Primary reason for adopting Open Source: -(Europe) Avoid vendor lock-in. -(US) Cost.
...because let's be brutally honest here: the US cares less about sending money to Redmond, Seattle than Europe does. For Europe it means a loss of value on the continent, but for the US the money stays 'at home', and contributes to local jobs, taxes, etc.
So yes, Europe cares about Open Source in a different way than the US. It might very well be the only way that serious software development in Europe can compete with the US...
And it won't work. 50% will simply become the new 0%. People who care about scores will adjust, and require higher scores than before. And while a child that scored 50% in the past was "almost there", now he will think of himself as a total failure. Well done, then, for this grade inflation...
If I recall correctly, the last time I traveled to USA, I had to fill a form stating that the intent of my travel was not to kill the US president. People who create such forms would probably fund a research on a "suspicious person detector"
I'm sure happy it is faster, but can anyone point me to a site where it actually matters? I tried Chrome and I couldn't find any site that behaved noticably faster than in Firefox. Maybe my 3 year old PC (and even then "good not state of the art") PC is simply too fast for the web? Or maybe I visit the wrong sites?
You got it all wrong: people hate COBOL because it is inefficient to _write_. There are just way too many characters and headers and declarations and whatever in even your short COBOL example.
As for the assembly it generates, do you see anyone giving a f'ck these days? The kids are all perl this, python that - no assembly in sight anywhere. The only thing they know that looks a little bit like assembly is Java bytecode!
As for your argument that non-programmers can read COBOL... Honestly, when was the last time you had a non-programmer trying to read through a program? And understand it? My guess would be "never" and "not in their life". Because they don't care; they just want it to work and that's why they pay you.
And don't forget this: to change the results of an election takes either *one* malicious programmer, or a veritable army of counters. That one programmer can be bribed or coerced, and if need be silenced, and the results of his efforts will never be verifiable. That army of counters is much harder to organize and control, and the risk of discovery is far, far larger...
As for your other point, I don't know anything who thinks Halo is the be-all and end-all of FPS games, just that the series is overall pretty good, the latest is very polished, and they're popular so it's never hard to find a match.
I wondered about that: how does the even-larger debt AIG ends up with actually help them? This is just postponing the inevitable, isn't it? Are they really relying on some magic upswing in the economy?
Actually it could be three teams, plus a single guy thinking part-time about how to extend the franchise further...
But no matter, let them dilute their only icon. It will not sell more XBoxes. Halo has always had the stink of desperation about it: "See? we also have a Mario-level hero on our platform! We also have a decent game that people buy consoles for!" Whereas reality is that this is a role born purely out of the general poverty of content: in a sea of mediocrity, masterchief floated to the top like the nameless, faceless turd that he is.
And I still don't know if all the fanboys (who will no doubt be flaming me to a crisp soon enough) actually *believe* that Halo is perfect and unique, or whether they secretly know that it is just another FPS, wanting for just a single outstanding feature to set it apart from the rest...
Ah wait, I forgot: there is the hallowed two weapon limit, that paragon of innovation! It sooo changed our world! It brought us such great strategy and choice, and thoughtful gameplay! It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that this simplified the controls to the point where an XBox controller had enough buttons to actually play the game to begin with! And the fact that you can find unused guns of virtually any type dotted around the landscape in just about unlimited numbers also has no bearing on that deep strategizing at all, no sir!
Of course, back in the day when I actually played Halo, I had just gone through half a dozen PC FPS'es. It was a phase, ok? I've since diversified; I now also play other types of games again. Nameless armored grunts don't work for me anymore; that's why I didn't play Crysis. But I digress; Halo was just one in a sea of similar games. It mostly stood out because of its repetitive level design. Although for me it wasn't the library, so much: I was bothered far worse by that level where you have to cross a bridge and in doing so traverse four completely identical towers. I hated that part.
Anyway... Let's get ready for Halo Golf (18 courses, but actually there are only 4, and they are repeated 4-5 times each, and you can only carry two clubs at any time), Halo Karting (8 tracks, but there are only 2), Halo Brawl (40 opponents, all taken from the first three Halo games, and you only get two moves), and maybe, if that single guy thinking of a fourth game ever gets off his ass, Super All-Star Masterchief Baskbetball (which, uniquely among the series, has numerous distinctive levels, a wide choice of opponents, allows you to carry any number of balls and bats, and has gratifying battles against some pretty smart endbosses).
I think you are only partially right though: the first game was great because it had a great story that turns out to be more and more like the world we live in. The second game had dumbed-down mechanics, but it also had a crappy irrelevant story where you could switch allegiance on every level if you wanted and it never mattered.
As for Deus Ex 3... It is in production, but I fear the worst. About the only info we have is that it will be a game about "what it means to be human". That's not at all what DX1 was about - DX1 was about what it means to live in a world where those in power are unscrupulous powerhungry bastards.
Ok, so maybe we don't actually need a game anymore to see what the result of that is, but that is what DX1 was about. That, and open, non-linear gameplay, and interesting locations and characters, and mildly amusing AI and physics problems;-)
The original (2D) game was just called "Metal Gear". You played as "Solid Snake", and were trying to destoroy the ultimate weapon "Metal Gear". That made sense to me, even if the name Solid Snake seemed unfitting for a high-tech soldier.
I've always taken the "solid" moniker in the name to mean that the game had moved to 3D, and now had a solid environment instead of a flat one. After all, the second one is not called "Metal Gear Raiden" or anything.
Of course none of this answers your question. I've wondered myself, to be honest;-)
Countries like China and India, that have lots of people that might one day want to connect, but not a lot of existing infrastructure yet, and certainly not a lot of IP4 addresses, will have a far better motivation than countries that have an abundance of unused addresses.
The killer app will come, alright - just not from the US.
Making a long list of websites containing a specific phrase is fairly trivial. Finding interesting ones among that set, or in other words, picking winners and losers, is the reason Google (and other search machines) exists at all.
So yes, they damn well should be doing that.
Now, if only they would get rid of those annoying sites that offer "$HARDWARE? Prices, reviews, and benchmarks! Be the first to write a review!"...
I call BS on the "unique and fascinating mechanics". The real reason games from the 80's will be "enjoyed" far into the future is that the generation that grew up with or played it will get nostalgic and run back to it every once in a while.
I'm just slightly too young to have fond memories of Pacman in the arcade (or maybe I just got into computers late, I don't know), and I never liked it. It is incredibly boring, the gameplay is the same for each level!
Games from that era tend to be simplistic, ugly, incredibly frustrating, and mostly rather crap. And while I do play the occasional game from the system that I did grow up with (MSX, for those who care), I wouldn't expect anyone else to look at it today and see anything of worth.
On the other hand, I expect there will be remakes of Deus Ex, Sands of Time, and System Shock 2 at some point, and people will still enjoy playing them.
Funny, then, that it is still beating the shit out of the PS3.
Funny, but that's not what I see. Worldwide sales for the PS3 are considerably higher than for the XBox 360 at this point (source: VGChartz), and have been since the beginning of the year.
The XBox still has a lead thanks to its hasty launch, but that lead is slowly eroding. And you have to wonder: are all those broken units actually counted as new sales? I wouldn't put it past them...
The article provides the answer: Bioshock was initially conceived as an RPG, but later turned into an FPS. At that point, my guess is that most of the depth and non-linearity was removed (because it was "too confusing" to their focus group).
So what conclusions will they draw from this? Probably that FPS'es sell better than RPG's, even though Bioshock was trading heavily on the SS2 name. If I had realized it was _only_ an FPS I would have waited with buying until it appeared in the bargain bin...
Bioshock was beautiful, but in the end it left me unsatisfied. I was hoping for less linearity (yes, you _can_ travel between levels at will, but why would you want to?), and more distinct levels. Not graphically, that was fine; but every level had the same set of enemies, the same set of power ups, vending machines, etc.
Compare this to System Shock 2 (hey, the developers did!): in SS2 you _have_ to backtrack to earlier levels (and doing so isn't a chore at all thanks to some brilliant level design), and each area has its own level of threat: some are swarming with enemies, some are eerily quiet, some have lots of useful goodies, and in some you have to carefully hoard your possessions.
To me it made a lot of difference: the Von Braun was a real place, but Rapture eventually just blurred out. Yes, it is pretty, but there is no emotion associated with any of the locations. It is all just some place you run past while killing baddies. If you need health, it is always less than a hundred meters away. If you need to change your skills, you can do it at any time - no need to carefully think about what you want before you start.
This is the uncanny valley all over again: the various Bioshock levels are so much alike in terms of what you can do, that in the end they all look the same, and wrong.
Wow. Why aren't we in the US trying to do this? We used to be so worried about the Communists beating us. But now it's like we don't even care. Where's the fire?
I'd say because neither Beijing nor Shanghai are in the US, so there is really not much point to the US spending money on such a line...
Same here. For the period of January-Juli, 43GB up, 145GB down. The lowest month was 1GB up, 7GB down. The busiest month was 20GB up, 52GB down. And although that was a mere two months ago, I have no recollection of what I torrented - some TV-show, no doubt, but apparently it didn't make a lasting impression...
Since then I've made a conscious choice to stop wasting so much of my life on brainless zombie-like activities like watching TV, so I doubt I'll be hitting such high numbers any time soon again...
Slashdot Mirror
Primary reason for adopting Open Source:
-(Europe) Avoid vendor lock-in.
-(US) Cost.
...because let's be brutally honest here: the US cares less about sending money to Redmond, Seattle than Europe does. For Europe it means a loss of value on the continent, but for the US the money stays 'at home', and contributes to local jobs, taxes, etc.
So yes, Europe cares about Open Source in a different way than the US. It might very well be the only way that serious software development in Europe can compete with the US...
And it won't work. 50% will simply become the new 0%. People who care about scores will adjust, and require higher scores than before. And while a child that scored 50% in the past was "almost there", now he will think of himself as a total failure. Well done, then, for this grade inflation...
If I recall correctly, the last time I traveled to USA, I had to fill a form stating that the intent of my travel was not to kill the US president. People who create such forms would probably fund a research on a "suspicious person detector"
So did you?
Hopefully it will cut down on the amount of spam...
I'm sure happy it is faster, but can anyone point me to a site where it actually matters? I tried Chrome and I couldn't find any site that behaved noticably faster than in Firefox. Maybe my 3 year old PC (and even then "good not state of the art") PC is simply too fast for the web? Or maybe I visit the wrong sites?
You got it all wrong: people hate COBOL because it is inefficient to _write_. There are just way too many characters and headers and declarations and whatever in even your short COBOL example.
As for the assembly it generates, do you see anyone giving a f'ck these days? The kids are all perl this, python that - no assembly in sight anywhere. The only thing they know that looks a little bit like assembly is Java bytecode!
As for your argument that non-programmers can read COBOL... Honestly, when was the last time you had a non-programmer trying to read through a program? And understand it? My guess would be "never" and "not in their life". Because they don't care; they just want it to work and that's why they pay you.
And don't forget this: to change the results of an election takes either *one* malicious programmer, or a veritable army of counters. That one programmer can be bribed or coerced, and if need be silenced, and the results of his efforts will never be verifiable. That army of counters is much harder to organize and control, and the risk of discovery is far, far larger...
As for your other point, I don't know anything who thinks Halo is the be-all and end-all of FPS games, just that the series is overall pretty good, the latest is very polished, and they're popular so it's never hard to find a match.
Let me help by providing a brief list...
I wondered about that: how does the even-larger debt AIG ends up with actually help them? This is just postponing the inevitable, isn't it? Are they really relying on some magic upswing in the economy?
How does this work, exactly?
Four.
Actually it could be three teams, plus a single guy thinking part-time about how to extend the franchise further...
But no matter, let them dilute their only icon. It will not sell more XBoxes. Halo has always had the stink of desperation about it: "See? we also have a Mario-level hero on our platform! We also have a decent game that people buy consoles for!" Whereas reality is that this is a role born purely out of the general poverty of content: in a sea of mediocrity, masterchief floated to the top like the nameless, faceless turd that he is.
And I still don't know if all the fanboys (who will no doubt be flaming me to a crisp soon enough) actually *believe* that Halo is perfect and unique, or whether they secretly know that it is just another FPS, wanting for just a single outstanding feature to set it apart from the rest...
Ah wait, I forgot: there is the hallowed two weapon limit, that paragon of innovation! It sooo changed our world! It brought us such great strategy and choice, and thoughtful gameplay! It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that this simplified the controls to the point where an XBox controller had enough buttons to actually play the game to begin with! And the fact that you can find unused guns of virtually any type dotted around the landscape in just about unlimited numbers also has no bearing on that deep strategizing at all, no sir!
Of course, back in the day when I actually played Halo, I had just gone through half a dozen PC FPS'es. It was a phase, ok? I've since diversified; I now also play other types of games again. Nameless armored grunts don't work for me anymore; that's why I didn't play Crysis. But I digress; Halo was just one in a sea of similar games. It mostly stood out because of its repetitive level design. Although for me it wasn't the library, so much: I was bothered far worse by that level where you have to cross a bridge and in doing so traverse four completely identical towers. I hated that part.
Anyway... Let's get ready for Halo Golf (18 courses, but actually there are only 4, and they are repeated 4-5 times each, and you can only carry two clubs at any time), Halo Karting (8 tracks, but there are only 2), Halo Brawl (40 opponents, all taken from the first three Halo games, and you only get two moves), and maybe, if that single guy thinking of a fourth game ever gets off his ass, Super All-Star Masterchief Baskbetball (which, uniquely among the series, has numerous distinctive levels, a wide choice of opponents, allows you to carry any number of balls and bats, and has gratifying battles against some pretty smart endbosses).
I think you are only partially right though: the first game was great because it had a great story that turns out to be more and more like the world we live in. The second game had dumbed-down mechanics, but it also had a crappy irrelevant story where you could switch allegiance on every level if you wanted and it never mattered.
As for Deus Ex 3... It is in production, but I fear the worst. About the only info we have is that it will be a game about "what it means to be human". That's not at all what DX1 was about - DX1 was about what it means to live in a world where those in power are unscrupulous powerhungry bastards.
Ok, so maybe we don't actually need a game anymore to see what the result of that is, but that is what DX1 was about. That, and open, non-linear gameplay, and interesting locations and characters, and mildly amusing AI and physics problems ;-)
The original (2D) game was just called "Metal Gear". You played as "Solid Snake", and were trying to destoroy the ultimate weapon "Metal Gear". That made sense to me, even if the name Solid Snake seemed unfitting for a high-tech soldier.
I've always taken the "solid" moniker in the name to mean that the game had moved to 3D, and now had a solid environment instead of a flat one. After all, the second one is not called "Metal Gear Raiden" or anything.
Of course none of this answers your question. I've wondered myself, to be honest ;-)
Countries like China and India, that have lots of people that might one day want to connect, but not a lot of existing infrastructure yet, and certainly not a lot of IP4 addresses, will have a far better motivation than countries that have an abundance of unused addresses.
The killer app will come, alright - just not from the US.
Making a long list of websites containing a specific phrase is fairly trivial. Finding interesting ones among that set, or in other words, picking winners and losers, is the reason Google (and other search machines) exists at all.
So yes, they damn well should be doing that.
Now, if only they would get rid of those annoying sites that offer "$HARDWARE? Prices, reviews, and benchmarks! Be the first to write a review!"...
No, but there might be a rootkit from Sony in the system.
I call BS on the "unique and fascinating mechanics". The real reason games from the 80's will be "enjoyed" far into the future is that the generation that grew up with or played it will get nostalgic and run back to it every once in a while.
I'm just slightly too young to have fond memories of Pacman in the arcade (or maybe I just got into computers late, I don't know), and I never liked it. It is incredibly boring, the gameplay is the same for each level!
Games from that era tend to be simplistic, ugly, incredibly frustrating, and mostly rather crap. And while I do play the occasional game from the system that I did grow up with (MSX, for those who care), I wouldn't expect anyone else to look at it today and see anything of worth.
On the other hand, I expect there will be remakes of Deus Ex, Sands of Time, and System Shock 2 at some point, and people will still enjoy playing them.
Let me start by saying that if others enjoy this game, great for them! But I agree with you: I completely fail to understand what the attraction is.
Glad to see there are others like me. Maybe we could set up a support group or something ;-)
Funny, then, that it is still beating the shit out of the PS3.
Funny, but that's not what I see. Worldwide sales for the PS3 are considerably higher than for the XBox 360 at this point (source: VGChartz), and have been since the beginning of the year.
The XBox still has a lead thanks to its hasty launch, but that lead is slowly eroding. And you have to wonder: are all those broken units actually counted as new sales? I wouldn't put it past them...
Did anyone else get aroused reading the summary?
I don't know about the rest of you, but the sun gets me pretty hot.
Well, she's still single, so go for it...
We need to set up an experiment to see if we can confirm or deny this... story.
Can someone call the TI and ask about doing a similar experiment?
I wonder where he could readily get a vacuum chamber big enough to pull the air out.
We have a 2300m3 one at work ;-)
BioShock was really underwhelming.
The article provides the answer: Bioshock was initially conceived as an RPG, but later turned into an FPS. At that point, my guess is that most of the depth and non-linearity was removed (because it was "too confusing" to their focus group).
So what conclusions will they draw from this? Probably that FPS'es sell better than RPG's, even though Bioshock was trading heavily on the SS2 name. If I had realized it was _only_ an FPS I would have waited with buying until it appeared in the bargain bin...
Bioshock was beautiful, but in the end it left me unsatisfied. I was hoping for less linearity (yes, you _can_ travel between levels at will, but why would you want to?), and more distinct levels. Not graphically, that was fine; but every level had the same set of enemies, the same set of power ups, vending machines, etc.
Compare this to System Shock 2 (hey, the developers did!): in SS2 you _have_ to backtrack to earlier levels (and doing so isn't a chore at all thanks to some brilliant level design), and each area has its own level of threat: some are swarming with enemies, some are eerily quiet, some have lots of useful goodies, and in some you have to carefully hoard your possessions.
To me it made a lot of difference: the Von Braun was a real place, but Rapture eventually just blurred out. Yes, it is pretty, but there is no emotion associated with any of the locations. It is all just some place you run past while killing baddies. If you need health, it is always less than a hundred meters away. If you need to change your skills, you can do it at any time - no need to carefully think about what you want before you start.
This is the uncanny valley all over again: the various Bioshock levels are so much alike in terms of what you can do, that in the end they all look the same, and wrong.
Wow. Why aren't we in the US trying to do this? We used to be so worried about the Communists beating us. But now it's like we don't even care. Where's the fire?
I'd say because neither Beijing nor Shanghai are in the US, so there is really not much point to the US spending money on such a line...
Same here. For the period of January-Juli, 43GB up, 145GB down. The lowest month was 1GB up, 7GB down. The busiest month was 20GB up, 52GB down. And although that was a mere two months ago, I have no recollection of what I torrented - some TV-show, no doubt, but apparently it didn't make a lasting impression...
Since then I've made a conscious choice to stop wasting so much of my life on brainless zombie-like activities like watching TV, so I doubt I'll be hitting such high numbers any time soon again...