It really doesn't matter. Vista is going to become the #1 operating system in a few years, so it's going to be a target regardless of whether Microsoft blusters about it or not. Your argument is probably why Apple doesn't make much of its good security record, but it doesn't apply for Microsoft.
Two of them, Code and Graphics, have an "expiration date" and they comprise "almost all" the content?
Of course they comprise almost all of the content. To give you a rough order of magnitude, a typical modern FPS development team has something like 50 artists, 10 programmers, two or three music/sound effects people and one writer.
So it's totally unheard of and impossible to make source art resources at a higher resolution and quality than is possible to render in real time and scale down for the engine implementation as needed?
Ooookay... I'd like to see you do try and do nice artwork with 1997-era Photoshop and 3d modeling tools and without knowing precisely what capabilities next-gen hardware will make available (higher-poly models? larger environments? higher-res textures? shaders? --- the last one in particular is central today, but most people couldn't imagine it in 1997). More to the point, why would anybody waste gobs of money on overly high-quality artwork when the game is expected to be released next year? We're talking a difference of resources in the millions here (the cost of game development has skyrocketed since 1997, and the difference is mostly in the artwork).
But now there's one thing I'm sure of -- you're not a game developer, and you couldn't even play a convincing one on TV.
Err whatever. He might well be, they're pretty common on slashdot. FWIW, I'm one (though not working on FPSes).
Do you think our enemies are retarded? If we annouced to the world "we will only search arabs, never whites" exacty how many seconds would pass before they recruited a white person to blow up a plane?
Actually, I heard the alleged terrorist cell recently arrested in Canada was trying to do just this already.
Uh, actually, the reason the vulnerability was announced was because it affects most Windows versions up to and including XP. I don't think anyone running win98 cares; with almost no exceptions, they're either already owned or not directly exposed to the net. Why burn money on lawyers for no benefit?
The same is true of ZoneAlarm Pro and Avast! Anti Virus which I find insulting as a technically minder user but I do understand that most people who use MS products need to be saved from the "lets install anything" mentality.
Those applications put in hooks at low levels of Windows and it makes perfect sense that they would be completely broken by the changes in Vista. Make no mistake, they wouldn't have worked if Vista had let you install them.
Also, why do you feel the need to install anti-virus software on an operating system which isn't yet widespread enough to be a target, anyway?
I don't have knowledge of the relevant laws, but couldn't it be said that the shareholders interests aren't only monetary? I bet a lot of Google shareholders are ethical people and they bought Google shares expecting it to continue to not be evil, possibly even at the cost of earning them less money. If so, pulling out of China might be in the shareholders' interests regardless of profits.
I still don't see the problem. So that leaves 40Gb free. I've just spent 3 years using a laptop with a 15Gb hard drive and I did everything I wanted with it except video --- games, music, programming, image editing. If you really need more space, cheap USB hard drives are available.
Even current integrated graphics won't cut it with Vista...
Where did you hear this? The most common crap integrated graphics card for current laptops and low-end desktops is the Intel GMA950, and it's Vista-ready. That's the only reason its 3d capabilities are there, since the card sure can't run very many games.
Just because you can make a program doesn't make you a programmer... Write a program, write it well, don't use a framework unless it actually benefits the program, not just because it's there. (Because who says it'll be on the client computer?)
You seem to be assuming that everything is an application for mass distribution. That's not the primary use of these frameworks at this time (the only mainstream managed-code software I know of is Azureus). But if you're a company needing a custom application, you can't afford an elite experienced programmer to spend years coding it in C++. You're going to hire an average code monkey and give him the most high-level framework that does the job, and who cares about efficiency because buying new hardware is a lot cheaper than paying programmers' salaries. And that framework is going to be on clients' computers because you installed it there!
In the context you program in it may not be the best solution, but there's a reason why Java and increasingly.NET is dominant in corporate environments.
What's the big deal? Hard disk space is ridiculously cheap and computers that aren't used for heavy music/video have gobs of unused space (those that do, meanwhile, will have vast HDs on the order of 300gb). Can't you find anything important to complain about?
Still, that technique requires a lot more resources and effort than the typical spammer/etc has. Capchas still provide a reasonable degree of protection against abuse.
Er, most Sudoku puzzles you see in newspapers are already generated by computers. The craze began when somebody wrote a decent program to create them. It's not very expensive and the DS could do it nicely given at most 2 seconds of loading time.
Er, I actually like Java, but since when does it not add weight and complexity? Has it been so optimized now that it drains no system resources at all? Like it or not, Java is still a fairly large, demanding system and it's not a great idea to run it on systems with low RAM.
Of course, a good outcome from this would be to reconsider the global transport of exchanging documentation (e.g., resumes and cover letters, etc.) to something a little less Micrsoft, a little more open, and a little less prone to exploits.
How about RTF (WordPad's native format)? That's what I use to send all my resumes. It's an open, text-markup format, every major operating system comes with software to read it, and it supports the basic rich-text stuff that's all that's needed in 90% of documents. You can even rename.rtf files to.doc without problems for fools who insist on only Microsoft Word documents.
So you're telling me the entire ~350$ dollar difference between the Wii and the PS3 hardware (more like ~450$ when you consider that the Wii controller will probably cost 100$ on its own) comes down to only the presence of a shader? I don't know that much about the specs of these systems but I call BS. I expect much stronger performance across the board from the Wii's competitors.
Okay, it always works in Windows anyway. IIRC it also works in OS X. Haven't used desktop Linux in ages so I'll take your word for it that it's broken there. I don't see why you're so angry about my informing people about it though, since Linux users probably don't form more than 5% of Firefox userbase.
I said if the font isn't properly installed. If your English fonts aren't properly installed, things will look glitchy too. It so happens that some systems ship with Chinese fonts instead of Japanese fonts enabled by default. This kind of bug wouldn't happen if it wasn't for Unicode, but it's still the fault of the system implementation not the core standard.
As I understand it, it has mainly to do with rivalries between Japan and China dating from WW2. The Unicode consortium decided to fuse the Japanese and Chinese character sets -- a sensible decision, since there is a huge amount of overlap. Sometimes with Unicode, if your fonts aren't properly installed, a few Japanese characters might look Chinese (still readable, just a little strange) and Japanese nationalists go ballistic over this. Seems totally irrational to us, but nationalism brings into play very strong feelings...
But are you aware that you can always press the middle mouse button on a tab to close it? I don't see why you would want an additional button that can be pressed by accident when you have that.
If you're so stupid you can't spell properly most of the time perhaps
you shouldn't be using a computer in the first place anyway.
Everyone makes typos in long texts. And what about those of us who need to write in foreign languages?
Also, if you've written over 1200 comments on slashdot and you're so stupid you haven't yet realized carriage returns are automatically converted to ugly <br>s by slashcode, maybe you shouldn't be using a computer in the first place anyway?
Slashdot Mirror
It really doesn't matter. Vista is going to become the #1 operating system in a few years, so it's going to be a target regardless of whether Microsoft blusters about it or not. Your argument is probably why Apple doesn't make much of its good security record, but it doesn't apply for Microsoft.
Of course they comprise almost all of the content. To give you a rough order of magnitude, a typical modern FPS development team has something like 50 artists, 10 programmers, two or three music/sound effects people and one writer.
So it's totally unheard of and impossible to make source art resources at a higher resolution and quality than is possible to render in real time and scale down for the engine implementation as needed?
Ooookay... I'd like to see you do try and do nice artwork with 1997-era Photoshop and 3d modeling tools and without knowing precisely what capabilities next-gen hardware will make available (higher-poly models? larger environments? higher-res textures? shaders? --- the last one in particular is central today, but most people couldn't imagine it in 1997). More to the point, why would anybody waste gobs of money on overly high-quality artwork when the game is expected to be released next year? We're talking a difference of resources in the millions here (the cost of game development has skyrocketed since 1997, and the difference is mostly in the artwork).
But now there's one thing I'm sure of -- you're not a game developer, and you couldn't even play a convincing one on TV.
Err whatever. He might well be, they're pretty common on slashdot. FWIW, I'm one (though not working on FPSes).
Actually, I heard the alleged terrorist cell recently arrested in Canada was trying to do just this already.
Uh, actually, the reason the vulnerability was announced was because it affects most Windows versions up to and including XP. I don't think anyone running win98 cares; with almost no exceptions, they're either already owned or not directly exposed to the net. Why burn money on lawyers for no benefit?
Those applications put in hooks at low levels of Windows and it makes perfect sense that they would be completely broken by the changes in Vista. Make no mistake, they wouldn't have worked if Vista had let you install them.
Also, why do you feel the need to install anti-virus software on an operating system which isn't yet widespread enough to be a target, anyway?
I don't have knowledge of the relevant laws, but couldn't it be said that the shareholders interests aren't only monetary? I bet a lot of Google shareholders are ethical people and they bought Google shares expecting it to continue to not be evil, possibly even at the cost of earning them less money. If so, pulling out of China might be in the shareholders' interests regardless of profits.
I still don't see the problem. So that leaves 40Gb free. I've just spent 3 years using a laptop with a 15Gb hard drive and I did everything I wanted with it except video --- games, music, programming, image editing. If you really need more space, cheap USB hard drives are available.
80% of windows users
Even current integrated graphics won't cut it with Vista...
Where did you hear this? The most common crap integrated graphics card for current laptops and low-end desktops is the Intel GMA950, and it's Vista-ready. That's the only reason its 3d capabilities are there, since the card sure can't run very many games.
Just because you can make a program doesn't make you a programmer... Write a program, write it well, don't use a framework unless it actually benefits the program, not just because it's there. (Because who says it'll be on the client computer?)
You seem to be assuming that everything is an application for mass distribution. That's not the primary use of these frameworks at this time (the only mainstream managed-code software I know of is Azureus). But if you're a company needing a custom application, you can't afford an elite experienced programmer to spend years coding it in C++. You're going to hire an average code monkey and give him the most high-level framework that does the job, and who cares about efficiency because buying new hardware is a lot cheaper than paying programmers' salaries. And that framework is going to be on clients' computers because you installed it there!
In the context you program in it may not be the best solution, but there's a reason why Java and increasingly .NET is dominant in corporate environments.
What's the big deal? Hard disk space is ridiculously cheap and computers that aren't used for heavy music/video have gobs of unused space (those that do, meanwhile, will have vast HDs on the order of 300gb). Can't you find anything important to complain about?
(For starters, text adventure games have improved a great deal since the Infocom days. You think no one makes them anymore?)
Your mouse sensitivity is probably way too high. I've never had a problem with this (and I use a clumsy ergonomic mouse).
You still use Word for your scientific documents? Poor guy.
Still, that technique requires a lot more resources and effort than the typical spammer/etc has. Capchas still provide a reasonable degree of protection against abuse.
Er, most Sudoku puzzles you see in newspapers are already generated by computers. The craze began when somebody wrote a decent program to create them. It's not very expensive and the DS could do it nicely given at most 2 seconds of loading time.
Er, I actually like Java, but since when does it not add weight and complexity? Has it been so optimized now that it drains no system resources at all? Like it or not, Java is still a fairly large, demanding system and it's not a great idea to run it on systems with low RAM.
How about RTF (WordPad's native format)? That's what I use to send all my resumes. It's an open, text-markup format, every major operating system comes with software to read it, and it supports the basic rich-text stuff that's all that's needed in 90% of documents. You can even rename .rtf files to .doc without problems for fools who insist on only Microsoft Word documents.
Um, I just tried and single quotes don't do anything. Google just ignores them.
Hmm, thanks for the additional explanation. I see the point better now.
So you're telling me the entire ~350$ dollar difference between the Wii and the PS3 hardware (more like ~450$ when you consider that the Wii controller will probably cost 100$ on its own) comes down to only the presence of a shader? I don't know that much about the specs of these systems but I call BS. I expect much stronger performance across the board from the Wii's competitors.
($_ = unpack("B*", "NERD ALERT")) =~ s/(........)/\1 /g;
print;
Okay, it always works in Windows anyway. IIRC it also works in OS X. Haven't used desktop Linux in ages so I'll take your word for it that it's broken there. I don't see why you're so angry about my informing people about it though, since Linux users probably don't form more than 5% of Firefox userbase.
I said if the font isn't properly installed. If your English fonts aren't properly installed, things will look glitchy too. It so happens that some systems ship with Chinese fonts instead of Japanese fonts enabled by default. This kind of bug wouldn't happen if it wasn't for Unicode, but it's still the fault of the system implementation not the core standard.
As I understand it, it has mainly to do with rivalries between Japan and China dating from WW2. The Unicode consortium decided to fuse the Japanese and Chinese character sets -- a sensible decision, since there is a huge amount of overlap. Sometimes with Unicode, if your fonts aren't properly installed, a few Japanese characters might look Chinese (still readable, just a little strange) and Japanese nationalists go ballistic over this. Seems totally irrational to us, but nationalism brings into play very strong feelings...
But are you aware that you can always press the middle mouse button on a tab to close it? I don't see why you would want an additional button that can be pressed by accident when you have that.
Everyone makes typos in long texts. And what about those of us who need to write in foreign languages?
Also, if you've written over 1200 comments on slashdot and you're so stupid you haven't yet realized carriage returns are automatically converted to ugly <br>s by slashcode, maybe you shouldn't be using a computer in the first place anyway?