I'm really getting bored of meaningless statistics such as "my software renderer is better then your software renderer because it can run Far Cry at a FPS of 6 rather than 5", which forget the essentials: when it comes to playability 6 IS NO BETTER THAN 5! In fact, 7 is not better than 5, nor is 10, nor is 15. Starting from 20 FPS this might be somewhat meaningful!
Please refrain from cluttering teh Interweb with more meaningless statistics
Have a nice day,
The Spaghetti Monster
Oh come one people, this seriously cannot be the real reason he wanted to switch OS. From the TFA and the introduction in CIO Magazine about the root cause of this change I seem to gather that John was annoyed with the updates that installed themselves and antivirus updates and so on. Any of these can be turned off or set to be manually installed later, and Windows instability? Yes, when you load it up with a hole bunch of applications, some legacy, some from vendors who don't know how to properly integrate their product with the OS, you might get some instability. Resolution to this sort of problems lies in application virtualization (see SoftGrid) or Terminal Services, or Citrix, which does incur bigger support costs, but maybe not as large as supporting >=4 OSes.
I cannot seriously see from the guy's description or even the CIO Mag's a real problem with the OS. I'd rather put this on account of his bias (also mentioned in TFA).
Please note that this is not in any way a bash of Ubuntu, SuSE, OS X or any other OS mentioned. I agree that they are more fit to do some jobs better than others. Hell, I even run Hoary Hedgehog on my old PC (converted to a sort of media-center). It's just the arguments are dubious.
Sure, I can see your point, and I agree with you in what you're saying, but your example is flawed. Allow me to expand: you're using Leonardo, Newton, Einstein and Pasteur as examples, but, apart from being considered geniuses, what do these people have in common? Is it the fact that they've discovered altogether a new branch of science or a science in itself, and they lived in a period when that was easy to do (i.e. not many people knew much about biology, vaccines, physics. Einstein actually may be excluded here, since physics had already progressed quite a lot in his time, so let's say that he is a good example. Nonetheless, science is increasingly harder to do with every year or dare I say month passing. Almost every branch of science has now evolved to be so complex that it almost requires external data storage for the brain. Just learning the science is painstakingly slow and difficult, never you mind revolutionising it!
I can also give a counter-example, although it might not be a good one as it involves myself. Anyway, I'm studying Logic for Computer Science, as it is - at least to my knowledge - the basis for automated theorem proving, partly for artificial intelligence, compiler development and more. Now I want to learn AI (as it applies to game development), even maybe understand it enough to speculate on my own, but the concepts are so difficult to grasp and the time so short that I'm left dumbstruck just wondering what the hell have I gotten myself into. Now this might be just "freshman anxiety syndrome", but it also shows that we're not as flexible as times demand. Learning should be taken to a different level, especially involving advanced concepts and sciences.
I agree with you on the teachers not allowing questions or not being flexibile enough. I'm guessing they're just too tired of hearing the same questions again and again. But then again, if they've heard a question numerous times, why don't they include the answer to it in their lecture or something? Oh well, this is already too long, CmdrTaco might begin to charge me for the extra storage space this post takes ^^
I'm sorry, but after having watched the "documentary", I was slightly shocked. How is searching for your kid's condition on the Internet relevant to the success of Google? I mean sure, there's the obvious connection that is supposedly formed in anyone's mind upon seeing/hearing this: nobody could help her, she searched Google, she found help there -> Google is a life saver. That page that she found might as well have been a hypochondriac club website in which semi-professional people are paranoid about a new mole on their skin. How can any sound-thinking human being associate Google to rescuing that girl from blindness after being told the facts? Something isn't right here. I mean is it just me or is BBC trying too hard to put Google in a good light? And it's not just the little girl example, the ones following are even more preposterous: a detective using Google as a means of finding information about people? Sure, a lot of people leave traces of their identities on different websites, but Google just searches, the websites are already there. Google itself only aggregates the info, so again, this is sort of blurry. Even considering how easy it is to steal someone's identity using the web today if you're skilled enough, that still is not enough to prove that the Internet is somehow relevant for finding the guy your wife's cheating you with.
Just get the facts and judge them for yourselves. You think Google is going to turn into its antagonistical self and consume every soul on the planet and that Larry and Serghey are The Antichrist? This is just media hype, time to wake up and smell the monopoly.
If what you say is true, then it must be that even _admitting_ the fact openly won't hurt their reader base significanly. While this should not be a problem for PC Gamer's budget, it is an issue of public concern. Marketing has been getting a whole new dimension recently by using the old press-as-guardian-of-free-speech paradigm - though I'd prefer to call it cliche. The prime exemple of this is "I, Robot", a movie which, without much relation to the video gaming industry, uncovers the lengths the producers will go to in order to promote their products. Video games aren't entertainment anymore, they're marketainment, with a few good exceptions. Most of them look like they're the result of some horribly gone wrong cloning experiment!
Now I'm not suggesting we figure out a new Power of State, this should sort itself out when enough people have opened their eyes to the problem and take steps to fix it (steps such as not buying the magazines anymore, which, if done in significant numbers, should make them ask themselves a question or two about allegiances). What I am suggesting is keeping an eye out for guys such as McKenna who, though not alone, are trying to tell the public that they're being screwed and they're paying for it! Keep up the good work.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm really getting bored of meaningless statistics such as "my software renderer is better then your software renderer because it can run Far Cry at a FPS of 6 rather than 5", which forget the essentials: when it comes to playability 6 IS NO BETTER THAN 5! In fact, 7 is not better than 5, nor is 10, nor is 15. Starting from 20 FPS this might be somewhat meaningful! Please refrain from cluttering teh Interweb with more meaningless statistics Have a nice day, The Spaghetti Monster
Oh come one people, this seriously cannot be the real reason he wanted to switch OS. From the TFA and the introduction in CIO Magazine about the root cause of this change I seem to gather that John was annoyed with the updates that installed themselves and antivirus updates and so on. Any of these can be turned off or set to be manually installed later, and Windows instability? Yes, when you load it up with a hole bunch of applications, some legacy, some from vendors who don't know how to properly integrate their product with the OS, you might get some instability. Resolution to this sort of problems lies in application virtualization (see SoftGrid) or Terminal Services, or Citrix, which does incur bigger support costs, but maybe not as large as supporting >=4 OSes.
I cannot seriously see from the guy's description or even the CIO Mag's a real problem with the OS. I'd rather put this on account of his bias (also mentioned in TFA).
Please note that this is not in any way a bash of Ubuntu, SuSE, OS X or any other OS mentioned. I agree that they are more fit to do some jobs better than others. Hell, I even run Hoary Hedgehog on my old PC (converted to a sort of media-center). It's just the arguments are dubious.
Sure, I can see your point, and I agree with you in what you're saying, but your example is flawed. Allow me to expand: you're using Leonardo, Newton, Einstein and Pasteur as examples, but, apart from being considered geniuses, what do these people have in common? Is it the fact that they've discovered altogether a new branch of science or a science in itself, and they lived in a period when that was easy to do (i.e. not many people knew much about biology, vaccines, physics. Einstein actually may be excluded here, since physics had already progressed quite a lot in his time, so let's say that he is a good example. Nonetheless, science is increasingly harder to do with every year or dare I say month passing. Almost every branch of science has now evolved to be so complex that it almost requires external data storage for the brain. Just learning the science is painstakingly slow and difficult, never you mind revolutionising it!
I can also give a counter-example, although it might not be a good one as it involves myself. Anyway, I'm studying Logic for Computer Science, as it is - at least to my knowledge - the basis for automated theorem proving, partly for artificial intelligence, compiler development and more. Now I want to learn AI (as it applies to game development), even maybe understand it enough to speculate on my own, but the concepts are so difficult to grasp and the time so short that I'm left dumbstruck just wondering what the hell have I gotten myself into. Now this might be just "freshman anxiety syndrome", but it also shows that we're not as flexible as times demand. Learning should be taken to a different level, especially involving advanced concepts and sciences.
I agree with you on the teachers not allowing questions or not being flexibile enough. I'm guessing they're just too tired of hearing the same questions again and again. But then again, if they've heard a question numerous times, why don't they include the answer to it in their lecture or something? Oh well, this is already too long, CmdrTaco might begin to charge me for the extra storage space this post takes ^^
I'm sorry, but after having watched the "documentary", I was slightly shocked. How is searching for your kid's condition on the Internet relevant to the success of Google? I mean sure, there's the obvious connection that is supposedly formed in anyone's mind upon seeing/hearing this: nobody could help her, she searched Google, she found help there -> Google is a life saver. That page that she found might as well have been a hypochondriac club website in which semi-professional people are paranoid about a new mole on their skin. How can any sound-thinking human being associate Google to rescuing that girl from blindness after being told the facts? Something isn't right here. I mean is it just me or is BBC trying too hard to put Google in a good light? And it's not just the little girl example, the ones following are even more preposterous: a detective using Google as a means of finding information about people? Sure, a lot of people leave traces of their identities on different websites, but Google just searches, the websites are already there. Google itself only aggregates the info, so again, this is sort of blurry. Even considering how easy it is to steal someone's identity using the web today if you're skilled enough, that still is not enough to prove that the Internet is somehow relevant for finding the guy your wife's cheating you with.
Just get the facts and judge them for yourselves. You think Google is going to turn into its antagonistical self and consume every soul on the planet and that Larry and Serghey are The Antichrist? This is just media hype, time to wake up and smell the monopoly.