality HTML renderer anywhere but in the browser.
This is the problem, though. Internet Explorer has never been - and still isn't - a high quality HTML renderer. It's sub-standard on performance, and still woefully sub-standard on the actual rendering.
When you're going from an inferior product (I found Ubuntu Linux slowed my internet connection considerably, probably due to a driver issue. Although I can't say for sure) to a superior product (my internet connection is considerably faster in Windows XP) then yes, I'd call it an upgrade.
I'd call it bad tuning. Linux is generally quite a lot faster on more or less any hardware than XP, so if you are having a performance problem then you have something misconfigured.
All you are doing is justifying your illegal actions (as is popular on this site). Don't get me wrong, I have pirated in the past so it isn't like I am sitting on some moral high horse. So feel free to pirate all you want, just don't come on here and tell me it is good for the game companies. It isn't. It is the people like you and the people that pirate everything that makes DRM exist.
OK, I am in a position to speak, because I have never 'pirated' anything. And what people have said above is true: the problem is not people making unauthorised copies, the problem is bad product. The result is that I buy - and play - very few games. I only buy after reading a lot of good reviews, and I tend not to trust 'industry' reviews, only user reviews. I buy games by Sid Meier's gang, because I know from experience they're good value; I buy games from Bioware, same reason; and currently I'm playing CD Projekt Red's The Witcher, which I've enjoyed tremendously, because it was promoted by Bioware.
But I wouldn't even know about Bioware if they hadn't released Neverwinter Nights for Linux - I bought it because I want to support companies releasing stuff for Linux, and having bought it, I played it...
In my opinion, to succeed games companies don't need 'digital rights management'. They don't need 'protected' disks. They don't need anti-piracy measures. They need a reputation for producing quality games, which consumers trust. And, with a few honourable exceptions, that's exactly what they don't have.
Final thought, game industry. Would you rather most consumers were like me, never pirate anything but buy on average two games a year, or like most people in this discussion, pirate lots but actually pay for five or six a year?
I think they're mainly suggesting that it would be more efficient than storing the same energy in ordinary chemical batteries, which is the current method for storing energy from natural sources for times of higher demand (or lower production, in the case of solar). Presumably their calculations are based on minimizing the inefficiencies for both batteries and compressed air.
Pumped storage systems - essentially hydroelectric systems with a top reservoir, a bottom reservoir, and a system of pumps to move water back up to the top reservoir at times of excess generating capacity - are used in the UK at Dinorwig and at Ffestiniog, and in the US at Luddington, Michigan (and probably in other places I don't know about). This is a reasonably simple, reasonably efficient system of storing energy at time of surplus production and releasing it at times of peak demand.
There is no way you can do some serious work without those keys.
There's no way you can do "serious work" on these machines at all. Tiny keyboards, tiny, low-res screens, slow CPUs, etc, etc.
A docking station might bring them close to be useful for "serious work", but even then they're lacking in things like CPU power, RAM and disk space.
This is complete rubbish.
My best laptop ever was a Toshiba Libretto - a little smaller than a standard paperback book. Yes, you can type perfectly well on a keyboard that size. Yes, Emacs runs just fine - and if you don't like the keymappings, remap them for heaven's sake!
My Libretto struggled with KDE3, but ran perfectly well with lighter window managers. It had a full Oracle installation and a full Apache installation and I used it when going into clients to do product demos. 'Where's the server,' they'd say, and I'd pull it out of my pocket and say 'here'.
If the screen hadn't died I'd still be using it now. 'Smaller' and 'lighter' (and 'reasonable batter life') are what I want from a laptop. I don't need vast processing power, and 20Gb of disk sounds enormous to me. Dammit, I have live e-commerce servers serving dynamic websites on the net with less disk, less memory, and less processor power than an EEEpc. People who think these are low power machines simply don't understand computing.
The EEE strategy can be stopped via a licensing scheme. That was the way Sun stopped MS over Java. ODF should do the same, minus the royalties.
Oh, God! [Bang head on desk, weeps] What the FSCK do you think C# is but Java 'Embraced and extended'? Every design idea - every design mistake, God damn it! - in Java is there for all to see in C#. This isn't innovation, it's plagiarism in software. Entirely legally. The licensing scheme failed absolutely.
Programming a physics engine does not take creativity, it takes intellectual brute force. Bah, let the cpu do all that. Gimme a creative guy who can come up with a solid design first, otherwise the brilliant physics engine will never be worth a damn anyway.
Actually, you're wrong. All my programming career (now twenty-five years), games have been pushing the limits of the available hardware. In business software you can often say 'programmers are expensive, silicon is cheap, shovel some extra silicon at the problem'. With games you typically can't do that - you're driving the available silicon to it's limits anyway. So every cycle you can save through tighter code contributes to a better experience - faster frame rate, more photo-realistic rendering, more responsive controls - for the user.
Yes, game design requires creativity. But it also needs good old-fashioned algorithms and ultra-tight code.
Slashdot Mirror
In the modern day that is, sadly, merely a semantic difference. If someone has a royalty-free licence to do anything with something they might as well own it and it woudln't make any difference to them or the author.
You might want to look up 'semantic' in a dictionary. It means the opposite of what you think it means.
That encounted is heavily scripted, and the script tends to... well, fail. I assume you've read somewhere what you're supposed to do (if not, SPOILERS: go to the tunnel, Aard the support beam behind you, pick up the rune from the body, run as fast as you can, killing as few kikimores as possible (stick to the right) and then at the right time turn around and Aard the beams twice or thrice). So, just keep going - the important bit is not to get bogged down fighting all the kikimores, as the queen will catch you.
I've played the game through five times on medium, so I know how to do it. I've tried it once before on hard before but got fed up trying to beat the Beast (the chapter one end of chapter monster). This time I decided I'd try on 'Hard' right through...
And since posting that I've got past the Kikkimore queen (twice, actually, since the first time the game crashed at the Adda cut-scene...) When you get the timing just right that Kikkimore Queen sequence seems easy, but getting it just right is the trick.
But this comes back to what I said before about immersion. The Witcher's great strength is its story telling and immersivity - you really get into the character. Therefore, things which break immersion are much more disruptive in The Witcher than they are in less immersive, more puzzle oriented games.
I'm just on my twelth attempt this afternoon to get past the Kikimore Queen in The Witcher. OK, she's a 'level boss...', an end of chapter monster (and yes, I do know about collapsing the cieling on her - I just haven't yet timed it right).
But there is a critical difference between 'game design' and 'story telling'. In a game, it's OK to set a challenge that the player may repeatedly fail to get past. But in story telling, if you break immersion you have failed. And every time the player dies - or even has to explicitly save - you are revealing the artifice, breaking the immersion, failing.
In a good game, the player may try again, repeatedly. In a good story, he must never die. When designing an RPG, you have to make up your mind whether you're designing a game or telling a story, because the needs of the two objectives are very divergent.
IE7 is a good browser. IE8 will be a better browser. This article is ridiculous. Not having standards mode for intranet is hardly breaking a promise.
I'm looking at that statement and I simply cannot believe that anyone said it. I work, these days, for my sins, in a Microsoft shop; everything we build is for Microsoft platforms, practically every tool we use is a Microsoft tool. But the one Microsoft product that no-one in the building will use except for testing is IE. Most people use Firefox, some people use Safari, I use Opera.
So why not? Is it because we care about standards? Well, a few of us do. But mainly, it's the dreadful 'lets hide all the controls' user interface, the 'helpful' 'we know what you want' features, and the slug-like performance.
IE is so bad that even brainwashed pro-Microsoft zealots won't use it.... and that's a good browser?
Dump it all for an iPhone ... yeah right !!!
Just because you are willing to compromise on everything doesn't mean the rest of us should ...
Nokia N810 = 800 x 480 display iPhone = 320 x 480 display (FAIL)
Canon Powershot SD1000 = 7.1 megapix iPhone = 2 megapix (FAIL)
Cowan iAudio X5L = 30GB storage iPhone = 4GB or 8GB (FAIL)
Lenovo Thinkpad = erm, it's a Laptop iPhone = erm, it's NOT (FAIL)
Logitech MX1000 = erm, it's a Mouse iPhone = erm, it's NOT (FAIL)
Nintendo DS = erm, it's a good little games console iPhone = erm, it's NOT (FAIL)
To be honest, I can't think of a single, sensible reason to buy an iPhone. It is jack of all trades and master of none.
You're missing the point. I currently run an HP IPAQ 6515. The camera is not as good as I'd like; the keyboard is not as good as I'd like; the screen is not as good as I'd like; and it currently runs Windows Mobile, which I don't much like. But it does everything, and it fits in one (count them, one) pocket. It also only needs to be recharged once a week, so I don't need to carry a charger with me unless I'm going to be on the road for more than a week.
With modern mobile devices, most people don't need a laptop (although they may need a better keyboard - I definitely can't touch type on the IPAQ). And if you don't need the laptop you don't need the mouse. And if the choice is between a less than perfect camera or audio player or word processor on the one hand and carrying around a heavy bag on the other, I'll take portability!
Nokia N810 + Canon Powershot SD1000 + Cowan iAudio X5L + Lenovo Thinkpad + Logitech MX1000 do not fit in one pocket, FAIL.
Are you kidding me? You clearly do not work with physicists. Granted we don't wear suits often but it's still a PROFESSION where we have to look PROFESSIONAL.
If you're working in a physics lab and the management care more about the state of your wardrobe than about the science you're doing, you're working in the wrong lab. CERN (or Rutherford Appleton) are thataway --->
If you pay more money, you should be able to hire more hirelings.
Having done work in both AI and game physics, I have the suspicion that the first true AI entity will be an NPC. There's ongoing demand for smarter NPCs, they have a world with which they can interact, they're physical within that world, not abstract intelligences, and they compete. That's the space in which we can make progress.
Laugh now, but someday we'll be in charge - an NPC.
Sadly, I don't have any mod points. However, they'd be redundent because you've already (deservedly) maxed out your 'Interesting' score on that post.... As it happens, ten minutes before I read that I had written, in a design document I'm drafting:
Bioware and CDPR both talk to some extent about 'Game AI', but in practice the characters in Aurora-based games have virtually no agency; they have tightly scripted behaviour. The appearance of agency is a consequence of tight scripting. I'm looking for an environment in which NPCs have a degree of real agency - where their behaviour is based on appetites, beliefs and attitudes, and is not tightly scripted. Obviously, 'Plot' characters may need tighter scripting so that they are in the right places and doing the right things at the right times.
While we are at it, you deserve a whoosh! award.
Someone got whooshed, certainly. Not, however, the person whom you thought.
You're lying. The network/file copy issues are resolved in SP1. Your English is also crap, not like "I'm learning English" but more like "I'm and uneducated American."
My, my, grammar flames. You need to be careful with those.
But something like 1 in 5 users will have made a very significant investment in hardware and in Vista in less than two years.
Or abandon Windows altogether.
And an awful lot of organisations will do just that.
In the United States, one does not have the right to block other traffic, regardless of whether one is in a car or on a bicycle.
Indeed not. But proceeding at a normal pace is not blocking other traffic.
In Silicon Valley I can't imagine the thought of biking to work. It's way too dangerous, the bike lanes are often missing, and there's no easy way to change lanes...
As an alternative, walking is easy to do.
Statistically, cycling is approximately twice as safe as walking. Counter-intuitive, but true.
(and what's with the idiot bike riders who don't even follow traffic rules?)
(sigh) They're selfish idiots. There are selfish idiots in all groups of people.
I really hate the holier than thou attitude as well. I'll gladly share the road with cyclists... when they start going the speed limit instead of doing 20mph in the middle of the road with a posted 30 mph speed limit - thus holding everyone behind them up.
This is a nonsense argument anyway, because in urban traffic a cyclist is almost always faster than a car. What's slowing you down is not cyclists, it's congestion. A cyclist uses a lot less road space than a car, so if everyone got out of their cars and onto bikes there would be a lot less congestion and everyone would get to their destinations faster (and in better temper).
But - at least in the UK and most other English-speaking countries - cyclists use the road by right while motorists use it by license. The point about a license is you don't have a right - that it can be taken away from you.
Motorists are allowed on the road as long as they play nice with the people who have a right to be there - and no longer.
Where do you live that you can bike to work without nearly getting run over on a constant basis?
Anywhere. Cycling is not dangerous. According to the UK National Statistics Office, there is on average one fatal accident for every twenty one and a half million miles cycled. If you were to cycle ten miles every single day, it would be nearly six thousand years before you had a fatal accident. The UK isn't a particularly safe place to cycle - in Holland you're three times safer than that.
What's more, cycling is twice as safe per thousand kilometers as walking - but you don't think walking is unacceptably dangerous, do you?
I've personally cycled something like a quarter of a million miles, and I've never been hit by a car.
Obviously, there are things you can do which make your cycling safer. They're mostly obvious -
Cycling is the ideal way for a geek to exercise. I can never be bothered to do exercises just for the sake of, and the idea of going to a gym leaves me completely cold. But cycling to work is fun, and gets the blood flowing.
Social Security? IRS? Medicare? Please... there is nothing transparent about government waste. If it weren't for market based funding there would be no improvements in the health care system. Who do you think is going to do drug research for free?
Try Europe where you can get 35 hour work weeks and 35% unemployment. There everyone has the same mediocre health care and they STILL have to have insurance if they want any care beyond antibiotics or the setting of a broken bone.
Just a few minor corrections:
Why yes, who could possibly have any use for a high-quality HTML renderer anywhere but in the browser.
This is the problem, though. Internet Explorer has never been - and still isn't - a high quality HTML renderer. It's sub-standard on performance, and still woefully sub-standard on the actual rendering.
When you're going from an inferior product (I found Ubuntu Linux slowed my internet connection considerably, probably due to a driver issue. Although I can't say for sure) to a superior product (my internet connection is considerably faster in Windows XP) then yes, I'd call it an upgrade.
I'd call it bad tuning. Linux is generally quite a lot faster on more or less any hardware than XP, so if you are having a performance problem then you have something misconfigured.
All you are doing is justifying your illegal actions (as is popular on this site). Don't get me wrong, I have pirated in the past so it isn't like I am sitting on some moral high horse. So feel free to pirate all you want, just don't come on here and tell me it is good for the game companies. It isn't. It is the people like you and the people that pirate everything that makes DRM exist.
OK, I am in a position to speak, because I have never 'pirated' anything. And what people have said above is true: the problem is not people making unauthorised copies, the problem is bad product. The result is that I buy - and play - very few games. I only buy after reading a lot of good reviews, and I tend not to trust 'industry' reviews, only user reviews. I buy games by Sid Meier's gang, because I know from experience they're good value; I buy games from Bioware, same reason; and currently I'm playing CD Projekt Red's The Witcher, which I've enjoyed tremendously, because it was promoted by Bioware.
But I wouldn't even know about Bioware if they hadn't released Neverwinter Nights for Linux - I bought it because I want to support companies releasing stuff for Linux, and having bought it, I played it...
In my opinion, to succeed games companies don't need 'digital rights management'. They don't need 'protected' disks. They don't need anti-piracy measures. They need a reputation for producing quality games, which consumers trust. And, with a few honourable exceptions, that's exactly what they don't have.
Final thought, game industry. Would you rather most consumers were like me, never pirate anything but buy on average two games a year, or like most people in this discussion, pirate lots but actually pay for five or six a year?
You want dim room light so that your pupils can relax and open up.
Why is that a good thing ?
Because when you are looking at a screen the focal distance is constant and you don't ever need to refocus, so depth of field is a complete non-issue.
Dark - or dim - rooms are definitely easier on the eyes.
Which is why we used to have green and amber screen monitors, before the days of colour.
Red or amber on black is best for human eyes, followed by green on black. Black on white is very nearly the worst possible combination.
I think they're mainly suggesting that it would be more efficient than storing the same energy in ordinary chemical batteries, which is the current method for storing energy from natural sources for times of higher demand (or lower production, in the case of solar). Presumably their calculations are based on minimizing the inefficiencies for both batteries and compressed air.
Pumped storage systems - essentially hydroelectric systems with a top reservoir, a bottom reservoir, and a system of pumps to move water back up to the top reservoir at times of excess generating capacity - are used in the UK at Dinorwig and at Ffestiniog, and in the US at Luddington, Michigan (and probably in other places I don't know about). This is a reasonably simple, reasonably efficient system of storing energy at time of surplus production and releasing it at times of peak demand.
There is no way you can do some serious work without those keys.
There's no way you can do "serious work" on these machines at all. Tiny keyboards, tiny, low-res screens, slow CPUs, etc, etc.
A docking station might bring them close to be useful for "serious work", but even then they're lacking in things like CPU power, RAM and disk space.
This is complete rubbish.
My best laptop ever was a Toshiba Libretto - a little smaller than a standard paperback book. Yes, you can type perfectly well on a keyboard that size. Yes, Emacs runs just fine - and if you don't like the keymappings, remap them for heaven's sake!
My Libretto struggled with KDE3, but ran perfectly well with lighter window managers. It had a full Oracle installation and a full Apache installation and I used it when going into clients to do product demos. 'Where's the server,' they'd say, and I'd pull it out of my pocket and say 'here'.
If the screen hadn't died I'd still be using it now. 'Smaller' and 'lighter' (and 'reasonable batter life') are what I want from a laptop. I don't need vast processing power, and 20Gb of disk sounds enormous to me. Dammit, I have live e-commerce servers serving dynamic websites on the net with less disk, less memory, and less processor power than an EEEpc. People who think these are low power machines simply don't understand computing.
Oh, God! [Bang head on desk, weeps] What the FSCK do you think C# is but Java 'Embraced and extended'? Every design idea - every design mistake, God damn it! - in Java is there for all to see in C#. This isn't innovation, it's plagiarism in software. Entirely legally. The licensing scheme failed absolutely.
Programming *is* mostly creative.
Well said, that man!
Actually, you're wrong. All my programming career (now twenty-five years), games have been pushing the limits of the available hardware. In business software you can often say 'programmers are expensive, silicon is cheap, shovel some extra silicon at the problem'. With games you typically can't do that - you're driving the available silicon to it's limits anyway. So every cycle you can save through tighter code contributes to a better experience - faster frame rate, more photo-realistic rendering, more responsive controls - for the user.
Yes, game design requires creativity. But it also needs good old-fashioned algorithms and ultra-tight code.