As for the Javascript, I like using Array() for readability.
I'd agree with you there, but the real downfall with new Array() is what happens when you start trying to initialize something other than an empty array. new Array(5, 4) creates a new array of size 2, with elements 5 and 4, but new Array(5) creates an array of size 5 (with undefined values). Needless to say, the headdesk potential is high in this case as the error isn't obvious until you've been bit by it before (and especially so if you happen to replace that 5 with a 1).
...but if it has a way so that you can view the source (unless it truly does it all through JS) then that might be interested just to see.
curl http://d0z.me/weFZ
Basically, they have an img tag pointed at the site with an onload function that just keeps reloading the image with a new cachebuster value. If your browser supports HTML5 Web Workers, it also spawns 4 of those and repeatedly AJAXes requests to the site.
It's also painfully obvious that the author isn't fluent in Javascript. The obvious clues being the use of new Array() instead of [] or {} and using setTimeout() with implicit eval instead of passing a function. The initial URL in the img tag is also wrong (it has an extra http:/// prepended.) They also set position: absolute; on the img tag, but don't actually position it anywhere, however, the iframe appears to be on top anyways.
It seems bizarre that someone would complain that an enterprise level OS has to version chase packages and is therefore "crusty". Remember that it's newer than Windows Serever 2003 and less than a year older than Windows Server 2008 and yet does anyone complain that either of those OS'es are "crusty"?!
There's only one stream of Windows server versions. Unlike the components in RHEL, there's no newer version of Windows than the latest release of Windows.
Windows doesn't package anything.
Windows is irrelevant, there's little point in comparing against it.
* RHEL 5 is now on version 5.5 (March 2010) with a 5.6 release just gone into beta, so it's not like it hasn't moved on version-wise and isn't stuck on what was released 3.5 years ago (though - because of its enterprise nature - only minor updates tend to be applied).
By which you mean, ~95% of packages have had security updates only. Not exactly what I'd call moving on. The one notable exception would be the addition of KVM in 5.4, but that was a new package (KVM didn't exist when 5.0 was released).
Not sure what you mean by 'crusty'. RHEL is specifically designed as a conservative, slow-moving distro. It comes configured with very conservative YUM confs. If you're not looking for a distro that focuses on stability, and field-tested, mature server systems, go install Mint.
I mean the software in RHEL 5 may have been almost borderline modern 4 years ago, but having not changed since then, it's now really really old. For example, it still uses Python 2.4, while the rest of the world has moved on to 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 3.0 and 3.1. Nobody even tests against Python 2.4 anymore.
Of course, you can't forget the kernel either. Originally forked from 2.6.18, it contains backported bits and pieces of kernels all the way up to and including 2.6.32. Today, we're on 2.6.36, and if you can't name any improvements in the kernel that you care about between 2.6.18 and 2.6.36, you haven't been paying attention.
There's a difference between stable and old. Stability isn't some magic process that happens as software gets older.
It's about time they released RHEL 6, RHEL 5 has become outrageously crusty in the almost 4 years that it's been out now. Nevermind that it's a mediocre distro with virtually nothing packaged in the base repository, $dayjob forces a lot of people to use RHEL, and it'll be nice to have something that isn't quite so crusty.
Anyone know why RHEL 6 took so long? Previous major releases were 2 years or less apart from eachother, 4 years is a really long time...
A lot of people will claim otherwise, and they're wrong, but JavaScript is a fucking horrible scripting language. It's even worse for writing anything significant. And no, it's absolutely nothing like Scheme (some JavaScript advocate always makes this stupid claim whenever the topic of JavaScript's horrid nature comes up).
Truly spoken by someone who's never made it past <a href="#" onclick="alert('hello world')">click me</a>.
What's surprising to me is that they managed to extract such awful performance out of so many SSDs. I mean, seriously, a pitiful 250k IOPS with $1M of SSD? You could do better with a dozen SSDs from the corner store!
Even if that's true, none of it matters, they've only implemented Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 11. That doesn't include any other DirectX APIs... DirectSound, DirectInput, and DirectEverythingElse are all still Windows only.
AMD x86_64 processors have an IOMMU. Intel's first x86_64 processors didn't but I don't know if this is still the case. IOMMUs are also important if you are running virtual machine software that allows some VMs access to physical hardware -- Xen lets you do this, for instance.
...and it might actually matter when you can actually find a motherboard with a chipset that also supports the IOMMU on the CPU. At the moment, that means an X58 chipset (socket 1366) for Intel, and for AMD, you're pretty much out of luck.
Not in Canada, there's strict laws about who can ask for a SIN (our SSN). Basically, only your employer and the tax man, as it's only used for tax purposes. I couldn't even tell you what mine is, because I don't carry the card for it, and nobody ever asks for it.
That's the stupidest argument I've ever heard. The core problem with it is that it relies on the assumption that an OS and it's respective applications will break horribly at anything other than 96 DPI. While this is true on Windows (and indeed would make running Windows on a 200 DPI screen a prescription for eye strain), it is a Windows-only problem.
Font scaling and image scaling are solved problems, get with the times.
Plus they wrote Ceph, (distributed/scalable file system, which merged into 2.6.34.)
Where did you find that information? The Ceph page suggests that it originated out of a University research group:
This project is based on a substantial body of research conducted by the Storage Systems Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz over the past few years that has resulted in a number of publications.
Furthermore, it makes no mention of Dreamhost whatsoever.
This is incorrect. Not only is it incorrect, but almost every x86 chip produced this century will prove you wrong. See speculative execution and out of order execution, for example.
For this to work, radical processor redesign would be necessary to allow communication and synchronization among cores down to the level of a few machine language instructions.
Yes, it does, and work started on it over a decade ago. Unsurprisingly, we've been reaping the benefits nearly as long. Aside from L1/L2/L3 cache, the overwhelming majority of the real estate on the i7 or the Phenom II is dedicated to various superscalar duties.
Obviously, there are diminishing benefits to superscalar technology. However, given the improvements we're currently getting, it's naive to say that we're anywhere close to a limit in that respect.
Emulation is no longer possible for new consoles. The last console for which a feasible emulator could exist (and in fact does) is probably the Wii.
That's silly. A single core of a 3 GHz i7 is already several times faster than a single core of a 3 GHz Pentium 4.
Emulation of a serial instruction stream cannot be parallelized in software.
This is incorrect. Not only is it incorrect, but almost every x86 chip produced this century will prove you wrong. See speculative execution and out of order execution, for example.
Emulation requires that the emulating machine be several times faster than the emulated machine, because there is effort required in translating the original assembly code to the target processor's code.
Direct emulation of the hardware isn't the only option. You can also reimplement the API(s) provided by the console, for which there need not be any noteworthy processing overhead. This is the approach that Wine uses. Of course, this is generally a more labour intensive approach, but for a static API, far from unattainable.
The only recent co-op game I can think of that was generally well reviewed was the New Super Mario Bros Wii, which was side-scrolling 2D. And, even with Nintendo's magic touch, many players found the multiplayer was not balanced quite correctly.
Actually, Left 4 Dead is a notable exception. It features nothing but co-op mode, isn't a 2D side scroller and yet was generally well received. However, it's obvious that they put a lot of polish into making the co-op work well.
Is this modded troll because someone doesn't like the truth? What he stated here is a fact. Xbox360's success has ensured that most mainstream developers are using DirectX. You and I may not like it, but it's a fact.
Yeah, and then you can just port it straight to the PS3! Oh, wait...
Same with Quake 3 Arena: just ditched the single-player entirely, and did very well.
Not entirely true. Quake 3's single player was a very thin gloss over top of the multiplayer, but at least it did have a few aspects to differentiate it from multiplayer... There were multiple tiers, each with a couple levels in them that you had to beat all of before moving on to the next tier, plus it recorded some stats for you. Unfortunately, both of the people who played Quake 3 only for the single player were unavailable for comment.
There's different kinds of multiplayer too. In an (RT)S like Civilization or Starcraft, you're pretty much bound to have a number of peers which can either be human or computer controlled, and this pretty much obviates multiplayer. In a lot of MMORPGs like Game! or WoW, you can arguably play them as "single player" games, without really interacting with other humans at all, but few people do that. On the other hand, the number of ways you can interact with other humans in an MMORPG is much broader than that which you'd normally find in an (RT)S game.
Then there's a whole different class of games where multiplayer isn't really an obvious addition. Consider something like Resident Evil, adding multiplayer to that would be quite unusual (which is probably why it was purely single player). The most obvious way to add multiplayer would be to have a co-op mode, but it seems that co-ops modes are pretty rare these days (I'm not entirely sure why), and it would totally throw a wrench into just about everything else in the game, from camera angles to difficulty, not to mention the impact to the story.
Really, I don't think anybody is complaining about multiplayer in the first two types of games, they're a welcome addition there. The problem is in the last class of games where multiplayer isn't an obvious addition. Certainly, multiplayer can be a brilliant addition if done properly, but if it's just tacked on, it'll probably be wasted effort aside from being able to check that invisible checkbox in some executive's mind.
Slashdot Mirror
As for the Javascript, I like using Array() for readability.
I'd agree with you there, but the real downfall with new Array() is what happens when you start trying to initialize something other than an empty array. new Array(5, 4) creates a new array of size 2, with elements 5 and 4, but new Array(5) creates an array of size 5 (with undefined values). Needless to say, the headdesk potential is high in this case as the error isn't obvious until you've been bit by it before (and especially so if you happen to replace that 5 with a 1).
Basically, they have an img tag pointed at the site with an onload function that just keeps reloading the image with a new cachebuster value. If your browser supports HTML5 Web Workers, it also spawns 4 of those and repeatedly AJAXes requests to the site.
It's also painfully obvious that the author isn't fluent in Javascript. The obvious clues being the use of new Array() instead of [] or {} and using setTimeout() with implicit eval instead of passing a function. The initial URL in the img tag is also wrong (it has an extra http:/// prepended.) They also set position: absolute; on the img tag, but don't actually position it anywhere, however, the iframe appears to be on top anyways.
You're right. Install Windows and your hardware will never work fine.
Fixed that for you.
By which you mean, ~95% of packages have had security updates only. Not exactly what I'd call moving on. The one notable exception would be the addition of KVM in 5.4, but that was a new package (KVM didn't exist when 5.0 was released).
Not sure what you mean by 'crusty'. RHEL is specifically designed as a conservative, slow-moving distro. It comes configured with very conservative YUM confs. If you're not looking for a distro that focuses on stability, and field-tested, mature server systems, go install Mint.
I mean the software in RHEL 5 may have been almost borderline modern 4 years ago, but having not changed since then, it's now really really old. For example, it still uses Python 2.4, while the rest of the world has moved on to 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 3.0 and 3.1. Nobody even tests against Python 2.4 anymore.
Of course, you can't forget the kernel either. Originally forked from 2.6.18, it contains backported bits and pieces of kernels all the way up to and including 2.6.32. Today, we're on 2.6.36, and if you can't name any improvements in the kernel that you care about between 2.6.18 and 2.6.36, you haven't been paying attention.
There's a difference between stable and old. Stability isn't some magic process that happens as software gets older.
It's about time they released RHEL 6, RHEL 5 has become outrageously crusty in the almost 4 years that it's been out now. Nevermind that it's a mediocre distro with virtually nothing packaged in the base repository, $dayjob forces a lot of people to use RHEL, and it'll be nice to have something that isn't quite so crusty.
Anyone know why RHEL 6 took so long? Previous major releases were 2 years or less apart from eachother, 4 years is a really long time...
Truly spoken by someone who's never made it past <a href="#" onclick="alert('hello world')">click me</a>.
What's surprising to me is that they managed to extract such awful performance out of so many SSDs. I mean, seriously, a pitiful 250k IOPS with $1M of SSD? You could do better with a dozen SSDs from the corner store!
Witty on topic text here.
So what you're saying is that we should never improve anything so we can perpetually employ people to work around the brain damages of everything?
It doesn't always have to be that way. Game! is completely free for example, no buying your way to victory.
Even if that's true, none of it matters, they've only implemented Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 11. That doesn't include any other DirectX APIs... DirectSound, DirectInput, and DirectEverythingElse are all still Windows only.
AMD x86_64 processors have an IOMMU. Intel's first x86_64 processors didn't but I don't know if this is still the case. IOMMUs are also important if you are running virtual machine software that allows some VMs access to physical hardware -- Xen lets you do this, for instance.
...and it might actually matter when you can actually find a motherboard with a chipset that also supports the IOMMU on the CPU. At the moment, that means an X58 chipset (socket 1366) for Intel, and for AMD, you're pretty much out of luck.
Not in Canada, there's strict laws about who can ask for a SIN (our SSN). Basically, only your employer and the tax man, as it's only used for tax purposes. I couldn't even tell you what mine is, because I don't carry the card for it, and nobody ever asks for it.
Now that's definitely an advantage of web games like Game!, there's no client to download in the first place!
Because it's marketable enough to sell. See anything Microsoft has ever made.
That's the stupidest argument I've ever heard. The core problem with it is that it relies on the assumption that an OS and it's respective applications will break horribly at anything other than 96 DPI. While this is true on Windows (and indeed would make running Windows on a 200 DPI screen a prescription for eye strain), it is a Windows-only problem.
Font scaling and image scaling are solved problems, get with the times.
Where did you find that information? The Ceph page suggests that it originated out of a University research group:
Furthermore, it makes no mention of Dreamhost whatsoever.
For this to work, radical processor redesign would be necessary to allow communication and synchronization among cores down to the level of a few machine language instructions.
Yes, it does, and work started on it over a decade ago. Unsurprisingly, we've been reaping the benefits nearly as long. Aside from L1/L2/L3 cache, the overwhelming majority of the real estate on the i7 or the Phenom II is dedicated to various superscalar duties.
Obviously, there are diminishing benefits to superscalar technology. However, given the improvements we're currently getting, it's naive to say that we're anywhere close to a limit in that respect.
That's silly. A single core of a 3 GHz i7 is already several times faster than a single core of a 3 GHz Pentium 4.
This is incorrect. Not only is it incorrect, but almost every x86 chip produced this century will prove you wrong. See speculative execution and out of order execution, for example.
Direct emulation of the hardware isn't the only option. You can also reimplement the API(s) provided by the console, for which there need not be any noteworthy processing overhead. This is the approach that Wine uses. Of course, this is generally a more labour intensive approach, but for a static API, far from unattainable.
The only recent co-op game I can think of that was generally well reviewed was the New Super Mario Bros Wii, which was side-scrolling 2D. And, even with Nintendo's magic touch, many players found the multiplayer was not balanced quite correctly.
Actually, Left 4 Dead is a notable exception. It features nothing but co-op mode, isn't a 2D side scroller and yet was generally well received. However, it's obvious that they put a lot of polish into making the co-op work well.
Is this modded troll because someone doesn't like the truth? What he stated here is a fact. Xbox360's success has ensured that most mainstream developers are using DirectX. You and I may not like it, but it's a fact.
Yeah, and then you can just port it straight to the PS3! Oh, wait...
Same with Quake 3 Arena: just ditched the single-player entirely, and did very well.
Not entirely true. Quake 3's single player was a very thin gloss over top of the multiplayer, but at least it did have a few aspects to differentiate it from multiplayer... There were multiple tiers, each with a couple levels in them that you had to beat all of before moving on to the next tier, plus it recorded some stats for you. Unfortunately, both of the people who played Quake 3 only for the single player were unavailable for comment.
There's different kinds of multiplayer too. In an (RT)S like Civilization or Starcraft, you're pretty much bound to have a number of peers which can either be human or computer controlled, and this pretty much obviates multiplayer. In a lot of MMORPGs like Game! or WoW, you can arguably play them as "single player" games, without really interacting with other humans at all, but few people do that. On the other hand, the number of ways you can interact with other humans in an MMORPG is much broader than that which you'd normally find in an (RT)S game.
Then there's a whole different class of games where multiplayer isn't really an obvious addition. Consider something like Resident Evil, adding multiplayer to that would be quite unusual (which is probably why it was purely single player). The most obvious way to add multiplayer would be to have a co-op mode, but it seems that co-ops modes are pretty rare these days (I'm not entirely sure why), and it would totally throw a wrench into just about everything else in the game, from camera angles to difficulty, not to mention the impact to the story.
Really, I don't think anybody is complaining about multiplayer in the first two types of games, they're a welcome addition there. The problem is in the last class of games where multiplayer isn't an obvious addition. Certainly, multiplayer can be a brilliant addition if done properly, but if it's just tacked on, it'll probably be wasted effort aside from being able to check that invisible checkbox in some executive's mind.
...and is spelled wr[down-arrow][enter].
If you're going to take your fingers off the home row while coding, you may as well not bother touch typing either.