Actually, you're not as trolly as you might have thought.
An IE Tab style add-on that would load the page with WebKit instead of the Firefox renderer would actually be helpful sometimes; I've hit a few websites in the last month that wouldn't work with Firefox 2.* on OS X but would work with Safari.
Yes, the solution is to bitch at the idiots who made the site check for specific browser/OS combos instead of just writing up standard XHTML and CSS, but in the mean time, I need to get things done...
Mostly colour matching, I think. Viewing an image on one Mac gives you the same colours as any other Mac. Even if they're using different video cards and monitors. With Windows machines, you get a lot of mostly random variation between systems.
I'd just like to say that there's nothing Windows-specific about the.zip format.
In fact, Info-ZIP's (http://www.info-zip.org/) unzip is the second most-portable application around (the first being C-Kermit).
The format was actually designed as expandable (imagine that!), and over the years it's been updated to store the extra meta-data for pretty much every filesystem out there (UNIX permission, BFS extra attributes, old Mac OS file type/creator, new Mac OS extended attributes, NTFS ACLs, NTFS extended attributes, OS/2 extended attributes, etc.).
I use.zip files for backups and whatnot all the time because of the extreme portability, and the ability to randomly access any file/directory inside the file without having to decompress the whole thing.
I haven't been part of the DS homebrew scene (the adaptor cards have been too expensive or fiddly), so I don't know anything about the hardware.
Why is the Supercard superior?
Which is better for development? I have no intention of using my DS as an MP3 player or for "backups", but I do have a game I'd like to develop there...
The nice thing is, Harper's part of a minority government; if he starts acting (more) like a jackhole, he'll face a Vote of Non-Confidence and be booted out, forcing an election. We're not necessarily stuck with idiots for their fully-purchased (err, elected) terms up here.
Costco in Ajax, Ontario, has 4-5 20GB PS3s, and almost a full palette (20+?) of 60GB PS3s. Under 10 Xbox 360s, and (of course) no Wiis.
EB Games in the Pickering Town Centre can't keep Wiis in stock (or accessories, for that matter), but they've got PS3s sitting there.
The Wii is just fun, the 360 has loads of games, and the PS3... has BluRay. Which is pretty pointless unless you've got the HDTV mess all sorted out.
I think one of the Wii's greatest opportunities is to reduce development costs. It's getting to the point where games need to sell millions of copies just to break even, and most games simply can't sell that many units. Especially with the lower installed bases of the new consoles. PS2 games will probably keep coming out for quite a while because of this, too.
Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II (and the expansions for both) were all written at BioWare, by generally the same folks... you can see how they progress in their craft (game design, writing, and programming) between the two.
The Neverwinter Nights and Knights of the Old Republic situation (BioWare did the good/excellent originals, shifted the sequels to Obsidian where they were rushed out the door by the publisher before they were even close to ready) on the other hand...
Maintaining a portable code base helps you produce more stable, bug-free code. Differences in architecture, endianness, compiler, and host OS will expose different kinds of errors that affect all the platforms.
This would reduce post-release support costs and patching, two things that eat into the profits of pretty much every single game released for Windows these days.
And "portable" doesn't mean "slower" unless your design is terrible.
The lack of support for OS X versions of games wouldn't be so frustrating if developers would let qualified enthusiasts port the code. Throw an unsupported binary on the website (or make the porters distribute it themselves), require the original Windows CD, yay, free money!
People with lots of experience porting software between operating systems (*waves*) have offered to do this for free under whatever NDA is required, with the original developer's approval before releasing a binary. They're either ignored or just told "no".
I can never tell if it's because:
The developers got $$$ for making it Windows Only (those "Games for Windows" branding things involve a kickback for all I know, since it's advertising for MS).
The developers are embarassed by the horrible hacks they're perpetrated in the code.
The developers don't have a sane source control system.
They missed the "unsupported binary" part of the deal and assume massive support costs for some reason.
They don't want to get a few hundred or thousand (or ten thousand?) extra sales.
Maybe I'm just too idealistic (hey, I used to run BeOS, what can I say), but I've never understood the insane amount of resistance developers/publishers have to porting, even when it's not costing them a cent.
I might be the odd man out here, but I have absolutely no intention of "upgrading" to HD until:
I feel confident that the "standard" won't be changed again after a year or two.
The Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD nonsense is resolved one way or another (ie, one "wins" or 100% of players support both "standards"). I'm unlikely to ever "upgrade" my DVDs to HD, I've still got some VHS tapes I haven't replaced (and I don't even have a VCR hooked up anymore).
The DRM nonsense is resolved. No, you can't tell me how, when, or where I can watch movies I've bought, sorry. Most DVDs tick me off enough with their unskippable warnings and ads and whatnot.
My current TV, which is only a few years old, kills itself.
My wife got me a Wii for Valentine's Day (I got it early due to the shortages:-)) and it's great fun, and it looks really good on my existing TV. I didn't have to invest $2000 or so in a new TV, cables, HD receiver, etc. to feel like I got my money's worth.
MS, Sony, the MPAA, electronics manufacturers and my cable company have utterly failed to give me a compelling reason to spend big bucks on HD, and plenty of reasons to avoid it (early adopters got seriously boned, several times on this).
That's actually one of the cooler things about the GameCube; most games have no load times, or almost no load times, during play. PS2 games are notorious for making you wait, and wait, and wait...
Although there are exceptions, I'm pretty sure Ico (for example) doesn't make you wait, so there must be clever work-arounds for the PS2 that have been in existence for most of its lifetime.
The Intel GMA950 is the one Apple's using in the Mac Mini and MacBook laptops, and doesn't seem too horrible for an integrated shared-memory GPU; it runs all the spiffy OS X eye-candy nicely, and I've had people tell me that playing games (World of Warcraft natively, or City of Heroes after installing BootCamp and XP) on it is fine.
Since gaming isn't really your focus if you're running Linux;-), I imagine the GMA950 chipset (or something newer) would be great for KDE/GNOME/etc. even when they start using OpenGL.
Maybe something like Asus' P5B motherboards (P5B-VM and P5B-V)?
(Note an Asus employee or stockholder, just a happy customer of an ASUS P4G8X Deluxe).
The Future Shops around here (Toronto, Ontario) seem to be bare of PS3s (and Wiis), but I've already seen the PS3 in Costco. Costco only buys things it can get in large batches at a good price... the Wii isn't there, and it took nearly six months for the DS Lite to show up there; XBox 360 took a while, too. Note that Costco's website (http://www.costco.ca/en-CA/Common/Category.aspx?c at=20561&eCat=BCCA|20428|20561&whse=BCCA&topnav=) lists Wii and PS3, but both are "sold out"... I should've checked the local one to see how many they had in stock.
So, in Canada at least, Sony is already dumping PS3s onto wholesaler warehouse stores.
It's usual to find overstocked or end-of-line stuff there.
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Damn kids... get off my lawn!
*shakes cane*
I think the poster referred to the people buying the RIAA's products. Have you seen the crap that's selling at your local CD store these days?
*shakes cane and yells at kids to get off his lawn*
They're over on 4chan.
Actually, you're not as trolly as you might have thought.
An IE Tab style add-on that would load the page with WebKit instead of the Firefox renderer would actually be helpful sometimes; I've hit a few websites in the last month that wouldn't work with Firefox 2.* on OS X but would work with Safari.
Yes, the solution is to bitch at the idiots who made the site check for specific browser/OS combos instead of just writing up standard XHTML and CSS, but in the mean time, I need to get things done...
Didn't they already do this with the European version of the PS3? PS2 backwards compatibility is handled in software?
Can't you pick up a used XBox and a copy of Halo 2 (it's been out since 2004, remember) for way less than a copy of Vista, even an upgrade?
Sure you'll be left without Crysis, but there are things like BioShock that won't have a (possibly artificial) requirement for DX10.
I'm going to wait for the L33T Sku.
The obvious question is why did you guys keep buying these things instead of dumping them for something more reliable?
*hope I can finish my PS2 games before my first-gen slim PS2 dies*
Mostly colour matching, I think. Viewing an image on one Mac gives you the same colours as any other Mac. Even if they're using different video cards and monitors. With Windows machines, you get a lot of mostly random variation between systems.
I'd just like to say that there's nothing Windows-specific about the .zip format.
.zip files for backups and whatnot all the time because of the extreme portability, and the ability to randomly access any file/directory inside the file without having to decompress the whole thing.
In fact, Info-ZIP's (http://www.info-zip.org/) unzip is the second most-portable application around (the first being C-Kermit).
The format was actually designed as expandable (imagine that!), and over the years it's been updated to store the extra meta-data for pretty much every filesystem out there (UNIX permission, BFS extra attributes, old Mac OS file type/creator, new Mac OS extended attributes, NTFS ACLs, NTFS extended attributes, OS/2 extended attributes, etc.).
I use
Very nice!
I haven't been part of the DS homebrew scene (the adaptor cards have been too expensive or fiddly), so I don't know anything about the hardware.
Why is the Supercard superior?
Which is better for development? I have no intention of using my DS as an MP3 player or for "backups", but I do have a game I'd like to develop there...
The nice thing is, Harper's part of a minority government; if he starts acting (more) like a jackhole, he'll face a Vote of Non-Confidence and be booted out, forcing an election. We're not necessarily stuck with idiots for their fully-purchased (err, elected) terms up here.
Costco in Ajax, Ontario, has 4-5 20GB PS3s, and almost a full palette (20+?) of 60GB PS3s. Under 10 Xbox 360s, and (of course) no Wiis.
EB Games in the Pickering Town Centre can't keep Wiis in stock (or accessories, for that matter), but they've got PS3s sitting there.
The Wii is just fun, the 360 has loads of games, and the PS3... has BluRay. Which is pretty pointless unless you've got the HDTV mess all sorted out.
I think one of the Wii's greatest opportunities is to reduce development costs. It's getting to the point where games need to sell millions of copies just to break even, and most games simply can't sell that many units. Especially with the lower installed bases of the new consoles. PS2 games will probably keep coming out for quite a while because of this, too.
Q: "Can I call the Business Software Alliance while I'm still on probation at my new job?"
A: Yes, it's your duty as a Citizen. Of course, you'll be fired, and the BSA is in no way liable.
Huh, what?
Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II (and the expansions for both) were all written at BioWare, by generally the same folks... you can see how they progress in their craft (game design, writing, and programming) between the two.
The Neverwinter Nights and Knights of the Old Republic situation (BioWare did the good/excellent originals, shifted the sequels to Obsidian where they were rushed out the door by the publisher before they were even close to ready) on the other hand...
"The Moon belongs to America, and eagerly awaits the coming of our space men!"
Maintaining a portable code base helps you produce more stable, bug-free code. Differences in architecture, endianness, compiler, and host OS will expose different kinds of errors that affect all the platforms.
This would reduce post-release support costs and patching, two things that eat into the profits of pretty much every single game released for Windows these days.
And "portable" doesn't mean "slower" unless your design is terrible.
The lack of support for OS X versions of games wouldn't be so frustrating if developers would let qualified enthusiasts port the code. Throw an unsupported binary on the website (or make the porters distribute it themselves), require the original Windows CD, yay, free money!
People with lots of experience porting software between operating systems (*waves*) have offered to do this for free under whatever NDA is required, with the original developer's approval before releasing a binary. They're either ignored or just told "no".
I can never tell if it's because:
Maybe I'm just too idealistic (hey, I used to run BeOS, what can I say), but I've never understood the insane amount of resistance developers/publishers have to porting, even when it's not costing them a cent.
Are you trying to tell me that Visual Basic is a programming language?!
Speaking of frozen in time...
I might be the odd man out here, but I have absolutely no intention of "upgrading" to HD until:
My wife got me a Wii for Valentine's Day (I got it early due to the shortages :-)) and it's great fun, and it looks really good on my existing TV. I didn't have to invest $2000 or so in a new TV, cables, HD receiver, etc. to feel like I got my money's worth.
MS, Sony, the MPAA, electronics manufacturers and my cable company have utterly failed to give me a compelling reason to spend big bucks on HD, and plenty of reasons to avoid it (early adopters got seriously boned, several times on this).
That's actually one of the cooler things about the GameCube; most games have no load times, or almost no load times, during play. PS2 games are notorious for making you wait, and wait, and wait...
Although there are exceptions, I'm pretty sure Ico (for example) doesn't make you wait, so there must be clever work-arounds for the PS2 that have been in existence for most of its lifetime.
The Intel GMA950 is the one Apple's using in the Mac Mini and MacBook laptops, and doesn't seem too horrible for an integrated shared-memory GPU; it runs all the spiffy OS X eye-candy nicely, and I've had people tell me that playing games (World of Warcraft natively, or City of Heroes after installing BootCamp and XP) on it is fine.
;-), I imagine the GMA950 chipset (or something newer) would be great for KDE/GNOME/etc. even when they start using OpenGL.
Since gaming isn't really your focus if you're running Linux
Maybe something like Asus' P5B motherboards (P5B-VM and P5B-V)?
(Note an Asus employee or stockholder, just a happy customer of an ASUS P4G8X Deluxe).
The Future Shops around here (Toronto, Ontario) seem to be bare of PS3s (and Wiis), but I've already seen the PS3 in Costco. Costco only buys things it can get in large batches at a good price... the Wii isn't there, and it took nearly six months for the DS Lite to show up there; XBox 360 took a while, too. Note that Costco's website (http://www.costco.ca/en-CA/Common/Category.aspx?c at=20561&eCat=BCCA|20428|20561&whse=BCCA&topnav=) lists Wii and PS3, but both are "sold out"... I should've checked the local one to see how many they had in stock.
So, in Canada at least, Sony is already dumping PS3s onto wholesaler warehouse stores.
It's usual to find overstocked or end-of-line stuff there.
Not to mention a proper ending...
The American government honours treaties now?