Microsoft generally sells their consoles at a loss. Those assholes. I guess the good news is that in order to flip the bird at MS you don't even have to get rid of the xbox360, just don't buy any games!
Chalk me up as a "moronic anti-intellectual" who "doesn't understand the meaning of economic value."
Someone who has a good understanding of physics and math would be very valuable to software companies, especially game companies. As a developer myself, I would love to have the money to pay for a someone who has focused on physics and math in college. Representing continuous movements and geometry with a discrete computational model requires a very good understanding of calculus, linear algebra, and trigonometry. Most people do not have this understanding, so yes, physics and math have a significant economical value.
Also, what the hell do you mean physics and math "are JUST theory"? Without theory, so much technology that we use today wouldn't even exist. Talk about "anti-intellectual"...sheesh.
The United States is antisocial. All its residents share in a sort of collective sociopathy where our very lifestyle represents a disregard for and violation of the rights of others. If you could be made to feel the suffering caused by the production of a product when you buy a new car or stereo receiver you'd keel over and die of heartbreak.
Wow, sounds like someone really loves his country.
I hate to break it to you, but it's a completely natural thing for people to care about themselves more than others. It's probably has something to do with natural selection. Obviously, some people are more outwardly caring than others, but to make a sweeping generalization about a whole nation like that is pretty naive.
If you could be made to feel the suffering caused by the production of a product when you buy a new car or stereo receiver you'd keel over and die of heartbreak.
If you didn't buy the car or stereo receiver, how do you know that the were wouldn't be even more pain and suffering caused by the lack of economic growth? As a guy that many people would consider a bleeding heart liberal, I have to say: you need to stop being such an oversensitive pansy.
I watched the video and I found in very interesting. As someone who's sitting in front of a 24" monitor and I've ~30 windows open, I totally get the clutter thing.
I found that 10/GUI's solution was not nearly as efficient and effect as the Alt-tab/Alt-shift-tab abilities of Windows. I have many windows open my self. If I want to go to the previous window, I hit alt tab. If I want further down the list, I can hold down alt-tab until I land on the window I want to open. If I go to far, I can go backward with alt-shift-tab. Selecting a window with alt-tab is instantaneous and I don't have to wait for a window to "slide" in to position like in 10/Gui's solution.
I've noticed most people don't really use alt-tab to it's full potential. I didn't either, but when I started using it, my productivity actually increased quite a bit.
Place finger on surface, then roll finger without lifting or dragging it.
A finger is a 3d dimensional object that doesn't have just one contact point to the touch interface, rather, it has a surface area of contact. Each person's finger is a different shape. Simply rolling a finger isn't going to guarantee that the pointer will move in the direction you want to.
Putting something at a subpixel position is even easier with modern GPUs (and even Intel GMAs) that power compositing window managers.
Yes, representing something in a sub-pixel position is a situation that modern graphics cards handle quite well. However, I don't see how that would be useful in the context of window management on an OS. If I were working on a Photoshop image, I would want my position to be guaranteed integer values as well.
Even RTS or rail shooters?
Have you ever tried to play Starcraft with a trackpad? Try playing it online and see how long it takes before you get frustrated.
Speaking of Starcraft, I find it to be false assumption that input bandwidth of current input schemes is insufficient (which the voice-over of the video claims). Professional Starcraft players are able to perform 300+ actions per minute with a mouse and keyboard. For the average user, I think this would be plenty.
Obviously, crawling isn't for traveling. People have different tastes for what they want out of an fps. Some want strategy and realism, some want fast-paced action, and some want a good mix of both.
Considering the recent success of the CoD series, I wouldn't be speaking down to the developers about what is more fun.
Those same servers have been able to sustain hours of fleet combat involving over two thousand players with acceptable lag (10 seconds to 2-10 minutes on module activation).
This toolkit allows you to create and sell games on XBox Live. How is this not commercial?
The absolute upper cap for the single highest profile Indie Game is 10,000 unit sales.
Absolute? Hardly. Not all developers are reporting how much units they have sold. Even so, there are a few developers that have reported significantly higher numbers than 10,000.
For commercial game production, Xbox Indie Games will NOT be profitable.
If you are making games on your free time, any dollar you make is profit. Also, keep in mind that many developers are releasing more than one game. Some have developers have already released about a dozen. So even if there is a cap on how much a game makes, doesn't mean a developer is limited to that amount of revenue.
It does. A minute number of high school athletes make professional careers out of it and are successful, the rest end up working in construction or a similar career and spending the rest of their life thinking about how great high school was.
I have to call bull shit on this one. Why the hell is this modded informative when there is no citations? Is slashdot really filled with the stereotypical nerd who is bitter that no one liked them in high school?
In my high school, the valedictorian played varsity basketball and golf. The salutatorian was on my my soccer team. My brother and I played varsity soccer and other sports, and we are both successful computer scientists with graduate degrees. I can't find any references, but I doubt there is any research out there that correlates being an athlete with becoming a low income wage earner.
Although I have to say all the football players in my high school were complete retards. I wonder if that's what you were thinking of when you meant high school athlete.
You assume that neither driver would have slowed down a bit before they saw the oncoming car. I wouldn't be surprised if a 80 mph difference is typical when dealing with head on collisions on the highway.
I can't think of any other API where you would allocate buffer and you had to constantly check to make sure that the pointer to that buffer hadn't been magically lost. Oh, I loved the sound API from version 5-8, and it was always going to be fixed "In the next version.
I don't see how this is a big deal. Just create an object that stores the buffer calls the check every time you need access or process the buffer. From then on just use the object in your main program and voila, no more annoying checks. There's a lot of annoying little subtleties like this in OpenGL as well. They can be easily taken care of with correctly engineered code.
I'm not sure if all 360's have this, but mine did come with a sticker on the front of the console (I think on the disc tray front) saying something to the effect of "Do not move console while in use."
I still think it's kind of silly though. Mainly because the cost adding a pad that prevents the disc from getting scratched is pretty much negligible compared to the cost of the console.
On a personal note, how about making your online architecture a little more friendly to MMO's? The PS3 has several in the pipeline, and you don't have any.
If they wait too long, Sony is going to start trouncing them with the stronger hardware of the PS3.
Sony has had over 3 years to "trounce" them. This hasn't happened yet. Why would the stronger hardware aspect of the PS3 all of the sudden start attracting gamers away from the 360?
It's not that simple. Obesity is only one piece of the puzzle in terms of why the US health care system sucks so much. Insurance premiums and drug costs have exploded at a much higher rate than obesity.
I have played all the Quakes, Unreals, and Half-Lifes, including CS semi-professionally. Guess what? I have fun playing Halo as well. Just because a superior control scheme exists for a game, doesn't mean that people can't enjoy the game on it's own merits.
There's a few that are honest and so on, I've met them too, but they are an extreme minority.
You provide nothing but anecdotal experience in your post. You couldn't possibly know how many cops are "corrupt" (especially since corruption can be a subjective thing) versus how many are honest. Just because you've interacted with cops more than the average person doesn't mean you can make such a sweeping statement authoritatively. The number of hits on google about any subject does not always reflect the frequency of occurrence of any particular corrupt action.
I totally agree with you that the US anti drug effort is a huge failure, but your post is borderline the-moon-landing-never-happened conspiracy theory.
You know I try so hard to be respectful in my slashdot comments, but your ignorant, wrong, and illogical post has just put me in flamebait mode.
First of all, you spelled Sid Meier's name incorrectly.
Second of all, Sid Meier has nothing to do with SimCity. You are speaking of Will Wright.
Thirdly, Bungie is now one of the biggest game companies in the world. You honestly think they would just stick with the Mac, because what...they like Macs? Give me a fucking break. Put yourself in their position: "Oh should we piddle along and release great, underrated games, until we die, or should we accept the huge contract that will eventually help us grow into one of the biggest gaming companies in the world?"
WTF. I think the only exception to these innovative Mac gaming companies going corporate at the expense of their initial fans is Ambrosia Software of Escape Velocity fame. Oh the days...
Yeah, and look how great Ambrosia is doing compared to Bungie. Oh but wait, Ambrosia released EV Nova for PC!!! OMG what a bunch of sell outs!!!
Lastly, I love your statement of "Well Blizzard, I think you just died." I hope I make a company that is as dead as Blizzard some day (in your method of evaluating game companies).
Don't forget they've been bought out, so they're not the Blizzard they used to be.
How the hell do you know that Blizzard has changed from the merger? Can we not make assumptions about Blizzard until they actually release a new game, please?
nor will it be difficult to set up a pirate server that out-competes the "wonderful experience" battle.net might have in store.
You mean like bnetd? Yeah I'm sure a kid running a server out of his mom's basement will out-compete a billion dollar company. Not to mention Blizzard has the legal power to shut down anything remotely competitive in a heartbeat.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft generally sells their consoles at a loss. Those assholes. I guess the good news is that in order to flip the bird at MS you don't even have to get rid of the xbox360, just don't buy any games!
Chalk me up as a "moronic anti-intellectual" who "doesn't understand the meaning of economic value."
Someone who has a good understanding of physics and math would be very valuable to software companies, especially game companies. As a developer myself, I would love to have the money to pay for a someone who has focused on physics and math in college. Representing continuous movements and geometry with a discrete computational model requires a very good understanding of calculus, linear algebra, and trigonometry. Most people do not have this understanding, so yes, physics and math have a significant economical value.
Also, what the hell do you mean physics and math "are JUST theory"? Without theory, so much technology that we use today wouldn't even exist. Talk about "anti-intellectual"...sheesh.
The United States is antisocial. All its residents share in a sort of collective sociopathy where our very lifestyle represents a disregard for and violation of the rights of others. If you could be made to feel the suffering caused by the production of a product when you buy a new car or stereo receiver you'd keel over and die of heartbreak.
Wow, sounds like someone really loves his country.
I hate to break it to you, but it's a completely natural thing for people to care about themselves more than others. It's probably has something to do with natural selection. Obviously, some people are more outwardly caring than others, but to make a sweeping generalization about a whole nation like that is pretty naive.
If you could be made to feel the suffering caused by the production of a product when you buy a new car or stereo receiver you'd keel over and die of heartbreak.
If you didn't buy the car or stereo receiver, how do you know that the were wouldn't be even more pain and suffering caused by the lack of economic growth? As a guy that many people would consider a bleeding heart liberal, I have to say: you need to stop being such an oversensitive pansy.
I watched the video and I found in very interesting. As someone who's sitting in front of a 24" monitor and I've ~30 windows open, I totally get the clutter thing.
I found that 10/GUI's solution was not nearly as efficient and effect as the Alt-tab/Alt-shift-tab abilities of Windows. I have many windows open my self. If I want to go to the previous window, I hit alt tab. If I want further down the list, I can hold down alt-tab until I land on the window I want to open. If I go to far, I can go backward with alt-shift-tab. Selecting a window with alt-tab is instantaneous and I don't have to wait for a window to "slide" in to position like in 10/Gui's solution.
I've noticed most people don't really use alt-tab to it's full potential. I didn't either, but when I started using it, my productivity actually increased quite a bit.
Place finger on surface, then roll finger without lifting or dragging it.
A finger is a 3d dimensional object that doesn't have just one contact point to the touch interface, rather, it has a surface area of contact. Each person's finger is a different shape. Simply rolling a finger isn't going to guarantee that the pointer will move in the direction you want to.
Putting something at a subpixel position is even easier with modern GPUs (and even Intel GMAs) that power compositing window managers.
Yes, representing something in a sub-pixel position is a situation that modern graphics cards handle quite well. However, I don't see how that would be useful in the context of window management on an OS. If I were working on a Photoshop image, I would want my position to be guaranteed integer values as well.
Even RTS or rail shooters?
Have you ever tried to play Starcraft with a trackpad? Try playing it online and see how long it takes before you get frustrated.
Speaking of Starcraft, I find it to be false assumption that input bandwidth of current input schemes is insufficient (which the voice-over of the video claims). Professional Starcraft players are able to perform 300+ actions per minute with a mouse and keyboard. For the average user, I think this would be plenty.
Obviously, crawling isn't for traveling. People have different tastes for what they want out of an fps. Some want strategy and realism, some want fast-paced action, and some want a good mix of both.
Considering the recent success of the CoD series, I wouldn't be speaking down to the developers about what is more fun.
Those same servers have been able to sustain hours of fleet combat involving over two thousand players with acceptable lag (10 seconds to 2-10 minutes on module activation).
Your definition of acceptable is interesting.
This is NOT a commercial development kit.
This toolkit allows you to create and sell games on XBox Live. How is this not commercial?
The absolute upper cap for the single highest profile Indie Game is 10,000 unit sales.
Absolute? Hardly. Not all developers are reporting how much units they have sold. Even so, there are a few developers that have reported significantly higher numbers than 10,000.
For commercial game production, Xbox Indie Games will NOT be profitable.
If you are making games on your free time, any dollar you make is profit. Also, keep in mind that many developers are releasing more than one game. Some have developers have already released about a dozen. So even if there is a cap on how much a game makes, doesn't mean a developer is limited to that amount of revenue.
It does. A minute number of high school athletes make professional careers out of it and are successful, the rest end up working in construction or a similar career and spending the rest of their life thinking about how great high school was.
I have to call bull shit on this one. Why the hell is this modded informative when there is no citations? Is slashdot really filled with the stereotypical nerd who is bitter that no one liked them in high school?
In my high school, the valedictorian played varsity basketball and golf. The salutatorian was on my my soccer team. My brother and I played varsity soccer and other sports, and we are both successful computer scientists with graduate degrees. I can't find any references, but I doubt there is any research out there that correlates being an athlete with becoming a low income wage earner.
Although I have to say all the football players in my high school were complete retards. I wonder if that's what you were thinking of when you meant high school athlete.
You assume that neither driver would have slowed down a bit before they saw the oncoming car. I wouldn't be surprised if a 80 mph difference is typical when dealing with head on collisions on the highway.
What world do you live in?
You literally need a "massive" number of players for the game to be any good.
Not necessarily. A well designed MMO can be an enjoyable experience regardless of the number of players on the server at any given time.
I can't think of any other API where you would allocate buffer and you had to constantly check to make sure that the pointer to that buffer hadn't been magically lost. Oh, I loved the sound API from version 5-8, and it was always going to be fixed "In the next version.
I don't see how this is a big deal. Just create an object that stores the buffer calls the check every time you need access or process the buffer. From then on just use the object in your main program and voila, no more annoying checks. There's a lot of annoying little subtleties like this in OpenGL as well. They can be easily taken care of with correctly engineered code.
Why, if it's so amazing are so many companies switching to OpenAL for their audio?
Citation needed.
Why did so many companies continue to develop for Glide when DirectX worked on all graphics cards?
Because DirectX was a piece of shit at the time. DirectX today is a very different API.
Why are they having to come out with a new version of the API every 6 months to 1 year? DirectX 9, 9a, 9b, 9c, 9d, 9e, 10, 10.1, 11
To take advantage of the new capabilities of latest video cards...is this something you don't want??
I'm not sure if all 360's have this, but mine did come with a sticker on the front of the console (I think on the disc tray front) saying something to the effect of "Do not move console while in use."
I still think it's kind of silly though. Mainly because the cost adding a pad that prevents the disc from getting scratched is pretty much negligible compared to the cost of the console.
On a personal note, how about making your online architecture a little more friendly to MMO's? The PS3 has several in the pipeline, and you don't have any.
Wrong.
If they wait too long, Sony is going to start trouncing them with the stronger hardware of the PS3.
Sony has had over 3 years to "trounce" them. This hasn't happened yet. Why would the stronger hardware aspect of the PS3 all of the sudden start attracting gamers away from the 360?
It's not that simple. Obesity is only one piece of the puzzle in terms of why the US health care system sucks so much. Insurance premiums and drug costs have exploded at a much higher rate than obesity.
I have played all the Quakes, Unreals, and Half-Lifes, including CS semi-professionally. Guess what? I have fun playing Halo as well. Just because a superior control scheme exists for a game, doesn't mean that people can't enjoy the game on it's own merits.
There's a few that are honest and so on, I've met them too, but they are an extreme minority.
You provide nothing but anecdotal experience in your post. You couldn't possibly know how many cops are "corrupt" (especially since corruption can be a subjective thing) versus how many are honest. Just because you've interacted with cops more than the average person doesn't mean you can make such a sweeping statement authoritatively. The number of hits on google about any subject does not always reflect the frequency of occurrence of any particular corrupt action.
I totally agree with you that the US anti drug effort is a huge failure, but your post is borderline the-moon-landing-never-happened conspiracy theory.
They only developed the best selling game on XBox and the best selling game on the 360. I'm so sorry for showing my favoritism. *rolls eyes*
You know I try so hard to be respectful in my slashdot comments, but your ignorant, wrong, and illogical post has just put me in flamebait mode.
First of all, you spelled Sid Meier's name incorrectly.
Second of all, Sid Meier has nothing to do with SimCity. You are speaking of Will Wright.
Thirdly, Bungie is now one of the biggest game companies in the world. You honestly think they would just stick with the Mac, because what...they like Macs? Give me a fucking break. Put yourself in their position: "Oh should we piddle along and release great, underrated games, until we die, or should we accept the huge contract that will eventually help us grow into one of the biggest gaming companies in the world?"
WTF. I think the only exception to these innovative Mac gaming companies going corporate at the expense of their initial fans is Ambrosia Software of Escape Velocity fame. Oh the days...
Yeah, and look how great Ambrosia is doing compared to Bungie. Oh but wait, Ambrosia released EV Nova for PC!!! OMG what a bunch of sell outs!!!
Lastly, I love your statement of "Well Blizzard, I think you just died." I hope I make a company that is as dead as Blizzard some day (in your method of evaluating game companies).
Don't forget they've been bought out, so they're not the Blizzard they used to be.
How the hell do you know that Blizzard has changed from the merger? Can we not make assumptions about Blizzard until they actually release a new game, please?
nor will it be difficult to set up a pirate server that out-competes the "wonderful experience" battle.net might have in store.
You mean like bnetd? Yeah I'm sure a kid running a server out of his mom's basement will out-compete a billion dollar company. Not to mention Blizzard has the legal power to shut down anything remotely competitive in a heartbeat.
Horribly suggestion.
Horrable grammer.
Wives tend to have that effect.