There was a sort of unwritten agreement at one time between some games developers to see how much bullshit they could get 'Edge' magazine to print (I think there's a sister mag called 'Next Generation' in the US - they shared a lot of content). The journos are arrogant and pretentious, and like to think they are technically knowledgeable, but of course they aren't.
So in features/interviews with some of the cheekier games dev houses, you would find some rare old nonsense passed off as 'technology' by the developer:-).
I think the same thing is happening here - there's a group of slashdot readers who have a competition to see how many dupe stories they can get accepted onto the front page.
While I was waiting in a Tesco checkout queue, I happened to see a little laminated list of rules on the checkout till. Rules for checkout staff, that is.
Well, they are. That's what the article says. In fact, the guy says that the raw CPU emulation isn't really a problem in terms of performance.
The problem seems to be the use of graphics primitives that are tailored to nVidia hardware that are hard to efficiently translate for ATI hardware.
That's what I got from the article, anyway. Having said that, it's a confused article - for instance:
All console manufacturers require developers to follow certain code requirements to ensure basic quality and functionality. Many of the best Xbox developers, such as Ubisoft and Tecmo just to name a few, have gone above and beyond the requirements. In fact, a few have pushed their games to the metal, squeezing out as much performance as possible from Microsoft's system. So, it's likely that the most technically superior games will be backward compatible on Xbox 360.
I'm not quite sure where they got that conclusion from. I would have said the exact opposite conclusion (that games that really push the hardware will be harder to run/emulate at full speed) was true. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe they switched halfway through the paragraph from technical considerations to marketing considerations.
It's a bit silly, though, don't you think? The world and his dog call it LZW. A few people decide it should be called ZLW. That's just being contrary really.
It's not like we need more acronyms that mean the same thing. Does he talk about ZL77 and ZLMA too?
PS. You know, it's just possible that other people in the world (and certainly on this website) have written/studied this code, too. You don't have a monopoly on that. I bet you'd get upset if I said "PIN number" too, eh?:)
XML files can be a little ungainly if you want to partially update them, or just append data. Binary files can be better for this (note: 'can').
As is evidenced by the lovely pause that happens whenever I close an MSN Messenger window of someone I chat to often, and it appends the chat history to the 1.5Mb XML file, by reading/writing the whole XML file again....wugga wugga wugga.
(Either that, or their append code sucks!)
But other than that, yes. The size argument doesn't stand up - a counter-intuitive result, but seems to be true. Especially when you start zipping XML files.
Perhaps a better approach would be to simply fire people who need books to figure this stuff out.
Awesome plan. While we're at it, let's get rid of all the books too. Documentation is a crutch as well, so let's delete all that. And burn down the universities - no-one ever gained anything from them that they couldn't have figured out in their own lifetime.
Also, no-one should be allowed to pass on advice, because everyone should be able to work this shit out for themselves.
"I read constantly to gain new knowledge and insights. Why spend years of learning by trial and error when I can pickup a good book and in a few days achieve insights that took someone else decades to formulate?"
-- Steve Maguire, "Debugging The Development Process"
Giving it 5 seconds of thought, they could modify their development cycle so that they release technical ideas as they come up, providing the world with prior art and short-circuiting other peoples' ability to patent those concepts.
That doesn't work either - then you're advertising to your competitors what you're going to be launching in a year.
What would work is getting a patent accepted, launching your product, then making the patent public domain (as in, no-one ever has to pay a license for it, however you legally do that).
At the moment this rarely seems to happen - you get a company like Amazon who say that they get patents defensively, and that they'll only use them to stop direct competitors, please don't blame us, it's not our fault, it's the patent system and the legal system, etc.
Of course with a nebulous statement like that, then you have to hope that Amazon doesn't ever feel like suing you for patent infringement, or just don't use the tech involved in the patent. So most people avoid the disputed tech. So Amazon (and others) can claim that they're against patents, yet still work the system and get the benefits.
Yes, I never understand that - it's like people who get caught speeding in their car and come out with "Why don't they go and catch the rapists and murderers instead of harrassing me?"
I'm sure they'd be happy with that logic when the police tell them to get lost when they're victims of theft, violence or criminal damage, etc.
My guess is that with the original Mac mini, they just wanted to ship the damn thing. I mean, it's a totally custom case, motherboard, layout, etc. You can't gear up to make those in a week, and at some point you have to stop tweaking and improving and decide to ship.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I've got it worked out.
:-).
:-)
There was a sort of unwritten agreement at one time between some games developers to see how much bullshit they could get 'Edge' magazine to print (I think there's a sister mag called 'Next Generation' in the US - they shared a lot of content). The journos are arrogant and pretentious, and like to think they are technically knowledgeable, but of course they aren't.
So in features/interviews with some of the cheekier games dev houses, you would find some rare old nonsense passed off as 'technology' by the developer
I think the same thing is happening here - there's a group of slashdot readers who have a competition to see how many dupe stories they can get accepted onto the front page.
It's the only thing that makes sense
Dude, you so totally lose!
My favourite entry was:
Made me appreciate my job a little more, anyway.
The problem seems to be the use of graphics primitives that are tailored to nVidia hardware that are hard to efficiently translate for ATI hardware.
That's what I got from the article, anyway. Having said that, it's a confused article - for instance:
I'm not quite sure where they got that conclusion from. I would have said the exact opposite conclusion (that games that really push the hardware will be harder to run/emulate at full speed) was true. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe they switched halfway through the paragraph from technical considerations to marketing considerations.
Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen :-)
While we're there, we should probably thank him for designing and creating one of the most popular and successful programming languages on the planet.
If we're being fair ;-)
It's not like we need more acronyms that mean the same thing. Does he talk about ZL77 and ZLMA too?
PS. You know, it's just possible that other people in the world (and certainly on this website) have written/studied this code, too. You don't have a monopoly on that. I bet you'd get upset if I said "PIN number" too, eh? :)
XML files can be a little ungainly if you want to partially update them, or just append data. Binary files can be better for this (note: 'can').
As is evidenced by the lovely pause that happens whenever I close an MSN Messenger window of someone I chat to often, and it appends the chat history to the 1.5Mb XML file, by reading/writing the whole XML file again....wugga wugga wugga.
(Either that, or their append code sucks!)
But other than that, yes. The size argument doesn't stand up - a counter-intuitive result, but seems to be true. Especially when you start zipping XML files.
He's not so smart, otherwise he wouldn't be talking about people being asked to "implement a ZLW file compressor" :-)
Awesome plan. While we're at it, let's get rid of all the books too. Documentation is a crutch as well, so let's delete all that. And burn down the universities - no-one ever gained anything from them that they couldn't have figured out in their own lifetime.
Also, no-one should be allowed to pass on advice, because everyone should be able to work this shit out for themselves.
That doesn't work either - then you're advertising to your competitors what you're going to be launching in a year.
What would work is getting a patent accepted, launching your product, then making the patent public domain (as in, no-one ever has to pay a license for it, however you legally do that).
At the moment this rarely seems to happen - you get a company like Amazon who say that they get patents defensively, and that they'll only use them to stop direct competitors, please don't blame us, it's not our fault, it's the patent system and the legal system, etc.
Of course with a nebulous statement like that, then you have to hope that Amazon doesn't ever feel like suing you for patent infringement, or just don't use the tech involved in the patent. So most people avoid the disputed tech. So Amazon (and others) can claim that they're against patents, yet still work the system and get the benefits.
Ad hominem. That says it all.
Yes, I never understand that - it's like people who get caught speeding in their car and come out with "Why don't they go and catch the rapists and murderers instead of harrassing me?"
I'm sure they'd be happy with that logic when the police tell them to get lost when they're victims of theft, violence or criminal damage, etc.
I get my 12 year old brother to click my employment contracts for me, then it's not legally binding.
Yeah, and we all know that MS Office is just a clone of OpenOffice.
Oh no wait, I got that wrong...
Mr Wilde? Oscar? Is that you?
Anyway, here's the one I meant:
Your post is strangely familiar.
It's amazing what you can pick up on ebay these days.
I think that UID got sold by some kid's mom because he wouldn't tidy his room or something.
It's just an excuse.
After all, "Real Artists Ship" :)
I've not seen a noise cancellation box as you describe, but then maybe too many engineers have read the Arthur C Clarke short story :)
So, er, what's stopping you setting up a company to build ARM laptops? From your description, it would sell like hot cakes and make you a billionaire.
Those of us with longer memories may of course remember that there was an ARM-based laptop, and no, it didn't sell.
It's a perfectly cromulent word!