not just a pride thing, unlike many colleagues I know what I'm missing out on, in the free software world
Like what, for example? Under Windows you can run Emacs, Vim, Perl, Python, Ruby, etc. You can get bash or another UNIXy shell if you like, and all the same command line tools. Putting together GUI interfaces for little tools with Visual Basic is a *great* idea. You could use something else, of course, like Tcl/Tk, or a free VB-like system, but VB is very good at what it does.
Reliability isn't an issue, if you're running Windows 2000. I have never had a single crash doing heavy software development under Windows 2000.
To me, it sounds like you just want to avoid Microsoft and Windows at all costs, but you don't have a real reason. In fact, you're even attempting to move away from the OS that most of your peripherals are designed to run under. Very strange.
The OSS model of peer review on a large scale is the sole reason for such reliable security.
No, sorry. Linux has such reliable security because it is based on a long established operating system model with reliable security. UNIX is over 30 years old now, and there's a good underanding of the security issues. Windows NT/2000/XP started from scratch using a different model. It may be that the model isn't as good as that of UNIX, but it's also true that it's a much younger one as well.
Does this mean only 600,000 XP users trust Windows Update?
Downloading and installing updates is a huge pain. Most people won't do it unless there's an obvious and clear benefit. Nebulous "security patches" don't qualify. Without DSL or cable--remember, that's still most people these days--downloading these things can take hours.
The Sims, Wolfenstein 3D, Unreal Tournament, Mario Kart, Pokemon, Myst, Parappa the Rapper, Super Mario 3d, Ninja Gaiden, The Legend of Zelda...
Let's see:
The Sims was released in 2000 or 2001. Wolfenstein 3D was released in 1992. Unreal Tournament was heavily "inspired" by Quake 3: Arena, much as Unreal was "inspired" by Quake. Mario Kart was released circa 1992. Myst was released circa 1993. Parappa the Rapper was released in 1997. Super Mario 3D (aka Super Mario 64) was release in 1997. Ninja Gaiden was released circa 1990. The Legend of Zelda was released circa 1987 (and if you mean the 3D version, that was released in 1998).
So essentially you've listed zero games released since 2001, and all but three were released in 1993 or earlier. You've proved the point of the article!
3D graphics are still very much a niche on the PC. This may change with Microsoft's plans to do something like Apple's "Quartz Extreme" in a future version of Windows, but at the moment there are still only a relative handful of games that even require a hardware transformation pipeline (available since 2000), and there are even fewer that do anything at all with programmable shaders (available since 2002). At the same time, the slide in the PC game market continues. A lot of people, including myself, expected it to turn around a bit by now, but no dice. What the PC does have is a couple of games that will be hig with hardcore gamers: Doom 3 and Half Life 2. In a lot of ways, nVidia and ATI are designing cards specifically for those games, and not the perceived 3D market in general.
In short, the race for the high-end video card market is increasingly meaningless, especially with the growing shift away from desktop PCs and the ridiculous power consumption and level of cooling required for high-end cards. If GeForce 2 class chipsets start shipping in an all-in-one, cool running, silent PC, then the real goal has been achieved. Gamers and CG people who want or need to blow $400 on a new video card + 10lb heat sink combo every few months can still do so. That's not a mass market industry any more, though.
Yes, but the problem with most ML implementations is that they are academic toy languages. You can't do anything useful with them because you can't connect them to real I/O
In all honesty, what are you talking about? You can pick up OCaml right now and I/O is just fine. Period.
if you can you can't distribute the code as noone else has the environment
The Atari 800 had one in 1978. And Commodore 64 programmers were used to using some values from the sound hardware for the same purpose. It's funny how some ideas go away for a long time, only to resurface after most people have forgotten it.
Actually Linux is becoming a big player in the embedded world. Several companies offer both hard real time, and near real time OS's that are either modified Linux kernels, or preserve binary compatibility with Linux, or provide a hard real time kernel, which then runs a instance of Linux as one of its tasks.
That's "embedded" in the sense of "embedded control of kiosks and building heating systems" and such, which is different than embedded control of jet engines.
Given that the Thai finance minister had to be rescued from his BMW with sledgehammers after his WinCE powered iDrive computer crashed, methinks I would prefer to fly on open source software.
Though this is a hoax, you still missed the point. For embedded systems, it's not Windows vs. Linux, it's "small, 100% completely understandable and predicatable systems" vs. general, complex operating systems. The latter includes all desktop OSes, period. You absolutely would not want Linux controlling the systems in a jet, for example. Nor would any open source programmers want to touch the system if they knew it was going to be used in jets. Embedded systems is a much different world than the desktop.
programming 3D rendering engine. that is where all the action is. i learned more about linear algebra while writting 3D rendering libraries, then i did during the course of my degree.:)
Although, in all honestly, most 3D rendering work is pretty cut and dried. After you've done it a few times, you realize how little there is to it, regardless of the fact the fanboys deify engine coders.
Re:I think the argument can be made
on
GCC 3.3 Released
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
open source requires more skill on the part of the developer to get through the learning curve. A greater amount of knowledge about what is happening at all levels is mandatory to make that GNU\Linux system happen.
No offense, but that's just so much self-justification. Personally, I'm growing tired of that kind of faux elitist stance.
The notion of "coding in C is a premature optimization" is completely rediculous. While I'll admit that for different tasks, different languages are more appropriate, if you know C best, then you should probably do it in C.
Now that's a good example of what the author of the article was talking about. If you know C and, say, Perl or Python, you'll *know* that you'd be pretty dumb to approach many tasks in C. Yet many programmers will do exactly that anyway.
Evolution is one of the most established theories there is. Every test designed to disprove the theory has failed. The theory that living things evolve is just a theory, like the theory that gravity acts between two physical objects is only a theory.
No one with any sense debates that living things evolve. What some people debate is the theory that evolution is what guided life from single-celled organisms to, say, mammals. Going from evolution to the latter is a huge jump. Debating it doesn't mean you're a creationist, just that it takes a lot of simpleminded faith to cling to *any* kind of theory that explains hugely complex results in a few sentences. When the pro "life evolved from single celled organisms" people go ballistic arguing with creationists, it makes me wonder why the former are so single-mindedly fervent.
That's the key. Remember that thick manual that came with the C64? That wasn't just a manual, it was the documentation for how to program the hardware. Just the documentation for DirectSound, let alone any significant part of the Windows API, is larger than that.
And there's also a simplicity that we've completely been unable to achieve, even though processors are much faster. Jef Raskin gave the example of being able to boot up an Apple II in seconds, and use BASIC as a snazzy, programmable calculator. You don't have to launch any applications. You don't have to futz about with GUI gadgets. Heck, you can also just type "CALL -151" and bang, you're in a machine language monitor that lets you explore the entire machine. Nasir Gebelli, among others, used to write commercial games entirely via that monitor.
Have you read any of Feynman's books? That guy was an uber-geek
Yes, I've read them. The meaning of "geek" has changed. Feynman lived his own life; he did was he wanted. "Geek" these days is a lot more of a word for branding someone with a certain set of limited interests. If someone goes home and writes fantastic software in the evenings, he or she isn't a geek. But if he writes essays about Star Wars, endlessly posts to discussion forums about the evils of Microsoft, and spends more time installing Linux and patching kernels than actually doing anything with it...that's what "geek" now means. And it's deservedly derogatory.
Paul Graham is a smart guy. He made millions selling his company to Yahoo. He's written several books on Lisp. He regularly has speaking engagements. And he does practice what he preaches, actually using high level languages rather just bashing away at C++, but still using it for everything, like most people do. He also manages to completely stay away from the usual topics, like Linux vs. Windows. Oh, all right, one more "and": And he has some unpopular opinions, like that of OOP being overrated smoke and mirrors.
That said, his view of what it means to hack is certainly different than what it usually means in geek circles. Actually, I should go further than that: Paul Graham isn't even a geek. Nobody would call Feynman or Dyson a geek, would they? Paul Graham is someone of high intelligence who happens to be applying that intelligence to computer programming (and writing, and speaking, and painting). This is much different from the typical hacker who pounds out C code because he has nothing better to do and revels in the geek traditions of arguing about Linux distributions, Star Trek movies, and yes, posting to Slashdot. In short, Paul Graham is a geek by association, because of what he decided he likes to do, whereas most hackers revel in their own geekiness, pointless and inbred though it may be.
a move that further edges out AMD and Intel from the mobile processor marketplace
Ah yes, another good story followed with the usual leading Slashdot-spin tagline. These have become the new Jon Katz.
Microsoft is not Intel exclusive. Windows CE officially supports PowerPC, Hitachi SH4, and MIPS, in addition to chips from Intel. And they also support some of Intel's non-x86 chips: ARM and StrongARM. These processors have been supported for Windows CE since at least 1997.
That was a very nice arguement in support of a monopoly. Unfortunately I think the rest of us know why monopolies are bad. And it had to do with that tag line you were so fond of
In all honesty, you're paranoid and delusional. If you want to run Linux, then you'll be able to get hardware to do so. But most people, including software developers, are more interested the ease of use and reliability of an overall PC. The Linux community has proven that it is good at serving the needs of the Linux community, but that's about all. If if takes Microsoft to get rid of some of the residual crap we've had to live with all this time, then more power to them. If some free software developers do the same thing, then more power to them as well (sure, I'd love for someone besides Microsoft and Apple to direct things). But you know, I'm not holding my breath. Linux is the OS of the extremely conservative.
Ah, the usual Slashdot-spin tagline. Gotta love 'em.
PCs have become messes, and it's a worthy goal to try to deal with that. Kudos to Apple for taking some steps in the right direction, such as eliminating floppy drives and switching to LCD monitors for home models. That's just the beginning. PCs are still based around what's essentially become pointless upgrading, something that is now completely ignored by everyone except a certain set of gamers and hardware fanboys. (If you aren't shooting for bleeding edge games, any video card made since 2000 and any sound card made since 1995--including motherboard sound--is just grand.)
Linux, for me, is only worthwhile if it improves the overall computing experience. It does that well, for some things, but for others it has become a retro object d'art. Perhaps the most damning thing about Linux is the hugely conservative community surrounding it. Cries of "If you want change then _you_ do it" and endless arguments about sticking with Emacs and the X11 standard are all so inbred and meaningless. I will make fun of Microsoft along with everyone else as long as Bill Gates & company are stagnant and producing poor products. But as much as I hate to say it, they're moving forward with some interesting ideas. Sure, those ideas aren't original (what is?) but the key is that they have a direction and purpose.
At least with all of the big companies gone we might get some innovation back (something that free software seems to be pretty good at)
Nonsense. The modern free software movement uses commercial developers to do it's R&D. So you have the free software people shouting "We're innovative!" on the one hand, but from the outside it all looks very me-too.
Slashdot Mirror
not just a pride thing, unlike many colleagues I know what I'm missing out on, in the free software world
Like what, for example? Under Windows you can run Emacs, Vim, Perl, Python, Ruby, etc. You can get bash or another UNIXy shell if you like, and all the same command line tools. Putting together GUI interfaces for little tools with Visual Basic is a *great* idea. You could use something else, of course, like Tcl/Tk, or a free VB-like system, but VB is very good at what it does.
Reliability isn't an issue, if you're running Windows 2000. I have never had a single crash doing heavy software development under Windows 2000.
To me, it sounds like you just want to avoid Microsoft and Windows at all costs, but you don't have a real reason. In fact, you're even attempting to move away from the OS that most of your peripherals are designed to run under. Very strange.
The OSS model of peer review on a large scale is the sole reason for such reliable security.
No, sorry. Linux has such reliable security because it is based on a long established operating system model with reliable security. UNIX is over 30 years old now, and there's a good underanding of the security issues. Windows NT/2000/XP started from scratch using a different model. It may be that the model isn't as good as that of UNIX, but it's also true that it's a much younger one as well.
Does this mean only 600,000 XP users trust Windows Update?
Downloading and installing updates is a huge pain. Most people won't do it unless there's an obvious and clear benefit. Nebulous "security patches" don't qualify. Without DSL or cable--remember, that's still most people these days--downloading these things can take hours.
The Sims, Wolfenstein 3D, Unreal Tournament, Mario Kart, Pokemon, Myst, Parappa the Rapper, Super Mario 3d, Ninja Gaiden, The Legend of Zelda...
Let's see:
The Sims was released in 2000 or 2001.
Wolfenstein 3D was released in 1992.
Unreal Tournament was heavily "inspired" by Quake 3: Arena, much as Unreal was "inspired" by Quake.
Mario Kart was released circa 1992.
Myst was released circa 1993.
Parappa the Rapper was released in 1997.
Super Mario 3D (aka Super Mario 64) was release in 1997.
Ninja Gaiden was released circa 1990.
The Legend of Zelda was released circa 1987 (and if you mean the 3D version, that was released in 1998).
So essentially you've listed zero games released since 2001, and all but three were released in 1993 or earlier. You've proved the point of the article!
The slashdot community does NOT hate microsoft.
C'mon, do you honestly believe that?
3D graphics are still very much a niche on the PC. This may change with Microsoft's plans to do something like Apple's "Quartz Extreme" in a future version of Windows, but at the moment there are still only a relative handful of games that even require a hardware transformation pipeline (available since 2000), and there are even fewer that do anything at all with programmable shaders (available since 2002). At the same time, the slide in the PC game market continues. A lot of people, including myself, expected it to turn around a bit by now, but no dice. What the PC does have is a couple of games that will be hig with hardcore gamers: Doom 3 and Half Life 2. In a lot of ways, nVidia and ATI are designing cards specifically for those games, and not the perceived 3D market in general.
In short, the race for the high-end video card market is increasingly meaningless, especially with the growing shift away from desktop PCs and the ridiculous power consumption and level of cooling required for high-end cards. If GeForce 2 class chipsets start shipping in an all-in-one, cool running, silent PC, then the real goal has been achieved. Gamers and CG people who want or need to blow $400 on a new video card + 10lb heat sink combo every few months can still do so. That's not a mass market industry any more, though.
Yes, but the problem with most ML implementations is that they are academic toy languages. You can't do anything useful with them because you can't connect them to real I/O
In all honesty, what are you talking about? You can pick up OCaml right now and I/O is just fine. Period.
if you can you can't distribute the code as noone else has the environment
So everyone has to use C forever and ever?
Was it a real random number generator or just digital pseudo-random shift registers?
It was pseudo-random, but it updated every clock cycle. The asynchronous nature of it is what made it very useful.
The Atari 800 had one in 1978. And Commodore 64 programmers were used to using some values from the sound hardware for the same purpose. It's funny how some ideas go away for a long time, only to resurface after most people have forgotten it.
Actually Linux is becoming a big player in the embedded world. Several companies offer both hard real time, and near real time OS's that are either modified Linux kernels, or preserve binary compatibility with Linux, or provide a hard real time kernel, which then runs a instance of Linux as one of its tasks.
That's "embedded" in the sense of "embedded control of kiosks and building heating systems" and such, which is different than embedded control of jet engines.
You could easily emulate the old computers today to keep the investment in software...
As long as the emulation includes microsecond accuracy for interrupts and such, fine.
Given that the Thai finance minister had to be rescued from his BMW with sledgehammers after his WinCE powered iDrive computer crashed, methinks I would prefer to fly on open source software.
Though this is a hoax, you still missed the point. For embedded systems, it's not Windows vs. Linux, it's "small, 100% completely understandable and predicatable systems" vs. general, complex operating systems. The latter includes all desktop OSes, period. You absolutely would not want Linux controlling the systems in a jet, for example. Nor would any open source programmers want to touch the system if they knew it was going to be used in jets. Embedded systems is a much different world than the desktop.
programming 3D rendering engine. that is where all the action is. i learned more about linear algebra while writting 3D rendering libraries, then i did during the course of my degree. :)
Although, in all honestly, most 3D rendering work is pretty cut and dried. After you've done it a few times, you realize how little there is to it, regardless of the fact the fanboys deify engine coders.
open source requires more skill on the part of the developer to get through the learning curve. A greater amount of knowledge about what is happening at all levels is mandatory to make that GNU\Linux system happen.
No offense, but that's just so much self-justification. Personally, I'm growing tired of that kind of faux elitist stance.
Several years ago I worked on an a-life project in which a population of tiny colour eating 'photobots' is let loose upon various images.
Neat idea!
The notion of "coding in C is a premature optimization" is completely rediculous. While I'll admit that for different tasks, different languages are more appropriate, if you know C best, then you should probably do it in C.
Now that's a good example of what the author of the article was talking about. If you know C and, say, Perl or Python, you'll *know* that you'd be pretty dumb to approach many tasks in C. Yet many programmers will do exactly that anyway.
Evolution is one of the most established theories there is. Every test designed to disprove the theory has failed. The theory that living things evolve is just a theory, like the theory that gravity acts between two physical objects is only a theory.
No one with any sense debates that living things evolve. What some people debate is the theory that evolution is what guided life from single-celled organisms to, say, mammals. Going from evolution to the latter is a huge jump. Debating it doesn't mean you're a creationist, just that it takes a lot of simpleminded faith to cling to *any* kind of theory that explains hugely complex results in a few sentences. When the pro "life evolved from single celled organisms" people go ballistic arguing with creationists, it makes me wonder why the former are so single-mindedly fervent.
(Note: I am not a creationist.)
That's the key. Remember that thick manual that came with the C64? That wasn't just a manual, it was the documentation for how to program the hardware. Just the documentation for DirectSound, let alone any significant part of the Windows API, is larger than that.
And there's also a simplicity that we've completely been unable to achieve, even though processors are much faster. Jef Raskin gave the example of being able to boot up an Apple II in seconds, and use BASIC as a snazzy, programmable calculator. You don't have to launch any applications. You don't have to futz about with GUI gadgets. Heck, you can also just type "CALL -151" and bang, you're in a machine language monitor that lets you explore the entire machine. Nasir Gebelli, among others, used to write commercial games entirely via that monitor.
Have you read any of Feynman's books? That guy was an uber-geek
Yes, I've read them. The meaning of "geek" has changed. Feynman lived his own life; he did was he wanted. "Geek" these days is a lot more of a word for branding someone with a certain set of limited interests. If someone goes home and writes fantastic software in the evenings, he or she isn't a geek. But if he writes essays about Star Wars, endlessly posts to discussion forums about the evils of Microsoft, and spends more time installing Linux and patching kernels than actually doing anything with it...that's what "geek" now means. And it's deservedly derogatory.
Paul Graham is a smart guy. He made millions selling his company to Yahoo. He's written several books on Lisp. He regularly has speaking engagements. And he does practice what he preaches, actually using high level languages rather just bashing away at C++, but still using it for everything, like most people do. He also manages to completely stay away from the usual topics, like Linux vs. Windows. Oh, all right, one more "and": And he has some unpopular opinions, like that of OOP being overrated smoke and mirrors.
That said, his view of what it means to hack is certainly different than what it usually means in geek circles. Actually, I should go further than that: Paul Graham isn't even a geek. Nobody would call Feynman or Dyson a geek, would they? Paul Graham is someone of high intelligence who happens to be applying that intelligence to computer programming (and writing, and speaking, and painting). This is much different from the typical hacker who pounds out C code because he has nothing better to do and revels in the geek traditions of arguing about Linux distributions, Star Trek movies, and yes, posting to Slashdot. In short, Paul Graham is a geek by association, because of what he decided he likes to do, whereas most hackers revel in their own geekiness, pointless and inbred though it may be.
Admitedly I haven't RTFA but ...
And when you RTFA, you'll realize that your comment has nothing whatsoever to do with the article.
a move that further edges out AMD and Intel from the mobile processor marketplace
Ah yes, another good story followed with the usual leading Slashdot-spin tagline. These have become the new Jon Katz.
Microsoft is not Intel exclusive. Windows CE officially supports PowerPC, Hitachi SH4, and MIPS, in addition to chips from Intel. And they also support some of Intel's non-x86 chips: ARM and StrongARM. These processors have been supported for Windows CE since at least 1997.
That was a very nice arguement in support of a monopoly. Unfortunately I think the rest of us know why monopolies are bad. And it had to do with that tag line you were so fond of
In all honesty, you're paranoid and delusional. If you want to run Linux, then you'll be able to get hardware to do so. But most people, including software developers, are more interested the ease of use and reliability of an overall PC. The Linux community has proven that it is good at serving the needs of the Linux community, but that's about all. If if takes Microsoft to get rid of some of the residual crap we've had to live with all this time, then more power to them. If some free software developers do the same thing, then more power to them as well (sure, I'd love for someone besides Microsoft and Apple to direct things). But you know, I'm not holding my breath. Linux is the OS of the extremely conservative.
locking Linux out of the desktop market
Ah, the usual Slashdot-spin tagline. Gotta love 'em.
PCs have become messes, and it's a worthy goal to try to deal with that. Kudos to Apple for taking some steps in the right direction, such as eliminating floppy drives and switching to LCD monitors for home models. That's just the beginning. PCs are still based around what's essentially become pointless upgrading, something that is now completely ignored by everyone except a certain set of gamers and hardware fanboys. (If you aren't shooting for bleeding edge games, any video card made since 2000 and any sound card made since 1995--including motherboard sound--is just grand.)
Linux, for me, is only worthwhile if it improves the overall computing experience. It does that well, for some things, but for others it has become a retro object d'art. Perhaps the most damning thing about Linux is the hugely conservative community surrounding it. Cries of "If you want change then _you_ do it" and endless arguments about sticking with Emacs and the X11 standard are all so inbred and meaningless. I will make fun of Microsoft along with everyone else as long as Bill Gates & company are stagnant and producing poor products. But as much as I hate to say it, they're moving forward with some interesting ideas. Sure, those ideas aren't original (what is?) but the key is that they have a direction and purpose.
At least with all of the big companies gone we might get some innovation back (something that free software seems to be pretty good at)
Nonsense. The modern free software movement uses commercial developers to do it's R&D. So you have the free software people shouting "We're innovative!" on the one hand, but from the outside it all looks very me-too.