Aye, I understand that. Eventually a fiscal decision was made, rationally, by a company teetering on the edge. And that's OK.
But speaking as a developer, I keep going back to my earlier statement; each moment when you're working on code and you have to make a decision, you weigh up the pros and cons of each option and pick the one that you want. The decisions they were making back then were, each time, to choose a windows-specific choice.
Somewhere along the way, the small marginal improvement in development time outweighed the benefits of keeping the code portable. I'd understand if it was a pathologically windows-only tool to begin with, but it wasn't; it was a fantastically portable codebase that they chose to decimate!
I would wager that when they eventually developed mac support, the time and developer resources that it took was way more than the time saved by choosing Windows-only options in the past. As someone who works on portable codebases a lot, the ability to run Valgrind on Linux, and Shark on OSX, is alone worth the extra time it took, because it so significantly offsets debugging time on windows. Difficult-to-debug bugs that manifest only in rare cases on one platform oftentimes manifest far more easily on other platforms, somehow that's the nature of the beast.
Huh, I posted as AC by accident. Well, to make up for it, here's the post where they officially gave Linux the finger: http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/9244 . The post was titled "Linux Expectation Management"
Borderlands did that, with drop-in multiplayer co-op.
In one fell swoop, that game was killed for me; I was really enjoying playing, I ended up in a maximum-size group with all decent people, completely by accident. We played the last half of the game in one loooong sitting.
Just as we were getting to the last boss, some exploiting douchebag came in and killed the end boss via some exploit.
Thus I don't play multiplayer games. As if I didn't hate them before, I sure as hell hate them now. The sad thing is that I *really* enjoyed Borderlands, but that put me off even buying the expansions.
"the current regulatory framework would lead to constant legal challenges to the FCC's authority every time it attempted to pursue a broadband policy."
And... so?
"Something's good for consumers but unpopular with service providers; because the service providers might be bitchy let's not do it."
What? The *point* of the FCC is *exactly* to suffer being that middle man.
Oh, and I should add that a relatively piddling amount of money in the face of "no, seriously, this *will* kill your customers" is hardly making me think more highly of them.
First... It seems obvious at this point that volcanic ash does, in fact, destroy engines. The fact that "how much ash for how much destruction" is unknown, well, I can almost sympathise with the airlines, and perhaps the governments really were erring a bit vigorously on the side of caution.
Then I think... Man, there was a time when airlines garnered occasional goodwill. I'd feel I'd been treated well by them, where there wasn't nickel-and-diming at every turn, where flying didn't make me feel like a criminal [sure, not entirely the airlines fault, but I don't remember any of them ever stepping up on behalf of their customers].
That time has passed. Nowadays it brings nothing but joy to me to see their airlines suffering. In some parts of the world stuff like this is known as karma. Treat your customers like shit, eventually mother nature dumps thousands of tons of rock on your ass.
When you're shopping for a new thing, what you do is: You weigh up the pros and cons of each thing available, compare those against the list of your needs, then pick the most appropriate one.
If affordable early termination is one of your specific needs, then don't buy the phone you're looking at from the provider you're looking at where early termination is a big scam. You have to weigh up the pros and cons and pick what's best for you. There are lots of phone providers, and sure - they all suck. But you pick what best meets your needs.
- And this is why I still don't have a smartphone. Because the cons [such as monthly cost c.f. my current plan] don't add up to be sufficient to meet my needs [such as affordable]. The cons of Apple's iPhone douchebaggery far outweigh the pros of having a phone I could kinda-sorta develop for.
Another simple way to avoid the problem of accidentally hitting the web browser is to remap the web browser button to something else. Even my cheap phone can do that.
Sure, and some people like their web browser to have a built in mail client.
The original purpose of phoenix was to stop putting in exactly this kind of cruft.
Perhaps if the "awesome bar" was so awesome, then someone could implement it as a plugin. That way, everyone's happy. You get a browser *with* that feature, and I get a browser *without* that feature.
Somehow it always makes it harder to find what I want, not easier [eg, for some reason, it appears to have decided that penny-arcade.com is the correct url when I type in "facebook"]
And no; "just turn it off" studiously avoids the OP's complaint - which was that things like this shouldn't have needed to be added in the first place. How soon we forget - the name "phoenix" didn't even appeared in the news post [although it is in TFA].
When I last went shopping for a phone, I didn't get Verizon because of exactly this. I bought a motorola razr cheap from t-mobile.
Let me sync with my mac out of the box. Phone cost: 20 dollars. Service cost: don't remember exactly but it's something like thirty bucks a month.
You make it sound like AT&T-iPhone vs Verizon are the only two games in town. In fact, they're just two of the worst. Perhaps you're into self-hate - is that why the only two options you describe both proscribe crippled hardware?
For the first time ever, I bothered to even write some comments about a negative game. That's how awful it was. Short version: 1) The camera *is* a deal breaker. It has no redeeming qualities. One interview mentioned people need to "stop fighting it". I don't need to "stop fighting it", I need "one that isn't actively counterproductive and vomit-inducing". 2) Co-op. Stop claiming it has "co-op", and start specifying it as "co-op only over xbox live". I bought the game to play with my SO, and I can't, because we sit in the same room to play games together. Too Human isn't the only guilty party here, but they're sure as hell a big contender. 3) Mediocre story. You have a whole universe of potential awesome there, and you churned out something seriously devoid of depth or breadth, that doesn't really hold much real reference to the actual mythology it's based on 4) Crappy combat. Look, I know they love to claim it's good, but it's not. It's massively limited. Your core attack is "hold the thumbstick in the direction of the enemy", and your character sits there and just does it. The "advanced attacks" screen contains six pieces of information. Even using all of them, the combat is still limited and dull.
There was a bunch of other stuff, but that was the core of my complaints - abysmal camera, dull story, crappy combat, and couldn't play co-op. Three of those were the reasons I bought the game, and the other was just something that made a crappy game worse.
Woo, better motion sensitivity. And just like everything else, it will cause issues with whatever you use to charge the batteries in your wiimote.
I repeat: where the hell is my battery charger? Some sort of magical way, built and supported by nintendo, to charge the batteries in my wiimote, that doesn't involve parts-fidgeting every time I want to use one of their other accessories.
XBox 360 that won't sound like a jet engine taking off under my TV
XBox 360 that doesn't double as a space heater
Of course, I don't really care. Already have a 360 and if [when] it goes up in flames [literally] I'm unlikely to buy a replacement. Personally my biggest issue with it is the noise. The fans are loud enough to genuinely detract from the game playing experience while I'm trying to listen to in-game voices.
The reason I started using torque, years ago now, was its unrivalled cross-platformness.
Oh, how things change:
1) Torque Game Engine, the original ideal of commercial cross platform code for games, now doesn't officially support Linux. The most recent release [1.5.2] was the first to compile on linux out of the box since early 1.3 versions, totally handled by community only. The kicker being that they'd never even commit patches the community [myself included] posted, even when those patches influenced nothing except the linux platform.
2) Torque Game Builder ran on Linux originally. They've dropped the Linux port and called it "community supported" on Linux. In fact, due to a bunch of pathologically platform-dependant decisions, it's borderline impossible to make it work on linux.
3) Torque Game Engine Advanced, the original promise was to have linux & mac versions out with the first major release - GG haven't even bothered with any graphics except directx, and have said they never will.
4) Torque2 - the new engine they're building. Again, they say they'd like to do linux and mac support, but have also said that they won't be getting those out in the first version
5) InstantAction.com - ostensibly platform independant, but there's no mac or linux versions of the browser plugins yet, let alone any games you might want to play
Blah. There was a time when I championed GarageGames as a paragon of cross platform, especially linux, support.
I never managed to get a real game written with Torque. Nowadays I'm using Ogre, and my development is actually progressing, and working on linux and mac as well as windows without a second thought.
I have a really, really, hard time empathising; as an end consumer of the content, the net effect is the same. I paid for something that's either incomplete [due to rampant commercialism], or incomplete [due to deadlines etc]. Either way the game is incomplete.
I find it pretty heavily disincentivising that [if deadlines arethe problem] instead of recognising this ahead of time, cutting it short and ending it cleanly, Bungie would cut it short and call it good.
I loved the first two, except the second one didn't end. I really despise games [or movies or TV shows [Lost, I'm looking at you]] that don't have an ending, or leave themselves with a cliffhanger.
It always feels to me like open commercialisation; effectively it's a way of forcing the customer to give you more money, not on the merits of the game, and the merits of its followup, but because the customer wants to finish off what they paid for the first time.
So list me as one of the people who won't be purchasing Halo3.
So far, I haven't bought a next gen console... mostly because Nintendo still can't keep up with demand. I still plan to get a Wii, but honestly I'm no longer even bothering to get my ass out of bed on a sunday morning on the offchance I'll beat someone else to the store. I was for a while, but screw that. Directly lost sales of games until Nintendo pull their thumbs out of their manufacturing asses.
Anyways, I'll buy a PS3 for GoW3. That's it. And if the price hasn't dropped into the realm of disposable cash for me by the time GoW3 comes out, then screw that, I'll just keep on playing on my future Wii. A 100 dollar price drop that everyone keeps saying here doesn't bring it into the realm of what I'd consider disposable. I don't have, want, or care for, high def anything. I just want games I like.
Overall, I've discovered that I don't actually want, or need, a multitool.
I have a single knife, a Kershaw Avalanche partially serrated. Overall, I find that I simply don't want, or have a use for, all the other bits & bobs you find on a multitool.
If you want a simple knife with a little more capability, then get a balisong [aka a butterfly knife]. Learn a couple decent opening/closing moves with it, and you can then use it for all the other things you don't normally do with a simple knife. It makes a great lever [the Spyderco Spyderfly is most of 6" long, closed], clamp/gripper [by opening it, then squeezing the handles around whatever it is, with varying leverage]...
Yep. Computers used to be fun toys to me. Nowadays, when I work with them for hours every day, they're no fun anymore. I now live in a house that actually has a TV, and I don't even want to look at that when I get home, let alone geek out with my PC.
Instead, I'm doing blacksmithing and locksmithing in my spare time.
TBH, right now, the net total it would take to get me to leave CA, go back home to Aberystwyth, would be a blacksmith [or a locksmith] back there offering me a job. I'd even take a 35% pay cut, actually. Living expenses really are that much different.
Slashdot Mirror
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Supposedly leaked from inside Microsoft, a spoof of MS pointing fun at themselves and as a reminder of how not to do things
Aye, I understand that. Eventually a fiscal decision was made, rationally, by a company teetering on the edge. And that's OK.
But speaking as a developer, I keep going back to my earlier statement; each moment when you're working on code and you have to make a decision, you weigh up the pros and cons of each option and pick the one that you want. The decisions they were making back then were, each time, to choose a windows-specific choice.
Somewhere along the way, the small marginal improvement in development time outweighed the benefits of keeping the code portable. I'd understand if it was a pathologically windows-only tool to begin with, but it wasn't; it was a fantastically portable codebase that they chose to decimate!
I would wager that when they eventually developed mac support, the time and developer resources that it took was way more than the time saved by choosing Windows-only options in the past. As someone who works on portable codebases a lot, the ability to run Valgrind on Linux, and Shark on OSX, is alone worth the extra time it took, because it so significantly offsets debugging time on windows. Difficult-to-debug bugs that manifest only in rare cases on one platform oftentimes manifest far more easily on other platforms, somehow that's the nature of the beast.
Huh, I posted as AC by accident. Well, to make up for it, here's the post where they officially gave Linux the finger: http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/9244 . The post was titled "Linux Expectation Management"
Borderlands did that, with drop-in multiplayer co-op.
In one fell swoop, that game was killed for me; I was really enjoying playing, I ended up in a maximum-size group with all decent people, completely by accident. We played the last half of the game in one loooong sitting.
Just as we were getting to the last boss, some exploiting douchebag came in and killed the end boss via some exploit.
Thus I don't play multiplayer games. As if I didn't hate them before, I sure as hell hate them now. The sad thing is that I *really* enjoyed Borderlands, but that put me off even buying the expansions.
Gary (-;
"the current regulatory framework would lead to constant legal challenges to the FCC's authority every time it attempted to pursue a broadband policy."
And... so?
"Something's good for consumers but unpopular with service providers; because the service providers might be bitchy let's not do it."
What? The *point* of the FCC is *exactly* to suffer being that middle man.
Gary (-;
Oh, and I should add that a relatively piddling amount of money in the face of "no, seriously, this *will* kill your customers" is hardly making me think more highly of them.
Gary (-;
First... It seems obvious at this point that volcanic ash does, in fact, destroy engines. The fact that "how much ash for how much destruction" is unknown, well, I can almost sympathise with the airlines, and perhaps the governments really were erring a bit vigorously on the side of caution.
Then I think... Man, there was a time when airlines garnered occasional goodwill. I'd feel I'd been treated well by them, where there wasn't nickel-and-diming at every turn, where flying didn't make me feel like a criminal [sure, not entirely the airlines fault, but I don't remember any of them ever stepping up on behalf of their customers].
That time has passed. Nowadays it brings nothing but joy to me to see their airlines suffering. In some parts of the world stuff like this is known as karma. Treat your customers like shit, eventually mother nature dumps thousands of tons of rock on your ass.
Gary (-;
When you're shopping for a new thing, what you do is: You weigh up the pros and cons of each thing available, compare those against the list of your needs, then pick the most appropriate one.
If affordable early termination is one of your specific needs, then don't buy the phone you're looking at from the provider you're looking at where early termination is a big scam. You have to weigh up the pros and cons and pick what's best for you. There are lots of phone providers, and sure - they all suck. But you pick what best meets your needs.
- And this is why I still don't have a smartphone. Because the cons [such as monthly cost c.f. my current plan] don't add up to be sufficient to meet my needs [such as affordable]. The cons of Apple's iPhone douchebaggery far outweigh the pros of having a phone I could kinda-sorta develop for.
Another simple way to avoid the problem of accidentally hitting the web browser is to remap the web browser button to something else. Even my cheap phone can do that.
Gary (-;
Sure, and some people like their web browser to have a built in mail client.
The original purpose of phoenix was to stop putting in exactly this kind of cruft.
Perhaps if the "awesome bar" was so awesome, then someone could implement it as a plugin. That way, everyone's happy. You get a browser *with* that feature, and I get a browser *without* that feature.
The [not] "awesome bar".
Somehow it always makes it harder to find what I want, not easier [eg, for some reason, it appears to have decided that penny-arcade.com is the correct url when I type in "facebook"]
And no; "just turn it off" studiously avoids the OP's complaint - which was that things like this shouldn't have needed to be added in the first place. How soon we forget - the name "phoenix" didn't even appeared in the news post [although it is in TFA].
When I last went shopping for a phone, I didn't get Verizon because of exactly this. I bought a motorola razr cheap from t-mobile.
Let me sync with my mac out of the box. Phone cost: 20 dollars. Service cost: don't remember exactly but it's something like thirty bucks a month.
You make it sound like AT&T-iPhone vs Verizon are the only two games in town. In fact, they're just two of the worst. Perhaps you're into self-hate - is that why the only two options you describe both proscribe crippled hardware?
Gary (-;
That mac address one seems like a lot of work. Why not /^[0-9A-F]{2}(:[0-9A-F]{2}){5}$/i
Or [0-9a-fA-F] as you had, if your regex system doesn't understand case insensitivity.
Gary (-;
For the first time ever, I bothered to even write some comments about a negative game. That's how awful it was. Short version:
1) The camera *is* a deal breaker. It has no redeeming qualities. One interview mentioned people need to "stop fighting it". I don't need to "stop fighting it", I need "one that isn't actively counterproductive and vomit-inducing".
2) Co-op. Stop claiming it has "co-op", and start specifying it as "co-op only over xbox live". I bought the game to play with my SO, and I can't, because we sit in the same room to play games together. Too Human isn't the only guilty party here, but they're sure as hell a big contender.
3) Mediocre story. You have a whole universe of potential awesome there, and you churned out something seriously devoid of depth or breadth, that doesn't really hold much real reference to the actual mythology it's based on
4) Crappy combat. Look, I know they love to claim it's good, but it's not. It's massively limited. Your core attack is "hold the thumbstick in the direction of the enemy", and your character sits there and just does it. The "advanced attacks" screen contains six pieces of information. Even using all of them, the combat is still limited and dull.
There was a bunch of other stuff, but that was the core of my complaints - abysmal camera, dull story, crappy combat, and couldn't play co-op. Three of those were the reasons I bought the game, and the other was just something that made a crappy game worse.
Gary (-;
Woo, better motion sensitivity. And just like everything else, it will cause issues with whatever you use to charge the batteries in your wiimote.
I repeat: where the hell is my battery charger? Some sort of magical way, built and supported by nintendo, to charge the batteries in my wiimote, that doesn't involve parts-fidgeting every time I want to use one of their other accessories.
Gary (-;
Of course, I don't really care. Already have a 360 and if [when] it goes up in flames [literally] I'm unlikely to buy a replacement. Personally my biggest issue with it is the noise. The fans are loud enough to genuinely detract from the game playing experience while I'm trying to listen to in-game voices.
Gary (-;
The reason I started using torque, years ago now, was its unrivalled cross-platformness.
Oh, how things change:
1) Torque Game Engine, the original ideal of commercial cross platform code for games, now doesn't officially support Linux. The most recent release [1.5.2] was the first to compile on linux out of the box since early 1.3 versions, totally handled by community only. The kicker being that they'd never even commit patches the community [myself included] posted, even when those patches influenced nothing except the linux platform.
2) Torque Game Builder ran on Linux originally. They've dropped the Linux port and called it "community supported" on Linux. In fact, due to a bunch of pathologically platform-dependant decisions, it's borderline impossible to make it work on linux.
3) Torque Game Engine Advanced, the original promise was to have linux & mac versions out with the first major release - GG haven't even bothered with any graphics except directx, and have said they never will.
4) Torque2 - the new engine they're building. Again, they say they'd like to do linux and mac support, but have also said that they won't be getting those out in the first version
5) InstantAction.com - ostensibly platform independant, but there's no mac or linux versions of the browser plugins yet, let alone any games you might want to play
Blah. There was a time when I championed GarageGames as a paragon of cross platform, especially linux, support.
I never managed to get a real game written with Torque. Nowadays I'm using Ogre, and my development is actually progressing, and working on linux and mac as well as windows without a second thought.
Gary (-;
I have a really, really, hard time empathising; as an end consumer of the content, the net effect is the same. I paid for something that's either incomplete [due to rampant commercialism], or incomplete [due to deadlines etc]. Either way the game is incomplete.
I find it pretty heavily disincentivising that [if deadlines arethe problem] instead of recognising this ahead of time, cutting it short and ending it cleanly, Bungie would cut it short and call it good.
Gary (-;
I loved the first two, except the second one didn't end. I really despise games [or movies or TV shows [Lost, I'm looking at you]] that don't have an ending, or leave themselves with a cliffhanger.
It always feels to me like open commercialisation; effectively it's a way of forcing the customer to give you more money, not on the merits of the game, and the merits of its followup, but because the customer wants to finish off what they paid for the first time.
So list me as one of the people who won't be purchasing Halo3.
Gary (-;
So far, I haven't bought a next gen console... mostly because Nintendo still can't keep up with demand. I still plan to get a Wii, but honestly I'm no longer even bothering to get my ass out of bed on a sunday morning on the offchance I'll beat someone else to the store. I was for a while, but screw that. Directly lost sales of games until Nintendo pull their thumbs out of their manufacturing asses.
Anyways, I'll buy a PS3 for GoW3. That's it. And if the price hasn't dropped into the realm of disposable cash for me by the time GoW3 comes out, then screw that, I'll just keep on playing on my future Wii. A 100 dollar price drop that everyone keeps saying here doesn't bring it into the realm of what I'd consider disposable. I don't have, want, or care for, high def anything. I just want games I like.
Gary (-;
Torque Game Engine. Fascinating, if only to poke about in the code for a genuinely amazing game engine
Or donate it to a good cause such as a dog rescue group [which is what I did with my last 100 USD].
Gary (-;
Overall, I've discovered that I don't actually want, or need, a multitool.
I have a single knife, a Kershaw Avalanche partially serrated. Overall, I find that I simply don't want, or have a use for, all the other bits & bobs you find on a multitool.
If you want a simple knife with a little more capability, then get a balisong [aka a butterfly knife]. Learn a couple decent opening/closing moves with it, and you can then use it for all the other things you don't normally do with a simple knife. It makes a great lever [the Spyderco Spyderfly is most of 6" long, closed], clamp/gripper [by opening it, then squeezing the handles around whatever it is, with varying leverage]...
Gary (-;
"Linux is only free if your time has no value"
Yes. And Windows is only 300 bucks if your time has no value.
What's your point?
Gary (-;
Flagrant Self-evangelisation, here.
AA JuggleMaster
For bonus points, it'll even function as a system load monitor.
That way I can call it a utility instead of a toy. Or, uhm. Right.
Gary (-;
Yep. Computers used to be fun toys to me. Nowadays, when I work with them for hours every day, they're no fun anymore. I now live in a house that actually has a TV, and I don't even want to look at that when I get home, let alone geek out with my PC.
Instead, I'm doing blacksmithing and locksmithing in my spare time.
TBH, right now, the net total it would take to get me to leave CA, go back home to Aberystwyth, would be a blacksmith [or a locksmith] back there offering me a job. I'd even take a 35% pay cut, actually. Living expenses really are that much different.
Oh - that, and I hate my current location.
Gary (-;
I actually still use it by choice :-P
my vtwmrc
Gary (-;