Comment Said before... (Score 1) 368
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
~Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899
Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child 331
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."
Indian Moon Mission Launched 305
hackerdownunder writes "India's maiden lunar mission (Chandrayaan-1) got off to a flying start today. Describing the launch as 'perfect and precise,' the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), G Madhavan Nair, said that it would be 14 days before the satellite would enter into lunar orbit.
Chandrayaan carries eleven payloads: five designed and developed in India, three from the European Space Agency, one from Bulgaria and two from NASA."
Comment Ubuntu Debian; Symbiotic relationship (Score 1) 45
What the writer is missing is the symbiotic relationship of Ubuntu and Debian. Debian does many things really really well. Somethings, like frequent releases, not so well. But for those of us who use Debian, that would be a beautiful design on top of the cake and frosting we already have... Without it, that cake tastes pretty darn good.
Ubuntu came along and tackled this problem, so Debian can continue doing what it does best. To top it off, Ubuntu has funding. And they aren't greedy leeches who take Debian's hard work and exploit it as their own distribution. They contribute back much of their work to Debian (if the Debian developers like the changes). With Debian, Ubuntu wouldn't survive. Ubuntu's funding and hard work ends up helping Debian.
So about saying "Debian will hit a brick wall"... I would ask the question, did you close your mind and hit a brick wall?
Our perception of a situation is based on our experiences and our knowledge of the situation. If we are missing information, our perception about the situation may be off. Like the fact I haven't read the actual article this is about... I'm probably missing something.
Adobe Joins Linux Foundation, Develops AIR For Linux 171
2muchcoffeeman writes "Adobe announced Monday that it is joining the Linux Foundation and alpha-released a Linux version of its new Adobe Internet Runtime environment, which allows Internet-enabled applications to run on Windows and Mac OS desktops, for Linux. According to Adobe, the alpha version lacks some key features that will be available in the final product and only runs with Sun Java, not GNU Java. Adobe also released an alpha of Flex Builder for Linux Monday."
Why the RIAA Really Hates Downloads 289
wtansill recommends the saga of Jeff Price, who traveled from successful small record label owner to successful Internet-era music distributor. His piece describes clearly what the major record labels used to be good for and why they are now good for nothing but getting in the way. "Allowing all music creators 'in' is both exciting and frightening. Some argue that we need subjective gatekeepers as filters. No matter which way you feel about it, there are a few indisputable facts -- control has been taken away from the 'four major labels' and the traditional media outlets. We, the 'masses,' now have access to create, distribute, discover, promote, share and listen to any music. Hopefully access to all of this new music will inspire us, make us think and open doors and minds to new experiences we choose, not what a corporation or media outlet decides we should want."
OOXML Will Pass Amid Massive Irregularities 329
Tokimasa notes a CNet blog predicting that OOXML will make the cut. Updegrove agrees, as does the OpenMalasia blog. Reports of irregularities continue to surface, such as this one from Norway — "The meeting: 27 people in the room, 4 of which were administrative staff from Standard Norge. The outcome: Of the 24 members attending, 19 disapproved, 5 approved. The result: The administrative staff decided that Norway wants to approve OOXML as an ISO standard." Groklaw adds reportage of odd processes in Germany and Croatia.
Newspapers Are Dying, Blog At 11 279
The New Yorker is running a long and thoughtful piece by Eric Alterman on the death and life of the American newspaper. It's not news that newspapers are dying, but the acceleration of the process in the last few years is startling: "Independent, publicly traded American newspapers have lost forty-two per cent of their market value in the past three years... The columnist Molly Ivins complained, shortly before her death, that the newspaper companies' solution to their problem was to make 'our product smaller and less helpful and less interesting.'" The article goes on to profile The Huffington Post as exemplar of what is replacing paper and ink. "The Huffington Post's editorial processes are based on what Peretti has named the 'mullet strategy.' ('Business up front, party in the back' is how his trend-spotting site BuzzFeed glosses it.) 'User-generated content is all the rage, but most of it totally sucks,' Peretti says. The mullet strategy invites users to 'argue and vent on the secondary pages, but professional editors keep the front page looking sharp.
Submission + - Indie 3D Game Engines?
TBBScorpion writes: Questions: Which of the Indie 3D game engines are worth while? How long until Ogre3D and other open source engines catch up?
Lately I have been investigating 3D game engines. I was mostly paying attention to open source engines like Ogre3d, Irrlicht, Crystal Space 3D, etc. Then I found out about cheap Indie licenses for commercial game engines like Torque Game Engine ($150), Torque Game Engine Advanced ($295) and the C4 Engine ($200 + free upgrades).
I found a list of top commercial and open source game engines at devmaster.net in case anyone is interested (I didn't want to take the time to list all the engines, but there are more good ones that I did not list on this page.
Here is my dilemma and question... Which of the engines are worth investing in? Buy an indie license or hold out for open source? Or start with indie and switch later if open source catches up?
Torque Game Engine 1.5 works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux but lacks modern shader support (except for something about a free modernization kit). I mostly do cross-platform software development so I like this feature.
But then there is Torque Game Engine Advanced (TGEA) which adds shader support and the Atlas terrain paging feature and a few other nice features, but is DirectX9 based and is no longer cross-platform. I have also heard rumors about support for the engine to be a little on the lacking side, yet the Torque community seems to be rather large compared to other commercial. Are the complaints just from people who don't really know how to program expecting to be able to edit the C++ of the game engine or are capable people really having trouble? I've heard rumors about stability of TGEA compared to TGE? For those of you who have used TGE or TGEA, would you recommend it over other engines?
The C4 Engine looks nice as well, but seems to be under active development and less mature, but potentially more modern game engine? Also, it supports Windows XP and Mac OS X, which is better then just Windows.
The features I am hoping for are:
When it comes to the open source engines like Ogre3D, the main thing the seem to be lacking is the built-in editors, and at least Ogre3D is currently mostly a graphics engine rather then a complete game engine (i.e. Physics built-in; does provide wrappers for ODE and other Physics engines). My assumption is that is just a matter of time before Ogre3D and other engines catch up with the top Indie commercial engines? What does the slashdot community think about the topic?
Lastly, I will be using the game engine for not only making games, but for some scientific applications as well. Also, I started using C++ 10 years ago and have been using Python since January 2002... so I'm ready to dive into the engine code.
Lately I have been investigating 3D game engines. I was mostly paying attention to open source engines like Ogre3d, Irrlicht, Crystal Space 3D, etc. Then I found out about cheap Indie licenses for commercial game engines like Torque Game Engine ($150), Torque Game Engine Advanced ($295) and the C4 Engine ($200 + free upgrades).
I found a list of top commercial and open source game engines at devmaster.net in case anyone is interested (I didn't want to take the time to list all the engines, but there are more good ones that I did not list on this page.
Here is my dilemma and question... Which of the engines are worth investing in? Buy an indie license or hold out for open source? Or start with indie and switch later if open source catches up?
Torque Game Engine 1.5 works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux but lacks modern shader support (except for something about a free modernization kit). I mostly do cross-platform software development so I like this feature.
But then there is Torque Game Engine Advanced (TGEA) which adds shader support and the Atlas terrain paging feature and a few other nice features, but is DirectX9 based and is no longer cross-platform. I have also heard rumors about support for the engine to be a little on the lacking side, yet the Torque community seems to be rather large compared to other commercial. Are the complaints just from people who don't really know how to program expecting to be able to edit the C++ of the game engine or are capable people really having trouble? I've heard rumors about stability of TGEA compared to TGE? For those of you who have used TGE or TGEA, would you recommend it over other engines?
The C4 Engine looks nice as well, but seems to be under active development and less mature, but potentially more modern game engine? Also, it supports Windows XP and Mac OS X, which is better then just Windows.
The features I am hoping for are:
- Cross-platform if possible
- Modern shader support
- Terrain paging system built-in
- Model, material and animation import from Blender 3d
When it comes to the open source engines like Ogre3D, the main thing the seem to be lacking is the built-in editors, and at least Ogre3D is currently mostly a graphics engine rather then a complete game engine (i.e. Physics built-in; does provide wrappers for ODE and other Physics engines). My assumption is that is just a matter of time before Ogre3D and other engines catch up with the top Indie commercial engines? What does the slashdot community think about the topic?
Lastly, I will be using the game engine for not only making games, but for some scientific applications as well. Also, I started using C++ 10 years ago and have been using Python since January 2002... so I'm ready to dive into the engine code.
