IMO no list of Windows FOSS would be complete without GnuCash, the accouting software. I first used it on Linux a few years ago to track spending when I started living on my own. Now, as a contract programmer, I use it on Windows to maintain my corporation's books. Not only is it a mature, feature-rich piece of software, but the dev team gives due attention to the Windows-specific issues, rather than treating the Windows port as a hands off "you're on your own" thing like some other projects from the Linux world.
Kudos to whoever figured that out. I am working on a project that sends dollar amounts for invoicing to PeopleSoft in flat files, and the format for all currency fields is exactly the one described: 16.4 digits, zero padded. So it seems perfectly plausible to me, not to mention very relevant. Hey maybe Visa uses PeopleSoft too... *shudder*
The question is how much are you willing to pay for entertainment, on an hourly basis? If the cost is <= that value, then the game is a good deal for you.
Of course time is not always the only factor for entertainment. Maybe it's something really spectacular or special so you don't mind paying more if it lives up. Or maybe it's so you can be with friends.. a beer isn't worth $5 but the time in the pub with your buddies is. Or maybe it fills some other need... like porn.:-) Generally, though, with 'commoditized entertainment' like computer games, cost-per-hour is a good measure.
For me I have generally been happy if I pay no more than $1/hr, so a $0.99 game is good enough if I get an hour of entertainment out of it. This has held for almost 20 years, going back to NES cartidges. However, it now seems to be too high. Orange Box kinda blew the curve, as I narrow in on $0.10/hr, and some of the other cheap games I've bought on Steam have been close to that mark too. So despite inflation and higher wages and stuff the acceptable cost-per-hour for computer games actually seems to be dropping... which isn't all that surprising I guess given that gaming is so huge now and there is way more supply.
Since you brought up Intellivision... I remember Lock 'n' Chase (a Pac-man-like game) had a bug that would every once in a while cause one of the enemy guys to become almost as tall as the entire screen. Something to do with when they hit the edge of the screen IIRC (which I probably don't). I was like 5 years old when I had that game and that bug used to absolutely scare the shit out of me when it happened... It wasn't quite a "cry and run to mommy" scared but it was definitely an "I don't wanna play anymore" scared.
By coinicidence I was watching 22,000 Foot Fall again last night, which of course also has a massive explosion. At one point the FBI guy Frank expresses concern because the weather was turning cloudy and that was potentially going to rebound the shockwave back to the ground and "shatter a bunch of windows". However, other delays resulted in the weather clearing up for that big boom.
Maybe they weren't paying as much attention this time? (Of course it's also possible they knew it'd happen but might have had so much invested in the shot that they figured it'd be cheaper to replace the windows than reset.) Good on them for fixing it quickly at least.
it's just that Sennheiser includes those quality control steps that the Chinese factories skimp on. They also take more than 0.85 seconds to solder the wires, and they use solder of reasonable quality.
Oh, so that's why the left driver of my CX-300s went almost totally silent after less than a month? Sure I know it's not a high-end model, but still, the quality is what's supposed to separate them from the $30 Sonys and JVCs.
Now I am waiting to see if their customer service is at least more reliable. (Also cursing myself for skimping and not buying Shures in the first place.)
Years ago Nintendo tried to enforce strict control over the creation and distribution of games for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Tengen (aka Atari) found a way to develop cartridges for the NES (probably by reverse engineering) then successfully sued Nintendo when they tried to uphold their "exclusive distribution rights".
To me that sounds exactly the same as the AppStore situation. So why can't someone do the same to Apple?
I misread the headline as "The Last Wii and Testament" and thought it meant they had a party for the person who bought their last Wii - like a 1-millionth customer thing. That woulda been a nice touch, actually. Even though it'd almost certainly end up on eBay soon after...
Getting bought by one of the biggest companies in the world turns out to be a rather costly thing.
That should read "Not getting bought out..." since the deal never went through. If they had only just given in to Microsoft... then all it would have cost them is their souls.
Also overlooked was the death of Train Simulator 2, which was to be based on the FSX platform, i.e. ESP. ACES was also developing this. They had a fair bit of work done already, and were even hinting at doing a release by year end, though I think that was somewhat optimistic.
I'm sure the ultimate goal was to further ESP so they could sell it to railways. That would be where the real money would be made, because a train sim game probably wouldn't sell well enough. Maybe they realised that North American railways tend to be very conservative and aren't all that interested in changing to fancy software. I know - I used to write software for one. The only way we could get the field folks to use our app instead of the old text-based mainframe app was to take access to the latter away, and boy were they pissed!
I think virtually nobody outside of the core rail sim world knew Train Sim 2 even existed. It wasn't advertised well. Even the Flight Sim site didn't have a link. Personally I'd been following it for quite some time and was really looking forward to it, but now it's gone. I am all too aware that the chances of it being open-sourced or picked up by someone else are effectively nil...
Up until last year my systems were all named after solitaire card games. My home network server was klondike, my own box was pyramid, my mom's box was canfield (earlier, when I still lived with her), and my experimental box was golf. Next name would have been spider.
Sadly klondike gave up the ghost last year so I decided to go to a more practical naming scheme. Working in industry must have corrupted me.
Hey since a (perfunctory, admittedly) search of all the comments so far didn't find another mention of solitaire, I guess I can feel proud of having come up with a fairly unique scheme!
This recently became required in Alberta (that's a province of Canada for you ignorant types) where I live.
Of course I didn't know this I went into renew my driver's licence. It was just after a weekend and I'd been working around the house and hadn't shaved in over a day, but I didn't think they'd need a new picture and I'd kept putting it off so I decided to get it over with. Sure enough, they tell me they have new rules and need a new photo with no smile. Oh and then she said my glasses were "obscuring my eyes" so those would have to go too.
So now my driver's licence has a photo of me looking somewhat disheveled in no glasses with thick whiskers, as opposed to how I'd normally look - clean-shaven with glasses. They never said anything about facial recognition software, but if that was the intent then I'd like to know how it can be effective by using this picture of me looking nothing like I normally do!
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, that gives a whole new meaning to "Internet Relay Chat"!
AMD has put some special sauce in its next-generation DirectX 11 GPUs to enable support for a whopping six monitors.
Special Sauce for a Whopper, eh? I must have missed the merger announcement between AMD and Burger King.
Hmmm.. They take up a LOT of real estate
Not unless you have really tall cattle.
Darn, and I was going to put a bunch of wind turbines on my giraffe farm!
IMO no list of Windows FOSS would be complete without GnuCash, the accouting software. I first used it on Linux a few years ago to track spending when I started living on my own. Now, as a contract programmer, I use it on Windows to maintain my corporation's books. Not only is it a mature, feature-rich piece of software, but the dev team gives due attention to the Windows-specific issues, rather than treating the Windows port as a hands off "you're on your own" thing like some other projects from the Linux world.
No need, (s)he's already outsourced the work to Slashdot!
Kudos to whoever figured that out. I am working on a project that sends dollar amounts for invoicing to PeopleSoft in flat files, and the format for all currency fields is exactly the one described: 16.4 digits, zero padded. So it seems perfectly plausible to me, not to mention very relevant. Hey maybe Visa uses PeopleSoft too... *shudder*
Don't forget The Eidolon!
Yes but at least at those parties you're guaranteed a foursome in every possible position.
The question is how much are you willing to pay for entertainment, on an hourly basis? If the cost is <= that value, then the game is a good deal for you.
Of course time is not always the only factor for entertainment. Maybe it's something really spectacular or special so you don't mind paying more if it lives up. Or maybe it's so you can be with friends.. a beer isn't worth $5 but the time in the pub with your buddies is. Or maybe it fills some other need... like porn. :-) Generally, though, with 'commoditized entertainment' like computer games, cost-per-hour is a good measure.
For me I have generally been happy if I pay no more than $1/hr, so a $0.99 game is good enough if I get an hour of entertainment out of it. This has held for almost 20 years, going back to NES cartidges. However, it now seems to be too high. Orange Box kinda blew the curve, as I narrow in on $0.10/hr, and some of the other cheap games I've bought on Steam have been close to that mark too. So despite inflation and higher wages and stuff the acceptable cost-per-hour for computer games actually seems to be dropping... which isn't all that surprising I guess given that gaming is so huge now and there is way more supply.
Bill Gates: Steve, my wallet's in my right front pocket. Oh, I'll take that statue of justice, too.
German Judge: Sold!
Since you brought up Intellivision... I remember Lock 'n' Chase (a Pac-man-like game) had a bug that would every once in a while cause one of the enemy guys to become almost as tall as the entire screen. Something to do with when they hit the edge of the screen IIRC (which I probably don't). I was like 5 years old when I had that game and that bug used to absolutely scare the shit out of me when it happened... It wasn't quite a "cry and run to mommy" scared but it was definitely an "I don't wanna play anymore" scared.
Good to here. I was trained as a touch typist, and quiet keyboards have screwed with my accuracy.
Cool, you intrinsically proved your own statement! (Boldface added by me for illustration.)
By coinicidence I was watching 22,000 Foot Fall again last night, which of course also has a massive explosion. At one point the FBI guy Frank expresses concern because the weather was turning cloudy and that was potentially going to rebound the shockwave back to the ground and "shatter a bunch of windows". However, other delays resulted in the weather clearing up for that big boom.
Maybe they weren't paying as much attention this time? (Of course it's also possible they knew it'd happen but might have had so much invested in the shot that they figured it'd be cheaper to replace the windows than reset.) Good on them for fixing it quickly at least.
it's just that Sennheiser includes those quality control steps that the Chinese factories skimp on. They also take more than 0.85 seconds to solder the wires, and they use solder of reasonable quality.
Oh, so that's why the left driver of my CX-300s went almost totally silent after less than a month? Sure I know it's not a high-end model, but still, the quality is what's supposed to separate them from the $30 Sonys and JVCs.
Now I am waiting to see if their customer service is at least more reliable. (Also cursing myself for skimping and not buying Shures in the first place.)
Cool, but they should have done it so he could access it by peeling back his fingernail - then he'd be like Data!
Years ago Nintendo tried to enforce strict control over the creation and distribution of games for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Tengen (aka Atari) found a way to develop cartridges for the NES (probably by reverse engineering) then successfully sued Nintendo when they tried to uphold their "exclusive distribution rights".
To me that sounds exactly the same as the AppStore situation. So why can't someone do the same to Apple?
I misread the headline as "The Last Wii and Testament" and thought it meant they had a party for the person who bought their last Wii - like a 1-millionth customer thing. That woulda been a nice touch, actually. Even though it'd almost certainly end up on eBay soon after...
Getting bought by one of the biggest companies in the world turns out to be a rather costly thing.
That should read "Not getting bought out..." since the deal never went through. If they had only just given in to Microsoft... then all it would have cost them is their souls.
Also overlooked was the death of Train Simulator 2, which was to be based on the FSX platform, i.e. ESP. ACES was also developing this. They had a fair bit of work done already, and were even hinting at doing a release by year end, though I think that was somewhat optimistic.
I'm sure the ultimate goal was to further ESP so they could sell it to railways. That would be where the real money would be made, because a train sim game probably wouldn't sell well enough. Maybe they realised that North American railways tend to be very conservative and aren't all that interested in changing to fancy software. I know - I used to write software for one. The only way we could get the field folks to use our app instead of the old text-based mainframe app was to take access to the latter away, and boy were they pissed!
I think virtually nobody outside of the core rail sim world knew Train Sim 2 even existed. It wasn't advertised well. Even the Flight Sim site didn't have a link. Personally I'd been following it for quite some time and was really looking forward to it, but now it's gone. I am all too aware that the chances of it being open-sourced or picked up by someone else are effectively nil...
A bad NIC brought down a whole airport a while back, read it on here, IIRC.
That might have been bad design, but who woulda thought that a NIC card can hose a network? A bad switch.... even worse.
A network hardware problem brought down the TSX, Canada's major stock exchange, for an entire day back in December as well.
Many traders pissed. Business news had a field day. Imagine if that happened at the NYSE? Yikes.
Why didn't he go all the way and name it "Monty Program's Flying Code Circus"?!
Up until last year my systems were all named after solitaire card games. My home network server was klondike, my own box was pyramid, my mom's box was canfield (earlier, when I still lived with her), and my experimental box was golf. Next name would have been spider.
Sadly klondike gave up the ghost last year so I decided to go to a more practical naming scheme. Working in industry must have corrupted me.
Hey since a (perfunctory, admittedly) search of all the comments so far didn't find another mention of solitaire, I guess I can feel proud of having come up with a fairly unique scheme!
Personally I prefer exploring a pair of DDs. Makes me forget all about electronic components...
Uhhh, a lot of the solutions mentioned in TFA are not open source
They couldn't even get the spelling of Jira correct ('Jirra') - you expect them to have done any other homework?!
This recently became required in Alberta (that's a province of Canada for you ignorant types) where I live.
Of course I didn't know this I went into renew my driver's licence. It was just after a weekend and I'd been working around the house and hadn't shaved in over a day, but I didn't think they'd need a new picture and I'd kept putting it off so I decided to get it over with. Sure enough, they tell me they have new rules and need a new photo with no smile. Oh and then she said my glasses were "obscuring my eyes" so those would have to go too.
So now my driver's licence has a photo of me looking somewhat disheveled in no glasses with thick whiskers, as opposed to how I'd normally look - clean-shaven with glasses. They never said anything about facial recognition software, but if that was the intent then I'd like to know how it can be effective by using this picture of me looking nothing like I normally do!