As it happens I tried listening to both of these this morning, but was disappointed. They seem to spend most of their time joking around. Perhaps I've been spoiled; the first podcast I listened to was The Word Nerds, and very little I've listened to since has come close to that quality.
I think it's highly unlikely that there's lots of PSP languishing somewhere in a warehouse. They are really hard to get hold of - almost everywhere has sold out. There won't be many units in "some shop[s] no-one cares about" because those shops wouldn't have had many allocated to them in the first place.
2.53 Million units in Europe is pretty impressive, seeing as it's only been out here for less than two months. It'll be interesting to see what the post-Christmas figures are like. In the UK at the moment it's extremely difficult to get hold of a new (non-import) one - everywhere is sold out. I wonder if Sony will be able to meet demand in time for Christmas?
Actually, Maya runs very well under Linux - At my last job almost everybody (we're talking a couple of hundered TDs/Animators here) moved over to Linux from Windows. Photoshop was another matter though - although some people used it via Crossover Office, most people who had to use it a lot had a second machine just to run it on. There's really no serious alternative.
However I'm talking Post Production here. Now I'm back in the games industry I'm back on Windows again.
With 20 years and 95% market share they had the time, money and resources to create the most advanced operating system ever. Instead, all they ever produced was "good enough" - never on the leading edge, never innovative.
I'd like to know where the phantasmal operating systems were that we could have had that were 'leading edge' and 'innovative'. The only candidate that's come along recently was OSX, which was unfortunately crippled to only run on proprietary hardware.
I'd go so far as to say that Windows 95 was pretty leading edge when it came out. Unlike the Apple operating systems of the time it had proper multitasking, and it had a lot of nice features. Was it as nice as NeXT? No, but unlike NeXT it did run on the kind of hardware affordable in the home. This is the thing about Windows - it could run on 'affordable' hardware. The first versions of Windows would run on 8086 machines, and Windows 3.0 could run on 80286 machines. The kind of 'advanced' operating system you seem to think they should have made just wouldn't be possible on their target systems. And remember, they also had to as far as possible maintain compatibility between versions.
Could Windows have been better? Sure it could, but as nobody else has managed to do any better than them, and that suggests to me it's not as easy as you make out.
2) The EU is trying to be relevant here. And they'd like a way to control the internet for taxation purposes. They've stated that many times in the past.
4) Lets fact it the EU has a fundamentally different view of free speech than the U.S. we can't reconcile it here or anywhere, so that disagreement will always be there. In what way? There are some minor differences, but in both the US and the EU the freedom of speech if firmly enshrined in law.
Carmack referred to rocketry as plumbing but with the volume turned up. Guess it's not quite that easy.
To be fair, they have got their ships in the air several times, it's just getting them down accelerating at less that 9.8m/s^2 that seems to have been giving them problems;-).
I think they're doing quite well considering they're basically five or six guys working in their spare time.
I think you're reaching with your 10Gb of data assertion. The majority of the expensive data (textures etc) will stay the same and exe patches and other changes could be stored on a memory stick. It could be that some superficial enhancements could only be available to hard drive owners. Perhaps some things will stream over the network. Perhaps for whole new areas you'll have to order a new DVD.
What I'm saying is this: Considering that you know fuck all about the Xbox 360 compared to J. Allard, I don't really think you're in a position to call him a liar.
True, but companies have also invested quite a lot in Maya as well (expertise, scripts, plugins etc.)
Having seen the transition from Windows to Linux, I think that the transition from Linux to Windows could actually be less pain than transferring from Maya to XSI. With cygwin many scripts could be kept, and much renderfarm could still stick on Linux.
Interesting. I don't remember that being the case when we switched over, but then I was in the R&D department rather than being a TD, so most of the test scenes I was working with didn't tend to be as big as the production ones anyway.
Until recently I worked at Europe's largest post production house. Most animation and modelling was done on Maya on Linux machines. If Autodesk were to drop their Linux version of Maya, I think the company would probably consider moving back to Windows to follow it, although they would probably also look very seriously at moving some production over to XSI instead. The thing is, it's probably cheaper to move desktops over to Windows than it is to get everybody retrained on XSI and rewrite all the existing custom Maya stuff that the company has accumulated.
So I don't think it's a sure thing that companies would drop Maya rather than go back to Windows.
Having said that, Autodesk would be rather stupid to drop Linux Maya as I'm sure that some people would just change to XSI instead.
I believe it's more likely that Autodesk would use Alias's knowledge of LInux to help them port more of their existing products over to Linux, rather than insist that Alias change to their way of working.
The point is not that *people* want to know where they are in cities, it's that their *devices* do.
For instance, you could tell your PDA to remind you to pick up something the next time that you are near a certain shop, or remind you to do something half an hour after you get home (giving you time to sit down with a nice cup of tea first...).
While you've had a lot of replies arguing about whether or not the US is the only country founded on individual rights, I think that's missing the point.
The point is that America is a country founded on American's individual rights. Although the life, liberty and access to justice is seen as very important for its own citizens, America does not seem to feel that the citizens of other countries deserve the same level of justice.
America may possibly be the best single country to do this, but some feel that it shouldn't be left to a single country.
It depends a lot on the platform. I could conceivably see Python used in PC and possibly next-generation games, but for current generation consoles, it's too large. It's very difficult to get the code alone under 1MB, whereas the Lua code can fit within 100KB.
There seems to be this attitude that a crack will inevitably come out fairly quickly.
I don't think that's the case.
I think many slashdotters are overly confident just because the original Xbox got hacked and we've manage to hack CSS, but you've got to remember a couple of things: Firstly, the original Xbox was the first hardware of that type that Microsoft had created. They put in some protection but it wasn't good enough. I'm sure they have learnt from their mistakes and it will be considerably more difficult to crack this time around. Secondly, with CSS it took quite a long time to get a crack and that was due (IIRC) to a CSS licensor screwing up and leaving the key unprotected in the firmware.
Now, it's possible that Microsoft have screwed up again, but it's by no means a sure thing.
Slashdot Mirror
As it happens I tried listening to both of these this morning, but was disappointed. They seem to spend most of their time joking around. Perhaps I've been spoiled; the first podcast I listened to was The Word Nerds, and very little I've listened to since has come close to that quality.
It's odd that they've not included any Semprons or Celerons in there...
I think it's highly unlikely that there's lots of PSP languishing somewhere in a warehouse. They are really hard to get hold of - almost everywhere has sold out. There won't be many units in "some shop[s] no-one cares about" because those shops wouldn't have had many allocated to them in the first place.
2.53 Million units in Europe is pretty impressive, seeing as it's only been out here for less than two months. It'll be interesting to see what the post-Christmas figures are like. In the UK at the moment it's extremely difficult to get hold of a new (non-import) one - everywhere is sold out. I wonder if Sony will be able to meet demand in time for Christmas?
God forbid that you wouldn't want to have your PC turned on all of the time!
Actually, Maya runs very well under Linux - At my last job almost everybody (we're talking a couple of hundered TDs/Animators here) moved over to Linux from Windows. Photoshop was another matter though - although some people used it via Crossover Office, most people who had to use it a lot had a second machine just to run it on. There's really no serious alternative.
However I'm talking Post Production here. Now I'm back in the games industry I'm back on Windows again.
That's what I thought, but that's not the way it sounded in that Wikipedia article.
Okay, so 3.0 required a 386.
With 20 years and 95% market share they had the time, money and resources to create the most advanced operating system ever. Instead, all they ever produced was "good enough" - never on the leading edge, never innovative.
I'd like to know where the phantasmal operating systems were that we could have had that were 'leading edge' and 'innovative'. The only candidate that's come along recently was OSX, which was unfortunately crippled to only run on proprietary hardware.
I'd go so far as to say that Windows 95 was pretty leading edge when it came out. Unlike the Apple operating systems of the time it had proper multitasking, and it had a lot of nice features. Was it as nice as NeXT? No, but unlike NeXT it did run on the kind of hardware affordable in the home. This is the thing about Windows - it could run on 'affordable' hardware. The first versions of Windows would run on 8086 machines, and Windows 3.0 could run on 80286 machines. The kind of 'advanced' operating system you seem to think they should have made just wouldn't be possible on their target systems. And remember, they also had to as far as possible maintain compatibility between versions.
Could Windows have been better? Sure it could, but as nobody else has managed to do any better than them, and that suggests to me it's not as easy as you make out.
2) The EU is trying to be relevant here. And they'd like a way to control the internet for taxation purposes. They've stated that many times in the past.
.uk registrar) refused to pay.
The problem that many countries (and the EU) has with the current situation is that they don't have any say over its current administration. For instance, there was the trouble with ICANN demanding fees from the reqional registrars without being able to promise any form of stability in return, which Nominet (the
4) Lets fact it the EU has a fundamentally different view of free speech than the U.S. we can't reconcile it here or anywhere, so that disagreement will always be there.
In what way? There are some minor differences, but in both the US and the EU the freedom of speech if firmly enshrined in law.
Only in North America, it seems. The UK iTunes 6 only offers music videos and shorts.
Carmack referred to rocketry as plumbing but with the volume turned up. Guess it's not quite that easy.
;-).
To be fair, they have got their ships in the air several times, it's just getting them down accelerating at less that 9.8m/s^2 that seems to have been giving them problems
I think they're doing quite well considering they're basically five or six guys working in their spare time.
Great news for the consumer, but I wonder if the film studios will be prepared to release their lineup on HD-DVD now?
I think you're reaching with your 10Gb of data assertion. The majority of the expensive data (textures etc) will stay the same and exe patches and other changes could be stored on a memory stick. It could be that some superficial enhancements could only be available to hard drive owners. Perhaps some things will stream over the network. Perhaps for whole new areas you'll have to order a new DVD.
What I'm saying is this: Considering that you know fuck all about the Xbox 360 compared to J. Allard, I don't really think you're in a position to call him a liar.
dod -> do
Shoulda previewed.
Know that for a fact, do you? Work for Squenix, dod you?
True, but companies have also invested quite a lot in Maya as well (expertise, scripts, plugins etc.)
Having seen the transition from Windows to Linux, I think that the transition from Linux to Windows could actually be less pain than transferring from Maya to XSI. With cygwin many scripts could be kept, and much renderfarm could still stick on Linux.
Interesting. I don't remember that being the case when we switched over, but then I was in the R&D department rather than being a TD, so most of the test scenes I was working with didn't tend to be as big as the production ones anyway.
Until recently I worked at Europe's largest post production house. Most animation and modelling was done on Maya on Linux machines. If Autodesk were to drop their Linux version of Maya, I think the company would probably consider moving back to Windows to follow it, although they would probably also look very seriously at moving some production over to XSI instead. The thing is, it's probably cheaper to move desktops over to Windows than it is to get everybody retrained on XSI and rewrite all the existing custom Maya stuff that the company has accumulated.
So I don't think it's a sure thing that companies would drop Maya rather than go back to Windows.
Having said that, Autodesk would be rather stupid to drop Linux Maya as I'm sure that some people would just change to XSI instead.
I believe it's more likely that Autodesk would use Alias's knowledge of LInux to help them port more of their existing products over to Linux, rather than insist that Alias change to their way of working.
The point is not that *people* want to know where they are in cities, it's that their *devices* do.
For instance, you could tell your PDA to remind you to pick up something the next time that you are near a certain shop, or remind you to do something half an hour after you get home (giving you time to sit down with a nice cup of tea first...).
While you've had a lot of replies arguing about whether or not the US is the only country founded on individual rights, I think that's missing the point.
The point is that America is a country founded on American's individual rights. Although the life, liberty and access to justice is seen as very important for its own citizens, America does not seem to feel that the citizens of other countries deserve the same level of justice.
America may possibly be the best single country to do this, but some feel that it shouldn't be left to a single country.
I am tired of the grammer nazi's that post here.
No apostrophe is required for the plural, idiot!
It depends a lot on the platform. I could conceivably see Python used in PC and possibly next-generation games, but for current generation consoles, it's too large. It's very difficult to get the code alone under 1MB, whereas the Lua code can fit within 100KB.
The article says that the aircraft is heavier-than-air, so coming down would be guaranteed.
There seems to be this attitude that a crack will inevitably come out fairly quickly.
I don't think that's the case.
I think many slashdotters are overly confident just because the original Xbox got hacked and we've manage to hack CSS, but you've got to remember a couple of things: Firstly, the original Xbox was the first hardware of that type that Microsoft had created. They put in some protection but it wasn't good enough. I'm sure they have learnt from their mistakes and it will be considerably more difficult to crack this time around. Secondly, with CSS it took quite a long time to get a crack and that was due (IIRC) to a CSS licensor screwing up and leaving the key unprotected in the firmware.
Now, it's possible that Microsoft have screwed up again, but it's by no means a sure thing.