Games like Pac man and Tetris don't evolve as you play deeper, they just get harder. YOu have the same tools and abilitys on stage one that you have on stage 101. And in fact, not much changes other than the difficulty
Exactly, and there isn't anything wrong with that if the basic gameplay is good. My wife and I can both play Tetris for hours on end even now, with little changing but that elusive high score. The same goes for Bejeweled.
This doesn't seem to account for Pac-Man or Tetris, two games which had broad appeal despite not really being able to "win" the game. Most casual gamers like a good puzzle game, note the success of Popcap games (particularly Bejeweled.) I think it's more an issue of gameplay balance, ramping the difficulty level up appropriately such that average players aren't frustrated immediately and the "hardcore" still have something to look forward to in the later levels.
Doubtful, virtual machines aren't much good for gaming. Most home users will just dual boot for this reason. Boot Camp isn't subject to the restriction, as it's no different than dual booting on a PC. More likely this is a swipe at VMware users, particularly those using the server-based products and the large number of companies using VMware for development.
As it happens, my home system runs Linux. I use VMware to remove any need to dual boot. The rule clearly covers my case, so however you view it, it's not good. Still, I imagine in a few years I'll be able to pick up a relatively cheap copy of the "ultimate" version of Vista sans early adopter bugs. At that time RAM will be cheaper, PCs more powerful, and thus Vista will no longer seem such the resource hog that it does now. It's better to wait for Vista until then IMO.
While I have more games than Wii Sports, and consoles other than the Wii, I can see why others might just want that one game. Declaring it 'stupid' is the primary flaw in your logic; a lack of intelligence is not required, simply a strong desire to try something new. You'll understand in time.
Change "real people" to "most people" and I believe he has a point. There are clearly more people who do not play console games than those who do. Declaring them to be stupid is an interesting take, based on which I'd wager that you're either in your mid to upper teens or possibly your twenties. I've been there, and as a gamer I can understand your sentiments. Once you get past that point however, you'll find that most people have a different set of priorities. Video games are not even a secondary concern, other elements like family become more important. Games that one can pick up easily, which is what the Wii console seems to do very well, are far easier to work into a busy schedule. The ability to bring the entire family into the experience makes it more attractive.
The PSP's battery gives up the ghost a bit too early for me, unless it's just used as a music player. When I'm flying back and forth to Japan, a 10 to 11 hour flight, the DS Lite can run the entire time. The only caveat is that you have to be careful to not enable wireless features; RF transmission is not allowed during flight.
I don't see a problem with it, I owned and played through both NiGHTS and Christmas NiGHTS many times. Particularly with the latter game, I can definitely see how mask-based themes could fit into the NiGHTS dream-based world. Think something like Kirby. It doesn't need to be a barrier, it can and should be totally optional, but it might present new ways of getting through a level.
My Honda Civic gets between 27mpg (for mostly stop-and-go city traffic) and 41mpg (long trips on the highway). I wouldn't call it expensive. It's bigger and has more leg room than my last car, an old Dodge Colt hatchback. The Colt had about the same mileage as your Prizm, and similar emissions characteristics. The Civic sounds pretty close to what you're looking for, there's even a hybrid version with better gas mileage.
On the other hand, the insane amount of fragmentation we've seen in the "screw you guys, I'm starting my own distro" space has nothing to do with market forces and everything to do with geek egos.
Or possibly with disenchantment with the direction that the current players are taking. I know I'm in that boat, and there's no OS vendor that currently offers precisely what I'm looking for. Not MS, having used their products for many years and still having to deal with the cruft; not Apple, as a former Mac user; not Sun, although I still work with Solaris; none of the BSDs, nor any one of the myriad operating systems and distributions I've used over the past 20 years.
I started running Mandrake years ago based on the direction that Gael had taken a Redhat fork several years ago, since that seemed to be the only Linux distro at the time that was moving toward what I was looking for right out of the box (simple, scriptable installs, well supported KDE desktop, automated dependency resolution, totally Free-as-in-speech core, user-centric approach, good security tools, decent compatibility with most other systems). Ubuntu is sort of there, but I'm not interested in a Gnome distribution. It just doesn't feel right to me, YMMV of course. Unfortunately, Mandriva hasn't exactly continued along the path of a smooth user experience. Update servers glitch and so do the updates sometimes. Their forums don't seem very customer-centric these days, and getting involved with development is surprisingly chaotic.
I say good luck to Gael and his new team. Hopefully they will take the seemingly half-hearted Kubuntu core and get it right. This might be my next distro, assuming everything pulls together.
Having configured X11 displays for a long time, I can tell you that it's true with older versions of X and older monitors. Newer versions of the common X11 servers (XFree86 4 and x.org) use the VESA GTF algorithms, along with EDID information from the monitor, to determine which video mode to use. See gtf(1) for details. You can override this information, but if the X server can determine the capabilities of the monitor it will prevent you from going outside the device's limitations. In any case, modern monitors will typically tell you that they cannot sync to the frequency coming from the computer and shut down the display, preventing these issues.
There are plenty of other games with virtual wars, riots and pillaging. Second Life is something different, and probably more interesting due to this difference. I'm sure the rest will come with time as people play the system, but Linden Labs should probably see what happens with Virtual Realty first.
Look at the resume on the domain owner's website. 2005-Present: "Contractor at Microsoft, Redmond, WA". Seems to have a bit to do with Microsoft. *shrug* Let them have their fun. I imagine most Linux users, like myself, are those who have used MS (and in my case, Apple) products - and would just rather not deal with the licensing, inability to fix things without Microsoft's assistance, and forced upgrades.
Dell Precision workstations are great; we use them for most of our Linux systems, with a few exceptions such as the aforementioned HP workstations. I have one on my desk at work. They come with fast buses, tend to support multiple processors, and provide good expandability. The graphics cards they come with tend to be Quadro series as well, although we've had a few that came with cheap cards like the Radeon VX. If we need graphics performance, odds are we're likely to replace what comes in one anyway.
In any case, they're well built systems intended to be workstations. If you're buying your system for a company or large organization, you're not likely worried about gaming performance but supportability. As I mentioned, the alternatives are fine for personal use. The other n series systems are ok if you want a naked PC, as are the multitude of vendors you mentioned. My real point (if we can step back for a moment and look at the big picture) is that we can indeed order Linux systems from PC vendors; the article is beating a dead horse, and one that really isn't as true as it once was.
What I read was "IT Professionals" are not able to purchase them. I'm assuming that IT Professionals can get a system if they want one. We don't actually have an account manager; and it's not a business as such, although it is a large organization. We buy Dell systems all the time, and often purchase them with Linux.
I've already posted links to where you can purchase them, but if you want to click to an n-series Precision workstation, go to Dell's website; Hover over the "Desktops" link, and choose "Medium or Large Business"; Choose "Dell Precision"; Linux is now an option on the systems. You don't need an account to get there, we do it all the time. Dell packages the n-series Precision systems with RHEL Linux WS4 at this time, fully installed and with media.
If you want Linux on a Dell system pre-installed, get a Precision-series n system. They're only sold in the "Medium and Large Business" and "Government" segments of their website, but I'm sure they'll sell one to you if you want to buy it. They do in fact support these models with Linux. Not that I disagree about supporting smaller vendors mind you, that's always a good idea. If you work in a large enough facility though, you'll see the value of a vendor which can provide and support hardware in larger quantities.
They're already including one based on DOS, it's called the Dell Diagnostics CD. You can download the ISO for a given system from Dell's support site. I've used them on Precision series workstations and Latitude series notebooks, as that's typically what we use at work.
We can and have purchased systems from Dell and HP without Windows. We purchase Precision n-series workstations from Dell, which always come with Linux, and XW9000 series workstations from HP. Both arrive with RHEL Linux WS4 when we buy them. Here are a few links:
As for the non-Precision n Series, FreeDOS isn't there for troubleshooting as such. Dell's diagnostic CDs remove the need for an OS when troubleshooting basic hardware issues. It's simply a token OS bundle to avoid the "naked" PC campaign run by a certain OS vendor, and doesn't require significant support on Dell's end. The result little different from a "naked" PC for an end user, unless they truly wanted a DOS box.
Dell sells the n series with FreeDOS. That's about as close to a naked PC as you can get. They also sell workstation-class systems (the Precision series) with Linux pre-installed, we buy them at work. You can even download drivers that work from their site, as I found out recently with a Precision 690 running WS4. Their sound drivers went in, and after removing the included non-functional driver everything worked great. I can't complain. HP also sells Linux systems, and we have a few.
Aside from those vendors, and numerous others that specialize in Linux, I build my own systems for home use. Not a one of them has ever come with Windows.
It really depends on the problem; some do benefit from MPI, but often these are utilizing algorithms where interprocess communication can be used to share results or prune the input set. For problems where you just need to crunch a large set of data in discrete processes, results are independent, and pruning cannot happen, batch scheduling can be at least as efficient when done properly.
I do work in a HPC environment, and we have a number of clusters available which are utilized through batch processing as well as software interfaces such as OpenMPI.
In defense of the batch system, assuming we definine parallel as "at the same time", and not "inter-node communication", one should be fine with the multiple processes approach. There are a number of commercial and open source schedulers which will do the work for you, including node weighting for systems with different numbers of processors and/or processor speeds. As long as the nodes are not doing anything else, the OS schedulers do the right thing.
Given that it's simpler to write, debug and verify single threaded code, pushing multiple instances of an application to a cluster's nodes can reduce development time. Not requiring direct communication between the nodes also allows execution the same application on multiple clusters as seen in grids, indeed even multiple architectures. It also lowers network overhead, unless you introduce InfiniBand or Myranet interfaces (which are costly.)
Agreed, it's never a good idea to put all of your eggs in one basket. The biggest problems I've seen while supporting Outlook clients have been corrupt PST files, either due to Outlook crashes or exceeding the PST file size limit. Not too long ago that limit was 2GB. Even if you upgraded to the newest Office release though, you still needed to create a new PST file and move all your mail into it before you can raise the limit. Then you get to tell Outlook which PST to use for mail, primary address book and such, which is just as fun. I'll take a set of mbox files or a Maildir structure any day.
*shrug* I view BSD vs. GPL as similar to Anarchy vs. Constitution-based law. It could be argued that anarchy allows more freedom, however the law of might makes right is still fully in effect. Free will is only truly available to those who can stand and exert it. Law allows more people to exert their will, even if some freedoms might be restricted.
The GPL likewise turns copyright on its head, allowing more people to do what they want with the software. It allows freedom of distribution for end users, while still leaving the author some extent of control over where their source goes and how it is modified WRT commercial software and its vendors (who tend to have quite a bit of legal clout.)
Let us not however dwell upon these trifles, lest we ignore the wonder that is remote controlled pigeons. No religious war should drive us to such a travesty.
Well, that would depend on your will, wouldn't it? Most people who choose the GPL (assuming they understand the license) want their software to remain free for their users, including derivative changes. IMO it's more free than BSD due to its protections, but I won't argue some religious war with you here. You'll need to find another sucker.
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Probably, that's around the time I actually got off my arse (figuratively of course) and applied for one.
Games like Pac man and Tetris don't evolve as you play deeper, they just get harder. YOu have the same tools and abilitys on stage one that you have on stage 101. And in fact, not much changes other than the difficulty
Exactly, and there isn't anything wrong with that if the basic gameplay is good. My wife and I can both play Tetris for hours on end even now, with little changing but that elusive high score. The same goes for Bejeweled.
This doesn't seem to account for Pac-Man or Tetris, two games which had broad appeal despite not really being able to "win" the game. Most casual gamers like a good puzzle game, note the success of Popcap games (particularly Bejeweled.) I think it's more an issue of gameplay balance, ramping the difficulty level up appropriately such that average players aren't frustrated immediately and the "hardcore" still have something to look forward to in the later levels.
Doubtful, virtual machines aren't much good for gaming. Most home users will just dual boot for this reason. Boot Camp isn't subject to the restriction, as it's no different than dual booting on a PC. More likely this is a swipe at VMware users, particularly those using the server-based products and the large number of companies using VMware for development.
As it happens, my home system runs Linux. I use VMware to remove any need to dual boot. The rule clearly covers my case, so however you view it, it's not good. Still, I imagine in a few years I'll be able to pick up a relatively cheap copy of the "ultimate" version of Vista sans early adopter bugs. At that time RAM will be cheaper, PCs more powerful, and thus Vista will no longer seem such the resource hog that it does now. It's better to wait for Vista until then IMO.
While I have more games than Wii Sports, and consoles other than the Wii, I can see why others might just want that one game. Declaring it 'stupid' is the primary flaw in your logic; a lack of intelligence is not required, simply a strong desire to try something new. You'll understand in time.
Change "real people" to "most people" and I believe he has a point. There are clearly more people who do not play console games than those who do. Declaring them to be stupid is an interesting take, based on which I'd wager that you're either in your mid to upper teens or possibly your twenties. I've been there, and as a gamer I can understand your sentiments. Once you get past that point however, you'll find that most people have a different set of priorities. Video games are not even a secondary concern, other elements like family become more important. Games that one can pick up easily, which is what the Wii console seems to do very well, are far easier to work into a busy schedule. The ability to bring the entire family into the experience makes it more attractive.
The PSP's battery gives up the ghost a bit too early for me, unless it's just used as a music player. When I'm flying back and forth to Japan, a 10 to 11 hour flight, the DS Lite can run the entire time. The only caveat is that you have to be careful to not enable wireless features; RF transmission is not allowed during flight.
I don't see a problem with it, I owned and played through both NiGHTS and Christmas NiGHTS many times. Particularly with the latter game, I can definitely see how mask-based themes could fit into the NiGHTS dream-based world. Think something like Kirby. It doesn't need to be a barrier, it can and should be totally optional, but it might present new ways of getting through a level.
My Honda Civic gets between 27mpg (for mostly stop-and-go city traffic) and 41mpg (long trips on the highway). I wouldn't call it expensive. It's bigger and has more leg room than my last car, an old Dodge Colt hatchback. The Colt had about the same mileage as your Prizm, and similar emissions characteristics. The Civic sounds pretty close to what you're looking for, there's even a hybrid version with better gas mileage.
On the other hand, the insane amount of fragmentation we've seen in the "screw you guys, I'm starting my own distro" space has nothing to do with market forces and everything to do with geek egos.
Or possibly with disenchantment with the direction that the current players are taking. I know I'm in that boat, and there's no OS vendor that currently offers precisely what I'm looking for. Not MS, having used their products for many years and still having to deal with the cruft; not Apple, as a former Mac user; not Sun, although I still work with Solaris; none of the BSDs, nor any one of the myriad operating systems and distributions I've used over the past 20 years.
I started running Mandrake years ago based on the direction that Gael had taken a Redhat fork several years ago, since that seemed to be the only Linux distro at the time that was moving toward what I was looking for right out of the box (simple, scriptable installs, well supported KDE desktop, automated dependency resolution, totally Free-as-in-speech core, user-centric approach, good security tools, decent compatibility with most other systems). Ubuntu is sort of there, but I'm not interested in a Gnome distribution. It just doesn't feel right to me, YMMV of course. Unfortunately, Mandriva hasn't exactly continued along the path of a smooth user experience. Update servers glitch and so do the updates sometimes. Their forums don't seem very customer-centric these days, and getting involved with development is surprisingly chaotic.
I say good luck to Gael and his new team. Hopefully they will take the seemingly half-hearted Kubuntu core and get it right. This might be my next distro, assuming everything pulls together.
Having configured X11 displays for a long time, I can tell you that it's true with older versions of X and older monitors. Newer versions of the common X11 servers (XFree86 4 and x.org) use the VESA GTF algorithms, along with EDID information from the monitor, to determine which video mode to use. See gtf(1) for details. You can override this information, but if the X server can determine the capabilities of the monitor it will prevent you from going outside the device's limitations. In any case, modern monitors will typically tell you that they cannot sync to the frequency coming from the computer and shut down the display, preventing these issues.
There are plenty of other games with virtual wars, riots and pillaging. Second Life is something different, and probably more interesting due to this difference. I'm sure the rest will come with time as people play the system, but Linden Labs should probably see what happens with Virtual Realty first.
Look at the resume on the domain owner's website. 2005-Present: "Contractor at Microsoft, Redmond, WA". Seems to have a bit to do with Microsoft. *shrug* Let them have their fun. I imagine most Linux users, like myself, are those who have used MS (and in my case, Apple) products - and would just rather not deal with the licensing, inability to fix things without Microsoft's assistance, and forced upgrades.
Dell Precision workstations are great; we use them for most of our Linux systems, with a few exceptions such as the aforementioned HP workstations. I have one on my desk at work. They come with fast buses, tend to support multiple processors, and provide good expandability. The graphics cards they come with tend to be Quadro series as well, although we've had a few that came with cheap cards like the Radeon VX. If we need graphics performance, odds are we're likely to replace what comes in one anyway.
In any case, they're well built systems intended to be workstations. If you're buying your system for a company or large organization, you're not likely worried about gaming performance but supportability. As I mentioned, the alternatives are fine for personal use. The other n series systems are ok if you want a naked PC, as are the multitude of vendors you mentioned. My real point (if we can step back for a moment and look at the big picture) is that we can indeed order Linux systems from PC vendors; the article is beating a dead horse, and one that really isn't as true as it once was.
What I read was "IT Professionals" are not able to purchase them. I'm assuming that IT Professionals can get a system if they want one. We don't actually have an account manager; and it's not a business as such, although it is a large organization. We buy Dell systems all the time, and often purchase them with Linux.
I've already posted links to where you can purchase them, but if you want to click to an n-series Precision workstation, go to Dell's website; Hover over the "Desktops" link, and choose "Medium or Large Business"; Choose "Dell Precision"; Linux is now an option on the systems. You don't need an account to get there, we do it all the time. Dell packages the n-series Precision systems with RHEL Linux WS4 at this time, fully installed and with media.
If you want Linux on a Dell system pre-installed, get a Precision-series n system. They're only sold in the "Medium and Large Business" and "Government" segments of their website, but I'm sure they'll sell one to you if you want to buy it. They do in fact support these models with Linux. Not that I disagree about supporting smaller vendors mind you, that's always a good idea. If you work in a large enough facility though, you'll see the value of a vendor which can provide and support hardware in larger quantities.
Have a look at this link, to one of the n series PCs:
x ?c=us&cs=19&kc=6V440&l=en&oc=DDCWAN3&s=dhs
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.asp
It's on the right side of the page, just search for "FreeDOS".
They're already including one based on DOS, it's called the Dell Diagnostics CD. You can download the ISO for a given system from Dell's support site. I've used them on Precision series workstations and Latitude series notebooks, as that's typically what we use at work.
We can and have purchased systems from Dell and HP without Windows. We purchase Precision n-series workstations from Dell, which always come with Linux, and XW9000 series workstations from HP. Both arrive with RHEL Linux WS4 when we buy them. Here are a few links:
. aspx?categoryid=precn&sysCat=Workstations&pid=6_B_ precn_2147483647&cs=RC9569345 4-12454-296719-307907-296721.html
http://premier.dell.com/portal/catalog/SeriesPage
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF04a/124
As for the non-Precision n Series, FreeDOS isn't there for troubleshooting as such. Dell's diagnostic CDs remove the need for an OS when troubleshooting basic hardware issues. It's simply a token OS bundle to avoid the "naked" PC campaign run by a certain OS vendor, and doesn't require significant support on Dell's end. The result little different from a "naked" PC for an end user, unless they truly wanted a DOS box.
Dell sells the n series with FreeDOS. That's about as close to a naked PC as you can get. They also sell workstation-class systems (the Precision series) with Linux pre-installed, we buy them at work. You can even download drivers that work from their site, as I found out recently with a Precision 690 running WS4. Their sound drivers went in, and after removing the included non-functional driver everything worked great. I can't complain. HP also sells Linux systems, and we have a few.
Aside from those vendors, and numerous others that specialize in Linux, I build my own systems for home use. Not a one of them has ever come with Windows.
It really depends on the problem; some do benefit from MPI, but often these are utilizing algorithms where interprocess communication can be used to share results or prune the input set. For problems where you just need to crunch a large set of data in discrete processes, results are independent, and pruning cannot happen, batch scheduling can be at least as efficient when done properly.
I do work in a HPC environment, and we have a number of clusters available which are utilized through batch processing as well as software interfaces such as OpenMPI.
In defense of the batch system, assuming we definine parallel as "at the same time", and not "inter-node communication", one should be fine with the multiple processes approach. There are a number of commercial and open source schedulers which will do the work for you, including node weighting for systems with different numbers of processors and/or processor speeds. As long as the nodes are not doing anything else, the OS schedulers do the right thing.
Given that it's simpler to write, debug and verify single threaded code, pushing multiple instances of an application to a cluster's nodes can reduce development time. Not requiring direct communication between the nodes also allows execution the same application on multiple clusters as seen in grids, indeed even multiple architectures. It also lowers network overhead, unless you introduce InfiniBand or Myranet interfaces (which are costly.)
Agreed, it's never a good idea to put all of your eggs in one basket. The biggest problems I've seen while supporting Outlook clients have been corrupt PST files, either due to Outlook crashes or exceeding the PST file size limit. Not too long ago that limit was 2GB. Even if you upgraded to the newest Office release though, you still needed to create a new PST file and move all your mail into it before you can raise the limit. Then you get to tell Outlook which PST to use for mail, primary address book and such, which is just as fun. I'll take a set of mbox files or a Maildir structure any day.
*shrug* I view BSD vs. GPL as similar to Anarchy vs. Constitution-based law. It could be argued that anarchy allows more freedom, however the law of might makes right is still fully in effect. Free will is only truly available to those who can stand and exert it. Law allows more people to exert their will, even if some freedoms might be restricted.
The GPL likewise turns copyright on its head, allowing more people to do what they want with the software. It allows freedom of distribution for end users, while still leaving the author some extent of control over where their source goes and how it is modified WRT commercial software and its vendors (who tend to have quite a bit of legal clout.)
Let us not however dwell upon these trifles, lest we ignore the wonder that is remote controlled pigeons. No religious war should drive us to such a travesty.
Well, that would depend on your will, wouldn't it? Most people who choose the GPL (assuming they understand the license) want their software to remain free for their users, including derivative changes. IMO it's more free than BSD due to its protections, but I won't argue some religious war with you here. You'll need to find another sucker.