If you mean VM as in Xen or VMWare, see natbsltd's post.
If you mean VM as in Java, Python, Ruby, etc, there's a few things to consider: The cache is shared as before (so there aren't duplicate copies of the VM), and you can run multiple apps in the same VM.
That's quite true -- in fact, it might have been better if it'd been under a BSD license. Linus chose the GPL almost arbitrarily, and hasn't been much for licenses...
I doubt very much that it would've been anything proprietary.
so you're only effectively doubling the amount of dots on the screen compared to highest end lcd that could be found.
Which also means that if I prefer LCDs, I can match you by just using two of them:P
I quite agree the listed crts on wiki would suck, because they are using a single tube for it all. analog projectors use three tubes...
Ah, cool. But this basically only applies to projectors, right?
with analog I don't seem to have to worry about having a dedicated high-end machine just to do scaling.
Define "high-end". Every machine I've had ever since I went to a 1600x1200 CRT something like five or six years ago has been able to scale decently well -- see mplayer. Besides, if you can afford a projector, you should be able to afford a decent machine to hook up to it.
I don't even care about that. I look at it two ways:
First, it's poor, but it works. I guess this answers my question of what Cygwin is good for.
Second, I'm always going to have a Unix fileserver anyway. Even if I switched to entirely a Windows desktop, I could store the files on a samba share and use Git over Putty.
The difference is not large until you realize that just about anything you want to do is going to take under a second, including merges. The only place I've started to see slowdown with Git is Webkit, with 40,000 commits.
That's an important threshold. That's the difference between "I'll do it later" and instantly, almost unconsciously committing or merging. And that's good -- this is version control, you can always undo it, but you can't undo what you put off committing.
I know when I was working on a large svn project, some people put off committing (or pulling) for days because they didn't want to deal with the conflicts, branching and merging was a hassle (so, same problem), and if they made the effort to stay up-to-date (so conflicts would be small, infrequent, and manageable), it was too slow. And that was with only a few thousand revisions.
I think I just fell into this trap, though:
"the smaller the differences, the louder the arguments"
Victory #1: You're using version control! Victory #2: You're using something distributed!
Beyond that, it's a matter of taste. I think Git is far and away the best, but the gap between git, bzr, hg, darcs, anything, is still far less than the difference between any of them and svn or cvs.
I'll give you that. Still, it does have Windows support, and all the cool kids are on unices these days -- even Macs.
too many commands, too many options,
Dude, you're a programmer. If you can't learn to use a meaningful subset and ignore the rest, you're in the wrong field.
Yes, there are a crapton of commands, but because the data model is so simple, once you get it, it's easy to understand what each command actually does just by reading its description.
Silly need for repository maintenance, ala git-gc;
Which bzr does automatically every few revisions whether you want to or not. I'm sure someone could hack a script around that if you're too lazy -- check the gc.auto config variable. In my experience, it's needed rarely enough that it's not hard to remember, and it's nice in case you screw up a repository to know that, in theory, every single commit is still there until you run 'git gc'.
incomplete, unclear documentation.
When did you last check? I found excellent documentation at git-scm.org. What's missing?
You can very easily shoot yourself in the foot with git, and accidentally destroy important history info (eg git-push --force),
You pretty much deserve what you get, there -- it's like 'rm -rf'. Any time you use --force isn't "easily", it's the fact that you didn't read the GIANT WARNING around the option. From the docs:
Usually, the command refuses to update a remote ref that is not an
ancestor of the local ref used to overwrite it. This flag disables the
check. This can cause the remote repository to lose commits; use it
with care.
I hate to say it, but RTFM.
Note also that this is again why 'git gc' exists. git-push may cause the remove repository to lose commits -- but not necessarily, and anything that hasn't been cleaned by 'git gc' can be recovered, likely with its entire tree intact.
And finally, assuming you're git-pushing to a remote repository that other people already have copies of, chances are someone will have that history. That's the beauty of a DVCS in the first place.
I will admit this:
Mercurial is a lot closer to CVS/SVN in terminology, much easier for developers to adapt to.
I thought so, too. I also thought that about bzr. I avoided Git for awhile, until I realized that all the projects I wanted to contribute to were on Github, so I forced myself to learn it.
I think the investment is well worth it.
VCS should be simple,
To a point. Think about it this way: As a programmer, your VCS is your most important tool. More important than your language, more important than your editor. You owe it to yourself to know it inside and out.
And as I said, the Git data model is simple -- ridiculously simple, back-of-an-envelope-from-memory simple. It's the tools that add features, and make it either harder or easier to use -- and I'd argue this is true of all good systems. Your filesystem is absurdly simple -- a hierarchy of directories (which can hold named references to other directories or files), and files (dumb streams of bytes). HTTP is incredibly simple, but use it properly (REST) and it's a powerful remote API.
Off the top of my hand, a Git feature for which I don't know a Mercurial equivalent -- git-cherry-pick. Want to rewrite history a bit? Create a new branch from sometime before the commits you want to change, then cherry-pick (point-and-click simple in gitk) the commits you want, in the order you want, ignoring the ones you don't. When you're ready, clobber master with your new branch.
I mean, quilt (hg mq) is cool and all, but how easy is it to rewrite history if you weren't in a quilt to begin with?
Scroll down -- there's a clearly-labeled section detailing which kinds of explosive are allowed and which aren't.
But see, this is one truly moronic result of security theater -- first, the explicit list of specific stuff you can't bring is also an implicit list of stuff you can. If I were an aspiring terrorist, I'd be reading through that thinking, "Hmm, a golf club would be really useful, but they're banned... I'll just bring a stick of rebar instead." That's the problem with security theater in general -- you're preparing for specific attacks, and by publicly preparing for those, you guarantee that the terrorists won't use that attack -- they'll use something else.
The second problem is that the list in itself is a list of ideas if you can manage to sneak that stuff past security. "Hmm, a spillable battery -- that's a good idea. I just have to put it in a wheelchair and pretend to be disabled..."
Apple removed the carriers' veto power over cell phone features.
Didn't Apple blame AT&T for the fact that the Google Voice app has still not been accepted?
But suppose you're right. What did that buy us, really? All it means is that Apple now has veto power over those same features.
Verizon has disabled or crippled countless features on their phones.
Including, I suspect, the Droid. It doesn't look like much has changed in Verizon-land.
Apple made sure they had creative control over the device;
Indeed they have -- they and no one else, except maybe the carrier anyway. Certainly not the consumer or the developer.
allowing the use of WiFi and some VoIP
Yes, note "some" -- see Google Voice above. And does tethering work yet -- finally? Windows Mobile has had that forever. How much do you want to bet AT&T is vetoing the tethering, behind closed doors?
All Apple did was take everything that's wrong with the existing mobile world, make it worse (at least I could install my own apps on Windows Mobile), and dressed it up in a shiny, glossy package.
Seriously, I'm a Linux guy. It's awkward for me to advocate the Microsoft choice -- it feels much like it does agreeing with Fox News on everything, but when it's Fox News vs the Westboro Baptist Church, I have to go with Fox.
So, I'd much rather it be a truly unlocked Android or Maemo, but Windows Mobile has had pretty much everything the iPhone does, and it's had it since before it was even called Windows Mobile.
It should be noted, that some high-end analog crt projectors are capable of resolutions up to 3500x2000,
I'd have a hard time actually seeing that, but alright. How much did it cost? How does it compare to stringing a couple of medium-resolution LCDs together?
It's more than the highest-resolution LCD that I found on Newegg -- 2560x1600 -- but not by that much.
combine that with the fact that they will display any resolution without the need for scaling or making the image blurry
Go read about how a CRT works -- unless I'm missing something, CRTs absolutely do have a native resolution. You usually have to adjust the monitor -- at least, I've never seen any with an "auto-adjust" button -- which implies that you almost certainly do not have it adjusted perfectly at any given moment.
So either there are more physical dots on the screen than pixels being displayed, or you're always going to miss a few pixels.
In other words: CRTs absolutely do scale, they just do it physically. And they absolutely do make lower resolutions look blurry.
Only in the high end of course and said projectors can typically make an image larger than your average room wall. But you will always have a crystal clear image
Test it out with a 640x480 image. You're going to have either pixellation or blurriness.
unlike digital which scales very poorly when certain non-native resolutions are used.
That's likely a problem with whatever's doing the scaling.
Take DVDs on a giant 1080p plasma or LCD display -- the kind of system that makes it hard to watch TV, because the compression artifacts are as big as your hand -- but actually play a DVD on it. I'll typically plug it into my laptop with HDMI and let mplayer do the scaling -- it comes out beautifully.
So, try that on a PC -- get a decent video card, and have the video card itself do the scaling, when the software won't. Chances are, that video card will have a much better scaling algorithm than your monitor.
I can plug in old arcade boards RGB signal directly into most analog projectors just fine,
I'd count that as a "perverse reason". But again, your biggest problem seems to be getting it to plug in in the first place, which makes sense -- a digital projector with an RGB input seems like finding a modern laptop with a floppy drive -- but once you take care of that, it sounds like, again, a problem with crappy scaling.
Mingw has both of these, and is much faster, last I checked.
Does this do something SFU doesn't?
on
Cygwin 1.7 Released
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Windows has had a POSIX layer of its own for awhile now, as "Services for Unix".
On the lighter-weight end, mingw can give you the basics, and they usually run much faster (even bash!) than Cygwin did. Maybe Cygwin is better now, it's just that I don't really see what it has over, well, any other way of running POSIX apps on Windows.
Well, the KDE example isn't on Windows -- drag-and-drop just goes.
But, as I said, I don't think that counts -- and emptying the trash (or recycle bin) anywhere will give you an "are you sure" message unless you configure it not to.
All the other stuff is OS-agnostic except the malware message, which is Windows-centric -- I don't know of drive-by malware anywhere else.
it takes way more work just to get some of the basic drivers working, such as ethernet, versus Kubuntu that it all *just worked*--WTF?! Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?!
I agree, but if you want to make a fair comparison, you really have to compare to 7 -- I doubt Kubuntu has existed in any form as long as XP has.
An example would be you accidentally hit the 'Save' button for a document after making a major error such as blowing away important text..
I know for a fact that ctrl+Z still works in Kate, and I've not yet run into a limit with how far back it will go -- but I assume you're talking about office documents. Just tried it in OpenOffice, and it works the same way -- "save" in no way clears the "undo" chain.
Then you panic and exit the program... go back to My Documents, to re-open the file, only to find the file is still blank.
Why would you do that? The kind of users I'm talking about would most likely look for a way to fix it inside the editor itself.
Accidentally dragging files to some folder, and forgetting about them.. accidentally dragging folders to the trash...
On KDE, this is mitigated by the fact that the drag and drop pops up a menu asking whether you want to move, copy, or cancel. But I don't think that qualifies -- the damage isn't irreversible until you empty the trash, which will give you a very definite "are you sure" message.
But may favorite is... acidentally visiting a website with a drive-by malware downloader, or downloading and trying to install a file with malware undetectable by any common antimalware.
That's fair -- though most malware does show a popup. So, most of these can be mitigated with, again, "read popups".
Entirely too many users wouldn't. They just assume that if they try something, they could screw up everything, and so they'd better not try, even though the computer is peppered with "Are you sure?" dialog boxes.
The first steps to becoming truly computer literate are to start actually reading the dialog boxes, and to start screwing around, knowing that you can almost always undo it easily, and you'll almost always get an "are you sure" before you do something stupid, and definitely before you do something irreversible.
...and that's the major reason for the industry to move us to HDMI.
*facepalm*
You've just confused HDMI with HDCP, as so many do. I hate DRM, too, but in this case, that would be like refusing to use DVDRs because commercial DVDs are sometimes DRM'd.
The only possibility is to use a dongle / smartcard (same thing, different name)
Different form factor too, and usually a different, less sinister use, but I'll give you that.
in the display and run the signal encrypted from disk to display.
And what would that accomplish? I'm sorry, but if I'm going to rip a movie, I'm not going to do it by trying to capture 1080p video from HDMI and compressing it down to something manageable -- not when it's already on the disc in beautiful h.264 or VC-1. Maybe if there was no other way, but there's always another way, which was part of the point of my post.
Encrypting the signal from the box to the display only pushes the problem either back to the box, or into the display. If it was actually encrypted from disk to display, that just means you've got the decryption hardware (and the keys) in the display instead of inside your blu-ray player (or TV box, whatever). I really don't see how the display is harder to open up and hack around in than any other box.
But that's not even what's done with HDCP -- it takes the video from the disc, decrypts it, decodes it, then re-encrypts it and sends it to the TV. This means that the video exists in an encoded but decrypted state at some point inside the machine (set-top box, blu-ray player, whatever), and it's always possible (though it may be difficult) to retrieve a perfect-quality copy.
But all of this is offtopic, because, again, you're confusing HDCP, which is the DRM-over-video-cable scheme, with HDMI, which is a perfectly reasonable standard.
I'm running 2000+ x 1600+ on my old EIZO CRT monitor @85Hz on old analog VGA connector, HiRes graphics do not need HDMI
That is true, but after using an LCD screen, you couldn't force me to go back to analog, even 85hz analog. Once you've gone digital, VGA makes no sense -- you're taking the digital signal from the computer, sending it analog over the wire, for the monitor to make digital again before it can be displayed?
No, DVI solves that problem -- the image is sent, still digital, over the wire. And you don't hear Slashdotters whining about DVI being evil and DRM'd.
The point is, HDMI is DVI plus an audio signal. That's it. In fact, HDCP works just as well over DVI.
Now, I use a laptop as my primary computer. I have a nice 1920x1080 24" LCD on my desk. Every time I bring the laptop in there, I want to plug it in. Should I have to fiddle with all those pins and screws of VGA or DVI? Or can I just plug in that one HDMI plug? That goes doubly if you're using it for audio -- while my laptop isn't configured this way, in theory, I could plug the HDMI cable into a home theater system and have the surround sound system and the gigantic projector instantly supported.
The only real reason not to use HDMI for a new system is if you're using analog for some perverse reason, or if you're using DisplayPort instead (which is better).
It's no different from a closed source DRM solution, except that since it is OSS, it may have a stronger encryption system since it can't rely on security through obscurity.
You're operating under two assumptions that exec-types often do:
First, you assume it has something to do with the strength of the encryption. It doesn't. DVD CSS was pathetic, it's true, and can easily be brute-forced on modern machines -- but the original crack was someone obtaining the keys. Blu-Ray (and HD-DVD) were cracked not by finding some flaw in the algorithms used, but in finding the key (09 F9...).
Second, it is always security through obscurity. In order to play the movie, you need the key. In order to copy the movie, you need the key. Thus, in order to play the movie, you need the same thing you'd need in order to copy the movie, and there is no way around that. All DRM around audiovisual content is crackable. This is a flaw inherent in the nature of DRM. It is something which will never be improved.
Look, I'm not saying Fox is "fair" or even "balanced", but neither are the other people.
No one is perfectly fair. The point is that Fox is actually biased to the point of lunacy.
come on, Joe Biden? He makes Sarah Palin look like a freakin genius.
I'm curious for some details about this, because some of the things Palin has said makes me question whether anyone can make her look like a genius.
Athiests should shut up about religion.
Why?
They are "ANTI" religion,
No, they aren't.
Atheism is defined as simply the lack of a religion. There is a word for anti religion -- antitheism.
While we're at it, it also doesn't mean the positive affirmation that there is no god -- only the lack of belief in a god. Many people you'd probably consider to be "agnostic" would identify themselves as atheist.
and thus should stay away from it.
Well, since everyone likes to scream "think of the children"...
Suppose I was anti-child-abuse. Should I stay away from children, or child abusers? Or should I speak up and get something done about it?
Oh wait, that's not entirely a metaphor. The Catholic Church really did molest children.
Or at least protest in front of a mosque, or two. In fact, I dare them to make fun of Mohammad or Allah in the same way.
If your war is against religion, why not pick on the one religion whose adherents are causing many (most?) of the problems today?
Mostly because the countries in which atheists are actually allowed to speak out are also mostly populated by Christians. In other words, just ask the Atheist Experience -- most of their callers are Christians. In the US in particular, there's a disturbingly high percentage of the population which believes in creationism, and another disturbingly high percentage who believe in the Rapture.
But you're again mistakenly assuming something's been "picked". If you actually bother to look, you'll find Muslim apostates who speak out against Islam, but there's a more fundamental problem with your argument: Atheism is not a movement, it is the simple lack of belief. That's a bit like suggesting that all people who don't collect stamps should pick a particular stamp to use...
Is it because they aren't really scared of Christians?
I, personally, am terrified of Christians, when I think about it, because they have the nuke codes, and because they follow a bronze-age doomsday cult. For many people in this country, including too many in government, a nuclear apocalypse would be a good thing -- it would be the Rapture.
That's a worst-case scenario. In the mean time, they are steadily trying to erode the rights of non-Christians, and atheists in particular. Every attempt to push back is met by the Christian majority suddenly pretending to be victimized, as Fox does with the "war on Christmas" -- take "under God" in the pledge. Can you imagine what that's like for an atheist kid? If not, just imagine it said "under Allah" instead. Are you still ok with it? Keep in mind, it's not even traditional -- it was added less than a century ago.
I'm sure that you'll say something like but most "americans" or whatever are "Christians" or whatever, but that is just bullshit excuse for picking on one, rather than all.
Ok, piece by piece...
It's bullshit to pick on one, rather than all? Weren't you just encouraging picking on Islam, rather than Christianity? Wasn't that kind of suggesting "picking on one"?
Next, you repeat your assumption that there's some collecti
But let's see, what else was covered today? Top stories -- health reform (impacts millions of lives), crash at Jamaica airport, H1N1 supply information, a captive soldier... y'know, important stuff?
Even if you're focusing on internal congressional politics, this is probably a more interesting story.
And hey, big surprise, this story isn't on the front page of foxnews.com now, and isn't "above the fold" (even on this 1200 vertical pixel screen) in their "politics" section. So while I'm sure they love taking shots at Democrats (hey, find me a Fox article critical of Republicans -- it's not hard to find a "liberal media" article, even on MSNBC, that's critical of Democrats) -- even Fox doesn't see it as that important, compared to all the other stuff going on. Maybe it'll actually matter if he succeeds...
Can you imagine what would happen to a (R) if they called someone a WHORE on TV?
Probably the same thing that happened to John McCain when he called this a "Christian nation", which is both offensive and demonstrably wrong. Or the same thing that happened to Ted "series of tubes" Stevens when he showed gross incompetence at grasping the most basic concepts of the Internet, such as e-mail.
Yes, I realize Ted Stevens was eventually prosecuted -- for actual corruption.
When 15 people show up for "Liberal" protest, the news reports "Dozens", when 5000 conservatives do the same thing, "some" showed up.
Yes, in a country of three hundred million, five thousand is "some". Would "dozens" have made you happier?
And if you're referring to the "TEA Parties" which "weren't covered" by the "mainstream media", let's keep a few facts in mind:
Fox News is "mainstream", as distasteful as that is.
Fox took out a full-page ad, then repeated the same lie over and over, that various other news agencies had "missed" that story. I know you'll consider the source, but try to actually look at the facts in this article -- other agencies indeed covered them, they just didn't promote them, as Fox so blatantly (and tearfully -- thanks, Beck) did.
I'd dismantle the rest of your argument, but...
FOX NEWS is balance, when you have a "tingly feeling running down your leg" as fare on the other channels.
...it pretty much devolved into name-calling.
Tell me again how "balanced" Beck is when he blames a gang beating on the rise of atheism -- or when he wants California out of the union. I mean, Bill O'Reilly is a real gem, too, running a segment about how reporters should stop harassing people, leave celebrities alone, etc, right before he goes into a segment of footage of his reporters doing the exact same thing, with no segue... but hey, Beck makes O'Reilly look like a genius saint by comparison.
Whatever bias the "liberal media" might have -- and it doesn't, it just actually is fair and balanced, so liberals think it's too conservative, and conservatives think it's too liberal, but let's pretend it has a liberal bias and I just can't see it -- that hypothetical bias is entirely dwarfed by the kind of unfiltered bullshit, bigotry, and ignorance that so frequently comes
Pipebombs are just a poor man's grenade. Other games have even had bombs that work exactly like that -- toss, then push a button. And, as others have mentioned, the other elements of this have appeared in other games since.
Granted, there's still some things that probably haven't been as common, if they've appeared at all -- the shrink ray, for example, or the holographic decoy. But if you just want crazy weapons, Ratchet and Clank has them all.
No, the point is that Duke3D, at the time, had things no one had seen before. Technologically, it was a Doom clone, but improved -- ramps, if nothing else -- and the level editor had the ability to toggle into 3D mode, I think even with some actions being possible in 3D mode.
And, all those other things you've mentioned, plus the Devastator -- yet it wasn't completely unbalanced -- plus jetpacks, movie references, the binary combination lock minigame, and so on -- sort of the perfect storm of all the things that made the FPS genre great, distilled to perfection, plus one-liners and strippers.
But, IMHO, this was pretty much the top of the id-style shooter, which is action-driven, you don't care that much about the plot, you just need enough verisimilitude to blow up some aliens, with some fun cutscenes to tie it together (but mostly to reward you for a boss fight). That's the legacy that, say, Serious Sam follows.
TFA makes the point that this was the problem -- they wanted Duke Nukem Forever to be at the top of the genre again, but it was getting harder and more expensive to do. I'm still a bit disappointed, because by all accounts, another year or two would've done it, especially if it was funded by a publisher who insisted on a release date.
But compare this to, say, Half-Life. It wasn't much later, and it was much more innovative, to the point of redefining the genre -- it was story-driven, an actual narrative expressed using the game as a medium. And the sequel, despite numerous delays and taking seven years in development, was actually released, and actually did it again.
And now we have Halo, which seems to combine the two -- there's a good story behind it, a fair amount is told in the gameplay, but it's tied together with often fun cinematics, and while it's more serious, Master Chief is similar to Duke in that he's the best at everything (and also ridiculously muscle-bound) -- and similarly fun in deathmatch mode.
What's my point in bringing up Half-Life and Halo? Well, nostalgia is fun, and Duke3D was significant, but there is no one perfect game, or even a most innovative game. Also, most of the time, the things you thought were so original in one game were probably there already, and have certainly been there since, unless no one wanted to touch them because they suck.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that must be why there are so many Windows and Linux stories, right?
Like it or not, Apple is important. (And for the record, I don't like it.)
If you mean VM as in Xen or VMWare, see natbsltd's post.
If you mean VM as in Java, Python, Ruby, etc, there's a few things to consider: The cache is shared as before (so there aren't duplicate copies of the VM), and you can run multiple apps in the same VM.
That's quite true -- in fact, it might have been better if it'd been under a BSD license. Linus chose the GPL almost arbitrarily, and hasn't been much for licenses...
I doubt very much that it would've been anything proprietary.
so you're only effectively doubling the amount of dots on the screen compared to highest end lcd that could be found.
Which also means that if I prefer LCDs, I can match you by just using two of them :P
I quite agree the listed crts on wiki would suck, because they are using a single tube for it all. analog projectors use three tubes...
Ah, cool. But this basically only applies to projectors, right?
with analog I don't seem to have to worry about having a dedicated high-end machine just to do scaling.
Define "high-end". Every machine I've had ever since I went to a 1600x1200 CRT something like five or six years ago has been able to scale decently well -- see mplayer. Besides, if you can afford a projector, you should be able to afford a decent machine to hook up to it.
I don't even care about that. I look at it two ways:
First, it's poor, but it works. I guess this answers my question of what Cygwin is good for.
Second, I'm always going to have a Unix fileserver anyway. Even if I switched to entirely a Windows desktop, I could store the files on a samba share and use Git over Putty.
The difference is not large until you realize that just about anything you want to do is going to take under a second, including merges. The only place I've started to see slowdown with Git is Webkit, with 40,000 commits.
That's an important threshold. That's the difference between "I'll do it later" and instantly, almost unconsciously committing or merging. And that's good -- this is version control, you can always undo it, but you can't undo what you put off committing.
I know when I was working on a large svn project, some people put off committing (or pulling) for days because they didn't want to deal with the conflicts, branching and merging was a hassle (so, same problem), and if they made the effort to stay up-to-date (so conflicts would be small, infrequent, and manageable), it was too slow. And that was with only a few thousand revisions.
I think I just fell into this trap, though:
"the smaller the differences, the louder the arguments"
Victory #1: You're using version control!
Victory #2: You're using something distributed!
Beyond that, it's a matter of taste. I think Git is far and away the best, but the gap between git, bzr, hg, darcs, anything, is still far less than the difference between any of them and svn or cvs.
crappy windows support
I'll give you that. Still, it does have Windows support, and all the cool kids are on unices these days -- even Macs.
too many commands, too many options,
Dude, you're a programmer. If you can't learn to use a meaningful subset and ignore the rest, you're in the wrong field.
Yes, there are a crapton of commands, but because the data model is so simple, once you get it, it's easy to understand what each command actually does just by reading its description.
Silly need for repository maintenance, ala git-gc;
Which bzr does automatically every few revisions whether you want to or not. I'm sure someone could hack a script around that if you're too lazy -- check the gc.auto config variable. In my experience, it's needed rarely enough that it's not hard to remember, and it's nice in case you screw up a repository to know that, in theory, every single commit is still there until you run 'git gc'.
incomplete, unclear documentation.
When did you last check? I found excellent documentation at git-scm.org. What's missing?
You can very easily shoot yourself in the foot with git, and accidentally destroy important history info (eg git-push --force),
You pretty much deserve what you get, there -- it's like 'rm -rf'. Any time you use --force isn't "easily", it's the fact that you didn't read the GIANT WARNING around the option. From the docs:
Usually, the command refuses to update a remote ref that is not an
ancestor of the local ref used to overwrite it. This flag disables the
check. This can cause the remote repository to lose commits; use it
with care.
I hate to say it, but RTFM.
Note also that this is again why 'git gc' exists. git-push may cause the remove repository to lose commits -- but not necessarily, and anything that hasn't been cleaned by 'git gc' can be recovered, likely with its entire tree intact.
And finally, assuming you're git-pushing to a remote repository that other people already have copies of, chances are someone will have that history. That's the beauty of a DVCS in the first place.
I will admit this:
Mercurial is a lot closer to CVS/SVN in terminology, much easier for developers to adapt to.
I thought so, too. I also thought that about bzr. I avoided Git for awhile, until I realized that all the projects I wanted to contribute to were on Github, so I forced myself to learn it.
I think the investment is well worth it.
VCS should be simple,
To a point. Think about it this way: As a programmer, your VCS is your most important tool. More important than your language, more important than your editor. You owe it to yourself to know it inside and out.
And as I said, the Git data model is simple -- ridiculously simple, back-of-an-envelope-from-memory simple. It's the tools that add features, and make it either harder or easier to use -- and I'd argue this is true of all good systems. Your filesystem is absurdly simple -- a hierarchy of directories (which can hold named references to other directories or files), and files (dumb streams of bytes). HTTP is incredibly simple, but use it properly (REST) and it's a powerful remote API.
Off the top of my hand, a Git feature for which I don't know a Mercurial equivalent -- git-cherry-pick. Want to rewrite history a bit? Create a new branch from sometime before the commits you want to change, then cherry-pick (point-and-click simple in gitk) the commits you want, in the order you want, ignoring the ones you don't. When you're ready, clobber master with your new branch.
I mean, quilt (hg mq) is cool and all, but how easy is it to rewrite history if you weren't in a quilt to begin with?
Yes, but think about it -- it's really not my fault for thinking of this. It's the TSA's fault for endorsing security theater.
For those who don't know, read the Wikipedia article.
Scroll down -- there's a clearly-labeled section detailing which kinds of explosive are allowed and which aren't.
But see, this is one truly moronic result of security theater -- first, the explicit list of specific stuff you can't bring is also an implicit list of stuff you can. If I were an aspiring terrorist, I'd be reading through that thinking, "Hmm, a golf club would be really useful, but they're banned... I'll just bring a stick of rebar instead." That's the problem with security theater in general -- you're preparing for specific attacks, and by publicly preparing for those, you guarantee that the terrorists won't use that attack -- they'll use something else.
The second problem is that the list in itself is a list of ideas if you can manage to sneak that stuff past security. "Hmm, a spillable battery -- that's a good idea. I just have to put it in a wheelchair and pretend to be disabled..."
Apple removed the carriers' veto power over cell phone features.
Didn't Apple blame AT&T for the fact that the Google Voice app has still not been accepted?
But suppose you're right. What did that buy us, really? All it means is that Apple now has veto power over those same features.
Verizon has disabled or crippled countless features on their phones.
Including, I suspect, the Droid. It doesn't look like much has changed in Verizon-land.
Apple made sure they had creative control over the device;
Indeed they have -- they and no one else, except maybe the carrier anyway. Certainly not the consumer or the developer.
allowing the use of WiFi and some VoIP
Yes, note "some" -- see Google Voice above. And does tethering work yet -- finally? Windows Mobile has had that forever. How much do you want to bet AT&T is vetoing the tethering, behind closed doors?
All Apple did was take everything that's wrong with the existing mobile world, make it worse (at least I could install my own apps on Windows Mobile), and dressed it up in a shiny, glossy package.
Seriously, I'm a Linux guy. It's awkward for me to advocate the Microsoft choice -- it feels much like it does agreeing with Fox News on everything, but when it's Fox News vs the Westboro Baptist Church, I have to go with Fox.
So, I'd much rather it be a truly unlocked Android or Maemo, but Windows Mobile has had pretty much everything the iPhone does, and it's had it since before it was even called Windows Mobile.
It should be noted, that some high-end analog crt projectors are capable of resolutions up to 3500x2000,
I'd have a hard time actually seeing that, but alright. How much did it cost? How does it compare to stringing a couple of medium-resolution LCDs together?
It's more than the highest-resolution LCD that I found on Newegg -- 2560x1600 -- but not by that much.
combine that with the fact that they will display any resolution without the need for scaling or making the image blurry
Go read about how a CRT works -- unless I'm missing something, CRTs absolutely do have a native resolution. You usually have to adjust the monitor -- at least, I've never seen any with an "auto-adjust" button -- which implies that you almost certainly do not have it adjusted perfectly at any given moment.
So either there are more physical dots on the screen than pixels being displayed, or you're always going to miss a few pixels.
In other words: CRTs absolutely do scale, they just do it physically. And they absolutely do make lower resolutions look blurry.
Only in the high end of course and said projectors can typically make an image larger than your average room wall. But you will always have a crystal clear image
Test it out with a 640x480 image. You're going to have either pixellation or blurriness.
unlike digital which scales very poorly when certain non-native resolutions are used.
That's likely a problem with whatever's doing the scaling.
Take DVDs on a giant 1080p plasma or LCD display -- the kind of system that makes it hard to watch TV, because the compression artifacts are as big as your hand -- but actually play a DVD on it. I'll typically plug it into my laptop with HDMI and let mplayer do the scaling -- it comes out beautifully.
So, try that on a PC -- get a decent video card, and have the video card itself do the scaling, when the software won't. Chances are, that video card will have a much better scaling algorithm than your monitor.
I can plug in old arcade boards RGB signal directly into most analog projectors just fine,
I'd count that as a "perverse reason". But again, your biggest problem seems to be getting it to plug in in the first place, which makes sense -- a digital projector with an RGB input seems like finding a modern laptop with a floppy drive -- but once you take care of that, it sounds like, again, a problem with crappy scaling.
No, the clippy thing is "It looks like you're trying to actually get some work done. Want some help with that?"
Mingw has both of these, and is much faster, last I checked.
Windows has had a POSIX layer of its own for awhile now, as "Services for Unix".
On the lighter-weight end, mingw can give you the basics, and they usually run much faster (even bash!) than Cygwin did. Maybe Cygwin is better now, it's just that I don't really see what it has over, well, any other way of running POSIX apps on Windows.
Well, the KDE example isn't on Windows -- drag-and-drop just goes.
But, as I said, I don't think that counts -- and emptying the trash (or recycle bin) anywhere will give you an "are you sure" message unless you configure it not to.
All the other stuff is OS-agnostic except the malware message, which is Windows-centric -- I don't know of drive-by malware anywhere else.
it takes way more work just to get some of the basic drivers working, such as ethernet, versus Kubuntu that it all *just worked*--WTF?! Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?!
I agree, but if you want to make a fair comparison, you really have to compare to 7 -- I doubt Kubuntu has existed in any form as long as XP has.
An example would be you accidentally hit the 'Save' button for a document after making a major error such as blowing away important text..
I know for a fact that ctrl+Z still works in Kate, and I've not yet run into a limit with how far back it will go -- but I assume you're talking about office documents. Just tried it in OpenOffice, and it works the same way -- "save" in no way clears the "undo" chain.
Then you panic and exit the program... go back to My Documents, to re-open the file, only to find the file is still blank.
Why would you do that? The kind of users I'm talking about would most likely look for a way to fix it inside the editor itself.
Accidentally dragging files to some folder, and forgetting about them.. accidentally dragging folders to the trash...
On KDE, this is mitigated by the fact that the drag and drop pops up a menu asking whether you want to move, copy, or cancel. But I don't think that qualifies -- the damage isn't irreversible until you empty the trash, which will give you a very definite "are you sure" message.
But may favorite is... acidentally visiting a website with a drive-by malware downloader, or downloading and trying to install a file with malware undetectable by any common antimalware.
That's fair -- though most malware does show a popup. So, most of these can be mitigated with, again, "read popups".
Entirely too many users wouldn't. They just assume that if they try something, they could screw up everything, and so they'd better not try, even though the computer is peppered with "Are you sure?" dialog boxes.
The first steps to becoming truly computer literate are to start actually reading the dialog boxes, and to start screwing around, knowing that you can almost always undo it easily, and you'll almost always get an "are you sure" before you do something stupid, and definitely before you do something irreversible.
Fusion Power Stealth... yep.
if you are in a situation where barely adequate was all you needed, analog fails more gracefully and could be the best choice.
Fair enough, I just find it hard to imagine such a situation occurring between a computer (or blu-ray player, or other set-top box) and a display.
...and that's the major reason for the industry to move us to HDMI.
*facepalm*
You've just confused HDMI with HDCP, as so many do. I hate DRM, too, but in this case, that would be like refusing to use DVDRs because commercial DVDs are sometimes DRM'd.
The only possibility is to use a dongle / smartcard (same thing, different name)
Different form factor too, and usually a different, less sinister use, but I'll give you that.
in the display and run the signal encrypted from disk to display.
And what would that accomplish? I'm sorry, but if I'm going to rip a movie, I'm not going to do it by trying to capture 1080p video from HDMI and compressing it down to something manageable -- not when it's already on the disc in beautiful h.264 or VC-1. Maybe if there was no other way, but there's always another way, which was part of the point of my post.
Encrypting the signal from the box to the display only pushes the problem either back to the box, or into the display. If it was actually encrypted from disk to display, that just means you've got the decryption hardware (and the keys) in the display instead of inside your blu-ray player (or TV box, whatever). I really don't see how the display is harder to open up and hack around in than any other box.
But that's not even what's done with HDCP -- it takes the video from the disc, decrypts it, decodes it, then re-encrypts it and sends it to the TV. This means that the video exists in an encoded but decrypted state at some point inside the machine (set-top box, blu-ray player, whatever), and it's always possible (though it may be difficult) to retrieve a perfect-quality copy.
But all of this is offtopic, because, again, you're confusing HDCP, which is the DRM-over-video-cable scheme, with HDMI, which is a perfectly reasonable standard.
I'm running 2000+ x 1600+ on my old EIZO CRT monitor @85Hz on old analog VGA connector, HiRes graphics do not need HDMI
That is true, but after using an LCD screen, you couldn't force me to go back to analog, even 85hz analog. Once you've gone digital, VGA makes no sense -- you're taking the digital signal from the computer, sending it analog over the wire, for the monitor to make digital again before it can be displayed?
No, DVI solves that problem -- the image is sent, still digital, over the wire. And you don't hear Slashdotters whining about DVI being evil and DRM'd.
The point is, HDMI is DVI plus an audio signal. That's it. In fact, HDCP works just as well over DVI.
Now, I use a laptop as my primary computer. I have a nice 1920x1080 24" LCD on my desk. Every time I bring the laptop in there, I want to plug it in. Should I have to fiddle with all those pins and screws of VGA or DVI? Or can I just plug in that one HDMI plug? That goes doubly if you're using it for audio -- while my laptop isn't configured this way, in theory, I could plug the HDMI cable into a home theater system and have the surround sound system and the gigantic projector instantly supported.
The only real reason not to use HDMI for a new system is if you're using analog for some perverse reason, or if you're using DisplayPort instead (which is better).
It's no different from a closed source DRM solution, except that since it is OSS, it may have a stronger encryption system since it can't rely on security through obscurity.
You're operating under two assumptions that exec-types often do:
First, you assume it has something to do with the strength of the encryption. It doesn't. DVD CSS was pathetic, it's true, and can easily be brute-forced on modern machines -- but the original crack was someone obtaining the keys. Blu-Ray (and HD-DVD) were cracked not by finding some flaw in the algorithms used, but in finding the key (09 F9 ...).
Second, it is always security through obscurity. In order to play the movie, you need the key. In order to copy the movie, you need the key. Thus, in order to play the movie, you need the same thing you'd need in order to copy the movie, and there is no way around that. All DRM around audiovisual content is crackable. This is a flaw inherent in the nature of DRM. It is something which will never be improved.
Look, I'm not saying Fox is "fair" or even "balanced", but neither are the other people.
No one is perfectly fair. The point is that Fox is actually biased to the point of lunacy.
come on, Joe Biden? He makes Sarah Palin look like a freakin genius.
I'm curious for some details about this, because some of the things Palin has said makes me question whether anyone can make her look like a genius.
Athiests should shut up about religion.
Why?
They are "ANTI" religion,
No, they aren't.
Atheism is defined as simply the lack of a religion. There is a word for anti religion -- antitheism.
While we're at it, it also doesn't mean the positive affirmation that there is no god -- only the lack of belief in a god. Many people you'd probably consider to be "agnostic" would identify themselves as atheist.
and thus should stay away from it.
Well, since everyone likes to scream "think of the children"...
Suppose I was anti-child-abuse. Should I stay away from children, or child abusers? Or should I speak up and get something done about it?
Oh wait, that's not entirely a metaphor. The Catholic Church really did molest children.
Or at least protest in front of a mosque, or two. In fact, I dare them to make fun of Mohammad or Allah in the same way.
Dude, it's been done.
If your war is against religion, why not pick on the one religion whose adherents are causing many (most?) of the problems today?
Mostly because the countries in which atheists are actually allowed to speak out are also mostly populated by Christians. In other words, just ask the Atheist Experience -- most of their callers are Christians. In the US in particular, there's a disturbingly high percentage of the population which believes in creationism, and another disturbingly high percentage who believe in the Rapture.
But you're again mistakenly assuming something's been "picked". If you actually bother to look, you'll find Muslim apostates who speak out against Islam, but there's a more fundamental problem with your argument: Atheism is not a movement, it is the simple lack of belief. That's a bit like suggesting that all people who don't collect stamps should pick a particular stamp to use...
Is it because they aren't really scared of Christians?
I, personally, am terrified of Christians, when I think about it, because they have the nuke codes, and because they follow a bronze-age doomsday cult. For many people in this country, including too many in government, a nuclear apocalypse would be a good thing -- it would be the Rapture.
That's a worst-case scenario. In the mean time, they are steadily trying to erode the rights of non-Christians, and atheists in particular. Every attempt to push back is met by the Christian majority suddenly pretending to be victimized, as Fox does with the "war on Christmas" -- take "under God" in the pledge. Can you imagine what that's like for an atheist kid? If not, just imagine it said "under Allah" instead. Are you still ok with it? Keep in mind, it's not even traditional -- it was added less than a century ago.
I'm sure that you'll say something like but most "americans" or whatever are "Christians" or whatever, but that is just bullshit excuse for picking on one, rather than all.
Ok, piece by piece...
It's bullshit to pick on one, rather than all? Weren't you just encouraging picking on Islam, rather than Christianity? Wasn't that kind of suggesting "picking on one"?
Next, you repeat your assumption that there's some collecti
*sigh* I didn't really want to get into this...
If it had been a (R) every news organization would have already covered it ... in spades ...
Looks like coverage to me.
But let's see, what else was covered today? Top stories -- health reform (impacts millions of lives), crash at Jamaica airport, H1N1 supply information, a captive soldier... y'know, important stuff?
Even if you're focusing on internal congressional politics, this is probably a more interesting story.
And hey, big surprise, this story isn't on the front page of foxnews.com now, and isn't "above the fold" (even on this 1200 vertical pixel screen) in their "politics" section. So while I'm sure they love taking shots at Democrats (hey, find me a Fox article critical of Republicans -- it's not hard to find a "liberal media" article, even on MSNBC, that's critical of Democrats) -- even Fox doesn't see it as that important, compared to all the other stuff going on. Maybe it'll actually matter if he succeeds...
Can you imagine what would happen to a (R) if they called someone a WHORE on TV?
Probably the same thing that happened to John McCain when he called this a "Christian nation", which is both offensive and demonstrably wrong. Or the same thing that happened to Ted "series of tubes" Stevens when he showed gross incompetence at grasping the most basic concepts of the Internet, such as e-mail.
Yes, I realize Ted Stevens was eventually prosecuted -- for actual corruption.
When 15 people show up for "Liberal" protest, the news reports "Dozens", when 5000 conservatives do the same thing, "some" showed up.
Yes, in a country of three hundred million, five thousand is "some". Would "dozens" have made you happier?
And if you're referring to the "TEA Parties" which "weren't covered" by the "mainstream media", let's keep a few facts in mind:
I'd dismantle the rest of your argument, but...
FOX NEWS is balance, when you have a "tingly feeling running down your leg" as fare on the other channels.
...it pretty much devolved into name-calling.
Tell me again how "balanced" Beck is when he blames a gang beating on the rise of atheism -- or when he wants California out of the union. I mean, Bill O'Reilly is a real gem, too, running a segment about how reporters should stop harassing people, leave celebrities alone, etc, right before he goes into a segment of footage of his reporters doing the exact same thing, with no segue... but hey, Beck makes O'Reilly look like a genius saint by comparison.
Whatever bias the "liberal media" might have -- and it doesn't, it just actually is fair and balanced, so liberals think it's too conservative, and conservatives think it's too liberal, but let's pretend it has a liberal bias and I just can't see it -- that hypothetical bias is entirely dwarfed by the kind of unfiltered bullshit, bigotry, and ignorance that so frequently comes
It looks somewhat legit, though that bias was a bit obvious -- the guy is a Democrat.
If he had been a Republican, would Fox have said anything?
Pipebombs are just a poor man's grenade. Other games have even had bombs that work exactly like that -- toss, then push a button. And, as others have mentioned, the other elements of this have appeared in other games since.
Granted, there's still some things that probably haven't been as common, if they've appeared at all -- the shrink ray, for example, or the holographic decoy. But if you just want crazy weapons, Ratchet and Clank has them all.
No, the point is that Duke3D, at the time, had things no one had seen before. Technologically, it was a Doom clone, but improved -- ramps, if nothing else -- and the level editor had the ability to toggle into 3D mode, I think even with some actions being possible in 3D mode.
And, all those other things you've mentioned, plus the Devastator -- yet it wasn't completely unbalanced -- plus jetpacks, movie references, the binary combination lock minigame, and so on -- sort of the perfect storm of all the things that made the FPS genre great, distilled to perfection, plus one-liners and strippers.
But, IMHO, this was pretty much the top of the id-style shooter, which is action-driven, you don't care that much about the plot, you just need enough verisimilitude to blow up some aliens, with some fun cutscenes to tie it together (but mostly to reward you for a boss fight). That's the legacy that, say, Serious Sam follows.
TFA makes the point that this was the problem -- they wanted Duke Nukem Forever to be at the top of the genre again, but it was getting harder and more expensive to do. I'm still a bit disappointed, because by all accounts, another year or two would've done it, especially if it was funded by a publisher who insisted on a release date.
But compare this to, say, Half-Life. It wasn't much later, and it was much more innovative, to the point of redefining the genre -- it was story-driven, an actual narrative expressed using the game as a medium. And the sequel, despite numerous delays and taking seven years in development, was actually released, and actually did it again.
And now we have Halo, which seems to combine the two -- there's a good story behind it, a fair amount is told in the gameplay, but it's tied together with often fun cinematics, and while it's more serious, Master Chief is similar to Duke in that he's the best at everything (and also ridiculously muscle-bound) -- and similarly fun in deathmatch mode.
What's my point in bringing up Half-Life and Halo? Well, nostalgia is fun, and Duke3D was significant, but there is no one perfect game, or even a most innovative game. Also, most of the time, the things you thought were so original in one game were probably there already, and have certainly been there since, unless no one wanted to touch them because they suck.