Except it's just as easy to get freeware and shareware for the Mac as it was in the Good Old Days of yore, and some of the new stuff is damn spiffy. As a cross-platform developer, I always felt that the Mac was easier and took less resources (e.g. money) to develop for than Windows or Linux.
However, download capacity is rarely reached, and it's okay to amortize the uploads over time. So you might download an ISO image in a few hours, but leave the torrent up for a couple days.
Saying it's inefficient is nothing more than a load of crap though. If you want inefficiency, go for centralized distribution -- you get single points of failure and bottlenecks.
I think games are just like movies in this regard... the majority are generic action. We'll have games like Quake as long as we have movies like Independence Day.
Did anyone else think about Final Fantasy 6 as a good example? Back in '94 this 16-bit RPG talked about teen pregnancy, suicide, and the responsibility of individual soldiers for their own actions during war. Plus, in how many games does the main character get to set up an orphanage?
First of all, not all RPG systems are random. Look at Theatrix or Amber... no dice, no cards, nothing.
Although randomness is not necessary, it is very useful for simulation. Let's say your character is in a gunfight. Most of the time, there will be no guarantee that you'll hit or miss. To simulate that, people roll dice. This lends authenticity to the battle. It adds danger because you are rarely certain to win, and it adds hope because you are rarely certain to lose. This increases tension and character identification because uncertainty fundamentally feels real or at least plausible.
From another point of view, randomness and rules allows for freedom from scripting. Let's suppose that the GM has an outline for a story, and some of the characters don't like it -- maybe it's distasteful, maybe it's just like the last story, maybe it's out of character, or maybe they just have different ideas. Without rules, the differences have to be resolved personally between the GM and the players. With rules, everyone accepts a certain level of reality, and the freedoms granted by that reality, and the players have the option to alter the events that occur without having to change the script. Rules and chance make it less like a story from a book and more like a story from life.
Role-playing is only two-thirds of the acronym 'RPG'... some people want to play a game, on some level similar to Go or Monopoly. A game is about making interesting decisions against opposition to achieve goals. Without rules, you're not playing an RPG... you're doing make-believe, not that there's anything bad about make-believe. Free-form role playing is fun when it's done well. In an RPG, your goal can be to tell a story and the opposition can be the rule system. That's a challenge and it's usually fun. People can basically choose their goals in an RPG, and although the rules are relatively constant, each person is playing a different game -- but everyone is still playing together. Without rules, completing these challenges is somehow less significant: rather than achieving something because of effort, you achieve things because it fits the story or because the GM said you did. Randomness just puts the game a little closer to Poker than Chess.
I've tried to explain how rules can be useful from each of the three classic RPG perspectives. If what you want is to tell a story through role-playing, don't use a system. If what you want is Story-Telling and Catharsis and Character Development and Plot Arcs, then you should be writing a book instead. If you like stories, games, and other people, then RPG systems are the way to go.
Finally, I get tired of people whining about RPG systems. Sure, some are really bad. However, D&D is for people who like to play powerful standard fantasy archetypes and role-play a bit between combats and dungeon crawls, if you don't want to do that, don't play D&D. If you don't like making rules to fill in the gaps, then don't play FUDGE. If you don't like explaining all of your actions in terms of story, play a system more based on simulation. Whatever you want.
Right... because we all know games that use DirectX are easy to port to OpenGL.
Porting between x86 and PPC has always been a matter of recompiling, unless you coded in assembler or forgot what 'endian' means. Jeez, people still write structures in memory directly to disk... that's just plain dumb, how do you know that you won't need different alignment when the next generation of processors comes out?
I don't think you understand Extreme Programming. I am completely unable to understand some of what you are saying.
Here is a traditional method: - Write program requirements - Write design document - Write source code - Realize that the design decument is wrong - Change the design document to fit the code - Realize that the requirements are wrong - Change the requirements - Repeat
Here is an agile method, like XP: - Set a short-term goal - Write as little code as possible - Make sure the code works - Repeat
Agile methods accept the fact that requirements change and that correct design documents are very rare beasts indeed. It's a good way to make good software. Designing the program completely before coding is a real waste of time. Agile means that you do loose some control... but it gives freedom to the programmers you hired -- enough freedom to do what they need to complete the task. Of course, it's not a good way to design software for, e.g., a space shuttle where the requirements are very well known and have little tolerance.
Dual Xenon? Xenon is a noble gas, it doesn't naturally form molecules, although Neil Bartlett did it in 1962.
Anyone here ever programmed in assembler for both x86 and PPC? x86 is just downright painful. Please don't pretend to know anything about which processor a supercomputer should use unless you know both the problem domain and the potential implementations of solutions under different architectures.
Have you ever seen NO2? It's orange. It's a gas. It's an acid. It *is* smog. It's like the sixth most powerful acid of all acids or thereabouts (when mixed with water of course... producing nitric acid... H20 + NO2 --> H2NO3). The cool thing is that the right catalyst (cars have catalytic converters which do this, as well as get rid of CO) will turn it into harmless Nitrogen and Oxygen. The uncool part is that it's also easy to make, just mix Nitrogen and Oxygen (uh, like air) at high temperature and pressure (like in an engine).
Cocoa, Carbon, etc. aren't really orthogonal. Cocoa relies on BSD, Mach and Carbon. Carbon relies on Cocoa, BSD, and Mach. The reliance is decreasing, if you look at how menus work you'll see a good example.
Think of Carbon and Cocoa as just two ways to access the (mostly) same UI elements. The only difference is that it's a real pain in the ass to write anything in Carbon. I've written a few things in Carbon and a few in Cocoa. Programming in Cocoa is beautiful and fast, at least for something that was wedged sideways into C. And Cocoa's got a lot more thread safety than Carbon. Look at the Carbon docs, tons of functions either must be called by the main thread or aren't reentrant. I think people writing Mach-O apps in Carbon are either lazy, stubborn, or masochists. I write Carbon, but only when I need compatability with the systems of yore.
It took Apple time to put both Carbon and Cocoa in OS X. Cocoa ran on Mach already, but Apple wanted UI elements from Carbon. So in the beginning, they changed Cocoa so that it looked and felt like a Mac, and the changed Carbon so that it ran on systems that used real virtual memory.
Try an experiment for yourself. Put a bunch of ice in a glass. Add water until the ice is floating. Put cellophane over the top to reduce evaporation. Measure the water level. Make the ice melt with a warm water bath, microwave, waiting, or whatever. Measure the water level again.
--- SPOILER ---
The buoyancy of an object is equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces. Any object which floats has weight equal to its buoyancy (otherwise it would move up or down). So, the ice weighs as much as the volume of water that it displaces. When the ice melts, the amount of water from the ice melting is the same as the amount displaced by the ice in the first place. So the water level doesn't change.
This works with water because water expands when it freezes. Most substances contract when frozen, so they will sink. This also doesn't work with Antarctic ice. Antarctic ice is resting on a nice chunk of land (although the land itself is floating -- continents are buoyant, too). Temperature can cause water levels to rise, however, through thermal expansion. Imagine the oceans as one giant thermometer. This is counteracted by increased evaporation, I have no idea which is greater.
And this, folks, is why every ecologist should know how to use differential equations. Seriously. You can make your own models with Stella from http://www.hps-inc.com.
At high resolutions you're going to get dots instead of a picture, especially with low quality stuff as magazines. 300 dpi should be enough for a magazine.
Chernobyl had a lot of things that were just wrong.
The reactor increased in efficiency as temperature increased. This is a nice little feedback loop. Most reactors lose efficiency as temperature increases, meaning that it is difficult to try and overload the reactor, even on purpose.
The reactor was designed to be cheap, and it did not have a dome. Domes contain radioactive material very well. Tests have shown that an aircraft hitting a dome would hardly scratch it.
As another cost-cutting measure, the reactor didn't have any good backup power. It may seem silly to have a power plant that needs power, but nuclear power plants do need power to start up and in case of emergencies. Western plants have batteries and generators.
As if these technological blunders weren't enough, some bonehead transfered control of the power plants from the ministry that designed and built them, where all the trained personnel are employed, to the ministry of energy. There are reports of operators sitting on the control board and people showing up to work drunk.
Basically, in 1986, the Chernobyl reactor demonstrated a bunch of "don'ts" to a world that should have already known.
There will always be technology out there that can be misused. The amount of that technology will only increase. Do we ban knives because people get stabbed? Do we ban nuclear power because a couple of Russians cut costs?
The 'ball' nuclear reactors are basically foolproof. You put a bunch of balls next to each other and you get heat. This is not weapons grade Uranium.
I only see one problem with nuclear -- the small amount of waste that is generated needs to be handled properly. It can be done, but it just has to be done right.
Was the French revolution not as dark a time as the Bolshevik? They are so similar, yet the French revolution was hardly communism.
The concept of communism is separable from the notion that all humans are strictly equal. Communism failed because, as implemented, it ostensibly tried to eliminate human distinction rather than simply refactor existing, arbitrary distinction.
Rand believes that humans need only rely on their in situ capabilities to achieve greatness. History has shown this to be untrue. It is entirely natural to rely on other people. I rely on farmers to grow food that I can eat to survive, but that hardly makes me their slave.
I don't think those millions died so that they could prove that communism always fails. Millions die as a result of totalitarianism, no matter what the guise is. Hitler wasn't communist, Stalin was. Nice set of data points you have there.
Are you upset at communism, or are you upset at oppressive, totalitarian communist regimes? Unfortunately, I do not feel that the book adequetely explains why communism is so bad. It does explain how ludicrous it is to equate equality with the abolishment of a system based on meritocracy (e.g., authorship as a meritocracy), that is to say, artifically give everyone an equal voice when some have no desire to speak or have shamelessly derivative voices. I agree with this aspect of egoism / objectivism. However, Ayn Rand quite incorrectly associates this extreme behavior with communism (though it no less applies to democracy), and continues, equating charity and altruism with the destruction of creative effort.
This is counter to my life experience, I would not be half who I am if were nobody to have cared about me. I can see how Rand, having lived through the Bolshevik revolution, thought differently. Her fault lies in incorrectly associating the ostensible goals and the methods of Russian communism. The methods are deplorable, obviously -- but the goals, which she attacks with equal if not greater vehemence, are merely to secure a better standard of living for all humans.
This is the focus of her literary assaults. It is denial of our interdependence; a rejection of human kindness.
I feel kind of obliged to point out that you need to be ready to read those books. They're full of hatred for communism, and a dogmatic obsession with Ayn Rand's objectivism. Be careful lest you get to involved with those books, take a moment to step aside and try to view them from a different context than they present. Very powerful work, but on another level it is propaganda and you should always remember that.
In addition, The Fountainhead has one of the ugliest scenes I have ever come across in any piece of literature. I'm referring to the scene involving Roarke and Dominique, which in my mind, seems more or less equivalent to rape, yet is not treated as such in the book.
I'm just trying to give adequate warning for those who don't know what to expect from the books, they are very powerful and well written.
My favorite reading experiences are usually those summer days when I'm on vacation (no computer), and it's hot (don't want to be too active). I alternate some classics with some sci-fi / fantasy. Some of Asimov's series make my favorite summer reading, like the one that begins with "Caves of Steel". I've also done the Ender series, the Hyperion series, and I plan on reading some Wheel of Time this summer. As long as you don't stagnate over the summer, almost any book will do... I know that if I avoid reading for more than about a week it gets hard to get back into the habit. Don't push those books back into the later summer weeks! Of course, I feel obligated to post because there are only 13 postings above me.
Slashdot Mirror
Except it's just as easy to get freeware and shareware for the Mac as it was in the Good Old Days of yore, and some of the new stuff is damn spiffy. As a cross-platform developer, I always felt that the Mac was easier and took less resources (e.g. money) to develop for than Windows or Linux.
However, download capacity is rarely reached, and it's okay to amortize the uploads over time. So you might download an ISO image in a few hours, but leave the torrent up for a couple days.
Saying it's inefficient is nothing more than a load of crap though. If you want inefficiency, go for centralized distribution -- you get single points of failure and bottlenecks.
I think games are just like movies in this regard... the majority are generic action. We'll have games like Quake as long as we have movies like Independence Day.
Did anyone else think about Final Fantasy 6 as a good example? Back in '94 this 16-bit RPG talked about teen pregnancy, suicide, and the responsibility of individual soldiers for their own actions during war. Plus, in how many games does the main character get to set up an orphanage?
First of all, not all RPG systems are random. Look at Theatrix or Amber... no dice, no cards, nothing.
Although randomness is not necessary, it is very useful for simulation. Let's say your character is in a gunfight. Most of the time, there will be no guarantee that you'll hit or miss. To simulate that, people roll dice. This lends authenticity to the battle. It adds danger because you are rarely certain to win, and it adds hope because you are rarely certain to lose. This increases tension and character identification because uncertainty fundamentally feels real or at least plausible.
From another point of view, randomness and rules allows for freedom from scripting. Let's suppose that the GM has an outline for a story, and some of the characters don't like it -- maybe it's distasteful, maybe it's just like the last story, maybe it's out of character, or maybe they just have different ideas. Without rules, the differences have to be resolved personally between the GM and the players. With rules, everyone accepts a certain level of reality, and the freedoms granted by that reality, and the players have the option to alter the events that occur without having to change the script. Rules and chance make it less like a story from a book and more like a story from life.
Role-playing is only two-thirds of the acronym 'RPG'... some people want to play a game, on some level similar to Go or Monopoly. A game is about making interesting decisions against opposition to achieve goals. Without rules, you're not playing an RPG... you're doing make-believe, not that there's anything bad about make-believe. Free-form role playing is fun when it's done well. In an RPG, your goal can be to tell a story and the opposition can be the rule system. That's a challenge and it's usually fun. People can basically choose their goals in an RPG, and although the rules are relatively constant, each person is playing a different game -- but everyone is still playing together. Without rules, completing these challenges is somehow less significant: rather than achieving something because of effort, you achieve things because it fits the story or because the GM said you did. Randomness just puts the game a little closer to Poker than Chess.
I've tried to explain how rules can be useful from each of the three classic RPG perspectives. If what you want is to tell a story through role-playing, don't use a system. If what you want is Story-Telling and Catharsis and Character Development and Plot Arcs, then you should be writing a book instead. If you like stories, games, and other people, then RPG systems are the way to go.
Finally, I get tired of people whining about RPG systems. Sure, some are really bad. However, D&D is for people who like to play powerful standard fantasy archetypes and role-play a bit between combats and dungeon crawls, if you don't want to do that, don't play D&D. If you don't like making rules to fill in the gaps, then don't play FUDGE. If you don't like explaining all of your actions in terms of story, play a system more based on simulation. Whatever you want.
Right... because we all know games that use DirectX are easy to port to OpenGL.
Porting between x86 and PPC has always been a matter of recompiling, unless you coded in assembler or forgot what 'endian' means. Jeez, people still write structures in memory directly to disk... that's just plain dumb, how do you know that you won't need different alignment when the next generation of processors comes out?
I don't think you understand Extreme Programming. I am completely unable to understand some of what you are saying.
Here is a traditional method:
- Write program requirements
- Write design document
- Write source code
- Realize that the design decument is wrong
- Change the design document to fit the code
- Realize that the requirements are wrong
- Change the requirements
- Repeat
Here is an agile method, like XP:
- Set a short-term goal
- Write as little code as possible
- Make sure the code works
- Repeat
Agile methods accept the fact that requirements change and that correct design documents are very rare beasts indeed. It's a good way to make good software. Designing the program completely before coding is a real waste of time. Agile means that you do loose some control... but it gives freedom to the programmers you hired -- enough freedom to do what they need to complete the task. Of course, it's not a good way to design software for, e.g., a space shuttle where the requirements are very well known and have little tolerance.
Dual Xenon? Xenon is a noble gas, it doesn't naturally form molecules, although Neil Bartlett did it in 1962.
Anyone here ever programmed in assembler for both x86 and PPC? x86 is just downright painful. Please don't pretend to know anything about which processor a supercomputer should use unless you know both the problem domain and the potential implementations of solutions under different architectures.
Have you ever seen NO2? It's orange. It's a gas. It's an acid. It *is* smog. It's like the sixth most powerful acid of all acids or thereabouts (when mixed with water of course... producing nitric acid... H20 + NO2 --> H2NO3). The cool thing is that the right catalyst (cars have catalytic converters which do this, as well as get rid of CO) will turn it into harmless Nitrogen and Oxygen. The uncool part is that it's also easy to make, just mix Nitrogen and Oxygen (uh, like air) at high temperature and pressure (like in an engine).
IANAAD: I am not an Apple developer.
Cocoa, Carbon, etc. aren't really orthogonal. Cocoa relies on BSD, Mach and Carbon. Carbon relies on Cocoa, BSD, and Mach. The reliance is decreasing, if you look at how menus work you'll see a good example.
Think of Carbon and Cocoa as just two ways to access the (mostly) same UI elements. The only difference is that it's a real pain in the ass to write anything in Carbon. I've written a few things in Carbon and a few in Cocoa. Programming in Cocoa is beautiful and fast, at least for something that was wedged sideways into C. And Cocoa's got a lot more thread safety than Carbon. Look at the Carbon docs, tons of functions either must be called by the main thread or aren't reentrant. I think people writing Mach-O apps in Carbon are either lazy, stubborn, or masochists. I write Carbon, but only when I need compatability with the systems of yore.
It took Apple time to put both Carbon and Cocoa in OS X. Cocoa ran on Mach already, but Apple wanted UI elements from Carbon. So in the beginning, they changed Cocoa so that it looked and felt like a Mac, and the changed Carbon so that it ran on systems that used real virtual memory.
Gotta love real virtual memory.
Damn, they all look just as bad as my current screen.
Let's stick with statistics like frequency response graphs.
Try an experiment for yourself. Put a bunch of ice in a glass. Add water until the ice is floating. Put cellophane over the top to reduce evaporation. Measure the water level. Make the ice melt with a warm water bath, microwave, waiting, or whatever. Measure the water level again.
--- SPOILER ---
The buoyancy of an object is equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces. Any object which floats has weight equal to its buoyancy (otherwise it would move up or down). So, the ice weighs as much as the volume of water that it displaces. When the ice melts, the amount of water from the ice melting is the same as the amount displaced by the ice in the first place. So the water level doesn't change.
This works with water because water expands when it freezes. Most substances contract when frozen, so they will sink. This also doesn't work with Antarctic ice. Antarctic ice is resting on a nice chunk of land (although the land itself is floating -- continents are buoyant, too). Temperature can cause water levels to rise, however, through thermal expansion. Imagine the oceans as one giant thermometer. This is counteracted by increased evaporation, I have no idea which is greater.
And this, folks, is why every ecologist should know how to use differential equations. Seriously. You can make your own models with Stella from http://www.hps-inc.com.
At high resolutions you're going to get dots instead of a picture, especially with low quality stuff as magazines. 300 dpi should be enough for a magazine.
Chernobyl had a lot of things that were just wrong.
The reactor increased in efficiency as temperature increased. This is a nice little feedback loop. Most reactors lose efficiency as temperature increases, meaning that it is difficult to try and overload the reactor, even on purpose.
The reactor was designed to be cheap, and it did not have a dome. Domes contain radioactive material very well. Tests have shown that an aircraft hitting a dome would hardly scratch it.
As another cost-cutting measure, the reactor didn't have any good backup power. It may seem silly to have a power plant that needs power, but nuclear power plants do need power to start up and in case of emergencies. Western plants have batteries and generators.
As if these technological blunders weren't enough, some bonehead transfered control of the power plants from the ministry that designed and built them, where all the trained personnel are employed, to the ministry of energy. There are reports of operators sitting on the control board and people showing up to work drunk.
Basically, in 1986, the Chernobyl reactor demonstrated a bunch of "don'ts" to a world that should have already known.
There will always be technology out there that can be misused. The amount of that technology will only increase. Do we ban knives because people get stabbed? Do we ban nuclear power because a couple of Russians cut costs?
The 'ball' nuclear reactors are basically foolproof. You put a bunch of balls next to each other and you get heat. This is not weapons grade Uranium.
I only see one problem with nuclear -- the small amount of waste that is generated needs to be handled properly. It can be done, but it just has to be done right.
Was the French revolution not as dark a time as the Bolshevik? They are so similar, yet the French revolution was hardly communism.
The concept of communism is separable from the notion that all humans are strictly equal. Communism failed because, as implemented, it ostensibly tried to eliminate human distinction rather than simply refactor existing, arbitrary distinction.
Rand believes that humans need only rely on their in situ capabilities to achieve greatness. History has shown this to be untrue. It is entirely natural to rely on other people. I rely on farmers to grow food that I can eat to survive, but that hardly makes me their slave.
I don't think those millions died so that they could prove that communism always fails. Millions die as a result of totalitarianism, no matter what the guise is. Hitler wasn't communist, Stalin was. Nice set of data points you have there.
Are you upset at communism, or are you upset at oppressive, totalitarian communist regimes? Unfortunately, I do not feel that the book adequetely explains why communism is so bad. It does explain how ludicrous it is to equate equality with the abolishment of a system based on meritocracy (e.g., authorship as a meritocracy), that is to say, artifically give everyone an equal voice when some have no desire to speak or have shamelessly derivative voices. I agree with this aspect of egoism / objectivism. However, Ayn Rand quite incorrectly associates this extreme behavior with communism (though it no less applies to democracy), and continues, equating charity and altruism with the destruction of creative effort.
This is counter to my life experience, I would not be half who I am if were nobody to have cared about me. I can see how Rand, having lived through the Bolshevik revolution, thought differently. Her fault lies in incorrectly associating the ostensible goals and the methods of Russian communism. The methods are deplorable, obviously -- but the goals, which she attacks with equal if not greater vehemence, are merely to secure a better standard of living for all humans.
This is the focus of her literary assaults. It is denial of our interdependence; a rejection of human kindness.
I didn't say it wasn't rape, I said that the book didn't treat it as such. Perhaps you should step closer to the monitor next time...
I feel kind of obliged to point out that you need to be ready to read those books. They're full of hatred for communism, and a dogmatic obsession with Ayn Rand's objectivism. Be careful lest you get to involved with those books, take a moment to step aside and try to view them from a different context than they present. Very powerful work, but on another level it is propaganda and you should always remember that.
In addition, The Fountainhead has one of the ugliest scenes I have ever come across in any piece of literature. I'm referring to the scene involving Roarke and Dominique, which in my mind, seems more or less equivalent to rape, yet is not treated as such in the book.
I'm just trying to give adequate warning for those who don't know what to expect from the books, they are very powerful and well written.
My favorite reading experiences are usually those summer days when I'm on vacation (no computer), and it's hot (don't want to be too active). I alternate some classics with some sci-fi / fantasy.
Some of Asimov's series make my favorite summer reading, like the one that begins with "Caves of Steel". I've also done the Ender series, the Hyperion series, and I plan on reading some Wheel of Time this summer.
As long as you don't stagnate over the summer, almost any book will do... I know that if I avoid reading for more than about a week it gets hard to get back into the habit. Don't push those books back into the later summer weeks!
Of course, I feel obligated to post because there are only 13 postings above me.