I am also an ebook reader. I tend to use the Microsoft reader format, only because to the restrictions on the Adobe format. I don't like being forced to use a non-MS platform to read books (as far as PDA's go, Adobe ebooks cannot be read on MS OS PDAs) anymore than I like being forced to use one. Regardless of my choice(s) I have one big issue with ebooks, ownership. I have always shared books with other family members and vice versa. It is not a shady ploy to avoid purchasing books, but to share our experiences in reading books by particular authors, that we would not otherwise purchase ourselves. The exposure to new materail often leads each of us to start purchasing books from the new author or series. Even the major publishers acknowledge the market power exhibited in this type of 'book sharing'. It has been proven to drive sales, by the publisher's own words and as the result of studies by them. Why then is this ability removed with ebooks? I like the convienience very much, but still prefer to buy real books because of this one reason alone. If we have priveleges associated with an established format, then why do they question why a new format is not readily accepted when the priveleges for the new format have been severly restricted? Seems like a dumb question on their part to me. Printed books will not ever diminish in sales as long as the newer formats continue to remove the availability of that material from the purchaser. This publisher's ploy to try to regain ground from an established venue only serves to open the door to theft that did not exist before. Inevitably they will throw up their arms and point fingers at the 'thieves' as the music industry has, but they alone are responsible for the inequaty in the formats, simply due to thier greed.
Publishers take heed, Just make the new formats as accessable as the previous and you won't run into the same problems as the music industry. When is the last time you read about 'Book Thieves' in the papers and FBI crack downs and public outrage at commercial stances in this industry? It doesn't happen. Why start now? It mystifies me.
My proposal is unfairly low? So you think that the penalty for a given crime should severly outweight the crime itself? The crime is stealing goods and or services. The cost of those goods and services stolen should be the real penalty. If we want to deter crime than perhaps we should make the penalty a bit higher than the cost of the goods when purchased legaly. Then the cost of doing business illegally is higher than legal business. That's all that is needed. To go further is over-reactionary (which seems to be bred into judges and lawyers these days). Rampant crime is no reason to raise the penalty for a single individual. It is a reason to raise the level of enforcement. Any other way of looking at it defies common sense AND justice.
" I am creating $475 of value in the economy (for myself)."
That is a very zenophobic view of the economy. If you are stealing tools so that you can do a job that you otherwise could not do, then you are taking that money from someone who legitamately purchased those tools to conduct their business. You have removed an equal portion of dollars from someone elses economy. You cannot add money to your own 'economy' without it coming from somewhere. That is too narrow a view on how things work.
" What's the retail price of something that isn't offered for sale anymore?"
The retail price for that is called growth in commerce. As demand rises for a product that did not have enough demand before to create commerce, commerce becomes 'born'. Recently, many very good examples (ebay, amazon, netflix, blockbuster, etc.) of how this particular kind of commerce works have sprung up. Most are very successful. There was an article in Wired News regarding this called The long tail of the economy that explains this very well. If you are stealing the music you are having a hard time finding, then you are short circuiting a very important part of our new economic cycle.
I am sure I will get modded down for saying this, but I hope they shut them all down. I don't understand how people think that downloading cracked copies of software isn't stealing. Maybe once the consequences of the actions get high enough, more people will stop. I pay higher prices for software and music because of the rampant theft. Contrary to what the prevailing attitude seems to be here, the vast majority of the public does pay for their software and music. There is however a large minority that feels otherwise and continues their criminal practices. They are the ones driving software companies to add more and more layers of security to our software. They are the ones that are causing the honest amongst us to have to jump through increasingly more difficult hoops to install, register and maintain our software.
Perhaps now, with more of these File sharers servers going dark, I will be able to start to enjoy lower prices on my software and music and more bandwidth from my ISP.
I don't support jail time for these people at all. I think that is severely over-reactionary. Simply make the people that are caught pay double the full retail price for each piece of stolen software. That should be discouraging enough and fits the crime. Jail time is ridiculous, ludicrous and a stupid reaction from small minded people. I certainly don't condone the crime, but there is also a crime going on with the over the top severity of the punishments. Let's stop the moronic behavior on both sides of the fence here.
That must be very tough development work. I always liked working on something that has never been done before, for the challenge. This one must be particularly hard as we all know there has never been a two button mouse in existance before. Perhaps they could get a couple of 'pointer' from their competitors to save some time?
This one is so not new, it reeks of death and decay. I think we have another case of 'teeny bopper' Slashdot editor doesn't know history, thing going on here again. It was actually done in the early 80's as found in an article in Mother Earth News, just before the Hybrid Electric car article. (I am not kidding you either).
I am not saying that Mother Earth news is the inventor, just that the tech existed 30 years ago, was published 30 years ago. Heck I am going to scour a few more of the older Mother Earth News articles and see if I can't claim that I invented them for myself too!
"Yeah, red and blue look similar too - if you're fucking color-blind."
Perhaps you are the freaking moron here GoMMiX. Red and Blue are not even close to each other. Pink and Purple are actually hues of the same color. They ARE very very close as far as palettes go too (as Blitzenn notes).
To me, you saying pink is a completely different color from purple is like saying brown is completely different than beige. The hue is different, but the color is the same. I have to agree with the judge on this one along with Blitzenn.
This seems to be a type of problem Blizzard encounters over and over. The ability of individuals to take characters offline and enhance someone elses gameplay in the online world. Is this cheating? If you want to have benefits from both online and offline play with the same characters, then you don't have much choice. Personally, I don't seem much benefit in taking characters and or items offline. Ruins the gameplay for me. I guess I am one of the few morons who struggled through Diablo II the old fashioned way. Blood Sweat and Tears, no purchased items at all. I would not play World of Warcraft any differently. What is the point of playing the game if you are going to get to the end by buying the things you need on Ebay? You have lost most of the fun and challenging part of the game.
Last I checked with myself, pink was similar to purple. They are not the same or anywhere near the same shade, but even on a palette, they are very close.
You can't do it (uninstall Explorer from Windows). Have you ever tried? Want to really break your windows install, try uninstalling explorer. The problem seems to me to be that the Mozilla browser is the culprit here. Since when do we blame MS for a leaky browser that allows files to be infected on our machine, then in the next breath blame MS for being infected by a vulnerability in the Mozilla browser? That makes very little sense to me.
"I could be wrong, but I get the idea that CMT allows you to perform multiple simultaneous software threads, even within a single processor!"
That's where they are hoodwinking you. A single processor machine hasn't any ability to process multiple instructions in the same clock cycle. Physically impossible as there is only one path or pipeline through the actual 'core' of the processor. Only one instruction can be physically processed at any given point in time. It's a physical limitation of a single CPU.
Multithreading allowed us to run multiple 'threads' or pieces of code virtually simultaneously, by allowing us to run a second piece of code, when the first piece was idle, (as perhaps in that case of waiting for a response from another piece of hardware). The key here is that multithreading allows for virtual multiprocessing of code, whereas a multicored machine or processer can allow for physical, simultaneous execution of instructions.
If Sun is bent on using this as a selling point, then they are setting themselves up for a lawsuit on selling a product under false pretenses. No amount of code is going to get a single processor cpu or machine to execute two instructions simultaneously. Virtually, sure, physically, never. See you in court Sun.
Sometimes I think the fed's think they can treat us like 8 year olds and we won't know the difference. Who thought that we could ask the government to report on itself, whether or not they have abused the laws given to them to follow? Especially when it is the same department doing the investigating as is using the law? My eight year old says the same thing when I ask him if he ate all of the fruit snacks, "I didn't do it daddy.", as he stands in his own pile of snack wrapper litter.
I have to agree. These manufacturers are bastardizing terms that we have had a hard enough time establishing and making mean something. This is not multithreading. It is not suited to the term. It is multicored processing. If we allow people like this to continually mixup the termonalogy like this, how are we going to talk to each other intelligently when it comes do to coder A explaining to coder B what they did and how they accomplished it? We won't without argueing out the base terms for the conversation.
I am sure that there will be others who will throw up definitions that will support their arguement, but... Multithreading;
" The ability of an operating system to execute different parts of a program, called threads, virtually simultaneously. The programmer must carefully design the program in such a way that all the threads can run at the same time without interfering with each other."
There is of course a wee bit more to this definition needed to make the difference clear, and that is that each thread takes it's turn being processed, if on a single cored machine (physically impossible to do otherwise). A multithreaded piece of code can run two threads physically at the same time if it is run on a multicored machine. Otherwise the threads take turns in execution depending on the process priorities.
A Multicored machine or processor, could run multiple threads or programs simultaneously (if coded to take advantage of the possible multiple procesing paths). This is something that a single cored or single CPU machine can only perform virtually.
Let's stop the graying out of terms, the bastardizing of terms and the blantant misuse of terms for the purpose of promotion and sale.
I see a huge ptoential for problems here as different authors in the past have defined their own meaning for words. Some of the more common words are in the most peril. A Phaser Rifle in one context may be something completely different in another. Depending on the time the story waas written, I would expect that the definition would change to more closely match actual science. But if the Dictionary remains true to it's prupose, it will be categorizing the word based on it's earliest instance. I can see where the contents of this 'dictionary' could become jaded and dated. I think it would be more appropriately name a Concordance of Sci-Fi words rather than a dictionary.
Agreed. Gees, I would expect an 'enemy' to do that. Is this really news, that an 'enemy' of something is using disinformation to herald their opinion? I think not. I would expect it as I clearly see it go on, on both sides of the fence.
I also have to agree with.NET being bloated. I like the concepts of the new things that are made available, but I also see those same things as backing one into the platform , with no way out. Very propritary platform.
I have to agree here. I am finding too that the coding effort necessary to work with a high end (video) adapter is already almost beyond any one person's ability to wrap their head around. All of the instructions and features are already pushing the limits. To add another physical processor that needs even more coding is not going to go very far at this point. The complexity is already close to being to great. I see this as easily pushing things over the edge, so to speak. The arguement to leaving the physics processing in code is that you can modularize responses, and feed the modules with simple information, in the formats that you need, not necessarily the processor. One could retort that you have a choice, either code for the 'PPU' or code for the software physics module, six of one half a dozen of the other. It doesn't seem to be apples and oranges though, from a coding standpoint. The hardware calls are much harder integrate into code in that you have to be aware of things like timing and the coder is left responsible for making sure that the objects layers are rendered in the correct order and filters applied correctly. When done in a software module, those tasks can be hidden from the coder to allow the concentrate on the other important items rather than timing and rendering.
Maybe I am overeracting to having to learn another new code set, but moving physics to a hardware platform scares me to think of the work involved. I think they are going to have an uphill battle getting this thing accepted by the coding houses.
It is specifically intended that the contest not attract those who are capable of breaking the server. All they want is some feeble attempts so that they can finish and say that they have the most secure distro out there, because nobody could break in when the posted the distro on a public server and invited attacks.
I have to agree that this is a lame ploy at getting publicity. Hopefully others can see through it too.
It could help their ratings, or it could hurt. It really depends on the episodes ability to stand on it's own. If it's a good episode and brings some new things to the table, it will get some good word of mouth amongst those who care. If it is a slop-shod episode, that brings nothing new to the table and is a thin attempt to reskin an old episode, then it will get bad word of mouth.
The risk because of the leak is great. I cannot believe it was intentional due to this; If the episode is good, word of mouth will be good and it will travel through the ranks of Dr. Who fans. It probably won't do a thing to add viewers, because people who don't already watch it, are not going to care, as they never had interest before, and probably won't until it hits the screen. A bad review from the leak, will cause fans to knock the show, and drive anyone who might have watched it to not watch it and hurt viewership.
In short, leaking is never very good. The damage can be great whereas the potential good that can come from it is extremely small. No one cares about good news, unless it is something that they care about to begin with. Everyone loves to hear bad news. Fact of life. That's why the evening news is nearly 100% bad news.
No, you absolutely have it wrong. Perhaps you should refer to a source for reference. Your own definition even defies the proper use of the word. You describe interupting the currect task and scheduling the next. That may be what is called "Preemptive multitasking" at best, but not multitasking. See the dictionary definition here, http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Multitask ing. This states the following definition: "The concurrent operation by one central processing unit of two or more processes."
The key word here being concurrent. I think you are mixing up things like "preemptive multitasking", "Time slicing" and scheduling of tasks with the word "multitasking". Perhaps if you could find a resource that describes simple multitasking as something other than performing tasks concurrently, I would back off. I stand by my statement that an 8086 processor is NOT capable of multitasking anything, regardless of the OS that is processing instructions.
Your points are great. The more disturbing fact is that they are heralding these articles are 'defining' the genres. That grates against me quite a bit as I credit the coders and creators of the games as the definers of the genre. This is a classic case of cart before the horse.
Are you writing your own version of history or something? Sorry but an 8086 processor is not physically capable of multitasking. It simply cannot be done. Then or now. The processor does not have the capability of handling more than one instruction at a time, in any part of the processor. In fact the instruction has to clear the end of the processing path before the next instruction can even be accepted. There are no 'pipelines' as you see today. It cannot be done on that hardware.
If you want to be confused about the difference between what hardware and software can do then go ahead. I am sure I can write a piece of software to 'emulate' multitasking on an 8086. But that is as far as it can go. NO matter how you physically do it. That processor can only accept and execute one instruction at a time. End of story. (apparently under your definition of multitasking, there was never anything that could not multitask)
Micro-Soft existed before the IBM deal, not Microsoft. Check it out. Micro-Soft was started in 1971. You can argue it is the same company, and I will concede to you on that if you insist. It did, at least, contain the same people.
I was paying attention better than you apparently. If you are going to argue that MS-DOS was a piece of junk, then you can't then argue that QDOS was good. They are either both pieces of crap or not. They are nearly identical and you can't call one junk and the other not without exposing yourself as a thinly veiled MS basher.
As far as your arguement that MS has never contributed anything, gosh someone just gave them a trillion dollars? How did they get all of that money? They must have had something that people were willing to pay them for? You can simply ignore the financial facts of history and spout off. Simply bashing despite the facts does not help you at all.
You guys are bickering over trivial items that were sidebars at the time. The main ring of the circus held IBM who was launching the PC and needed an operating system. The numbers plainly show that this was the start of the boon for personal computer. It is the players in that specific market that we are talking about, not the others periphery.
There is so much contact their between all of the power groups (that exist today) that it is impossible to point the finger at any one person and say they did it all, (or even a major part). Do you credit Digital Research, for blowing off IBM when they were approached prior to Bill Gates? Do you credit Gates with tricking IBM into allowing him future rights? Who knows, who really cares.
You guys are talking about Amiga's and BSD's and such. We are talking about an 8086 here and the OS you could use with it. Multitask? Gosh, that thing had a hard time doing one task all the way through. There is no way you can multitask an 8086, sorry. I have no idea where you are coming from, I built those things, I know. Microsoft? Sorry that didn't exist either. It was Gates and his buddy who supplied IBM with code on the first go around. It wasn't until round 2 that Microsoft came into existance, because they retained the rights to the code in round 1. I remember, I was there too.
Gates had absolutely no decision in what OS was pushed. He was hired by IBM to write what they wanted. That's what he did.
The tiny market quicked doubled and doubled again (and again and again) as IBM started shipping machines. Granted, Digital Research and others were out there first peddling OS's to the tinkerers like me. But until IBM became a player, there wasn't hardly a market to sell to.
Slashdot Mirror
I am also an ebook reader. I tend to use the Microsoft reader format, only because to the restrictions on the Adobe format. I don't like being forced to use a non-MS platform to read books (as far as PDA's go, Adobe ebooks cannot be read on MS OS PDAs) anymore than I like being forced to use one. Regardless of my choice(s) I have one big issue with ebooks, ownership. I have always shared books with other family members and vice versa. It is not a shady ploy to avoid purchasing books, but to share our experiences in reading books by particular authors, that we would not otherwise purchase ourselves. The exposure to new materail often leads each of us to start purchasing books from the new author or series. Even the major publishers acknowledge the market power exhibited in this type of 'book sharing'. It has been proven to drive sales, by the publisher's own words and as the result of studies by them. Why then is this ability removed with ebooks? I like the convienience very much, but still prefer to buy real books because of this one reason alone. If we have priveleges associated with an established format, then why do they question why a new format is not readily accepted when the priveleges for the new format have been severly restricted? Seems like a dumb question on their part to me. Printed books will not ever diminish in sales as long as the newer formats continue to remove the availability of that material from the purchaser. This publisher's ploy to try to regain ground from an established venue only serves to open the door to theft that did not exist before. Inevitably they will throw up their arms and point fingers at the 'thieves' as the music industry has, but they alone are responsible for the inequaty in the formats, simply due to thier greed.
Publishers take heed, Just make the new formats as accessable as the previous and you won't run into the same problems as the music industry. When is the last time you read about 'Book Thieves' in the papers and FBI crack downs and public outrage at commercial stances in this industry? It doesn't happen. Why start now? It mystifies me.
My proposal is unfairly low? So you think that the penalty for a given crime should severly outweight the crime itself? The crime is stealing goods and or services. The cost of those goods and services stolen should be the real penalty. If we want to deter crime than perhaps we should make the penalty a bit higher than the cost of the goods when purchased legaly. Then the cost of doing business illegally is higher than legal business. That's all that is needed. To go further is over-reactionary (which seems to be bred into judges and lawyers these days). Rampant crime is no reason to raise the penalty for a single individual. It is a reason to raise the level of enforcement. Any other way of looking at it defies common sense AND justice.
" I am creating $475 of value in the economy (for myself)."
That is a very zenophobic view of the economy. If you are stealing tools so that you can do a job that you otherwise could not do, then you are taking that money from someone who legitamately purchased those tools to conduct their business. You have removed an equal portion of dollars from someone elses economy. You cannot add money to your own 'economy' without it coming from somewhere. That is too narrow a view on how things work.
" What's the retail price of something that isn't offered for sale anymore?"
The retail price for that is called growth in commerce. As demand rises for a product that did not have enough demand before to create commerce, commerce becomes 'born'. Recently, many very good examples (ebay, amazon, netflix, blockbuster, etc.) of how this particular kind of commerce works have sprung up. Most are very successful. There was an article in Wired News regarding this called The long tail of the economy that explains this very well. If you are stealing the music you are having a hard time finding, then you are short circuiting a very important part of our new economic cycle.
I am sure I will get modded down for saying this, but I hope they shut them all down. I don't understand how people think that downloading cracked copies of software isn't stealing. Maybe once the consequences of the actions get high enough, more people will stop. I pay higher prices for software and music because of the rampant theft. Contrary to what the prevailing attitude seems to be here, the vast majority of the public does pay for their software and music. There is however a large minority that feels otherwise and continues their criminal practices. They are the ones driving software companies to add more and more layers of security to our software. They are the ones that are causing the honest amongst us to have to jump through increasingly more difficult hoops to install, register and maintain our software. Perhaps now, with more of these File sharers servers going dark, I will be able to start to enjoy lower prices on my software and music and more bandwidth from my ISP.
I don't support jail time for these people at all. I think that is severely over-reactionary. Simply make the people that are caught pay double the full retail price for each piece of stolen software. That should be discouraging enough and fits the crime. Jail time is ridiculous, ludicrous and a stupid reaction from small minded people. I certainly don't condone the crime, but there is also a crime going on with the over the top severity of the punishments. Let's stop the moronic behavior on both sides of the fence here.
That must be very tough development work. I always liked working on something that has never been done before, for the challenge. This one must be particularly hard as we all know there has never been a two button mouse in existance before. Perhaps they could get a couple of 'pointer' from their competitors to save some time?
"Did you forget to check the post anonymously checkbox before attempting to back yourself up? ..."
Doh! Yep.
This one is so not new, it reeks of death and decay. I think we have another case of 'teeny bopper' Slashdot editor doesn't know history, thing going on here again. It was actually done in the early 80's as found in an article in Mother Earth News, just before the Hybrid Electric car article. (I am not kidding you either).
I am not saying that Mother Earth news is the inventor, just that the tech existed 30 years ago, was published 30 years ago. Heck I am going to scour a few more of the older Mother Earth News articles and see if I can't claim that I invented them for myself too!
"Yeah, red and blue look similar too - if you're fucking color-blind."
Perhaps you are the freaking moron here GoMMiX.
Red and Blue are not even close to each other. Pink and Purple are actually hues of the same color. They ARE very very close as far as palettes go too (as Blitzenn notes).
To me, you saying pink is a completely different color from purple is like saying brown is completely different than beige. The hue is different, but the color is the same. I have to agree with the judge on this one along with Blitzenn.
This seems to be a type of problem Blizzard encounters over and over. The ability of individuals to take characters offline and enhance someone elses gameplay in the online world. Is this cheating? If you want to have benefits from both online and offline play with the same characters, then you don't have much choice. Personally, I don't seem much benefit in taking characters and or items offline. Ruins the gameplay for me. I guess I am one of the few morons who struggled through Diablo II the old fashioned way. Blood Sweat and Tears, no purchased items at all. I would not play World of Warcraft any differently. What is the point of playing the game if you are going to get to the end by buying the things you need on Ebay? You have lost most of the fun and challenging part of the game.
Last I checked with myself, pink was similar to purple. They are not the same or anywhere near the same shade, but even on a palette, they are very close.
You can't do it (uninstall Explorer from Windows). Have you ever tried? Want to really break your windows install, try uninstalling explorer. The problem seems to me to be that the Mozilla browser is the culprit here. Since when do we blame MS for a leaky browser that allows files to be infected on our machine, then in the next breath blame MS for being infected by a vulnerability in the Mozilla browser? That makes very little sense to me.
"I could be wrong, but I get the idea that CMT allows you to perform multiple simultaneous software threads, even within a single processor!"
That's where they are hoodwinking you. A single processor machine hasn't any ability to process multiple instructions in the same clock cycle. Physically impossible as there is only one path or pipeline through the actual 'core' of the processor. Only one instruction can be physically processed at any given point in time. It's a physical limitation of a single CPU.
Multithreading allowed us to run multiple 'threads' or pieces of code virtually simultaneously, by allowing us to run a second piece of code, when the first piece was idle, (as perhaps in that case of waiting for a response from another piece of hardware). The key here is that multithreading allows for virtual multiprocessing of code, whereas a multicored machine or processer can allow for physical, simultaneous execution of instructions.
If Sun is bent on using this as a selling point, then they are setting themselves up for a lawsuit on selling a product under false pretenses. No amount of code is going to get a single processor cpu or machine to execute two instructions simultaneously. Virtually, sure, physically, never. See you in court Sun.
Sometimes I think the fed's think they can treat us like 8 year olds and we won't know the difference. Who thought that we could ask the government to report on itself, whether or not they have abused the laws given to them to follow? Especially when it is the same department doing the investigating as is using the law? My eight year old says the same thing when I ask him if he ate all of the fruit snacks, "I didn't do it daddy.", as he stands in his own pile of snack wrapper litter.
Give me a break. I am smarter than that.
I have to agree. These manufacturers are bastardizing terms that we have had a hard enough time establishing and making mean something. This is not multithreading. It is not suited to the term. It is multicored processing. If we allow people like this to continually mixup the termonalogy like this, how are we going to talk to each other intelligently when it comes do to coder A explaining to coder B what they did and how they accomplished it? We won't without argueing out the base terms for the conversation.
I am sure that there will be others who will throw up definitions that will support their arguement, but... Multithreading;
" The ability of an operating system to execute different parts of a program, called threads, virtually simultaneously. The programmer must carefully design the program in such a way that all the threads can run at the same time without interfering with each other."
There is of course a wee bit more to this definition needed to make the difference clear, and that is that each thread takes it's turn being processed, if on a single cored machine (physically impossible to do otherwise). A multithreaded piece of code can run two threads physically at the same time if it is run on a multicored machine. Otherwise the threads take turns in execution depending on the process priorities.
A Multicored machine or processor, could run multiple threads or programs simultaneously (if coded to take advantage of the possible multiple procesing paths). This is something that a single cored or single CPU machine can only perform virtually.
Let's stop the graying out of terms, the bastardizing of terms and the blantant misuse of terms for the purpose of promotion and sale.
Shame on Sun!
I see a huge ptoential for problems here as different authors in the past have defined their own meaning for words. Some of the more common words are in the most peril. A Phaser Rifle in one context may be something completely different in another. Depending on the time the story waas written, I would expect that the definition would change to more closely match actual science. But if the Dictionary remains true to it's prupose, it will be categorizing the word based on it's earliest instance. I can see where the contents of this 'dictionary' could become jaded and dated. I think it would be more appropriately name a Concordance of Sci-Fi words rather than a dictionary.
Agreed. Gees, I would expect an 'enemy' to do that. Is this really news, that an 'enemy' of something is using disinformation to herald their opinion? I think not. I would expect it as I clearly see it go on, on both sides of the fence.
.NET being bloated. I like the concepts of the new things that are made available, but I also see those same things as backing one into the platform , with no way out. Very propritary platform.
I also have to agree with
I have to agree here. I am finding too that the coding effort necessary to work with a high end (video) adapter is already almost beyond any one person's ability to wrap their head around. All of the instructions and features are already pushing the limits. To add another physical processor that needs even more coding is not going to go very far at this point. The complexity is already close to being to great. I see this as easily pushing things over the edge, so to speak. The arguement to leaving the physics processing in code is that you can modularize responses, and feed the modules with simple information, in the formats that you need, not necessarily the processor. One could retort that you have a choice, either code for the 'PPU' or code for the software physics module, six of one half a dozen of the other. It doesn't seem to be apples and oranges though, from a coding standpoint. The hardware calls are much harder integrate into code in that you have to be aware of things like timing and the coder is left responsible for making sure that the objects layers are rendered in the correct order and filters applied correctly. When done in a software module, those tasks can be hidden from the coder to allow the concentrate on the other important items rather than timing and rendering.
Maybe I am overeracting to having to learn another new code set, but moving physics to a hardware platform scares me to think of the work involved. I think they are going to have an uphill battle getting this thing accepted by the coding houses.
It is specifically intended that the contest not attract those who are capable of breaking the server. All they want is some feeble attempts so that they can finish and say that they have the most secure distro out there, because nobody could break in when the posted the distro on a public server and invited attacks.
I have to agree that this is a lame ploy at getting publicity. Hopefully others can see through it too.
It could help their ratings, or it could hurt. It really depends on the episodes ability to stand on it's own. If it's a good episode and brings some new things to the table, it will get some good word of mouth amongst those who care. If it is a slop-shod episode, that brings nothing new to the table and is a thin attempt to reskin an old episode, then it will get bad word of mouth.
The risk because of the leak is great. I cannot believe it was intentional due to this; If the episode is good, word of mouth will be good and it will travel through the ranks of Dr. Who fans. It probably won't do a thing to add viewers, because people who don't already watch it, are not going to care, as they never had interest before, and probably won't until it hits the screen. A bad review from the leak, will cause fans to knock the show, and drive anyone who might have watched it to not watch it and hurt viewership.
In short, leaking is never very good. The damage can be great whereas the potential good that can come from it is extremely small. No one cares about good news, unless it is something that they care about to begin with. Everyone loves to hear bad news. Fact of life. That's why the evening news is nearly 100% bad news.
No, you absolutely have it wrong. Perhaps you should refer to a source for reference. Your own definition even defies the proper use of the word. You describe interupting the currect task and scheduling the next. That may be what is called "Preemptive multitasking" at best, but not multitasking. See the dictionary definition here, http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Multitask ing. This states the following definition: "The concurrent operation by one central processing unit of two or more processes."
The key word here being concurrent. I think you are mixing up things like "preemptive multitasking", "Time slicing" and scheduling of tasks with the word "multitasking". Perhaps if you could find a resource that describes simple multitasking as something other than performing tasks concurrently, I would back off. I stand by my statement that an 8086 processor is NOT capable of multitasking anything, regardless of the OS that is processing instructions.
Your points are great. The more disturbing fact is that they are heralding these articles are 'defining' the genres. That grates against me quite a bit as I credit the coders and creators of the games as the definers of the genre. This is a classic case of cart before the horse.
Are you writing your own version of history or something? Sorry but an 8086 processor is not physically capable of multitasking. It simply cannot be done. Then or now. The processor does not have the capability of handling more than one instruction at a time, in any part of the processor. In fact the instruction has to clear the end of the processing path before the next instruction can even be accepted. There are no 'pipelines' as you see today. It cannot be done on that hardware.
If you want to be confused about the difference between what hardware and software can do then go ahead. I am sure I can write a piece of software to 'emulate' multitasking on an 8086. But that is as far as it can go. NO matter how you physically do it. That processor can only accept and execute one instruction at a time. End of story. (apparently under your definition of multitasking, there was never anything that could not multitask)
Micro-Soft existed before the IBM deal, not Microsoft. Check it out. Micro-Soft was started in 1971. You can argue it is the same company, and I will concede to you on that if you insist. It did, at least, contain the same people.
I was paying attention better than you apparently. If you are going to argue that MS-DOS was a piece of junk, then you can't then argue that QDOS was good. They are either both pieces of crap or not. They are nearly identical and you can't call one junk and the other not without exposing yourself as a thinly veiled MS basher.
As far as your arguement that MS has never contributed anything, gosh someone just gave them a trillion dollars? How did they get all of that money? They must have had something that people were willing to pay them for? You can simply ignore the financial facts of history and spout off. Simply bashing despite the facts does not help you at all.
Gramps? How long ago do you think that was? We are talking 30 years here not 60.
But I do like a good story and I'll let you cut up my food if you want to, but you better do it right, or I'll spank you and send you to your room!
You guys are bickering over trivial items that were sidebars at the time. The main ring of the circus held IBM who was launching the PC and needed an operating system. The numbers plainly show that this was the start of the boon for personal computer. It is the players in that specific market that we are talking about, not the others periphery.
There is so much contact their between all of the power groups (that exist today) that it is impossible to point the finger at any one person and say they did it all, (or even a major part). Do you credit Digital Research, for blowing off IBM when they were approached prior to Bill Gates? Do you credit Gates with tricking IBM into allowing him future rights? Who knows, who really cares.
You guys are talking about Amiga's and BSD's and such. We are talking about an 8086 here and the OS you could use with it. Multitask? Gosh, that thing had a hard time doing one task all the way through. There is no way you can multitask an 8086, sorry. I have no idea where you are coming from, I built those things, I know. Microsoft? Sorry that didn't exist either. It was Gates and his buddy who supplied IBM with code on the first go around. It wasn't until round 2 that Microsoft came into existance, because they retained the rights to the code in round 1. I remember, I was there too.
Gates had absolutely no decision in what OS was pushed. He was hired by IBM to write what they wanted. That's what he did.
The tiny market quicked doubled and doubled again (and again and again) as IBM started shipping machines. Granted, Digital Research and others were out there first peddling OS's to the tinkerers like me. But until IBM became a player, there wasn't hardly a market to sell to.