What about if a particular commodity software sucks ?
Following your logic it should be free. Meaning, if I write a better one working 6 month full time, I cannot get payback for my time investment. Why should I do it then ?
We're back to square one and stuck with shitty software.
You are forgetting we still haven't actually resolved the problem of preventing crew irradiation during their travel to/from Mars. That is a show-stopper, 100% chance of being irradiated beats the off-chance to get a new world disease. Shielding rises the mass of the vehicule, which is already a problem that forces us to a slow travel due to our limitation to chemical rockets.
We need to switch to a different and better propulsion system like a nuclear one in order to escape this quagmire of Shield/mass+length of travel compounded problem.
You are wrong. X360 games ARE region-encoded. (except when it suits microsoft to not do so for blockbuster titles like Halo 3)
And microsoft would sell more X360 if it was possible to run XBMC on it, but being anal about modchips prevented that.
Banning X360 with modchip activated on live is understandable and commendable, trying so hard to bar modchips from X360 at all resulted in less sales of the console.
I can remember reading Dave Small (famous hardware hacker and entrepreneur, he made the MacIntosh emulator cartridge on the ATARI ST back in the days, also some 68030 accelerator cards) describing how he saw a character on his screen change in front of his eyes with no intervention, and attributed to a cosmic ray and his higher than normal altitude.
So this begs the question, although modern servers do have ECC memory to correct such occurences, couldn't there be a weaker link in the server chain somewhere that could be affected ?
As someone who wanted to develop better AI for games, I'll say this : the state of AI didn't change because there is no customer need for it.
When AI becomes a selling feature, then it will be given more consideration by developpers AND allowed more resources by managers. Which may be never, as it faces a tough adversary : the 'ooooh Shiny' whizz effect of graphics.
Covering your partner when he gets surrounded, taking risks you wouldn't if you were alone, rushing the enemy to get the first chainsaw slice of the level is lots of fun.
Co-op is 95% of my play time on Gears. There's the real value of it, imo.
_The need for a professional/server OS _The need for a home/consumer OS
Every of your critics about BeOS may be well founded, I do not have the background or information at hand to refute them. However, even yourself should agree with what I am going to say. Those flaws you mentioned are important for a professional/server OS, not for a home/consumer one.
"Meanwhile, because you've got all these superfluous threads that need to communicate with each other and with the OS, every application is sending lots of messages, but again Be's engineers took the easy way out, when a message queue fills up they just drop the messages. So sometimes, when things get busy, your app will lose vital messages and get confused. Awesome."
How is that any different from Windows applications that stutter, stay blank and unresponsive (for any length of time) because of a plethora of different, stupid reasons that stem from a retardly designed messaging system ?
I want my home computer to be responsive, always. I don't care if every other OS on the planet is a better file server, network server, domain server or else. I want to do things on it, and I want a 1/60s reaction time to my GUI actions. (not to mention a dead simple way of adding drivers : drag to system folder, drop it there, done.)
BeOS was responsive on a Pentium 200MHz with 64MB. There is no reason to believe it wouldn't work well on my (humble by today's standards) 2.6GHz dual core opteron and 2 GB RAM.
"As can be seen in the texts, the French declaration is heavily influenced by the political philosophy of the Enlightenment, and by Enlightenment principles of human rights contained in the U.S. Declaration of Independence (4 July 1776), of which the delegates were fully aware.[4] It might also be noted that Thomas Jefferson, primary author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, was at the time in France as a U.S. diplomat, and was in correspondence with members of the French National Constituent Assembly."
Your country an also decide at will to spoil you from your 'real' money. Like when the US banned the ownership of gold... (the metal, not any virtual currency)
Well then, you will have to explain why you can see flying saucers on medieval paintings, or exactly what the belgian F-16 were chasing above their territory, and which went through the sound barrier over urban areas without producing any supersonic bang.
I have seen on television the videos of the F-16's radar when in pursuit of those. The commentary didn't mention any numbers, but as I recognized a familiar layout from my FALCON (ATARI ST) days, I did check the illuminated target speed indicator. It went from 400K to 700K in a matter of seconds. It is publicly known the intruder lost the F-16 in pursuit behind like leaves in the wind.
Belgium is a small country and is maybe one of the few to have a fighter air force but no official, government-run public relation service in charge of explaining that everything people see is either a meteor or a piece of rocket burning on reentry.
Advertising worked so well for sony and the PS2. Impeding sales of the best console of the time that had an incredible line-up (the DreamCast) by using only shallow promises of "Real time Toy Story graphics" and "connected to high speed networks" when in reality it took the PS2 two years to get any valuable game and it didn't ship with any online interface.
Microsoft are the other masters of the marketng hype. If they start pushing Windows 7 now, they will at least sell as many as Vista did, regardless of the product's qualities.
Millions of PSO (Phantasy Star Online) players disagree with you. The DreamCast's keyboard was widely available. PSO for the Xbox had an (exclusive) USB adapter sold with it.(in addition to Xbox Live audio chat) The Gamecube had a combo keyboard/pad designed for it. etc... etc...
Well, guess what. When you watch pictures of cosplayers at events in Japan, if the face of a bystander happens to also appear in the picture, it will be blurred out. If someone takes a picture of a customly decorated car, they will blur the car's ID plate. It is common sense, courtesy, behaviour to protect people's privacy. Even if that was a public event they never asked for you to publish their face online.
But that's too far a concept for your american culture of "me/myself/whatever I want is FIRST", I guess.
Well, for one, when you buy an album (assuming it isn't DRMed to hell), you get a perfect digital copy of the recording.
No, you are not, and for two reasons.
The first is that the CD-audio standard does not give you a perfect digital copy of anything. It lacks sufficient error-correcting codes.
The second is that digital downloads can give you master-quality, or high definition audio, which are identical or extremely close to the original tune as designed by the artist See Trent Reznor and his latest album release in 96kHz/24bits.WAV format.
Slashdot Mirror
Visicalc was also available on ATARI 800XL.
Given the price difference between those two machines, this detail is important.
May I inform you that excel has/had an easter-egg flight simulator ?
How unprofessionnal from Microsoft would you then say ?
Best post of the year. I wish we could mod this +15.
It is probable that reviving a human from so far in time means his DNA doesn't have the defenses we evolved against current diseases ?
Would our vaccines even work ?
What about if a particular commodity software sucks ?
Following your logic it should be free.
Meaning, if I write a better one working 6 month full time, I cannot get payback for my time investment.
Why should I do it then ?
We're back to square one and stuck with shitty software.
You are forgetting we still haven't actually resolved the problem of preventing crew irradiation during their travel to/from Mars.
That is a show-stopper, 100% chance of being irradiated beats the off-chance to get a new world disease.
Shielding rises the mass of the vehicule, which is already a problem that forces us to a slow travel due to our limitation to chemical rockets.
We need to switch to a different and better propulsion system like a nuclear one in order to escape this quagmire of Shield/mass+length of travel compounded problem.
$50 ? More like 70 euros around here. Which is almost 90 bucks and further validates your point.
You are wrong. X360 games ARE region-encoded. (except when it suits microsoft to not do so for blockbuster titles like Halo 3)
And microsoft would sell more X360 if it was possible to run XBMC on it, but being anal about modchips prevented that.
Banning X360 with modchip activated on live is understandable and commendable, trying so hard to bar modchips from X360 at all resulted in less sales of the console.
I can remember reading Dave Small (famous hardware hacker and entrepreneur, he made the MacIntosh emulator cartridge on the ATARI ST back in the days, also some 68030 accelerator cards) describing how he saw a character on his screen change in front of his eyes with no intervention, and attributed to a cosmic ray and his higher than normal altitude.
So this begs the question, although modern servers do have ECC memory to correct such occurences, couldn't there be a weaker link in the server chain somewhere that could be affected ?
As someone who wanted to develop better AI for games, I'll say this : the state of AI didn't change because there is no customer need for it.
When AI becomes a selling feature, then it will be given more consideration by developpers AND allowed more resources by managers.
Which may be never, as it faces a tough adversary : the 'ooooh Shiny' whizz effect of graphics.
One word : Co-op
Gears of War is terrific to play with a buddy.
Covering your partner when he gets surrounded, taking risks you wouldn't if you were alone, rushing the enemy to get the first chainsaw slice of the level is lots of fun.
Co-op is 95% of my play time on Gears. There's the real value of it, imo.
Er .. East of Brisbane means the pacific ocean ...
You are confusing two totally different needs :
_The need for a professional/server OS
_The need for a home/consumer OS
Every of your critics about BeOS may be well founded, I do not have the background or information at hand to refute them.
However, even yourself should agree with what I am going to say.
Those flaws you mentioned are important for a professional/server OS, not for a home/consumer one.
"Meanwhile, because you've got all these superfluous threads that need to communicate with each other and with the OS, every application is sending lots of messages, but again Be's engineers took the easy way out, when a message queue fills up they just drop the messages. So sometimes, when things get busy, your app will lose vital messages and get confused. Awesome."
How is that any different from Windows applications that stutter, stay blank and unresponsive (for any length of time) because of a plethora of different, stupid reasons that stem from a retardly designed messaging system ?
I want my home computer to be responsive, always.
I don't care if every other OS on the planet is a better file server, network server, domain server or else.
I want to do things on it, and I want a 1/60s reaction time to my GUI actions.
(not to mention a dead simple way of adding drivers : drag to system folder, drop it there, done.)
BeOS was responsive on a Pentium 200MHz with 64MB.
There is no reason to believe it wouldn't work well on my (humble by today's standards) 2.6GHz dual core opteron and 2 GB RAM.
Not exactly your constitution, but there is another country that prides itself on the defense of human rights.
Check this (from 1789):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen
"The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (French: Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen) is a fundamental document of the French Revolution, defining the individual and collective rights of all the estates of the realm as universal. Influenced by the doctrine of natural rights, the rights of Man are universal: valid at all times and in every place, pertaining to human nature itself. Although it establishes fundamental rights for French citizens and all men without exception"
(...)
"As can be seen in the texts, the French declaration is heavily influenced by the political philosophy of the Enlightenment, and by Enlightenment principles of human rights contained in the U.S. Declaration of Independence (4 July 1776), of which the delegates were fully aware.[4] It might also be noted that Thomas Jefferson, primary author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, was at the time in France as a U.S. diplomat, and was in correspondence with members of the French National Constituent Assembly."
Another illustration of the maxim 'Knowledge is power'.
Though it's kinda sad to see that in the US.
Your country an also decide at will to spoil you from your 'real' money. ... (the metal, not any virtual currency)
Like when the US banned the ownership of gold
Situation before the Atomic bomb :
Every 20-30 years, wars regularly happened between the most industrialized or powerful countries on earth.
The bomb ended WWII.
After the bomb :
No open/direct/full conflict between the most powerful countries on earth since then.
60 years of 'peace' as we have now since 1945 are an exception in the long recurrent wars that regularly dotted history.
You should check your geography before posting.
The Falkland Islands are absolutely NOT in the Pacific Ocean.
(but in the south Atlantic).
Well then, you will have to explain why you can see flying saucers on medieval paintings, or exactly what the belgian F-16 were chasing above their territory, and which went through the sound barrier over urban areas without producing any supersonic bang.
I have seen on television the videos of the F-16's radar when in pursuit of those. The commentary didn't mention any numbers, but as I recognized a familiar layout from my FALCON (ATARI ST) days, I did check the illuminated target speed indicator. It went from 400K to 700K in a matter of seconds.
It is publicly known the intruder lost the F-16 in pursuit behind like leaves in the wind.
Belgium is a small country and is maybe one of the few to have a fighter air force but no official, government-run public relation service in charge of explaining that everything people see is either a meteor or a piece of rocket burning on reentry.
You should actually watch Robotech again, the Invid Invasion part.
Alpha Fighters do integrate a ride-armor in the airframe.
Advertising worked so well for sony and the PS2. Impeding sales of the best console of the time that had an incredible line-up (the DreamCast) by using only shallow promises of "Real time Toy Story graphics" and "connected to high speed networks" when in reality it took the PS2 two years to get any valuable game and it didn't ship with any online interface.
Microsoft are the other masters of the marketng hype. If they start pushing Windows 7 now, they will at least sell as many as Vista did, regardless of the product's qualities.
Millions of PSO (Phantasy Star Online) players disagree with you. ... etc ...
The DreamCast's keyboard was widely available.
PSO for the Xbox had an (exclusive) USB adapter sold with it.(in addition to Xbox Live audio chat)
The Gamecube had a combo keyboard/pad designed for it.
etc
Well, guess what.
When you watch pictures of cosplayers at events in Japan, if the face of a bystander happens to also appear in the picture, it will be blurred out.
If someone takes a picture of a customly decorated car, they will blur the car's ID plate.
It is common sense, courtesy, behaviour to protect people's privacy. Even if that was a public event they never asked for you to publish their face online.
But that's too far a concept for your american culture of "me/myself/whatever I want is FIRST", I guess.
Yoichiro and Toshihide are typically male first names.
Makoto is dual gender.
Well, for one, when you buy an album (assuming it isn't DRMed to hell), you get a perfect digital copy of the recording.
No, you are not, and for two reasons.
The first is that the CD-audio standard does not give you a perfect digital copy of anything.
It lacks sufficient error-correcting codes.
The second is that digital downloads can give you master-quality, or high definition audio, which are identical or extremely close to the original tune as designed by the artist .WAV format.
See Trent Reznor and his latest album release in 96kHz/24bits