I don't get it. I know it's not My Thing(tm) but if I was presented with the problem of running a game over teh internet, I wouldn't be streaming the rendered video back.
Why can't the dumb box be more than a dumb box?
Why can't the textures and sounds be downloaded to a cache on the machine before the game starts?
Instead of a video stream, why can't the frame be described? A polygon here, a sprite there, and the GUI under that?
We played Quake over 56k and the latency wasn't a big problem. I know my pings are under three digits these days too. Is it really as big an issue as everyone is making out?
The moulds, once cast, are machined on the same CNC machines as every other mould in the world. Getting the feeler gauges out, with the vernier tools, and checking tolerances, is no different to any other job. I produced models of parts, that eventually were injection moulded, and I could meet a tolerance of 0.05mm using hand tools alone.
They are polished, by hand, by people with lower skills as myself. It's not hard; itâ€(TM)s semi-skilled.
I've seen the Lego moulds on YouTube. They aren't large enough to have complex cooling.
I've heard the company tell its audience about how hard it is to make the bricks. If I was charging stupid prices for them, I'd tell the world how hard it was too. Sure, if you have no training, those bricks will be hard to produce. For the rest of us, no problem.
In my opinion, the high price of the bricks comes from the packing and packaging, the movie licences, the instruction booklets, maybe the higher quality material, but not the manufacturing of the plastic bricks.
But, Iâ€(TM)m also more than willing to be wrong about all of this. Itâ€(TM)s been a long time..., but the bricks were made before I was born, with old technology, that I learnt fully.
Right now, even a single query of the 2006-2010 archive takes as many as 24 hours to execute.
Why? Why does it take so long?
They talk about the hardware and software not being up to scratch, but many other companies seem to be able to process huge amounts of data quickly. Google, for one, seems to do it.
Ah the joy of beating for pheasants and being hit on the head by shot. Thirty pheasants fly over, twenty farmers shoot with both their over-and-unders, no pheasants fall from the sky, I get hit on the head by shot.
It paid good money though.
There was no lead in that shot, and that was 25 years ago.
Buckets of sand, various files, gloves, full face guards, heat resistant safety boots with toe-protectors... the list goes on.
I've made knives in the past, although my skills are more tuned to making the handles. I've made chisels too and those chisels are still in use today after 20 years of daily use. All my best tools are made by me!
The theories behind the hardening and annealing are fascinating and should be learnt. Knowing about grain structure, and why carbon hardening works is important. Tools that go blunt after one use are, um, only useful for cutting fingers!
I did it for a local football club who wouldn't stop sending me SMS texts.
After the third attempt, I received two 'out of office' replies and knew I'd hit the jackpot. That taught me a big lesson about setting those damn things. I learnt that jane.bloggs@footballclub.com was on maternity leave and joe.bloggs@footballclub.com was out of the country for the rest of the week. Joe was high up in the company and probably had nice stuff in his house.
The SMS texts stopped. Job done for the price of three emails, and a name-scrape from a website.
As a player of all types of games, although not so much FPS these day, yes, yes we expect some shitty little server in the corner of an office to run forever.
I've invested time, money, and knowledge (captured for others to use) on these F2P games. And yes, I do expect them to run forever. I'm playing one of Zynga's at the moment and I enjoy the casual nature of it. There's no pause button. I can chat to the wife while playing. I can even surf during those "resource recharging" moments. I've met new players...
There's a metric shitload of bugs. There's zero feedback from Zynga. All in all, Zynga dump a beta version and the community field all the bugs reports and possible workarounds. All Zynga does is count their cash and reboot the server once a week.
So, to repeat myself again, yes, yes I do expect the games to run forever on a shitty little server stuffed in the corner of an office.
I've run servers myself in the past. The cost was minimal. The effort involved was a few mouse clicks once a week. I could still do it today with even less effort, but maybe a little more electric, and I'm only one man.
It should probably be added that very small engine cars (650cc - yes, they do exist USA people), electric, LPG and vintage cars are not required to pay road tax.
It's not so much based on engine size but on CO(2) emissions.
Are the drawings dimensioned in feet and fractions of inches?
I haven't touched imperial in twenty-five years, but when I did, everything was in inches. From 10 metres to 0.02mm, everything was dimensioned in inches. Inches were broken down into thousandths.
I can't even begin to imagine talking in feet and inches. Saying "two feet, eight and three-eighths" it so long compared with "eight-two-two mil" (822mm). Even remembering the dimension while marking out must be an extra pain.
One summer, I fancied an outside job. There was one for cutting grass all day. Perfect, I thought. Fresh air, sunlight, and that smell of freshly cut grass all day.
Before the engines were starter, litter picking was in order.
Most of the time it was on housing estates and people actually had the price of the grass cutting added to their rent. They still choose to throw out nappies, used toilet paper, last night's dinner, condoms, tampons and everything else yucky.
Remembering names is a skill, John. It can be learnt. There are many tricks you can employ. I've gone from remembering no one to remembering 99% of the people I meet. Practice the skill and it'll grow.
If you need any help, Tom, feel free to ask some other Dick or Harry on the internet.:)
I sense a theme: Intelligent people on this thread, like myself, have problems with English, spelling and remembering names.
All those things are skills and skills can be learnt.
I used to have a problem with names. Now I can name everyone in the office (150 people), 400 out of 700+ football players in the EPL. It took a lot of focus and practice - saying the names out loud, writing them down, not being scared to ask for someone's name for the tenth time.
English and spelling - practice again. Funnily enough, mostly learnt from posting and reading forums like this one.
I've only taken one proper test in my life, and it lasted three days.
One of the things tested was speed. I was actually told I was the first person, in the 20-year career of the tester, that finished all the questions in the spacial awareness test (aced it too!). The tests were designed so that no one should ever finish all the questions in the allotted time.
And I "failed" the hand writting test due to me cutting corners; trying to be too fast. It showed that goals are inportant to me, not processes - fasinating stuff.
Top 10 percentile in the UK! 'Av some of that thickos!
Slashdot Mirror
I never thought I'd see the day when EPL football was joked about on /.
Arsenal are a stain on the underpants of Football
#COYS
I don't get it. I know it's not My Thing(tm) but if I was presented with the problem of running a game over teh internet, I wouldn't be streaming the rendered video back.
Why can't the dumb box be more than a dumb box?
Why can't the textures and sounds be downloaded to a cache on the machine before the game starts?
Instead of a video stream, why can't the frame be described? A polygon here, a sprite there, and the GUI under that?
We played Quake over 56k and the latency wasn't a big problem. I know my pings are under three digits these days too. Is it really as big an issue as everyone is making out?
hmmm. I have qualifications in moulding.
The moulds, once cast, are machined on the same CNC machines as every other mould in the world. Getting the feeler gauges out, with the vernier tools, and checking tolerances, is no different to any other job. I produced models of parts, that eventually were injection moulded, and I could meet a tolerance of 0.05mm using hand tools alone.
They are polished, by hand, by people with lower skills as myself. It's not hard; itâ€(TM)s semi-skilled.
I've seen the Lego moulds on YouTube. They aren't large enough to have complex cooling.
I've heard the company tell its audience about how hard it is to make the bricks. If I was charging stupid prices for them, I'd tell the world how hard it was too. Sure, if you have no training, those bricks will be hard to produce. For the rest of us, no problem.
In my opinion, the high price of the bricks comes from the packing and packaging, the movie licences, the instruction booklets, maybe the higher quality material, but not the manufacturing of the plastic bricks.
But, Iâ€(TM)m also more than willing to be wrong about all of this. Itâ€(TM)s been a long time..., but the bricks were made before I was born, with old technology, that I learnt fully.
Right now, even a single query of the 2006-2010 archive takes as many as 24 hours to execute.
Why? Why does it take so long?
They talk about the hardware and software not being up to scratch, but many other companies seem to be able to process huge amounts of data quickly. Google, for one, seems to do it.
Ah the joy of beating for pheasants and being hit on the head by shot. Thirty pheasants fly over, twenty farmers shoot with both their over-and-unders, no pheasants fall from the sky, I get hit on the head by shot.
It paid good money though.
There was no lead in that shot, and that was 25 years ago.
Football hooliganism? In the UK? Not for 20 years. Your information is too dated to use.
Pick one of the baltic countries if you want to spout that sort of crap. Or Italy, because they still enjoy stabbing football fans.
Here are the facts: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20338047 with further reading if you desire.
Oh, and fuck off with your bullshit.
We were calling them Appz, with a "Zed", long before iSO, long before Web Apps, long before Java Applets.
It was short for any binary package.
We don't even say "pint" in the local pub.
Stella please.
Carling please.
Cider please.
Half a Stella for the lady please.
Half a Carling for...
"We can't help who we are "
Um, yes you can. You mentioned "choice" above.
"I wonder how much of our overweight problems and poor health is a direct result of all that PC garbage that was crammed down our throats as children"
It wasn't PC garbage, it was cake, and candy, and burgers, and soda, and all manner of high sugar and high fat foods.
Don't use that XKCD drawing! It's wrong!
* 5m for a car length is wrong, wrong, wrong. Even your big-ass American cars aren't that big. Try 3m.
* 3l is not a two-liter [sic] bottle. The clue is in the integers.
Buckets of sand, various files, gloves, full face guards, heat resistant safety boots with toe-protectors... the list goes on.
I've made knives in the past, although my skills are more tuned to making the handles. I've made chisels too and those chisels are still in use today after 20 years of daily use. All my best tools are made by me!
The theories behind the hardening and annealing are fascinating and should be learnt. Knowing about grain structure, and why carbon hardening works is important. Tools that go blunt after one use are, um, only useful for cutting fingers!
If my daughter offered me a drink in the evening I would be immediately suspicious. It's my job.
Haven't we all done this at some point?
I did it for a local football club who wouldn't stop sending me SMS texts.
After the third attempt, I received two 'out of office' replies and knew I'd hit the jackpot. That taught me a big lesson about setting those damn things. I learnt that jane.bloggs@footballclub.com was on maternity leave and joe.bloggs@footballclub.com was out of the country for the rest of the week. Joe was high up in the company and probably had nice stuff in his house.
The SMS texts stopped. Job done for the price of three emails, and a name-scrape from a website.
Give the man a break. He only copied and pasted from TFA.
As a player of all types of games, although not so much FPS these day, yes, yes we expect some shitty little server in the corner of an office to run forever.
I've invested time, money, and knowledge (captured for others to use) on these F2P games. And yes, I do expect them to run forever. I'm playing one of Zynga's at the moment and I enjoy the casual nature of it. There's no pause button. I can chat to the wife while playing. I can even surf during those "resource recharging" moments. I've met new players...
There's a metric shitload of bugs. There's zero feedback from Zynga. All in all, Zynga dump a beta version and the community field all the bugs reports and possible workarounds. All Zynga does is count their cash and reboot the server once a week.
So, to repeat myself again, yes, yes I do expect the games to run forever on a shitty little server stuffed in the corner of an office.
I've run servers myself in the past. The cost was minimal. The effort involved was a few mouse clicks once a week. I could still do it today with even less effort, but maybe a little more electric, and I'm only one man.
No excuses. Run those servers forever.
It should probably be added that very small engine cars (650cc - yes, they do exist USA people), electric, LPG and vintage cars are not required to pay road tax.
It's not so much based on engine size but on CO(2) emissions.
I'd be that tourist and $16, when converted to my local currency, is only slightly over the cost of a single cinema ticket here.
Here is the UK and we are rountinely ripped off.
Are the drawings dimensioned in feet and fractions of inches?
I haven't touched imperial in twenty-five years, but when I did, everything was in inches. From 10 metres to 0.02mm, everything was dimensioned in inches. Inches were broken down into thousandths.
I can't even begin to imagine talking in feet and inches. Saying "two feet, eight and three-eighths" it so long compared with "eight-two-two mil" (822mm). Even remembering the dimension while marking out must be an extra pain.
It's a horrible job.
One summer, I fancied an outside job. There was one for cutting grass all day. Perfect, I thought. Fresh air, sunlight, and that smell of freshly cut grass all day.
Before the engines were starter, litter picking was in order.
Most of the time it was on housing estates and people actually had the price of the grass cutting added to their rent. They still choose to throw out nappies, used toilet paper, last night's dinner, condoms, tampons and everything else yucky.
Little picking is a horrible job.
Cutting grass was the best summer job ever.
I should probably add that the AC wasn't me.
:)
When I troll, I troll logged in.
And, oh, you must be new here
SPACES, MY FRIEND, SPACES
Humans are not substantially more violent.
And if any one disagrees with me, I'll punch their face in.
Remembering names is a skill, John. It can be learnt. There are many tricks you can employ. I've gone from remembering no one to remembering 99% of the people I meet. Practice the skill and it'll grow.
:)
If you need any help, Tom, feel free to ask some other Dick or Harry on the internet.
I sense a theme: Intelligent people on this thread, like myself, have problems with English, spelling and remembering names.
All those things are skills and skills can be learnt.
I used to have a problem with names. Now I can name everyone in the office (150 people), 400 out of 700+ football players in the EPL. It took a lot of focus and practice - saying the names out loud, writing them down, not being scared to ask for someone's name for the tenth time.
English and spelling - practice again. Funnily enough, mostly learnt from posting and reading forums like this one.
I've only taken one proper test in my life, and it lasted three days.
One of the things tested was speed. I was actually told I was the first person, in the 20-year career of the tester, that finished all the questions in the spacial awareness test (aced it too!). The tests were designed so that no one should ever finish all the questions in the allotted time.
And I "failed" the hand writting test due to me cutting corners; trying to be too fast. It showed that goals are inportant to me, not processes - fasinating stuff.
Top 10 percentile in the UK! 'Av some of that thickos!