The ability to but powerful computing time is a cool idea that has been featured in several sci-fi novels. However the article fails to mention exactly how powerful these Sun CPUs are. How much bang do you get for your buck? They also fail to mention how hard it will be to write code for this platform. Can I simply send them some standard C source, or will I have to code using some special extensions that will make my code totally unportable and thus lock me into buying more and more time from them?
On the other hand this is a good thing for the computer science departments of universities, for less students means that they can do less job training and more actual computer science. If you aren't convinced that real progress in computer science isn't being made any more I encourage you to watch this video. In it you can see all the aspects of the modern computers that we know and love being demonstated oh so long ago, only with less polish. Sadly research hasn't proceeded much beyond this in terms of software. The problem is that the typical student in a computer science course doesn't want to learn computer science, they just want to learn some Java/hot language of the momement and get out into the workforce. This is where bad programmers and bugs galore come from. However if those who simply want a job leave then a computer science degree will once again have meaning, and better software will be produced. Trust me on this one, I'm surrounded by CS majors who think Java is the best language ever, and are unable to program in anything else.
The real constraint with phone games is the input device, not the games themselves. Phone buttons are way too tiny to be easy to use, so games have to use only a couple of them, or be too hard to play. Also the tiny screen isnt very conductive either. What phones need is some kind of tilt sensitivity (for example), which would be easy to make games arround, and easy to interact with. Acceleration sensititivty might work as well, or possibly some game which uses the camera as an input device (i.e. you point it at differnt colored and shaped things to make the game react. Anther possibility is to use the audio input, but this could be annoying for the people arround you. While the games developed look nice, they still will all be a pain in the ass to play, and its not the developers' fault.
I loved mech commander. Is there any chance someone might build on this source to create a sequal, or is the liscense to restrictive? Actually even if it was GPL there might not be much hope, because the open source community has a tendancy to create only small games sucessfully, porbably due at least in part to not enough artists/level designers. Sigh
Exactlty how important is CATO in the scheme of things. Will this report reach the ears of politicians / mass media, or will it go largely unnoticed except by slashdot? I don't think we are going to see the DMCA revoked unless the public cares enough to put pressure on their representatives, and honestly the public isn't informed enough to care. So will this report help mobize people or are they just preaching to the choir?
Yes, I agree that feature and bug feedback from the user community is important, but I don't think you need to have a collaborative development community to do this. After all you were not collaborating with them in the same way you would as if you were working with them. They did not assign you tasks, nor were your fixes accepted without review/revision. So yes, open source has benifits such as these and more, but open source doesn't necessarily mean collaborative development.
I know we all love to hype collaborative devlopment and the open source model, but in all honesty not everyone is cut out to be a programmer, and programmers come in differnt levels of ability. I will admit freely that I am not one of the few elite programmers, and there is a good likely hood that I will never be. Sure, some projects, perhaps the majority, benefit from average programmers, and collaborateive development works in those cases. However, the most cutting edge, and bug-less, projects are only ever going to be the realm of the best of the best, and it doesn't matter how many people want to collaborate. Plus bad programmers, who fool you into thinking they are good because they want to feel needed, hurt any project they join, if only because they commit to work they will never finish. So yes, collaborative development such as sourceforge can help some projects, but it is definitely not the be all and end all for programming.
I hope you realize that Java != Javascript. Anyways why would a language's popularity influence the quality of the language? Bad languages can be widely used (COBOL at one time), while good ones may only take root in niche markets.
My response: thats nice, but I don't have time to care about your whining. Awww poor baby windows treating you bad? I would have respect if the author had proposed solutions, preferably with some diagrams / mockups. Anyone can whine about problems, but if you want respect you should attempt to solve them as well. It would be like if NASA kept releasing reports on how gravity is heavy and then never did anything. I also enjoyed how he took extra time out to mock microsoft and apple. Because I'm sure making an operating system is so easy that the author could do a much better job, all by himself. bah.
Drag select with a D-pad does not work in any shape or form, mainly because it is either not percise enough or not fast enough when things get heated. The mouse overcomes this because you can be more percise by moving it slower, but the D-pad only has one speed. I would be interested to hear of an alternate way of selecting indididual units or a group of units without the D-pad.
Two things:
modding
the mouse
Care to play a RTS game on a console? I tried to play a lemmings console adaption once, the controls really killed it. Also mods, and their brother patches, make games last longer and more fun.
Wow thats so awesome, I wonder what he keeps in his glove box? In fact I see the potential for a who series of articles in which we can examine every container he posseses individually. We could even examine the lap top bags of other employees, the possibilities are endless.
Thats a good point, and I think the problem here is that students are starting with Java. Simply learning C first teaches you a lot about how the machine works. Also I consider bufferoverflows and instruction sets and what not to be part of the software side of things, not the hardware side. Hardware to me is more like the difference between different kinds of RAM, bus speeds, memory mapping ROM, ect.
Well no wonder these people aren't getting hired. When my boss tells me to go write a component I don't reply to him with a study about the most efficient way of implementing it, nor a report on the "paradigm" it belongs to. No, I just write it and debug it, which lets the whole project move forwards. In fact sometimes the most effficient implementation isn't desireable for a small task simply for clarity, and to speed up the time it takes to write the code.
I think it is fine for some people just to focus on software, that is why you work with other people who understand the hard-ware. However I am more concernd (a reason that I am an ex-CS major too) that the university doesnt offer a single course in PERL, Python, Ruby, PHP, or any of the currently popular languages except Java, and some C as a side benefit from some classes. Don't give me BS about the basic concepts being all the preperation you need from any language. What you really need is practice programmming in new languages, followed by more practice. Theory is nice, but if your networking classes never teach you how to code arround a socket you still can't write a network application. However if you learn the coding side first you will pick up the theory anyways as a means to making your programs work. And yes I too currently have a programming job, despite not being a CS major.
I own this book and I thought it was great. I am not a rootkit creator, but I am woking with drivers, and the information this book gives is great for a driver developer. This book is very straight forward and understandable, even for someone with little driver experiance, unlike many resources for driver developers. Also it gives actual source code to illustrate concepts, unlike many books which spend too much time covering concepts and too little getting those concepts to do actual work for you.
I think it helped me get my job at least. However what my employer was looking for was the creativity to do new things. So working on a minor aspect of someone else's big project is not going to make much of an impact, as most coders can do grunt work for someone else. However developing and maintaning something of your own, or at least being a big innovater in someone else's project can be helpful.
Lets see red vs. blue just finished season 3, with a insanely large number of fans waiting for season 4. So basically you are totally and completely wrong. I mean at least visit the website once.
Do you know who Mark Russinovich is? Besides writing key books on windows published by Microsoft themselves he is also a very important member of the windows developer community. There is no way in hell Microsoft would want to make him an unsatisfied customer. If they really didn't like what he is doing I bet that they would try to bribe him with large sums of money to stop instead.
Sure its nifty and all, but why does one person's small project make the news? It doesn't even seem to be a team of people, and it is limited to one small OS. Is he giving bribes to the editors? Are the editors FreeDOS users? I am not trying to imply that it isn't a cool project or worth doing, but that if his project makes the news so should the majority of sourceforge projects. Me first please.
Slashdot Mirror
Best use of Sun's grid: playing Duke Nukem Forever, thats why it has been delayed so long, honest
The ability to but powerful computing time is a cool idea that has been featured in several sci-fi novels. However the article fails to mention exactly how powerful these Sun CPUs are. How much bang do you get for your buck? They also fail to mention how hard it will be to write code for this platform. Can I simply send them some standard C source, or will I have to code using some special extensions that will make my code totally unportable and thus lock me into buying more and more time from them?
On the other hand this is a good thing for the computer science departments of universities, for less students means that they can do less job training and more actual computer science. If you aren't convinced that real progress in computer science isn't being made any more I encourage you to watch this video. In it you can see all the aspects of the modern computers that we know and love being demonstated oh so long ago, only with less polish. Sadly research hasn't proceeded much beyond this in terms of software. The problem is that the typical student in a computer science course doesn't want to learn computer science, they just want to learn some Java/hot language of the momement and get out into the workforce. This is where bad programmers and bugs galore come from. However if those who simply want a job leave then a computer science degree will once again have meaning, and better software will be produced. Trust me on this one, I'm surrounded by CS majors who think Java is the best language ever, and are unable to program in anything else.
The real constraint with phone games is the input device, not the games themselves. Phone buttons are way too tiny to be easy to use, so games have to use only a couple of them, or be too hard to play. Also the tiny screen isnt very conductive either. What phones need is some kind of tilt sensitivity (for example), which would be easy to make games arround, and easy to interact with. Acceleration sensititivty might work as well, or possibly some game which uses the camera as an input device (i.e. you point it at differnt colored and shaped things to make the game react. Anther possibility is to use the audio input, but this could be annoying for the people arround you. While the games developed look nice, they still will all be a pain in the ass to play, and its not the developers' fault.
I loved mech commander. Is there any chance someone might build on this source to create a sequal, or is the liscense to restrictive? Actually even if it was GPL there might not be much hope, because the open source community has a tendancy to create only small games sucessfully, porbably due at least in part to not enough artists/level designers. Sigh
Exactlty how important is CATO in the scheme of things. Will this report reach the ears of politicians / mass media, or will it go largely unnoticed except by slashdot? I don't think we are going to see the DMCA revoked unless the public cares enough to put pressure on their representatives, and honestly the public isn't informed enough to care. So will this report help mobize people or are they just preaching to the choir?
Yes, I agree that feature and bug feedback from the user community is important, but I don't think you need to have a collaborative development community to do this. After all you were not collaborating with them in the same way you would as if you were working with them. They did not assign you tasks, nor were your fixes accepted without review/revision. So yes, open source has benifits such as these and more, but open source doesn't necessarily mean collaborative development.
I know we all love to hype collaborative devlopment and the open source model, but in all honesty not everyone is cut out to be a programmer, and programmers come in differnt levels of ability. I will admit freely that I am not one of the few elite programmers, and there is a good likely hood that I will never be. Sure, some projects, perhaps the majority, benefit from average programmers, and collaborateive development works in those cases. However, the most cutting edge, and bug-less, projects are only ever going to be the realm of the best of the best, and it doesn't matter how many people want to collaborate. Plus bad programmers, who fool you into thinking they are good because they want to feel needed, hurt any project they join, if only because they commit to work they will never finish. So yes, collaborative development such as sourceforge can help some projects, but it is definitely not the be all and end all for programming.
I find the google groups helpful, specifically: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp and http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.scheme however, they are probably only useful because there is an established group of people willing to answer questions. If you want to know how to form a new group which will be so friendly ... I have no idea.
I hope you realize that Java != Javascript. Anyways why would a language's popularity influence the quality of the language? Bad languages can be widely used (COBOL at one time), while good ones may only take root in niche markets.
I hope it was
My response: thats nice, but I don't have time to care about your whining. Awww poor baby windows treating you bad? I would have respect if the author had proposed solutions, preferably with some diagrams / mockups. Anyone can whine about problems, but if you want respect you should attempt to solve them as well. It would be like if NASA kept releasing reports on how gravity is heavy and then never did anything. I also enjoyed how he took extra time out to mock microsoft and apple. Because I'm sure making an operating system is so easy that the author could do a much better job, all by himself. bah.
Drag select with a D-pad does not work in any shape or form, mainly because it is either not percise enough or not fast enough when things get heated. The mouse overcomes this because you can be more percise by moving it slower, but the D-pad only has one speed. I would be interested to hear of an alternate way of selecting indididual units or a group of units without the D-pad.
Two things:
modding
the mouse
Care to play a RTS game on a console? I tried to play a lemmings console adaption once, the controls really killed it. Also mods, and their brother patches, make games last longer and more fun.
Wow, clinton was impeached. Thats news to me.
Wow thats so awesome, I wonder what he keeps in his glove box? In fact I see the potential for a who series of articles in which we can examine every container he posseses individually. We could even examine the lap top bags of other employees, the possibilities are endless.
Thats a good point, and I think the problem here is that students are starting with Java. Simply learning C first teaches you a lot about how the machine works. Also I consider bufferoverflows and instruction sets and what not to be part of the software side of things, not the hardware side. Hardware to me is more like the difference between different kinds of RAM, bus speeds, memory mapping ROM, ect.
Well no wonder these people aren't getting hired. When my boss tells me to go write a component I don't reply to him with a study about the most efficient way of implementing it, nor a report on the "paradigm" it belongs to. No, I just write it and debug it, which lets the whole project move forwards. In fact sometimes the most effficient implementation isn't desireable for a small task simply for clarity, and to speed up the time it takes to write the code.
I think it is fine for some people just to focus on software, that is why you work with other people who understand the hard-ware. However I am more concernd (a reason that I am an ex-CS major too) that the university doesnt offer a single course in PERL, Python, Ruby, PHP, or any of the currently popular languages except Java, and some C as a side benefit from some classes. Don't give me BS about the basic concepts being all the preperation you need from any language. What you really need is practice programmming in new languages, followed by more practice. Theory is nice, but if your networking classes never teach you how to code arround a socket you still can't write a network application. However if you learn the coding side first you will pick up the theory anyways as a means to making your programs work. And yes I too currently have a programming job, despite not being a CS major.
I own this book and I thought it was great. I am not a rootkit creator, but I am woking with drivers, and the information this book gives is great for a driver developer. This book is very straight forward and understandable, even for someone with little driver experiance, unlike many resources for driver developers. Also it gives actual source code to illustrate concepts, unlike many books which spend too much time covering concepts and too little getting those concepts to do actual work for you.
I don't even hava a degree.
I think it helped me get my job at least. However what my employer was looking for was the creativity to do new things. So working on a minor aspect of someone else's big project is not going to make much of an impact, as most coders can do grunt work for someone else. However developing and maintaning something of your own, or at least being a big innovater in someone else's project can be helpful.
Lets see red vs. blue just finished season 3, with a insanely large number of fans waiting for season 4. So basically you are totally and completely wrong. I mean at least visit the website once.
Do you know who Mark Russinovich is? Besides writing key books on windows published by Microsoft themselves he is also a very important member of the windows developer community. There is no way in hell Microsoft would want to make him an unsatisfied customer. If they really didn't like what he is doing I bet that they would try to bribe him with large sums of money to stop instead.
Sure its nifty and all, but why does one person's small project make the news? It doesn't even seem to be a team of people, and it is limited to one small OS. Is he giving bribes to the editors? Are the editors FreeDOS users? I am not trying to imply that it isn't a cool project or worth doing, but that if his project makes the news so should the majority of sourceforge projects. Me first please.