I may not LOVE windows, but I prefer it to the alternatives.
I use, on a daily basis, two Linux-based machines. One runs KDE, one GNOME. I've been using some flavor of these for years. I also regularly use a Macintosh, currently 10.4, and have been using them since 1984, after switching from several pre-Mac Apple II's, and a Commodore PET before them.
I have XP installed on both my main desktop, and my laptop. I use both of them whenever I don't need to be using the other machines...not because I can't imagine something better than Windows, but because both Linux (because of the ridiculous consistency & compatibility issues, not to mention awful driver support) and OS X (because it's simply poorly designed - doesn't do what I need it to, isn't rational in its behavior in an even worse way than Windows) don't meet my needs.
Windows works, consistently, without hassle, without fidgeting with drivers and kernel modules and shell scripts, without stupid Apple-esque interface "niceties" that only make things more difficult, etc.
And when I'm using a TOOL, as opposed to a LIFESTYLE CHOICE, that's what I want: for it to work. And those other alternatives don't deliver.
I've used one of these since 1999 or 2000, and just retired it two weeks ago. I used it with a whole series of gaming-oriented cards, ATI mostly. Worked fine.
It did require SGI's "Multisync adapter" to use anything other than the original Revolution #9 card, but it worked fine.
I agree about the pixel density - it was great to have those tiny, sharp (and, for the time, bright) pixels. I'v just moved to a Dell 2450, which is pretty close, and MUCH brighter and bigger (1920x1200, 24" diagonal). It's horizontal pixel density is about 94, not far from the 1600sw's 110.
Interestingly, since SGI released this adapter much later than when I bought the monitor (2001? 2002?), but included it with later monitor sales, I complained to SGI about the extra cost...they gave me a steep discount on it. Nice of them.
A notebook with two screens? Or just a notebook with a video out port for a second display attached? Seems like carrying a second display around would be a hassle...:)
The problem with the 'zoom' button is that the OS decides where/how big my window should be.
It's MY WINDOW, not the OS's, and if I click the button with the big "+" on it, I expect "+" behavior, not "change the window size to some size that big brother decides is right for me" behavior.
Personally, I hate to drag/resize windows, ever. I browse/work with everything full-screen, and with Windows' or (or KDE, GNOME, etc) standard MDI behavior, it works precisely as suits me. I toggle back and forth with the alt-tab convention, moving between Windows that I made full-screen using the Windows equivalent of the "+" button...which actually does what it makes sense for it to do, IMHO. Under OSX, I have to manually drag, arrange, size windows to do this, making things a) annoying, b) harder, c) less intuitive.
You should go look at more LCDs. You're not going to find a perfect LCD for $199, but if you're willing to spend a little, you'll be floored not only at how much it doesn't suck, but at how much BETTER than a CRT it is. I don't want an LCD that acts like a CRT, because that would be a downgrade.
I saved my pennies and bought one of Dell's nice new monsters. Very fast response times (12ms for grey-to-grey, 16 or 17 I think for black-to-white) and has ZERO dead/stuck pixels.
It's the best monitor I've ever used, and I've been staring at computer screens since sometime in the late 1970's.
> Of course, by those standards, most Americans must > be addicted to work, sex, and TV as well."
And breathing, sleeping, etc.
This is dumb. The fact that modern work requires heavy use of a given tool does NOT mean that those who use that tool are addicted to it. Ten thousand years ago, most humans made heavy use - perhaps even all day long - of hand-held stone tools. Were they "addicted" to them? Or were they simply making efficient use of an effective tool?
Sure, I check my email often, even on the weekends. And much of what is contained in that email has nothing to do with work. But that simply doesn't equate to addiction.
This whole notion is simply dumb and ignores the realities of what email is and does in the modern world.
Re:#9: Immersion and the invisible hand of God
on
A Gamer's Manifesto
·
· Score: 1
Hmm...well, it's possible that your drivers or DirectX need to be updated? I must admit to knowing little or nothing about nVidia cards, so I don't know how your 6600 ought to be performing. What graphics quality settings are you using in FC?
The game is beautiful on my Radeon 800XT, even with less than the highest quality settings. With quality set to max, it's just amazing, fullscreen 1920x1200, with AA and Anisotropic filtering on.
Re:He doesn't know what he's talking about
on
A Gamer's Manifesto
·
· Score: 1
> "AI" as 99.99% of laymen seem to call it is merely > an elaborate hack.
Ok, so he doesn't use the correct academic terminology. "AI" is, however, colloquially used to describe the perceived "intelligence" of the computer-guided opponents. And using that definition, he is 100% correct...and so does know what he's talking about.
Re:#9: Immersion and the invisible hand of God
on
A Gamer's Manifesto
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This one does hit home. I'm plaing brothers in arms, and after playing FarCry obsessively for the last year I'm constantly trying to jump over small obstacles without success.
A similar annoyance is not being able to lie down in BIA - I'm a soldier! Why can't I go prone? It's nuts!
I agree. It's ridiculous that I have to sit and tend the keyboard during an install - I should be able to stick a single disc in, click the button and go clean my toenails or something.
At least it's not like the old days when we had to constantly switch discs in-game depending on where we were because hard discs were wither not really common/affordable on the desktop yet or were too small to consider copying an entire game to. Heck, I remember swapping 143k 5.25" floppies in-game...:)
Re:He doesn't know what he's talking about
on
A Gamer's Manifesto
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
> it's evident that he doesn't know what he's > talking about.
Something is a challenge for the developers, therefore he doesn't know what he's talking about? He didn't say "adding good AI is easy, get on it"; he said that good AI was a seriously lacking element in modern games. And he's correct.
I think he's pretty much right on on every point, and the fact that developers would have a lot of work cut out for them has nothing to do with whether he "knows what he's talking about".
> One average asteroid probably has enough > material in it to create a household robot for > every person alive.
Just for fun, I wanted to see if this was true. Whip out the TI-89 and Google, and...
Dr. Ted Bowell of the Lowell Observatory's Near-Earth-Object Search notes that the average size of the 800 known Earth-crossing asteroids is less than one kilometer. Assuming that Earth-crossing asteroids are a representative sampling (which they may or may not be, but it's a reasonable place to start), we can also make note of the fact that smaller bodies are harder to detect. This in turn suggests that the true avereage size will be lower. But assuming that 1-kilometer IS an avereage size, we can calculate the volume of the asteroid as:
Vol = (4/3)*Pi*(100000cm/2)^3 = 5.24E14 cm^3
If we then divide this by 6E9 people, we get:
(5.24E14 cm^3) / (6E9 people) = 87333 cm^3 / person
If it's an Iron asteroid, let's assume at least 90% of the object is useful metals, or 78,600cm^3. In perspective, that's a cube of metal about 42.8cm (1.4') on a side. By most reasonable standards, that ought to be enough to make a robot.
If the object was a stony asteroid (the other major group; there are intermediate types and subtypes as well), things are at least a little different: instead of 90% useful metal, the figure is around 30%, so we're down to:
78600 cm^3 * 0.3 = 23580 cm^3
That's a cube only 29cm (1') on a side. That's probably enough to make a robot, but probably not an R2, C3PO or battlemech. More like those little scurrying toasters from the original death star. Heh.
Note that the true avereage size of an asteroid is probably MUCH less than a kilometer, depending on how you define "asteroid". If you include every object in the asteroid belt, the average probably hovers around a centimeter, just as an educated guess.
This just gave me a great idea: the Toilet Paper Laser Printer! It'd have special paper-handling abilities, so that it could print onto a roll of TP as it re-spooled the paper onto a new cardboard tube on the other side.
This is better than Va-Poo-Rize! I'll be rich, RICH I tell you! HAHAHAHAHA!
Seriously, if I had had this idea before the bubble burst, I could have had a Ferarri and a bunch of cute secreataries and millions in venture capital.
What self-respecting SW fan still has a JOB? They're all in line already. The loss will be negligible. There might even be a net increase in productivity.
> the evidence in support of which appears (rightly > or not) to be exaggerated
Well, you say "rightly or not", but the evidence only tends to "appear to be exaggerated" to the very people who don't want to give up their Hummers and airconditioners and all of the other trappings that come with cheap fossil energy.
It may appear that the evidence for anthropogenic global warming is exaggerated to those folks, but to the vast, vast majority (not ALL, I said "vast majority") of people who are:
a) scientifically literate and b) willing to look at evidence for things they'd rather not deal with,
the evidence:
a) comes from multiple lines of investigation by large numbers of researchers in multiple fields, and b) is, on the whole, more free from political & economic power game baggage than the 'evidence' offered by those on the opposing side of the argument (many/most of whom are funded by the very people/sorporations which stand to make the most profit out of continuing on the present course).
Now that's not a guarantee of being "right", but it's pretty damn compelling. It always sucks to be forced to do something we don't want to do, but when the repurcussions of our actions affect every living thing on the planet, we no longer have the luxury of being libertarian, enviro-isolationists.
I can understand why someone would mod this as flamebait, but I strongly disagree with their decision to do so.
The fact is that it's dangerous on Slashdot to try and point out the rabid, kneejerk defense of Linux and Apple, and the rabid, kneejerk condemnation of anything having to do with Microsoft or Windows, and this post is a fairly funny, insightful commentary on this phenomenon.
So...a "Dell", who/which we can surmise is extant, who is neither a person nor a company named "Dell", has "dropped" $100M "onto" Red Hat, which is a company and not a person.
I agree - we can hope that Nikon will hear the loud, persistent sound of new customers turning away. But Nikon's track record in terms of listening to anyone other than itself is pretty dismal.
Hmm. I guess I'll have to take another look. I use NC exclusively after having an AWFUL time trying to get ACR to do what I wanted it to do. NC feels smoother, gives me all the control I want, and has some nice bells & whistles missing from ACR (support for ultra-wide angle lens relinearization, D-lighting, etc).
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I may not LOVE windows, but I prefer it to the alternatives.
I use, on a daily basis, two Linux-based machines. One runs KDE, one GNOME. I've been using some flavor of these for years. I also regularly use a Macintosh, currently 10.4, and have been using them since 1984, after switching from several pre-Mac Apple II's, and a Commodore PET before them.
I have XP installed on both my main desktop, and my laptop. I use both of them whenever I don't need to be using the other machines...not because I can't imagine something better than Windows, but because both Linux (because of the ridiculous consistency & compatibility issues, not to mention awful driver support) and OS X (because it's simply poorly designed - doesn't do what I need it to, isn't rational in its behavior in an even worse way than Windows) don't meet my needs.
Windows works, consistently, without hassle, without fidgeting with drivers and kernel modules and shell scripts, without stupid Apple-esque interface "niceties" that only make things more difficult, etc.
And when I'm using a TOOL, as opposed to a LIFESTYLE CHOICE, that's what I want: for it to work. And those other alternatives don't deliver.
I've used one of these since 1999 or 2000, and just retired it two weeks ago. I used it with a whole series of gaming-oriented cards, ATI mostly. Worked fine.
It did require SGI's "Multisync adapter" to use anything other than the original Revolution #9 card, but it worked fine.
I agree about the pixel density - it was great to have those tiny, sharp (and, for the time, bright) pixels. I'v just moved to a Dell 2450, which is pretty close, and MUCH brighter and bigger (1920x1200, 24" diagonal). It's horizontal pixel density is about 94, not far from the 1600sw's 110.
Interestingly, since SGI released this adapter much later than when I bought the monitor (2001? 2002?), but included it with later monitor sales, I complained to SGI about the extra cost...they gave me a steep discount on it. Nice of them.
> I considered buying a dual screen notebook.
A notebook with two screens? Or just a notebook with a video out port for a second display attached? Seems like carrying a second display around would be a hassle...:)
The problem with the 'zoom' button is that the OS decides where/how big my window should be.
It's MY WINDOW, not the OS's, and if I click the button with the big "+" on it, I expect "+" behavior, not "change the window size to some size that big brother decides is right for me" behavior.
Personally, I hate to drag/resize windows, ever. I browse/work with everything full-screen, and with Windows' or (or KDE, GNOME, etc) standard MDI behavior, it works precisely as suits me. I toggle back and forth with the alt-tab convention, moving between Windows that I made full-screen using the Windows equivalent of the "+" button...which actually does what it makes sense for it to do, IMHO. Under OSX, I have to manually drag, arrange, size windows to do this, making things a) annoying, b) harder, c) less intuitive.
You should go look at more LCDs. You're not going to find a perfect LCD for $199, but if you're willing to spend a little, you'll be floored not only at how much it doesn't suck, but at how much BETTER than a CRT it is. I don't want an LCD that acts like a CRT, because that would be a downgrade.
I saved my pennies and bought one of Dell's nice new monsters. Very fast response times (12ms for grey-to-grey, 16 or 17 I think for black-to-white) and has ZERO dead/stuck pixels.
It's the best monitor I've ever used, and I've been staring at computer screens since sometime in the late 1970's.
> Apple has officially decided to drop IBM, and will
> use Intel processors
And OSX will still suck.
> Of course, by those standards, most Americans must
> be addicted to work, sex, and TV as well."
And breathing, sleeping, etc.
This is dumb. The fact that modern work requires heavy use of a given tool does NOT mean that those who use that tool are addicted to it. Ten thousand years ago, most humans made heavy use - perhaps even all day long - of hand-held stone tools. Were they "addicted" to them? Or were they simply making efficient use of an effective tool?
Sure, I check my email often, even on the weekends. And much of what is contained in that email has nothing to do with work. But that simply doesn't equate to addiction.
This whole notion is simply dumb and ignores the realities of what email is and does in the modern world.
Hmm...well, it's possible that your drivers or DirectX need to be updated? I must admit to knowing little or nothing about nVidia cards, so I don't know how your 6600 ought to be performing. What graphics quality settings are you using in FC?
The game is beautiful on my Radeon 800XT, even with less than the highest quality settings. With quality set to max, it's just amazing, fullscreen 1920x1200, with AA and Anisotropic filtering on.
> "AI" as 99.99% of laymen seem to call it is merely
> an elaborate hack.
Ok, so he doesn't use the correct academic terminology. "AI" is, however, colloquially used to describe the perceived "intelligence" of the computer-guided opponents. And using that definition, he is 100% correct...and so does know what he's talking about.
This one does hit home. I'm plaing brothers in arms, and after playing FarCry obsessively for the last year I'm constantly trying to jump over small obstacles without success.
A similar annoyance is not being able to lie down in BIA - I'm a soldier! Why can't I go prone? It's nuts!
I agree. It's ridiculous that I have to sit and tend the keyboard during an install - I should be able to stick a single disc in, click the button and go clean my toenails or something.
:)
At least it's not like the old days when we had to constantly switch discs in-game depending on where we were because hard discs were wither not really common/affordable on the desktop yet or were too small to consider copying an entire game to. Heck, I remember swapping 143k 5.25" floppies in-game...
> it's evident that he doesn't know what he's
> talking about.
Something is a challenge for the developers, therefore he doesn't know what he's talking about? He didn't say "adding good AI is easy, get on it"; he said that good AI was a seriously lacking element in modern games. And he's correct.
I think he's pretty much right on on every point, and the fact that developers would have a lot of work cut out for them has nothing to do with whether he "knows what he's talking about".
person A is a smart person who is resistant to a good idea, so person B, who likes the good idea, therefore a genius?
Some very smart people have opposed universal peace. I like universal peace. I am a genius.
> One average asteroid probably has enough
> material in it to create a household robot for
> every person alive.
Just for fun, I wanted to see if this was true. Whip out the TI-89 and Google, and...
Dr. Ted Bowell of the Lowell Observatory's Near-Earth-Object Search notes that the average size of the 800 known Earth-crossing asteroids is less than one kilometer. Assuming that Earth-crossing asteroids are a representative sampling (which they may or may not be, but it's a reasonable place to start), we can also make note of the fact that smaller bodies are harder to detect. This in turn suggests that the true avereage size will be lower. But assuming that 1-kilometer IS an avereage size, we can calculate the volume of the asteroid as:
Vol = (4/3)*Pi*(100000cm/2)^3 = 5.24E14 cm^3
If we then divide this by 6E9 people, we get:
(5.24E14 cm^3) / (6E9 people) = 87333 cm^3 / person
If it's an Iron asteroid, let's assume at least 90% of the object is useful metals, or 78,600cm^3. In perspective, that's a cube of metal about 42.8cm (1.4') on a side. By most reasonable standards, that ought to be enough to make a robot.
If the object was a stony asteroid (the other major group; there are intermediate types and subtypes as well), things are at least a little different: instead of 90% useful metal, the figure is around 30%, so we're down to:
78600 cm^3 * 0.3 = 23580 cm^3
That's a cube only 29cm (1') on a side. That's probably enough to make a robot, but probably not an R2, C3PO or battlemech. More like those little scurrying toasters from the original death star. Heh.
Note that the true avereage size of an asteroid is probably MUCH less than a kilometer, depending on how you define "asteroid". If you include every object in the asteroid belt, the average probably hovers around a centimeter, just as an educated guess.
This just gave me a great idea: the Toilet Paper Laser Printer! It'd have special paper-handling abilities, so that it could print onto a roll of TP as it re-spooled the paper onto a new cardboard tube on the other side.
This is better than Va-Poo-Rize! I'll be rich, RICH I tell you! HAHAHAHAHA!
Seriously, if I had had this idea before the bubble burst, I could have had a Ferarri and a bunch of cute secreataries and millions in venture capital.
What self-respecting SW fan still has a JOB? They're all in line already. The loss will be negligible. There might even be a net increase in productivity.
> or not) to be exaggerated
Well, you say "rightly or not", but the evidence only tends to "appear to be exaggerated" to the very people who don't want to give up their Hummers and airconditioners and all of the other trappings that come with cheap fossil energy.
It may appear that the evidence for anthropogenic global warming is exaggerated to those folks, but to the vast, vast majority (not ALL, I said "vast majority") of people who are:
the evidence:Now that's not a guarantee of being "right", but it's pretty damn compelling. It always sucks to be forced to do something we don't want to do, but when the repurcussions of our actions affect every living thing on the planet, we no longer have the luxury of being libertarian, enviro-isolationists.
I can understand why someone would mod this as flamebait, but I strongly disagree with their decision to do so.
The fact is that it's dangerous on Slashdot to try and point out the rabid, kneejerk defense of Linux and Apple, and the rabid, kneejerk condemnation of anything having to do with Microsoft or Windows, and this post is a fairly funny, insightful commentary on this phenomenon.
Wish I had mod points.
> Dell - neither the person nor the company
So...a "Dell", who/which we can surmise is extant, who is neither a person nor a company named "Dell", has "dropped" $100M "onto" Red Hat, which is a company and not a person.
Okay...
Tip of the day: When submitting a story to /., remember to RUN A SPELLCHECKER FIRST.
"summery" != "summary".
> STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES
Hallelujah!
Now all we need is a similar site for its/it's, there/their/they're, you're/your/yore, site/sight, et cetera.
Is it possible to mod someone down infinitely?
If so, I draw your attention to...parent.
i call thirds.
I agree - we can hope that Nikon will hear the loud, persistent sound of new customers turning away. But Nikon's track record in terms of listening to anyone other than itself is pretty dismal.
Hmm. I guess I'll have to take another look. I use NC exclusively after having an AWFUL time trying to get ACR to do what I wanted it to do. NC feels smoother, gives me all the control I want, and has some nice bells & whistles missing from ACR (support for ultra-wide angle lens relinearization, D-lighting, etc).