A few short years? Warcraft I was released in 1994. Diablo II was released in 2000, the expansion in 2001. So there's six or seven years. Those seemed like awful long years to me at the time. You completely left out WarCraft III and its expansion between Diablo II and WoW.
I'll certainly agree that the focus on WoW has probably delayed SC2 from being started and released by a couple years, but it's been an attention-leech, not a money leech. If anything, WoW makes them a ton of dough. Anyway, I don't think the argument that Blizzard has "died" stands up in the face of their simultaneous Diablo III and SC2 development--both of which look like a lot of fun!
Parent post should be modded insightful or something, not funny.
Terry Lambert is an actual Apple employee who, if I'm not mistaken, could quite honestly hire people like Alan to work on the "unix" portions of OS X. He's quite active on Apple's Darwin Kernel mailing list.
Well, it doesn't sound like we really disagree very much. Python is a different tool than Java, so they don't generally compete head-to-head in my experience.
True, my requiring Python for my department doesn't cause it to be much more prevalent in jobs across the globe. On the same note, your not having seen them doesn't make them less common.
Still, I'm being objective when I say there's lots and lots of python jobs out there.
Here's an example of a few dozen (hundreds? I didn't count them) Python job listings from just one site:
I'm not saying that there's not lots of Java jobs too, because there obviously are. And I'm not claiming that there are more or less of one or the other, because I have no idea what the ratio is.
On the "quick programming" note, I'm surprised you state you don't understand it and then give an example of how you use Python (not Java) for a calculator (an example of "quick programming")! That's exactly what I'm talking about. The ability to fire up the interpreter and instantly be in business, without ever creating a file, a class, or anything. I'll often want to crunch some data quick and dirty, or do some parsing that's a little too complex for command-line tools, and I can do it by just firing up a Python interpreter and having at it. My comment about Java was really just to reflect that (as far as I know--I'm no Java guru), no one fires up a Java interpreter and starts making stuff happen right then and there without at least creating and compiling a file.
You can also make fairly sophisticated command-line utilities with very few lines in Python, which I was also thinking about as quick programming.
Python is quite likely to be used in a real job. In fact, I require python skills for the development positions I hire for. My department uses it every single day.
If an applicant or employee chose "Java" or "Matlab" to implement a "quick program" to try to solve the tasks we tackle at my workplace, I'd throw them out on their ear for choosing an inappropriate tool for the job. For example, creating a secure, asynchronous communications network with Matlab would be very difficult. Another example: automating system administration tasks across a variety of open-source OS's of various ages and architectures would be unnecessarily complex with Java and difficult to make portable due to the incompatibility of various Java versions, while a python script works quite nicely and portably.
Mind you, there are other domains where Java or Matlab are the appropriate tool for the job (I mean, c'mon, who wants to process matrices with Java or Python?). I'm not saying they are useless. They're just useful in other domains than we are in at my workplace. There is definitely a place for Python in this world. It's quite often used in real jobs.
I disagree that Python is an appropriate educational stepping stone to C, but that's just because my personal opinion is that things ought to start with the nuts and bolts and then taught upward (for example: binary, then machine language, then assembly, then C, then scripting languages).
What I'd like to see is the youtube video of someone pulling this out in a highschool sports game to take pictures of the game while standing right next to the local policeman...
The problem with that is that you still have the performance hit of calling the ROT-13 function times four (twice for encryption, twice for decryption).
I'll sell you my ROT-52 accelerator card for $50,000 which will do it all in one function call, and hardware accelerated to boot! Did I mention it supports unicode?
Given a choice between the Germany of today (ban violent video games!) or the Germany of 70 years ago (Genocide! World wars!), I'm not going to lose any sleep over their current extremes.
I remember when Y windows was slashdotted in Feb 2004. It sounded pretty interesting. Unfortunately, it also looks like there hasn't been a single news item on their web site since Feb 2004, and their "community wiki" link points to a domain-squatter-ad-site. Also, the downloads match the version announced in 2004.
Just how popular is it? I've personally used and seen a lot of people use a lot of distros (over a dozen), but I've never used or seen anyone use Linspire or Freespire.
On my MacBook Pro in my Bootcamp partition, installing SP3 made my mouse constantly jerk (freeze for 1/4second every second) and caused similar disruptions to my audio.
How do you account for the fact that all of their software is developed first for Microsoft based OS and not for Apple OS? That assertion is false. All of their games from StarCraft (possibly WarCraft II?) onwards have been simultanously released for the Mac.
In fact, StarCraft was the last game that had separate PC vs Mac CD's (later StarCraft installation CD's were PC+Mac, I know, I owned both the PC only and the PC+Mac installation CD's).
Here's a reference for my assertion with regards to their post-OS X releases.
http://developer.apple.com/business/macmarket/blizzard.html
- X is hosed. They moved from XFree86 to Xorg. Big change. The x11-users@lists.apple.com has been super-active, though, with Ben Byer from Apple putting out tons of fixes. Most stuff works now or has a workaround. You can get the latest update here: http://www.x.org/wiki/XDarwin
Slashdot Mirror
Eurasia?
A few short years? Warcraft I was released in 1994. Diablo II was released in 2000, the expansion in 2001. So there's six or seven years. Those seemed like awful long years to me at the time. You completely left out WarCraft III and its expansion between Diablo II and WoW.
I'll certainly agree that the focus on WoW has probably delayed SC2 from being started and released by a couple years, but it's been an attention-leech, not a money leech. If anything, WoW makes them a ton of dough. Anyway, I don't think the argument that Blizzard has "died" stands up in the face of their simultaneous Diablo III and SC2 development--both of which look like a lot of fun!
Parent post should be modded insightful or something, not funny.
Terry Lambert is an actual Apple employee who, if I'm not mistaken, could quite honestly hire people like Alan to work on the "unix" portions of OS X. He's quite active on Apple's Darwin Kernel mailing list.
Well, it doesn't sound like we really disagree very much. Python is a different tool than Java, so they don't generally compete head-to-head in my experience.
True, my requiring Python for my department doesn't cause it to be much more prevalent in jobs across the globe. On the same note, your not having seen them doesn't make them less common.
Still, I'm being objective when I say there's lots and lots of python jobs out there. Here's an example of a few dozen (hundreds? I didn't count them) Python job listings from just one site:
http://www.python.org/community/jobs/
I'm not saying that there's not lots of Java jobs too, because there obviously are. And I'm not claiming that there are more or less of one or the other, because I have no idea what the ratio is.
On the "quick programming" note, I'm surprised you state you don't understand it and then give an example of how you use Python (not Java) for a calculator (an example of "quick programming")! That's exactly what I'm talking about. The ability to fire up the interpreter and instantly be in business, without ever creating a file, a class, or anything. I'll often want to crunch some data quick and dirty, or do some parsing that's a little too complex for command-line tools, and I can do it by just firing up a Python interpreter and having at it. My comment about Java was really just to reflect that (as far as I know--I'm no Java guru), no one fires up a Java interpreter and starts making stuff happen right then and there without at least creating and compiling a file.
You can also make fairly sophisticated command-line utilities with very few lines in Python, which I was also thinking about as quick programming.
I _have_ used Java, Matlab, and Python.
Python is quite likely to be used in a real job. In fact, I require python skills for the development positions I hire for. My department uses it every single day.
If an applicant or employee chose "Java" or "Matlab" to implement a "quick program" to try to solve the tasks we tackle at my workplace, I'd throw them out on their ear for choosing an inappropriate tool for the job. For example, creating a secure, asynchronous communications network with Matlab would be very difficult. Another example: automating system administration tasks across a variety of open-source OS's of various ages and architectures would be unnecessarily complex with Java and difficult to make portable due to the incompatibility of various Java versions, while a python script works quite nicely and portably.
Mind you, there are other domains where Java or Matlab are the appropriate tool for the job (I mean, c'mon, who wants to process matrices with Java or Python?). I'm not saying they are useless. They're just useful in other domains than we are in at my workplace. There is definitely a place for Python in this world. It's quite often used in real jobs.
I disagree that Python is an appropriate educational stepping stone to C, but that's just because my personal opinion is that things ought to start with the nuts and bolts and then taught upward (for example: binary, then machine language, then assembly, then C, then scripting languages).
What you are describing is called a "Lebanese Loop"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_loop
What I'd like to see is the youtube video of someone pulling this out in a highschool sports game to take pictures of the game while standing right next to the local policeman...
The problem with that is that you still have the performance hit of calling the ROT-13 function times four (twice for encryption, twice for decryption).
I'll sell you my ROT-52 accelerator card for $50,000 which will do it all in one function call, and hardware accelerated to boot! Did I mention it supports unicode?
Given a choice between the Germany of today (ban violent video games!) or the Germany of 70 years ago (Genocide! World wars!), I'm not going to lose any sleep over their current extremes.
Just an opinion.
But is it snappier?
I remember when Y windows was slashdotted in Feb 2004. It sounded pretty interesting. Unfortunately, it also looks like there hasn't been a single news item on their web site since Feb 2004, and their "community wiki" link points to a domain-squatter-ad-site. Also, the downloads match the version announced in 2004.
It's dead, Jim.
...to getting decent performance from Windows while simultaneously running anti-virus software!
I'm not sure it's safe there.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Northwest_Passage
Just how popular is it? I've personally used and seen a lot of people use a lot of distros (over a dozen), but I've never used or seen anyone use Linspire or Freespire.
Oops. Wasn't logged in. Let me say it again:
Well said.
Phew! At first I read that as "...explore your attic"
I play TF2 in Crossover Games on OS X and on my bootcamp partition.
I always submit the "hardware surveys" that they do, hoping that they'll realize that Apple hardware is a big segment...
I'd buy a native TF2 in a heartbeat...
On my MacBook Pro in my Bootcamp partition, installing SP3 made my mouse constantly jerk (freeze for 1/4second every second) and caused similar disruptions to my audio.
Anyone else experience that?
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=481457
Will it also pay the salary of the person who's going to be doing that for the next 90 years? And the equipment he uses? And his healthcare plan? :P
I, for one, am insulted that they think emacs should be invisible! Invisible operating systems my foot!
Hmm...if you did this with a pair of hamsters (1 male, 1 female), perhaps you would have a perpetual power machine...
Check your sources before you contradict someone who knows.
Yes, they did use XFree86 for Tiger and Xorg for Leopard. Ben Byer's the Apple Engineer who did it. He explains it all right here:
http://lists.apple.com/archives/x11-users/2007/Nov/msg00208.html