They're not generally an option for me, and even if they were running in my constituency it wouldn't matter, being probably one of, if not the safest Labour seats in the country. I don't really have a vote because of our first past the post system, I get to turn up put my little slip in the ballot box, but it's not really a vote, it doesn't really actually matter, it's just something to pacify me as a mere citizen of the state.
At least if we had a PR system I might be able to vote, but as it stands, I'm effectively not entitled to a real vote because I do not and will not vote Labour.
It's one of the disadvantages of living in a nice rural area, that unfortunately has a few miles away from it a bunch of ex-mining villages filled with complete and utter ignorance and an interest merely in which party will give them the best benefits (Labour) and which party was most vocal against Thatcher 25 years ago (Labour), apparently those things are more important than actually, you know, voting for a party that will run the country competently.
I'm intrigued, what media outlet would you recommend as more trustworthy than The Guardian?
The Mail? The Telegraph? The Register? The Sun?
The Guardian is hardly perfect, but compared to the alternatives? It at least tries to publish news, rather than just outright lies and propaganda as with the above 4.
"Not that I'm cynical or anything but was this bill brought through the house at the beginning of a general election campaign for a reason?"
Yes, it's nearly summer and Peter Mandelson needed to make sure he fulfilled his obligations to the music industry in time to ensure he could go on another all expenses paid holiday on a yacht in Corfu again over the summer period.
The problem for the politicians is that it doesn't really matter what laws they pass. They'll never find a way now to completely prevent me gaining internet access and downloading or accessing whatever I want.
Christ, even people in our jails keep managing to find their way online with smuggled smartphones and stuff.
This news really sucks, but ultimately it's just another battle the content industry thinks they've won, but have completely and utterly lost. Each time this happens I decrease the amount of content like DVDs I buy, and simply to make a point, I'm now decreasing it to none, and shall download all the content I'd otherwise consume instead. If the political process is this far fucked (I actually watched the stich up last night) then, well, fuck the political process.
Really, they wonder why so many people don't vote, and so many vote for extremists whilst completely and utterly ignoring reasoned debate, peaceful political activisim such as writing your MPs en-masse, providing evidence that demonstrates why the laws are unquestionably flawed and so forth? If you leave people with the choice of apathy towards politics or supporting extremism to get their voice heard then it's no wonder people who want their voice heard flock to the growing far right. The rise of the far right in the UK is squarely on Labour and the Tories shoulders, they are entirely without question to blame for the situation the UK is in right.
They should be utterly ashamed of themselves that despite being caught en-masse as being completely and utterly corrupt this past couple of years stealing from the public coffer, despite seeing a massive rise in support of the far right (UKIP and the BNP), they still haven't learnt their lesson in the slightest. They're still pursuing a path of ignoring the populace, taking bribes, focussing entirely on self interest and so forth. Honestly, the death penalty wouldn't even be good enough for politicians so utterly willing to sell out their country and it's citizens and causing so much misery in the process for their own personal gain.
As much as I dislike the DEB being passed, I could care less about it because it has zero actual effect on me, and will only harm innocent people- hopefully enough to make them start caring and actually fight back. What fucks me off is the blatant and rampant corruption amongst British politicians, and the way the British political landscape is so utterly fucked, that for many, the far right is the only way to make themselves heard and even that's still not enough for many politicians. It's utterly wrong, people should be heard without having to support extremism, or themselves being rich enough to find money to bribe politicians.
I don't advocate voting BNP or UKIP for one minute, they're the scum of the earth, but christ, I'm beginning to see now why so many people resort to them nowadays with the feeling of helplessness and lack of voice the British political system leaves people with.
So you compile and release separate binary for every single processor, RAM and other hardware combination which your application might run on? That's an awful lot of binaries to compile and distribute simply to get the same performance benefits that JIT compilation can provide.
"I'm not. But you were saying that they're not the best for anything, which is also clearly insane."
It is insane, but then, you're also wrong that I ever said that. I made it quite clear throughout (and think I brought it up in each of my posts in fact) that C and C++ are well placed for some things- I'd never write a device driver in Java for example. One example of a project I worked on in the past is a distributed network monitoring tool, we looked closely at Java because we'd be monitoring from Windows and Linux boxes with the tool, but Java's support for low level networking (raw sockets, and protocols like ICMP) wasn't acceptable, and so we went with C++. I fully recognise that Java does not always offer the solution, and that sometimes C or C++ are the best option, but this is what I've been getting at all along- use the best tool for the job.
"I still say that for time critical realtime systems compiled binaries are the best."
But that's exactly what modern VM based languages are, they're compiled to native code the first time they run.
"I really don't need a JVM suddenly deciding to do garbage collection if 10 milliseconds makes the difference between a good and bad price on the trading floor for a trade that was about to be processed."
You can tame the garbage collector fairly easily in Java to work with you as you want it to, in.NET you can even explicitly manage garbage collection.
I'm really not trying to be nasty about C/C++, but most of the misconceptions about managed languages today are based on lack of understanding about how far these sorts of languages have come in the last 10 years. As I've said elsewhere before, this is really the same as what we've seen when languages like C came along and all the assembly programmers were making similar comments about how C can't ever be as good as assembly for some tasks- well, as it turns out, C compilers got better than most assembly programmers in the end but also allowed much faster development of much bigger, better, more impressive applications, so yes they can. It doesn't mean assembly programmers are useless even now however, but just as with C/C++ it's useful remit is shrinking as new languages and technology take to the floor a bit more- even embedded devices which used to purely be the realm of assembly developers now generally support higher level languages better for example. It's not as if Java and.NET wont end up being displaced sometime in the future either, it's really just the way things move on that's all.
As I say, personally C/C++ have a special place for me, and I really have a lot of respect for C/C++ developers because of this, there's a certain beauty to those languages that's hard to explain. One point of concern that I see is that we end up with the opposite situation which does seem to happen all too often, particularly amongst modern graduates- we get people who know Java/.NET but who don't know C/C++ and end up trying to use Java where as we both agree, it's not always appropriate, places where C/C++ are in fact the best option. I do agree that there absolutely is a place for C/C++ development, I just disagree that it's as widespread as it once was and feel that Java has demonstrated itself well enough in many real world scenarios from eBay to the NYSE, to mobile devices, to various HPC centres across the globe to take on many of the roles that used to be reserved for C/C++.
"So their whole stated goal of removing DRM from the iTunes Store and never wanting it there in the first place... where does that fit?"
It fits in marketing mostly.
Whilst Jobs was telling us he'd love to do away with DRM, and how he hates it, but can't get rid of it because the studios force it upon him, other online music vendors like eMusic, Play and Amazon were selling DRM free music with the blessing of the music industry and often at lower prices than Apple's DRM'd versions. So what Steve Jobs said about the music industry's interest in DRM, didn't actually reflect reality, although Apple fanboys bought it (and people wonder why people joke about Steve Jobs having a reality distortion field?).
It was pretty obvious why Apple supported DRM, and it was pretty obvious why you couldn't re-download content you've bought from iTunes after the first time, even though this is a standard feature amongst the vast majority of digital content providers- it's all about profit for Apple. Apple was quite aware of the fact that iTunes got the online music distribution thing wrapped up pretty well initially, and with this success knew full well that by ensuring iTunes was difficult about syncing with other media players, and ensuring content was DRM protected with proprietary DRM, it meant that if people's iPods broke, or the battery life reached unacceptable levels and as with the majority of the consumer it meant they'd just get a new media player because of no easy battery changes in iPods, they'd have to basically go Apple again, or lose possibly hundreds of dollars they'd invested in content from Apple. Also, if people lost their content, they couldn't just re-download it again, they'd have to re-buy it.
Apples strategy has been pretty clear to anyone with any level of objectivity and clarity from day 1 - it's all about customer lock-in, to a greater degree than any other tech company in history, including Microsoft. Apple wants to make sure that if you need a new devices, or new content that you HAVE to buy Apple, or face losing out other investments. It's all about making sure that if you go Apple, you have to reasonably stay Apple or suffer even more expensive consequences.
Of course, Apple finally caved on DRM but only after the likes of Amazon started to really eat into their marketshare, and when they did cave, they did so by introducing higher prices- a reasonable way for them to offset the loss in lock in profits I suppose.
If people think Microsoft is bad with their proprietary office software and formats causing corporate lock-in then they'd run for the hills if they evaluate the level of lock-in that Apple pushes.
Of course, the obvious solution for most of us is to just not ever go Apple in the first place. But it's those like my girlfriend who don't understand the issues of DRM that get sucked in, such that when her iPod failed, she found she couldn't move the content off of it to her Android phone (which did everything she wanted, why should she have to buy a new iPod as well?). I solved it for her by just downloading MP3 copies of her music- I don't care about the legality of it, it was morally by far the correct solution.
Regarding Apple and open source, the only reason Apple support open source is because they need it to help them do the things they can't do well in house. They only support it where they have to to the degree that some members of the OSS community aren't put off writing software that benefits Apple and beyond that point, where they can do stuff in house well, they've demonstrated time and time again they're not interested in OSS. To them it's just a business tool, they certainly have no interest in supporting the ideology itself, else they wouldn't have so many closed source products, they wouldn't push h264 as the HTML5 video standard and so forth. Microsoft releases FOSS stuff too, but that doesn't mean they support the ideology, they just use it where it suits them, no different to Apple, the difference is Microsoft doesn't really try and
"Well my experience in a number of different arenas suggests otherwise. JVMs consistently lag in speed, memory used and CPU utilisation compared to a compiled binaries (written in any language) not to mention I/O throughput, poor memory mapping functionality"
Sorry, that's simply not true. I'll explain below in response to your other comment.
"no forking, virtually non existent process control (yes , process, not thread) ability, no interprocess pipes, no tty control and in general just lame support for OS APIs."
A lot of this is really irrelevant to the discussion, as I don't disagree if you want to do systems level stuff that Java and.NET are probably not the best options. Languages like Java and.NET language implementations abstract things away specifically so they are portable, if you need to be working with OS level APIs then you're right, Java and the likes of C# are not the tool for you, but most people do not need these things for many applications. That said, if you really do want it, there's still the option of JNI in Java and unmanaged code in C# regardless so you can still keep the unmanaged benefits where possible without the disadvantages throughout your entire codebase.
"So you're saying it only optimises based on the type of OS, not the type of CPU. Yes , I can see how that would be better. Not."
No, that's not what I'm saying. This is the issue again, you do not seem to understand how managed languages work and why they perform well now. The issue is this, C/C++ compilers can optimise a binary they compile only for a generic architecture, because they cannot tell what platform they will be run on. JIT compilers like those underlying Java and.NET nowadays still compile applications down to native code just like C compilers do, but as they compile JIT they can optimise for the exact machine that the application is being run on taking into account specific processor, RAM availability and so forth- they can do a much more specific set of optimisations than a C/C++ compiler. This is the reason Java performs as well as C/C++ in the vast majority of cases, and even performs better in some cases nowadays. The performance problem for managed languages is largely a solved issue nowadays.
"And you're the typical kind of arrogant know-it-all who just goes by what he's been told rather than first hand experience. So any views you have to offer are worthless frankly IMO."
This makes no sense, you're talking Java down with a clear lack of understanding about it, yet I'm responding to correct you precisely because I have actually got experience in multiple different languages including all those being discussed. The point is I do have first hand experience, whilst your lack of understanding about managed languages shows you simply do not.
"Well that blows any credibility you had out the water. WHy not google the fun the London Stock Exchange had with.NET and why they eventually ditched it along with Windows."
Ah, that's probably a bad example. LSE had.NET problems because of bad development, and not because of any inherent issue with.NET. You see, the reason I state that's a bad example, is because a few months back, the LSE ran into exactly the same set of issues with their shiny new Linux based implementation, oops-
Really, you couldn't have picked a worse example. Besides, I'm not doing HPC stuff at the moment, I'm using.NET simply because it fits the bill for the current projects perfectly, and because it offers the most rapid development, testing and maintenance tools for the job. I don't see how using the most sensible tool for the job blows my credibility out the water, you'd be hard pressed to justify using something like Java for the sort of work I
"Because for every dozen C/C++ applications there are about 1 Java application out there. And since Java runs mostly somewhere in corporate data center, it also has much less exposure to all the security risks."
No, because Java offers inherent protection against buffer overflows, which have been the bane of C/C++ security for, well, forever.
"On the security topic, I have recently seen an example where Java service was easily tricked into dropping whole DB. Java might have removed problems with strings handling, but is still vulnerable to plain logical errors."
Yes, it's called an SQL injection attack. It's a problem that is fairly easy to solve, but most database frameworks don't solve by default. It's not a Java problem though, it's a problem that affects the wider software development industry, I don't think really any major database framework for any platform or any language does a good job of database security right now unfortunately.
"Another good example of "poor" Java security was when folks accidentally managed to "crash" a service: instead of doing anything useful it was in endless loop printing NullPointerException on a console."
That's called having crap developers, it's also a problem that effects any language, and you'd struggle to write a language that can't be broken by people who are incompetent.
"In the end, it all depends on a developer. "Secure" language is a myth. Developers simply do different mistakes in Java."
This is where I disagree, it doesn't all depend on the developer. Java and.NET aren't secure, you're right about that, but they're more secure, and there is less that the developer has to actively do to make sure their applications are secure because again, they don't need to worry about things like buffer overflows. You also have things like assembly security, and so forth too, so that even if an assembly does have a bug in it, the JVM can keep check on what it can actually do if it is compromised. The likes of C/C++ don't have these benefits, you have to manually make sure every single section of code is secure in ways that you simply do not need to in managed languages like Java and C#.
Like you say, that doesn't mean that bad developers can't still write bad software in these languages just as they can in any language, but the fundamental difference is this- in languages like C/C++ it's far too easy for even the most competent developers to miss a security vulnerability, whilst in languages like Java/C++ the window in which developers can accidently create security vulnerabilities is much smaller. So certainly Java and C# apps wont always be absolutely secure, but in general they'll be more secure than C/C++ apps and importantly, they can be developed much more quickly too.
"Very few systems (especially in house ones) require true cross platform development so that's generally irrelevant anyway."
That's too blanket a statement to be valid in the general case, it's certainly true for some companies. As I stated however, our company is Microsoft based, however even here we want to expand some of our apps onto mobile devices and we have a combination of them such that Java is the only real sensible option. Of all the companies I've worked in I've yet to work in one that only ever has a single platform throughout the entire company, they've all had the odd Linux server between their Microsoft servers, a combination of mobile devices and so forth. It's certainly not an uncommon situation to want apps to be portable. There's also the issues of larger companies which have different operating subsidiaries who have to share some apps and data, but who also are given autonomy on IT decisions from subsidiary to subsidiary- Java absolutely excels here, it acts as a common language that just works between subsidiaries pretty much whatever their platform choices.
If you're not developing in house applications and are developing to sell Java makes sense too, because there's no point writing say, a piece of helpdesk software in C#.NET, or C/C++ with multiple binaries to sell when you can just write once with Java and inherently have a product that works across Windows, Linux and Mac OS X greatly expanding your potential clientbase.
"Or maybe its a developer who doesn't have a knee jerk reaction that the tool that leads to the quickest prototype is the best."
Whose talking about prototypes? I'm referring to real working apps.
"I've developed back-end trading apps in the past that required the fastest possible throughput of data (we're talking down to milliseconds being shaved off here) to beat the competition and for that Java simply was not an option."
Really? Apparentlyy the NYSE doesn't agree with you:
"Not every "app" is some floppy piece of GUI code that sits there doing bugger all 99% of its life - some apps are back end systems that are maxed out all the working day and for that you can't beat C and C++."
Simply put, you're wrong. Java performs just as well as C/C++ in many cases, better in some, slightly worse than others. This is largely because the JIT compiler is better suited to optimising per platform, rather than per architecture like classic compilers. Plenty of case studies here for Java use in HPC for example:
The fact that you talk about Java being faster simply for prototyping, the fact you are not aware of the fact that Java performs just as well in many cases as C/C++, and the fact that you do not think Java is used for high load back end processing demonstrates one thing- you do not know enough about Java to be able to correctly evaluate whether it is the right tool for the job or not in the face of C/C++ and are a good example of the type of developer I was referring to as not being a great developer for this reason. It may well be that C/C++ was in fact the right tool for your particular solution after all (i.e. if you had some custom hardware to take advantage of), but as you clearly don't know much about Java, you cannot possibly say for sure whether that was the case or not, despite the fact you are attempting assert otherwise.
The likes of eBay runs on Java and much of Google's back end work is done with Java also. There's a good reason it's the most prominent language in business still today and has been for a while. It's because it does offer advantages, it is versatile, and yes, it ca
" - He was making arbitrary examples, which usually means in normal conversation: "All those big PC game companies you know." He probably wasnt singling out EA, but if you want to be pedantic..."
Arbitrary examples.... which aren't actually examples. Sorry, what? If you're going to provide an example of something in "normal conversation" it generally has to be you know, an actual example, rather than something quite the opposite.
"Sad but true. Why? Because console games are less intellectually stimulating and engaging on the long term. Less intellectually stimulating means that ALL households and walks of life can have a console, but few of those will know how to boot a PC. Less engaging on the long term is kinda like planned obsolescence, you want more? here's the sequel at the same artificially inflated price..."
I take it you failed high school science? Suggesting that console games are less intellectually stimulating which in itself, is merely your assumption and clearly not true, and that it means all households can buy them, even though more households in the world own a PC is quite an impressive, well, lie perhaps? By your own reasoning because PCs are far more widespread it means that PCs are actually less intellectually stimulating than consoles, but of course, I'm capable of seeing that's equally absurd.
"Unfortunately you do get people who insist that RTSs and management games actually "worked fine" on consoles"
Yes, like those people who have you know, actually played them just fine and found they do in fact work fine, over those who just want to pretend the PC doesn't have problems as a gaming platform and prefers to irrationally blame consoles for that usually.
"the fact remains that the majority of successful console games are those that dont involve lots of precision control (picking items off the screen for example) and are NOT intellectually stimulating (GOW? duuuurrrr, God of War? hulk smash...)"
Ah, another conclusion pulled from an argument that simply doesn't follow. Of the high quality AAA action games that are released for the PC (i.e. BF1942, Crysis) they all equally do very well. Action games sell because they're popular, there's more for consoles, because they sell well, and they're popular. Look at the likes of MW2, it gets lapped up on the PC like any other platform. Drawing some kind of suggestion from the popularity of action games is really quite, well, stupid. Besides, games like Halo Wars have shifted more units as the top XBox 360 exclusive RTS a year ago than Dawn of War II the PC's top selling RTS, so even RTS which people seem to class as intellectually stimulating seem to often do better on consoles which if their flawed logic is followed, would suggest that there are more "intellectual gamers" on consoles regardless.
For someone who likes to repeatedly tout the intellectual benefits of the PC as a gaming platform, you've made some pretty impressive intellectual failures in your post. Coming to conclusions based on flawed premises, and faulty logic, so even if there was some truth in the gist of your argument, it's clearly not of any real benefit regardless.
None of these really offers any suggestion that the PC is a more intellectually stimulating gaming platform, quite the opposite in fact. As I say, it's more likely that there's no difference in intellectual stimulation between the platforms at all. Besides, even the most intellectually targetted games have a level of intellectual stimulation so low that for most people they don't require much thought anyway- you'd have to have a relatively low level of intelligence to gain much in that respect from them either way, they're games, they're designed to be fun above all else after all.
"I get the point, but a lot of people get the idea to use Java if you want your apps to run anywhere, which is just idiotic, if you want it run really almost anywhere and are ready to make an extra effort, C is a far better choice than Java."
No, it's really not. Java apps are portable because they're write once, run anywhere there's a JVM. C apps are only portable if you write for every single different platform providing a suitable C compiler exists for each of those platforms.
The issue is that you're confusing a portable application, with an application that can be ported, and having to specifically port for each platform is expensive as it requires much more development time, and it creates more headaches in terms of debugging etc. as you face platform specific issues more often.
The extra effort to go cross platform on C isn't trivial, if you've got to write an IO, networking, graphics, threading abstraction layer and so forth, as well as multiple implementations of for those abstractions layers to get your app to run on multiple platforms then it's likely going to be equivalent to re-writing your entire app a few times over. What's worse is you do not get the inherent security benefits of a language like Java either, meaning the end result is a lot more work, much harder debugging of platform specific issues, much higher chance of security flaws and for what? certainly no worthwhile performance gain.
This is why C is best kept as a systems language- creating things like JVMs, drivers, kernels and so forth it's just fine for. But replacing Java for cross platform application development if Java is an option? that's insane.
Part of being a good developer is using the right tool for the job, anyone recommending C when Java is an option for cross platform development cannot possibly be classed as a good developer, advocating C over Java where Java is an option is simply the sign of a developer who is not capable of picking the right tool for the job.
I'm not even advocating Java as the be all and end all of languages, I don't use it at work, I use C# and.NET because we're a Microsoft based company and C# and.NET simply offer much better development tools, albeit at the expense of portability. It really is about using the right tool for the job to get the best balance of cost, features, and quality possible, and languages like Java have simply matured to offer a far superior solution to many of the more classic languages like C and C++, even if those languages do deserve a special place in our hearts in terms of the behemoths they once were- the languages which you could pretty much just do everything in.
Of course, it's not a new situation either, assembly programmers said about C, what C programmers say about Java. Unfortunately, those who say these are those unable to keep up with the times rather than recognise and sensibly weigh up the benefits and disadvantages of each option.
Yep, just did my daily job check, there's still around 20 new Java, 35 new.NET jobs and no C jobs whatsoever, it looks like C hasn't in fact made a massive leap overnight since I checked yesterday, and TIOBE is in fact still completely useless as you say.
Vivendi still owns Activision Blizzard, Vivendi Games was just a holding company for Sierra and Blizzard. Vivendi Universal Games was just a publisher and only ever really published a couple of games. Sierra's studios did some PC and console gaming but mostly PC (Tribes, F.E.A.R., World in Conflict, Homeworld etc.).
Vivendi hasn't gone anywhere, in fact, it's one of France's top 20 biggest companies, so is unlikely to ever go anywhere- to big to fail and all that.
In the UK it's not 0.01%, it's around a minimum of 15% of people with internet access given a conservative estimate of 7 million pirates and internet access of 48 million, but realistically the 48 million value is lower as that include people with just dialup access, people without any home access but with library access and so forth. Also, the 7 million estimate is based on people willing to answer a survey admitting performing an illegal activity.
The stats aren't perfect, but either way, suggesting 99.99% of people don't do it is way out. Even as a figure out of thin air to make a point, it clearly fails, as it misses the point that a large proportion of the population are pirating media and it isn't just a negligible minority.
I'd be willing to bet too, that out of such a sizeable proportion of the population, there's a fair few in there that use their internet access in a far more intelligent way than you do also, even if they do pirate too.
"That might be true for EA Sports, but most of what EA is comprised of today has been game development studios pretty much exclusively for the PC throughout the 90s and 00s. Have you ever heard of Populous? Syndicate? Ultima Online? Sim City? The Sims? Command and Conquer? Crysis? These are all EA franchises today."
Where exactly are Populous, Syndicate, Ultima online today? The likes of C&C have always been available on consoles too and Crysis matters what when EA has the likes of Army of Two on the consoles? For every PC franchise EA has, they have many times as many games of that genre as console franchises, if that franchise isn't itself available on consoles anyway, and if that franchise doesn't in fact make more money on consoles.
"I have tried out RTS on consoles. They suffer from imprecise commands and low resolution - and are generally less fun than C&C or Warcraft on a 15-year-old PC from the scrap heap."
This makes no sense, what exactly is imprecise? Are you working on the mistaken belief console ports of RTS games use a cursor or something like that? That's the only explanation I can think of for the imprecise argument, but that's also not how console RTS games play nowadays so it makes no sense at all.
The resolution argument is also nonsense, the resolution depends on what resolution you play at. Modern consoles run at 1080p just fine and how many people really have monitors that have resolutions beyond 1920x1200 which is roughly similar? An absolute minority that's for sure.
"So yes, I make the claim that PC games, due to the superior keyboard/mouse interface can be generally more intellectually stimulating than console games."
I'd like to see you cite a source that demonstrates that an input source with more available buttons inherently leads to more intellectually stimulating games than an input device with less buttons, but allows you to just as easily do exactly the same, except you wont be able to, because you're talking a load of nonsense. I can equally make the claim that people who play WoW all worship jesus, but it's just as nonsensical and unfounded.
"Come back to me when your console can run EVE Online, WoW, or even an equally usable port of Civilization, Rome Total War, Sim City, Transport Tycoon or Nethack."
Perhaps this is the problem? you've not been near a console in recent years? Really, I pointed out why consoles weren't as good for MMOs already so it's not suprising that you chose to mention two MMOs because the PC is short on other games to act as good examples- but regardless consoles are perfectly capable of producing equally usable ports of all those games even the MMOs, but communication in the MMOs will be the only difficulty for the afformentioned reasons in my previous post.
Still, you haven't addressed the fact that PC gaming is suffering regardless of your feelings about consoles, whilst consoles are thriving more than ever.
"Every point of that has been true for the last 25 years. It hasn't kept PC game companies like Blizzard or EA from becoming multi-billion dollar ventures which rival the largest console companies"
I'm not sure where you get the impression EA is really a PC game company. I suppose you could say it was, a long time ago, back in the 80s, but it's been as much a console game company for a long long time, think of games like Desert Strike for example from the start of the 90s that was released on the Mega Drive initially, but also platforms like the Amiga, and Atari ST. Looking it up in fact, it was released in '92, the same year as one of the PC's first real successes as a mainstream gaming platform- Wolfenstein. So to suggest EA somehow has it's roots as a PC gaming company when it's been doing games for other platforms just as long, and when through the last 20 years the majority of it's profits have come from consoles (i.e. EA sports titles) is ignorant at best, dishonest at worst.
Blizzard is however a good example of a successful PC gaming company, but it's really just a one off- the majority of it's fortunes have come from WoW and despite numerous attempts, billions of investment, countless major IPs no other PC gaming companies have managed to immitate the success of WoW which begs the question as to whether the PC gaming market only really has room for one multi-million userbase MMO in the first place, and if that's the case, it's not exactly an example of something that can be held up as evidence of a strong market when only one company can truly tie up the vast majority of it like that.
Blizzard doesn't rival the largest console companies, because it's had to merge with what is primarily a console company to stay competitive- Activision. As pointed out above, EA is for the most part a console company and has been for a long long time, so your examples really don't hold up much weight. Even the likes of id Software, one of PC gaming's finest has now been eaten up by a publisher, and this is exactly the problem- even the most succesful PC games companies have been eaten up by larger publishers who have more interest in consoles because that's where the money is, and has been for a long long time. The fact is, even the most succesful PC games developers get eaten up by companies making the majority of their profits from consoles.
If you want a real example of a succesful company that's managed to avoid being eaten up, I'd say Valve is the only real one, but again, Valve's done it by becoming a publisher, and cornering the PC digital distribution channel pretty well, rather than through just developing games.
"Why? PC games interfaces are not dumbed down for a living room interface, and thus can present more of a challenge to either creativity (Sim City, The Sims etc) or tactical/strategic skill (FPS, RTS etc). Mario, Wii Sports or Halo might be fun and can be a challenge for hand/eye, but aren't not exactly intellectually stimulating and engaging in the long term."
This paragraph is just absurd, you do realise games like Sim City had console ports that worked fine right? You do realise contrary to popular belief amongst PC gamers, there is a sizeable amount of RTS games that play just fine, and in fact, because the speed at which you can scroll is capped unlike with a mouse, competitive console RTS gaming is based far more on thinking and tactics than who has their mouse sensitivity the highest and can hit their macro'd hotkeys quickest? Processor speed, mouse sensitivity, macros and so forth are all out the window, it's an even playing field and tactics trump all. Did you really try and make the implication that PC games are somehow generally more intellectually stimulating than console games? I'm guessing you don't really know what console games are out there, because for every genre on the PC, games exist on the consoles too, and about the only genre that doesn't work well right now on consoles are MMOs, simply because typing is still the best way to communicate lots of infor
I'd also like to add when looking at the job market in the UK on www.jobsite.co.uk as I do regularly just in case I decide it's time to move on I've seen a fair few jobs citing experience on FOSS projects as a plus.
They most certainly are out there, the parents job isn't just a one off.
The only thing I will add though is that they don't necessarily pay well, all the money still seems to be in Java and.NET at the end of the day. So although I've seen plenty of job ads citing FOSS experience as an advantage, I've not seen many (or in fact any that I can recall immediately) that actually offer a decent wage. They've pretty much all been targetted at fresh graduates paying only £18,000 - £23,000 or so which is little use for experienced developers who are probably wanting to break £30k of which there are plenty of.NET and Java jobs paying that amount.
You keep noting that you haven't seen the video but feel the need to suggest you have a hard time believing what others are saying regardless.
Let me spell it out for you, because I have watched it, in the video it is absolutely clear that the majority of civilians in the group are completely unarmed, only one really looks like they have a weapon but it is a camera. It's a group of 8 people appearing very white on the camera footage, with nothing that could even be confused for a weapon standing out, again, apart from the cameras and even then, the gunners cry of "RPG" when he sees the camera is laughable, god only knows what type of RPG the insurgents have access to is that short and stubby- it's not like any RPG I've ever seen carried around in places like that.
After the shooting, one of the journalists with what appears to be his leg shot to shit is trying to crawl away to safety, the gunner says something along the lines of "Come on, pick up a weapon" because he's just desperate to shoot the guy, even though he never had a weapon to start with.
A van turns up, and starts to try and carry the injured guy into it, again, no one from the van has a weapon, there is no sign of the van having any weapons in it, the van is clearly just trying to help evacuate the wounded. The gunner is like a little kid basically saying "permission to engage" a few times which sounds in my mind more like "Can I shoot daddy? can I? please please please!" and eventually he's told yes, he can, so he does. After letting off a few rounds the dust clears and they see they got a round right through the windscreen amongst other places, and they congratulate themselves on that.
When the troops finally turn up and realise there were two kids in the van, who are carried away for treatment the gunner tries to tell himself what he does was all well and good by saying something along the lines of "Well, it's their fault, they shouldn't have bought their kids into the fight". Sorry? What fucking fight exactly? You mean carrying away the wounded?
Please, don't assume anything about the video until you have actually seen it, it's clear, wanton breach of multiple sections of the geneva convention, coupled with a few jokes and laughs about it all as they do so.
I think the issue is that by using gunships they put themselves in a position where they couldn't properly evaluate the situation.
Whilst to me, a non-military person it's quite fucking clear on my 24" monitor that the pilots screams of multiple AK47s were completely and utterly idiotic, and simply wrong, I understand that his screen inside a gunship may well be a fair bit smaller. As such, he thought he could see things he couldn't, either because he was incompetent and just wanted a reason to shoot, or because again, perhaps his screen was too small to show the level of detail he required.
So whilst I agree there's nothing wrong with using gunships against valid targets I would say that the fundamental problem is that it's harder to tell whether a target is valid, and they should've sent ground troops in to evaluate in the first place. Don't want to risk your ground troops? tough shit, you shouldn't have gone to war if you're worried about that. Really, if they'd gone in on the ground, they could've dealt with this so much better. If the gunship pilot had had no say in it there'd almost certainly be 12 less people killed in this incident.
It was purely the fact the Apache was unable to correctly evaluate the situation that made things end up the way it did- multiple dead civilians, and even innocents trying to evacuate the injured getting killed by needless 30mm cannon fire.
If the goal was to protect US soldiers, then well done, but what's the point in protecting a couple of soldiers from dying if it means 12 of the very people they were supposed to be protecting in the first place die? It makes the official and only legal reason for war pointless. It only makes sense to allow civilians to die just in case it prevents a couple of soldiers dying if your reason for war isn't in fact the safety and well being of the civilian population, and is say, oil contracts, or engineering contracts for a company like Haliburton, and well, I suspect that's really the truth of it. There was no interest in protecting the civilian population in Iraq all along, that the key was to install a leadership more open to the idea of oil contracts with the US, and this is exactly why this type of shit happens- gunships are used where they're inappropriate for protecting civilians because that's not the goal, and so civilians needlessly die.
You don't need to change the layout, or update existing applications per-se, but it depends on whether developers want to take advantages of a higher resolution.
Games would look far better, existing UI's may be able to be modified so that they're not limited by the existing low resolution for high res users and so forth. At the end of the day, there's only so much you can fit on screen per resolution, and if a higher resolution allows you to build a better UI then you're going to want to do it.
Apple need to decide if they're going to let devs use the screen resolution, if they're not then a resolution update is pointless for the most part, and means the iPhone will begin to look dated as Android devices and so forth offer much better UIs and much better looking games for example. If they are going to allow devs to access it then what are their options? They can get devs to rewrite existing apps, which may not happen or they can allow devs to explicitly make use of the new resolution and scale those that don't make use of it.
Bringing in aspect ratios is silly, because that's the same argument that was used for screen resolutions, that was used for differing hardware features like GPS, different processor speeds and so forth but throughout the iPhone's development. It's like people are grasping at this idea that the iPhone offers and will always offer a fixed platform to develop, but it's stupid to think that, Apple can't keep up and expand their offerings if the hardware can't change so they ultimately have to. Anyone developing iPhone apps would be foolish not to realise this, and not to take it into account when developing regardless, the fact is, you just don't know what hardware changes you'll have to cater to in future anymore than you do with other platforms like desktop Linux, Windows, or even Android. It's going to bite eventually, it makes sense to cater to it from the off if you're developing an app that you intend to maintain and isn't just a throwaway quick cash in like fart button apps etc.
If this is true then it's really no suprise, particularly regarding the screen resolution.
Many pointed out the issue of having to cater to different screen sizes with Android and touted the iPhone as a superior platform for development because it's hardware is static.
I've long said that it's not realistically going to stay that way, with the iPhone you already have differences between existing models that you must cater too in terms of performance and certain features. It's not suprising that resolution is now something you will also have to deal with, because the iPhone was already running at half the resolution of the likes of the Nexus One.
Of course, you might say that Apple will automatically scale apps, which is an option, but that just means the apps wont be making any use of the higher resolution.
It'll be interesting to see how Apple handles this, and with the iPad coming too, developers for Apple's platform are going to have to cater to differences just as with Android, and just as developers of desktop apps have always had to.
Realistically it could only ever be a pipe dream to keep the hardware static, else the phone would simply get dated and no other platforms based on the technology (i.e. the iPad) could ever be released. If this is true it's really a vindication of the fact that if you want your platform to advance, and stay relevant, there's no hiding behind the supposed advantage of having a static hardware platform for the sake of easier development. Developers are going to have to work and deal with differences over time regardless whether they're developing for Windows, Android or the iPhone.
Do any iPhone developers here know whether this means existing applications might have to be updated to support different resolutions? It'll be a massive job if so, so I'm guessing by default the new iPhone will indeed just scale graphics or something to start with unless an application specifically handles differing resolutions?
"- Your hand can slip, making you drift before you can react. Sideswipe or head-on collision."
How can you hand slip? Steering wheels aren't slippery. Even in the summer where my hands are sweaty I've never once found a situation where my hand could possibly slip, you've got too much grip.
"- Mid-curve you might need to make a quick-but-major adjustment due to an issue in front of you (getting cut off, debris on the road, child chasing a toy, etc)."
Why can't you do that one handed? power steering solves this problem. You don't need to make major hand movements with power steering to get that effect.
As I say, these things are such negligible issues, they're certainly not outweighed by the requirement to quickly change gear- i.e. to get more acceleration to avoid a truck driver who has fallen asleep and is straying into your lane.
I agree with your latter point in cars without power steering certainly, but it's really a non-issue with power steering. Even then though, if you need to turn the wheel a full 360 degrees or more then the distance you'd need to move your hand from the gear stick to the wheel is no different from the movement round the wheel regardless so your second hand could be on the wheel when needed anyway.
You've really just stumbled on the fundamental problem in the whole pirates vs. content industry problem.
The issue is this, the content industry aren't really simply trying to fight piracy to protect their business, if they were I think they'd have a lot more respect. The content industry are trying to control the distribution channels like they always have, to be able to continue to price gouge, but importantly, are even taking this further. They're pushing DRM because they think it means they can sell you the same product twice, something they'd be hard pressed to do when music was on standardised cassettes for years, and standardised TVs for years. Now we have a quagmire of DRM and file formats, they think to themselves, "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we could get people to buy this content at least once for every file format they require?".
I'd have a lot more respect for the industry if it was merely protecting itself, but it's not, it's trying to control an open network, it's trying to disrupt standardisation, it's trying to artificial prevent a file playing between media players you own with DRM and so forth.
Until the content industry learns to accept a customer only wishes to buy their product once, until they learn that their campaign isn't more important than fundamental human rights they're trying to get overruled for protection of their content, until the content industry learns that people want content on demand that they can keep indefinitely, use as they want and when they want without restriction, content that just works, and is fairly price then they can quite frankly, go fuck themselves. All these things can easily be achieved with modern technology and there's still billions in profit sat there for them, yet they wont, because they figure if they can just keep screwing the consumer, then there's even more profit for them.
Let's face it, the only real reason Sony gave the feature in the first place was because they wanted to bolster their case for passing the PS3 off as computer rather than an entertainment device for import tax purposes.
Other OS was just a tax dodge, one that failed in court, and when it did Sony decided to stop supporting it, that's really what it comes down to at the end of the day.
I've no doubt that you're right, GeoHot's actions are a major reason Sony have now decided to remove this feature retroactively too because keeping the feature meant they now had to use resources to ensure the feature was secure. The real blame, the majority of the blame must really go on Sony for telling their users this feature exist for the user's benefit, rather than the reality which is that it existed for Sony's benefit as an attempted tax dodge.
Sony is the real enemy for implementing a feature for the wrong reasons, and then deciding to give up supporting it when those reasons bore no fruit for them. Blame them for only ever implementing the feature for their benefit, and not the users benefit, but half-arsed pretending it was for the users benefit giving users a very misleading impression of the likelihood of continued support for the feature.
"The difference, and why the PC gaming will win in the long run? It's easier to just program a game in openGL that runs on all platforms than it is to program for wii/ps3/xbox360 where you have 3 entirely separate hardware and development requirements."
No it's not, because you have to cater to the different levels of processing power, memory, disk storage, you still have to optimise for the different iterations of difference graphics cards for each different vendor, you have to implement optimisations. You have to cater to OS differences, you have to cater to conflicting other software (anti-Virus) that might crop up and cause problems and so on.
Besides, the graphics API is largely irrelevant, any company worth their salt has a re-usable graphics abstraction layer written, and in fact, abstraction layers for most components so that's really a non-issue.
Writing for 3 platforms, is far easier than writing for literally, millions of platforms, which is the real problem with PC development. Those added development and testing requirements coupled with higher rates of piracy on PC, and lower per-unit profits coupled with lower average figures for units sold just make the PC a rather unattractive platform in comparison.
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They're not generally an option for me, and even if they were running in my constituency it wouldn't matter, being probably one of, if not the safest Labour seats in the country. I don't really have a vote because of our first past the post system, I get to turn up put my little slip in the ballot box, but it's not really a vote, it doesn't really actually matter, it's just something to pacify me as a mere citizen of the state.
At least if we had a PR system I might be able to vote, but as it stands, I'm effectively not entitled to a real vote because I do not and will not vote Labour.
It's one of the disadvantages of living in a nice rural area, that unfortunately has a few miles away from it a bunch of ex-mining villages filled with complete and utter ignorance and an interest merely in which party will give them the best benefits (Labour) and which party was most vocal against Thatcher 25 years ago (Labour), apparently those things are more important than actually, you know, voting for a party that will run the country competently.
I'm intrigued, what media outlet would you recommend as more trustworthy than The Guardian?
The Mail? The Telegraph? The Register? The Sun?
The Guardian is hardly perfect, but compared to the alternatives? It at least tries to publish news, rather than just outright lies and propaganda as with the above 4.
"Not that I'm cynical or anything but was this bill brought through the house at the beginning of a general election campaign for a reason?"
Yes, it's nearly summer and Peter Mandelson needed to make sure he fulfilled his obligations to the music industry in time to ensure he could go on another all expenses paid holiday on a yacht in Corfu again over the summer period.
The problem for the politicians is that it doesn't really matter what laws they pass. They'll never find a way now to completely prevent me gaining internet access and downloading or accessing whatever I want.
Christ, even people in our jails keep managing to find their way online with smuggled smartphones and stuff.
This news really sucks, but ultimately it's just another battle the content industry thinks they've won, but have completely and utterly lost. Each time this happens I decrease the amount of content like DVDs I buy, and simply to make a point, I'm now decreasing it to none, and shall download all the content I'd otherwise consume instead. If the political process is this far fucked (I actually watched the stich up last night) then, well, fuck the political process.
Really, they wonder why so many people don't vote, and so many vote for extremists whilst completely and utterly ignoring reasoned debate, peaceful political activisim such as writing your MPs en-masse, providing evidence that demonstrates why the laws are unquestionably flawed and so forth? If you leave people with the choice of apathy towards politics or supporting extremism to get their voice heard then it's no wonder people who want their voice heard flock to the growing far right. The rise of the far right in the UK is squarely on Labour and the Tories shoulders, they are entirely without question to blame for the situation the UK is in right.
They should be utterly ashamed of themselves that despite being caught en-masse as being completely and utterly corrupt this past couple of years stealing from the public coffer, despite seeing a massive rise in support of the far right (UKIP and the BNP), they still haven't learnt their lesson in the slightest. They're still pursuing a path of ignoring the populace, taking bribes, focussing entirely on self interest and so forth. Honestly, the death penalty wouldn't even be good enough for politicians so utterly willing to sell out their country and it's citizens and causing so much misery in the process for their own personal gain.
As much as I dislike the DEB being passed, I could care less about it because it has zero actual effect on me, and will only harm innocent people- hopefully enough to make them start caring and actually fight back. What fucks me off is the blatant and rampant corruption amongst British politicians, and the way the British political landscape is so utterly fucked, that for many, the far right is the only way to make themselves heard and even that's still not enough for many politicians. It's utterly wrong, people should be heard without having to support extremism, or themselves being rich enough to find money to bribe politicians.
I don't advocate voting BNP or UKIP for one minute, they're the scum of the earth, but christ, I'm beginning to see now why so many people resort to them nowadays with the feeling of helplessness and lack of voice the British political system leaves people with.
"Thats why you tell them."
So you compile and release separate binary for every single processor, RAM and other hardware combination which your application might run on? That's an awful lot of binaries to compile and distribute simply to get the same performance benefits that JIT compilation can provide.
"I'm not. But you were saying that they're not the best for anything, which is also clearly insane."
It is insane, but then, you're also wrong that I ever said that. I made it quite clear throughout (and think I brought it up in each of my posts in fact) that C and C++ are well placed for some things- I'd never write a device driver in Java for example. One example of a project I worked on in the past is a distributed network monitoring tool, we looked closely at Java because we'd be monitoring from Windows and Linux boxes with the tool, but Java's support for low level networking (raw sockets, and protocols like ICMP) wasn't acceptable, and so we went with C++. I fully recognise that Java does not always offer the solution, and that sometimes C or C++ are the best option, but this is what I've been getting at all along- use the best tool for the job.
"I still say that for time critical realtime systems compiled binaries are the best."
But that's exactly what modern VM based languages are, they're compiled to native code the first time they run.
"I really don't need a JVM suddenly deciding to do garbage collection if 10 milliseconds makes the difference between a good and bad price on the trading floor for a trade that was about to be processed."
You can tame the garbage collector fairly easily in Java to work with you as you want it to, in .NET you can even explicitly manage garbage collection.
I'm really not trying to be nasty about C/C++, but most of the misconceptions about managed languages today are based on lack of understanding about how far these sorts of languages have come in the last 10 years. As I've said elsewhere before, this is really the same as what we've seen when languages like C came along and all the assembly programmers were making similar comments about how C can't ever be as good as assembly for some tasks- well, as it turns out, C compilers got better than most assembly programmers in the end but also allowed much faster development of much bigger, better, more impressive applications, so yes they can. It doesn't mean assembly programmers are useless even now however, but just as with C/C++ it's useful remit is shrinking as new languages and technology take to the floor a bit more- even embedded devices which used to purely be the realm of assembly developers now generally support higher level languages better for example. It's not as if Java and .NET wont end up being displaced sometime in the future either, it's really just the way things move on that's all.
As I say, personally C/C++ have a special place for me, and I really have a lot of respect for C/C++ developers because of this, there's a certain beauty to those languages that's hard to explain. One point of concern that I see is that we end up with the opposite situation which does seem to happen all too often, particularly amongst modern graduates- we get people who know Java/.NET but who don't know C/C++ and end up trying to use Java where as we both agree, it's not always appropriate, places where C/C++ are in fact the best option. I do agree that there absolutely is a place for C/C++ development, I just disagree that it's as widespread as it once was and feel that Java has demonstrated itself well enough in many real world scenarios from eBay to the NYSE, to mobile devices, to various HPC centres across the globe to take on many of the roles that used to be reserved for C/C++.
"So their whole stated goal of removing DRM from the iTunes Store and never wanting it there in the first place... where does that fit?"
It fits in marketing mostly.
Whilst Jobs was telling us he'd love to do away with DRM, and how he hates it, but can't get rid of it because the studios force it upon him, other online music vendors like eMusic, Play and Amazon were selling DRM free music with the blessing of the music industry and often at lower prices than Apple's DRM'd versions. So what Steve Jobs said about the music industry's interest in DRM, didn't actually reflect reality, although Apple fanboys bought it (and people wonder why people joke about Steve Jobs having a reality distortion field?).
It was pretty obvious why Apple supported DRM, and it was pretty obvious why you couldn't re-download content you've bought from iTunes after the first time, even though this is a standard feature amongst the vast majority of digital content providers- it's all about profit for Apple. Apple was quite aware of the fact that iTunes got the online music distribution thing wrapped up pretty well initially, and with this success knew full well that by ensuring iTunes was difficult about syncing with other media players, and ensuring content was DRM protected with proprietary DRM, it meant that if people's iPods broke, or the battery life reached unacceptable levels and as with the majority of the consumer it meant they'd just get a new media player because of no easy battery changes in iPods, they'd have to basically go Apple again, or lose possibly hundreds of dollars they'd invested in content from Apple. Also, if people lost their content, they couldn't just re-download it again, they'd have to re-buy it.
Apples strategy has been pretty clear to anyone with any level of objectivity and clarity from day 1 - it's all about customer lock-in, to a greater degree than any other tech company in history, including Microsoft. Apple wants to make sure that if you need a new devices, or new content that you HAVE to buy Apple, or face losing out other investments. It's all about making sure that if you go Apple, you have to reasonably stay Apple or suffer even more expensive consequences.
Of course, Apple finally caved on DRM but only after the likes of Amazon started to really eat into their marketshare, and when they did cave, they did so by introducing higher prices- a reasonable way for them to offset the loss in lock in profits I suppose.
If people think Microsoft is bad with their proprietary office software and formats causing corporate lock-in then they'd run for the hills if they evaluate the level of lock-in that Apple pushes.
Of course, the obvious solution for most of us is to just not ever go Apple in the first place. But it's those like my girlfriend who don't understand the issues of DRM that get sucked in, such that when her iPod failed, she found she couldn't move the content off of it to her Android phone (which did everything she wanted, why should she have to buy a new iPod as well?). I solved it for her by just downloading MP3 copies of her music- I don't care about the legality of it, it was morally by far the correct solution.
Regarding Apple and open source, the only reason Apple support open source is because they need it to help them do the things they can't do well in house. They only support it where they have to to the degree that some members of the OSS community aren't put off writing software that benefits Apple and beyond that point, where they can do stuff in house well, they've demonstrated time and time again they're not interested in OSS. To them it's just a business tool, they certainly have no interest in supporting the ideology itself, else they wouldn't have so many closed source products, they wouldn't push h264 as the HTML5 video standard and so forth. Microsoft releases FOSS stuff too, but that doesn't mean they support the ideology, they just use it where it suits them, no different to Apple, the difference is Microsoft doesn't really try and
"Well my experience in a number of different arenas suggests otherwise. JVMs consistently lag in speed, memory used and CPU utilisation compared to a compiled binaries (written in any language) not to mention I/O throughput, poor memory mapping functionality"
Sorry, that's simply not true. I'll explain below in response to your other comment.
"no forking, virtually non existent process control (yes , process, not thread) ability, no interprocess pipes, no tty control and in general just lame support for OS APIs."
A lot of this is really irrelevant to the discussion, as I don't disagree if you want to do systems level stuff that Java and .NET are probably not the best options. Languages like Java and .NET language implementations abstract things away specifically so they are portable, if you need to be working with OS level APIs then you're right, Java and the likes of C# are not the tool for you, but most people do not need these things for many applications. That said, if you really do want it, there's still the option of JNI in Java and unmanaged code in C# regardless so you can still keep the unmanaged benefits where possible without the disadvantages throughout your entire codebase.
"So you're saying it only optimises based on the type of OS, not the type of CPU. Yes , I can see how that would be better. Not."
No, that's not what I'm saying. This is the issue again, you do not seem to understand how managed languages work and why they perform well now. The issue is this, C/C++ compilers can optimise a binary they compile only for a generic architecture, because they cannot tell what platform they will be run on. JIT compilers like those underlying Java and .NET nowadays still compile applications down to native code just like C compilers do, but as they compile JIT they can optimise for the exact machine that the application is being run on taking into account specific processor, RAM availability and so forth- they can do a much more specific set of optimisations than a C/C++ compiler. This is the reason Java performs as well as C/C++ in the vast majority of cases, and even performs better in some cases nowadays. The performance problem for managed languages is largely a solved issue nowadays.
"And you're the typical kind of arrogant know-it-all who just goes by what he's been told rather than first hand experience. So any views you have to offer are worthless frankly IMO."
This makes no sense, you're talking Java down with a clear lack of understanding about it, yet I'm responding to correct you precisely because I have actually got experience in multiple different languages including all those being discussed. The point is I do have first hand experience, whilst your lack of understanding about managed languages shows you simply do not.
"Well that blows any credibility you had out the water. WHy not google the fun the London Stock Exchange had with .NET and why they eventually ditched it along with Windows."
Ah, that's probably a bad example. LSE had .NET problems because of bad development, and not because of any inherent issue with .NET. You see, the reason I state that's a bad example, is because a few months back, the LSE ran into exactly the same set of issues with their shiny new Linux based implementation, oops-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/26/london-stock-exchange-crashes
Really, you couldn't have picked a worse example. Besides, I'm not doing HPC stuff at the moment, I'm using .NET simply because it fits the bill for the current projects perfectly, and because it offers the most rapid development, testing and maintenance tools for the job. I don't see how using the most sensible tool for the job blows my credibility out the water, you'd be hard pressed to justify using something like Java for the sort of work I
"Because for every dozen C/C++ applications there are about 1 Java application out there. And since Java runs mostly somewhere in corporate data center, it also has much less exposure to all the security risks."
No, because Java offers inherent protection against buffer overflows, which have been the bane of C/C++ security for, well, forever.
"On the security topic, I have recently seen an example where Java service was easily tricked into dropping whole DB. Java might have removed problems with strings handling, but is still vulnerable to plain logical errors."
Yes, it's called an SQL injection attack. It's a problem that is fairly easy to solve, but most database frameworks don't solve by default. It's not a Java problem though, it's a problem that affects the wider software development industry, I don't think really any major database framework for any platform or any language does a good job of database security right now unfortunately.
"Another good example of "poor" Java security was when folks accidentally managed to "crash" a service: instead of doing anything useful it was in endless loop printing NullPointerException on a console."
That's called having crap developers, it's also a problem that effects any language, and you'd struggle to write a language that can't be broken by people who are incompetent.
"In the end, it all depends on a developer. "Secure" language is a myth. Developers simply do different mistakes in Java."
This is where I disagree, it doesn't all depend on the developer. Java and .NET aren't secure, you're right about that, but they're more secure, and there is less that the developer has to actively do to make sure their applications are secure because again, they don't need to worry about things like buffer overflows. You also have things like assembly security, and so forth too, so that even if an assembly does have a bug in it, the JVM can keep check on what it can actually do if it is compromised. The likes of C/C++ don't have these benefits, you have to manually make sure every single section of code is secure in ways that you simply do not need to in managed languages like Java and C#.
Like you say, that doesn't mean that bad developers can't still write bad software in these languages just as they can in any language, but the fundamental difference is this- in languages like C/C++ it's far too easy for even the most competent developers to miss a security vulnerability, whilst in languages like Java/C++ the window in which developers can accidently create security vulnerabilities is much smaller. So certainly Java and C# apps wont always be absolutely secure, but in general they'll be more secure than C/C++ apps and importantly, they can be developed much more quickly too.
"Very few systems (especially in house ones) require true cross platform development so that's generally irrelevant anyway."
That's too blanket a statement to be valid in the general case, it's certainly true for some companies. As I stated however, our company is Microsoft based, however even here we want to expand some of our apps onto mobile devices and we have a combination of them such that Java is the only real sensible option. Of all the companies I've worked in I've yet to work in one that only ever has a single platform throughout the entire company, they've all had the odd Linux server between their Microsoft servers, a combination of mobile devices and so forth. It's certainly not an uncommon situation to want apps to be portable. There's also the issues of larger companies which have different operating subsidiaries who have to share some apps and data, but who also are given autonomy on IT decisions from subsidiary to subsidiary- Java absolutely excels here, it acts as a common language that just works between subsidiaries pretty much whatever their platform choices.
If you're not developing in house applications and are developing to sell Java makes sense too, because there's no point writing say, a piece of helpdesk software in C# .NET, or C/C++ with multiple binaries to sell when you can just write once with Java and inherently have a product that works across Windows, Linux and Mac OS X greatly expanding your potential clientbase.
"Or maybe its a developer who doesn't have a knee jerk reaction that the tool that leads to the quickest prototype is the best."
Whose talking about prototypes? I'm referring to real working apps.
"I've developed back-end trading apps in the past that required the fastest possible throughput of data (we're talking down to milliseconds being shaved off here) to beat the competition and for that Java simply was not an option."
Really? Apparentlyy the NYSE doesn't agree with you:
http://www.nyse.com/tradingsolutions/transacttools/1204674243385.html
"Not every "app" is some floppy piece of GUI code that sits there doing bugger all 99% of its life - some apps are back end systems that are maxed out all the working day and for that you can't beat C and C++."
Simply put, you're wrong. Java performs just as well as C/C++ in many cases, better in some, slightly worse than others. This is largely because the JIT compiler is better suited to optimising per platform, rather than per architecture like classic compilers. Plenty of case studies here for Java use in HPC for example:
http://www.sun.com/customers/index.xml?soln=31a8487e-0f60-11da-99bc-080020a9ed93&page=1&sort=date&asc=false
The fact that you talk about Java being faster simply for prototyping, the fact you are not aware of the fact that Java performs just as well in many cases as C/C++, and the fact that you do not think Java is used for high load back end processing demonstrates one thing- you do not know enough about Java to be able to correctly evaluate whether it is the right tool for the job or not in the face of C/C++ and are a good example of the type of developer I was referring to as not being a great developer for this reason. It may well be that C/C++ was in fact the right tool for your particular solution after all (i.e. if you had some custom hardware to take advantage of), but as you clearly don't know much about Java, you cannot possibly say for sure whether that was the case or not, despite the fact you are attempting assert otherwise.
The likes of eBay runs on Java and much of Google's back end work is done with Java also. There's a good reason it's the most prominent language in business still today and has been for a while. It's because it does offer advantages, it is versatile, and yes, it ca
" - He was making arbitrary examples, which usually means in normal conversation: "All those big PC game companies you know." He probably wasnt singling out EA, but if you want to be pedantic..."
Arbitrary examples.... which aren't actually examples. Sorry, what? If you're going to provide an example of something in "normal conversation" it generally has to be you know, an actual example, rather than something quite the opposite.
"Sad but true. Why? Because console games are less intellectually stimulating and engaging on the long term. Less intellectually stimulating means that ALL households and walks of life can have a console, but few of those will know how to boot a PC. Less engaging on the long term is kinda like planned obsolescence, you want more? here's the sequel at the same artificially inflated price..."
I take it you failed high school science? Suggesting that console games are less intellectually stimulating which in itself, is merely your assumption and clearly not true, and that it means all households can buy them, even though more households in the world own a PC is quite an impressive, well, lie perhaps? By your own reasoning because PCs are far more widespread it means that PCs are actually less intellectually stimulating than consoles, but of course, I'm capable of seeing that's equally absurd.
"Unfortunately you do get people who insist that RTSs and management games actually "worked fine" on consoles"
Yes, like those people who have you know, actually played them just fine and found they do in fact work fine, over those who just want to pretend the PC doesn't have problems as a gaming platform and prefers to irrationally blame consoles for that usually.
"the fact remains that the majority of successful console games are those that dont involve lots of precision control (picking items off the screen for example) and are NOT intellectually stimulating (GOW? duuuurrrr, God of War? hulk smash...)"
Ah, another conclusion pulled from an argument that simply doesn't follow. Of the high quality AAA action games that are released for the PC (i.e. BF1942, Crysis) they all equally do very well. Action games sell because they're popular, there's more for consoles, because they sell well, and they're popular. Look at the likes of MW2, it gets lapped up on the PC like any other platform. Drawing some kind of suggestion from the popularity of action games is really quite, well, stupid. Besides, games like Halo Wars have shifted more units as the top XBox 360 exclusive RTS a year ago than Dawn of War II the PC's top selling RTS, so even RTS which people seem to class as intellectually stimulating seem to often do better on consoles which if their flawed logic is followed, would suggest that there are more "intellectual gamers" on consoles regardless.
For someone who likes to repeatedly tout the intellectual benefits of the PC as a gaming platform, you've made some pretty impressive intellectual failures in your post. Coming to conclusions based on flawed premises, and faulty logic, so even if there was some truth in the gist of your argument, it's clearly not of any real benefit regardless.
None of these really offers any suggestion that the PC is a more intellectually stimulating gaming platform, quite the opposite in fact. As I say, it's more likely that there's no difference in intellectual stimulation between the platforms at all. Besides, even the most intellectually targetted games have a level of intellectual stimulation so low that for most people they don't require much thought anyway- you'd have to have a relatively low level of intelligence to gain much in that respect from them either way, they're games, they're designed to be fun above all else after all.
"I get the point, but a lot of people get the idea to use Java if you want your apps to run anywhere, which is just idiotic, if you want it run really almost anywhere and are ready to make an extra effort, C is a far better choice than Java."
No, it's really not. Java apps are portable because they're write once, run anywhere there's a JVM. C apps are only portable if you write for every single different platform providing a suitable C compiler exists for each of those platforms.
The issue is that you're confusing a portable application, with an application that can be ported, and having to specifically port for each platform is expensive as it requires much more development time, and it creates more headaches in terms of debugging etc. as you face platform specific issues more often.
The extra effort to go cross platform on C isn't trivial, if you've got to write an IO, networking, graphics, threading abstraction layer and so forth, as well as multiple implementations of for those abstractions layers to get your app to run on multiple platforms then it's likely going to be equivalent to re-writing your entire app a few times over. What's worse is you do not get the inherent security benefits of a language like Java either, meaning the end result is a lot more work, much harder debugging of platform specific issues, much higher chance of security flaws and for what? certainly no worthwhile performance gain.
This is why C is best kept as a systems language- creating things like JVMs, drivers, kernels and so forth it's just fine for. But replacing Java for cross platform application development if Java is an option? that's insane.
Part of being a good developer is using the right tool for the job, anyone recommending C when Java is an option for cross platform development cannot possibly be classed as a good developer, advocating C over Java where Java is an option is simply the sign of a developer who is not capable of picking the right tool for the job.
I'm not even advocating Java as the be all and end all of languages, I don't use it at work, I use C# and .NET because we're a Microsoft based company and C# and .NET simply offer much better development tools, albeit at the expense of portability. It really is about using the right tool for the job to get the best balance of cost, features, and quality possible, and languages like Java have simply matured to offer a far superior solution to many of the more classic languages like C and C++, even if those languages do deserve a special place in our hearts in terms of the behemoths they once were- the languages which you could pretty much just do everything in.
Of course, it's not a new situation either, assembly programmers said about C, what C programmers say about Java. Unfortunately, those who say these are those unable to keep up with the times rather than recognise and sensibly weigh up the benefits and disadvantages of each option.
Yep, just did my daily job check, there's still around 20 new Java, 35 new .NET jobs and no C jobs whatsoever, it looks like C hasn't in fact made a massive leap overnight since I checked yesterday, and TIOBE is in fact still completely useless as you say.
Vivendi still owns Activision Blizzard, Vivendi Games was just a holding company for Sierra and Blizzard. Vivendi Universal Games was just a publisher and only ever really published a couple of games. Sierra's studios did some PC and console gaming but mostly PC (Tribes, F.E.A.R., World in Conflict, Homeworld etc.).
Vivendi hasn't gone anywhere, in fact, it's one of France's top 20 biggest companies, so is unlikely to ever go anywhere- to big to fail and all that.
In the UK it's not 0.01%, it's around a minimum of 15% of people with internet access given a conservative estimate of 7 million pirates and internet access of 48 million, but realistically the 48 million value is lower as that include people with just dialup access, people without any home access but with library access and so forth. Also, the 7 million estimate is based on people willing to answer a survey admitting performing an illegal activity.
The stats aren't perfect, but either way, suggesting 99.99% of people don't do it is way out. Even as a figure out of thin air to make a point, it clearly fails, as it misses the point that a large proportion of the population are pirating media and it isn't just a negligible minority.
I'd be willing to bet too, that out of such a sizeable proportion of the population, there's a fair few in there that use their internet access in a far more intelligent way than you do also, even if they do pirate too.
"That might be true for EA Sports, but most of what EA is comprised of today has been game development studios pretty much exclusively for the PC throughout the 90s and 00s. Have you ever heard of Populous? Syndicate? Ultima Online? Sim City? The Sims? Command and Conquer? Crysis? These are all EA franchises today."
Where exactly are Populous, Syndicate, Ultima online today? The likes of C&C have always been available on consoles too and Crysis matters what when EA has the likes of Army of Two on the consoles? For every PC franchise EA has, they have many times as many games of that genre as console franchises, if that franchise isn't itself available on consoles anyway, and if that franchise doesn't in fact make more money on consoles.
"I have tried out RTS on consoles. They suffer from imprecise commands and low resolution - and are generally less fun than C&C or Warcraft on a 15-year-old PC from the scrap heap."
This makes no sense, what exactly is imprecise? Are you working on the mistaken belief console ports of RTS games use a cursor or something like that? That's the only explanation I can think of for the imprecise argument, but that's also not how console RTS games play nowadays so it makes no sense at all.
The resolution argument is also nonsense, the resolution depends on what resolution you play at. Modern consoles run at 1080p just fine and how many people really have monitors that have resolutions beyond 1920x1200 which is roughly similar? An absolute minority that's for sure.
"So yes, I make the claim that PC games, due to the superior keyboard/mouse interface can be generally more intellectually stimulating than console games."
I'd like to see you cite a source that demonstrates that an input source with more available buttons inherently leads to more intellectually stimulating games than an input device with less buttons, but allows you to just as easily do exactly the same, except you wont be able to, because you're talking a load of nonsense. I can equally make the claim that people who play WoW all worship jesus, but it's just as nonsensical and unfounded.
"Come back to me when your console can run EVE Online, WoW, or even an equally usable port of Civilization, Rome Total War, Sim City, Transport Tycoon or Nethack."
Perhaps this is the problem? you've not been near a console in recent years? Really, I pointed out why consoles weren't as good for MMOs already so it's not suprising that you chose to mention two MMOs because the PC is short on other games to act as good examples- but regardless consoles are perfectly capable of producing equally usable ports of all those games even the MMOs, but communication in the MMOs will be the only difficulty for the afformentioned reasons in my previous post.
Still, you haven't addressed the fact that PC gaming is suffering regardless of your feelings about consoles, whilst consoles are thriving more than ever.
"Every point of that has been true for the last 25 years. It hasn't kept PC game companies like Blizzard or EA from becoming multi-billion dollar ventures which rival the largest console companies"
I'm not sure where you get the impression EA is really a PC game company. I suppose you could say it was, a long time ago, back in the 80s, but it's been as much a console game company for a long long time, think of games like Desert Strike for example from the start of the 90s that was released on the Mega Drive initially, but also platforms like the Amiga, and Atari ST. Looking it up in fact, it was released in '92, the same year as one of the PC's first real successes as a mainstream gaming platform- Wolfenstein. So to suggest EA somehow has it's roots as a PC gaming company when it's been doing games for other platforms just as long, and when through the last 20 years the majority of it's profits have come from consoles (i.e. EA sports titles) is ignorant at best, dishonest at worst.
Blizzard is however a good example of a successful PC gaming company, but it's really just a one off- the majority of it's fortunes have come from WoW and despite numerous attempts, billions of investment, countless major IPs no other PC gaming companies have managed to immitate the success of WoW which begs the question as to whether the PC gaming market only really has room for one multi-million userbase MMO in the first place, and if that's the case, it's not exactly an example of something that can be held up as evidence of a strong market when only one company can truly tie up the vast majority of it like that.
Blizzard doesn't rival the largest console companies, because it's had to merge with what is primarily a console company to stay competitive- Activision. As pointed out above, EA is for the most part a console company and has been for a long long time, so your examples really don't hold up much weight. Even the likes of id Software, one of PC gaming's finest has now been eaten up by a publisher, and this is exactly the problem- even the most succesful PC games companies have been eaten up by larger publishers who have more interest in consoles because that's where the money is, and has been for a long long time. The fact is, even the most succesful PC games developers get eaten up by companies making the majority of their profits from consoles.
If you want a real example of a succesful company that's managed to avoid being eaten up, I'd say Valve is the only real one, but again, Valve's done it by becoming a publisher, and cornering the PC digital distribution channel pretty well, rather than through just developing games.
"Why? PC games interfaces are not dumbed down for a living room interface, and thus can present more of a challenge to either creativity (Sim City, The Sims etc) or tactical/strategic skill (FPS, RTS etc). Mario, Wii Sports or Halo might be fun and can be a challenge for hand/eye, but aren't not exactly intellectually stimulating and engaging in the long term."
This paragraph is just absurd, you do realise games like Sim City had console ports that worked fine right? You do realise contrary to popular belief amongst PC gamers, there is a sizeable amount of RTS games that play just fine, and in fact, because the speed at which you can scroll is capped unlike with a mouse, competitive console RTS gaming is based far more on thinking and tactics than who has their mouse sensitivity the highest and can hit their macro'd hotkeys quickest? Processor speed, mouse sensitivity, macros and so forth are all out the window, it's an even playing field and tactics trump all. Did you really try and make the implication that PC games are somehow generally more intellectually stimulating than console games? I'm guessing you don't really know what console games are out there, because for every genre on the PC, games exist on the consoles too, and about the only genre that doesn't work well right now on consoles are MMOs, simply because typing is still the best way to communicate lots of infor
I'd also like to add when looking at the job market in the UK on www.jobsite.co.uk as I do regularly just in case I decide it's time to move on I've seen a fair few jobs citing experience on FOSS projects as a plus.
They most certainly are out there, the parents job isn't just a one off.
The only thing I will add though is that they don't necessarily pay well, all the money still seems to be in Java and .NET at the end of the day. So although I've seen plenty of job ads citing FOSS experience as an advantage, I've not seen many (or in fact any that I can recall immediately) that actually offer a decent wage. They've pretty much all been targetted at fresh graduates paying only £18,000 - £23,000 or so which is little use for experienced developers who are probably wanting to break £30k of which there are plenty of .NET and Java jobs paying that amount.
You keep noting that you haven't seen the video but feel the need to suggest you have a hard time believing what others are saying regardless.
Let me spell it out for you, because I have watched it, in the video it is absolutely clear that the majority of civilians in the group are completely unarmed, only one really looks like they have a weapon but it is a camera. It's a group of 8 people appearing very white on the camera footage, with nothing that could even be confused for a weapon standing out, again, apart from the cameras and even then, the gunners cry of "RPG" when he sees the camera is laughable, god only knows what type of RPG the insurgents have access to is that short and stubby- it's not like any RPG I've ever seen carried around in places like that.
After the shooting, one of the journalists with what appears to be his leg shot to shit is trying to crawl away to safety, the gunner says something along the lines of "Come on, pick up a weapon" because he's just desperate to shoot the guy, even though he never had a weapon to start with.
A van turns up, and starts to try and carry the injured guy into it, again, no one from the van has a weapon, there is no sign of the van having any weapons in it, the van is clearly just trying to help evacuate the wounded. The gunner is like a little kid basically saying "permission to engage" a few times which sounds in my mind more like "Can I shoot daddy? can I? please please please!" and eventually he's told yes, he can, so he does. After letting off a few rounds the dust clears and they see they got a round right through the windscreen amongst other places, and they congratulate themselves on that.
When the troops finally turn up and realise there were two kids in the van, who are carried away for treatment the gunner tries to tell himself what he does was all well and good by saying something along the lines of "Well, it's their fault, they shouldn't have bought their kids into the fight". Sorry? What fucking fight exactly? You mean carrying away the wounded?
Please, don't assume anything about the video until you have actually seen it, it's clear, wanton breach of multiple sections of the geneva convention, coupled with a few jokes and laughs about it all as they do so.
I think the issue is that by using gunships they put themselves in a position where they couldn't properly evaluate the situation.
Whilst to me, a non-military person it's quite fucking clear on my 24" monitor that the pilots screams of multiple AK47s were completely and utterly idiotic, and simply wrong, I understand that his screen inside a gunship may well be a fair bit smaller. As such, he thought he could see things he couldn't, either because he was incompetent and just wanted a reason to shoot, or because again, perhaps his screen was too small to show the level of detail he required.
So whilst I agree there's nothing wrong with using gunships against valid targets I would say that the fundamental problem is that it's harder to tell whether a target is valid, and they should've sent ground troops in to evaluate in the first place. Don't want to risk your ground troops? tough shit, you shouldn't have gone to war if you're worried about that. Really, if they'd gone in on the ground, they could've dealt with this so much better. If the gunship pilot had had no say in it there'd almost certainly be 12 less people killed in this incident.
It was purely the fact the Apache was unable to correctly evaluate the situation that made things end up the way it did- multiple dead civilians, and even innocents trying to evacuate the injured getting killed by needless 30mm cannon fire.
If the goal was to protect US soldiers, then well done, but what's the point in protecting a couple of soldiers from dying if it means 12 of the very people they were supposed to be protecting in the first place die? It makes the official and only legal reason for war pointless. It only makes sense to allow civilians to die just in case it prevents a couple of soldiers dying if your reason for war isn't in fact the safety and well being of the civilian population, and is say, oil contracts, or engineering contracts for a company like Haliburton, and well, I suspect that's really the truth of it. There was no interest in protecting the civilian population in Iraq all along, that the key was to install a leadership more open to the idea of oil contracts with the US, and this is exactly why this type of shit happens- gunships are used where they're inappropriate for protecting civilians because that's not the goal, and so civilians needlessly die.
You don't need to change the layout, or update existing applications per-se, but it depends on whether developers want to take advantages of a higher resolution.
Games would look far better, existing UI's may be able to be modified so that they're not limited by the existing low resolution for high res users and so forth. At the end of the day, there's only so much you can fit on screen per resolution, and if a higher resolution allows you to build a better UI then you're going to want to do it.
Apple need to decide if they're going to let devs use the screen resolution, if they're not then a resolution update is pointless for the most part, and means the iPhone will begin to look dated as Android devices and so forth offer much better UIs and much better looking games for example. If they are going to allow devs to access it then what are their options? They can get devs to rewrite existing apps, which may not happen or they can allow devs to explicitly make use of the new resolution and scale those that don't make use of it.
Bringing in aspect ratios is silly, because that's the same argument that was used for screen resolutions, that was used for differing hardware features like GPS, different processor speeds and so forth but throughout the iPhone's development. It's like people are grasping at this idea that the iPhone offers and will always offer a fixed platform to develop, but it's stupid to think that, Apple can't keep up and expand their offerings if the hardware can't change so they ultimately have to. Anyone developing iPhone apps would be foolish not to realise this, and not to take it into account when developing regardless, the fact is, you just don't know what hardware changes you'll have to cater to in future anymore than you do with other platforms like desktop Linux, Windows, or even Android. It's going to bite eventually, it makes sense to cater to it from the off if you're developing an app that you intend to maintain and isn't just a throwaway quick cash in like fart button apps etc.
If this is true then it's really no suprise, particularly regarding the screen resolution.
Many pointed out the issue of having to cater to different screen sizes with Android and touted the iPhone as a superior platform for development because it's hardware is static.
I've long said that it's not realistically going to stay that way, with the iPhone you already have differences between existing models that you must cater too in terms of performance and certain features. It's not suprising that resolution is now something you will also have to deal with, because the iPhone was already running at half the resolution of the likes of the Nexus One.
Of course, you might say that Apple will automatically scale apps, which is an option, but that just means the apps wont be making any use of the higher resolution.
It'll be interesting to see how Apple handles this, and with the iPad coming too, developers for Apple's platform are going to have to cater to differences just as with Android, and just as developers of desktop apps have always had to.
Realistically it could only ever be a pipe dream to keep the hardware static, else the phone would simply get dated and no other platforms based on the technology (i.e. the iPad) could ever be released. If this is true it's really a vindication of the fact that if you want your platform to advance, and stay relevant, there's no hiding behind the supposed advantage of having a static hardware platform for the sake of easier development. Developers are going to have to work and deal with differences over time regardless whether they're developing for Windows, Android or the iPhone.
Do any iPhone developers here know whether this means existing applications might have to be updated to support different resolutions? It'll be a massive job if so, so I'm guessing by default the new iPhone will indeed just scale graphics or something to start with unless an application specifically handles differing resolutions?
"- Your hand can slip, making you drift before you can react. Sideswipe or head-on collision."
How can you hand slip? Steering wheels aren't slippery. Even in the summer where my hands are sweaty I've never once found a situation where my hand could possibly slip, you've got too much grip.
"- Mid-curve you might need to make a quick-but-major adjustment due to an issue in front of you (getting cut off, debris on the road, child chasing a toy, etc)."
Why can't you do that one handed? power steering solves this problem. You don't need to make major hand movements with power steering to get that effect.
As I say, these things are such negligible issues, they're certainly not outweighed by the requirement to quickly change gear- i.e. to get more acceleration to avoid a truck driver who has fallen asleep and is straying into your lane.
I agree with your latter point in cars without power steering certainly, but it's really a non-issue with power steering. Even then though, if you need to turn the wheel a full 360 degrees or more then the distance you'd need to move your hand from the gear stick to the wheel is no different from the movement round the wheel regardless so your second hand could be on the wheel when needed anyway.
You've really just stumbled on the fundamental problem in the whole pirates vs. content industry problem.
The issue is this, the content industry aren't really simply trying to fight piracy to protect their business, if they were I think they'd have a lot more respect. The content industry are trying to control the distribution channels like they always have, to be able to continue to price gouge, but importantly, are even taking this further. They're pushing DRM because they think it means they can sell you the same product twice, something they'd be hard pressed to do when music was on standardised cassettes for years, and standardised TVs for years. Now we have a quagmire of DRM and file formats, they think to themselves, "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we could get people to buy this content at least once for every file format they require?".
I'd have a lot more respect for the industry if it was merely protecting itself, but it's not, it's trying to control an open network, it's trying to disrupt standardisation, it's trying to artificial prevent a file playing between media players you own with DRM and so forth.
Until the content industry learns to accept a customer only wishes to buy their product once, until they learn that their campaign isn't more important than fundamental human rights they're trying to get overruled for protection of their content, until the content industry learns that people want content on demand that they can keep indefinitely, use as they want and when they want without restriction, content that just works, and is fairly price then they can quite frankly, go fuck themselves. All these things can easily be achieved with modern technology and there's still billions in profit sat there for them, yet they wont, because they figure if they can just keep screwing the consumer, then there's even more profit for them.
Let's face it, the only real reason Sony gave the feature in the first place was because they wanted to bolster their case for passing the PS3 off as computer rather than an entertainment device for import tax purposes.
Other OS was just a tax dodge, one that failed in court, and when it did Sony decided to stop supporting it, that's really what it comes down to at the end of the day.
I've no doubt that you're right, GeoHot's actions are a major reason Sony have now decided to remove this feature retroactively too because keeping the feature meant they now had to use resources to ensure the feature was secure. The real blame, the majority of the blame must really go on Sony for telling their users this feature exist for the user's benefit, rather than the reality which is that it existed for Sony's benefit as an attempted tax dodge.
Sony is the real enemy for implementing a feature for the wrong reasons, and then deciding to give up supporting it when those reasons bore no fruit for them. Blame them for only ever implementing the feature for their benefit, and not the users benefit, but half-arsed pretending it was for the users benefit giving users a very misleading impression of the likelihood of continued support for the feature.
"The difference, and why the PC gaming will win in the long run? It's easier to just program a game in openGL that runs on all platforms than it is to program for wii/ps3/xbox360 where you have 3 entirely separate hardware and development requirements."
No it's not, because you have to cater to the different levels of processing power, memory, disk storage, you still have to optimise for the different iterations of difference graphics cards for each different vendor, you have to implement optimisations. You have to cater to OS differences, you have to cater to conflicting other software (anti-Virus) that might crop up and cause problems and so on.
Besides, the graphics API is largely irrelevant, any company worth their salt has a re-usable graphics abstraction layer written, and in fact, abstraction layers for most components so that's really a non-issue.
Writing for 3 platforms, is far easier than writing for literally, millions of platforms, which is the real problem with PC development. Those added development and testing requirements coupled with higher rates of piracy on PC, and lower per-unit profits coupled with lower average figures for units sold just make the PC a rather unattractive platform in comparison.