Citibank (I think) has a credit card mask generator. You can generate a credit card number for use online and then you tell the credit card company the spending and number of transations limits. You get a safe, one time use credit card number.
More important than everything other repliers to you have listed,
THE BEST reason to have a "fast" Direct3D emulator in software is because the REF driver is slow.
The REF (or "Reference") driver for Direct3D is a purely software implementation of D3D that supports every possible feature even if your 3D card doesn't. This allows people to debug, or experience things that they just wouldn't have been able to do in hardware; and its 50 times faster than the REF driver.
This, of course, assumes that the software renderer is feature complete, which it isn't. Maybe someday soon this will be an acceptable REF driver replacement.
Re:What sort of "original" game do you propose?
on
Ask Sid Meier
·
· Score: 1
"Who's fault is this ?, its the consumer"
This is simply not true. Consumers support good games. Many consumers can't tell a stinker from a winner, but as a whole, good games sell. They just simply don't sell as well because publishers identify them as risks and fail to give them the advertising they are due. Games like Kamari Damacy, which received stellar reviews, also enjoy cult success among those who read and follow those reviews. Sadly, the average gamer simply walks into Best Buy or ebGames and buys what ever is prominently displayed on the shelf (assuming they already own copies of Madden and GTA). If a creative and innovative new game is mediocre at best, there no sense pushing it with advertising, but great games deserve great support from their publishers that they just simply aren't getting.
"it is easier than ever before for an independant to distribute their their own games"
It may be easy for an independent to distribute their own games, but it is still extremely difficult and costly to spread the word. Most consumers don't have broadband. Casual gamers actively look for games online, so advertising is a must, but casual gamers also don't visit the usual gaming sites, so advertising has to be spread too thin to be effective. Until a centralized simple and inexpensive means of publishing games online becomes common place, independent games will never sell what they can be worth without a decent publisher.
Mod parent up, but after reading the parent post, please understand:
There is a major flaw in the "vote with your dollars" aspect of a market economy. That flaw is that there are far too many people who don't realize the importance of this concept.
In the case of CDs with DRM, customers will continue to buy them without being aware that they are casting a vote in favor of DRM. Maybe they are ignorant to the issue, computer-illiterate in general, or simply just don't case. Those who do avoid buying DRMed CDs will just contribute to the RIAA's "piracy is hurting out sales!" FUD.
In order to counter-act this, I think law should require that CD's with DRM be clearly marked. Customers should be aware of what they are buying. Currently, two CD's produced by the same company can be sitting on the shelf next to each other, same price, but one has DRM. One of these two products is intentionally crippled. One of these products is over priced. Which is it? Consumers are entitled to know.
Additionally, this marking should be standardized in such a way that DRM doesn't look like a "feature". Maybe something like "This CD contains contains software designed to inhibit copying".
This article presents the idea relatively well, but this is NOT A NEW IDEA.
I'm not sure if Epic invented it, but I can certainly tell you that microthreading, latent functions (such as the sleep in the door example, or a playanimation method that takes game time to complete), and this general idea has been around since at least the original Unreal Engine in UnrealScript (which is now a rather mature scripting language).
"It is a bald faced lie to say Linux is hard to install."
I agreed and disagree.
I've installed Ubuntu a bunch of times and it is cake to do so. But after installation, despite the hype, it is not "immediately useful". You still need to install a lot of software and Synaptic/apt only helps if you know exactly what it is you are looking to install. And even then many problems can arise.
After installation, the average computer user is dumped to the gnome Desktop with no ability to setup or configure the system to their liking. They can't just pop in the CDs that came with their printer, iPod, web cam, or other accessories and expect them to work with the ease a Mac or Windows machine can. They can't just browse to a web site and watch a video or flash movie without minor headaches.
Installing Linux has become easier and that is a great accomplishment, but it is still not easy to "setup" a Linux machine.
This is why I am studying "Software Engineering", not "Computer Science".
Dispite already having 3+ years professional software development, I am a student at Drexel University. Computer Science, which was my original major, is the traditional university scientific approach, but Software Engineering focuses on more real world application development stuff.
I wouldn't worry too much about those left-handed redheaded midget Mac users. It's Sarah Jane and the other 400 members of the Lesbian midget Eskimo Albino Student Union you need to worry about. This will explain everything...
I understand that IE isn't standards compliant, but it is dominant. As such, many people will be viewing the FireFox web site in IE. But IE doesn't render many of the FireFox site's pages correctly! Rounded corners don't work on every page and some pages (such as the "Mozilla FireFox 1.5 Beta 1 Release Notes" page) have much larger issues. However, IE renders the content at full width and FireFox leaves a substantial margin on either side (I have a wide screen display, I want to make use of it!).
Blame Microsoft all you want, but this is inexcusable. If you want people to switch to FireFox, they need to believe FireFox is better. Seeing as most web sites are built for IE, users coming to FireFox's web site see a page that doesn't render correctly and they assume the makers of the page are to blame. Why would they blame IE? Every other page they go to renders just fine in IE.
Since the same organization that made the page makes the software, it is conceivable that people would be turned away from FireFox on the assumption that people who produce broken web pages also produce broken programs.
Whether the FireFox web site doesn't properly support IE out of laziness, or out of malice. It should be fixed.
The VS.net Express series may not remain free for ever, but the compiler and many other tools are included in the SDK which Microsoft promised will forever remain free.
If artwork and technology are causing exponential development costs, developers need to work smarter.
Right now the game industry is in a transitional phase where great graphics are expected, but hard to produce. The solution is to make it easier to produce great looking games and Middleware is the key.
Middleware solutions are growing fast and have enabled spectacular feats. GTA3+, for example, runs entirely on RenderWare with a proprietary background-loading/streaming system. Rockstar took existing technology (RenderWare) and existing game play stuff (racing, 3rd person shooters, crazy-taxi, etc) and blended them together with something new and unique and CREATIVE (a vast, free roaming game world). Sure the development costs were high for the GTA3 series games, but I can bet you that had they been forced to reimplement RenderWare, there would be no GTA3 games to play today. The cost would have just been too prohibitive.
Now that Rockstar has come up with this free roaming world game play style (and people clearly enjoy it) either rockstar, or someone else, should release the technology as middle ware and poof, its now easy for people to add new innovations to that.
A lot of time is spend reproducing work. We need to work smarter, not harder. We need public domain high resolution 3d models for common real world objects, character model generation software, facial expression engines, animation engines, tons of stuff!
There is a big itch that people need to start scratching! And you can make a lot of money doing it.
I understand that this was a joke, but I'm gonna reply helpfully anyway:
I would venture a guess that Duke Nukem Forever would have similar hardware requirements to that of Unreal Tournament 2007 because it will (supposibly) run on the Unreal 3 engine. Game and graphics freaks should definitly check out the Unreal 3 Technology page
Movies, video games, and tv shows have it (mostly) right. They provide broad categories that enable quick culling. For example. As a parent, I can instantly assume that Mature and Adults Only games are inappropriate for my (imaginary) 9 year old. But I'm sure there are some Teen rated games that I would consider safe for him. The ratings are mearly guidelines, they still require good parenting.
It's a matter of using the tools that are available to you as a parent. If an xxx domain was to exist, parents could instantly block them all for their kid, but the "real" internet will never be kid safe. Many would argue that it is important for kids to have access to the full power of the internet (and not just something like AOL's kids area), so a parent needs to watch what their kids browse. I'm sure there is software that blocks sites that may be questionable, but presents a message "see your parents if you need to view this site" and allow a parent to override the block. In this case, it would be like forbidding stores to sell M rated games to kids.
You can't watch your kids all the time, so it is nice to have some help by means of broad, lowest common denominator, censorship, but there is just no substitute for keeping an eye on your kid.
The internet is like a power tool. Virtually limitless utility, but virtually limitless potential for causing harm as well.
Direct3D's DrawPrimative calls, for example, execute asyncronously. They can be handeled by an additional processor. By simply creating a single threaded application, you can take advantage of a second CPU to feed your GPU where the actual rasterizing takes place. You achieve a pretty decent parallelism with little to no added effort.
Similar API tricker can be (or maybe already is) done with DirectSound and the like.
Slashdot Mirror
2. Publish a really rich library of types.
:-)
Or allow machine learning to generate one
The summary does not state the womans name, Louisette Lanteigne, nor does it link to her website (it's geocities, so this is a google Cache), nor does it mention the company's name, Activa Holdings Inc.
I am even more saddened that your comment was not modded up. I wish had had mod points for you.
Citibank (I think) has a credit card mask generator. You can generate a credit card number for use online and then you tell the credit card company the spending and number of transations limits. You get a safe, one time use credit card number.
"[Microsoft's] ambition is to be bigger than Google in search."
Bigger or more popular doesn't necessarily mean better. Microsoft should strive to be BETTER at search than Google.
Competition is a good thing, but compete for the best product/service, not for the most customers. The customer count will follow.
More important than everything other repliers to you have listed,
THE BEST reason to have a "fast" Direct3D emulator in software is because the REF driver is slow.
The REF (or "Reference") driver for Direct3D is a purely software implementation of D3D that supports every possible feature even if your 3D card doesn't. This allows people to debug, or experience things that they just wouldn't have been able to do in hardware; and its 50 times faster than the REF driver.
This, of course, assumes that the software renderer is feature complete, which it isn't. Maybe someday soon this will be an acceptable REF driver replacement.
"Who's fault is this ?, its the consumer"
This is simply not true. Consumers support good games. Many consumers can't tell a stinker from a winner, but as a whole, good games sell. They just simply don't sell as well because publishers identify them as risks and fail to give them the advertising they are due. Games like Kamari Damacy, which received stellar reviews, also enjoy cult success among those who read and follow those reviews. Sadly, the average gamer simply walks into Best Buy or ebGames and buys what ever is prominently displayed on the shelf (assuming they already own copies of Madden and GTA). If a creative and innovative new game is mediocre at best, there no sense pushing it with advertising, but great games deserve great support from their publishers that they just simply aren't getting.
"it is easier than ever before for an independant to distribute their their own games"
It may be easy for an independent to distribute their own games, but it is still extremely difficult and costly to spread the word. Most consumers don't have broadband. Casual gamers actively look for games online, so advertising is a must, but casual gamers also don't visit the usual gaming sites, so advertising has to be spread too thin to be effective. Until a centralized simple and inexpensive means of publishing games online becomes common place, independent games will never sell what they can be worth without a decent publisher.
Mod parent up, but after reading the parent post, please understand:
There is a major flaw in the "vote with your dollars" aspect of a market economy. That flaw is that there are far too many people who don't realize the importance of this concept.
In the case of CDs with DRM, customers will continue to buy them without being aware that they are casting a vote in favor of DRM. Maybe they are ignorant to the issue, computer-illiterate in general, or simply just don't case. Those who do avoid buying DRMed CDs will just contribute to the RIAA's "piracy is hurting out sales!" FUD.
In order to counter-act this, I think law should require that CD's with DRM be clearly marked. Customers should be aware of what they are buying. Currently, two CD's produced by the same company can be sitting on the shelf next to each other, same price, but one has DRM. One of these two products is intentionally crippled. One of these products is over priced. Which is it? Consumers are entitled to know.
Additionally, this marking should be standardized in such a way that DRM doesn't look like a "feature". Maybe something like "This CD contains contains software designed to inhibit copying".
This article presents the idea relatively well, but this is NOT A NEW IDEA.
I'm not sure if Epic invented it, but I can certainly tell you that microthreading, latent functions (such as the sleep in the door example, or a playanimation method that takes game time to complete), and this general idea has been around since at least the original Unreal Engine in UnrealScript (which is now a rather mature scripting language).
Professional Developers Conference!
NOT
"Programmers Developer Conference"
What exactly is a "Programmers Developer"? That doesn't even make sense...
Hurray editors!
Cue the "Installing Windows" jokes...
"It is a bald faced lie to say Linux is hard to install."
I agreed and disagree.
I've installed Ubuntu a bunch of times and it is cake to do so. But after installation, despite the hype, it is not "immediately useful". You still need to install a lot of software and Synaptic/apt only helps if you know exactly what it is you are looking to install. And even then many problems can arise.
After installation, the average computer user is dumped to the gnome Desktop with no ability to setup or configure the system to their liking. They can't just pop in the CDs that came with their printer, iPod, web cam, or other accessories and expect them to work with the ease a Mac or Windows machine can. They can't just browse to a web site and watch a video or flash movie without minor headaches.
Installing Linux has become easier and that is a great accomplishment, but it is still not easy to "setup" a Linux machine.
This is why I am studying "Software Engineering", not "Computer Science".
n year.asp?plan_id=172&coop_type_id=2
Dispite already having 3+ years professional software development, I am a student at Drexel University. Computer Science, which was my original major, is the traditional university scientific approach, but Software Engineering focuses on more real world application development stuff.
You can find the software engineering recommended plan of study at Drexel here:
http://www.drexel.edu/provost/catalog/dynamic/pla
More universities should make this distinction.
I wouldn't worry too much about those left-handed redheaded midget Mac users. It's Sarah Jane and the other 400 members of the Lesbian midget Eskimo Albino Student Union you need to worry about. This will explain everything...
I understand that IE isn't standards compliant, but it is dominant. As such, many people will be viewing the FireFox web site in IE. But IE doesn't render many of the FireFox site's pages correctly! Rounded corners don't work on every page and some pages (such as the "Mozilla FireFox 1.5 Beta 1 Release Notes" page) have much larger issues. However, IE renders the content at full width and FireFox leaves a substantial margin on either side (I have a wide screen display, I want to make use of it!).
Blame Microsoft all you want, but this is inexcusable. If you want people to switch to FireFox, they need to believe FireFox is better. Seeing as most web sites are built for IE, users coming to FireFox's web site see a page that doesn't render correctly and they assume the makers of the page are to blame. Why would they blame IE? Every other page they go to renders just fine in IE.
Since the same organization that made the page makes the software, it is conceivable that people would be turned away from FireFox on the assumption that people who produce broken web pages also produce broken programs.
Whether the FireFox web site doesn't properly support IE out of laziness, or out of malice. It should be fixed.
and load faster as well!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113749/
Not nearly as funny as this:
http://www.monzy.com/intro/drama_lyrics.html
Yea, free is really an exorbitant price...
The VS.net Express series may not remain free for ever, but the compiler and many other tools are included in the SDK which Microsoft promised will forever remain free.
If artwork and technology are causing exponential development costs, developers need to work smarter.
Right now the game industry is in a transitional phase where great graphics are expected, but hard to produce. The solution is to make it easier to produce great looking games and Middleware is the key.
Middleware solutions are growing fast and have enabled spectacular feats. GTA3+, for example, runs entirely on RenderWare with a proprietary background-loading/streaming system. Rockstar took existing technology (RenderWare) and existing game play stuff (racing, 3rd person shooters, crazy-taxi, etc) and blended them together with something new and unique and CREATIVE (a vast, free roaming game world). Sure the development costs were high for the GTA3 series games, but I can bet you that had they been forced to reimplement RenderWare, there would be no GTA3 games to play today. The cost would have just been too prohibitive.
Now that Rockstar has come up with this free roaming world game play style (and people clearly enjoy it) either rockstar, or someone else, should release the technology as middle ware and poof, its now easy for people to add new innovations to that.
There needs to be more art-related middleware such as http://www.speedtree.com/ and improved tools such as ZBrush (being used for bump map creation in Unreal 3) from http://pixologic.com/home/home.shtml
A lot of time is spend reproducing work. We need to work smarter, not harder. We need public domain high resolution 3d models for common real world objects, character model generation software, facial expression engines, animation engines, tons of stuff!
There is a big itch that people need to start scratching! And you can make a lot of money doing it.
I understand that this was a joke, but I'm gonna reply helpfully anyway:
I would venture a guess that Duke Nukem Forever would have similar hardware requirements to that of Unreal Tournament 2007 because it will (supposibly) run on the Unreal 3 engine. Game and graphics freaks should definitly check out the Unreal 3 Technology page
until you go to florida again on spring break and later want to see all pictures from florida all in one place...
/. does have a spell check button: http://toolbar.google.com/ :-)
"The only solution is parenting."
Amen.
Movies, video games, and tv shows have it (mostly) right. They provide broad categories that enable quick culling. For example. As a parent, I can instantly assume that Mature and Adults Only games are inappropriate for my (imaginary) 9 year old. But I'm sure there are some Teen rated games that I would consider safe for him. The ratings are mearly guidelines, they still require good parenting.
It's a matter of using the tools that are available to you as a parent. If an xxx domain was to exist, parents could instantly block them all for their kid, but the "real" internet will never be kid safe. Many would argue that it is important for kids to have access to the full power of the internet (and not just something like AOL's kids area), so a parent needs to watch what their kids browse. I'm sure there is software that blocks sites that may be questionable, but presents a message "see your parents if you need to view this site" and allow a parent to override the block. In this case, it would be like forbidding stores to sell M rated games to kids.
You can't watch your kids all the time, so it is nice to have some help by means of broad, lowest common denominator, censorship, but there is just no substitute for keeping an eye on your kid.
The internet is like a power tool. Virtually limitless utility, but virtually limitless potential for causing harm as well.
DirectX simply solves a lot of this problem.
Direct3D's DrawPrimative calls, for example, execute asyncronously. They can be handeled by an additional processor. By simply creating a single threaded application, you can take advantage of a second CPU to feed your GPU where the actual rasterizing takes place. You achieve a pretty decent parallelism with little to no added effort.
Similar API tricker can be (or maybe already is) done with DirectSound and the like.