On the web, if you go for the few remaining gaming news sites, it is easy think that mods are the center of the universe. But then you look at where the serious action is in gaming:
1. Big console titles like GTA3, MGS2, FFX, Halo. 2. Monster PC titles like The Sims and Roller Coaster Tycoon. The Sims has sold over 6.5 million copies.
then you get a different feeling. Are mods interesting and important? Yes. But lets not get carried away. In reality the communities surrounding games like Half-Life and Unreal tend to be self-serving and isolated, with notable exceptions (gotta mention Counterstrike). You just don't find all that much innovation in mods for, say, Unreal. Now, sure, the mod community will argue otherwise, but that's what I meant by "isolated."
Note: don't get your hopes up -- these are the sources for the game code, not the engine.
Speaking as a professional game player, the game-level code is the interesting part. Graphics engines get pretty boring after you've worked on a couple of them. Go back to a graphics book from 15 years ago, back before PC gaming took off, and that's pretty much how graphics engines still work. Game-level code, though, now that's interesting. There are many more open problems in that area, or at least problems that can be solved in hundreds of ways, as opposed to three or four.
It's not "payola" that's the issue, it's that there aren't many good game reviewers out there. Remember, most game reviews are for magazines targeted at junior high kids. And the "mature" game magazines all tend to read like Maxium.
Most reviews I read on the web make me cringe. Sometimes the reviewer has weird personal beefs, like Intel vs. AMD, nVidia vs. ATI, or whater. Often there are strange misinterpretations of technical issues, as if the reviewer really really wants to be a game developer but doesn't have a clue. "Bad art" is sometimes blamed on low resolution textures, low poly count, etc., when it's really just bad art. And it's just so easy for a great game to get blasted for some personal peeve, like a dead body having a leg that intersects a wall. If you get that anal retentive, then you're not going to be happy with _any_ game.
Re:Blindingly obvious, bloke
on
Unix Isn't Dead
·
· Score: 2
Unix isn't dead? What a relief! Come on, this is news? I mean, the only ones who even want you to believe that Unix is dying is Microsoft and Unisys.
I know it's not expected for Slashdotters to know their computing history, but UNIX was in dire straits in the early 1990s. Seriously. It was looking pretty awful and ugly, especially considering the popular hardware of the time. And many people from the pre-Linux generation are still surprised that UNIX has come back from the grave (and is now running on consumer level Macintoshes of all things).
It's not entirely logical, because going to MacOS X requires at least two things: one, it requires you to purchase new hardware, and two, it requires you to use closed-source software (namely, Quartz et. al.).
If OSX truly makes you more productive in your business--and I mean "you" personally and not some generic group--then it's worth the price. Too often poor open source advocates (i.e. students) think that it is worth enduring massive hardship just to avoid spending $1000.
Perl is emphatically not an object-oriented language.
And the biggest problem with Python is that it is too fundamentally object-oriented. Seriously. Lack of OO features in non-OO languages is a classic newbie complaint.
Too many simple tasks are pointlessly complicated.
You could argue the same for Python. In Perl, you can check for the existence of a file or use regular expressions with built in operators. In Python you have to import a module and work with the supplied API, which is much awkward than the Perl way. Both this argument and the "impossible to read and maintain" one can be leveled against *any* language, depending on the examples chosen.
I'll probably get slammed for this, but design patterns are not abstract in any good sense of the word. They are boilerplates that allow infinite monkeys (or bad programmers) to piece applications.
I tend to agree, though not for the same reasons. It a lot of ways, object-oriented programming has gone over the top, in that what would have been simple designs are turned into OO monsters that no one can understand. Patterns are a response to this. They provide a way of classifying and approaching problems in a structured OO way that keeps the programmer focused on the pattern and not on over-engineering a custom solution (spaghetti programming + OOP = ravioli programming). The obvious flaw here is that perhaps such a heavy reliance on OO-ness for *everything* isn't a good idea. After all, it's only certain groups of programmers that find themselves being sucked into the pattern dogma. Other programmers without strict OO hangups don't understand the reliance on patterns.
I was thinking over the holidays about how much I prefer playing games on a dedicated console instead of my PC. PCs have gotten to be necessary evils, especially in recent years. Consider:
1. Upgrading one piece of software or one hardware component (e.g. video card) can easily turn into a cascade of upgrades and a week's worth of evenings. I've gotten afraid to upgrade; I don't want to mess with something that works.
2. The rash of awful virii and worms that get released for whatever system provides the most opportunity (note: If Linux were on 95% of all desktops, there would be just as many Linux viruses; thinking otherwise is like thinking you have developed an unbreakable copy protection scheme). Keeping up with all the security patches and such has been a real headache. And unless I keep up with sites where these things are announced, I'd never know about them.
3. There's still a general unreliability factor associated with PCs. Sometimes my PC doesn't boot completely, and I have to power down and try again. Ever run a game and hear the monitor click indicating a resolution change, and then nothing happens and even if you could kill the game you can't get your video card to reset without a reboot. This is a common occurrence in both Linux and Windows.
4. 99% of the time there's a problem with a game or application, the response is "Do you have the latest video card drivers?" They seem to be released stealthily every few weeks. Who wants to deal with it? And whenever you upgrade there's a high probability of trouble with older software. See #1.
If PCs change in a drastic way, I'd like to see that change in the reliability direction. Yes, yes, yes, Linux is more reliable than Windows 95/98/ME, but Windows 2000 and XP are right up there with Linux. The OS wars dodge the issue. If PCs could be make as reliable as cell phones or PDAs, then I might be interested in them again. Right now I simply view them as mainframes for your home, with all the same system administration headaches.
There are getting to be a lot of games for Linux. To me, though, there are very few games that I would truly call Linux games. That is, sure, you can get emulators and lots of versions of Tetris and Sokoban and lots of retro remakes of Asteroids and so on; and you can get some big titles that you can also get for other platforms, like Quake 3. But there's no much that really makes you think "Wow, now there is a gaming experience that I can only get under Linux." This is similar to the later years of many all-but-dead systems, like the Amiga, Atari ST, and Apple IIgs.
Tux Racer is one of the few games that shines for Linux, even though there is also a Windows version. Too bad it's just one of several dozen "Franchise Racer" games, though. It's a good game, but it relies on the player never having seen Crash Team Racing or Diddy Kong Racing or other such games which make Tux Racer seem lackluster.
Here's hoping for some original Linux games in 2002. The coding abilities are there, so the time is ripe for some good stuff.
Windows is descended from DOS (and CP/M) and came from an environment that assumed one machine / one user. Hence their were no protections built in.
Sigh. Not this again. Windows 95 & 98, yes. Windows NT, 2000, and XP, no. The latter family were designed from the ground up as secure, reliable, operating systems. And they are.
The FF games have been slowly getting more non-interactive, and FFX is the culmination of that trend. In the first hour of gameplay, you have control of your character for maybe 20% of the time, and that's being generous. Sometimes you go for 10 minutes just watching movies. The combat sequences--the actual game parts--are much less impressive than the non-interactive sequences. The parts where you have control of your character are almost completely linear, and you just walk forward much of the time.
Only if the user is logged in as root. A big problem with Windows is that the user logged in with local admin permissions (default) runs everything under the Windows equivalent of root. So yes, it's possible for Linux to be vulnerable, but at least it gives you a choice of not acting as root.
You're not getting it are you? It doesn't matter that the user isn't logged in as root. We're talking about *exploits* that get around that.
And note that the recent Windows worms send mail to everyone in your address book, filling inboxes with garbage. You don't need to be logged in as root to send mail on most systems.
Enough with regurgitating the standard advocacy lines, already.
Apache has a veto-proof majority of the web servers out there. Where are the Apache worms? Why is IIS, with far less market share, getting them? It's because Apache is secure and IIS is not, period.
That's because Apache is a web-server and we're talking about exploits on the user's machine. The last big Windows virus from a few weeks ago was actually a trojan horse. People clicked on it and that was that. Linux is just as vulnerable as Windows.
Oh, stop with the Windows security remarks already
on
Clever New Windows Worm
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Worms and virii are being written for Windows/Outlook, because:
(A) 98% of all people using PCs to read email are running Windows.
(B) There are a lot of cracker-types full of concentrated angst about Microsoft, Bill Gates, Windows XP, etc.
If that 98% referred to Linux/KDE or MacOS X, you can be _damn_ sure that there would be severe security exploits for those systems as well. All it takes is _one_ small hole to give a virus writer leverage, and in any system with hundreds of thousands of lines of code behind it, there are going to be small holes. Arguably things would be much worse if everyone used Linux, because Linux is more daunting for users to administrate than Windows. So anyone not keeping up with security issues would be vulnerable. Most people fall into that category, even intelligent people.
As for (B) above, what can be said except that it's pretty sad.
You definitely get the feeling these guys know there stuff from more than one perspective.
Grammar aside, that's a good recommendation for the book. I'm getting tired of all the dismissals of anything Windows with flippant, often incorrect, remarks. (For example, it seems that many Slashdotters don't realize that Windows XP is based on Windows NT, not Windows 95.) When you expand your horizons, you expand your knowledge. And as a bonus it makes you less bitter.
First of, KDE is one option. if you are that speed anal use a less resource hungry GUI. I use WindowMaker and it screams compared to other GUI's even on a P166/63MB machine
That's because WindowMaker does a fraction of what people expect from a desktop GUI. (I'm not knocking it--I like Blackbox myself--but this is like saying that people should replace Word with Notepad because the latter is snappier.)
then this is going to be one horrid TV channel, but at least it will give high school kids somewhere else to work than McDonald's. Fortunately, game web sites have been dropping like flies.
It is very difficult to tell if this person is (A) trying to be funny, or (B) really, really uptight.
Re:How do you tell what is and isn't spam?
on
Crazy Stats on Spam
·
· Score: 2
What is spam?
Unsolicited advertisements from people you have never done business with. That covers about 95% of the mail I delete without reading. This isn't a difficult definition; no need to try so hard to make it otherwise.
I see so-o-o many Windows users doing exactly the same thing. Tweaking fonts, adjusting colors, downloading more screensavers than you can shake a stick at. It's not just a Linux phenomena and I see more UNIX users grow out of this more than I see Windows users getting tired of this tweaking. (I wonder why...)
That's not what the author was talking about. You can do the same thing with KDE, if you like to twiddle with colors.
The author meant that many Linux users sole purpose for using a computer is to tweak Linux. It's somewhat of an addiction.
Slashdot Mirror
On the web, if you go for the few remaining gaming news sites, it is easy think that mods are the center of the universe. But then you look at where the serious action is in gaming:
1. Big console titles like GTA3, MGS2, FFX, Halo.
2. Monster PC titles like The Sims and Roller Coaster Tycoon. The Sims has sold over 6.5 million copies.
then you get a different feeling. Are mods interesting and important? Yes. But lets not get carried away. In reality the communities surrounding games like Half-Life and Unreal tend to be self-serving and isolated, with notable exceptions (gotta mention Counterstrike). You just don't find all that much innovation in mods for, say, Unreal. Now, sure, the mod community will argue otherwise, but that's what I meant by "isolated."
Note: don't get your hopes up -- these are the sources for the game code, not the engine.
Speaking as a professional game player, the game-level code is the interesting part. Graphics engines get pretty boring after you've worked on a couple of them. Go back to a graphics book from 15 years ago, back before PC gaming took off, and that's pretty much how graphics engines still work. Game-level code, though, now that's interesting. There are many more open problems in that area, or at least problems that can be solved in hundreds of ways, as opposed to three or four.
It's not "payola" that's the issue, it's that there aren't many good game reviewers out there. Remember, most game reviews are for magazines targeted at junior high kids. And the "mature" game magazines all tend to read like Maxium.
Most reviews I read on the web make me cringe. Sometimes the reviewer has weird personal beefs, like Intel vs. AMD, nVidia vs. ATI, or whater. Often there are strange misinterpretations of technical issues, as if the reviewer really really wants to be a game developer but doesn't have a clue. "Bad art" is sometimes blamed on low resolution textures, low poly count, etc., when it's really just bad art. And it's just so easy for a great game to get blasted for some personal peeve, like a dead body having a leg that intersects a wall. If you get that anal retentive, then you're not going to be happy with _any_ game.
Unix isn't dead? What a relief! Come on, this is news? I mean, the only ones who even want you to believe that Unix is dying is Microsoft and Unisys.
I know it's not expected for Slashdotters to know their computing history, but UNIX was in dire straits in the early 1990s. Seriously. It was looking pretty awful and ugly, especially considering the popular hardware of the time. And many people from the pre-Linux generation are still surprised that UNIX has come back from the grave (and is now running on consumer level Macintoshes of all things).
It's not entirely logical, because going to MacOS X requires at least two things: one, it requires you to purchase new hardware, and two, it requires you to use closed-source software (namely, Quartz et. al.).
If OSX truly makes you more productive in your business--and I mean "you" personally and not some generic group--then it's worth the price. Too often poor open source advocates (i.e. students) think that it is worth enduring massive hardship just to avoid spending $1000.
Perl is emphatically not an object-oriented language.
And the biggest problem with Python is that it is too fundamentally object-oriented. Seriously. Lack of OO features in non-OO languages is a classic newbie complaint.
Too many simple tasks are pointlessly complicated.
You could argue the same for Python. In Perl, you can check for the existence of a file or use regular expressions with built in operators. In Python you have to import a module and work with the supplied API, which is much awkward than the Perl way. Both this argument and the "impossible to read and maintain" one can be leveled against *any* language, depending on the examples chosen.
Honestly, you didn't expect to play older gameboys in the dark without a light, why should the GBA be different?
Once you've played a handheld with backlighting--I'm thinking specifically of the Atari Lynx--then you're spoiled forever.
I'll probably get slammed for this, but design patterns are not abstract in any good sense of the word. They are boilerplates that allow infinite monkeys (or bad programmers) to piece applications.
I tend to agree, though not for the same reasons. It a lot of ways, object-oriented programming has gone over the top, in that what would have been simple designs are turned into OO monsters that no one can understand. Patterns are a response to this. They provide a way of classifying and approaching problems in a structured OO way that keeps the programmer focused on the pattern and not on over-engineering a custom solution (spaghetti programming + OOP = ravioli programming). The obvious flaw here is that perhaps such a heavy reliance on OO-ness for *everything* isn't a good idea. After all, it's only certain groups of programmers that find themselves being sucked into the pattern dogma. Other programmers without strict OO hangups don't understand the reliance on patterns.
Well, Linux is the type of operating system where you are EXPECTED to go under the hood (as the mechanics would say..*grin*).
And as such, all hopes about Linux becoming a dominant desktop OS can be safely ignored.
I was thinking over the holidays about how much I prefer playing games on a dedicated console instead of my PC. PCs have gotten to be necessary evils, especially in recent years. Consider:
1. Upgrading one piece of software or one hardware component (e.g. video card) can easily turn into a cascade of upgrades and a week's worth of evenings. I've gotten afraid to upgrade; I don't want to mess with something that works.
2. The rash of awful virii and worms that get released for whatever system provides the most opportunity (note: If Linux were on 95% of all desktops, there would be just as many Linux viruses; thinking otherwise is like thinking you have developed an unbreakable copy protection scheme). Keeping up with all the security patches and such has been a real headache. And unless I keep up with sites where these things are announced, I'd never know about them.
3. There's still a general unreliability factor associated with PCs. Sometimes my PC doesn't boot completely, and I have to power down and try again. Ever run a game and hear the monitor click indicating a resolution change, and then nothing happens and even if you could kill the game you can't get your video card to reset without a reboot. This is a common occurrence in both Linux and Windows.
4. 99% of the time there's a problem with a game or application, the response is "Do you have the latest video card drivers?" They seem to be released stealthily every few weeks. Who wants to deal with it? And whenever you upgrade there's a high probability of trouble with older software. See #1.
If PCs change in a drastic way, I'd like to see that change in the reliability direction. Yes, yes, yes, Linux is more reliable than Windows 95/98/ME, but Windows 2000 and XP are right up there with Linux. The OS wars dodge the issue. If PCs could be make as reliable as cell phones or PDAs, then I might be interested in them again. Right now I simply view them as mainframes for your home, with all the same system administration headaches.
"Do such and such because I read in an interview that..."
"There's this cool buzzword called refactoring that my professor mentioned and so you should..."
"[blah blah blah] object orientation [blah blah blah]"
"I saw a book about Extreme Programming at the bookstore and..."
There are getting to be a lot of games for Linux. To me, though, there are very few games that I would truly call Linux games. That is, sure, you can get emulators and lots of versions of Tetris and Sokoban and lots of retro remakes of Asteroids and so on; and you can get some big titles that you can also get for other platforms, like Quake 3. But there's no much that really makes you think "Wow, now there is a gaming experience that I can only get under Linux." This is similar to the later years of many all-but-dead systems, like the Amiga, Atari ST, and Apple IIgs.
Tux Racer is one of the few games that shines for Linux, even though there is also a Windows version. Too bad it's just one of several dozen "Franchise Racer" games, though. It's a good game, but it relies on the player never having seen Crash Team Racing or Diddy Kong Racing or other such games which make Tux Racer seem lackluster.
Here's hoping for some original Linux games in 2002. The coding abilities are there, so the time is ripe for some good stuff.
Windows is descended from DOS (and CP/M) and came from an environment that assumed one machine / one user. Hence their were no protections built in.
Sigh. Not this again. Windows 95 & 98, yes. Windows NT, 2000, and XP, no. The latter family were designed from the ground up as secure, reliable, operating systems. And they are.
The FF games have been slowly getting more non-interactive, and FFX is the culmination of that trend. In the first hour of gameplay, you have control of your character for maybe 20% of the time, and that's being generous. Sometimes you go for 10 minutes just watching movies. The combat sequences--the actual game parts--are much less impressive than the non-interactive sequences. The parts where you have control of your character are almost completely linear, and you just walk forward much of the time.
Bottom line: Amazing visuals? Yes. A game? Sorta, leaning toward no.
Only if the user is logged in as root. A big problem with Windows is that the user logged in with local admin permissions (default) runs everything under the Windows equivalent of root. So yes, it's possible for Linux to be vulnerable, but at least it gives you a choice of not acting as root.
You're not getting it are you? It doesn't matter that the user isn't logged in as root. We're talking about *exploits* that get around that.
And note that the recent Windows worms send mail to everyone in your address book, filling inboxes with garbage. You don't need to be logged in as root to send mail on most systems.
Enough with regurgitating the standard advocacy lines, already.
Apache has a veto-proof majority of the web servers out there. Where are the Apache worms? Why is IIS, with far less market share, getting them? It's because Apache is secure and IIS is not, period.
That's because Apache is a web-server and we're talking about exploits on the user's machine. The last big Windows virus from a few weeks ago was actually a trojan horse. People clicked on it and that was that. Linux is just as vulnerable as Windows.
Worms and virii are being written for Windows/Outlook, because:
(A) 98% of all people using PCs to read email are running Windows.
(B) There are a lot of cracker-types full of concentrated angst about Microsoft, Bill Gates, Windows XP, etc.
If that 98% referred to Linux/KDE or MacOS X, you can be _damn_ sure that there would be severe security exploits for those systems as well. All it takes is _one_ small hole to give a virus writer leverage, and in any system with hundreds of thousands of lines of code behind it, there are going to be small holes. Arguably things would be much worse if everyone used Linux, because Linux is more daunting for users to administrate than Windows. So anyone not keeping up with security issues would be vulnerable. Most people fall into that category, even intelligent people.
As for (B) above, what can be said except that it's pretty sad.
You definitely get the feeling these guys know there stuff from more than one perspective.
Grammar aside, that's a good recommendation for the book. I'm getting tired of all the dismissals of anything Windows with flippant, often incorrect, remarks. (For example, it seems that many Slashdotters don't realize that Windows XP is based on Windows NT, not Windows 95.) When you expand your horizons, you expand your knowledge. And as a bonus it makes you less bitter.
First of, KDE is one option. if you are that speed anal use a less resource hungry GUI. I use WindowMaker and it screams compared to other GUI's even on a P166/63MB machine
That's because WindowMaker does a fraction of what people expect from a desktop GUI. (I'm not knocking it--I like Blackbox myself--but this is like saying that people should replace Word with Notepad because the latter is snappier.)
then this is going to be one horrid TV channel, but at least it will give high school kids somewhere else to work than McDonald's. Fortunately, game web sites have been dropping like flies.
Now piss off and go back to downloading the latest 20MB IE patch.
I know that was a throwaway line, but:
I downloaded the IE 6 patch last night, the one that fixes all known security issues. It was 2.7 MB.
It is very difficult to tell if this person is (A) trying to be funny, or (B) really, really uptight.
What is spam?
Unsolicited advertisements from people you have never done business with. That covers about 95% of the mail I delete without reading. This isn't a difficult definition; no need to try so hard to make it otherwise.
I see so-o-o many Windows users doing exactly the same thing. Tweaking fonts, adjusting colors, downloading more screensavers than you can shake a stick at. It's not just a Linux phenomena and I see more UNIX users grow out of this more than I see Windows users getting tired of this tweaking. (I wonder why...)
That's not what the author was talking about. You can do the same thing with KDE, if you like to twiddle with colors.
The author meant that many Linux users sole purpose for using a computer is to tweak Linux. It's somewhat of an addiction.
Try and buy a GameCube, and then tell us that the two numbers aren't the same.
Where I live, you can just walk into any store and buy one. There's no shortage.