Ken Silverman is pretty decent with assembly. He's a smart guy and could write very well optimized assembly for his time.
Every shred of C he's ever written is absolutely unmaintainable. It's just horrible.
The answer to the question "Is assembly language faster than C?" is the same as the answer to "Is C faster than assembly language?": "No." My point is that there's no magic bullet. The article was not nearly balanced enough to be considered correct.
The fact is that the church simply uses the topic of games to force people to look away from it's real problems. One being that they lost their control over the world's countries. The second being that they have so much corruption in their system that it makes Windows look better alongside a Linux array.
Since this is a "fact", perhaps you'd like to back it up by citing a time when "the church" has spoken out against video games. I'm going to go out on a very long limb and assume that by "the church" you mean the Catholic Church. When has the Pope ever talked about video games? I haven't seen anything from any church that touches on this issue. All I've seen is media assassination and some crazy lawsuits.
I think that for the general public the violent video game dispute flies under the radar. No one cares about it except game news sites, advocacy groups (which usually aren't linked to "the church", whatever that means), and that stupid lawyer that's trying to get rich off the deaths of kids in schools. (Jack Thompson?)
See http://www.linuxandmain.com/features/lokistory.htm lfor the full story on how bad the management really was.
You weren't there, and Dennis Powell wasn't there, but I sure was. The management mistakes made would not have added up to the demise of the company if games had sold as expected.
Carmack was just about right on the nose a few years ago when he said that all Linux games sold ever don't add up to the sales of one medium-selling Windows title. This is not counting units sold at a loss by Loki to dump stock, but I'd put the total number of Linux games sold at less than 50,000 units... total.
In Troika Games' computer role playing game The Temple of Elemental Evil (2003)... the player is asked to rescue, and given the option to marry, an openly gay character.
Do they have to wander around the United States until they find a city offering marriage licenses? That sounds like a pretty extensive side-quest.
DX makes things a lot easier than writing for every sound/video card out there.
You think that making a game on Linux requires you to write for every sound/video card out there? Trust me when I say it doesn't... I've done a lot of Linux games.
I consider it an ethical mandate to avoid giving my money to Microsoft, and if I want something and there is no alternative to and the software cannot be pirated, I simply go without.
"I consider it an ethical mandate to avoid giving my money to pimps, so if I see a girl I want and she won't sleep with me I'll just rape her."
Does your argument sound any more ridiculous when applied to a more serious situation?
Realize that it's the same argument. The fact is you want the software and you don't want to pay for it, despite the fact that the law says that you must. You are willing to violate both the law and the rights of people in order to satisfy your desire. If you can justify stealing a $100 piece of software in this manner, how long will it be until you can justify stealing a woman's dignity using the exact same reasoning?
The solution is the same to both problems. If a woman doesn't want to have sex with you, you don't have sex with her. If Microsoft doesn't want you to use their software without paying for it, you don't use the software.
Not everyone is like you. Some of us really do have moral standards above the common cockroach.
You proudly declare that you plan to steal software and try to defend it as a moral choice? Cockroaches sound pretty nice in comparison. At least they're true to their motives.
Your hate for Microsoft seems very convenient in that it gives you an excuse to not pay for software.
There will always be exceptions.
U.S. law doesn't take any of them into consideration. You obey the law only when you find it convenient to do so? I think I'll go with the cockroaches again.
Ya know, now that the Matrix hype vanished into nowhere, I'm glad the LotR hype is gearing up. I think this one will earn it.
Even if it does suck, people here will still proudly proclaim that it's the greatest movie and movie series of all time.
In the real world, The Matrix was a better film than Fellowship of the Ring, the sequels to each film sucked equally, and I'm about 97% sure that Matrix: Revolutions is a better movie than RotK will be. (RotK will certainly have better acting, though)
Perhaps I can see reality because I don't base my perceptions on what "karma" I'll get for them.
It probably just means that levels, graphics and/or music have been illegally copied from commercial games, which is a pretty common problem with open source games.
That's odd, I've been active with open source games for a while now and I've never heard of this problem. Either it's not "pretty common" or my standards in open source games are too high. Either way I'm going to have to ask you to cite a source to back up your claim.
You're putting too much stock in the wording of the article. "XBox Exclusive" has always meant simply that the game cannot be ported over to PS2 and GameCube. Microsoft only allows PC ports to XBox if they're exclusive, which is a good move on their part. Nothing sinister or immoral about it.
I seriously doubt that this announcement (which we don't have a source from either MS or Epic on yet) has anything at all to do with Linux.
Even if it did, I don't doubt that Epic would drop Linux clients in half a second if Microsoft decided to require it. Epic doesn't make money off of Linux.
Trusted Computing initiatives would open the doors for this, although I don't think it would ever be accepted by mainstream society. AIM is too dear to them. Also, many businesses would just die overnight. People are looking for the solution to the virus problem in the wrong place. They just start requiring a license to use Outlook for that.
I think what is really needed is something to reverse the spread of general stupidity on the Internet. Because email and IM are among the worst possible forms of communication and people are accepting them wholeheartedly, large numbers of people are settling for crappy communication and real communication is suffering. This is demonstrated by people using "2" instead of to or too in seventh grade essays and movie titles.
My personal suggestion is that anyone creating a new acronym or abbreviation should be imprisoned, and anyone using an existing one should be fined.
mp3.com is not a P2P distribution system. "Theives" is not a word.
I would have ignored your unbalanced and factually dubious letter claiming that my station should broadcast balanced and factual news if I worked there.
Alas, as far as I can tell, Woo has left that all behind. But I always hope he'll feel a nostalgic urge...
Have you even seen Windtalkers or Mission Impossible 2? Windtalkers was even a good dramatic turn for Woo until Nicholas Cage got "low" on ammo. At that point, he started killing 3 Japanese soldiers with each bullet.
Nothing says BEST MOVIE EVER like an emaciated woman, an uninteresting lead, and lots of doves. Oh and computers. Computers always make great plots... always.
I mean... come on, Swordfish and Antitrust didn't suck that much...
Really, everyone should have seen this coming. I don't see why everyone is complaining about the RIAA when distribution of copyrighted material is clearly illegal. However since you all undoubtedly want to continue your freeloading, I have the proper solution to this onslaught of litigation... and unsurprisingly, it doesn't have anything to do with the RIAA.
I may be wrong, since I haven't ever used KAZAA, but I find that most file sharing software has a handy feature that lets you grab a convenient list of every song or file that a person shares, or some way of indicating how much space the files a person shares take up. This feature is useless.
To solve the "problem" of RIAA litigation, all that needs to happen is for all filesharing programs to release a protocol-breaking upgrade which enables searching only by song title, rather than username. As well, it should completely disassociate the sharer's username from the search results. The IP address is still needed, but does not need to be reported through the client. If you make it more inconvenient for the RIAA to figure out who is sharing what files or how much music, lawsuits will decrease.
I keep hearing everyone jawing about how the RIAA needs to adapt its "outdated" method of music distribution, but no one on the filesharing side of things wants to adapt. These changes will slow the RIAA down, but one thing won't change... if you get caught sharing music, you really don't have anyone to blame but yourself.
Why shouldn't they be able to run their legal software on hardware they own?
Because Microsoft disallows it. It is not legal to bypass Microsoft's security; the legality of the software you wish to run on the system is irrelevant. Like it or not, you're stuck (legally) with running Microsoft-approved software. Most people are fully aware of this when they buy an XBox.
They are saying "Let us run legal software that we have a fair use right to run on our own hardware, without compromising your security system *or* we will allow any software to be run whether it is signed by MS or not."
Of course you realize that "fair use" as a legal concept doesn't even apply at all here. Microsoft has no legal obligation or general reason to sign Linux. The XBox-Linux folks have no legal way to distribute their product (in the US).
This entire project and their interactions with the media and Microsoft are a black eye to Linux users everywhere.
Does the Linux/SDL version compile on non-x86 Linux?
Yes, yes it does. A concerted effort was made by one of the icculus.org folks to remove all of the x86 assembly. Right now, Duke3D and BUILD are both fully functional using only C code.
An OSX version was in progress, but it is apparently stalled at this time.
It amazes me that a book such as this could be banned, yet car service manuals can be sold in most bookstores.
What a completely ridiculous comparison. Servicing your car has nothing to do with theft, and the book isn't banned anyway. Before people start saying "MODHCIPS AREn"T FOR THEFT OMG OMG IP LAY VUDEOS IN MY LINVING ROOM n00B!'", please recall that although modchips can be used for valid reasons, their primary purpose is piracy.
Still many of the valid reasons for chipping an XBox will be disappearing with MS's impending XBox Live upgrade, which allows you to play mp3s and videos on your XBox. That way the only people that need modchips *will* be pirates... (oh and those XBox Linux folks)
Last I checked, people who released software under the GPL didn't spend millions on advertising that claims said software is secure and reliable.
Luckily they don't have to spend millions of dollars to claim their software is secure and reliable... they've trained most users of Linux to tell this to everyone they know.
This lawsuit is retarded anyway, as is the wording of the story. People don't intentionally insert bugs into code, and anyone that uses software should know that there's no guarantee that it is secure. New vulnerabilities are coming up all the time; every software product has bugs.
Even if they did somehow manage to convince some dimwitted judge that this is Microsoft's fault, the fact that they had 6 months to apply the patch is not going to work in their favor. This lawsuit is completely ridiculous, and I certainly hope it's thrown out of court.
The ultimate goal is for Linux binaries to be included on the CD with every Windows game that ships. Wine is an interim solution that causes people to ignore the real solution.
The only way to get Linux binaries in the box with retail Windows games on a wide scale is to show that it will provide the publisher with an increase in sales that makes up for the time spent porting to Linux. The only way to do this is to build a market for Linux games.
Wine doesn't build a market. The only people switching to Linux because of Wine are those who simply want to stop dual booting Linux and Windows. If you run only Windows, Wine itself provides no reason to switch to Linux. Think about it... "For only $xx.xx a month, you can play the games that ran fine under Windows with only a large amount of hassle in Linux!" You have to pay a monthly fee to play your games and they don't work as well... great deal!
Native ports provide concrete sales figures, and the sales figures provide tell publishers that no one buys Linux games. It's simply not worth it to port games to Linux.... statistic after statistic has shown this. Until things start selling better, we won't get Linux games. Will Wine help? It's been around for years and it hasn't brought people to Linux in droves like you all claim it will. It's just a temporary solution that people are trying to perpetuate. It's like a pain-killer... it relieves the symptoms but it doesn't cure the disease.
If you're using Wine or WineX, that's fine. The problem is when you use Wine or WineX as an excuse not to buy native ports. Not only are you investing your time and money in a temporary solution, you're hurting the market we're trying to build.
Does it matter? Wine is just a cute name, it was never meant to be taken as the Holy Truth. Even the primary author of Wine has referred to it as an emulator in mailing list posts. Just give it up.
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Every shred of C he's ever written is absolutely unmaintainable. It's just horrible.
The answer to the question "Is assembly language faster than C?" is the same as the answer to "Is C faster than assembly language?": "No." My point is that there's no magic bullet. The article was not nearly balanced enough to be considered correct.
The fact is that the church simply uses the topic of games to force people to look away from it's real problems. One being that they lost their control over the world's countries. The second being that they have so much corruption in their system that it makes Windows look better alongside a Linux array.
Since this is a "fact", perhaps you'd like to back it up by citing a time when "the church" has spoken out against video games. I'm going to go out on a very long limb and assume that by "the church" you mean the Catholic Church. When has the Pope ever talked about video games? I haven't seen anything from any church that touches on this issue. All I've seen is media assassination and some crazy lawsuits.
I think that for the general public the violent video game dispute flies under the radar. No one cares about it except game news sites, advocacy groups (which usually aren't linked to "the church", whatever that means), and that stupid lawyer that's trying to get rich off the deaths of kids in schools. (Jack Thompson?)
You weren't there, and Dennis Powell wasn't there, but I sure was. The management mistakes made would not have added up to the demise of the company if games had sold as expected.
Carmack was just about right on the nose a few years ago when he said that all Linux games sold ever don't add up to the sales of one medium-selling Windows title. This is not counting units sold at a loss by Loki to dump stock, but I'd put the total number of Linux games sold at less than 50,000 units... total.
Don't kid yourself, it was both.
Do they have to wander around the United States until they find a city offering marriage licenses? That sounds like a pretty extensive side-quest.
You think that making a game on Linux requires you to write for every sound/video card out there? Trust me when I say it doesn't... I've done a lot of Linux games.
I knew Peter Jackson was heavy... but... WOW.
While the answer to all your questions is "Yes", perhaps a better question to ask would be "Is it alright to steal software?"
Here's a hint... the answer is "No."
Bonus points are available if you replace "alright" with "legal" and take the test again.
"I consider it an ethical mandate to avoid giving my money to pimps, so if I see a girl I want and she won't sleep with me I'll just rape her."
Does your argument sound any more ridiculous when applied to a more serious situation?
Realize that it's the same argument. The fact is you want the software and you don't want to pay for it, despite the fact that the law says that you must. You are willing to violate both the law and the rights of people in order to satisfy your desire. If you can justify stealing a $100 piece of software in this manner, how long will it be until you can justify stealing a woman's dignity using the exact same reasoning?
The solution is the same to both problems. If a woman doesn't want to have sex with you, you don't have sex with her. If Microsoft doesn't want you to use their software without paying for it, you don't use the software.
You proudly declare that you plan to steal software and try to defend it as a moral choice? Cockroaches sound pretty nice in comparison. At least they're true to their motives.
Your hate for Microsoft seems very convenient in that it gives you an excuse to not pay for software.
There will always be exceptions.
U.S. law doesn't take any of them into consideration. You obey the law only when you find it convenient to do so? I think I'll go with the cockroaches again.
Even if it does suck, people here will still proudly proclaim that it's the greatest movie and movie series of all time.
In the real world, The Matrix was a better film than Fellowship of the Ring, the sequels to each film sucked equally, and I'm about 97% sure that Matrix: Revolutions is a better movie than RotK will be. (RotK will certainly have better acting, though)
Perhaps I can see reality because I don't base my perceptions on what "karma" I'll get for them.
That's odd, I've been active with open source games for a while now and I've never heard of this problem. Either it's not "pretty common" or my standards in open source games are too high. Either way I'm going to have to ask you to cite a source to back up your claim.
I seriously doubt that this announcement (which we don't have a source from either MS or Epic on yet) has anything at all to do with Linux.
Even if it did, I don't doubt that Epic would drop Linux clients in half a second if Microsoft decided to require it. Epic doesn't make money off of Linux.
I think what is really needed is something to reverse the spread of general stupidity on the Internet. Because email and IM are among the worst possible forms of communication and people are accepting them wholeheartedly, large numbers of people are settling for crappy communication and real communication is suffering. This is demonstrated by people using "2" instead of to or too in seventh grade essays and movie titles.
My personal suggestion is that anyone creating a new acronym or abbreviation should be imprisoned, and anyone using an existing one should be fined.
I would have ignored your unbalanced and factually dubious letter claiming that my station should broadcast balanced and factual news if I worked there.
Have you even seen Windtalkers or Mission Impossible 2? Windtalkers was even a good dramatic turn for Woo until Nicholas Cage got "low" on ammo. At that point, he started killing 3 Japanese soldiers with each bullet.
I mean... come on, Swordfish and Antitrust didn't suck that much...
Oh.
Wait.
They did.
I may be wrong, since I haven't ever used KAZAA, but I find that most file sharing software has a handy feature that lets you grab a convenient list of every song or file that a person shares, or some way of indicating how much space the files a person shares take up. This feature is useless.
To solve the "problem" of RIAA litigation, all that needs to happen is for all filesharing programs to release a protocol-breaking upgrade which enables searching only by song title, rather than username. As well, it should completely disassociate the sharer's username from the search results. The IP address is still needed, but does not need to be reported through the client. If you make it more inconvenient for the RIAA to figure out who is sharing what files or how much music, lawsuits will decrease.
I keep hearing everyone jawing about how the RIAA needs to adapt its "outdated" method of music distribution, but no one on the filesharing side of things wants to adapt. These changes will slow the RIAA down, but one thing won't change... if you get caught sharing music, you really don't have anyone to blame but yourself.
Because Microsoft disallows it. It is not legal to bypass Microsoft's security; the legality of the software you wish to run on the system is irrelevant. Like it or not, you're stuck (legally) with running Microsoft-approved software. Most people are fully aware of this when they buy an XBox.
They are saying "Let us run legal software that we have a fair use right to run on our own hardware, without compromising your security system *or* we will allow any software to be run whether it is signed by MS or not."
Of course you realize that "fair use" as a legal concept doesn't even apply at all here. Microsoft has no legal obligation or general reason to sign Linux. The XBox-Linux folks have no legal way to distribute their product (in the US).
This entire project and their interactions with the media and Microsoft are a black eye to Linux users everywhere.
Yes, yes it does. A concerted effort was made by one of the icculus.org folks to remove all of the x86 assembly. Right now, Duke3D and BUILD are both fully functional using only C code.
An OSX version was in progress, but it is apparently stalled at this time.
What a completely ridiculous comparison. Servicing your car has nothing to do with theft, and the book isn't banned anyway. Before people start saying "MODHCIPS AREn"T FOR THEFT OMG OMG IP LAY VUDEOS IN MY LINVING ROOM n00B!'", please recall that although modchips can be used for valid reasons, their primary purpose is piracy.
Still many of the valid reasons for chipping an XBox will be disappearing with MS's impending XBox Live upgrade, which allows you to play mp3s and videos on your XBox. That way the only people that need modchips *will* be pirates... (oh and those XBox Linux folks)
Luckily they don't have to spend millions of dollars to claim their software is secure and reliable... they've trained most users of Linux to tell this to everyone they know.
This lawsuit is retarded anyway, as is the wording of the story. People don't intentionally insert bugs into code, and anyone that uses software should know that there's no guarantee that it is secure. New vulnerabilities are coming up all the time; every software product has bugs.
Even if they did somehow manage to convince some dimwitted judge that this is Microsoft's fault, the fact that they had 6 months to apply the patch is not going to work in their favor. This lawsuit is completely ridiculous, and I certainly hope it's thrown out of court.
You seem convinced that this will happen. Perhaps you shouldn't be.
The only way to get Linux binaries in the box with retail Windows games on a wide scale is to show that it will provide the publisher with an increase in sales that makes up for the time spent porting to Linux. The only way to do this is to build a market for Linux games.
Wine doesn't build a market. The only people switching to Linux because of Wine are those who simply want to stop dual booting Linux and Windows. If you run only Windows, Wine itself provides no reason to switch to Linux. Think about it... "For only $xx.xx a month, you can play the games that ran fine under Windows with only a large amount of hassle in Linux!" You have to pay a monthly fee to play your games and they don't work as well... great deal!
Native ports provide concrete sales figures, and the sales figures provide tell publishers that no one buys Linux games. It's simply not worth it to port games to Linux.... statistic after statistic has shown this. Until things start selling better, we won't get Linux games. Will Wine help? It's been around for years and it hasn't brought people to Linux in droves like you all claim it will. It's just a temporary solution that people are trying to perpetuate. It's like a pain-killer... it relieves the symptoms but it doesn't cure the disease.
If you're using Wine or WineX, that's fine. The problem is when you use Wine or WineX as an excuse not to buy native ports. Not only are you investing your time and money in a temporary solution, you're hurting the market we're trying to build.
Does it matter? Wine is just a cute name, it was never meant to be taken as the Holy Truth. Even the primary author of Wine has referred to it as an emulator in mailing list posts. Just give it up.