This is so sad it makes me cry. Comparing Wesnoth to FarCry2 or even Civilization4?
Compare it to something else then... I've played Wesnoth more than Civ4 (which has been sitting on the shelf ever since the first couple of days, I'm not bothering to juggle CDs to play a simple game like that when I have e.g. GalCiv2) and FarCry2 I didn't even try because after Stalker and Fallout 3 I'm bored with FPS graphics demos with "artifical stupidity" (i.e. NPCs running in circles).
I'm all for open source but for now it seems like the open source community is not yet at the stage where they can bring together hundreds of programmers,artists,musicians,managers,and a huge variety of support personnel (drivers,security,cooks,etc) required to make a modern game.
The good thing about this is that you'd only need to construct models, textures etc. once and could then reuse/adapt them as needed. It works very well with highly moddable commercial games, someone just has to fund the development of a basic set of code/tools/graphics (because unlike programmers, most artists are notoriously lazy and greedy and would never do real work for the greater good... They all want to be rock stars, I guess.;-))
... at least to Macs with german keyboards: no curly braces, no square brackets, no pipe char (not visible on the keyboard and oddly placed keyboard combination to type them).
Build something people want, charge customers for it and its use, use that money to pay developers to improve the software to get more customer, to beat the competition, to earn more money to hire more developers to improve the
Other issues (addressed by other people) aside, I'm sure that concept worked for WoW for the first 2 years or so. Now the game is stale and boring and people are leaving in droves, WotLK is a major disappointment.
Now compare that with games where people can modify the content and gameplay, like Morrowind, Oblivion, Mount & Blade, Half Life 1/2 etc. etc., they have a lot more staying power and not even a monthly fee. I'm sure that a "Free Software" game could work (even better), but of course it's not the short-time money maker that game publishers are after nowdays.
Yeah, what about it? Wesnoth rocks and many old game engines are "free" already (well, Open Source for now). Companies could keep the content proprietary if they like and charge for serving it from their servers, I suppose. Meanwhile you could play with your own homemade content... Sounds good to me.
Oooh, neat! Could you comment on how well this works in real life? That is, how is performance, how well does it scale and how resilient is it?
I wish I could. I have not yet built such a setup and thus am shopping around for something comparable (which is why I read this article). In theory, you can do many neat things with drbd esp. together with Xen, have a look at this thread for example (3rd post).
Basically you can build fully redundant iSCSI SANs and have Xen VMs use these while being able to migrate "live" between the Xen machines. So you could lose any of your boxes and still have all your VMs running again in a very short time. All components are cheap PC boxes, so all your worries about SPOFs or expensive legacy hardware that is hard to replace (e.g. that oh so reliable SAN box) are gone. Once you figure it out.;-)
so for "small" SAN/NAS usage with replication/clustering to tolerate 1 completely dead appliance you need deep pockets... or go back to 2 Linux boxes with drbd. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I have no idea how "real" this is, but bsrsolar.com claims to have heat storage technology with density 0.8KWh/Kg (= 2.88 MJ/Kg), which is better than even nanowire LiIon batteries (see wikipedia).
So basically you could build a car with only a small (expensive) "buffer" LiIon battery and cheaper/lighter heat storage with Stirling engine as the main source of power.
I would sure love to have a huge solar dish on top of my car, it would look so 1930's sci-fi-ish...
Since when do we need to RTFM for consumer products like a WLAN router? It's not something complicated like a microwave oven where you need warning labels telling you not to dry your pet in it...
We have employee monitoring software in use and need to track the usage of the console. So, it seems best to use a capture card along with some type of viewer utility. This would allow us to have a record of when and how long the console was used, in case anyone else in management ever has a problem.
Must be because I'm European, but this just seems so absurd to me. Why don't you just switch off your monitoring software for 30 minutes per day, I'm sure many people will appreciate it more than being allowed to play on a console while being monitored.
The nodes don't support 64GB each, so both ways to parse that fragment yield wrong information. I think it's safe to assume that the author of the summary just thought that a node was the whole system with 8 blades.
Those boxes are just blade systems with up to 8 blades with up to 2 quad core CPUs each, so a total of 64 cores per blade system. Certainly not not "64 cores per node" where Cray calls a blade a "node".
You're right, but I was just using it as an example for rarely-used mechanisms that are not immediately obvious even to some experienced C programmers. Another example is the "50462976 trick", which is horrible to see with the number in decimal instead of hex. Sure, it's clever and it's impressive, but you're not being nice to your workmates by using it in that way without any comments.
anticipate what others would see/think if they read your code, write comments/code clearly accordingly (e.g. Duff's Device is cool, but many people haven't seen it before, so please just add a Wikipedia link or just "// Duff's Device"...)
make sure that you're happy with your code, don't let your feelings towards your workmates/boss/your company affect the quality of your work
don't trust other people's code too much, but look for errors in your own code first (it can be, but it isn't necessarily "some bug in a library")
How is it possible that citizens must comply with laws that they cannot know because they're secret? (see also: papersplease.org).
Also, how can this still be called a "democracy" when those people, who are supposedly holding the power, are not allowed to know what their so-called representatives are doing?
While it is important to know what's going on in your company (not only in IT!) and to be able to tell a good (programming) job from a bad one, it's even more important for managers to be able to hire people who can do that just as well or even better. A good manager is like a good system administrator: he does his job best when he is never really needed.
Their t5735 thin clients (and others) come with a properly configured and visually appealing Debian. It makes a good TC but can run a lot of software locally as well (I run Gnome, Iceweasel, audacious and xterms locally). While stock Debian always looks absymal wherever I try it (the fonts are badly configured etc.), HP's version looks really nice. They also use their own package repository for updates (ftp.hp.com/pub/tcdebian).
... we will be able to poke people in the eye over the Internet.
Re:It's not the "Web's evolving needs" ...
on
Chrome Vs. IE 8
·
· Score: 1
The corporate world is begging for more web applications. They're tired of the intricacies of client-installed software. Installation, maintenance and configuration of native apps is a nightmare when you're talking about rolling stuff out on thousands of desktops. Turning it into a web app solves the problem.
Bad solution. We already had network computing (thin clients, X displays...) 15 years ago. The corporate world decided not to make it a big success because, presmumably, at the end of the day the biggest hardware investment was on the client side either way and software administration isn't much easier on the server side than on the client side using centralized management tools.
Besides, how silly is it that documents and applications are tied to physical locations? Applications and documents should follow the user wherever they go, not the other way around.
That's what USB sticks / flash cards are for, they even provide you with "privacy", if you still remember what that means and the data doesn't multiply and go places where you don't want to go. Maybe some day there will be a trustworthy entity on the "net" where I can store my data securely (encryped on the client side).
Also, let's not forget one big issue: why do you think people still own cars when cabs are much less hassle and when public transport is cheaper and more reliable? It's also about freedom, individuality and choice. Do you really want all your data and applications to be locked to one ASP who can dictate new terms at a whim without allowing you to move all your stuff elsewhere?
It's not the "Web's evolving needs" ...
on
Chrome Vs. IE 8
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Chrome is just an attempt to implement a solid layer between the native OS and the future "OS" Google will provide: Google Gears. In a couple of years, most of our everyday applications will run inside our browser, most likely using Gears.
At least that's the bleak future for people who don't mind putting layer upon layer of bloated APIs, reimplemented OS tasks (scheduler inside the browser...) and interpreted code on their system in order to run stuff noticeably slower than 15 years ago. Sooner or later, an emulated (in software!) Windows 95 machine with WordPerfect will outperform the mainstream JS/browser based abominations that also keep your data "safe" with corporations keen on turning them into profit...
Call me old, old-fashioned, whatever. The "Web"'s purpose is still to feed *me* information and not to cheat me into feeding megacorps with my private information and whose "evolving needs" you are talking about.
I've already set up nodes several times in the past, but neither Tor, nor Freenet are currently worth the legal risks for me. Where I live, someone has been in prison for the past 3 months because he showed animal rights' activists how to encrypt their PCs... Therefore I'd rather wait for out-of-the-box support in mainstream browsers so I don't need to explain why I am using Tor or Freenet (I'll just tell them it's built into my browser like SSL).
Yeah, I'm paranoid, but wouldn't you be when people in your neighbourhood get thrown in jail because they've encrypted their e-mails and hard disk?
bandwidth-intensive and essential stuff: none except occasional heavy youtube usage (example), but I'm impatient, so I have a fast connection. Also planning on using Freenet at some point in the future (on principle, because I dislike the current trends in wiretapping legislation).
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This is so sad it makes me cry. Comparing Wesnoth to FarCry2 or even Civilization4?
Compare it to something else then ... I've played Wesnoth more than Civ4 (which has been sitting on the shelf ever since the first couple of days, I'm not bothering to juggle CDs to play a simple game like that when I have e.g. GalCiv2) and FarCry2 I didn't even try because after Stalker and Fallout 3 I'm bored with FPS graphics demos with "artifical stupidity" (i.e. NPCs running in circles).
I'm all for open source but for now it seems like the open source community is not yet at the stage where they can bring together hundreds of programmers,artists,musicians,managers,and a huge variety of support personnel (drivers,security,cooks,etc) required to make a modern game.
The good thing about this is that you'd only need to construct models, textures etc. once and could then reuse/adapt them as needed. It works very well with highly moddable commercial games, someone just has to fund the development of a basic set of code/tools/graphics (because unlike programmers, most artists are notoriously lazy and greedy and would never do real work for the greater good... They all want to be rock stars, I guess. ;-))
... at least to Macs with german keyboards: no curly braces, no square brackets, no pipe char (not visible on the keyboard and oddly placed keyboard combination to type them).
Build something people want, charge customers for it and its use, use that money to pay developers to improve the software to get more customer, to beat the competition, to earn more money to hire more developers to improve the
Other issues (addressed by other people) aside, I'm sure that concept worked for WoW for the first 2 years or so. Now the game is stale and boring and people are leaving in droves, WotLK is a major disappointment.
Now compare that with games where people can modify the content and gameplay, like Morrowind, Oblivion, Mount & Blade, Half Life 1/2 etc. etc., they have a lot more staying power and not even a monthly fee. I'm sure that a "Free Software" game could work (even better), but of course it's not the short-time money maker that game publishers are after nowdays.
What about gaming?
Yeah, what about it? Wesnoth rocks and many old game engines are "free" already (well, Open Source for now). Companies could keep the content proprietary if they like and charge for serving it from their servers, I suppose. Meanwhile you could play with your own homemade content... Sounds good to me.
Oooh, neat! Could you comment on how well this works in real life? That is, how is performance, how well does it scale and how resilient is it?
I wish I could. I have not yet built such a setup and thus am shopping around for something comparable (which is why I read this article). In theory, you can do many neat things with drbd esp. together with Xen, have a look at this thread for example (3rd post).
Basically you can build fully redundant iSCSI SANs and have Xen VMs use these while being able to migrate "live" between the Xen machines. So you could lose any of your boxes and still have all your VMs running again in a very short time. All components are cheap PC boxes, so all your worries about SPOFs or expensive legacy hardware that is hard to replace (e.g. that oh so reliable SAN box) are gone. Once you figure it out. ;-)
so for "small" SAN/NAS usage with replication/clustering to tolerate 1 completely dead appliance you need deep pockets ... or go back to 2 Linux boxes with drbd. Correct me if I'm wrong.
So basically you could build a car with only a small (expensive) "buffer" LiIon battery and cheaper/lighter heat storage with Stirling engine as the main source of power.
I would sure love to have a huge solar dish on top of my car, it would look so 1930's sci-fi-ish...
If you RTFA it is something you can disable
Since when do we need to RTFM for consumer products like a WLAN router? It's not something complicated like a microwave oven where you need warning labels telling you not to dry your pet in it...
We have employee monitoring software in use and need to track the usage of the console. So, it seems best to use a capture card along with some type of viewer utility. This would allow us to have a record of when and how long the console was used, in case anyone else in management ever has a problem.
Must be because I'm European, but this just seems so absurd to me. Why don't you just switch off your monitoring software for 30 minutes per day, I'm sure many people will appreciate it more than being allowed to play on a console while being monitored.
"64Gb of memory per node" is wrong also ...
The nodes don't support 64GB each, so both ways to parse that fragment yield wrong information. I think it's safe to assume that the author of the summary just thought that a node was the whole system with 8 blades.
Those boxes are just blade systems with up to 8 blades with up to 2 quad core CPUs each, so a total of 64 cores per blade system. Certainly not not "64 cores per node" where Cray calls a blade a "node".
You're right, but I was just using it as an example for rarely-used mechanisms that are not immediately obvious even to some experienced C programmers. Another example is the "50462976 trick", which is horrible to see with the number in decimal instead of hex. Sure, it's clever and it's impressive, but you're not being nice to your workmates by using it in that way without any comments.
also in online shops etc. ...
... please don't let it happen that JavaScript becomes the successor of C and the browser the successor of Windows ...
Also, how can this still be called a "democracy" when those people, who are supposedly holding the power, are not allowed to know what their so-called representatives are doing?
While it is important to know what's going on in your company (not only in IT!) and to be able to tell a good (programming) job from a bad one, it's even more important for managers to be able to hire people who can do that just as well or even better. A good manager is like a good system administrator: he does his job best when he is never really needed.
Their t5735 thin clients (and others) come with a properly configured and visually appealing Debian. It makes a good TC but can run a lot of software locally as well (I run Gnome, Iceweasel, audacious and xterms locally). While stock Debian always looks absymal wherever I try it (the fonts are badly configured etc.), HP's version looks really nice. They also use their own package repository for updates (ftp.hp.com/pub/tcdebian).
... we will be able to poke people in the eye over the Internet.
The corporate world is begging for more web applications. They're tired of the intricacies of client-installed software. Installation, maintenance and configuration of native apps is a nightmare when you're talking about rolling stuff out on thousands of desktops. Turning it into a web app solves the problem.
Bad solution. We already had network computing (thin clients, X displays ...) 15 years ago. The corporate world decided not to make it a big success because, presmumably, at the end of the day the biggest hardware investment was on the client side either way and software administration isn't much easier on the server side than on the client side using centralized management tools.
Besides, how silly is it that documents and applications are tied to physical locations? Applications and documents should follow the user wherever they go, not the other way around.
That's what USB sticks / flash cards are for, they even provide you with "privacy", if you still remember what that means and the data doesn't multiply and go places where you don't want to go. Maybe some day there will be a trustworthy entity on the "net" where I can store my data securely (encryped on the client side).
Also, let's not forget one big issue: why do you think people still own cars when cabs are much less hassle and when public transport is cheaper and more reliable? It's also about freedom, individuality and choice. Do you really want all your data and applications to be locked to one ASP who can dictate new terms at a whim without allowing you to move all your stuff elsewhere?
Perhaps someone could combine copyrighted laws and laws you have to comply with but will not be told about, i.e. "secret laws", and then maybe patent the whole thing and register it as an aesthetic model and its name as a trademark.
At least that's the bleak future for people who don't mind putting layer upon layer of bloated APIs, reimplemented OS tasks (scheduler inside the browser...) and interpreted code on their system in order to run stuff noticeably slower than 15 years ago. Sooner or later, an emulated (in software!) Windows 95 machine with WordPerfect will outperform the mainstream JS/browser based abominations that also keep your data "safe" with corporations keen on turning them into profit...
Call me old, old-fashioned, whatever. The "Web"'s purpose is still to feed *me* information and not to cheat me into feeding megacorps with my private information and whose "evolving needs" you are talking about.
Have you considered running a Tor node instead ?
I've already set up nodes several times in the past, but neither Tor, nor Freenet are currently worth the legal risks for me. Where I live, someone has been in prison for the past 3 months because he showed animal rights' activists how to encrypt their PCs... Therefore I'd rather wait for out-of-the-box support in mainstream browsers so I don't need to explain why I am using Tor or Freenet (I'll just tell them it's built into my browser like SSL).
Yeah, I'm paranoid, but wouldn't you be when people in your neighbourhood get thrown in jail because they've encrypted their e-mails and hard disk?
bandwidth-intensive and essential stuff: none except occasional heavy youtube usage (example), but I'm impatient, so I have a fast connection. Also planning on using Freenet at some point in the future (on principle, because I dislike the current trends in wiretapping legislation).