Space flight is still so rare that 2 accidents can throw a real spanner into the works. Shuttles carry an insane amount of passengers compared to russian craft. If everything had gone right and I am talking budget here then the shuttle would have been ferrying people up and down like a big bus. Supported by dedicated cargo missles and an american space station like the russian Mir but a lot bigger.
This did not happen. Instead the shuttle became the one and only workhorse of the NASA and was badly funded while its controllers changed from techs to beancouters. Two accidents were the result and while the russians loose at most 3 crew members the americans whipe out 7 at a time.
However there is an other point. Russians are more practical people. Their capsules got escape options. They can eject the capsule from the missle giving them at least a change to escape. Further more the capsule is designed to come down by parachute so possibly they could have recovered from an accident like the first shuttle accident. Fact is that the crew of that shuttle didn't die until they hit the ground. Had the shuttle been fitted with an ejection system they could have had a change. (Kinda like the F111 where the entire cockpit is ejected)
Instead silly enough the americans built themselves a system with no escape and the russians have succesfully used their escape system.
Kinda like some people claim the russian fighter ejection system is currently the best in the world. (At least the claim made in an american documentary on the history of ejection seats).
Anyway the numbers that you mention are silly. Not only because they don't count the number of accidents but also since you seem to believe the russians never lost people in flight but other already pointed that out.
I got tons of legal software. Well not tons. A stack of about 30 centimeters of legit cd's (granted about half of that is phantasmorgia) , an even greater stack of floppies and I am fed up.
Why did I pay big money for games that often are broken and were never repaired? If they were normal physical products each and every game company would be in court getting its ass chewed out by consumer watchdog agencies.
And it just doesn't look like it is getting any better. Hell with "copy-protection" schemes it even gotten worse. Buy the legal product and you end up with something you can't copy to preserve the orginal CD, wich is a legal right in holland, and no way to get new cd's (only often send to american residents).
Where as if you download the game you can archive it as much as you want, you have no bloody keys to keep, and because they rip out the cd checking code the game frequently even runs faster. I lost 1 cd to my legally own "the longest journey", got the box if you don't believe me, I downloaded the game and notice how playing it from virtual cd's is a lot faster. No waiting for the CD to spin up to play a movie.
So game companies should get their act together. I was a paying customer who bought all his games except doom, no credit card. I now got even more money then when I was a kid and you lost me. Spend some time figuring that out. I tended to buy at least 1 game every single month and frequently more.
Have I just become a thief or am I rebelling against being ripped off by selling me broken products?
Call me strange but for some reason I presume that when the extension says PHP it really isn't java on the server. Not impossible java is used somewhere on the server but usually not. Same with extensions as asp.
Go and check the server signature and you will also see java mentioned far less often then the other platform/languages.
So far from the revolutionary language claimed by java fans it is just another tool. Suitable for some jobs, unsuitable for others. As a programmer you have dozens of languages to choose from and a decent developer knows at least half a dozen reasonably well.
I am not saying java is crap or anything like that. Same with.Net or mono. I just don't believe they are the second coming.
This guy seems to want to change to something new and exciting for change sake(?) and that I can't stand. C works. Gnome works. Concentrate on other matters first. Or at least give us an example first. Code something in a new platform and show why it is better.
Too many times I see people telling stories oh if only people would use programming language X it will all be better. Frankly it pisses me off since so far noone has actually gone out and bothered to prove it..Net is hardly a runaway success. Java is still just one of many languages. And now they are adding mono to the mix as the next saviour.
Thanks but no thanks.
I am not against mono. Add all the language hooks you want. Code your desktop in php gui version if you like. Just don't tell me it is going to save the world.
Most amazing in this type of/. article is that each time someone mentions a language I never heard of before. I am no genious but after a couple of years you would expect to have seen them all. No there is always some new language someone invented to solve all the worlds problems.
Every OS out there supports multi processor. OpenBSD is the last to get it. Geez even bloody Windows has got it by now in the desktop versions.
I guess first post or something is more important then facts.
BSD may be many things but people like this are only hurting it as anyone with a clue about operating systems knows that SMP is old stuff by now. Of course there is a good reason OpenBSD is late. SMP brings a whole lot of issues regarding security with it and OpenBSD is about security, not speed.
Seems to be more like them obtaining your phone records. IE the famous, ah but you called your lover 5 minutes after your husband died and only then the ambulance, from the movies.
Wiretapping falls under surveillance. Getting you to appear before the judge to defend yourselve against being tapped would be rather pointless. Surveillance works on the premise that the suspect doesn't know about it.
I am afraid there are three kinds of people who don't like this. Criminals, loonies and people who think wiretapping is fine as long as their is a ton of paperwork signed by a judge and that is put out in the open after a certain period and that period being no more then a year.
Wiretapping is no different from them intercepting mail, phone tapping or bugging a place. All needed for them to do the job the normal people want them to do. Just make sure that it is open and in the public eye.
Digital wiretapping would make it too easy just to do a blanket sweep. Me being investigated because they think I killed someone is good, me being investigated because my income is in a certain target is bad.
I live in holland. Drugs are here more or less legal. So what do we do with a person who deals LEGAL drugs in holland and just happens to sell stuff to american tourists who themselves smuggle it to the US?
Hand them over ofcourse. Despite the fact people in america do not get a fair trial. If you believe they do look a little bit closer at the system of plea bargaining, people are in jail in america without ever having been found guilty or even have had a trial in front of a jury or judge. Nice eh? Oh sure you can refuse the plea bargain. couple of years in jail vs life when you got no money and no experience with the legal system.
No I am afraid that the worst thing in the world that ever happened was the collapse of the soviet union. At least when they were around america had some opposition. Sure sucked if you lived in the soviet union but now the whole world is living in the US.
This is basically just looking at a file and seeing if it has the same fingerprint as a known virus. Just like fingerprints it only works when a match is found in your database/virus definition file. If I take your fingerprints I can match them against the police database to see if you are known. It tells me if you are a known criminal. It does not tell me if you are a new criminal/virus.
So a new virus can only be detected when it is discovered and its signature put into your database. This takes time. Since modifying the signature is easy to do each new version of MyDoom requires a new signature and therefore an update.
The other method is too look at patterns in the code but this is a lot harder.
Ever since I started to work in computers years back java been around as the great solution. First it would change the web. Remember all those applets? Gone. Then it would change web pages on the server. Well that is still hanging around but I see more perl/asp/php then java.
It was supposed to be cross platform. Well I use the azureus bittorrent client and it is indeed cross platform. It is also a bit of a resource hog.
And that really is my problem. While intrestting in many ways java has always left me with the impression that its insides are a mess or the people who code for it are on 2gig memory machines.
Lean and efficient are words I look for in my desktop. Java would not be the first language I would think off.
For years people been predicting the death of C and it hasn't happened yet. Could this be a clue? That perhaps all the pretenders are just that? Pretenders without any hope of ever coming close to the true king of programming languages?
If this guy really wants a mono or java desktop then let him fork gnome and code it his way. Prove that java/mono is the better way.
Surely that is the opensource way? He got an itch, let him scratch it.
As an aside, anyone know how much of suns java desktop is actually written in java?
No error display: If you don't know what is wrong it certainly is not going to tell you.
When you insert a small usb plug in the usb hole it will show a gentle message informing you that size doesn't matter. Then runoff with the parallel cable.
A constant reminder to upgrade your lease to a purchase.
Known problems:
Once a month the inkt is known to leak.
It will complain that you never ask it to print anything intresting anymore.
It will demand the finest in inks then only consume a tiny portion of it claiming it is on a diet.
mmm, well there is this. Does that count? It is a little project called the kernel. Some linux fans seem to think it is important.
Grep it for HP and Compaq. Now grep it for IBM.
So I would say HP is as committed as IBM. Both have something to gain by linux. They just have different ways of going about it. Yes that Linux add is nice. Helping making the kernel available for free is also nice.
So? People gamble on longer odds
on
Reanimated Lobsters?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
They are dead anyway. Adding a tiny percentage of surviving dead no matter how small doesn't sound all that crazy.
The real problem I am afraid isn't tech. It is why. Why should we want to unfreeze these people in a hundred years? It is not like we are running out of people.
Unless they are talking Garfield like comics, small square panels all the same size, how the hell is it going to fit?
Now the japanese also got strips like that, except theirs tend to four panels per strip and are vertical. These I could imagine being on a GBA screen. One panel at a time. Down and up to flip panels, left and right to flip strips.
Even then it would be hell to read the more wordy ones. There is a huge difference between watching an animation WITHOUT subs (japanese don't need their anime subbed:P ) and reading handdrawn text.
The more regular manga would be even harder as like in comics or strips there are no rules about the size of a panel. You could of course pan a large page on the gba screen but that sounds like a hazzle.
Pity there are no screenshots.
All this talk about movies, music, wireless play and now manga being squeezed on the GBA is making me think that there really would be a market for a far more powerfull device with a bigger screen that could do all this. At least in japan.
As it can first of be emulated resulting in every game being available. Emulators also exist for some PDA so you can still play on the move.
Second is that the rom images are tiny smaller then an mp3 song often wich makes it trivial to distro them.
Third is the fact that there exist a couple of flashcards for the gba that you can use to copy images too. This even results in you having ONE catridge with a dozen games and save games you can edit on the pc.
But most important is that GBA games are insanely priced. Although there are original games most are frankly based on tech perfect 10 years ago and more some being little more then direct copies. Nonetheless they cost the same as "full" console games.
This all makes the GBA's content one of the most copied in history. Gamecube != Gameboy. GBA just makes it far to economical too copy games.
Mmm, ps2 and x-box runs linux. So he seems to argue that since those sell or something if we get linux to run games then linux will sell.
Some of the posters suggest a knoppix like idea so that you could have a selfbooting game. Pretty much like a console in fact.
So what is stopping that. First of all why the hell would anyone want to use linux to run a game in a console way? Linux is a multi-tasking multi-user kernel. Games are single task single user software. You could probably run Quake on a mainframe but some might just suggest it is a tad wastefull.
Writing a kernel/os to run games is not hard. Writing an OS is not hard countless are writting by students each year. Writing an OS that actually runs on different hardware with usefull software is the real trick. Getting it stable is an even bigger trick.
But the real gigantic almost impossible trick? Getting it to supply software developers with a whole bunch of routines that make their jobs easier.
This is the real trick behind DirectX from Microsoft. Turning the hodgepodge that is the PC into a single API. Use DirectX and you can more or less forget about the underlying hardware. Sure there is a performance hit wich is why MS itself does not use DirectX on the X-box but it is worth it for the ease of use.
Now not everyone needs Direct-X. ID is famous for using Opengl but that is just the same idea by another company and focusing on video while DirectX does everything. ID did use DirectX for things like input and sound if I remember correctly. This they missed when they ported it to linux but to people that can code 3D engines writing a sound engine is easy enough. All the Linux games are hardly sound wonders. Correct me if I am wrong please.
Now the idea of a self booting game can actually be attractive to game developers. Add copy protection and you can in one sweep disable daemon tools and similar. You also get around those ***** who run windows 2003. Games from 5 years ago would still boot and run despite the fact you got a new generation of OS installed.
But to do this you would need to create a directX like enviroment.
And this I think is going to be very very hard.
Yes if game developers were smart then they would work with linux developers in getting this underway. The knowledge is there since only a few years ago direct X was unheard off.
They would also realise that relying on Microsoft is not very smart. MS makes games so effectively this is like say ferrari using michelin tires if michelin had their own F1 team. What is to stop MS from keeping the best DirectX api calls to themselves or only reveal them to companies that do not port games to the PS2/gamecube?
The game industry is however not smart.
Only if somehow someone manages to come up with an easy self booting distro wich can detect the fast majority of hardware and have fast stable drivers and an complete api to handle core game functionality then maybe you will have something.
I don't think this is possible. Look at the infighting started when bruce perens wanted to start a linux distro and decided to include only 1 desktop. Can you imagine when it comes time to decide on 3D api? Binarie vs Source? Sound engine?
Exactly what is the problem with having to compile everything? Should I, developer of application X, really distro binaries for every damn processor? Any idea how many there are? You can't just say, oh but do only the major ones, since the major ones are x86 and that leaves you out.
So you should love having to compile everything. The alternative is simply switching to "normal" hardware. Love having to go voting in pooring rain. The alternative is not to vote on any day.
I really miss the days of simpler cars. I miss minimal computer control
You know I remember when cars had NO computers at all. Not even minimal. Geez. Kids these days. We had to push our car up a mountain through the snow every day and when we got on the way down the landlord would get in and ride down and drive over us. But we were happy.
Try it if you got word installed. Take a source document, with all the meta data showing it came from the MPAA, and copy and paste text from it to your own new document. Now closely examine your own new document. See? No MPAA meta data.
The only way this could have happened if they used the MPAA wordfile to add their own text too.
So they did not use simply the text. They used the entire MS word file from the MPAA. You only do this if your own additions are going to be minor. At least that is how it works when I write a document.
Copy and pasting a quote, acceptable. Just adding your name to an MPAA drafter document, unaccaptable.
My grandfather used coal to keep his house warm. As a kid we had a big truck drive up to our house deliviring oil to warm our house.
Nowadays in holland we are all hooked up the gas network. How does the coal man and oil man make his living? Answer they don't. They lost their job because of changes in technology. Same with factory workers. Typists. Farm hands. Miners. Type setters. Etc Etc Etc.
Artist are a spoiled lot. Everyone else has had to adjust to technology taking their jobs away. Now it is your turn. Exactly were is it written you are guaranteed to make a living selling pieces of plastic at 100 times production cost?
Maybe you will just have to go back to 100 years ago. Before copyright and the music industry and simply perform live. At least you job is not entirely gone. You will just have to work like all the other performers who work live.
Did shakespear, beethoven and all the other greats need the MPAA/RIAA?
So my answer is: YES. Others have lost their jobs because of changes. Answer me in turn: why should you be excempt?
I am a sysadmin and a lot of times I just need a short script to automate a task. These are not super critical things or even that complex. I could hire someone to type them in every so often. However they quickly become complex when I try to build in very basic error handling. In fact as basic as the examples shown on the website, oops didn't work, retry it for a while then if it still doesn't work, do something else like tell me.
This would allow me to use somebody elses code to save me work. Call me a lazy bastard. For sysadmins that is a compliment.
You are wrong when you see shell scripting as a step up. In many ways when you are a sysadmin shell scripting remains one of the basic needs.
What I disagree with is that this will teach people wrong programming routines. Look at the code out there. They don't need a retry shell script to do that. Bad code has been with us since we invented programming. Rejoice. It means someone is going to be paid to clean it up.
Of course I am guessing here since the site seems down but this kinda stuff is usually aimed at the business market. Ask you boss for a nice dvd player and widescreen monitor. Sure someone here could use your job:P
But yes playing certain media files on linux is only possible by breaking the law if you live in the wrong country. As in any democracy. Chinese are free to watch all the movies on linux they want. Funny world isn't it.
One of the few who get it apparently.
on
Fault Tolerant Shell
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· Score: 4, Informative
This is indeed little more then the wrapper that you describe. Yet most seem to comment on its non-claimed properties of fixing the programmers errors. Wich it really really doesn't. In fact it is worse since this one would happily keep trying to execute a command like "rm -Rf / home/me/tmp".
I have often had to write such wrappers myself.
Sure even easier/better would have been if somebody added this to say BASH as an extension but perhaps that is not possible.
How often have you needed to write horrible bash code just to pull data from an unreliable source and ended up either with a script that worked totally blind "command && command && command &&" wich never reported if it failed for days on end or ended up with several pages just to catch all the damn network errors that could occur.
I will definitly be giving this little language a try in the near future. Just another tool for the smart sys-admin. (smart people write as little code as possible. Let others work for you)
This is not about catching scripting errors. It does not fix your code. It is about catching errors in the enviroment that scripts are running in.
Shell scripts should be short and easy to write. I have seen plenty of them fail due to some resource or another being temporarily down. At first people are neat and then send an email to notify the admin. When this then results in a ton of emails everytime some dodo knocks out the DNS they turn it off and forget about it.
Every scripting language has their own special little niche. BASH for simple things, perl for heavy text manipulation, PHP for creating HTML output. This scripting language is pretty much like BASH but takes failure as given. The example shows clearly how it works. Instead of ending up with PERL like scripts to catch all the possible errors you add two lines and you got a wonderfull small script, wich is what shell scripts should be, that is none the less capable of recovering from an error. This script will simply retry when someone knocks out the DNS again.
This new language will not catch your errors. It will catch other peoples errors. Sure a really good programmer can do this himself. A really good programmer can also create his own libraries. Most find of us in admin jobs find it easier to use somebody elses code rather then constantly reinvent the wheel.
Slashdot Mirror
This did not happen. Instead the shuttle became the one and only workhorse of the NASA and was badly funded while its controllers changed from techs to beancouters. Two accidents were the result and while the russians loose at most 3 crew members the americans whipe out 7 at a time.
However there is an other point. Russians are more practical people. Their capsules got escape options. They can eject the capsule from the missle giving them at least a change to escape. Further more the capsule is designed to come down by parachute so possibly they could have recovered from an accident like the first shuttle accident. Fact is that the crew of that shuttle didn't die until they hit the ground. Had the shuttle been fitted with an ejection system they could have had a change. (Kinda like the F111 where the entire cockpit is ejected)
Instead silly enough the americans built themselves a system with no escape and the russians have succesfully used their escape system.
Kinda like some people claim the russian fighter ejection system is currently the best in the world. (At least the claim made in an american documentary on the history of ejection seats).
Anyway the numbers that you mention are silly. Not only because they don't count the number of accidents but also since you seem to believe the russians never lost people in flight but other already pointed that out.
Why did I pay big money for games that often are broken and were never repaired? If they were normal physical products each and every game company would be in court getting its ass chewed out by consumer watchdog agencies.
And it just doesn't look like it is getting any better. Hell with "copy-protection" schemes it even gotten worse. Buy the legal product and you end up with something you can't copy to preserve the orginal CD, wich is a legal right in holland, and no way to get new cd's (only often send to american residents).
Where as if you download the game you can archive it as much as you want, you have no bloody keys to keep, and because they rip out the cd checking code the game frequently even runs faster. I lost 1 cd to my legally own "the longest journey", got the box if you don't believe me, I downloaded the game and notice how playing it from virtual cd's is a lot faster. No waiting for the CD to spin up to play a movie.
So game companies should get their act together. I was a paying customer who bought all his games except doom, no credit card. I now got even more money then when I was a kid and you lost me. Spend some time figuring that out. I tended to buy at least 1 game every single month and frequently more.
Have I just become a thief or am I rebelling against being ripped off by selling me broken products?
Go and check the server signature and you will also see java mentioned far less often then the other platform/languages.
So far from the revolutionary language claimed by java fans it is just another tool. Suitable for some jobs, unsuitable for others. As a programmer you have dozens of languages to choose from and a decent developer knows at least half a dozen reasonably well.
I am not saying java is crap or anything like that. Same with .Net or mono. I just don't believe they are the second coming.
Too many times I see people telling stories oh if only people would use programming language X it will all be better. Frankly it pisses me off since so far noone has actually gone out and bothered to prove it. .Net is hardly a runaway success. Java is still just one of many languages. And now they are adding mono to the mix as the next saviour.
Thanks but no thanks.
I am not against mono. Add all the language hooks you want. Code your desktop in php gui version if you like. Just don't tell me it is going to save the world.
Most amazing in this type of /. article is that each time someone mentions a language I never heard of before. I am no genious but after a couple of years you would expect to have seen them all. No there is always some new language someone invented to solve all the worlds problems.
I guess first post or something is more important then facts.
BSD may be many things but people like this are only hurting it as anyone with a clue about operating systems knows that SMP is old stuff by now. Of course there is a good reason OpenBSD is late. SMP brings a whole lot of issues regarding security with it and OpenBSD is about security, not speed.
Wiretapping falls under surveillance. Getting you to appear before the judge to defend yourselve against being tapped would be rather pointless. Surveillance works on the premise that the suspect doesn't know about it.
I am afraid there are three kinds of people who don't like this. Criminals, loonies and people who think wiretapping is fine as long as their is a ton of paperwork signed by a judge and that is put out in the open after a certain period and that period being no more then a year.
Wiretapping is no different from them intercepting mail, phone tapping or bugging a place. All needed for them to do the job the normal people want them to do. Just make sure that it is open and in the public eye.
Digital wiretapping would make it too easy just to do a blanket sweep. Me being investigated because they think I killed someone is good, me being investigated because my income is in a certain target is bad.
Hand them over ofcourse. Despite the fact people in america do not get a fair trial. If you believe they do look a little bit closer at the system of plea bargaining, people are in jail in america without ever having been found guilty or even have had a trial in front of a jury or judge. Nice eh? Oh sure you can refuse the plea bargain. couple of years in jail vs life when you got no money and no experience with the legal system.
No I am afraid that the worst thing in the world that ever happened was the collapse of the soviet union. At least when they were around america had some opposition. Sure sucked if you lived in the soviet union but now the whole world is living in the US.
So a new virus can only be detected when it is discovered and its signature put into your database. This takes time. Since modifying the signature is easy to do each new version of MyDoom requires a new signature and therefore an update.
The other method is too look at patterns in the code but this is a lot harder.
Ever since I started to work in computers years back java been around as the great solution. First it would change the web. Remember all those applets? Gone. Then it would change web pages on the server. Well that is still hanging around but I see more perl/asp/php then java.
It was supposed to be cross platform. Well I use the azureus bittorrent client and it is indeed cross platform. It is also a bit of a resource hog.
And that really is my problem. While intrestting in many ways java has always left me with the impression that its insides are a mess or the people who code for it are on 2gig memory machines.
Lean and efficient are words I look for in my desktop. Java would not be the first language I would think off.
For years people been predicting the death of C and it hasn't happened yet. Could this be a clue? That perhaps all the pretenders are just that? Pretenders without any hope of ever coming close to the true king of programming languages?
If this guy really wants a mono or java desktop then let him fork gnome and code it his way. Prove that java/mono is the better way.
Surely that is the opensource way? He got an itch, let him scratch it.
As an aside, anyone know how much of suns java desktop is actually written in java?
Printer for woman features
Known problems:
Grep it for HP and Compaq. Now grep it for IBM.
So I would say HP is as committed as IBM. Both have something to gain by linux. They just have different ways of going about it. Yes that Linux add is nice. Helping making the kernel available for free is also nice.
The real problem I am afraid isn't tech. It is why. Why should we want to unfreeze these people in a hundred years? It is not like we are running out of people.
Now the japanese also got strips like that, except theirs tend to four panels per strip and are vertical. These I could imagine being on a GBA screen. One panel at a time. Down and up to flip panels, left and right to flip strips.
Even then it would be hell to read the more wordy ones. There is a huge difference between watching an animation WITHOUT subs (japanese don't need their anime subbed :P ) and reading handdrawn text.
The more regular manga would be even harder as like in comics or strips there are no rules about the size of a panel. You could of course pan a large page on the gba screen but that sounds like a hazzle.
Pity there are no screenshots.
All this talk about movies, music, wireless play and now manga being squeezed on the GBA is making me think that there really would be a market for a far more powerfull device with a bigger screen that could do all this. At least in japan.
Second is that the rom images are tiny smaller then an mp3 song often wich makes it trivial to distro them.
Third is the fact that there exist a couple of flashcards for the gba that you can use to copy images too. This even results in you having ONE catridge with a dozen games and save games you can edit on the pc.
But most important is that GBA games are insanely priced. Although there are original games most are frankly based on tech perfect 10 years ago and more some being little more then direct copies. Nonetheless they cost the same as "full" console games.
This all makes the GBA's content one of the most copied in history. Gamecube != Gameboy. GBA just makes it far to economical too copy games.
Some of the posters suggest a knoppix like idea so that you could have a selfbooting game. Pretty much like a console in fact.
So what is stopping that. First of all why the hell would anyone want to use linux to run a game in a console way? Linux is a multi-tasking multi-user kernel. Games are single task single user software. You could probably run Quake on a mainframe but some might just suggest it is a tad wastefull.
Writing a kernel/os to run games is not hard. Writing an OS is not hard countless are writting by students each year. Writing an OS that actually runs on different hardware with usefull software is the real trick. Getting it stable is an even bigger trick.
But the real gigantic almost impossible trick? Getting it to supply software developers with a whole bunch of routines that make their jobs easier.
This is the real trick behind DirectX from Microsoft. Turning the hodgepodge that is the PC into a single API. Use DirectX and you can more or less forget about the underlying hardware. Sure there is a performance hit wich is why MS itself does not use DirectX on the X-box but it is worth it for the ease of use.
Now not everyone needs Direct-X. ID is famous for using Opengl but that is just the same idea by another company and focusing on video while DirectX does everything. ID did use DirectX for things like input and sound if I remember correctly. This they missed when they ported it to linux but to people that can code 3D engines writing a sound engine is easy enough. All the Linux games are hardly sound wonders. Correct me if I am wrong please.
Now the idea of a self booting game can actually be attractive to game developers. Add copy protection and you can in one sweep disable daemon tools and similar. You also get around those ***** who run windows 2003. Games from 5 years ago would still boot and run despite the fact you got a new generation of OS installed.
But to do this you would need to create a directX like enviroment.
And this I think is going to be very very hard.
Yes if game developers were smart then they would work with linux developers in getting this underway. The knowledge is there since only a few years ago direct X was unheard off.
They would also realise that relying on Microsoft is not very smart. MS makes games so effectively this is like say ferrari using michelin tires if michelin had their own F1 team. What is to stop MS from keeping the best DirectX api calls to themselves or only reveal them to companies that do not port games to the PS2/gamecube?
The game industry is however not smart.
Only if somehow someone manages to come up with an easy self booting distro wich can detect the fast majority of hardware and have fast stable drivers and an complete api to handle core game functionality then maybe you will have something.
I don't think this is possible. Look at the infighting started when bruce perens wanted to start a linux distro and decided to include only 1 desktop. Can you imagine when it comes time to decide on 3D api? Binarie vs Source? Sound engine?
Exactly what is the problem with having to compile everything? Should I, developer of application X, really distro binaries for every damn processor? Any idea how many there are? You can't just say, oh but do only the major ones, since the major ones are x86 and that leaves you out.
So you should love having to compile everything. The alternative is simply switching to "normal" hardware. Love having to go voting in pooring rain. The alternative is not to vote on any day.
You know I remember when cars had NO computers at all. Not even minimal. Geez. Kids these days. We had to push our car up a mountain through the snow every day and when we got on the way down the landlord would get in and ride down and drive over us. But we were happy.
Intresting idea but unless you live in venice how are you going to get your ship up the highstreet?
Hoist the electic window and shiver me sheet metal does not quite have the same ring.
The only way this could have happened if they used the MPAA wordfile to add their own text too.
So they did not use simply the text. They used the entire MS word file from the MPAA. You only do this if your own additions are going to be minor. At least that is how it works when I write a document.
Copy and pasting a quote, acceptable. Just adding your name to an MPAA drafter document, unaccaptable.
Nowadays in holland we are all hooked up the gas network. How does the coal man and oil man make his living? Answer they don't. They lost their job because of changes in technology. Same with factory workers. Typists. Farm hands. Miners. Type setters. Etc Etc Etc.
Artist are a spoiled lot. Everyone else has had to adjust to technology taking their jobs away. Now it is your turn. Exactly were is it written you are guaranteed to make a living selling pieces of plastic at 100 times production cost?
Maybe you will just have to go back to 100 years ago. Before copyright and the music industry and simply perform live. At least you job is not entirely gone. You will just have to work like all the other performers who work live.
Did shakespear, beethoven and all the other greats need the MPAA/RIAA?
So my answer is: YES. Others have lost their jobs because of changes. Answer me in turn: why should you be excempt?
This would allow me to use somebody elses code to save me work. Call me a lazy bastard. For sysadmins that is a compliment.
You are wrong when you see shell scripting as a step up. In many ways when you are a sysadmin shell scripting remains one of the basic needs.
What I disagree with is that this will teach people wrong programming routines. Look at the code out there. They don't need a retry shell script to do that. Bad code has been with us since we invented programming. Rejoice. It means someone is going to be paid to clean it up.
Of course I am guessing here since the site seems down but this kinda stuff is usually aimed at the business market. Ask you boss for a nice dvd player and widescreen monitor. Sure someone here could use your job :P
But yes playing certain media files on linux is only possible by breaking the law if you live in the wrong country. As in any democracy. Chinese are free to watch all the movies on linux they want. Funny world isn't it.
I have often had to write such wrappers myself. Sure even easier/better would have been if somebody added this to say BASH as an extension but perhaps that is not possible.
How often have you needed to write horrible bash code just to pull data from an unreliable source and ended up either with a script that worked totally blind "command && command && command &&" wich never reported if it failed for days on end or ended up with several pages just to catch all the damn network errors that could occur.
I will definitly be giving this little language a try in the near future. Just another tool for the smart sys-admin. (smart people write as little code as possible. Let others work for you)
Shell scripts should be short and easy to write. I have seen plenty of them fail due to some resource or another being temporarily down. At first people are neat and then send an email to notify the admin. When this then results in a ton of emails everytime some dodo knocks out the DNS they turn it off and forget about it.
Every scripting language has their own special little niche. BASH for simple things, perl for heavy text manipulation, PHP for creating HTML output. This scripting language is pretty much like BASH but takes failure as given. The example shows clearly how it works. Instead of ending up with PERL like scripts to catch all the possible errors you add two lines and you got a wonderfull small script, wich is what shell scripts should be, that is none the less capable of recovering from an error. This script will simply retry when someone knocks out the DNS again.
This new language will not catch your errors. It will catch other peoples errors. Sure a really good programmer can do this himself. A really good programmer can also create his own libraries. Most find of us in admin jobs find it easier to use somebody elses code rather then constantly reinvent the wheel.