Indeed, using Sherlock I translated it to English:
"NVidia has just changed the denomination of its cards containing NV 35. It will not be Geforce 6800 and 6800 Ultra but 5900 and 5900 Ultra. This reversal is purely commercial. Indeed, there was a too important hiatus with the other products of the range (5200 to 5600) which could have implied that these products are exceeded."
This report seems to mainly constitute statements of the bleeding obvious, but one thing caught my eye:
He expects Linux to have a slight edge over Windows for three reasons: 1) the existence of fewer viruses targeting Linux desktops; 2) fewer problems caused by conflicting applications; and 3) difficulty of understanding and repairing the Window registry. Since Linux is purely file-based, administrators may be able to troubleshoot application problems more easily.
Interesting that these are mainly issues Microsoft has brought on itself, 1) through putting VBA in everything and making it a default option (even in their email clients), 2) through its DLL architecture, 3) by their insane "configuration as software protection by stealth" implementation of the registry.
I am totally amazed that Outlook will simply not allow you to extract a.EXE file attachment from an email (while cheerfully allowing it to occupy space in your inbox) because it might be a virus, but will cheerfully execute VBA scripts in messages without asking you.
This (Macintosh, at least originally) game affected me by making me very, very angry.
Here's a typical review: http://www.mobygames.com/game/sheet/p,24/ gameId,25 9/
One of the most over-rated game designs ever (there was absolutely no sense to it, but reviewers all seemed to think it was amazingly deep), the fundamental idea was that whenever one superpower did something another didn't like (establish an embassy in Bangkok, for example) they would play a game of chicken with nuclear weapons. Truly, the only way to win this game was not to play (and not to have bought it).
There's always the folks who're just trying to validate mailing lists or who are out-and-out con-men (the Nigerian swindle, for example). These folks don't need assets or physical capital, and they're every bit as annoying as someone selling fake viagra.
For that matter, trying to put an already marginal mail order business operating from a post box and email account in Venezuala out of business is probably tougher than you think.
Rendering Quake2 models is not exactly bleeding edge. Quake2 ran just fine on 200MHz computers; rendering models out of Quake2 is a lot less demanding than running Quake2.
In short, rendering Quake2 models in a demo is slightly more compelling that the Amiga boing demo running on a Dual GHz G4...wait I just got that from Apple.
Back in 1991 the company I worked for developed a computer-based training course to familiarise crane operators with a newly constructed custom-designed crane. The idea was to minimise down-time on the cranes for training purposes.
Anyway, I developed the final "integration" test, which was a simulation (2D) of the crane in operation, with controls that worked and an animated crane that did what you told it to. The simulator (aside from winning awards) was a huge hit with the crane operators who would "play it" during their lunch breaks.
In general, ALL of our CBT software was graphical and scenario based -- in essence we designed our courses as role-playing games where you were a character who needs to learn the stuff we were trying to teach to get through the story in the course. Any course material that was "optional" was available as a resource from a library (in the scenario).
The issue with simulations as training isn't that they don't work -- they clearly DO work. The issue is that they are often expensive to stage, and require more imagination and creativity to set up than "chalk and talk". And the best simulation -- assuming it's safe -- is the real thing. There's no better way to learn something than to have a task to complete that requires that you know it.
"New users of a computer system (even seasoned ones) require a certain amount of hospitality from that system. At a minimum a gracious computer system offers the following...: * Logical command names that follow from function * Careful handling of dangerous commands * Consistency and predictability in how commands behave and how they interpret their options and arguments * Easily found and readable online documentation * Comprehensive and useful feedback when commands fail"
In general, UNIX and its workalikes are just as atrocious in not satisfying these very reasonable minimum standards as ever. You can still easily annihilate your most important data by mistying "rm *.bak"...
The main thing that has become obsolete about the book is that some of the security issues with UNIX et al have shifted to Microsoft's OSes, not necessarily because UNIX has become more secure as that it has become relatively less popular.
It seems to me that the interview contained some very interesting questions and got fairly lame answers.
1. The cost of systems is going down, and Office can cost 1/3 the cost of a physical system.
It seems crazy to me that consumers are willing to pay $800 for a $300 computer with Windows and Office. Eventually consumers will figure this out too. Ballmer basically sticks his head in the sand and claims the two things aren't related. But when the price ratio of going Linux/OSS + PC vs. Windows/Office + PC goes up and the utility of the systems approachs par, this has to be bad news for MS.
2. People selling Linux-based PCs in developing nations and installing pirate copies of Windows...
Obviously, this is an ongoing problem for Microsoft. The real problem will be when the users don't immediately install Windows on the computer, and are happy with Linux. Indeed, this is the acid test for desktop Linux.
You're right, some games handled text puzzles much better than others and made failing a positive part of the gameplay experience (although dying every time you failed added nothing to the experience).
On the whole, I think LucasArts managed to capture most of the positive aspects of text adventures (e.g. with their rather insane object combinations) while avoiding the simple nastiness (e.g. if you didn't feed a sandwich to the small dog you needed to start your game over).
The 80386 processor introduced more than just 32-bit register addressing. It was also the first processor to support the protected mode interface to the processor and not to mention the ability to "virtualize" memory by paging to another medium. Windows 3.0 took advantage of the new features of the processor while still being a 16-bit operating system.
In what sense did the 80386 introduce any of these things? Leaving aside mainframe CPUs, Motorola's single chip CPUs preceded it.
The 68020 was released in 1984 (the 386 in 1985) and had all of these features. The 68000 (1979) only had 24-bit addressing and lacked a PMMU.
Intel has done an extraordinary job in predicting the market and following demand.
Reminds me of Gareth Powell, the Sydney Morning Herald's former computer section editor.
Anyway, for years he used to annoy the (bad afterlife situation) out of me and everyone I knew, but your typical (Microsoft worshipping IT manager) would use the typical "if you're so smart why aren't you rich/a famous columnist?" response.
Well, finally, after having tried to correct his various idiocies with letters to the editor (rejected; he was the editor) he was featured on a well-respected TV show called Media Watch, which found numerous cases of blatant plagiarism -- he would essentially put his byline on other people's articles or press releases -- and errors in his articles. He lost his job the next day. (He still works in the industry, but then plagiarism is almost expected these days.)
These games didn't die, they were assimilated...
on
Top Ten Dying Game Genres
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
In essence, the problem with this article is that it misses the point of most modern game designs. Let's take some top selling games from the last year or two:
Grand Theft Auto III: Vice City WarCraft III NeverWinter Nights
Each of these games has a role-playing component (develop your individual war leaders' skills).
Each of these games has a puzzle-solving component (open the ancient seal by following clues).
Each of these games has a maze component (learn you way around Vice City).
Each of these games has a "dot-eating" component (pick up the gold, hidden item, etc.). Each of these games uses 3D graphics, canned video.
Each of these games has a "twitch" component (although in single-player mode, WC III and NWN allow you to pause to get your bearings or grab a snack).
In essence, all that the article shows is that the "one trick wonder" game is dead; you need to have more going for you than a single concept or a technology demo. Indeed, if you look at the graphic adventure -- it simply integrated the text adventure, the canned slide show, and a few mini-games.
There are a few minor things that have disappeared. E.g. being able to type text into a game has been replaced by selecting from canned responses? Why? Probably because most people find the process of figuring out that you have to SCRATCH your name into the rock and not WRITE, CARVE, or SCRAWL it to be too damn annoying.
I certainly can't say anything about KDE's stability vs. OS X's -- but OS X seems a lot more stable to me than XP. In particular, Explorer dying in XP tends to be very bad in XP.
My example was merely an extreme one to make a point: in general (and with relatively few exceptions), more modern software is SLOWER than older software.
And giving an example of a Microsoft Word 2000 document is pretty idiotic. Let's start with a WriteNow 1.0 document, how's Word handle that? Or let's see, maybe a Photoshop 7.0 document?
So a typical K-mart type will tend to experience performance REDUCTION if they get the latest and greatest software (without new hardware).
...this largely mirrors something I posted on an earlier thread (re: the "Hollywoodization" of the games industry and risk aversion). Still, I was hardly the first to point this out.
But there are independent software labels. Take a look at:
Of course, some of them live hand-to-mouth (i.e. on incomes of less than $100,000 a year) but, so do independent film makers and recording artists.
The fact is that like Hollywood, the games industry is dominated by risk-averse money people who spurn originality in favor of the sure thing. But like Hollywood, the games industry is always willing to leap onto independent innovators (the "My Big Fat Greek Weddings" of games), such as id.
Don't be surprised when yesterday's bold innovators become part of today's problem, that's part of the creative life cycle (just as great innovative scientists become curmudgeons in their old age).
One of the really annoying aspects of having a menu in every window is that sometimes you go for the wrong menu (bringing the wrong document or instance of the application forward). Admit it, you've done it!
I think more needs to be made of the Windows tendency to waste vertical screen real estate. Once you've subtracted status bars, title bars, menu bars, toolbars, etc. from your screen, particularly on 1024x768 or smaller displays, you've got very little usable HEIGHT. But height is what you crave for most purposes. It's particularly galling to waste space in MDI for nested title bars and status bars AND a task bar. We're taking a serious fraction of your screen showing absolutely nothing useful.
It's good to see restrictions on the use of things that might, conceivably be used by ingenious people as weapons. Luckily, the NRA is busy protecting our right to use objects intended to be used by idiots as weapons.
Slashdot Mirror
There was an award for that category...
It was won by the University of Tokya and Sega for a highly technical character animation innovation.
Indeed, using Sherlock I translated it to English:
"NVidia has just changed the denomination of its cards containing NV 35. It will not be Geforce 6800 and 6800 Ultra but 5900 and 5900 Ultra. This reversal is purely commercial. Indeed, there was a too important hiatus with the other products of the range (5200 to 5600) which could have implied that these products are exceeded."
"subtle philosphical theme about how we percieve reality"
You mean the boring adolescent half-understood existentialist crap between the action scenes? Well, the oracle at least was funny.
"I'm free. You're not. My reality is real. Yours isn't. Die!"
Yeah, subtle.
This report seems to mainly constitute statements of the bleeding obvious, but one thing caught my eye:
.EXE file attachment from an email (while cheerfully allowing it to occupy space in your inbox) because it might be a virus, but will cheerfully execute VBA scripts in messages without asking you.
He expects Linux to have a slight edge over Windows for three reasons: 1) the existence of fewer viruses targeting Linux desktops; 2) fewer problems caused by conflicting applications; and 3) difficulty of understanding and repairing the Window registry. Since Linux is purely file-based, administrators may be able to troubleshoot application problems more easily.
Interesting that these are mainly issues Microsoft has brought on itself, 1) through putting VBA in everything and making it a default option (even in their email clients), 2) through its DLL architecture, 3) by their insane "configuration as software protection by stealth" implementation of the registry.
I am totally amazed that Outlook will simply not allow you to extract a
This (Macintosh, at least originally) game affected me by making me very, very angry.
/ gameId,25 9/
Here's a typical review:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/sheet/p,24
One of the most over-rated game designs ever (there was absolutely no sense to it, but reviewers all seemed to think it was amazingly deep), the fundamental idea was that whenever one superpower did something another didn't like (establish an embassy in Bangkok, for example) they would play a game of chicken with nuclear weapons. Truly, the only way to win this game was not to play (and not to have bought it).
There's always the folks who're just trying to validate mailing lists or who are out-and-out con-men (the Nigerian swindle, for example). These folks don't need assets or physical capital, and they're every bit as annoying as someone selling fake viagra.
For that matter, trying to put an already marginal mail order business operating from a post box and email account in Venezuala out of business is probably tougher than you think.
Rendering Quake2 models is not exactly bleeding edge. Quake2 ran just fine on 200MHz computers; rendering models out of Quake2 is a lot less demanding than running Quake2.
In short, rendering Quake2 models in a demo is slightly more compelling that the Amiga boing demo running on a Dual GHz G4...wait I just got that from Apple.
Back in 1991 the company I worked for developed a computer-based training course to familiarise crane operators with a newly constructed custom-designed crane. The idea was to minimise down-time on the cranes for training purposes.
Anyway, I developed the final "integration" test, which was a simulation (2D) of the crane in operation, with controls that worked and an animated crane that did what you told it to. The simulator (aside from winning awards) was a huge hit with the crane operators who would "play it" during their lunch breaks.
In general, ALL of our CBT software was graphical and scenario based -- in essence we designed our courses as role-playing games where you were a character who needs to learn the stuff we were trying to teach to get through the story in the course. Any course material that was "optional" was available as a resource from a library (in the scenario).
The issue with simulations as training isn't that they don't work -- they clearly DO work. The issue is that they are often expensive to stage, and require more imagination and creativity to set up than "chalk and talk". And the best simulation -- assuming it's safe -- is the real thing. There's no better way to learn something than to have a task to complete that requires that you know it.
"New users of a computer system (even seasoned ones) require a certain amount of hospitality from that system. At a minimum a gracious computer system offers the following...:
* Logical command names that follow from function
* Careful handling of dangerous commands
* Consistency and predictability in how commands behave and how they interpret their options and arguments
* Easily found and readable online documentation
* Comprehensive and useful feedback when commands fail"
In general, UNIX and its workalikes are just as atrocious in not satisfying these very reasonable minimum standards as ever. You can still easily annihilate your most important data by mistying "rm *.bak"...
The main thing that has become obsolete about the book is that some of the security issues with UNIX et al have shifted to Microsoft's OSes, not necessarily because UNIX has become more secure as that it has become relatively less popular.
...in a standup routine. At least for men.
Men have no idea what impresses women. They build bridges, join the army. And write open source software... to get laid.
It seems to me that the interview contained some very interesting questions and got fairly lame answers.
1. The cost of systems is going down, and Office can cost 1/3 the cost of a physical system.
It seems crazy to me that consumers are willing to pay $800 for a $300 computer with Windows and Office. Eventually consumers will figure this out too. Ballmer basically sticks his head in the sand and claims the two things aren't related. But when the price ratio of going Linux/OSS + PC vs. Windows/Office + PC goes up and the utility of the systems approachs par, this has to be bad news for MS.
2. People selling Linux-based PCs in developing nations and installing pirate copies of Windows...
Obviously, this is an ongoing problem for Microsoft. The real problem will be when the users don't immediately install Windows on the computer, and are happy with Linux. Indeed, this is the acid test for desktop Linux.
Actually just sticking an x86 processor in there and letting it run VPC and Cocoa threads could be viable, BUT...
I think the AMD HyperTransport chipset + IBM PPC 970 is far more likely.
Apple has already released several Macs with built-in PC hardware to vaguely enthusiastic responses.
The computer needs to parse the questions in the exam correctly first. At the moment, humans win this race pretty easily.
It's only the index system of course...
You're right, some games handled text puzzles much better than others and made failing a positive part of the gameplay experience (although dying every time you failed added nothing to the experience).
On the whole, I think LucasArts managed to capture most of the positive aspects of text adventures (e.g. with their rather insane object combinations) while avoiding the simple nastiness (e.g. if you didn't feed a sandwich to the small dog you needed to start your game over).
The 80386 processor introduced more than just 32-bit register addressing. It was also the first processor to support the protected mode interface to the processor and not to mention the ability to "virtualize" memory by paging to another medium. Windows 3.0 took advantage of the new features of the processor while still being a 16-bit operating system.
In what sense did the 80386 introduce any of these things? Leaving aside mainframe CPUs, Motorola's single chip CPUs preceded it.
The 68020 was released in 1984 (the 386 in 1985) and had all of these features. The 68000 (1979) only had 24-bit addressing and lacked a PMMU.
Intel has done an extraordinary job in predicting the market and following demand.
It's good to be smart. It's better to be lucky.
Reminds me of Gareth Powell, the Sydney Morning Herald's former computer section editor.
Anyway, for years he used to annoy the (bad afterlife situation) out of me and everyone I knew, but your typical (Microsoft worshipping IT manager) would use the typical "if you're so smart why aren't you rich/a famous columnist?" response.
Well, finally, after having tried to correct his various idiocies with letters to the editor (rejected; he was the editor) he was featured on a well-respected TV show called Media Watch, which found numerous cases of blatant plagiarism -- he would essentially put his byline on other people's articles or press releases -- and errors in his articles. He lost his job the next day. (He still works in the industry, but then plagiarism is almost expected these days.)
In essence, the problem with this article is that it misses the point of most modern game designs. Let's take some top selling games from the last year or two:
Grand Theft Auto III: Vice City
WarCraft III
NeverWinter Nights
Each of these games has a role-playing component (develop your individual war leaders' skills).
Each of these games has a puzzle-solving component (open the ancient seal by following clues).
Each of these games has a maze component (learn you way around Vice City).
Each of these games has a "dot-eating" component (pick up the gold, hidden item, etc.). Each of these games uses 3D graphics, canned video.
Each of these games has a "twitch" component (although in single-player mode, WC III and NWN allow you to pause to get your bearings or grab a snack).
In essence, all that the article shows is that the "one trick wonder" game is dead; you need to have more going for you than a single concept or a technology demo. Indeed, if you look at the graphic adventure -- it simply integrated the text adventure, the canned slide show, and a few mini-games.
There are a few minor things that have disappeared. E.g. being able to type text into a game has been replaced by selecting from canned responses? Why? Probably because most people find the process of figuring out that you have to SCRATCH your name into the rock and not WRITE, CARVE, or SCRAWL it to be too damn annoying.
Just for your edification:
Photoshop supports 16 bits per channel (it's a menu option).
It also supports Lab and CMYK color spaces. Lab because it's a "nice" color space, and CMYK because, like RGB, it's a "useful" color space.
I certainly can't say anything about KDE's stability vs. OS X's -- but OS X seems a lot more stable to me than XP. In particular, Explorer dying in XP tends to be very bad in XP.
Obviously, mileage varies.
My example was merely an extreme one to make a point: in general (and with relatively few exceptions), more modern software is SLOWER than older software.
And giving an example of a Microsoft Word 2000 document is pretty idiotic. Let's start with a WriteNow 1.0 document, how's Word handle that? Or let's see, maybe a Photoshop 7.0 document?
So a typical K-mart type will tend to experience performance REDUCTION if they get the latest and greatest software (without new hardware).
...this largely mirrors something I posted on an earlier thread (re: the "Hollywoodization" of the games industry and risk aversion). Still, I was hardly the first to point this out.
But there are independent software labels. Take a look at:
Delta Tao
Ambrosia
Beenox
Of course, some of them live hand-to-mouth (i.e. on incomes of less than $100,000 a year) but, so do independent film makers and recording artists.
The fact is that like Hollywood, the games industry is dominated by risk-averse money people who spurn originality in favor of the sure thing. But like Hollywood, the games industry is always willing to leap onto independent innovators (the "My Big Fat Greek Weddings" of games), such as id.
Don't be surprised when yesterday's bold innovators become part of today's problem, that's part of the creative life cycle (just as great innovative scientists become curmudgeons in their old age).
One of the really annoying aspects of having a menu in every window is that sometimes you go for the wrong menu (bringing the wrong document or instance of the application forward). Admit it, you've done it!
I think more needs to be made of the Windows tendency to waste vertical screen real estate. Once you've subtracted status bars, title bars, menu bars, toolbars, etc. from your screen, particularly on 1024x768 or smaller displays, you've got very little usable HEIGHT. But height is what you crave for most purposes. It's particularly galling to waste space in MDI for nested title bars and status bars AND a task bar. We're taking a serious fraction of your screen showing absolutely nothing useful.
It's good to see restrictions on the use of things that might, conceivably be used by ingenious people as weapons. Luckily, the NRA is busy protecting our right to use objects intended to be used by idiots as weapons.
And er Stephen Hawking was hardly the first to suggest this.