I'll look up the CD version I think I still have kicking around sometime (which was also V1.5). I thought the monorail did get added though. No rememberence at all about railguns (which were in Outpost 2:Divided Destiny -- that was a real game and I remember enjoying it quite a lot).
Outpost, IMHO, never was a game in the first place. It was someone NASA engineer's wet dream about how f'ing hard it is to actually accomplish a remote colony.
It was interesting (after version 1.5) to the people who like that kind of insane detail and pain in a simulation.
Translation: Their dicks are being sucked by Disney and Sony. Not that I've felt like renting from them in the past 3 years (something about packing their shelves with garbage... oh wait, it's the film industry that's to thank for that).
+10 Defending Apple
-15 Contradicting Prevailing Slashdot Groupthink More like that, so I'd take the ratio of the two and toss in some Overrated too. -1.5?
...from the {MP,RI}AA against children who got OLPC laptops and got creative.
...from the {MP,RI}AA against the OLPC people, claiming that the machines are a breeding ground of copyright violations as they don't have DRM pre-equipped.
We all know that they just love negative publicity.
Yes yes, I know about (or can readily surmise) the various hurdles and impracticalities of suing a child on the other side of the planet. If you took that seriously, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Well, if the system can pass a rigorous Turing Test and functionally replace you in all your roles, that may mean that you never even died. Either that or your life was so predictable and monotonous that a machine could live it for you.
That brings "replace with a small shell script" new meaning there...
...will be in the throes of nuclear fire, brought on when a Skynet analog comprised of networked PS3s, takes control and launches blue-painted nukes at Redmond. Microsoft retaliates. Millions die.
You, sir, have hit the difference "on the money", and if I hadn't already posted a response an hour ago, I'd mod you up myself.
To reinforce: You are a "hacker". You get a concept together, and then make it work. Whether or not any documentation you produce would lead to someone else producing identical (or similar enough to be mistaken for your implementation) is unlikely for nontrivial solutions.
Where does your opinion lay? Should software 'just work', or are users too lazy?
Yes and no.
Our users (as a whole) are lazy twits who shouldn't be allowed near most of the functions available to a computer. Unfortunately, the 'just work' principle doesn't work when applied to software that can't afford to be that simple. Operating systems, for example, are by their very natures complex beasts and should be treated as such. Linux (for the most part) makes no bones about its own complexity (and in fact generally revels in it), whereas Apple's operating systems earned their "easy to use" moniker by simply performing most significant intermediary tasks "magically". MS Windows takes the median route (which unfortunately results in users learning just enough to be highly dangerous to their machines and data).
When designing a piece of software, special care must be made to balance the feature load. If you want something simple (reaching for the appliance metaphor here), you can only really apply a few user-invokable features.
One of the things that has always confused me is that people (speaking very generally here) take the time to learn how to use their appliances (TV, microwave, VCR, etc), but sit down at a computer and expect everything to be taken care of for them.
Other than resulting in all system administrators suddenly becoming good looking, young, thin and trendy, I don't see what real use Apple systems have in a corporate setting. That sound you just heard was the stampede of sysadmins trying to get the finance people to let the put Apple boxes in their shops.
Meanwhile, C and C++ compiler are installed in the base system by default.
The major assumption that you've appeared to make is that people will compile from source (and so therefore portable C/C++ code is preferable to Java). Java's portability stems from its binary-compatibility, which is the desirable setup for light applications.
Of course, Java's portability comes at the cost of looking completely like it's in its own little world most of the time (GUI) and some performance hits (which usually can be ignored unless you must have heavy time-critical computations running). Both of which you mentioned in your post.
That all being said, I avoid Java whenever I can, because I have an irrational dislike of the language.:)
FYI, writing games for multicore processors is a bitch. A rightous pain in the ass. Particularly everyone's favorite wankfest--the FPS. Everything about games like that are in the timing and the "on demand" aspect -- the software is constantly reacting to the player.
The major strength of multicore processors and software designed to take advantage of such is the tasks are broken down and processed in parts (asynchronously in the best case), which is why for applications like audio and video encoding, the benefits scale with the number of cores (with limiting factors such as drive I/O latency). Not gaming.
Cell clusters would be wonderful for servers, not so much for game consoles. And don't get me started on some of the design BS associated with the PS3's memory access.
Disclaimer:I'm a gamer. I'm not a fanboi. I own the PS2, DS Lite, and a decent computer. I have never looked forward to the PS3 (which I view as a gambit to push Blu-Ray on the masses). The Wii I find a fun system (Although I do not, as of yet, own one).
Don't know about you, but I managed to pick up a DS Lite (White) 4 days before Christmas from Walmart for the list price. There were 8 of them when I walked in, and nobody seemed to be hounding the units. I honestly don't think they were backordered, just coming out at a trickle. Don't get me started on the Wiimotes, which I've been hunting down without much success since launch.
Steve really wants to change the world. He doesn't want the world changed, he wants Steve Jobs to be the world changer. Money is just a means to that end.
Hold that thought for a minute while I go sell my Apple stock.
The 512mb of RAM is the only 'hard' and 'high' requirement to run Vista. Are people this mis-informed, or is everyone trying to run their desktops with a Pentium 200mhz system with 32mb of RAM?
I've seen someone run the FCKGW- copy of XP on a machine exactly like that.
It was frightening, as not only was it a blatant disregard for stated minimum hardware requirements, but the guy didn't seem to think that there was anything wrong.
So please, encourage everyone you know to carry around at least 1GB of RAM. Think of the software.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll look up the CD version I think I still have kicking around sometime (which was also V1.5). I thought the monorail did get added though. No rememberence at all about railguns (which were in Outpost 2:Divided Destiny -- that was a real game and I remember enjoying it quite a lot).
...so what would be the reason to create an irregular declination of a word without any reason other than trying to look cool? Game.Set.
Match.
Outpost, IMHO, never was a game in the first place. It was someone NASA engineer's wet dream about how f'ing hard it is to actually accomplish a remote colony.
It was interesting (after version 1.5) to the people who like that kind of insane detail and pain in a simulation.
And who can forget the Panic Button?
Translation: Their dicks are being sucked by Disney and Sony. Not that I've felt like renting from them in the past 3 years (something about packing their shelves with garbage... oh wait, it's the film industry that's to thank for that).
So they're going to sell it at more of a loss than originally? Especially with games for the thing being expensive to make?
This dream was realized years ago. At least for computer development.
-15 Contradicting Prevailing Slashdot Groupthink More like that, so I'd take the ratio of the two and toss in some Overrated too. -1.5?
To reiterate:
/|\
O <---- Joke
O
| You
|
/ \
Nice offhand "Bush stole the fscking election" quip at the end though.
...from the {MP,RI}AA against children who got OLPC laptops and got creative.
...from the {MP,RI}AA against the OLPC people, claiming that the machines are a breeding ground of copyright violations as they don't have DRM pre-equipped.
We all know that they just love negative publicity.
Yes yes, I know about (or can readily surmise) the various hurdles and impracticalities of suing a child on the other side of the planet. If you took that seriously, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
That brings "replace with a small shell script" new meaning there...
...will be in the throes of nuclear fire, brought on when a Skynet analog comprised of networked PS3s, takes control and launches blue-painted nukes at Redmond. Microsoft retaliates. Millions die.
You, sir, have hit the difference "on the money", and if I hadn't already posted a response an hour ago, I'd mod you up myself. To reinforce: You are a "hacker". You get a concept together, and then make it work. Whether or not any documentation you produce would lead to someone else producing identical (or similar enough to be mistaken for your implementation) is unlikely for nontrivial solutions.
You're forgetting one of the Cardinal Rules of Games: It's always okay to kill Nazis.
[Politics]The left wing hates violence and the right wing hates sex. Take your pick.
Yes and no.
Our users (as a whole) are lazy twits who shouldn't be allowed near most of the functions available to a computer. Unfortunately, the 'just work' principle doesn't work when applied to software that can't afford to be that simple. Operating systems, for example, are by their very natures complex beasts and should be treated as such. Linux (for the most part) makes no bones about its own complexity (and in fact generally revels in it), whereas Apple's operating systems earned their "easy to use" moniker by simply performing most significant intermediary tasks "magically". MS Windows takes the median route (which unfortunately results in users learning just enough to be highly dangerous to their machines and data).
When designing a piece of software, special care must be made to balance the feature load. If you want something simple (reaching for the appliance metaphor here), you can only really apply a few user-invokable features.
One of the things that has always confused me is that people (speaking very generally here) take the time to learn how to use their appliances (TV, microwave, VCR, etc), but sit down at a computer and expect everything to be taken care of for them.
So your internets are a series of tubes too?
*rimshot*
Interesting note: Intel did sell its ARM/xScale off a few months ago.
I prefer my vocabularies to be voluptuous.
Now kneel before my dazzling cascade of delectable prose! KNEEL!
I, for one, welcome our virtualized overlords. And their virtualized management systems.
The major assumption that you've appeared to make is that people will compile from source (and so therefore portable C/C++ code is preferable to Java). Java's portability stems from its binary-compatibility, which is the desirable setup for light applications.
Of course, Java's portability comes at the cost of looking completely like it's in its own little world most of the time (GUI) and some performance hits (which usually can be ignored unless you must have heavy time-critical computations running). Both of which you mentioned in your post.
That all being said, I avoid Java whenever I can, because I have an irrational dislike of the language. :)
FYI, writing games for multicore processors is a bitch. A rightous pain in the ass. Particularly everyone's favorite wankfest--the FPS. Everything about games like that are in the timing and the "on demand" aspect -- the software is constantly reacting to the player.
The major strength of multicore processors and software designed to take advantage of such is the tasks are broken down and processed in parts (asynchronously in the best case), which is why for applications like audio and video encoding, the benefits scale with the number of cores (with limiting factors such as drive I/O latency). Not gaming.
Cell clusters would be wonderful for servers, not so much for game consoles. And don't get me started on some of the design BS associated with the PS3's memory access.
Disclaimer:I'm a gamer. I'm not a fanboi. I own the PS2, DS Lite, and a decent computer. I have never looked forward to the PS3 (which I view as a gambit to push Blu-Ray on the masses). The Wii I find a fun system (Although I do not, as of yet, own one).
Don't know about you, but I managed to pick up a DS Lite (White) 4 days before Christmas from Walmart for the list price. There were 8 of them when I walked in, and nobody seemed to be hounding the units. I honestly don't think they were backordered, just coming out at a trickle. Don't get me started on the Wiimotes, which I've been hunting down without much success since launch.
And hot damn, this thing is fun.
This means our players can actually, for once, welcome their Cylon overlords?
Of all the possibilities this could entail... I just hope that they stay the hell away from D20.
Hold that thought for a minute while I go sell my Apple stock.
I've seen someone run the FCKGW- copy of XP on a machine exactly like that.
It was frightening, as not only was it a blatant disregard for stated minimum hardware requirements, but the guy didn't seem to think that there was anything wrong.
So please, encourage everyone you know to carry around at least 1GB of RAM. Think of the software.