I can't believe I'm defending the realism of a videogame-turned-movie, but it's honestly not as bad as the old western "sixty-six shooters" or the never needs recahrging energy packs of most sf blaster/laser weapons
Well, don't feel too bad - Jon didn't even notice the obvious mistake in his own article:
As in the game, despite her access to some stunningly sophisticated firepower, Croft prefers the 9mm pistols strapped prominently to her hips, wielding them against robots, commandos, even supernatural creatures of yore. Only in the movie, she never runs out of ammo.
So, uh, in other words, that would be the same as the game, Jon?
In Tomb Raider (the game), the pistols never run out of ammo. Sheesh, you'd think if he was going to compare the movie to the game, he'd at least play it sometime.
Can you explain to me why tapes are 8 bucks and cds are AT LEAST double that for the exact same album at the same time?
Sadly, you have to be careful with that kind of argument. When attention was called to this disparity in the UK, the record companies responded by jacking up the prices of tapes to somewhere near the price of CDs.
I'm not sure I understand the story about your girlfriend - if this is the case, how do Japanese companies hire anybody? Assuming that leaving your job is reason enough not to get hired, presumably being fired from your job is also reason enough.
So how do they find people who have not been fired and who are not leaving their job? Do they only hire people from companies that go out of business?
Or was it that she had already left her job when she was looking for a new one?
On the other hand, I have noticed that some Mac users have a slight tendency to *believe* that they are cleverer, smarter, spell better, etc. than PC users.
This is not necessarily the same thing.
Then again, I know people who think they'll be more *creative* just because they're using a Mac instead of a PC. Never did work out how that one worked.
Tim
Re:Has Pratchett read Adams?
on
Thief of Time
·
· Score: 1
If I was really wired and used IMAP for my email, I'd be able to include the text of the email DNA sent round the office saying something like "Who wrote this? It's funny, but it wasn't me, and people think it was."
Although I can do something similar, thanks to a friend - look at this message, where Douglas asks who wrote it, and then this message where the author explains that he wrote it, DNA didn't, and it was in part inspired by "The Lost Continent" by TP. He also mentions how it became attributed to DNA.
Tim
Re:Has Pratchett read Adams?
on
Thief of Time
·
· Score: 2
That was not written by Douglas. It was written as an article for h2g2.com by a guy using the nickname Orinoco, and he admitted some of it was inspired by Terry Pratchett's writing. I know this because I edited the article before it went live on h2g2.
If I was really wired and used IMAP for my email, I'd be able to include the text of the email DNA sent round the office saying something like "Who wrote this? It's funny, but it wasn't me, and people think it was."
it is a truism that a very good ("great") programmer's productivity is 10X better than a merely good one's [sic]
Not as far as I recall. That's the best versus the worst (10x difference). The difference between the best and the average is something like 2.5x - see Peopleware by DeMarco and Lister for accurate figures (my copy's at home).
I know quite a few really good programmers, and none of them think that they are a "uniquely talented hacker", or that they have "never met anyone better".
On the other hand, I've met plenty of arrogant jerks with big egos who can't work in a team, can't document their code, don't like anyone else even looking at their code - never mind working on it, and can't build any sort of large system, that think just like this.
If someone buys your site, then obviously they already have some ideas on how to grow revenue with it. After all, no savvy business person would spend money on an established venture without first doing an audit of the books, the business model, etc.
That would be a fine assertion if savvy business people were the only people to spend money on an established venture. The dot-com boom taught us otherwise, I thought...
You mean that you think if you bought it as a unit, and/or had a warranty etc, that they would just replace it?
My experience of all these warranties/after sales plans is that you have to prove something is wrong. Good luck doing that with a system that reboots spontaneously once a week!
"Sorry Sir, we tested it for 3 days and found no problem...so you're down the shipping charges as well now..."
Speaking as a games developer, from my perspective, there are two main problems with producing games for Linux:
(a) Persuading the publisher that it is worthwhile.
(b) Being able to minimise compatibility problems with all the different versions of Linux, and its associated libraries. I've not tried lots of different distributions, but judging from what I read on this and other sites there is a fair bit of pushing and shoving required, especially when using bleeding edge hardware like 3D cards and DSP sound cards.
Basically, it has to be worth it - I'd like to produce a Linux version of our game, but if the market is tiny, *and* it consists of a bunch of people running very different OSs that we have to deal with, it doesn't seem like a viable business proposition.
Bottom line is: it may well take a lot of effort to get the game running smoothly and reliably on all major dists of Linux (and how many of those are there?!), and if we didn't make that effort, we'd get lots of support calls and lots of irate (and very vocal) users - rightly so. For that reason, it can be more attractive to support Windows and ignore Linux (sadly).
Caveat: as I said, I haven't looked into this in detail, but it might prove to be less of a problem than I think (OpenAL and similar libraries will help if they become widespread) - and the problems may just be exaggerated anyway. At this time, I just don't know. I contacted Loki for advice months ago, but have heard nothing, which doesn't make me keener to to do the Linux version.
I regularly consult the Britannica my girlfriend bought in 1982, despite its obsolence -- if I wanted one, and I could afford it now, I couldn't get it updated. They are out of business. Encarta is a sad joke by comparison.
I was going to email this, but you've (wisely) left your email out of your user profile, but try going to Britannica.com - they sell the Encyclopaedia Britannica on CD/DVD. The site itself is some wanky portal site, but the Encyclopaedia is still promoted on the front page, and from tick-list on the the Compare Britannica 2001 page:
Entire text of 32 vol.
Encyclopædia Britannica : Tick (for all versions)
So they still seem to be in business - although I think they nearly went out of business, as they originally sold the CD version of their Encyclopaedia at about £400 (it's less than £90 now). But then, that's what Encarta cost when it first came out (although most people don't believe that anymore), but Britannica were asking £400 when MS had already dropped the Encarta price to the usual £40-70 you pay these days.
Er...that's it really. Thought you might like to know - I have no connection with Britannica, and have not actually used the CD/DVD version myself, so caveat emptor.
Tim
PS. Why did you think they were out of business? Even www.encyclopaediabritannica.com takes you to that web page...
Actually, no, it's "favours". Show respect to the nation who created the language which you so readily butcher.
Actually...
His spelling is the correct original English spelling, which was taken across to the USA by the original settlers. The addition of the 'u' to such words is a relatively recent change to the British English usage, and was added as an affectation to make the language seem similar to French, and thus make it more interesting/exotic.
To paraphrase Gerald Weinberg, if it doesn't have to produce the correct result, I can write an HTML renderer that renders it much faster than IE5 or NS4.7!
I have not programmed either the Dreamcast, or the PS2, but I feel fairly confident in saying: yes, developers can write directly to RAM on both systems.
That's what I wanted too (except mouse button) - and I found it - look at the Logitech iTouch Pro (Mouse and keyboard).
T-shaped cursor keys and everything.
BUT: don't buy one - I bought one for work, only to find that Logitech suffer from the same "it must fit in a keyboard drawer" disease that led MS to cripple the Natural keyboard for about a year (before the "Natural Keyboard Pro" came out).
Check this:
* NO num lock/caps lock lights - you get a lame bit of software in the Windows systray that has numlock and capslock icons (what if you don't have Windows? Tough).
* The bunch of six keys Insert/Home/End/PgUp etc have been transformed from 3x2 into a 2x3 block (to fit in a kbd drawer I presume - it's much shorter than my MS NatKbdPro).
* The keys in the middle that are bigger on split keyboards (e.g. T ang G on this MS kbd) have been given big keycaps (imagine the same as MS kbds, but the top of the keycap is much wider).
The first is annoying, the second and third kill my typing.
The third one is bad because *every* time I go to hit one of these keys, my brain thinks "Er...big keycap...must not be a letter!" and I have to check, or my brain auto adjusts and uses the next key along.
I'm a habitual Insert/Delete key user for copy/paste - I don't use Ctrl-C/V - that's just the way I learnt it at the time; go figure. I also use shift-cursor keys to select text under windows, and shift-home, shift-end etc to select to start/end of line, and ctrl-home/ctrl-end to go to the start/end of a file.
With the braindead Logitech layout, I also hit the wrong key every time I go for Insert/Delete/Home/End.
In short, don't buy the Logitech one if you expect a standard layout (or lights! I can't see why the lights aren't there - there's plenty of room).
All I wanted was a ergo keyboard with a standard non-fucked about with layout that was wireless.
Can someone PLEASE just make one?!:-)
I wanted wireless kbd and mouse so when I'm designing I can just lift my kbd/mouse off the desk and put them somewhere else and get a pad and paper out to sketch designs out etc. And it was wonderfully liberating to be able to do that...but then I had to go back to typing on that lame layout.
I stuck it two days before literally shouting "Oh, for *FUCK'S* sake" in the middle of some heavy code rearrangement, unplugged the Logitech kbd, plugged my old MS one back in and haven't looked back since.
I have no personal experience, but have been told it's quite good. For example, all database operations are atomic - compare this with Microsoft's KB recommendation that you "never let SourceSafe run out of disk space" because it will corrupt the database.
This probably isn't widely known, but Eidos began life as Domark many many years ago. They were always one of those companies that produced crappy game after crappy game after crappy game. Then one day they changed their name to Eidos (do either of those words mean anything? I don't know.) and published Tomb Raider
The reason it isn't widely known is that it's so wrong it's laughable:-)
At my old job, we worked with Eidos, and they were a video technology company, founded by the Streater brothers (this was about...er 6 years ago).
They worked with us on desktop video compression/playback (we used their 'Escape' codec), and they also produced off-line pro video editing suites. (All of these were based on Acorn hardware.)
They then diversified and started buying games studios/companies like there was no tomorrow (they bought Domark - who in turn had bought Simis, if I'm not mistaken).
They formed a strong relationship with Core, possibly partly due to their Acorn heritage - Jeremy Smith (I think that was his name - one of the founders of Core) wrote the game "Exile" for the Acorn BBC micro. Eventually Eidos published Core's Tomb Raider (you got that part right).
This explains in part why you always see the Eidos Escape video compression ident on the first Tomb Raider games, and why Escape was always mentioned at the bottom of any Eidos press release - Stephen Streater was extremely keen on his video compression technology.
Eidos never 'changed their name' - they've always been Eidos - you just didn't know about them then.
Nowadays, as Eidos is now really just a publisher, Stephen Streater has left to set up his own special projects company, to do things that interest him.
I'm really not trying to namedrop, but I work for Douglas Adams, and as much as I respect him, there is a large probability that the story you cite is not an accurate representation of the events (I myself have heard a different version).
Douglas himself knows this - indeed, he's included the point in some of his public speaking that the more you tell a story, the more it gets refined or subverted to match your own desires of what should have happened, sometimes to such an extent that you can't actually remember what really happened.
I'll tell you what's funny: when people laugh at Bill Gates getting it wrong, and they also get it wrong themselves.
As someone pointed out, there's not a lot of point trying to factor a large (or any other kind of) prime number. If you could factor it, then it wouldn't be a prime number.
Tim
It's hard to wreck a nice beach as peach is am big you us.
I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't store any personal documents on my game system (I don't even think I could), so Sega can have all the backdoors they want on my dreamcast (not that I even own one, yet).
You know you can get a Dreamcast keyboard, right? And that it's intended for things like email?
Slashdot Mirror
That's "Goal-post Head" actually.
It's a reference to how the H looks like the goal-posts for Rugby football.
Tim
Well, don't feel too bad - Jon didn't even notice the obvious mistake in his own article:
As in the game, despite her access to some stunningly sophisticated firepower, Croft prefers the 9mm pistols strapped prominently to her hips, wielding them against robots, commandos, even supernatural creatures of yore. Only in the movie, she never runs out of ammo.
So, uh, in other words, that would be the same as the game, Jon?
In Tomb Raider (the game), the pistols never run out of ammo. Sheesh, you'd think if he was going to compare the movie to the game, he'd at least play it sometime.
Tim
Sadly, you have to be careful with that kind of argument. When attention was called to this disparity in the UK, the record companies responded by jacking up the prices of tapes to somewhere near the price of CDs.
Strike one victory to the consumer :-(
Tim
I'm not sure I understand the story about your girlfriend - if this is the case, how do Japanese companies hire anybody? Assuming that leaving your job is reason enough not to get hired, presumably being fired from your job is also reason enough.
So how do they find people who have not been fired and who are not leaving their job? Do they only hire people from companies that go out of business?
Or was it that she had already left her job when she was looking for a new one?
Tim
Nope.
On the other hand, I have noticed that some Mac users have a slight tendency to *believe* that they are cleverer, smarter, spell better, etc. than PC users.
This is not necessarily the same thing.
Then again, I know people who think they'll be more *creative* just because they're using a Mac instead of a PC. Never did work out how that one worked.
Tim
Although I can do something similar, thanks to a friend - look at this message, where Douglas asks who wrote it, and then this message where the author explains that he wrote it, DNA didn't, and it was in part inspired by "The Lost Continent" by TP. He also mentions how it became attributed to DNA.
Tim
That was not written by Douglas. It was written as an article for h2g2.com by a guy using the nickname Orinoco, and he admitted some of it was inspired by Terry Pratchett's writing. I know this because I edited the article before it went live on h2g2.
The original is here.
If I was really wired and used IMAP for my email, I'd be able to include the text of the email DNA sent round the office saying something like "Who wrote this? It's funny, but it wasn't me, and people think it was."
But I'm not and I don't, so I can't.
But it's true.
Sorry.
Tim
Oddly enough, you would have done better if you'd looked it up in an English dictionary.
The above link defines it as "Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others."
It's not new for English speakers to use this word.
Tim
Not as far as I recall. That's the best versus the worst (10x difference). The difference between the best and the average is something like 2.5x - see Peopleware by DeMarco and Lister for accurate figures (my copy's at home).
I know quite a few really good programmers, and none of them think that they are a "uniquely talented hacker", or that they have "never met anyone better".
On the other hand, I've met plenty of arrogant jerks with big egos who can't work in a team, can't document their code, don't like anyone else even looking at their code - never mind working on it, and can't build any sort of large system, that think just like this.
YMMV
Tim
That would be a fine assertion if savvy business people were the only people to spend money on an established venture. The dot-com boom taught us otherwise, I thought...
Tim
You mean that you think if you bought it as a unit, and/or had a warranty etc, that they would just replace it?
My experience of all these warranties/after sales plans is that you have to prove something is wrong. Good luck doing that with a system that reboots spontaneously once a week!
"Sorry Sir, we tested it for 3 days and found no problem...so you're down the shipping charges as well now..."
Tim
IIRC, arithmetic encoding results in a number between 0 and 1, and allows encoding of an arbitrary amount of data.
See The Data Compression Book - I haven't got a copy to hand to check.
So the only issue is the resolution of the mark on the rod.
Tim
EA have a simple strategy when it comes to games - I know because they told me it up front when we talked to them about publishing our game.
Basically, they're interested in two types of games:
* Games produced by developers with a track record of a number of hit games.
* Sequels.
That's it. They weren't interested otherwise, and told us so.
From some points of view, it's not a good strategy, and from others it is.
I'm only repeating this here because they didn't seem to be all that coy about it.
Tim
Go tell that to Escient/CDDB/whatever they're called now.
They claim their database of CD titles and track names is copyright them, the last time I heard.
Tim
Speaking as a games developer, from my perspective, there are two main problems with producing games for Linux:
(a) Persuading the publisher that it is worthwhile.
(b) Being able to minimise compatibility problems with all the different versions of Linux, and its associated libraries. I've not tried lots of different distributions, but judging from what I read on this and other sites there is a fair bit of pushing and shoving required, especially when using bleeding edge hardware like 3D cards and DSP sound cards.
Basically, it has to be worth it - I'd like to produce a Linux version of our game, but if the market is tiny, *and* it consists of a bunch of people running very different OSs that we have to deal with, it doesn't seem like a viable business proposition.
Bottom line is: it may well take a lot of effort to get the game running smoothly and reliably on all major dists of Linux (and how many of those are there?!), and if we didn't make that effort, we'd get lots of support calls and lots of irate (and very vocal) users - rightly so. For that reason, it can be more attractive to support Windows and ignore Linux (sadly).
Caveat: as I said, I haven't looked into this in detail, but it might prove to be less of a problem than I think (OpenAL and similar libraries will help if they become widespread) - and the problems may just be exaggerated anyway. At this time, I just don't know. I contacted Loki for advice months ago, but have heard nothing, which doesn't make me keener to to do the Linux version.
2p.
Tim
I was going to email this, but you've (wisely) left your email out of your user profile, but try going to Britannica.com - they sell the Encyclopaedia Britannica on CD/DVD. The site itself is some wanky portal site, but the Encyclopaedia is still promoted on the front page, and from tick-list on the the Compare Britannica 2001 page:
Entire text of 32 vol. Encyclopædia Britannica : Tick (for all versions)
So they still seem to be in business - although I think they nearly went out of business, as they originally sold the CD version of their Encyclopaedia at about £400 (it's less than £90 now). But then, that's what Encarta cost when it first came out (although most people don't believe that anymore), but Britannica were asking £400 when MS had already dropped the Encarta price to the usual £40-70 you pay these days.
Er...that's it really. Thought you might like to know - I have no connection with Britannica, and have not actually used the CD/DVD version myself, so caveat emptor.
Tim
PS. Why did you think they were out of business? Even www.encyclopaediabritannica.com takes you to that web page...
Actually...
His spelling is the correct original English spelling, which was taken across to the USA by the original settlers. The addition of the 'u' to such words is a relatively recent change to the British English usage, and was added as an affectation to make the language seem similar to French, and thus make it more interesting/exotic.
Tim, amateur pedant
Tim :-)
I have not programmed either the Dreamcast, or the PS2, but I feel fairly confident in saying: yes, developers can write directly to RAM on both systems.
:-)
It's kinda essential
Tim
That's what I wanted too (except mouse button) - and I found it - look at the Logitech iTouch Pro (Mouse and keyboard).
:-)
T-shaped cursor keys and everything.
BUT: don't buy one - I bought one for work, only to find that Logitech suffer from the same "it must fit in a keyboard drawer" disease that led MS to cripple the Natural keyboard for about a year (before the "Natural Keyboard Pro" came out).
Check this:
* NO num lock/caps lock lights - you get a lame bit of software in the Windows systray that has numlock and capslock icons (what if you don't have Windows? Tough).
* The bunch of six keys Insert/Home/End/PgUp etc have been transformed from 3x2 into a 2x3 block (to fit in a kbd drawer I presume - it's much shorter than my MS NatKbdPro).
* The keys in the middle that are bigger on split keyboards (e.g. T ang G on this MS kbd) have been given big keycaps (imagine the same as MS kbds, but the top of the keycap is much wider).
The first is annoying, the second and third kill my typing.
The third one is bad because *every* time I go to hit one of these keys, my brain thinks "Er...big keycap...must not be a letter!" and I have to check, or my brain auto adjusts and uses the next key along.
I'm a habitual Insert/Delete key user for copy/paste - I don't use Ctrl-C/V - that's just the way I learnt it at the time; go figure. I also use shift-cursor keys to select text under windows, and shift-home, shift-end etc to select to start/end of line, and ctrl-home/ctrl-end to go to the start/end of a file.
With the braindead Logitech layout, I also hit the wrong key every time I go for Insert/Delete/Home/End.
In short, don't buy the Logitech one if you expect a standard layout (or lights! I can't see why the lights aren't there - there's plenty of room).
All I wanted was a ergo keyboard with a standard non-fucked about with layout that was wireless.
Can someone PLEASE just make one?!
I wanted wireless kbd and mouse so when I'm designing I can just lift my kbd/mouse off the desk and put them somewhere else and get a pad and paper out to sketch designs out etc. And it was wonderfully liberating to be able to do that...but then I had to go back to typing on that lame layout.
I stuck it two days before literally shouting "Oh, for *FUCK'S* sake" in the middle of some heavy code rearrangement, unplugged the Logitech kbd, plugged my old MS one back in and haven't looked back since.
Tim
Try the Perforce configuration management system.
I have no personal experience, but have been told it's quite good. For example, all database operations are atomic - compare this with Microsoft's KB recommendation that you "never let SourceSafe run out of disk space" because it will corrupt the database.
Tim
This probably isn't widely known, but Eidos began life as Domark many many years ago. They were always one of those companies that produced crappy game after crappy game after crappy game. Then one day they changed their name to Eidos (do either of those words mean anything? I don't know.) and published Tomb Raider
The reason it isn't widely known is that it's so wrong it's laughable :-)
At my old job, we worked with Eidos, and they were a video technology company, founded by the Streater brothers (this was about...er 6 years ago).
They worked with us on desktop video compression/playback (we used their 'Escape' codec), and they also produced off-line pro video editing suites. (All of these were based on Acorn hardware.)
They then diversified and started buying games studios/companies like there was no tomorrow (they bought Domark - who in turn had bought Simis, if I'm not mistaken).
They formed a strong relationship with Core, possibly partly due to their Acorn heritage - Jeremy Smith (I think that was his name - one of the founders of Core) wrote the game "Exile" for the Acorn BBC micro. Eventually Eidos published Core's Tomb Raider (you got that part right).
This explains in part why you always see the Eidos Escape video compression ident on the first Tomb Raider games, and why Escape was always mentioned at the bottom of any Eidos press release - Stephen Streater was extremely keen on his video compression technology.
Eidos never 'changed their name' - they've always been Eidos - you just didn't know about them then.
Nowadays, as Eidos is now really just a publisher, Stephen Streater has left to set up his own special projects company, to do things that interest him.
Plus ca change...
Tim
I'm really not trying to namedrop, but I work for Douglas Adams, and as much as I respect him, there is a large probability that the story you cite is not an accurate representation of the events (I myself have heard a different version).
:-)
Douglas himself knows this - indeed, he's included the point in some of his public speaking that the more you tell a story, the more it gets refined or subverted to match your own desires of what should have happened, sometimes to such an extent that you can't actually remember what really happened.
Tim
PS. Or it could be 100% true
I'll tell you what's funny: when people laugh at Bill Gates getting it wrong, and they also get it wrong themselves.
As someone pointed out, there's not a lot of point trying to factor a large (or any other kind of) prime number. If you could factor it, then it wouldn't be a prime number.
Tim
It's hard to wreck a nice beach as peach is am big you us.
I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't store any personal documents on my game system (I don't even think I could), so Sega can have all the backdoors they want on my dreamcast (not that I even own one, yet).
You know you can get a Dreamcast keyboard, right? And that it's intended for things like email?
You work it out.
Tim