Incorrect - the Ipad was hyped and advertised for several months. The 30 days was simply the final shipping time.
Not to mention that's been with vast amounts of coverage and advertising from the media, including Slashdot.
Compared to any given Netbook product
Can you tell me which specific netbook product gets three stories on Slashdot a day? Thanks. Hell, we don't even get that much for netbooks as a whole.
Nokia ship hundreds of millions of mobile computing devices a year - do we get stories about them, or how they're "destroying netbook sales" (or indeed, how they're "destroying Ipad sales")?
You must be reading a different Slashdot to me. We get multiple advertisement "stories" on the Iphone/Ipad daily. And we get ludicrous assertions that any drop in netbook sales must be because of the Apple tablet, and no other reason, or product.
Remember, Less Space than a Nomad. No Wireless. Has Lamely become synonymous with an MP3 player. Apple is the 400 lb gorilla when it comes to online audio sales.
And Windows is the most dominant operating system, so according to your logic, anyone who claims it's lame must be wrong. You really want to equate dominant with being the best? Not that this has anything to do with the Ipad, which isn't dominant - despite what people here will pretend.
Indeed. And whilst there's an argument for using "PC" to refer specifically to the x86 hardware platform, this no longer applies to Macs either. From a hardware point of view, Apple ship Apple PCs. They run a different OS, but that's no more relevant that someone shipping Linux PCs - they're still PCs, as you say.
The irony is that back when Macs weren't PCs in this sense of the word, Apple insisted they were (in order to advertise false claims like "first 64 bit PC", because they handpicked an arbitrary definition that included Macs, but not other non-x86 PCs that were 64 bit before them). And since they switched to releasing PCs, they claimed they weren't PCs, so they could falsely advertise a sense of "oh, but we're still different and unique, honest!".
That's the point though - why is it that porn is demonised, when the problem of sexual portrayals of women is a far bigger problem in mainstream media and advertising? Why aren't things like gay porn and porn where the men are in the submissive role exempt from such criticism, if it was really about the objectification of women?
Not to mention that the whole point of porn is to be sexual - the problem is when it creeps into everyday things where there's no need for it to be sexualised.
Well yes indeed - it's pretty good only in terms of forum software, but nothing compared to using a news client. The only website that comes close to offering these features takes tonnes of resources to run.
Citation needed? Including compared with things like the DS? Or is this just more of the "But Linux users don't buy their software" FUD?
Anyhow, I didn't see anyone talking about mobile development, which seems a way to add greater complication to your game, as you now have to worry about things like limited resolution and power, unless you intend to make a mobile game. Windows has vastly more market share, including in terms of selling games.
And it's free for most other platforms (including Windows, which as much as we dislike it round here, has far bigger marketshare, especially for games).
If you want to prove me wrong, make a game that's totally original, then get back to me. Not "write a few words on a web forum" - you're just proving the point that anyone can do that, because ideas are cheap. Getting good ideas into a workable game that's actually fun is hard.
It's like me, with no clue about cars, saying "I've got a great idea for a car! Who wants to build it for me? And surely my idea must be worth lots, because all the cars we get all look the same!"
Exactly, that's part of the same point. When people say "I've got a great idea for a game, how can I get people to buy my idea!", and they haven't even tried a working demo, which category do we think they fall into?
The OP said ideas, not good ideas, so his statement was perfectly correct. Getting ideas is easy; making a game with good ideas that work is hard.
Of course you can control a newsgroup - it's Usenet that you can't control, but there's no reason why you can't run an account-required NNTP server with your own newsgroups, where you delete what you like.
It's unclear from the article what Microsoft were doing. Surely the latter - if it was on Usenet, surely they don't even have the control to delete them?
Whilst I think it's fine for MS to choose what's best for their own groups, I don't see web forums as an evolution. The biggest problem is that you're now restricted by what software the website runs, rather than running your own client (and websites are typically far more limited - have you seen one with a killfile? Even basic things like threading elude most webforum software).
Worse, decisions are made by admins for the decision of all when they should be a user option. Most notably, the "Lock thread" feature of a certain popular webforum software, which inevitably gets used by power crazy admins for "I'm bored of reading this thread now".
Slashdot is pretty good in terms of forum software, but most are far worse. And Slashdot still seems to have problems on every browser I've tried...
Well, it makes a change from people round here talking about "Iphone-like device" to refer to "phone", and I'm surprised for once that the media have chosen Blackberry rather than Apple yet again.
Really though, looking at the article:
such a hand-held device would be simple to use and that, one day, everyone in the world would communicate to friends using it
There's nothing here that even implies a QWERTY keyboard, or even being so-called "smart" (which is ill-defined anyway, and simply means the high end at any given time). This description refers to mobile phones in general (whether it's communicating by speech, text, or Internet - almost all phones do all these things).
If anyone one company deserves the mention, it should be Nokia, who've shipped billions of these "hand-held devices" and have 40+% of the market. Other companies worthy of mention would be LG, Samsung, Motorola - in fact, RIM and Apple come rather low on the list.
(And I have to say, is predicting a device really that special? Communication devices already existed, and this just said, one day they'll be smaller and mobile. I'm going to predict that in the future we'll have faster computers, and they'll be smaller too.)
I did a Maths degree, which I also need in my programming job. Does that make me a copy-paste programmer? Would a programmer who didn't have a maths degree do better?
Anyhow, perhaps the article is geared towards people who are learning it before they go to University, or people who are picking it up later in life. And hell, I suspect the original essay was intended for people who are currently studying a degree! No one's claiming this article is intended at people who are already professional programmers. I guess the OP thinks people doing a degree should only learn what they're spoonfed by the lecturers, rather than reading material on the topic in general.
And for months, indeed up to 5 years, there was rumour, hype about the Apple tablet, Istale, Ipad, or whatever the new name of the week was. The use of vaporware to generate publicity was employed by Apple here far more than Microsoft (I hadn't even heard about the device, before now - hyped up vaporware is far more annoying than stuff that isn't hyped up).
Indeed, and just to elaborate on that: even if they were an entirely private organisation, whilst they might have a legal right to discriminate, we still have the right to criticise a private organisation for bigoted views. And I think that trying to push such prejudiced views on children is especially low.
To respond to the OP's "Hindu, Greek Orthodox Christian, Muslim, Baptist, Quaker, polytheistic, monotheistic" - one thing I found laughable was the way that they bend over backwards to pretend to be inclusive to all sorts of minority religions (despite the fact that, at least here in the UK, they're still clearly Christian, in terms of the worship they practice), yet atheism/agnosticism/etc is out.
Anyhow, if children want to learn how to do it for real, there are plenty of youth organisations that do teach them how to shoot guns etc (at least in the UK - all the army cadet type groups). Once again, we're in a world where fictional shooting is bad, but teaching children to do the real thing is good...
GL is short for Graphics Library. It's what we call an abbreviation.
DirectX or Directx; IPhone or Iphone - both are fine, and I don't really care between them. But both are proper nouns, and the first letter of proper nouns in English is capitalised. Not that I even said "Iphone" in my post, so I guess I've got some sad stalker.
I don't follow my own rules, I follow the rules of basic English. Nowhere have I claimed that proper nouns "have no other capital letters", so you can take your straw man elsewhere.
I think this will be interesting to watch - already there's devices like the Nokia 5230, offering Symbian on a phone costing about £100 on PAYG.
The distinction between "smart" phones and "feature" phones is rather ill-defined, and the only clear thing that the low end "feature" phones lack these days is a "smartphone" OS. Give them Symbian, and you're there. It won't have the extra bells and whistles that people get on more expensive phones, such as GPS, wireless access, and CPU/RAM will be more limited, but they'll be running Internet an apps on a smartphone OS.
The other one to watch will be Android - I'm not sure what the cheapest Android phone is at the moment, but I can't help wondering why all the non-Nokia manufacturers aren't jumping at the chance to run Android rather than a custom "feature" phone OS. Unless either the fees are too high, or the system requirements too high, for low end phones.
Of course Apple will be nowhere to be seen, if they stick with their usual philosophy of making money by selling expensive products at the high end.
I can't speak to USB ports, but Apple was the first to completely remove the floppy from their PC line, forcing people to move on to optical media, USB drives, flash drives, etc.
And external floppy drives.
I still don't see removing the floppy changed anything, when people were just forced to then buy an external drive. The change came years later, when floppies really were no longer needed. If we're going to credit the lack of a drive, I'd argue laptops had a far bigger effect than a niche computer platform. And if you're crediting Apple for being first, well no, you're still wrong - there was the Commodore CDTV at least, years earlier.
Slashdot Mirror
Incorrect - the Ipad was hyped and advertised for several months. The 30 days was simply the final shipping time.
Not to mention that's been with vast amounts of coverage and advertising from the media, including Slashdot.
Compared to any given Netbook product
Can you tell me which specific netbook product gets three stories on Slashdot a day? Thanks. Hell, we don't even get that much for netbooks as a whole.
Nokia ship hundreds of millions of mobile computing devices a year - do we get stories about them, or how they're "destroying netbook sales" (or indeed, how they're "destroying Ipad sales")?
You must be reading a different Slashdot to me. We get multiple advertisement "stories" on the Iphone/Ipad daily. And we get ludicrous assertions that any drop in netbook sales must be because of the Apple tablet, and no other reason, or product.
Remember, Less Space than a Nomad. No Wireless. Has Lamely become synonymous with an MP3 player. Apple is the 400 lb gorilla when it comes to online audio sales.
And Windows is the most dominant operating system, so according to your logic, anyone who claims it's lame must be wrong. You really want to equate dominant with being the best? Not that this has anything to do with the Ipad, which isn't dominant - despite what people here will pretend.
Indeed - but if only it was still only the Apple section. Now the thrice-daily iStories show up in all sorts of sections, such as Games, Mobile.
True, though in that case, it's fair to ask why the obligitary Applevertisement by mentioning the Ipad prominently, if it's for any tablet.
Indeed. And whilst there's an argument for using "PC" to refer specifically to the x86 hardware platform, this no longer applies to Macs either. From a hardware point of view, Apple ship Apple PCs. They run a different OS, but that's no more relevant that someone shipping Linux PCs - they're still PCs, as you say.
The irony is that back when Macs weren't PCs in this sense of the word, Apple insisted they were (in order to advertise false claims like "first 64 bit PC", because they handpicked an arbitrary definition that included Macs, but not other non-x86 PCs that were 64 bit before them). And since they switched to releasing PCs, they claimed they weren't PCs, so they could falsely advertise a sense of "oh, but we're still different and unique, honest!".
That's the point though - why is it that porn is demonised, when the problem of sexual portrayals of women is a far bigger problem in mainstream media and advertising? Why aren't things like gay porn and porn where the men are in the submissive role exempt from such criticism, if it was really about the objectification of women?
Not to mention that the whole point of porn is to be sexual - the problem is when it creeps into everyday things where there's no need for it to be sexualised.
Well yes indeed - it's pretty good only in terms of forum software, but nothing compared to using a news client. The only website that comes close to offering these features takes tonnes of resources to run.
Citation needed? Including compared with things like the DS? Or is this just more of the "But Linux users don't buy their software" FUD?
Anyhow, I didn't see anyone talking about mobile development, which seems a way to add greater complication to your game, as you now have to worry about things like limited resolution and power, unless you intend to make a mobile game. Windows has vastly more market share, including in terms of selling games.
And it's free for most other platforms (including Windows, which as much as we dislike it round here, has far bigger marketshare, especially for games).
Because those are the ideas that work.
If you want to prove me wrong, make a game that's totally original, then get back to me. Not "write a few words on a web forum" - you're just proving the point that anyone can do that, because ideas are cheap. Getting good ideas into a workable game that's actually fun is hard.
It's like me, with no clue about cars, saying "I've got a great idea for a car! Who wants to build it for me? And surely my idea must be worth lots, because all the cars we get all look the same!"
Exactly, that's part of the same point. When people say "I've got a great idea for a game, how can I get people to buy my idea!", and they haven't even tried a working demo, which category do we think they fall into?
The OP said ideas, not good ideas, so his statement was perfectly correct. Getting ideas is easy; making a game with good ideas that work is hard.
Of course you can control a newsgroup - it's Usenet that you can't control, but there's no reason why you can't run an account-required NNTP server with your own newsgroups, where you delete what you like.
It's unclear from the article what Microsoft were doing. Surely the latter - if it was on Usenet, surely they don't even have the control to delete them?
Whilst I think it's fine for MS to choose what's best for their own groups, I don't see web forums as an evolution. The biggest problem is that you're now restricted by what software the website runs, rather than running your own client (and websites are typically far more limited - have you seen one with a killfile? Even basic things like threading elude most webforum software).
Worse, decisions are made by admins for the decision of all when they should be a user option. Most notably, the "Lock thread" feature of a certain popular webforum software, which inevitably gets used by power crazy admins for "I'm bored of reading this thread now".
Slashdot is pretty good in terms of forum software, but most are far worse. And Slashdot still seems to have problems on every browser I've tried...
Well, it makes a change from people round here talking about "Iphone-like device" to refer to "phone", and I'm surprised for once that the media have chosen Blackberry rather than Apple yet again.
Really though, looking at the article:
such a hand-held device would be simple to use and that, one day, everyone in the world would communicate to friends using it
There's nothing here that even implies a QWERTY keyboard, or even being so-called "smart" (which is ill-defined anyway, and simply means the high end at any given time). This description refers to mobile phones in general (whether it's communicating by speech, text, or Internet - almost all phones do all these things).
If anyone one company deserves the mention, it should be Nokia, who've shipped billions of these "hand-held devices" and have 40+% of the market. Other companies worthy of mention would be LG, Samsung, Motorola - in fact, RIM and Apple come rather low on the list.
(And I have to say, is predicting a device really that special? Communication devices already existed, and this just said, one day they'll be smaller and mobile. I'm going to predict that in the future we'll have faster computers, and they'll be smaller too.)
I did a Maths degree, which I also need in my programming job. Does that make me a copy-paste programmer? Would a programmer who didn't have a maths degree do better?
Anyhow, perhaps the article is geared towards people who are learning it before they go to University, or people who are picking it up later in life. And hell, I suspect the original essay was intended for people who are currently studying a degree! No one's claiming this article is intended at people who are already professional programmers. I guess the OP thinks people doing a degree should only learn what they're spoonfed by the lecturers, rather than reading material on the topic in general.
And for months, indeed up to 5 years, there was rumour, hype about the Apple tablet, Istale, Ipad, or whatever the new name of the week was. The use of vaporware to generate publicity was employed by Apple here far more than Microsoft (I hadn't even heard about the device, before now - hyped up vaporware is far more annoying than stuff that isn't hyped up).
No, it's easy to criticise, because there's no rational reason for them doing so. There's no so-called "political correctness" here.
Indeed, and just to elaborate on that: even if they were an entirely private organisation, whilst they might have a legal right to discriminate, we still have the right to criticise a private organisation for bigoted views. And I think that trying to push such prejudiced views on children is especially low.
To respond to the OP's "Hindu, Greek Orthodox Christian, Muslim, Baptist, Quaker, polytheistic, monotheistic" - one thing I found laughable was the way that they bend over backwards to pretend to be inclusive to all sorts of minority religions (despite the fact that, at least here in the UK, they're still clearly Christian, in terms of the worship they practice), yet atheism/agnosticism/etc is out.
I wonder if they'd allow an FSM believer?
Indeed.
Anyhow, if children want to learn how to do it for real, there are plenty of youth organisations that do teach them how to shoot guns etc (at least in the UK - all the army cadet type groups). Once again, we're in a world where fictional shooting is bad, but teaching children to do the real thing is good...
But as I say, that argument applies to DirectX at least as much as OpenGL.
And sure, the latest versions of OpenGL and DirectX won't be suited to almost decade old hardware ... I'm not sure that's really a problem though.
Not if you have to rewrite the engine to do it, or unlearn lots of bad habits I'd picked up when learning it, no.
GL is short for Graphics Library. It's what we call an abbreviation.
DirectX or Directx; IPhone or Iphone - both are fine, and I don't really care between them. But both are proper nouns, and the first letter of proper nouns in English is capitalised. Not that I even said "Iphone" in my post, so I guess I've got some sad stalker.
I don't follow my own rules, I follow the rules of basic English. Nowhere have I claimed that proper nouns "have no other capital letters", so you can take your straw man elsewhere.
"Mindshare" == "What I think is the best platform, inside my head".
I think this will be interesting to watch - already there's devices like the Nokia 5230, offering Symbian on a phone costing about £100 on PAYG.
The distinction between "smart" phones and "feature" phones is rather ill-defined, and the only clear thing that the low end "feature" phones lack these days is a "smartphone" OS. Give them Symbian, and you're there. It won't have the extra bells and whistles that people get on more expensive phones, such as GPS, wireless access, and CPU/RAM will be more limited, but they'll be running Internet an apps on a smartphone OS.
The other one to watch will be Android - I'm not sure what the cheapest Android phone is at the moment, but I can't help wondering why all the non-Nokia manufacturers aren't jumping at the chance to run Android rather than a custom "feature" phone OS. Unless either the fees are too high, or the system requirements too high, for low end phones.
Of course Apple will be nowhere to be seen, if they stick with their usual philosophy of making money by selling expensive products at the high end.
I can't speak to USB ports, but Apple was the first to completely remove the floppy from their PC line, forcing people to move on to optical media, USB drives, flash drives, etc.
And external floppy drives.
I still don't see removing the floppy changed anything, when people were just forced to then buy an external drive. The change came years later, when floppies really were no longer needed. If we're going to credit the lack of a drive, I'd argue laptops had a far bigger effect than a niche computer platform. And if you're crediting Apple for being first, well no, you're still wrong - there was the Commodore CDTV at least, years earlier.