Maybe this will lay waste to claims that java is slow, bloated, and sucks.
Well, it may lay waste to claims that Java is slow, but I think it's hard to argue that it's not bloated. And, of course, Java does suck for rapid prototyping. However, it doesn't suck so much in other contexts.
"Come on, do you seriously believe that an LP or a tape has an infinite information storage capability?"
It was sarcasm. When CDs were introduced to the market, digital sampling was seen as a negative by people. At that point, people were even less familiar with digital sampling than they are now. The impression that CDs somehow failed to capture sound that would be present on a record or cassette was far from rare. Of course, we're all enlightened now, right?
Well, let's see. I used to listen to albums, that were apparently far superior in sound quality than anything else in the world. They would get scratches that would cause them to make popping sounds and would add fuzz to the music. What the hell, it still sounds fine.
Next, I bought cassettes. Cassettes had an always present hiss in the background and after several plays, the music on the cheaply made cassettes would start to fade. What's worse, the tapes would eventually stretch and snap after overuse. That was fine too. I could listen to my music.
Then I bought CDs. These were okay too. They were bulkier than cassettes--sort of. They were also prone to scratches, but far less so than records. The problem was that they were digital and not analog, which meant that I wasn't getting to hear all the sound that was being played by the artists (as we obviously were with LPs and cassettes since they had infinite information storage capabilities). Oh dear. Where's my tape hiss? Where's the fullness of my phonograph? Well, whatever. I can still hear the music.
Now I have lossless MP3s and AACs. The horror. They don't scratch. They don't add tape hiss. They don't wear out at all and are incredibly portable. However, they don't store all the information that our CDs do. They even distort some of that sound. Oh no! Oh, wait, I can still hear the music. That's okay.
So, my point is, what the hell does it matter? There's no perfect recording medium. If there were no choices we'd be happy with whatever we had. Now that the common consumer has a choice, she frets day and night over how many bits she's losing. Talk about a waste of time. Freedom of choice isn't always a blessing. It can distract you from those other freedoms that are slipping away.
The advantage of Pascal is that there are a number of books designed at the introductory level. The language itself is fairly easy to understand up to dealing with the differences between val (call by value) and var (call by reference) parameters. Even then, you can usually ignore var parameters for awhile.
Common Lisp isn't so bad either, and Touretzky's book is as gentle as it claims and free.
My DSL was acting up one day. I couldn't keep a connection for more than a couple of minutes before it would drop out and my little connection light would give me that sad, lost blink. I called Verizon to ask whether they were having server problems. Well, of course they weren't. So, what did the tech support guy tell me?
You see, after awhile, a charge builds up at one end of an Ethernet cable. That degrades the connection and could cause problems. You should try turning your cable around.
I can't decide what's worse. First, you have all those poor kids in 3rd world countries that'll be out of work. Second, you have the 100+ thousand dollars that supported the development of a machine that folds party hats for squirrels.
I suppose the military could make a really big robot that folds the enemy on the front lines.
Is there any other hardware/software you've been disappointed not to hear about, besides the obvious?
Anybody who's still disappointed about the non-appearance of Duke Nukem 4 needs to re-evaluate her priorities. Really. Duke Nukem 3D was nice, but given the recent Duke offerings, I can't imagine that DN4 would be the life-expanding experience that it's vapor-fueled hype has promised. Valve has a better track record than the progenitors of the Duke franchise. Valve.
Yawn. Now, if anybody can tell me how to play Duke 3D on OS X, I'd be glad to hear the tale.
The charts show that a full $15 of the price is profit to the wholesalers, and the retailers. I'm surprised that more studios don't try the direct channel, selling right to the customer. It seems that there's some serious inefficiency there.
That $15 pays for shelf space, advertisement through store flyers, customer assistance, and other publicity. If a company sells directly to customers it has to figure out how to get eyeballs on the product. It also has to employ direct sales associates and manage individualized (as opposed to cheaper bulk) shipping. While some companies do sell directly to customers (in addition to retail channels), such as the EA Store, their prices are not particularly competitive. Perhaps this is due to the extra costs associated with direct distribution.
Thinking back to the shareware companies in the early 1990s (id software in particular), word of mouth got games into the hands of people, but once the opportunity arose, successful titles like Doom were sucking up shelf space wherever they could. Even today, direct downloads are likely to be offered as an option along side retail-based purchase. You can even get WinZip in a box these days.
So, I suppose my point is that the $15 pays for quite a bit of service, and that the service is apparently useful for moving the product (otherwise, why wouldn't id, 3DRealms, etc. just keep up with the direct marketing angle and avoid brick & morter completely?).
if the original source is acknowledge - which it is - and there is no profit being made - which there isn't - then it is not serious.
So, if I distribute PDFs of new books for free, with thanks to the original publisher, I'm not "seriously" infringing on copyright? It's not a case of plagiarism, but it is a case of copyright infringement.
If something like Wikipedia were around in Gallileo's time, would it ever say that the earth is round?
I know that this is just being picky, but I would guess that it would. Magellan made his voyage in the early 16th century. Gallileo was alive well into the 17th century. Of course, the information would all depend on what article you read as internal consistency isn't the strong suit of Wikipedia. Oh, and it assumes that people would have access to the Internet via advanced technology.
Quite simply, success itself is a barrier to innovation. After a big hit, you are economically incentivized to play it safe with future projects. There's more money riding on the development side and there's plenty of risk in releasing any game, let alone an actual gaming advancement. Plus, it's no longer just a handful of friends coding in their spare time - wasting weekends and vacation. It's the jobs of 6 other coders, a dozen office and technical support professionals, and 2 dozen artists on the line.
That's an astute observation, and it's one that rings true outside the gaming business as well. Things may work differently in the movie industry (think of Altman and Van Sant), but as for the tech business, the music industry, or even clothing and other design, an initial success generally leads to iterative "improvements."
Of course, it may be too much to ask a person (or a team of like-minded people) to create something truly innovative twice in a lifetime. Aside from being risky, innovation is difficult. When creating a game, finding something that's both novel *and* fun for the gaming populace is much more difficult than just making something fun.
Within the context of scientific research, there has been some work to determine what environment leads to breakthroughs, but far too little. The preliminary indication is that a group of academics with varied backgrounds makes a better source than a homogeneous group. I suppose that after a first product, many gaming developers tend to think in terms of what has come before as opposed to what should come next. You can't get much more homogeneous in thought than that.
Science shouldn't operate on the principle of PAY to play. Anyone should have access to any and all information for free.
Science costs money. That's just how it is. Data collection costs money, data preparation costs money, researchers to process the data cost money. If you're a computer scientist, then you'll pay for computers, software, and other things to perform your research.
To his credit, Wolfram realized that the cost of Mathematica was out of the reach of many people and released the components necessary to explore cellular automata for somewhere around $50-$100. Yes, this probably was a way to soak the reader for a couple more bucks, but you shouldn't slight a person for failing to be entirely altruistic.
Would it be alright if I bought a book, read it, didn't like it, and returned it?
Generally it is. Borders allows you to return purchases within 30 days.
As for PC games, 1 major problem is the need for post-release patches. You play a demo and notice a bug or two, but you see that a patch has been released. You rush to the store and buy the game, and much to your chagrin, the patch doesn't help. The game still has problems. Great. You can't return it even though the company sold a product loaded with defects.
I'm glad that I was able to return Anarchy Online during the first month of operations. Returning Red Alert 2 was a great experience (reviews were good, there was no demo, and I'd liked Red Alert). When I bought Post Mortem (after reading reviews that failed to point out how terribly bugged the game really was), I was relieved that I had gotten in on the final week that the local EB was accepting returns.
Since I'm no longer allowed to return games, I've just quit buying them. I'll wait until they drop below $20 or until I receive them as gifts.
It should also be mentioned that board games are definitely more portable than a game console/PC.
Maybe, but I've never spilled all the letters out of my GameCube. I can't say as much about Scrabble.
Come to think of it, a GameCube is pretty portable. I think you can even get backpacks for them. Then again, it's probably really wierd being the only person over 12 at a GameCube LAN party.;-)
The Indians that I've spoken to say that they are actually paid very well for India. We're not talking about sweat shops full of unskilled laborers. We're talking about globalization allowing companies to move production to locations with a lower cost of living. It makes the shareholders happy without incurring the cost of exploitation. Unfortunately, it also pushes America closer to the status of a service nation as the last major segment of products is pushed overseas. We'll all be working at McDonalds before this is over.
Of course, most developers would never agree to such a thing [unions]. They'd rather die first. Fucking irony.
With the number of developers and the freedoms that employers take with assigning hours, I've been surprised that a programmer's union or computer-professionals union hasn't developed. Admittedly unions have seen a bad light lately due to alleged bad behavior by union leaders--those in power becoming corrupt because of it--but without unionization, the employers are free to take advantage of the employees in any way they see fit.
People died for the 12 hour day, the 10 hour day, and several other workers' privileges, but we tend to forget about that these days. We even think that our employers might very well be benevolent, sharing no genes with the horrid beasts of the pasts. We even praise our owners as we, making far less than other professionals that are on call 24 hours a day, wander into the office at two in the morning on a Sunday night to press the reboot button on the company server. We think that as our boss says, "Ahh, I'm going to have to go ahead and ask you to come in on Sunday, too."
Well, maybe you get what you ask for. Maybe there is no way for a union to establish real bargaining power these days. I don't know. Regardless, I see a lot of people going on strike in these the days of our great economy.
I'd suggest you save $35 dollars and buy a CD, which you can also listen to over and over again. Concerts are intended for live music. I enjoy hearing the artist in their true form.
I've ended up at concerts where I've left wishing that I had just sat at home and listened to the CD. It isn't that the bands were awful, it's that the live show didn't vary from a "best of" album in the least bit. There was no noticeable difference from the original recording, and the band never played any "non-hit" songs.
I'm sure that this lovely device, if it really works, will make my concert experiences even more generic than before. Or, it would, if any of the bands I see live could afford the damn thing.;-)
Does anyone know of a whole-house solution for providing clean, voltage-regulated power to an entire house?
I thought that my electricity supplier offered a "premium" service that consisted of sticking a voltage regulator at the source. I checked their website, but no longer see any mention of it. It may be worth checking with your local supplier.
As a cheaper solution, I bought a line conditioner and a UPS w/ voltage regulation to avoid damaging my electronics. My current is all over the place and the old DVD player is really sensitive to the fluxuations.
Slashdot Mirror
Ain't It Cool News has a review up as well. Oh, and another here although both are mostly comments on Uwe as a person.
Maybe this will lay waste to claims that java is slow, bloated, and sucks.
Well, it may lay waste to claims that Java is slow, but I think it's hard to argue that it's not bloated. And, of course, Java does suck for rapid prototyping. However, it doesn't suck so much in other contexts.
Mostly, I just wanted to type the word suck.
"Come on, do you seriously believe that an LP or a tape has an infinite information storage capability?"
It was sarcasm. When CDs were introduced to the market, digital sampling was seen as a negative by people. At that point, people were even less familiar with digital sampling than they are now. The impression that CDs somehow failed to capture sound that would be present on a record or cassette was far from rare. Of course, we're all enlightened now, right?
Well, let's see. I used to listen to albums, that were apparently far superior in sound quality than anything else in the world. They would get scratches that would cause them to make popping sounds and would add fuzz to the music. What the hell, it still sounds fine.
Next, I bought cassettes. Cassettes had an always present hiss in the background and after several plays, the music on the cheaply made cassettes would start to fade. What's worse, the tapes would eventually stretch and snap after overuse. That was fine too. I could listen to my music.
Then I bought CDs. These were okay too. They were bulkier than cassettes--sort of. They were also prone to scratches, but far less so than records. The problem was that they were digital and not analog, which meant that I wasn't getting to hear all the sound that was being played by the artists (as we obviously were with LPs and cassettes since they had infinite information storage capabilities). Oh dear. Where's my tape hiss? Where's the fullness of my phonograph? Well, whatever. I can still hear the music.
Now I have lossless MP3s and AACs. The horror. They don't scratch. They don't add tape hiss. They don't wear out at all and are incredibly portable. However, they don't store all the information that our CDs do. They even distort some of that sound. Oh no! Oh, wait, I can still hear the music. That's okay.
So, my point is, what the hell does it matter? There's no perfect recording medium. If there were no choices we'd be happy with whatever we had. Now that the common consumer has a choice, she frets day and night over how many bits she's losing. Talk about a waste of time. Freedom of choice isn't always a blessing. It can distract you from those other freedoms that are slipping away.
Given that there are almost 2 decent XBox-only games on the market, it's not that big of a deal. Right?
The advantage of Pascal is that there are a number of books designed at the introductory level. The language itself is fairly easy to understand up to dealing with the differences between val (call by value) and var (call by reference) parameters. Even then, you can usually ignore var parameters for awhile.
Common Lisp isn't so bad either, and Touretzky's book is as gentle as it claims and free.
My DSL was acting up one day. I couldn't keep a connection for more than a couple of minutes before it would drop out and my little connection light would give me that sad, lost blink. I called Verizon to ask whether they were having server problems. Well, of course they weren't. So, what did the tech support guy tell me?
You see, after awhile, a charge builds up at one end of an Ethernet cable. That degrades the connection and could cause problems. You should try turning your cable around.
Wow.
Oh, geez. I'd forgotten the horrors of DOS configuration until I checked out DOSBox. I think I'll stick w/ my memories for the moment.
I can't decide what's worse. First, you have all those poor kids in 3rd world countries that'll be out of work. Second, you have the 100+ thousand dollars that supported the development of a machine that folds party hats for squirrels.
I suppose the military could make a really big robot that folds the enemy on the front lines.
Hmm. That all sounds a bit too bitter.
Is there any other hardware/software you've been disappointed not to hear about, besides the obvious?
Anybody who's still disappointed about the non-appearance of Duke Nukem 4 needs to re-evaluate her priorities. Really. Duke Nukem 3D was nice, but given the recent Duke offerings, I can't imagine that DN4 would be the life-expanding experience that it's vapor-fueled hype has promised. Valve has a better track record than the progenitors of the Duke franchise. Valve.
Yawn. Now, if anybody can tell me how to play Duke 3D on OS X, I'd be glad to hear the tale.
Eternal Darkness, I simply hated.
;-)
You've apparently never worshipped the crawling chaos.
Nyarlathotep r0x3rZ.
The charts show that a full $15 of the price is profit to the wholesalers, and the retailers. I'm surprised that more studios don't try the direct channel, selling right to the customer. It seems that there's some serious inefficiency there.
That $15 pays for shelf space, advertisement through store flyers, customer assistance, and other publicity. If a company sells directly to customers it has to figure out how to get eyeballs on the product. It also has to employ direct sales associates and manage individualized (as opposed to cheaper bulk) shipping. While some companies do sell directly to customers (in addition to retail channels), such as the EA Store, their prices are not particularly competitive. Perhaps this is due to the extra costs associated with direct distribution.
Thinking back to the shareware companies in the early 1990s (id software in particular), word of mouth got games into the hands of people, but once the opportunity arose, successful titles like Doom were sucking up shelf space wherever they could. Even today, direct downloads are likely to be offered as an option along side retail-based purchase. You can even get WinZip in a box these days.
So, I suppose my point is that the $15 pays for quite a bit of service, and that the service is apparently useful for moving the product (otherwise, why wouldn't id, 3DRealms, etc. just keep up with the direct marketing angle and avoid brick & morter completely?).
An al-Hallaj reference?
Yup.
if the original source is acknowledge - which it is - and there is no profit being made - which there isn't - then it is not serious.
So, if I distribute PDFs of new books for free, with thanks to the original publisher, I'm not "seriously" infringing on copyright? It's not a case of plagiarism, but it is a case of copyright infringement.
If something like Wikipedia were around in Gallileo's time, would it ever say that the earth is round?
I know that this is just being picky, but I would guess that it would. Magellan made his voyage in the early 16th century. Gallileo was alive well into the 17th century. Of course, the information would all depend on what article you read as internal consistency isn't the strong suit of Wikipedia. Oh, and it assumes that people would have access to the Internet via advanced technology.
Quite simply, success itself is a barrier to innovation. After a big hit, you are economically incentivized to play it safe with future projects. There's more money riding on the development side and there's plenty of risk in releasing any game, let alone an actual gaming advancement. Plus, it's no longer just a handful of friends coding in their spare time - wasting weekends and vacation. It's the jobs of 6 other coders, a dozen office and technical support professionals, and 2 dozen artists on the line.
That's an astute observation, and it's one that rings true outside the gaming business as well. Things may work differently in the movie industry (think of Altman and Van Sant), but as for the tech business, the music industry, or even clothing and other design, an initial success generally leads to iterative "improvements."
Of course, it may be too much to ask a person (or a team of like-minded people) to create something truly innovative twice in a lifetime. Aside from being risky, innovation is difficult. When creating a game, finding something that's both novel *and* fun for the gaming populace is much more difficult than just making something fun.
Within the context of scientific research, there has been some work to determine what environment leads to breakthroughs, but far too little. The preliminary indication is that a group of academics with varied backgrounds makes a better source than a homogeneous group. I suppose that after a first product, many gaming developers tend to think in terms of what has come before as opposed to what should come next. You can't get much more homogeneous in thought than that.
Science shouldn't operate on the principle of PAY to play. Anyone should have access to any and all information for free.
Science costs money. That's just how it is. Data collection costs money, data preparation costs money, researchers to process the data cost money. If you're a computer scientist, then you'll pay for computers, software, and other things to perform your research.
To his credit, Wolfram realized that the cost of Mathematica was out of the reach of many people and released the components necessary to explore cellular automata for somewhere around $50-$100. Yes, this probably was a way to soak the reader for a couple more bucks, but you shouldn't slight a person for failing to be entirely altruistic.
Would it be alright if I bought a book, read it, didn't like it, and returned it?
Generally it is. Borders allows you to return purchases within 30 days.
As for PC games, 1 major problem is the need for post-release patches. You play a demo and notice a bug or two, but you see that a patch has been released. You rush to the store and buy the game, and much to your chagrin, the patch doesn't help. The game still has problems. Great. You can't return it even though the company sold a product loaded with defects.
I'm glad that I was able to return Anarchy Online during the first month of operations. Returning Red Alert 2 was a great experience (reviews were good, there was no demo, and I'd liked Red Alert). When I bought Post Mortem (after reading reviews that failed to point out how terribly bugged the game really was), I was relieved that I had gotten in on the final week that the local EB was accepting returns.
Since I'm no longer allowed to return games, I've just quit buying them. I'll wait until they drop below $20 or until I receive them as gifts.
It should also be mentioned that board games are definitely more portable than a game console/PC.
;-)
Maybe, but I've never spilled all the letters out of my GameCube. I can't say as much about Scrabble.
Come to think of it, a GameCube is pretty portable. I think you can even get backpacks for them. Then again, it's probably really wierd being the only person over 12 at a GameCube LAN party.
the user meditates intensely and mutters a small prayer to Hardus Discus
Yeah, I've been doing this for years.
Oh, wait--"Discus"--my bad.
Are they really underpaid? By whose standards?
The Indians that I've spoken to say that they are actually paid very well for India. We're not talking about sweat shops full of unskilled laborers. We're talking about globalization allowing companies to move production to locations with a lower cost of living. It makes the shareholders happy without incurring the cost of exploitation. Unfortunately, it also pushes America closer to the status of a service nation as the last major segment of products is pushed overseas. We'll all be working at McDonalds before this is over.
Of course, most developers would never agree to such a thing [unions]. They'd rather die first. Fucking irony.
With the number of developers and the freedoms that employers take with assigning hours, I've been surprised that a programmer's union or computer-professionals union hasn't developed. Admittedly unions have seen a bad light lately due to alleged bad behavior by union leaders--those in power becoming corrupt because of it--but without unionization, the employers are free to take advantage of the employees in any way they see fit.
People died for the 12 hour day, the 10 hour day, and several other workers' privileges, but we tend to forget about that these days. We even think that our employers might very well be benevolent, sharing no genes with the horrid beasts of the pasts. We even praise our owners as we, making far less than other professionals that are on call 24 hours a day, wander into the office at two in the morning on a Sunday night to press the reboot button on the company server. We think that as our boss says, "Ahh, I'm going to have to go ahead and ask you to come in on Sunday, too."
Well, maybe you get what you ask for. Maybe there is no way for a union to establish real bargaining power these days. I don't know. Regardless, I see a lot of people going on strike in these the days of our great economy.
I'd suggest you save $35 dollars and buy a CD, which you can also listen to over and over again. Concerts are intended for live music. I enjoy hearing the artist in their true form.
;-)
I've ended up at concerts where I've left wishing that I had just sat at home and listened to the CD. It isn't that the bands were awful, it's that the live show didn't vary from a "best of" album in the least bit. There was no noticeable difference from the original recording, and the band never played any "non-hit" songs.
I'm sure that this lovely device, if it really works, will make my concert experiences even more generic than before. Or, it would, if any of the bands I see live could afford the damn thing.
Does anyone know of a whole-house solution for providing clean, voltage-regulated power to an entire house?
I thought that my electricity supplier offered a "premium" service that consisted of sticking a voltage regulator at the source. I checked their website, but no longer see any mention of it. It may be worth checking with your local supplier.
As a cheaper solution, I bought a line conditioner and a UPS w/ voltage regulation to avoid damaging my electronics. My current is all over the place and the old DVD player is really sensitive to the fluxuations.
OMG. Did you actually make a Calista Flockhart reference in 2003?!
Egads.