Based on you saying this, I can only assume you haven't played either game for more than 5 minutes...
Pfft, as if you could play Metroid for any length of time and call the motion controls "tacked on". They're integral, and they're better than anything any previous console controller could produce.
5 minutes is how long it took before I swore off ever playing an FPS with dual analog ever again. I bet Bioshock for the PC is fun, but damned if I want to play the Xbox version.
Why in the hell is there even a DEBATE about granting CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS to those would seek to have our Constitution DESTROYED?
I suppose, but denying Constitutional Rights to the President seems a bit harsh. I mean, it's not just supposed to be for those who believe in it. Even George Bush should be granted Constitutional rights.
FWIW, I hold the PS2 and PS3 controllers with the grip prongs resting on the bottom three fingers of each hand past the first joint (sometimes just two if I need to use both shoulder buttons on both sides a lot). In this configuration, the current location of the sticks is obviously the most natural location for them. In order to reproduce the "hand stress" you talk about, I have to shift my grip way down so that the prongs are resting in my palms, which is an absurd way to hold the controller.
Uh-huh. I hold them the same way, two fingers under the prong, index and middle finger curled around the top to use the shoulder buttons. Which means my index finger is pointing straight up, while my thumbs are angled out. Hold up your hand. Let it relax. Notice how your thumb is roughly parallel with your index finger to the first knuckle. Notice how the side of the Dual Shock is not even close to parallel with the line from the grip to the analog controllers. Our thumbs don't naturally stick out like that; you're pulling them out.
You're experiencing the stress, you probably don't notice it because it's "normal" to you. Congrats, you've demonstrated the human ability to adapt to crap. The controller should be adapted for the human hand, not vice versa.
But yeah, I can only imagine how awkward the original PSX controller must have been for you. "Why are there no buttons here, where my thumbs 'naturally' lay?!"
Yeah, just like there weren't any (to my knowledge browsing at best buy and fry's:P) 3rd party GC controllers that had normal shaped/sized face buttons. I mean it's usually not about being creative, it's about being a cheap knockoff with rapid fire or other basic features.
so.... your thumb gets fatigued because the left stick is on the bottom? Well, how about the right stick? You do know that your left hand is the mirror image of your right... it should be equal if indeed it happens. I think you're full of shit. Either that, or you have tiny hands... Either way, the right one should still give you trouble just as must as the left one does.
Exactly! It is the same. Yet why after a marathon session of GTA:SA does my left hand hurt and not my right? Because like in most games the left hand is on the analog stick all the time controlling my character, while the right hand is hitting buttons which are -- surprise! -- in the natural upward position. The right analog stick is used for camera controls or other features where it's okay to stretch your thumb occasionaly. The face buttons are the primary input device for the right hand by the design of the controller. The primary input for the left hand is the same as it was on the PSX, the D-pad.
For games where the right analog is used equally -- mostly FPSes -- then the complaint applies equally. This is part of why FPS controls suck on every dual analog controller. When playing Time Splitters on the Game Cube it was only the right hand that complained because my left was comfortable.
Yeah, I know, and the idea that this somehow by chance happens to be the most ergonomic design just seems silly to me. The implication is that the d-pad on the original psx controller is poorly placed and unergonomic...
Yes, but what you said was that anyone who doesn't think Sony's design is inferior is being a fanboy (you didn't say fanboy, but you gave the standard definition of one). You didn't allow for the fact that people might actually prefer the design!
No, that's not what I said. I said fanboys convince themselves that Sony's design is superior, and it was directed at the person I was replying to. That's not the same as saying everyone who likes the Dual Shock is a fanboy.
While it may not have been what you were trying to say, what you came across as saying was akin to someone saying that anyone who doesn't like the GUI in Mac OS is a liar, because it's objectively provable to be the best design.
Well, okay, you're right, I did come across too strong and it is my fault. Because while I don't think that anyone who likes the Dual Shock is somehow lying about liking it, I do think that it is objectively provable that the most natural position for the human thumb at rest would place it over where MS, Nintendo, and every other game pad maker puts their primary input controls. Even Sony puts the right-hand primary controls there, and used to put the left hand primary controls there. I think it's obvious the only reason Sony didn't put it there is for historical reasons. I can't tell you that you don't find it comfortable, I can't tell you that you aren't allowed to like it. I can say it's bad design.
I mean, a kinesthesiologist could come in and prove to you using whatever measurements it took that your favorite chair was terrible for you and damaging your spine and causing a thousand other problems. That doesn't mean you would suddenly stop liking the chair, or that you would stop being comfortable in it. Our likes and dislikes are more complex than that. However your liking the chair would not change it from being unergonomic, either. Or I should say "I", since I like both chairs and sitting positions that are completely bad for me.
I'm no kinesthesiologist, I just can't shake the feeling that people's affinity for the dual shock is the same thing -- learned. The feeling that if millions hadn't gotten into 3d gaming with a Dual Shock, there'd be basically nobody who preferred that configuration.
Do you seriously believe that no one actually likes the controllers?
Don't be ridiculous. Of course people actually like it. I think a lot of them would also like a controller with the analog control swapped even more if they gave it a chance. And I think there are those who wouldn't prefer the analog-up configuration, even if that was the controller Sony had originally came out with. Yet that wasn't the controller came out with, they came out with Dual Shock, and that controller is the one many people cut their teeth on analog gaming with. Our preferences frequently depend on tons of subjective things, like nostalgia, what we're used to, as opposed to more objective things, like hand stress. There's nothing wrong with having that preference. Nothing wrong with saying "I just like it".
There is something wrong with acting like a historical quirk is actually a superior design, that the design could not be improved in simple ways. Look at your relaxed hand, and the angle made between thumb and forefinger. Imagine your forefinger wrapped around the outside of a controller. Your thumb would naturally be resting slightly below the tip of your index finger. Create a controller to put into this relaxed hand, and you'd get the primary controls placed where they are on the Xbox, Gamecube, heck even the pre-dualshock and just about every game pad ever made.
There's a reason that nobody who was designing a controller without the historical baggage of the Dual Shock put the primary control where Sony did. There's a reason that Sony did put it there, and it was aforementioned historical baggage, not because it was the best place to put it if you were considering a from-scratch design. The whole point of the Dual Shock design was that the analog was not considered the primary control. Deny that, and yeah, I'm going to refer to Sony fans convincing themselves that whatever Sony does is inherently the best.
Oh hey, I just remembered there's a counterexample to the rule -- the Wii Classic controller also has the dpad up and the left analog down. Oddly enough, it too has historical baggage in the sense that it is designed to play games which range from the NES to the GC. Like the Dual Shock, it's designed with the d-pad as primary for that reason, though in my brief experience with it I think it's even less comfortable than Dual Shock. Good thing I have my GC controller -- though I'll probably use the wiimote for NES titles, since using the DPad on the GC controller is just as uncomfortable as using the analog stick on the Dual Shock.
If you're bending your thumbs to reach the analog stick, you're holding the controller wrong, plain and simple.
Wrong, how it's designed to be held, same difference. They made the controller wrong. Unless your forearms are at 180 degrees, you're bending your thumb to reach the sticks. If they made the controller correctly, there would be no issue of having to hold it "right" where "right" means "unlike the handgrips are designed for you to hold it".
I really honestly don't give a shit why they didn't put the D-pad there in the first place. The original Playstation controller from pre-DualShock was a total piece of crap. Using their rationale for the design of that particular product to justify the movement of the controls today is just plain broken, and a stupid rhetorical argument anyway.
Uh, it's the rationale behind which the analog stick ended up in its current position; you're relying on it to justify not moving the stick like it or not.
I agree the original PSX controller was a piece of crap. And then they hacked analog controls onto that piece of crap, resulting in the piece of crap knows as Dual Shock. They didn't change anything about the controller other than to add awkwardly placed analog sticks. The idea that a piece of crap that was then hacked to add additional controls just by chance ended up having the ideal position of those controls, while everyone who designed those controls in from the beginning did it wrong, is just silly.
Non-crap controllers put the analog stick in the right place, because they were designed with the analog stick from the beginning. The crappiness of the original PSX controller is not an argument against that, it's just an example of why playstation controllers have continued to suck: Their designers can't make good controllers, and their fans convince themselves that it's the opposite and everyone else is the crappy designer, so they don't ask for better.
5. Don't listen to this guy. Leave the D-Pad right where it is. It's 1000x better that way. If you're going to move them, put them in the same place on both sides of the controller. If you're going to move them up, you'll have to make the controller wider, otherwise your thumbs won't be properly aligned with the analog sticks.
Don't listen to the guy who thinks unnecessary hand stress is 1000x better. No, really. Putting the most used control down and to the right means you have to bend your thumb outward away from it's natural configuration. The reason you don't put them in the same place on both sides is because on the right side you want the buttons to be where it is most natural to push them -- imagine if they put the 4 primary buttons where the right analog stick is now. Hard to hit them, right? Right, because it's an unnatural position. The goal is to have the most neutral hand position for the most common items. MS and N understand this.
Back in the PS1, when the DPad was the most common item, Sony put the analog stick where it is for that reason. Keeping it out of the way of the DPad, so the DPad would be just as familiar and comfortable as it used to be. There was no excuse for keeping it in the same place on the PS2, and for the PS3 still having the mostly useless DPad where the thumb most naturally rests is idiotic. They keep it that way solely because of the brand recognition. But some people have convinced themselves that these historical reasons that de-emphasized the analog stick are actually ergonomic reasons that favor the analog stick. That the current location is the ideal spot for the analog stick, even though it was originally put in that spot exactly because it isn't the ideal spot for primary input.
If you really think down and to the right is the best, most optimal and comfortable position for the primary input method, why did zero controllers have that setup with the Dpad? The original PS1 controller didn't put the D-pad or buttons in that area, they put it in the upward position so that it's easiest to reach, just like everyone else.
I cannot see how anyone would really be asking for direct3d. I can only assume that most gamers have no idea, or care if they do,
"Customers" here was referring to game development studios who want to use iD engines in their games. That's a major source of income for iD. They license their engines for $Big.
And another poster gave a plausible reason for why customers would be demanding Direct3D support: The Xbox 360.
Lots of games have both a direct3d and opengl renderer. wow, ut2k4 spring immediately to mind. Ultimately the two aren't that different, and it isn't that hard to code your engine using a generic wrapper so that there isn't that much work to be done to create the two render paths. Usually one of them is less optimized, and it's usually OpenGL since a lot of companies target Windows/Direct3D primarily and create the OpenGL path for the Mac port.
However coming from id I'm taking this with a huge grain of salt. Carmack isn't the kind of guy who likes to have two separate yet redundant render paths where one is probably more optimized than the other. Software vs hardware rendering ala quake2? Sure. But since they're already committed to an opengl path for the Mac, I just can't imagine them going through with creating the Direct3D one.
Though maybe it's a side effect of iD's business of selling engines? If customers are demanding direct3d for whatever reason, they may very well get it.
Well then your college was somewhat unusual if it never graded on the curve. Nearly every university course I took was graded on a curve, with only a couple exceptions. And your high school is becoming increasingly atypical. Certainly when I was in high school grading on the curve was a rarity, but it's changed rapidly since then.
NiN is a Big Deal & could easily start their own label and do whatever they damn well please.
They (or rather he) did - Nothing Records. Then it went bankrupt (sounds like a partner took advantage of him, i don't really know the story though) so now having far fewer financial resources he resorted to going back to the big label for a contract. A contract he's not going to be able to get out of soon. In the meantime, he's pissing off his corporate masters which is exactly what I would expect.
Why, if his point is that they're charging too much for CDs, not that the entire edifice of the music industry should be torn down? Refusing royalties would be pointless since all that would happen is the record company would keep even more of the CD price. Canceling his contract would be a dramatic gesture, but then he would have zero influence in that company anymore.
I mean of course it's just a gesture from a very rich man -- being rich is kinda what enables him to be able to afford to say "steal my album even though I'm payed through royalties". You won't see any small-time act say that unless they all have day jobs. But whereas he could make a more extreme gesture, this is one where he is putting his money directly where his mouth is -- i.e. he's threatening his own royalties through increased piracy.
Just compare it to the "gestures" of other rich musicians who make a lot of money from royalties -- yes, I'm thinking Metallica here. Compared to Lar's "stop stealing our stuff, pay full price and like it bitches" I think Trent is a lot better even if he isn't going as far as you'd like him to.
On the other hand, System of a Down actually named an album "Steal This Album" so I think they win in the "encouraging piracy of their own products" dept.
But you have to admit, Microsoft helped bring computing to the masses.
No, I have to admit that cheap IBM PC clones which double in power and drop in price every year or two helped bring computing to the masses. If Microsoft hadn't been there, it would have been some other OS that ran on these clones and that would have been that. If IBM had signed an exclusive license with MS for MSDOS, then it would have been any of the other disk operating systems and any of the other DOS-based GUIs that would have become the standard PC OS.
If anyone has the right to say that they brought computing to the masses, it was Compaq who reverse engineered the IBM BIOS and then won the resulting legal battle.
Especially considering that the real "platform" which Google is based on is the WWW, which Microsoft is infamous for having first underestimated (along with the 'net in general) as a passing fad, then viewed as a threat to their monopoly that they had to embrace and extend to make sure you still needed Windows to use the Web.
If you want to decelerate you put your solar batteries at an angle where the "reflection" points in the direction of your orbital movement.
Which means that there will still be a component of the delta-p pointing away from the sun raising the orbit and counteracting the reduced orbital velocity.
But okay, I accept that in principle, especially combined with the laser, you could use this to drop your orbit. Which means that in order to receive funding for my Space Keel I must silence you. Sorry.
No, the self-deception is in telling yourself that it's okay to make up facts that support your agenda because your agenda is right. Only the truly deranged delude themselves into thinking that they aren't making things up. I do not believe for a second that the Director of National Intelligence is that kind of deranged person. He may have believed he was doing the right thing by pushing his agenda, but he was lying to do it and was definitely aware of it.
Weight is a property independent of the units you measure it with.
The object which defines the Kilogram is getting lighter (the fact that it is getting lighter is independent of this object's role in defining the Kilogram), ergo the definition of Kilogram is getting lighter. We all weight the same, we'll just use a slightly bigger number to describe how heavy we are.
Dude, the term "expectation of privacy" does not mean that you expect that your privacy cannot be violated, it means that you have a reasonable expectation that they won't. Yes your mailman could read your mail just by holding the envelope up to the light. However that is illegal because despite your depending on someone else's infrastructure to carry the message, you can still expect privacy. Just because your data is traveling through someone else's network, it is still your data, and the government is still prohibited from acquiring that data without a warrant.
I don't know why it makes you feel better to think that they probably can't monitor everyone with no oversight. What percentage of warrantless unaccountable spying makes you uncomfortable?
Oh yeah and the Democrats did pass this law because despite being voted in to end this shit they've proven that they're big pussies who will still burst into tears and capitulate to whatever Bush wants every time he says "support the troops" or "9/11".
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Based on you saying this, I can only assume you haven't played either game for more than 5 minutes...
Pfft, as if you could play Metroid for any length of time and call the motion controls "tacked on". They're integral, and they're better than anything any previous console controller could produce.
5 minutes is how long it took before I swore off ever playing an FPS with dual analog ever again. I bet Bioshock for the PC is fun, but damned if I want to play the Xbox version.
Why in the hell is there even a DEBATE about granting CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS to those would seek to have our Constitution DESTROYED?
I suppose, but denying Constitutional Rights to the President seems a bit harsh. I mean, it's not just supposed to be for those who believe in it. Even George Bush should be granted Constitutional rights.
FWIW, I hold the PS2 and PS3 controllers with the grip prongs resting on the bottom three fingers of each hand past the first joint (sometimes just two if I need to use both shoulder buttons on both sides a lot). In this configuration, the current location of the sticks is obviously the most natural location for them. In order to reproduce the "hand stress" you talk about, I have to shift my grip way down so that the prongs are resting in my palms, which is an absurd way to hold the controller.
Uh-huh. I hold them the same way, two fingers under the prong, index and middle finger curled around the top to use the shoulder buttons. Which means my index finger is pointing straight up, while my thumbs are angled out. Hold up your hand. Let it relax. Notice how your thumb is roughly parallel with your index finger to the first knuckle. Notice how the side of the Dual Shock is not even close to parallel with the line from the grip to the analog controllers. Our thumbs don't naturally stick out like that; you're pulling them out.
You're experiencing the stress, you probably don't notice it because it's "normal" to you. Congrats, you've demonstrated the human ability to adapt to crap. The controller should be adapted for the human hand, not vice versa.
But yeah, I can only imagine how awkward the original PSX controller must have been for you. "Why are there no buttons here, where my thumbs 'naturally' lay?!"
Until then, any serious game engine will need both an OpenGL and a DirectX render path.
Let's see if that's true... From Wikipedia:
"The "Serious Engine" can render through both Direct3D or OpenGL"
Well there you have it.
Yeah, just like there weren't any (to my knowledge browsing at best buy and fry's :P) 3rd party GC controllers that had normal shaped/sized face buttons. I mean it's usually not about being creative, it's about being a cheap knockoff with rapid fire or other basic features.
so.... your thumb gets fatigued because the left stick is on the bottom? Well, how about the right stick? You do know that your left hand is the mirror image of your right... it should be equal if indeed it happens. I think you're full of shit. Either that, or you have tiny hands... Either way, the right one should still give you trouble just as must as the left one does.
Exactly! It is the same. Yet why after a marathon session of GTA:SA does my left hand hurt and not my right? Because like in most games the left hand is on the analog stick all the time controlling my character, while the right hand is hitting buttons which are -- surprise! -- in the natural upward position. The right analog stick is used for camera controls or other features where it's okay to stretch your thumb occasionaly. The face buttons are the primary input device for the right hand by the design of the controller. The primary input for the left hand is the same as it was on the PSX, the D-pad.
For games where the right analog is used equally -- mostly FPSes -- then the complaint applies equally. This is part of why FPS controls suck on every dual analog controller. When playing Time Splitters on the Game Cube it was only the right hand that complained because my left was comfortable.
Yeah, I know, and the idea that this somehow by chance happens to be the most ergonomic design just seems silly to me. The implication is that the d-pad on the original psx controller is poorly placed and unergonomic...
Yes, but what you said was that anyone who doesn't think Sony's design is inferior is being a fanboy (you didn't say fanboy, but you gave the standard definition of one). You didn't allow for the fact that people might actually prefer the design!
No, that's not what I said. I said fanboys convince themselves that Sony's design is superior, and it was directed at the person I was replying to. That's not the same as saying everyone who likes the Dual Shock is a fanboy.
While it may not have been what you were trying to say, what you came across as saying was akin to someone saying that anyone who doesn't like the GUI in Mac OS is a liar, because it's objectively provable to be the best design.
Well, okay, you're right, I did come across too strong and it is my fault. Because while I don't think that anyone who likes the Dual Shock is somehow lying about liking it, I do think that it is objectively provable that the most natural position for the human thumb at rest would place it over where MS, Nintendo, and every other game pad maker puts their primary input controls. Even Sony puts the right-hand primary controls there, and used to put the left hand primary controls there. I think it's obvious the only reason Sony didn't put it there is for historical reasons. I can't tell you that you don't find it comfortable, I can't tell you that you aren't allowed to like it. I can say it's bad design.
I mean, a kinesthesiologist could come in and prove to you using whatever measurements it took that your favorite chair was terrible for you and damaging your spine and causing a thousand other problems. That doesn't mean you would suddenly stop liking the chair, or that you would stop being comfortable in it. Our likes and dislikes are more complex than that. However your liking the chair would not change it from being unergonomic, either. Or I should say "I", since I like both chairs and sitting positions that are completely bad for me.
I'm no kinesthesiologist, I just can't shake the feeling that people's affinity for the dual shock is the same thing -- learned. The feeling that if millions hadn't gotten into 3d gaming with a Dual Shock, there'd be basically nobody who preferred that configuration.
Do you seriously believe that no one actually likes the controllers?
Don't be ridiculous. Of course people actually like it. I think a lot of them would also like a controller with the analog control swapped even more if they gave it a chance. And I think there are those who wouldn't prefer the analog-up configuration, even if that was the controller Sony had originally came out with. Yet that wasn't the controller came out with, they came out with Dual Shock, and that controller is the one many people cut their teeth on analog gaming with. Our preferences frequently depend on tons of subjective things, like nostalgia, what we're used to, as opposed to more objective things, like hand stress. There's nothing wrong with having that preference. Nothing wrong with saying "I just like it".
There is something wrong with acting like a historical quirk is actually a superior design, that the design could not be improved in simple ways. Look at your relaxed hand, and the angle made between thumb and forefinger. Imagine your forefinger wrapped around the outside of a controller. Your thumb would naturally be resting slightly below the tip of your index finger. Create a controller to put into this relaxed hand, and you'd get the primary controls placed where they are on the Xbox, Gamecube, heck even the pre-dualshock and just about every game pad ever made.
There's a reason that nobody who was designing a controller without the historical baggage of the Dual Shock put the primary control where Sony did. There's a reason that Sony did put it there, and it was aforementioned historical baggage, not because it was the best place to put it if you were considering a from-scratch design. The whole point of the Dual Shock design was that the analog was not considered the primary control. Deny that, and yeah, I'm going to refer to Sony fans convincing themselves that whatever Sony does is inherently the best.
Oh hey, I just remembered there's a counterexample to the rule -- the Wii Classic controller also has the dpad up and the left analog down. Oddly enough, it too has historical baggage in the sense that it is designed to play games which range from the NES to the GC. Like the Dual Shock, it's designed with the d-pad as primary for that reason, though in my brief experience with it I think it's even less comfortable than Dual Shock. Good thing I have my GC controller -- though I'll probably use the wiimote for NES titles, since using the DPad on the GC controller is just as uncomfortable as using the analog stick on the Dual Shock.
If you're bending your thumbs to reach the analog stick, you're holding the controller wrong, plain and simple.
Wrong, how it's designed to be held, same difference. They made the controller wrong. Unless your forearms are at 180 degrees, you're bending your thumb to reach the sticks. If they made the controller correctly, there would be no issue of having to hold it "right" where "right" means "unlike the handgrips are designed for you to hold it".
I really honestly don't give a shit why they didn't put the D-pad there in the first place. The original Playstation controller from pre-DualShock was a total piece of crap. Using their rationale for the design of that particular product to justify the movement of the controls today is just plain broken, and a stupid rhetorical argument anyway.
Uh, it's the rationale behind which the analog stick ended up in its current position; you're relying on it to justify not moving the stick like it or not.
I agree the original PSX controller was a piece of crap. And then they hacked analog controls onto that piece of crap, resulting in the piece of crap knows as Dual Shock. They didn't change anything about the controller other than to add awkwardly placed analog sticks. The idea that a piece of crap that was then hacked to add additional controls just by chance ended up having the ideal position of those controls, while everyone who designed those controls in from the beginning did it wrong, is just silly.
Non-crap controllers put the analog stick in the right place, because they were designed with the analog stick from the beginning. The crappiness of the original PSX controller is not an argument against that, it's just an example of why playstation controllers have continued to suck: Their designers can't make good controllers, and their fans convince themselves that it's the opposite and everyone else is the crappy designer, so they don't ask for better.
5. Don't listen to this guy. Leave the D-Pad right where it is. It's 1000x better that way. If you're going to move them, put them in the same place on both sides of the controller. If you're going to move them up, you'll have to make the controller wider, otherwise your thumbs won't be properly aligned with the analog sticks.
Don't listen to the guy who thinks unnecessary hand stress is 1000x better. No, really. Putting the most used control down and to the right means you have to bend your thumb outward away from it's natural configuration. The reason you don't put them in the same place on both sides is because on the right side you want the buttons to be where it is most natural to push them -- imagine if they put the 4 primary buttons where the right analog stick is now. Hard to hit them, right? Right, because it's an unnatural position. The goal is to have the most neutral hand position for the most common items. MS and N understand this.
Back in the PS1, when the DPad was the most common item, Sony put the analog stick where it is for that reason. Keeping it out of the way of the DPad, so the DPad would be just as familiar and comfortable as it used to be. There was no excuse for keeping it in the same place on the PS2, and for the PS3 still having the mostly useless DPad where the thumb most naturally rests is idiotic. They keep it that way solely because of the brand recognition. But some people have convinced themselves that these historical reasons that de-emphasized the analog stick are actually ergonomic reasons that favor the analog stick. That the current location is the ideal spot for the analog stick, even though it was originally put in that spot exactly because it isn't the ideal spot for primary input.
If you really think down and to the right is the best, most optimal and comfortable position for the primary input method, why did zero controllers have that setup with the Dpad? The original PS1 controller didn't put the D-pad or buttons in that area, they put it in the upward position so that it's easiest to reach, just like everyone else.
I cannot see how anyone would really be asking for direct3d. I can only assume that most gamers have no idea, or care if they do,
"Customers" here was referring to game development studios who want to use iD engines in their games. That's a major source of income for iD. They license their engines for $Big.
And another poster gave a plausible reason for why customers would be demanding Direct3D support: The Xbox 360.
Lots of games have both a direct3d and opengl renderer. wow, ut2k4 spring immediately to mind. Ultimately the two aren't that different, and it isn't that hard to code your engine using a generic wrapper so that there isn't that much work to be done to create the two render paths. Usually one of them is less optimized, and it's usually OpenGL since a lot of companies target Windows/Direct3D primarily and create the OpenGL path for the Mac port.
However coming from id I'm taking this with a huge grain of salt. Carmack isn't the kind of guy who likes to have two separate yet redundant render paths where one is probably more optimized than the other. Software vs hardware rendering ala quake2? Sure. But since they're already committed to an opengl path for the Mac, I just can't imagine them going through with creating the Direct3D one.
Though maybe it's a side effect of iD's business of selling engines? If customers are demanding direct3d for whatever reason, they may very well get it.
Well then your college was somewhat unusual if it never graded on the curve. Nearly every university course I took was graded on a curve, with only a couple exceptions. And your high school is becoming increasingly atypical. Certainly when I was in high school grading on the curve was a rarity, but it's changed rapidly since then.
NiN is a Big Deal & could easily start their own label and do whatever they damn well please.
They (or rather he) did - Nothing Records. Then it went bankrupt (sounds like a partner took advantage of him, i don't really know the story though) so now having far fewer financial resources he resorted to going back to the big label for a contract. A contract he's not going to be able to get out of soon. In the meantime, he's pissing off his corporate masters which is exactly what I would expect.
Why, if his point is that they're charging too much for CDs, not that the entire edifice of the music industry should be torn down? Refusing royalties would be pointless since all that would happen is the record company would keep even more of the CD price. Canceling his contract would be a dramatic gesture, but then he would have zero influence in that company anymore.
I mean of course it's just a gesture from a very rich man -- being rich is kinda what enables him to be able to afford to say "steal my album even though I'm payed through royalties". You won't see any small-time act say that unless they all have day jobs. But whereas he could make a more extreme gesture, this is one where he is putting his money directly where his mouth is -- i.e. he's threatening his own royalties through increased piracy.
Just compare it to the "gestures" of other rich musicians who make a lot of money from royalties -- yes, I'm thinking Metallica here. Compared to Lar's "stop stealing our stuff, pay full price and like it bitches" I think Trent is a lot better even if he isn't going as far as you'd like him to.
On the other hand, System of a Down actually named an album "Steal This Album" so I think they win in the "encouraging piracy of their own products" dept.
But you have to admit, Microsoft helped bring computing to the masses.
No, I have to admit that cheap IBM PC clones which double in power and drop in price every year or two helped bring computing to the masses. If Microsoft hadn't been there, it would have been some other OS that ran on these clones and that would have been that. If IBM had signed an exclusive license with MS for MSDOS, then it would have been any of the other disk operating systems and any of the other DOS-based GUIs that would have become the standard PC OS.
If anyone has the right to say that they brought computing to the masses, it was Compaq who reverse engineered the IBM BIOS and then won the resulting legal battle.
Especially considering that the real "platform" which Google is based on is the WWW, which Microsoft is infamous for having first underestimated (along with the 'net in general) as a passing fad, then viewed as a threat to their monopoly that they had to embrace and extend to make sure you still needed Windows to use the Web.
If you want to decelerate you put your solar batteries at an angle where the "reflection" points in the direction of your orbital movement.
Which means that there will still be a component of the delta-p pointing away from the sun raising the orbit and counteracting the reduced orbital velocity.
But okay, I accept that in principle, especially combined with the laser, you could use this to drop your orbit. Which means that in order to receive funding for my Space Keel I must silence you. Sorry.
Which poses a problem for any return trip. What we should be working on is inventing a Space Keel so that we can tack against the solar wind.
I'm sure NASA will be calling me with a job offer based on my ingenious idea!
There's no environment to harm in space so nuclear power can't possibly work out there.
That seems like an easy problem to fix if we just bring an environment along with us.
For this kind of scale, I think a compartment full of puppies adjacent to the reactor should suffice.
No, the self-deception is in telling yourself that it's okay to make up facts that support your agenda because your agenda is right. Only the truly deranged delude themselves into thinking that they aren't making things up. I do not believe for a second that the Director of National Intelligence is that kind of deranged person. He may have believed he was doing the right thing by pushing his agenda, but he was lying to do it and was definitely aware of it.
Man, don't give me that, going by the mods is why I made my pedantic reply when the OP was modded +1 Insightful.
/.
Also your implication that fact correction is sometimes unnecessary goes against everything I've learned on
Since gravitational acceleration isn't changing either, we all weight the same too.
Weight is a property independent of the units you measure it with.
The object which defines the Kilogram is getting lighter (the fact that it is getting lighter is independent of this object's role in defining the Kilogram), ergo the definition of Kilogram is getting lighter. We all weight the same, we'll just use a slightly bigger number to describe how heavy we are.
Dude, the term "expectation of privacy" does not mean that you expect that your privacy cannot be violated, it means that you have a reasonable expectation that they won't. Yes your mailman could read your mail just by holding the envelope up to the light. However that is illegal because despite your depending on someone else's infrastructure to carry the message, you can still expect privacy. Just because your data is traveling through someone else's network, it is still your data, and the government is still prohibited from acquiring that data without a warrant.
I don't know why it makes you feel better to think that they probably can't monitor everyone with no oversight. What percentage of warrantless unaccountable spying makes you uncomfortable?
Oh yeah and the Democrats did pass this law because despite being voted in to end this shit they've proven that they're big pussies who will still burst into tears and capitulate to whatever Bush wants every time he says "support the troops" or "9/11".