Re:Users are branching out - game companies are no
on
Is the Gaming PC Dead?
·
· Score: 1
Crap hardware will make any OS piss all over itself. Most of the Windows people who have problems tend to have the absolute cheapest, underpowered, or simply malfunctioning hardware.
Good guess, but *bzzzt* wrong. Most of my friends are IT professionals and they don't buy Dell. We're talking people with 10 years corporate windos administration experience here, who know what they need to do to avoid at least the worst nightmares.
Yes, you pay out a lot more money for your Apple laptop or desktop system, but it tends to be higher quality hardware. This isn't much different than buying Sun or SGI hardware, FWIW.
Or any non-crap PC hardware. The last non-Apple notebook a close friend bought before switching to a MacBook Pro was actually more expensive than the MBP. Quality costs money, Apple or not Apple.
In every case, no one skimped on hardware, and as a result, I've never really had an issue keeping everything running smoothly, regardless of what OS was being used.
Funny. I used to administer a couple windos systems running on the best hardware available back then. Ok, that was NT 3.5 so you'll claim things have changed. But it's the best I can offer in anecdotal evidence because after that I decided that the whole windos crap is hopeless and went for Unix. Anyways, we had an exchange server that was so prone to falling over, we finally decided that one of us had to be the first one in each morning and reboot the damn thing. After being rebooted daily, it had a 99% chance of staying up until the next reboot.
Funny how my private Linux systems on average hardware tend to have uptimes in the hundred of days.
Don't tell me it's never the OS. It isn't always the OS, I'll grant you that. But I've seen everything from AIX to windos first-hand myself and unless close your eyes, there are visible differences.
Re:Users are branching out - game companies are no
on
Is the Gaming PC Dead?
·
· Score: 1, Funny
Ah. Now I'm reminded of why I don't have too many geek friends. They're obsessed with their operating systems more than what they can do with them.:)
Actually, being able to do something with the OS, instead of fighting with it all the time, is one of the prime reasons while people switch to OS X. A lot of my friends did, over the past two years or so, and most of them come back a few weeks after they switched and tell everyone how much more productive they have become now that the OS has stopped being in the way all the time.
In other news, FreeBSD is also going to die real soon now. Also, peace talks among the vi and Emacs fanatics are about to conclude with a mutual satisfactory solution.
*yawn*
I know it's a slow news time around this time of the year. And yes, if you repeat a story often enough, you can point at it and say "told you so" if/when it finally comes true. But still: PLEEEEAAAASE! Think of the children! Or whatever else makes you tick. We've had this "PC gaming dead", "PC gaming about to die", "PC gaming might be in peril" about once a month FOR THE PAST FIVE FRIGGING YEARS!
Sorry, console fanboys, us PC dudes are here to stay, too. Now get on your sofa and leave us alone with your doomsaying/wishful thinking.
Actually, I think of it more the same way I think about powerpoint: MAJOR productivity killer.
Almost everything you use on your desktop PC was designed for a keyboard/mouse interface at 1024x768 or up. Maybe with a check on whether it's halfway useable at 800x600, if you are lucky.
The iPhone has a 320x480 screen and touchscreen interface. Good luck using any of your office applications on it.
Sure, every PHB will do it anyways, not because it's really good for anything, but because it makes him look "important". Much the same way people use Blackberries when they're 10 feet from their office and it would be quicker to go there to check the mail. That's where the productivity killing comes in.
When's the last time MS shipped an OS on the date it announced that it would?
So instead of one problem ("migrate to Vista or stick with XP?") IT departments will now have a second question to answer ("skip Vista and wait for W7 or not?"). I'm sure they'll be happy like it were christmas.:-)
It is for text, so if you need something that does your layouting and figures and tables as well, it's probably not right. But I love it for its organisation features, where your book is treated as individual chapters and sub-chapters that you can drag around and sort as you like, something that's saved me a loot of copy & paste when you realize that this part would make a much better chapter start and that part over there really ought to be explained earlier, etc.
Newspapers have been declared dead every few years for the past 15 or so. When I went to university, one of our projects was to come up with suggestions on how newspapers could leverage all the new tech (Internet was new at that time) so they could "survive".
Look, they're still around. I guess they'll still be here in another 15 years.
I must have watched The Neverending Story like a hundred times, The original Star Wars trilogy over 30 times each one, I know quite a few people that do the same. I don't think that TV reruns are mostly watched by people that haven't seen the movie before, instead I heard comments like "XYZ was on Fox last night, I haven't seen that movie in a long time, it's still pretty awesome".
Yes, and there's also movies that I've watched multiple times.
They make up maybe 1% of the total movies I watched.
So it's not exactly an exception that invalidates the point, you see?:-)
Also, C# is almost syntactically identical to Java, and it is a good language for the beginner to discover whether or not they have a REAL interest and a knack for coding.
Why?
No, seriously. I don't see a single reason to calall C# (or Java, for that matter) a good language for beginners.
I have been using Linux for more than 10 years, and I still think it's not nearly ready for the desktop.
Thanks! Yes, someone had to say it. I've been waiting for Linux being ready for 6 years or so, then last year I was tired of waiting and bought a MacBook Pro. And sorry to say it, but: Linux, I'm not coming back.
The Apple stuff is what computers should be like from a user perspective. The argument about open sourcing this or that or now the iPhone are all arguments from the developer perspective (and often not even that). As long as developers think that they are the important people, Linux, Windos or anything else they drive will not be ready for the desktop, much less the pocket.
Whatever you do, never ever ever teach someone BASIC. Not QBASIC and not any other flavour. It was my first programming language, too, and it took almost ten years and a study of computer science to finally get all those bad habits you acquire in BASIC out of my system. DO NOT POISON INNOCENTS WITH BASIC.
You can consider Pascal, which after all was designed specifically as a teaching language. There's also Oberon if you want to go more into OO and make sure that the language they learn on will never be used in an actual real-world context.:-)
Java, Mono, C++, etc will probably all be suggested, but I wouldn't consider them suitable for beginners.
The company is very different (a hardware instead of a software company) the market is very different now than six, ten years ago. Even the product is very different (a phone/PDA compared to desktop computers) and so on and so on.
There's absolutely no fact to support the claim that "things will play out the same way". None at all.
There's also no reason for Apple to open source the iPhone. It's selling like crazy, and nothing even hints at open source giving that a significant push.
Oh, totally. Having a 3D model to turn and zoom as I like would be much better for online shopping than a picture or two.
But that's a totally different animal. And I'd still want my 3D preview embedded in an interface that was designed for this specific medium. Like, say, an online-shop.
Behold: a detailed, realistic 3D walk-thru rendering of the entire store
Which is good for what, exactly?
If you want interaction, you're back at coding it. And the "virtual shop" you just created does more to limit options, than to help them. Why the fuck should I care which aisle the product is in?
Welcome to the 21st century. Right now, we are doing an "80s revival". No, that doesn't mean the clothes or music, for this one, we are reviving 1980s faults, errors and misconceptions.
Today: The misguided idea that 3D, VR or other "close to reality" interfaces are by default good interfaces. Let's ignore the past 20 years of research! Be happy! There is no uncanny valley. We don't have other options that might offer better interfaces than a simulation of reality does. No, let's assume that rocket cars, 50s music and VR are what we want.
Seriously, this is so stupid, it hurts. When I'm online I don't want to "browse". That was 20 years ago. Even "searching" is on its way out. I don't want a cheap 3D copy of your shop, I want something adapted to the medium I'm using. I want search, overviews and recommendations. I want to narrow down my view and sort according to arbitrary criteria of my own, not browse through the collection in whatever order you put it up in your shop.
It appears TFA misses completly why people do online shopping at all. Newsflash: It is very rarely because you don't want to walk or drive to the shop. In fact, I've been in a physical shop multiple times and went online there in order to research and sometimes even buy the article I was holding in my hands online. More information, price comparisons, and many more things.
Now publishers and developers just see revenue the initial few weeks regardless of the game's quality and then gamers start buying used copies
Maybe that's because the replay value of your titles has dropped? All those cutscenes, interactive-movie "games" where there's exactly one plot to follow on exactly one road, you know? Few people see a movie twice, even a good one. So in becoming more like a movie, that's one of the consequences for your games.
Meanwhile, I still dig up games like Crusader Kings occasionally.
"the student was informed of the proper procedures to follow and flatly refused to obtain proper permissions stating that she would continue to send emails out and demanded that I file charges against her."
Speaking as someone who does in his day job occasionally sue people - anyone specifically asking for it is... well, asking for it.
21 million is three in four existing German bank accounts.
Errr.... no?
Germany has about 80 mio. people living in it. Almost everyone who is not a small child has a bank account here. Most kids are given one by their parents somewhere around age 6-10 (depending on the parents) for savings. A lot of people have more than one bank account. One in four sounds more like it.
And that's just private accounts. I can't even guess at the number of bank accounts that companies have.
And how often does a person financially support his affair? Not so much I'd guess.
Short-term affairs? No. Secondary wives? Often. These girls get houses, cars and expensive travels on behalf of their not-quite-husband.
But I guess it depends a little on culture. Over here in Europe, a lot of people a pretty open with things like that. Over in the US, at least from what I gather from headliness, especially republican politicians apparently prefer fucking other gay men in airport restrooms over having a mistress. To each his own, I guess.:-)
but to postulate that their wives are in on it too and in fact we live in a polyandrous society is going a touch too far IMHO.
Remember what I was comparing it to. I don't think that's the rule. But I do think this "inofficial polygamy" is about as often as the official having-2-3-4 wives is in the countries it's allowed in.
Yeah, sorry for not differentiating the various small sects within one group of a specific subtype of one of the many abrahamic religions. Couldn't bother to.:-)
That depends on a lot of other factors besides government encouragement.
See it like this: Polygamy is here, today. Depending on your culture or country, it might be officially sanctioned (muslims if n=4, or mormons) or not (most of the west, anything else that's catholic). But reality is that it simply takes different forms. In the west, for example, the rich manager simply has an affair. More often with knowledge of his wife than you'd think.
The common factor is that requires the ability to financially support two wives. That's why in muslim countries, even though they can have up to four wives, the vast majority only have one. They simply can't afford a second one. And that's why in western society, a lot of rich men do have two (or more) wives, going by different official terms, because they can afford to.
Slashdot Mirror
Crap hardware will make any OS piss all over itself. Most of the Windows people who have problems tend to have the absolute cheapest, underpowered, or simply malfunctioning hardware.
Good guess, but *bzzzt* wrong. Most of my friends are IT professionals and they don't buy Dell. We're talking people with 10 years corporate windos administration experience here, who know what they need to do to avoid at least the worst nightmares.
Yes, you pay out a lot more money for your Apple laptop or desktop system, but it tends to be higher quality hardware. This isn't much different than buying Sun or SGI hardware, FWIW.
Or any non-crap PC hardware. The last non-Apple notebook a close friend bought before switching to a MacBook Pro was actually more expensive than the MBP. Quality costs money, Apple or not Apple.
In every case, no one skimped on hardware, and as a result, I've never really had an issue keeping everything running smoothly, regardless of what OS was being used.
Funny. I used to administer a couple windos systems running on the best hardware available back then. Ok, that was NT 3.5 so you'll claim things have changed. But it's the best I can offer in anecdotal evidence because after that I decided that the whole windos crap is hopeless and went for Unix. Anyways, we had an exchange server that was so prone to falling over, we finally decided that one of us had to be the first one in each morning and reboot the damn thing. After being rebooted daily, it had a 99% chance of staying up until the next reboot.
Funny how my private Linux systems on average hardware tend to have uptimes in the hundred of days.
Don't tell me it's never the OS. It isn't always the OS, I'll grant you that. But I've seen everything from AIX to windos first-hand myself and unless close your eyes, there are visible differences.
Ah. Now I'm reminded of why I don't have too many geek friends. They're obsessed with their operating systems more than what they can do with them. :)
Actually, being able to do something with the OS, instead of fighting with it all the time, is one of the prime reasons while people switch to OS X. A lot of my friends did, over the past two years or so, and most of them come back a few weeks after they switched and tell everyone how much more productive they have become now that the OS has stopped being in the way all the time.
In other news, FreeBSD is also going to die real soon now. Also, peace talks among the vi and Emacs fanatics are about to conclude with a mutual satisfactory solution.
*yawn*
I know it's a slow news time around this time of the year. And yes, if you repeat a story often enough, you can point at it and say "told you so" if/when it finally comes true. But still: PLEEEEAAAASE! Think of the children! Or whatever else makes you tick. We've had this "PC gaming dead", "PC gaming about to die", "PC gaming might be in peril" about once a month FOR THE PAST FIVE FRIGGING YEARS!
Sorry, console fanboys, us PC dudes are here to stay, too. Now get on your sofa and leave us alone with your doomsaying/wishful thinking.
So Linux users can finally get what Mac users have had for four years?
Revolutionary! :-)
MAJOR Business killer application
Actually, I think of it more the same way I think about powerpoint: MAJOR productivity killer.
Almost everything you use on your desktop PC was designed for a keyboard/mouse interface at 1024x768 or up. Maybe with a check on whether it's halfway useable at 800x600, if you are lucky.
The iPhone has a 320x480 screen and touchscreen interface. Good luck using any of your office applications on it.
Sure, every PHB will do it anyways, not because it's really good for anything, but because it makes him look "important". Much the same way people use Blackberries when they're 10 feet from their office and it would be quicker to go there to check the mail. That's where the productivity killing comes in.
So everyone will be screwed again?
When's the last time MS shipped an OS on the date it announced that it would?
So instead of one problem ("migrate to Vista or stick with XP?") IT departments will now have a second question to answer ("skip Vista and wait for W7 or not?"). I'm sure they'll be happy like it were christmas. :-)
True, that. Revision control is one of the features that it does not support well.
If you're on a Mac, I can recommend Scrivener.
It is for text, so if you need something that does your layouting and figures and tables as well, it's probably not right. But I love it for its organisation features, where your book is treated as individual chapters and sub-chapters that you can drag around and sort as you like, something that's saved me a loot of copy & paste when you realize that this part would make a much better chapter start and that part over there really ought to be explained earlier, etc.
Newspapers have been declared dead every few years for the past 15 or so. When I went to university, one of our projects was to come up with suggestions on how newspapers could leverage all the new tech (Internet was new at that time) so they could "survive".
Look, they're still around. I guess they'll still be here in another 15 years.
We were talking about DNSCurve last time I checked. ;-)
I must have watched The Neverending Story like a hundred times, The original Star Wars trilogy over 30 times each one, I know quite a few people that do the same. I don't think that TV reruns are mostly watched by people that haven't seen the movie before, instead I heard comments like "XYZ was on Fox last night, I haven't seen that movie in a long time, it's still pretty awesome".
Yes, and there's also movies that I've watched multiple times.
They make up maybe 1% of the total movies I watched.
So it's not exactly an exception that invalidates the point, you see? :-)
Also, C# is almost syntactically identical to Java, and it is a good language for the beginner to discover whether or not they have a REAL interest and a knack for coding.
Why?
No, seriously. I don't see a single reason to calall C# (or Java, for that matter) a good language for beginners.
I have been using Linux for more than 10 years, and I still think it's not nearly ready for the desktop.
Thanks! Yes, someone had to say it. I've been waiting for Linux being ready for 6 years or so, then last year I was tired of waiting and bought a MacBook Pro. And sorry to say it, but: Linux, I'm not coming back.
The Apple stuff is what computers should be like from a user perspective. The argument about open sourcing this or that or now the iPhone are all arguments from the developer perspective (and often not even that). As long as developers think that they are the important people, Linux, Windos or anything else they drive will not be ready for the desktop, much less the pocket.
Whatever you do, never ever ever teach someone BASIC. Not QBASIC and not any other flavour. It was my first programming language, too, and it took almost ten years and a study of computer science to finally get all those bad habits you acquire in BASIC out of my system. DO NOT POISON INNOCENTS WITH BASIC.
You can consider Pascal, which after all was designed specifically as a teaching language. There's also Oberon if you want to go more into OO and make sure that the language they learn on will never be used in an actual real-world context. :-)
Java, Mono, C++, etc will probably all be suggested, but I wouldn't consider them suitable for beginners.
A bullshit claim substantiated by nothing.
The company is very different (a hardware instead of a software company) the market is very different now than six, ten years ago. Even the product is very different (a phone/PDA compared to desktop computers) and so on and so on.
There's absolutely no fact to support the claim that "things will play out the same way". None at all.
There's also no reason for Apple to open source the iPhone. It's selling like crazy, and nothing even hints at open source giving that a significant push.
Oh, totally. Having a 3D model to turn and zoom as I like would be much better for online shopping than a picture or two.
But that's a totally different animal. And I'd still want my 3D preview embedded in an interface that was designed for this specific medium. Like, say, an online-shop.
Behold: a detailed, realistic 3D walk-thru rendering of the entire store
Which is good for what, exactly?
If you want interaction, you're back at coding it. And the "virtual shop" you just created does more to limit options, than to help them. Why the fuck should I care which aisle the product is in?
Welcome to the 21st century. Right now, we are doing an "80s revival". No, that doesn't mean the clothes or music, for this one, we are reviving 1980s faults, errors and misconceptions.
Today: The misguided idea that 3D, VR or other "close to reality" interfaces are by default good interfaces. Let's ignore the past 20 years of research! Be happy! There is no uncanny valley. We don't have other options that might offer better interfaces than a simulation of reality does. No, let's assume that rocket cars, 50s music and VR are what we want.
Seriously, this is so stupid, it hurts. When I'm online I don't want to "browse". That was 20 years ago. Even "searching" is on its way out. I don't want a cheap 3D copy of your shop, I want something adapted to the medium I'm using. I want search, overviews and recommendations. I want to narrow down my view and sort according to arbitrary criteria of my own, not browse through the collection in whatever order you put it up in your shop.
It appears TFA misses completly why people do online shopping at all. Newsflash: It is very rarely because you don't want to walk or drive to the shop. In fact, I've been in a physical shop multiple times and went online there in order to research and sometimes even buy the article I was holding in my hands online. More information, price comparisons, and many more things.
Wake me when there's a Debian packet available.
Seriously. I've outgrown the age where I compile my software, unless it's stuff that I've written myself.
Now publishers and developers just see revenue the initial few weeks regardless of the game's quality and then gamers start buying used copies
Maybe that's because the replay value of your titles has dropped? All those cutscenes, interactive-movie "games" where there's exactly one plot to follow on exactly one road, you know? Few people see a movie twice, even a good one. So in becoming more like a movie, that's one of the consequences for your games.
Meanwhile, I still dig up games like Crusader Kings occasionally.
"the student was informed of the proper procedures to follow and flatly refused to obtain proper permissions stating that she would continue to send emails out and demanded that I file charges against her."
Speaking as someone who does in his day job occasionally sue people - anyone specifically asking for it is... well, asking for it.
21 million is three in four existing German bank accounts.
Errr.... no?
Germany has about 80 mio. people living in it. Almost everyone who is not a small child has a bank account here. Most kids are given one by their parents somewhere around age 6-10 (depending on the parents) for savings. A lot of people have more than one bank account. One in four sounds more like it.
And that's just private accounts. I can't even guess at the number of bank accounts that companies have.
And how often does a person financially support his affair? Not so much I'd guess.
Short-term affairs? No.
Secondary wives? Often. These girls get houses, cars and expensive travels on behalf of their not-quite-husband.
But I guess it depends a little on culture. Over here in Europe, a lot of people a pretty open with things like that. Over in the US, at least from what I gather from headliness, especially republican politicians apparently prefer fucking other gay men in airport restrooms over having a mistress. To each his own, I guess. :-)
but to postulate that their wives are in on it too and in fact we live in a polyandrous society is going a touch too far IMHO.
Remember what I was comparing it to. I don't think that's the rule. But I do think this "inofficial polygamy" is about as often as the official having-2-3-4 wives is in the countries it's allowed in.
Yeah, sorry for not differentiating the various small sects within one group of a specific subtype of one of the many abrahamic religions. Couldn't bother to. :-)
That depends on a lot of other factors besides government encouragement.
See it like this: Polygamy is here, today. Depending on your culture or country, it might be officially sanctioned (muslims if n=4, or mormons) or not (most of the west, anything else that's catholic). But reality is that it simply takes different forms. In the west, for example, the rich manager simply has an affair. More often with knowledge of his wife than you'd think.
The common factor is that requires the ability to financially support two wives. That's why in muslim countries, even though they can have up to four wives, the vast majority only have one. They simply can't afford a second one. And that's why in western society, a lot of rich men do have two (or more) wives, going by different official terms, because they can afford to.
So - you still happy? :-)