I was under the impression that Windows XP Home edition had a price tag of $199. That's way too much to spend just to be able to run some games, not to mention the generally unclean feeling it would give me.
Why do you feel the need to malign Linux users? Think about who uses Windows at home. Pretty much everyone, including 14 year olds who don't hesitate to download whatever they like. Linux users are acutely aware of the difference between free software and proprietary software. I'd venture to say that most Linux users would jump at the chance to pay for the Linux version of a game as a way to encourage publishers to release for their platform.
It's fairly easy to pick libraries that have been ported to all the popular platforms. SDL is, of course, the obvious choice, although the Allegro game programming library might work well for 2d games. Stick to ANSI standard C (or whatever it is you're using) and you should be able to compile anywhere. Should being the key word, as bugs can creep in, sometimes not even directly in your code. The real work is making sure that your code is as compatible as you think it is, which definitely adds some time. It's not so much that writing for Linux is harder than for Windows or vice versa, it's that you can't always be sure that multiple targets will behave as they should. Just like web developers have to test in all the browsers.
I also hear that DirectX guarantees more than OpenGL does. DirectX has features which are guaranteed to at least be implemented in software, whereas OpenGL has many extensions that may or may not be present.
I read that as, "When Martin Luther King led the nonviolent machines...." You have no idea how disconcerting it was. Now that I'm sure I haven't slipped into a parallel world, I agree.
Just before questioning. They can't ask questions about the crime before making you aware of your rights. Arrest is allowed, but they must be read before you are questioned.
I wouldn't say never, although I was talking more about the viability of speech as an input method from a hypothetical standpoint rather than a practical one. From a practical standpoint, it wouldn't even have to be that fast to be competetive. An advanced typist can do around 60 wpm, and the average typist can only do half that. Speech recognition doesn't have to beat the holder of the world record, just the rest of us. If it could do 50 wpm, the speed gains would be well worth it. 100, and all but the best typists could be faster. Of course, it would still be noisy and wear out your voice, but I think it could be fast enough for a lot of uses.
Even if you figure a person can only speak proper English at half the speed of a regular conversation (200 wpm, acc. to Wikipedia), that's still 100 wpm, which is way faster than most of us type.
"Yes, I really mean that. Typing is faster than talking, for anybody who's any good at it. And not by a little - by a lot. If you want to get a document into a computer quickly, use a keyboard."
I don't think that's correct. According to Wikipedia, Barbara Blackburn, the world's fastest typist, has hit a peak speed of 212 wpm, with a sustained speed of 170 wpm. Conversations happen at about 200 wpm.
Yeah! Except it would work better if the planet we need to destroy wasn't also the one we're currently on. We'd better build colony ships too. I'll round up the telephone sanitizers.
Perhaps because the comment doesn't possess any of the things that it requires to be a part of the discussion -- namely, the commenter's reasoning. It's just a naked assertion, and on top of that, it's a controversial one.
I'm really not convinced of this thing's utility. It's assuming that since a neutral "handshake" position puts the least strain on a person's wrist, it must be best to hold it in that position all the time. Joints are made to be used, so it's silly to decide that immobilizing them will solve the problem. I suspect that staying immobile too long is a bad idea. The real problem is, like the acronym says, repetetive *strain*. Learning to use your joints in the way they work best will get you farther than locking them in place.
Guitarists, for example play for long stretches at a time, but most (decent ones) don't end up hurting themselves. Anyone who's played the guitar can tell you that it's not really an ergonomically constructed device. Why don't we hurt ourselves when we twist our wrists backwards and make strange movements very quickly, while office workers manage to destroy their wrists pushing buttons and scooting a mouse around? First of all, musicians practice for hours to figure out how not to hurt their wrists. Second, musicians don't usually play for eight hours straight. My advice to anyone who feels an RSI coming on is to take breaks, but also to examine very closely how you operate these devices. Are you bending your wrist funny to move the mouse, or reaching with a single finger rather than moving your whole hand when typing?
Basically, it's okay to move joints within their range of motion all you like, but every joint has positions in which it can take some stress, and positions in which it can't. Everyone has been told to "always lift with your legs." You need to know similar rules for other joints. You stress a joint whenever you move it out of its safest position then try to exert force through it. For keyboarding, this means reaching with a finger or bending your wrists back then trying to press a key. Keeping your wrists straight and moving your whole hand when you reach for a key is the way to go. Also, making sure never to stretch your hand out when chording is a good idea. Left shift for right hand keys, and vice versa. For mousing, putting your whole hand on the mouse and bending your wrist to move it strains you unduly. A better solution is to hold it with your fingertips and use every joint you can to distribute the action. The fingertips and wrist for fine motion, and the rest of the arm for gross motions. It's also helpful to rotate your hands a little closer to the handshake position, for both mousing and keyboarding.
Of course, some people have already sustained joint damage, and may need to immobilize the joint until it heals. After that, better mousing technique should prevent further trouble, unless you're prone to injury for some other reason.
IANAPT, but I am a guy who types a lot, mouses a lot, and plays a lot of musical instruments, but has never sustained an RSI (except once when I played with a noisemaker for too long). I attribute that to my amazing technique.
It sounds like this mouse would be perfect for you, since you can't grip things, but I question how much utility it has for a person who is either trying to avoid injury in the first place or who is combating a minor RSI.
I, for one, welcome our new 64% slashdot humor overlords. I'd like to remind them that as an unknown Internet personality I could be helpful in watching others toiling in their series of tubes.
But it's not caused by using the joint. Joints are meant to be used. It's caused by *misusing* the joint, which means you're stressing it in a way that it can't handle. That's why it's a repetetive *strain* injury rather than a repetetive motion injury. Simply immobilizing it may work, but I think that's a bit of an overreaction unless the damage is already so severe that any movement exacerbates it. A better approach would be to think about how you could change your movement to avoid stressing the joint. Things like keeping it within its range of motion, not attempting to exert a lot of force with it, and the like.
Yep, it depends completely on the game. Any discussion about what games need that treats games as a homogenous group is doomed to benefit no one. All a game "needs" is to accomplish its goal, just like any work of art. Some games try to offer a fast-paced and exciting gameplay experience (like Wolfenstein 3d, which even cut features to accomplish that goal). Others try to offer a good story, like interactive fiction. It's stupid to say that Wolfenstein needs a better story, just like it's stupid to insist that a text adventure doesn't have enough action sequences. Games are such a wide genre that throwing them all into one heap is meaningless. It's like trying to talk about what music needs. A strong beat? Take a look at Indian classical music. A melody? What about rap music (I'm sure this will draw fire)? All a work of art "needs" is to be what the author wants.
I agree, the words "game developer" should have appeared before his name, at minimum. Even I know that, and I'm a horrible media writer. On the other hand, why waste time complaining about this particular failure of Internet journalism? Journalism is poor across the board these days, online and offline. At least it links directly to an article intended to answer that question.
You know, that is the topic of the article. It's not like the information is hidden away somewhere. Although it probably should have read "who game developer John Romero really is."
I like wireless mice because cords tend to drag mice around on their own. Logitech's cordless mice have charging cradles and built-in batteries, so making sure they have power is simple. They last days on a charge with heavy use, and last months when not in use. I wouldn't mess around with a mouse that required me to manually fumble with batteries though.
I understand that they're just software packages. What I was driving at is that you since they're Linux only, you couldn't have tested them under Windows, and therefore you must have no experience trying to run it in that environment, meaning that you can't compare their ease of use under Linux to their ease of use under Windows.
My gripe with your post is that you provide no information about how you compare Windows and Linux. You mention only one thing, which (for the reasons outlined above) could not possibly have been your basis for comparison. Therefore, I conclude that you must either be (a) guessing or (b) basing your comparison on other aspects of the operating systems. Possibility "b" is more likely, but you mention no specifics of the tribulations Linux forced you to endure. This renders your comment devoid of meaning. Your experience is very relevant as an anecdote, but your anecdote is so woefully incomplete that it has no value.
The best I can glean from the garbled English you offer is that you need to set up your machine again every time it loses power. I assure, you this is no obstacle, as one of Linux's great strengths is the ease with which common processes can be automated. Evidently your Linux knowledge is not great enough to do that, which is nothing to be ashamed of, but you did not express the situation clearly in your original post. You merely said the equivalent of, "It too hard!" It's all very well to say that learning curve is steep, but you need to explain what you were trying to learn to do. "I tried to learn Linux," is way too general. Linux does a lot of things, and there's a lot to learn about each of them.
A more well spoken alternative would have gone something like, "I use Linux to run a quantam calculation package. It has made great steps, but the learning curve is still a pain in the ass. I had great difficulty setting it up; [example here]. Additionally, the uni admins like to change stuff and I sometimes lose power in the middle of a calculation. Have fun remounting and repairing everything [an explanation of what this means would not go amiss] after that! [Elaborate on this; what needs repairs?]"
I would not have criticed a post following that general template. Anecdotes can be very informative, but they need to convey exactly: what you're doing, what problems you have, and who you are (i.e. your level of experience). Without these important bits of context, an anecdote is useless at best, and misleading at worst. My fear as a Linux fan is that a prospective user whose Linux usage would be vastly different than yours might be scared off by the vague assertions you make, even if in the course of the activities they intend to perform they would not encounter any of the problems you did. As you say, it's just your experience, and mine might have been (has been, actually) better. I have the experience to know this, but a neophyte does not, nor can they judge from the inadequate information you provided whether they are likely to encounter the trouble you did. Relaying your experience is good, but you need to make the domain of your experience clear to those without experience of their own as context.
Maybe for some unusual objects, but what object exhibits only horizontal features? Nearly everything you might try to locate is small enough or exhibits enough features that improperly focusing your eyes results in double vision. How often do you try to judge the distance of an infinitly wide object whose features are purely horizonal and whose features are also wider than your field of view can encompass?
More widely-set eyes would do more to enhance our depth perception.
Slashdot Mirror
SDL will take care of all of that, although OpenAL will have to be implemeted seperately if you want it.
I was under the impression that Windows XP Home edition had a price tag of $199. That's way too much to spend just to be able to run some games, not to mention the generally unclean feeling it would give me.
Why do you feel the need to malign Linux users? Think about who uses Windows at home. Pretty much everyone, including 14 year olds who don't hesitate to download whatever they like. Linux users are acutely aware of the difference between free software and proprietary software. I'd venture to say that most Linux users would jump at the chance to pay for the Linux version of a game as a way to encourage publishers to release for their platform.
It's fairly easy to pick libraries that have been ported to all the popular platforms. SDL is, of course, the obvious choice, although the Allegro game programming library might work well for 2d games. Stick to ANSI standard C (or whatever it is you're using) and you should be able to compile anywhere. Should being the key word, as bugs can creep in, sometimes not even directly in your code. The real work is making sure that your code is as compatible as you think it is, which definitely adds some time. It's not so much that writing for Linux is harder than for Windows or vice versa, it's that you can't always be sure that multiple targets will behave as they should. Just like web developers have to test in all the browsers.
I also hear that DirectX guarantees more than OpenGL does. DirectX has features which are guaranteed to at least be implemented in software, whereas OpenGL has many extensions that may or may not be present.
It's replay value is somewhat limited though. I can't bring myself to play through more than once a year.
I read that as, "When Martin Luther King led the nonviolent machines...." You have no idea how disconcerting it was. Now that I'm sure I haven't slipped into a parallel world, I agree.
Did you just feel a breeze over your head? From a low-flying joke perhaps?
Just before questioning. They can't ask questions about the crime before making you aware of your rights. Arrest is allowed, but they must be read before you are questioned.
I wouldn't say never, although I was talking more about the viability of speech as an input method from a hypothetical standpoint rather than a practical one. From a practical standpoint, it wouldn't even have to be that fast to be competetive. An advanced typist can do around 60 wpm, and the average typist can only do half that. Speech recognition doesn't have to beat the holder of the world record, just the rest of us. If it could do 50 wpm, the speed gains would be well worth it. 100, and all but the best typists could be faster. Of course, it would still be noisy and wear out your voice, but I think it could be fast enough for a lot of uses.
Even if you figure a person can only speak proper English at half the speed of a regular conversation (200 wpm, acc. to Wikipedia), that's still 100 wpm, which is way faster than most of us type.
"Yes, I really mean that. Typing is faster than talking, for anybody who's any good at it. And not by a little - by a lot. If you want to get a document into a computer quickly, use a keyboard."
I don't think that's correct. According to Wikipedia, Barbara Blackburn, the world's fastest typist, has hit a peak speed of 212 wpm, with a sustained speed of 170 wpm. Conversations happen at about 200 wpm.
Yeah! Except it would work better if the planet we need to destroy wasn't also the one we're currently on. We'd better build colony ships too. I'll round up the telephone sanitizers.
By removing the stress.
Perhaps because the comment doesn't possess any of the things that it requires to be a part of the discussion -- namely, the commenter's reasoning. It's just a naked assertion, and on top of that, it's a controversial one.
My "don't do that" is to switch to performing the same activity in a healty way.
Editors are for wimps. I use a magnet on a stick to flip the bits on my hard drive directly.
I'm really not convinced of this thing's utility. It's assuming that since a neutral "handshake" position puts the least strain on a person's wrist, it must be best to hold it in that position all the time. Joints are made to be used, so it's silly to decide that immobilizing them will solve the problem. I suspect that staying immobile too long is a bad idea. The real problem is, like the acronym says, repetetive *strain*. Learning to use your joints in the way they work best will get you farther than locking them in place.
Guitarists, for example play for long stretches at a time, but most (decent ones) don't end up hurting themselves. Anyone who's played the guitar can tell you that it's not really an ergonomically constructed device. Why don't we hurt ourselves when we twist our wrists backwards and make strange movements very quickly, while office workers manage to destroy their wrists pushing buttons and scooting a mouse around? First of all, musicians practice for hours to figure out how not to hurt their wrists. Second, musicians don't usually play for eight hours straight. My advice to anyone who feels an RSI coming on is to take breaks, but also to examine very closely how you operate these devices. Are you bending your wrist funny to move the mouse, or reaching with a single finger rather than moving your whole hand when typing?
Basically, it's okay to move joints within their range of motion all you like, but every joint has positions in which it can take some stress, and positions in which it can't. Everyone has been told to "always lift with your legs." You need to know similar rules for other joints. You stress a joint whenever you move it out of its safest position then try to exert force through it. For keyboarding, this means reaching with a finger or bending your wrists back then trying to press a key. Keeping your wrists straight and moving your whole hand when you reach for a key is the way to go. Also, making sure never to stretch your hand out when chording is a good idea. Left shift for right hand keys, and vice versa. For mousing, putting your whole hand on the mouse and bending your wrist to move it strains you unduly. A better solution is to hold it with your fingertips and use every joint you can to distribute the action. The fingertips and wrist for fine motion, and the rest of the arm for gross motions. It's also helpful to rotate your hands a little closer to the handshake position, for both mousing and keyboarding.
Of course, some people have already sustained joint damage, and may need to immobilize the joint until it heals. After that, better mousing technique should prevent further trouble, unless you're prone to injury for some other reason.
IANAPT, but I am a guy who types a lot, mouses a lot, and plays a lot of musical instruments, but has never sustained an RSI (except once when I played with a noisemaker for too long). I attribute that to my amazing technique.
It sounds like this mouse would be perfect for you, since you can't grip things, but I question how much utility it has for a person who is either trying to avoid injury in the first place or who is combating a minor RSI.
I, for one, welcome our new 64% slashdot humor overlords. I'd like to remind them that as an unknown Internet personality I could be helpful in watching others toiling in their series of tubes.
But it's not caused by using the joint. Joints are meant to be used. It's caused by *misusing* the joint, which means you're stressing it in a way that it can't handle. That's why it's a repetetive *strain* injury rather than a repetetive motion injury. Simply immobilizing it may work, but I think that's a bit of an overreaction unless the damage is already so severe that any movement exacerbates it. A better approach would be to think about how you could change your movement to avoid stressing the joint. Things like keeping it within its range of motion, not attempting to exert a lot of force with it, and the like.
Yep, it depends completely on the game. Any discussion about what games need that treats games as a homogenous group is doomed to benefit no one. All a game "needs" is to accomplish its goal, just like any work of art. Some games try to offer a fast-paced and exciting gameplay experience (like Wolfenstein 3d, which even cut features to accomplish that goal). Others try to offer a good story, like interactive fiction. It's stupid to say that Wolfenstein needs a better story, just like it's stupid to insist that a text adventure doesn't have enough action sequences. Games are such a wide genre that throwing them all into one heap is meaningless. It's like trying to talk about what music needs. A strong beat? Take a look at Indian classical music. A melody? What about rap music (I'm sure this will draw fire)? All a work of art "needs" is to be what the author wants.
I agree, the words "game developer" should have appeared before his name, at minimum. Even I know that, and I'm a horrible media writer. On the other hand, why waste time complaining about this particular failure of Internet journalism? Journalism is poor across the board these days, online and offline. At least it links directly to an article intended to answer that question.
You know, that is the topic of the article. It's not like the information is hidden away somewhere. Although it probably should have read "who game developer John Romero really is."
I like wireless mice because cords tend to drag mice around on their own. Logitech's cordless mice have charging cradles and built-in batteries, so making sure they have power is simple. They last days on a charge with heavy use, and last months when not in use. I wouldn't mess around with a mouse that required me to manually fumble with batteries though.
I understand that they're just software packages. What I was driving at is that you since they're Linux only, you couldn't have tested them under Windows, and therefore you must have no experience trying to run it in that environment, meaning that you can't compare their ease of use under Linux to their ease of use under Windows.
My gripe with your post is that you provide no information about how you compare Windows and Linux. You mention only one thing, which (for the reasons outlined above) could not possibly have been your basis for comparison. Therefore, I conclude that you must either be (a) guessing or (b) basing your comparison on other aspects of the operating systems. Possibility "b" is more likely, but you mention no specifics of the tribulations Linux forced you to endure. This renders your comment devoid of meaning. Your experience is very relevant as an anecdote, but your anecdote is so woefully incomplete that it has no value.
The best I can glean from the garbled English you offer is that you need to set up your machine again every time it loses power. I assure, you this is no obstacle, as one of Linux's great strengths is the ease with which common processes can be automated. Evidently your Linux knowledge is not great enough to do that, which is nothing to be ashamed of, but you did not express the situation clearly in your original post. You merely said the equivalent of, "It too hard!" It's all very well to say that learning curve is steep, but you need to explain what you were trying to learn to do. "I tried to learn Linux," is way too general. Linux does a lot of things, and there's a lot to learn about each of them.
A more well spoken alternative would have gone something like, "I use Linux to run a quantam calculation package. It has made great steps, but the learning curve is still a pain in the ass. I had great difficulty setting it up; [example here]. Additionally, the uni admins like to change stuff and I sometimes lose power in the middle of a calculation. Have fun remounting and repairing everything [an explanation of what this means would not go amiss] after that! [Elaborate on this; what needs repairs?]"
I would not have criticed a post following that general template. Anecdotes can be very informative, but they need to convey exactly: what you're doing, what problems you have, and who you are (i.e. your level of experience). Without these important bits of context, an anecdote is useless at best, and misleading at worst. My fear as a Linux fan is that a prospective user whose Linux usage would be vastly different than yours might be scared off by the vague assertions you make, even if in the course of the activities they intend to perform they would not encounter any of the problems you did. As you say, it's just your experience, and mine might have been (has been, actually) better. I have the experience to know this, but a neophyte does not, nor can they judge from the inadequate information you provided whether they are likely to encounter the trouble you did. Relaying your experience is good, but you need to make the domain of your experience clear to those without experience of their own as context.
Maybe for some unusual objects, but what object exhibits only horizontal features? Nearly everything you might try to locate is small enough or exhibits enough features that improperly focusing your eyes results in double vision. How often do you try to judge the distance of an infinitly wide object whose features are purely horizonal and whose features are also wider than your field of view can encompass?
More widely-set eyes would do more to enhance our depth perception.