Well, I don't like to break this to you, but... $200 is not cheap. That's more than an average VCR costs.
For a Tivo-like device to become useful and cool to the home user (i.e. be able to filter out ads, etc...) the manufacturer has to be able to make a profit on the hardware *alone*. Oh, and it really ought to cost $150 or less for most people to buy it. So, manufacturing cost would have to be about half that at most - $75. You've got to remember all the compression and decompression hardware on there as well, so I'd guess you'd need a hard drive that costs about $30.
Re:Photoshop like emulation w/Gimp
on
GIMP And OS X
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· Score: 3
Why, with those images you've really proved the power of the GIMP.
Damn.
If only it had native widgets....
on
GIMP And OS X
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· Score: 2
The GIMP on non-X platforms really suffers from it's lack of native widgets. Fot instance, on Windows, the menus don't work properly on a dual-monitor setup, whenever I use a menu, it'll only appear on the primary monitor, which for various reasons is not the one I wish to use the program on. It also crashes quite a lot and when you install it the preferences directory is hard-coded to c:\_gimp21. It's simply not ready for the prime time yet. It's nowhere near as good as Photoshop - hell, it's not even as usable as Paint Shop Pro.
*DON'T* wrap you drives in bubble-wrap to keep them quiet. I tried that once - it made it really quiet (It was a very noisy old SCSI drive), but after a while it got so hot I burnt my finger on it. I'm quite suprised it didn't catch fire. I shut down the machine to take the bubble wrap off, but after that it never worked again.
The reason proof of good use is needed for P2P filesharing is that there's been precious little evidence of P2P filesharing being put to good use so far.
Since the first ever (well, fist well known) P2P filesharing system was designed specifically with illegal activity in mind, you shouldn't be suprised if people view it in a similar light to say... a lockpicking set. Sure, there are legal things you can do with it, but most people are gonna question why you want one...
I'm sure the reason many companies make their own licenses up is that there's far too much propaganda in the GPL and LGPL. If you're a company that survives by selling 'non-free' software it's rather galling to include a license that rants on about how bad it is that you should do this.
That's all very well and good when you're doing an Open Source project, but there's all kinds of nasty stuff in there if you're a commercial developer.
Like you can't statically link with the library.
You have to give 'prominent notice' that the software includes the library and include the LGPL with it. This is particularly galling as the LGPL includes a load of crap at the beginning about how evil closed source and proprietary software is and how it should all be free. Obviously if I'm writing commercial software I don't agree with that. I don't want to disseminate propaganda for an opinion that I'm fundamentally opposed to.
You don't have to do any of that crap with the Microsoft libraries. You can just use them.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's admirable that people are doing these open source libraries, but If they really want people to use them, they'd better think about using a slightly less restrictive license, and really, it doesn't have to be much less restrictive.
a) Low user base - they don't see any evidence that they can make money from selling Linux games.
b) Tech support - A biggy... there's several versions of Windows, but to the programmer they're much more similar than Linux. Installing 3d video drivers is much easier, and the amount of hardware that is supported under Windows is much greater. 3D support under Linux is still in its infancy and not well supported by video card manufacturers.
c) Lack of decent development APIs. DirectX has become very good now (especially DX8) and it's pretty well documented. The only API that is well documented and mature for games on Linux is OpenGL - OpenAL, SDL etc. are a step in the right direction but are only about as mature as DirectX 1.0 or 2.0, and the documentation isn't up to scratch.
Basically it boils down to this. Microsoft has spent a very large amount of resources getting Windows to be good at gaming. Although there is work being done on Linux in the same direction, it is more fragmented and less well orgranised. A bunch of developers 'scratching an itch' rather than producing a commercial product. Until you can be reasonably sure that you can use one set of APIs to do all the sound, graphics and input on Linux, and that it will work on the majority of computers with a recent version of Linux on them, the developers won't come.
I doubt that the owners of the Harry Potter license would agree to anybody doing a Linux-only game... There's just no evidence of anybody being able make any money from it.
Having skimmed the patent, one of the things they mention a lot is the system for only displaying a certain number of avatars on the screen, so that you never go above a predefined 'avatar count'. I don't believe that Quake had this, although I think it had most of the rest of the stuff.
The advantage a console has over a PC is that it is a fixed platform. A Dreamcast (200Mhz CPU, 16Mb RAM, 8Mb VRAM, & graphics card roughly equivalent to a TNT...) will have games that look pretty much as good as a much more powerful PC (Let's say... 500Mhz, 64Mb Ram + TNT 2 Ultra...), . It is easier to optimise a game if you know exactly what hardware it will run on.
There have been several people pointing out that they never inspect the source anyway, son binaries are just as safe. I don't think that's quite true. At least the source normally comes from a relatively 'trusted' source, whereas if you're donwloading a binary rpm from a 'contrib' directory, you may not be able to find out who wrote it.
However, I'd be more interested to hear if anyone has been stung by malicious rpms - is the problem widespread at all?
The fact that you can't plug any old PC USB peripheral into the Xbox as a controller is a *good* thing. The best thing that consoles have over a PC is that they are pretty much *fixed hardware platforms*. The last thing you want is to be in a situation where you've got to download patches and drivers for your USB peripherals and then have them fucking up on your favourite game.
The other thing to note is that a USB port is a very bad port to use on the front of a console. Obviously you need something which fits use in the living room.
I want to see their prototypes...
on
Indrema No More
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· Score: 1
Surely they must have built a couple of prototypes...
They must have at least put some hardware together? It would be interesting to see what their controller looked like, for instance.
The other thing I'd like to know is whether nVidia were really going to supply them with a custom graphics chip, like Gildred claimed, or whether they were just going to use a standard GeForce 3 piece.
It's funny actually, although I'd always ranted about how it was never going to work and how Gildred obviously didn't really understand the games industry... I am quite sad to see it go. I, for one, was looking forward to trying to install Windows on it...;)
"Of course, distributed hackers have been doing this for years on open source projects. Its not quite as real-time as they're talking about here, but its fundamentally similiar. "
Uh.. surely that's called 'working on a team project', if you're not actually sitting at the same computer... and programmers working on both commercial and free software have been doing that for a *very* long time.
The 'pair programming' concept relies on the fact that both people are working on one computer together. As a result you brainstorm the solutions to problems quicker, and the person who isn't doing the typing spots a lot more of the bugs.
It's fundamentally dissimilar to working on the same project but in different places and at different times.
They claim it's a first, but there's nothing new under the sun.
I've got an old tablet 486 that works the same way... detachable keyboard and presto! you can use it as a tablet with the special pen that comes with it...
'Course, it's got a much smaller greyscale screen and only 25 whole megahertz of power (not to mention a whopping 12Mb of memory). Pretty cool though - I had it mounted to a wall for a bit as an electronic noteboard.
Slashdot Mirror
The masses aren't stupid, they are on average of average intelligence.
Most people in the world see the world differently to you.
For most people in the world, most other people in the world see the world differently from them.
Well, I don't like to break this to you, but... $200 is not cheap. That's more than an average VCR costs.
For a Tivo-like device to become useful and cool to the home user (i.e. be able to filter out ads, etc...) the manufacturer has to be able to make a profit on the hardware *alone*. Oh, and it really ought to cost $150 or less for most people to buy it. So, manufacturing cost would have to be about half that at most - $75. You've got to remember all the compression and decompression hardware on there as well, so I'd guess you'd need a hard drive that costs about $30.
Why, with those images you've really proved the power of the GIMP.
Damn.
The GIMP on non-X platforms really suffers from it's lack of native widgets. Fot instance, on Windows, the menus don't work properly on a dual-monitor setup, whenever I use a menu, it'll only appear on the primary monitor, which for various reasons is not the one I wish to use the program on. It also crashes quite a lot and when you install it the preferences directory is hard-coded to c:\_gimp21. It's simply not ready for the prime time yet. It's nowhere near as good as Photoshop - hell, it's not even as usable as Paint Shop Pro.
I'd be interested to know why my post was moderated down to flamebait...?
What 'de-peering' means?
cheers,
Tim
*DON'T* wrap you drives in bubble-wrap to keep them quiet. I tried that once - it made it really quiet (It was a very noisy old SCSI drive), but after a while it got so hot I burnt my finger on it. I'm quite suprised it didn't catch fire. I shut down the machine to take the bubble wrap off, but after that it never worked again.
Maybe, but I'd guess the record companies can spell 'losing' correctly.
The reason proof of good use is needed for P2P filesharing is that there's been precious little evidence of P2P filesharing being put to good use so far.
Since the first ever (well, fist well known) P2P filesharing system was designed specifically with illegal activity in mind, you shouldn't be suprised if people view it in a similar light to say... a lockpicking set. Sure, there are legal things you can do with it, but most people are gonna question why you want one...
I'm sure the reason many companies make their own licenses up is that there's far too much propaganda in the GPL and LGPL. If you're a company that survives by selling 'non-free' software it's rather galling to include a license that rants on about how bad it is that you should do this.
SDL is LGPL'ed.
That's all very well and good when you're doing an Open Source project, but there's all kinds of nasty stuff in there if you're a commercial developer.
Like you can't statically link with the library.
You have to give 'prominent notice' that the software includes the library and include the LGPL with it. This is particularly galling as the LGPL includes a load of crap at the beginning about how evil closed source and proprietary software is and how it should all be free. Obviously if I'm writing commercial software I don't agree with that. I don't want to disseminate propaganda for an opinion that I'm fundamentally opposed to.
You don't have to do any of that crap with the Microsoft libraries. You can just use them.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's admirable that people are doing these open source libraries, but If they really want people to use them, they'd better think about using a slightly less restrictive license, and really, it doesn't have to be much less restrictive.
a) Low user base - they don't see any evidence that they can make money from selling Linux games.
... there's several versions of Windows, but to the programmer they're much more similar than Linux. Installing 3d video drivers is much easier, and the amount of hardware that is supported under Windows is much greater. 3D support under Linux is still in its infancy and not well supported by video card manufacturers.
b) Tech support - A biggy
c) Lack of decent development APIs. DirectX has become very good now (especially DX8) and it's pretty well documented. The only API that is well documented and mature for games on Linux is OpenGL - OpenAL, SDL etc. are a step in the right direction but are only about as mature as DirectX 1.0 or 2.0, and the documentation isn't up to scratch.
Basically it boils down to this. Microsoft has spent a very large amount of resources getting Windows to be good at gaming. Although there is work being done on Linux in the same direction, it is more fragmented and less well orgranised. A bunch of developers 'scratching an itch' rather than producing a commercial product. Until you can be reasonably sure that you can use one set of APIs to do all the sound, graphics and input on Linux, and that it will work on the majority of computers with a recent version of Linux on them, the developers won't come.
cheers,
Tim
I doubt that the owners of the Harry Potter license would agree to anybody doing a Linux-only game... There's just no evidence of anybody being able make any money from it.
Having skimmed the patent, one of the things they mention a lot is the system for only displaying a certain number of avatars on the screen, so that you never go above a predefined 'avatar count'. I don't believe that Quake had this, although I think it had most of the rest of the stuff.
"Even a very smart one such as a computer programmer"...
Ahhh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Ha ha ha
The advantage a console has over a PC is that it is a fixed platform. A Dreamcast (200Mhz CPU, 16Mb RAM, 8Mb VRAM, & graphics card roughly equivalent to a TNT...) will have games that look pretty much as good as a much more powerful PC (Let's say... 500Mhz, 64Mb Ram + TNT 2 Ultra...), . It is easier to optimise a game if you know exactly what hardware it will run on.
I'll bet this is so they can sell the browser to webpad manufacturers, especially those who aren't going to put Windows on them.
I seem to remember news of a webpad that was going to use BeOS, for example...
Jesus, what an arsehole.
There have been several people pointing out that they never inspect the source anyway, son binaries are just as safe. I don't think that's quite true. At least the source normally comes from a relatively 'trusted' source, whereas if you're donwloading a binary rpm from a 'contrib' directory, you may not be able to find out who wrote it.
However, I'd be more interested to hear if anyone has been stung by malicious rpms - is the problem widespread at all?
The fact that you can't plug any old PC USB peripheral into the Xbox as a controller is a *good* thing. The best thing that consoles have over a PC is that they are pretty much *fixed hardware platforms*. The last thing you want is to be in a situation where you've got to download patches and drivers for your USB peripherals and then have them fucking up on your favourite game.
The other thing to note is that a USB port is a very bad port to use on the front of a console. Obviously you need something which fits use in the living room.
Surely they must have built a couple of prototypes...
;)
They must have at least put some hardware together? It would be interesting to see what their controller looked like, for instance.
The other thing I'd like to know is whether nVidia were really going to supply them with a custom graphics chip, like Gildred claimed, or whether they were just going to use a standard GeForce 3 piece.
It's funny actually, although I'd always ranted about how it was never going to work and how Gildred obviously didn't really understand the games industry... I am quite sad to see it go. I, for one, was looking forward to trying to install Windows on it...
"Of course, distributed hackers have been doing this for years on open source projects. Its not quite as real-time as they're talking about here, but its fundamentally similiar. "
Uh.. surely that's called 'working on a team project', if you're not actually sitting at the same computer... and programmers working on both commercial and free software have been doing that for a *very* long time.
The 'pair programming' concept relies on the fact that both people are working on one computer together. As a result you brainstorm the solutions to problems quicker, and the person who isn't doing the typing spots a lot more of the bugs.
It's fundamentally dissimilar to working on the same project but in different places and at different times.
Actually, it was the Russians we have to thank - you guys only came in *after* the Nazis had stopped trying to invade Britain.
Say, you don't know where you can get replacement pens for them, do you?
They claim it's a first, but there's nothing new under the sun.
I've got an old tablet 486 that works the same way... detachable keyboard and presto! you can use it as a tablet with the special pen that comes with it...
'Course, it's got a much smaller greyscale screen and only 25 whole megahertz of power (not to mention a whopping 12Mb of memory). Pretty cool though - I had it mounted to a wall for a bit as an electronic noteboard.
It was made by Compaq, but I forget its name now.