I've met plenty of South Africans and they've all been white. Never mind "South Africans", you saw "Africans" and assumed black. It's not "wrong", but it certainly doesn't make you look very "global".
And since when was it "ok to point out that an inventor in the US is black"? I can't think of any time I've seen someone's ethnicity mentioned in any tech article at all.
I got to thinking about this after I posted my other post... but actually I think having his six year old start with Linux instead of Windows is a good idea - esp if he is forced to spend lots of time at the command prompt. He is going to learn first impression thought patterns and given the importance of the Un*x os, a good start. I would recommend teaching him the DOS command shell also, although it probably isn't as pervasive anymore.
Hahahaha... hahahaha. Just because children are capable of grasping the most stupidly complex things if they're interested doesn't mean it's a good idea. Nothing I learned poking around Commodore / Sinclair BASIC at age 7 has helped me in my later life. When some stupid problem with the primitive command-line driven piece of crap I like to call a "modern operating system" prevents me from getting any work done, I always have flashback to sitting in front of a (slightly more advanced) editor, cursor blinking at me while I trawl through maybe a thousand lines of code copied from a book to try and get some game to run.
The only thing that being mocked by a cursor as a child has taught me is that a piece of code, no matter how small or trivial, will always give you an error the first time you try and run it. To be honest, i could have done with waiting until university for that lesson.
Do you know how many instances of zlib.dll reside on an average Windows box? And that's a small one... what about all the apps which dynamically link to an MFC lib which comes with the program? Or some Visual Basic runtime? The average Windows surfer who lazily installs shareware over a period of time gets bogged down with tons of this stuff, largely unneccessary.
You do have a fair point though. Even if half of one's Program Files was filled with unnecessary libraries, that's nothing on a modern PC. My 40GB is ghetto nowadays for an upper-mid-range PC, and the majority of my HD is taken up with documents and mp3s rather than applications.
You're not missing much. The article is poorly written and offers little insight to those who are (like me) unfamiliar with Windows XP. All of his examples come from how it's changed compared to XP.
What else is it going to be compared with? MacOS 7? Might as well compare it with the thing that (a) most people interested in the new OS are currently occupied with, and (b) it's intended to eventually replace. Anyway, the guy presumably got it off usenet last night like everyone else, so he's hardly likely to be aware of the extent of any underlying changes.
For anyone who still can't get through to the site, it really is nothing but a bunch of screenshots of the first hour's desktop experience.
Phoenix is out there too, less recognised, but I don't see them dropping a port either.
That's because said port never officially existed in the first place. The last OS X port of Phoenix I saw is about three months old now. Seeing as 110% of all OS X users seem to have switched default browsers overnight upon seeing brushed metal, I don't imagine the OS X port of Phoenix is going to be well-attended.
The computers in my brothers school has the refresh rate set a 60hz(vertial). And they are the biggest pieces of shit ever. When I walk in there its just makes me want to pull out my handy dandy set of Red Hat Linux 8 and install it on every computer.
the linux labs at my university are running a two-year-old Red hat distro, and I have a colleague who can't use them because there is absolutely no obvious way to change the refresh rate the something sensible like there is on Windows.
How wonderfully awesome. Now if someone would port GTK+ to Windows instead of pretending they did and in fact using some Linux emulation trickery to make apps seem to run on Windows but using the most hideous, disgusting interface humanly possible (see Windows GIMP, Windows GAIM, anything else Windows GTK+ related) then I'd be even more impressed.
Can't you skin GTK or something on Linux to make it not look quite as much like ass? Is there any way of making the Windows port do this, at all?
The hurdle is that the video codec's proprietary and and audio's all done through a special windows-only API. They have to try and get all the current media (on the discs they've already shipped) to work with a linux binary.
Well, to be fair to me, I did read what you'd said in that thread, and you didn't mention anything that really wsung it. And as I said, if they already had their mp3 engine working correctly and weren't living in terror of the day Thomson / Fraunhofer wanted $$$ by the truckload, then they'd probably be less than interested in scrapping it for any reason.
I suspect if it was as easy as just using an open library, then Miles wouldn't be so entrenched into Win32 gaming (why pay $$$ for something you could write yourself?).
As for Bioware using Ogg, assuming that they already had their mp3 engine written (which I assume they had), the effort of scrapping it for nothing more than ideology would seem a bit much.
Divx is a joke as far as commercial products go... Quicktime/sorenson is the only thing that even approaches an acceptable compromise for video in a game, due to its high quality at reasonable bitrate.
What a lot of rubbish. Blizzard are using DivX now, Warcraft III used it for all ingame video. Nobody uses Sorenson for games. Were it not for Apple having a movie trailers site and Enchanced CDs being forced into it, nobody would use Sorenson for anything.
I imagine RAD Video are running scared now on the DivX front, they seem to be emphasising the speed of Smacker now (and their other products, Miles and Granny) in favour of Bink.
The problem with the sound is not just getting footsteps to play. It's getting footsteps to play with shitloads of clever filters, in 360-degree surround sound in exceedinglu clever ways.
As for the video, Bink licenses cost an absolute fortune. It would have to be weighed up against the theorteical profit made by having linux users pay for a NWN box.
Slashdot Mirror
+5 About-As-Funny-As-Being-Punched-In-The-Kidneys-But -It's-A-Shot-At-Microsoft-Sorry-Micro$oft.
- Chris
I've met plenty of South Africans and they've all been white. Never mind "South Africans", you saw "Africans" and assumed black. It's not "wrong", but it certainly doesn't make you look very "global".
And since when was it "ok to point out that an inventor in the US is black"? I can't think of any time I've seen someone's ethnicity mentioned in any tech article at all.
- Chris
Hahahaha... hahahaha. Just because children are capable of grasping the most stupidly complex things if they're interested doesn't mean it's a good idea. Nothing I learned poking around Commodore / Sinclair BASIC at age 7 has helped me in my later life. When some stupid problem with the primitive command-line driven piece of crap I like to call a "modern operating system" prevents me from getting any work done, I always have flashback to sitting in front of a (slightly more advanced) editor, cursor blinking at me while I trawl through maybe a thousand lines of code copied from a book to try and get some game to run.
The only thing that being mocked by a cursor as a child has taught me is that a piece of code, no matter how small or trivial, will always give you an error the first time you try and run it. To be honest, i could have done with waiting until university for that lesson.
- Chris
That's like the oldest trick in the book, dude... haven't you ever been to the movies?
- Chris
What kind of leprosy-infected browser are you using that would force popups on you?
- Chris
Do you know how many instances of zlib.dll reside on an average Windows box? And that's a small one... what about all the apps which dynamically link to an MFC lib which comes with the program? Or some Visual Basic runtime? The average Windows surfer who lazily installs shareware over a period of time gets bogged down with tons of this stuff, largely unneccessary.
You do have a fair point though. Even if half of one's Program Files was filled with unnecessary libraries, that's nothing on a modern PC. My 40GB is ghetto nowadays for an upper-mid-range PC, and the majority of my HD is taken up with documents and mp3s rather than applications.
- Chris
What else is it going to be compared with? MacOS 7? Might as well compare it with the thing that (a) most people interested in the new OS are currently occupied with, and (b) it's intended to eventually replace. Anyway, the guy presumably got it off usenet last night like everyone else, so he's hardly likely to be aware of the extent of any underlying changes.
For anyone who still can't get through to the site, it really is nothing but a bunch of screenshots of the first hour's desktop experience.
- Chris
Spare a single mod point for the parent, if you will.
- Chris
Because those boring people who don't read AC posts would miss it otherwise.
- Chris
Don't change my language because of your inferiority complex.
It isn't your language. It's our language. USian English isn't a real language at all.
re: your point though, surely the objective would be binary compatibility, therefore eliminating the need for an actual port entirely?
- Chris
Phoenix is out there too, less recognised, but I don't see them dropping a port either.
That's because said port never officially existed in the first place. The last OS X port of Phoenix I saw is about three months old now. Seeing as 110% of all OS X users seem to have switched default browsers overnight upon seeing brushed metal, I don't imagine the OS X port of Phoenix is going to be well-attended.
- Chris
the linux labs at my university are running a two-year-old Red hat distro, and I have a colleague who can't use them because there is absolutely no obvious way to change the refresh rate the something sensible like there is on Windows.
- Chris
Awesome, I get to win this.
for(;;)
{
drink_guinness();
}
- Chris
How wonderfully awesome. Now if someone would port GTK+ to Windows instead of pretending they did and in fact using some Linux emulation trickery to make apps seem to run on Windows but using the most hideous, disgusting interface humanly possible (see Windows GIMP, Windows GAIM, anything else Windows GTK+ related) then I'd be even more impressed.
Can't you skin GTK or something on Linux to make it not look quite as much like ass? Is there any way of making the Windows port do this, at all?
- Chris
The hurdle is that the video codec's proprietary and and audio's all done through a special windows-only API. They have to try and get all the current media (on the discs they've already shipped) to work with a linux binary.
- Chris
Well, to be fair to me, I did read what you'd said in that thread, and you didn't mention anything that really wsung it. And as I said, if they already had their mp3 engine working correctly and weren't living in terror of the day Thomson / Fraunhofer wanted $$$ by the truckload, then they'd probably be less than interested in scrapping it for any reason.
- Chris
The FSF condones mixing Free and non-Free software now? That's a bit of a turnaround.
- Chris
Ahhh. Serves me right. Cheers for the heads-up.
- Chris
Seconded. This thread alone has destroyed any faith I had in the moderation system. It's practically a textbook example of why moderation fails.
- Chris
What he said. Didn't SDL's name (Simple DirectMedia Layer) ring any bells at all?
- Chris
I suspect if it was as easy as just using an open library, then Miles wouldn't be so entrenched into Win32 gaming (why pay $$$ for something you could write yourself?).
As for Bioware using Ogg, assuming that they already had their mp3 engine written (which I assume they had), the effort of scrapping it for nothing more than ideology would seem a bit much.
- Chris
I thought that too. The moderation on this thread is on crack, between all the insightful "use SDL" and "port DirectX to linux" posts.
- Chris
woah.
- Chris
What a lot of rubbish. Blizzard are using DivX now, Warcraft III used it for all ingame video. Nobody uses Sorenson for games. Were it not for Apple having a movie trailers site and Enchanced CDs being forced into it, nobody would use Sorenson for anything.
I imagine RAD Video are running scared now on the DivX front, they seem to be emphasising the speed of Smacker now (and their other products, Miles and Granny) in favour of Bink.
- Chris
The problem with the sound is not just getting footsteps to play. It's getting footsteps to play with shitloads of clever filters, in 360-degree surround sound in exceedinglu clever ways.
As for the video, Bink licenses cost an absolute fortune. It would have to be weighed up against the theorteical profit made by having linux users pay for a NWN box.
- Chris