GTK+ is in a NSIS package and runs with/S switch (silent mode) with the Pidgin and GIMP setups (which are also NSIS packages capable of running silently).
Yeah, because you can compile standard C and standard C++ on just about EVERY platform. Unfortunately the phone OS makers do not want us to make native code and instead want us to program Java apps. With that we will never be able to trash the idea that phone apps are slow and pseudo-3D.
Learn and master C, as above is saying! Seriously, I try hard as possible to stay away from.NET/Mono/Java/bytecode apps as much as possible. Why? Speed, obviously!
The worse argument I have seen is that when we have computers that are faster in the future, the speed will not be a problem.
I will always prefer to program in C (or C++) and have the program be native. I am very supportive of the GCJ project, which turns Java source into native. Soon Swing will be implemented, making the case for using bytecode INCREDIBLY impossible to justify. Mono should do this with C# and the like. I do not even see why Microsoft did not do this anyway. All it involves is making new libraries. What is the difference in making C# native as making MFC API native back in 96? Instead we get more bloat. How does this make any sense?
I have much better things to do than wait for Java AND your app to initialise. Furthermore, I have better things to do than wait for Java AND your app to de-initialise at exit. Same goes for.NET and Mono.
Or you could just do what we do here. We have some old software and hardware that worked on Windows 95. So we keep a couple boxes running with Windows 95. Problem solved. It's ONLY used for that using a piece of hardware, so it's really not an issue as far as management goes. They aren't even hooked up to the network.
The only slight issue I have with maintaining old hardware is power usage. Old hardware almost always means inefficient power usage in comparison to today's machines. Beyond that, you have the problem of 'imminent' death. The machine could die any moment and you know it is far closer than your newer machines.
First of all, why would you go Freenode asking to download non-free software? Second, there is something called Google. Even Google has a torrent indexer.
I have pirated OS X software, both downloaded and burned from other people's copies. Clearly those people still do not know how to do it if they have to go on IRC looking for copies.
I am sure this is not news to anyone whether you love or hate Microsoft. The fact is the coding practices commonly followed under DOS and then under Windows have been rather poor. The reasons for it are many, but largely because of a thirst for performance. But in order to keep people hooked on Windows, they have to keep supporting the mistakes of others as well as their own. This is what they call "backward compatibility."
But there is a way out of it and for some reason they seem unwilling to do it. Write a new OS, virtualize old Windows for "legacy support" and eventually all the software vendors will port their code to work with the new Microsoft OS natively just as they did with Mac OS X. I can't imagine why Microsoft is unwilling to do that... got any suggestions anyone?
I have been suggesting this for years. Enterprise (Microsoft's most important customer base), in general, does NOT want it. Seemingly they want the 'good ole' x86 to live forever and Windows to run programs written for DOS 5.0 even in 2009 and beyond. Ridiculous, but it is true.
If you are a business who relies upon some certain software to get work done and do NOT have the time, money or resources to switch to something else, it is in your interest to demand your software vendor (in this case Microsoft) NOT to remove compatibility for X application.
If you look at the Windows 2000 leaked source code, you can find plenty of comments about VERY specific application fixes. Yes, XP broke stuff. Vista broke more. But it probably did not break what the enterprises care about (Vista likely did break many things, hence why 7 is being rushed and so many enterprises skipped Vista and will go to 7 after some extensive testing).
Today I experienced a game that does not work on Vista. Microids' Corsairs from 1998, made for Windows 9x. Tried compatibility modes, the latest patches, etc. It just kept crashing. Microsoft does not care about your 'classic' games at all. All they care about is the enterprises who actually buy the expensive volume licenses Microsoft is always trying to sell.
Meh. You are simply, wrong. Obviously you know nothing about China or the Chinese people and assume you can infiltrate with ease. Dream on, especially with that idea to lock down USB ports and optical media.
Less people using Macs know how to pirate software. And, it is not a simple case of porting. Microsoft does the right thing in developing for the OS X interface and (mostly) following Apple's HIG.
[quote]This is China. The rules are different here. For starters, law is irrelevant. All laws. All the time. Cold-blooded pre-planned murder is a debatable situation here depending on who you know. The only actually arrestable offense is annoying a police officer or someone with a hold over police officers.[/quote]
I am glad someone else understands. Everyone else assumes Chinese in China are going to act like everyone else eventually. I will never EVER believe that.
Software piracy in China enables jobs, feeds families, etc. I would rather see pirated discs on the street than have starving families.
Honestly, the Chinese do not and will not ever see it 'our' way. Why? Because they do not care about anything really unless Chinese (not counting outside of China normally) people are involved. So Chinese do not pirate games like Lineage and games that look/seem/marketed/made for them.
The security risk is high, but China already knows this and they probably figured it out even better when Windows 98 was around.
I would like to know if there is some reason why 90% of the games coming out use DirectX as opposed to OpenGL in the first place. A reason besides ease. I can certainly side with developers if they find DirectX easier to app with OpenGL (it is bound to happen). Also, the incentive is that if you make a game with DirectX, that means there will be a LOT less time spent porting it to Xbox 360. If the games were written with OpenGL, Linux and Mac ports (native, NOT Cider) could be easily made. Even PS3 and Wii ports would be easier.
Must not be fun programming games today for up to 6 consoles (all slightly different architectures and libraries): Xbox 360 (DirectX, PowerPC big-endian), PS3 (PSGL based on OpenGL, special Cell processor that not everyone knows how to program yet it seems), Wii (PowerPC processor, slight upgrade from the GameCube; an OpenGL-based graphics language again), PS2 (also uses a variant of OpenGL for graphics; as it is MIPS, can be little-endian or big-endian); PSP (MIPS, like PS2), Nintendo DS (ARM, graphics library based on OpenGL like Nintendo 64 was heavily based upon SGI's implementation since SGI provided the chip). I cannot even imagine. #ifdef _XBOX360, #ifdef _BIGENDIAN. Although consoles are going to compete, that does not mean they should use totally different languages (especially the difference between DirectX and OpenGL). How does this benefit the developers who are PAYING to be able to make console games in the first place?
Conspiracy theory: M$ is paying developers like EA Games to use DirectX only, and soon enough they will pay developers to use DirectX 10 only.
I disagree. Why rely upon the buggy Windows kernel to keep things afloat? We do not know exactly how it works, why it does it what it does, etc etc. It is not trustworthy. Linux is because we can see the source code and we compile. We can see the source code of GCC which compiles it. We can see the source code of the GCC that compiles GCC, ad infinitum until we get down to the ASM code that starts up our PCs in the first place.
If developers build for andLinux, that is all it will really support. It is generally impossible to say that a binary built on Fedora will work on Ubuntu. It is likely a simple Hello, world app will run fine but not something that has a vast amount of dependencies with specific versions.
I also applaud the effort in creating Wine. It has enabled great efficiency within Linux as you no longer have to boot into Windows or virtualise to run many apps.
Regardless, I do not mind listing my project as 'supporting' Wine, but my project is open source and builds natively on Linux. Obviously I am going to want the native version.
Shared libraries seem to be the biggest problem with trying to distribute binary-only apps for Linux. A lot of apps try to solve by using static binaries or building the binary so it only uses so files in a certain directory, including its own, much the same way a Windows app will first look for a DLL in its current directory first before going to system32 and other 'standard' directories. Currently on Gentoo if I grab Opera (64-bit), it has a problem with a symbol in a shared library and then crashes. No real way to solve this except to go back a version or two in the library that the so file belongs to. Of course I would not want to do that if everything else works fine.
We cannot convince the commercial software developers to release their source so we can all compile or make distribution packages yet. Someday though I hope.
I would love to experiment this: make a high-budget game that is sure to get high-ratings and release it with the source code so that Linux users can use it. The catch: the licence would NOT be the GPL or LGPL, thus making it possible for me to sue anyone who modifies the source code and distributes or even pirates in the first place. How different is this from the current state of warez? Right now, a game gets released, someone who knows ASM really well cracks the protection away, and then the game is released onto the internet and masses download the game for free (many of whom were never going to buy the game whether they have the money or not). I think the game will sell regardless, pirates will get the game because they want it, and modders will have a great time. Maybe I could make a good licence for modders?
The problem is developers who write Windows-only code then. There are a decent number of games that are open source that are written using Windows APIs only. Sure, maybe developers like the Windows API but why target one OS? The other thing is.NET. Wine still barely works with it and Microsoft loves that developers find C# easy to use and that most developers using C# are developing Windows-only.NET apps. Yes, there is Mono but it is nowhere near compatible. Purposely kept behind, plus if there's a.NET app front-end to a Windows CLI app, that will not work because.NET has no Win32 API.
I would like to see Mono and Wine developers work together. Of course, Micro$oft does not. On the other hand, what's stopping DotGNU from becoming better than Mono and working with the Wine project?
Then of course, newcomers to developing should understand that they can provide to a larger user base if they build cross-platform apps (and if necessary use cross-platform libs). We would all like newcomers to developing to start on Linux (this is essentially how my university does it), but this is right now not necessarily a reality.
Who wants to start the 'Learn on Linux First' campaign?
There is also Qt, totally easy to use (macro-based C++ code style). On Windows and Mac, it actually calls to load the native widgets instead of making its own, unlike so many other APIs for Windows.
UI inconsistency has been a problem forever and it seems to never end. Microsoft fails to keep the UI consistent, Apple at least tries, and Linux has UIs in whatever way the developers want them. Open up XChat, there's no File Edit View menus, there's XChat View Server menus. It may make sense once you get used to it but it is still inconsistent. There are no 'files' to deal with in XChat but the menu names are inconsistent. Then there's Pidgin with different menu names as well.
KDE and GNOME both try to fix this problem by having interface guidelines, just as Microsoft and Apple do. The problem is when someone (even someone like me) wants a quick and dirty solution that needs a GUI, they could care less about GUI guidelines and they want something that will work for THEM.
On the web, we cannot standardise UIs that are programmed with JS or whatever you wish to use because every site has their style sheet to keep their site unique. All we really need is completely standardised JS and web layout across the board for browsers.
If you buy a set of DVDRs, you quickly find out they are measuring totally wrong on the package. It is definitely NOT 4.7 GB. This is a wild exaggeration if they would stop using SI GBs to measure (GB = 1000 MB). So if a DVD holds 4.7 SI GBs, then it holds ~4.34 GiB (Gibibytes, and I HATE that word).
Legality: the manufacturer LABELS the item stating that they measure a GB to be 1000 MB and not 1024.
Hard drive manufacturers do the exact same thing. A few years ago they were sued for not doing so, and won because they agreed to label their packaging about 'their' measurement of sizes.
LTC-KB = Kilobyte but it means 1000 bytes. 1024 bytes is a Kibibyte (kilo binary byte) according to Wikipedia according to the International Electrotechnical Commission standards defined in 1998-2000. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte
True, but I am not affected. Largest drive I have from Seagate is a 500 GB. Beyond that, as a consumer (and not an enterprise), since when do you update firmware of your hard drives? I have never done that before and would be very weary to do so.
I do not think I will be buying this one, or another WD. It is really hard to witness so many dead hard drives (including many DOA) and have your own experiences with their hard drives that just die so quickly. And another thing, why is every WD so damn big? They squeeze into every slot you put them into, not just slide in nicely like any Seagate (or most other brands). This goes for desktop and laptop. No wonder they are making their own external drives. Generic ones may not even fit their drives.
I have had much success with Seagate (lasts 5 years or more) and Hitachi (louder than most HDDs but they last). I do not know the warranty of WD, but the warranty for both Seagate and Hitachi are great (especially the Seagate one).
I am sure some people have luck, but after 2 dead hard drives (and many DOAs at a shop I worked at) and physical size problems, I will probably never give WD another chance, no matter what the price.
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GTK+ is in a NSIS package and runs with /S switch (silent mode) with the Pidgin and GIMP setups (which are also NSIS packages capable of running silently).
Yeah, because you can compile standard C and standard C++ on just about EVERY platform. Unfortunately the phone OS makers do not want us to make native code and instead want us to program Java apps. With that we will never be able to trash the idea that phone apps are slow and pseudo-3D.
Learn and master C, as above is saying! Seriously, I try hard as possible to stay away from .NET/Mono/Java/bytecode apps as much as possible. Why? Speed, obviously!
The worse argument I have seen is that when we have computers that are faster in the future, the speed will not be a problem.
I will always prefer to program in C (or C++) and have the program be native. I am very supportive of the GCJ project, which turns Java source into native. Soon Swing will be implemented, making the case for using bytecode INCREDIBLY impossible to justify. Mono should do this with C# and the like. I do not even see why Microsoft did not do this anyway. All it involves is making new libraries. What is the difference in making C# native as making MFC API native back in 96? Instead we get more bloat. How does this make any sense?
I have much better things to do than wait for Java AND your app to initialise. Furthermore, I have better things to do than wait for Java AND your app to de-initialise at exit. Same goes for .NET and Mono.
Or you could just do what we do here. We have some old software and hardware that worked on Windows 95. So we keep a couple boxes running with Windows 95. Problem solved. It's ONLY used for that using a piece of hardware, so it's really not an issue as far as management goes. They aren't even hooked up to the network.
The only slight issue I have with maintaining old hardware is power usage. Old hardware almost always means inefficient power usage in comparison to today's machines. Beyond that, you have the problem of 'imminent' death. The machine could die any moment and you know it is far closer than your newer machines.
First of all, why would you go Freenode asking to download non-free software? Second, there is something called Google. Even Google has a torrent indexer.
I probably will but it does not help the person who was trying to run it in Vista (they do not have Linux installed).
I have pirated OS X software, both downloaded and burned from other people's copies. Clearly those people still do not know how to do it if they have to go on IRC looking for copies.
I am sure this is not news to anyone whether you love or hate Microsoft. The fact is the coding practices commonly followed under DOS and then under Windows have been rather poor. The reasons for it are many, but largely because of a thirst for performance. But in order to keep people hooked on Windows, they have to keep supporting the mistakes of others as well as their own. This is what they call "backward compatibility."
But there is a way out of it and for some reason they seem unwilling to do it. Write a new OS, virtualize old Windows for "legacy support" and eventually all the software vendors will port their code to work with the new Microsoft OS natively just as they did with Mac OS X. I can't imagine why Microsoft is unwilling to do that... got any suggestions anyone?
I have been suggesting this for years. Enterprise (Microsoft's most important customer base), in general, does NOT want it. Seemingly they want the 'good ole' x86 to live forever and Windows to run programs written for DOS 5.0 even in 2009 and beyond. Ridiculous, but it is true.
If you are a business who relies upon some certain software to get work done and do NOT have the time, money or resources to switch to something else, it is in your interest to demand your software vendor (in this case Microsoft) NOT to remove compatibility for X application.
If you look at the Windows 2000 leaked source code, you can find plenty of comments about VERY specific application fixes. Yes, XP broke stuff. Vista broke more. But it probably did not break what the enterprises care about (Vista likely did break many things, hence why 7 is being rushed and so many enterprises skipped Vista and will go to 7 after some extensive testing).
Today I experienced a game that does not work on Vista. Microids' Corsairs from 1998, made for Windows 9x. Tried compatibility modes, the latest patches, etc. It just kept crashing. Microsoft does not care about your 'classic' games at all. All they care about is the enterprises who actually buy the expensive volume licenses Microsoft is always trying to sell.
Meh. You are simply, wrong. Obviously you know nothing about China or the Chinese people and assume you can infiltrate with ease. Dream on, especially with that idea to lock down USB ports and optical media.
Less people using Macs know how to pirate software. And, it is not a simple case of porting. Microsoft does the right thing in developing for the OS X interface and (mostly) following Apple's HIG.
[quote]This is China. The rules are different here. For starters, law is irrelevant. All laws. All the time. Cold-blooded pre-planned murder is a debatable situation here depending on who you know. The only actually arrestable offense is annoying a police officer or someone with a hold over police officers.[/quote]
I am glad someone else understands. Everyone else assumes Chinese in China are going to act like everyone else eventually. I will never EVER believe that.
I'm developing spyware for Windows 7 using the beta in a VM on Linux :P
I'll be rich in hours!
Software piracy in China enables jobs, feeds families, etc. I would rather see pirated discs on the street than have starving families.
Honestly, the Chinese do not and will not ever see it 'our' way. Why? Because they do not care about anything really unless Chinese (not counting outside of China normally) people are involved. So Chinese do not pirate games like Lineage and games that look/seem/marketed/made for them.
The security risk is high, but China already knows this and they probably figured it out even better when Windows 98 was around.
I would like to know if there is some reason why 90% of the games coming out use DirectX as opposed to OpenGL in the first place. A reason besides ease. I can certainly side with developers if they find DirectX easier to app with OpenGL (it is bound to happen). Also, the incentive is that if you make a game with DirectX, that means there will be a LOT less time spent porting it to Xbox 360. If the games were written with OpenGL, Linux and Mac ports (native, NOT Cider) could be easily made. Even PS3 and Wii ports would be easier.
Must not be fun programming games today for up to 6 consoles (all slightly different architectures and libraries): Xbox 360 (DirectX, PowerPC big-endian), PS3 (PSGL based on OpenGL, special Cell processor that not everyone knows how to program yet it seems), Wii (PowerPC processor, slight upgrade from the GameCube; an OpenGL-based graphics language again), PS2 (also uses a variant of OpenGL for graphics; as it is MIPS, can be little-endian or big-endian); PSP (MIPS, like PS2), Nintendo DS (ARM, graphics library based on OpenGL like Nintendo 64 was heavily based upon SGI's implementation since SGI provided the chip). I cannot even imagine. #ifdef _XBOX360, #ifdef _BIGENDIAN. Although consoles are going to compete, that does not mean they should use totally different languages (especially the difference between DirectX and OpenGL). How does this benefit the developers who are PAYING to be able to make console games in the first place?
Conspiracy theory: M$ is paying developers like EA Games to use DirectX only, and soon enough they will pay developers to use DirectX 10 only.
I disagree. Why rely upon the buggy Windows kernel to keep things afloat? We do not know exactly how it works, why it does it what it does, etc etc. It is not trustworthy. Linux is because we can see the source code and we compile. We can see the source code of GCC which compiles it. We can see the source code of the GCC that compiles GCC, ad infinitum until we get down to the ASM code that starts up our PCs in the first place.
If developers build for andLinux, that is all it will really support. It is generally impossible to say that a binary built on Fedora will work on Ubuntu. It is likely a simple Hello, world app will run fine but not something that has a vast amount of dependencies with specific versions.
I also applaud the effort in creating Wine. It has enabled great efficiency within Linux as you no longer have to boot into Windows or virtualise to run many apps.
Regardless, I do not mind listing my project as 'supporting' Wine, but my project is open source and builds natively on Linux. Obviously I am going to want the native version.
Shared libraries seem to be the biggest problem with trying to distribute binary-only apps for Linux. A lot of apps try to solve by using static binaries or building the binary so it only uses so files in a certain directory, including its own, much the same way a Windows app will first look for a DLL in its current directory first before going to system32 and other 'standard' directories. Currently on Gentoo if I grab Opera (64-bit), it has a problem with a symbol in a shared library and then crashes. No real way to solve this except to go back a version or two in the library that the so file belongs to. Of course I would not want to do that if everything else works fine.
We cannot convince the commercial software developers to release their source so we can all compile or make distribution packages yet. Someday though I hope.
I would love to experiment this: make a high-budget game that is sure to get high-ratings and release it with the source code so that Linux users can use it. The catch: the licence would NOT be the GPL or LGPL, thus making it possible for me to sue anyone who modifies the source code and distributes or even pirates in the first place. How different is this from the current state of warez? Right now, a game gets released, someone who knows ASM really well cracks the protection away, and then the game is released onto the internet and masses download the game for free (many of whom were never going to buy the game whether they have the money or not). I think the game will sell regardless, pirates will get the game because they want it, and modders will have a great time. Maybe I could make a good licence for modders?
The problem is developers who write Windows-only code then. There are a decent number of games that are open source that are written using Windows APIs only. Sure, maybe developers like the Windows API but why target one OS? The other thing is .NET. Wine still barely works with it and Microsoft loves that developers find C# easy to use and that most developers using C# are developing Windows-only .NET apps. Yes, there is Mono but it is nowhere near compatible. Purposely kept behind, plus if there's a .NET app front-end to a Windows CLI app, that will not work because .NET has no Win32 API.
I would like to see Mono and Wine developers work together. Of course, Micro$oft does not. On the other hand, what's stopping DotGNU from becoming better than Mono and working with the Wine project?
Then of course, newcomers to developing should understand that they can provide to a larger user base if they build cross-platform apps (and if necessary use cross-platform libs). We would all like newcomers to developing to start on Linux (this is essentially how my university does it), but this is right now not necessarily a reality.
Who wants to start the 'Learn on Linux First' campaign?
I played that all last month and it works fine 100%. Real money, but I lost it all hehe
Well, I'll still support that over GTK+'s ugliness that, at least on Windows, looks nothing like a Windows app.
There is also Qt, totally easy to use (macro-based C++ code style). On Windows and Mac, it actually calls to load the native widgets instead of making its own, unlike so many other APIs for Windows.
UI inconsistency has been a problem forever and it seems to never end. Microsoft fails to keep the UI consistent, Apple at least tries, and Linux has UIs in whatever way the developers want them. Open up XChat, there's no File Edit View menus, there's XChat View Server menus. It may make sense once you get used to it but it is still inconsistent. There are no 'files' to deal with in XChat but the menu names are inconsistent. Then there's Pidgin with different menu names as well.
KDE and GNOME both try to fix this problem by having interface guidelines, just as Microsoft and Apple do. The problem is when someone (even someone like me) wants a quick and dirty solution that needs a GUI, they could care less about GUI guidelines and they want something that will work for THEM.
On the web, we cannot standardise UIs that are programmed with JS or whatever you wish to use because every site has their style sheet to keep their site unique. All we really need is completely standardised JS and web layout across the board for browsers.
Well, I completely agree. I hate the terms Kibi, Mebi-, etc. Stupid and random. I for one would be embarrassed to use those words anyway.
If you buy a set of DVDRs, you quickly find out they are measuring totally wrong on the package. It is definitely NOT 4.7 GB. This is a wild exaggeration if they would stop using SI GBs to measure (GB = 1000 MB). So if a DVD holds 4.7 SI GBs, then it holds ~4.34 GiB (Gibibytes, and I HATE that word).
Legality: the manufacturer LABELS the item stating that they measure a GB to be 1000 MB and not 1024.
Hard drive manufacturers do the exact same thing. A few years ago they were sued for not doing so, and won because they agreed to label their packaging about 'their' measurement of sizes.
Good one. Lol
LTC-KB = Kilobyte but it means 1000 bytes. 1024 bytes is a Kibibyte (kilo binary byte) according to Wikipedia according to the International Electrotechnical Commission standards defined in 1998-2000. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte
True, but I am not affected. Largest drive I have from Seagate is a 500 GB. Beyond that, as a consumer (and not an enterprise), since when do you update firmware of your hard drives? I have never done that before and would be very weary to do so.
I do not think I will be buying this one, or another WD. It is really hard to witness so many dead hard drives (including many DOA) and have your own experiences with their hard drives that just die so quickly. And another thing, why is every WD so damn big? They squeeze into every slot you put them into, not just slide in nicely like any Seagate (or most other brands). This goes for desktop and laptop. No wonder they are making their own external drives. Generic ones may not even fit their drives.
I have had much success with Seagate (lasts 5 years or more) and Hitachi (louder than most HDDs but they last). I do not know the warranty of WD, but the warranty for both Seagate and Hitachi are great (especially the Seagate one).
I am sure some people have luck, but after 2 dead hard drives (and many DOAs at a shop I worked at) and physical size problems, I will probably never give WD another chance, no matter what the price.