Apple Snags Former Xbox Exec 190
nandemoari sends along word that Apple has picked up Richard Teversham, a senior Executive from Microsoft's European Xbox operations, ending his 15 years of service to Redmond. Some press accounts assume that Teversham's role may lie in beefing up the games scene on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Forbes goes farther, opining that Apple "appears to be preparing an all-out assault on the handheld gaming market." Other reporting associates the hire with Apple's recent buildout of chip-design expertise.
remember the atari lynx? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:remember the atari lynx? (Score:5, Funny)
Who let you out of the nursing home.
Re:remember the atari lynx? (Score:5, Funny)
I award you "Comment of the day".
Go upstairs to your front door and wait for your prize to arrive.
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I waited and some lady came with Jesus pamphlets. My prize? Free Toilet paper.
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(Gran)parent comment removed?
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I'm just glad he doesn't try to talk to me.
Re:remember the atari lynx? (Score:5, Informative)
...and a battery life of about an hour.
Game Gear was worse (Score:5, Informative)
The Sega GameGear was way worse, that thing would suck 6 AA batteries dry in under 30 mins.
It used to annoy my friend no end when I would be playing my Gameboy every where while he had to be in the vicinity of a power outlet and have to carry the adapter around.
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While true; what's better, a black-and-white screen you can only use in certain lighting conditions, or one which you can't use at all because the batteries ran out before you could get through the first level of anything?
I had a Game Gear and loved it, but I recognise now that it completely lacked any niche to fit into. You couldn't play it when out and about, making it useless as a hand-held, and if you were going to only play it next to a power outlet it made more sense to just get a Mega Drive or SNES.
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There was an option however to bolt on an extra (rechargeable) battery pack to the back that gave somewhat decent battery life. I had 2 and remember taking my Game Gear on the bus with me on school field trips and playing for most of the ride, which sometimes lasted a few hours.
Re:remember the atari lynx? (Score:5, Funny)
About the same as an iPhone, then?
tramiel's atari corporation (Score:2)
Actualy Tramiel was owner number three. All went down when Nolan sold Atari to Warner Brother.
Martin
Interesting possibilities... (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's definitely not as glamorous as a PS3, but they're a completely different market.
Re:Interesting possibilities... (Score:5, Interesting)
Plus with the DS, PSP, etc. you can have things like spare batteries.
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Now, I will take a PIM (like a Palm device, with decent handwriting recognition, not the abomination that Grafitti 2 was) that also happens to be a phone, game platform, messenger service, etc... especially if it comes with bluetooth and/or 802.11a/b/g/n.
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It wouldn't be half as bad if apple would take their heads out of their asses and make a device with user-swappable batteries.
I love the ability to play wolfenstein 3d wherever I go but I also like to be
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The iPhone is great for time killing. I use the iPod Touch, but its the same experience. If you have 15 minutes to burn sit down for a couple of rounds of online poker, play an action game or a puzzle game. The device isn't a hardcore gamer device, but then again most of the population are not hardcore gamers so maybe its good to cater to the masses. The Wii worked well and this seems to be going along the same path.
I really do think the iPhone has potential to kick ass in the games area if they add jus
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The iPhone's potential for just about everything is pretty well proven at this point. We may have found the form factor + interface device for the 21st century. Now if only the damned thing had a projector in it so geezers like me wouldn't have to squint at our - er - videos... and bluetooth so we could use this neat keyboard [thinkgeek.com], we'd be all set.
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I think the iPhone is great for casual phone games, but the input isn't precise enough to topple a dedicated device like, say, the Nintendo DS and its d-pad and stylus. I think it's more important as a regular application platform.
Let me guess... (Score:2)
This just in.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Hurricane Ballmer hits conference room. Scores of chairs injured and missing.
Maybe Apple will launch an attack on the console market next?! I wouldn't pout it past them, they move so quietly you don't know till it's too late! Imagine a console that is top of the line, but has all the games distributed directly to the console with Apple store, eliminating the retail and the distribution networks.
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Please, think of the memes and don't over-use them. Look at what you people did to the "But does it run Linux?" joke? Its rocking back and forth in a padded room, chanting "No more me-too's".
As for the topic at h
You mean like the Xbox? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that at this point in time, Apple releasing a gaming console would make as much brand sense as IBM releasing an IBM branded gaming console.
That's what people said about Microsoft in 2001, and the newcomer's product tied Nintendo GameCube in worldwide hardware sales.
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Aside from the fucked quality control, xbox is a pretty good product.
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> A stupid Nintendo Mii ripoff
Er... that's a bit of a reach. Not that it's not a ripoff of nintendo, but really does THAT affect the quality of the console?
To use a car analogy: "This is a terrible car... muffler missing, no battery, two broken headlights, there is a barbie doll in the glove box, and the front axle is broken."
On second thought, I did miss this
Stupid and gigantic external power brick
So maybe that car metaphor should include "has one of those stupid dreamcatchers on the rearview mirror."
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The price differential between the 360 and the PS3 was so great when the PS3 came out, the 360 was bound to gain traction. Parents and gamers chose the cheaper machine and developers found they could address a wider audience in less time by going 360 only - as it's easier to program for [youtube.com] than the PS3. Better games catalogue = even more customers.
For the OP and me, the 360 is a dreadful product. I couldn't live with a 360 in the same way that I wouldn't tolerate the shortcomings of a typical budget laptop. I
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The Dreamcast wasn't even sold after 2001.
Why did Sega withdraw it from sale? As far as I can tell, the answer is because it lost hard to the PS2.
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Hurricane Ballmer hits conference room. Scores of chairs injured and missing.
Maybe Apple will launch an attack on the console market next?! I wouldn't pout it past them, they move so quietly you don't know till it's too late! Imagine a console that is top of the line, but has all the games distributed directly to the console with Apple store, eliminating the retail and the distribution networks.
For a long time Apple was rumored to have a possible foray into the console market, and that they were developing a "next gen gaming system" or something like that.
They were, just not in the form everyone was thinking. Instead of a console they came out with the iPhone and iTouch.
Since then they have acquired PAsemi, snatched up graphics people from ATI and IBM, and have otherwise been building up a set of high class graphical engineers. Apple has experience designing an ARM chip (an ARM6 I believe), now th
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Already exists, more or less. It's called AppleTV. It's a console in somewhat the same way that the XBox is basically a desktop computer. All that's missing is a controller and a software update allowing game downloads from the App Store.
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Re:This just in.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple makes you program in the painful language of Objective C or some other language that Apple deems as necessary but most programmers cry out in agony.
What's wrong with Objective C? You can mix Objective C and "pure" C / C++ in the same project. Any decent C++ programmer can pick up Objective C / Objective C++ in one day of practice[1]. Obj-C is a superset of C, all of your favorite tricks still work. You can program it on Linux or Cygwin using GnuStep [gnustep.org] and gcc (though admittedly getting it going is kind of a pain). If you really hate it that much, you can get away with writing a pretty thin wrapper of Obj-C to interface to the OSX specific APIs (most of your calls will probably be standard libc calls in C anyway), and have almost all of your code in C/C++. I don't see how it would be an obstacle to anyone.
[1] No True Scotsman would doubt this comment.
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If you really hate it that much, you can get away with writing a pretty thin wrapper of Obj-C to interface to the OSX specific APIs (most of your calls will probably be standard libc calls in C anyway), and have almost all of your code in C/C++.
While you are wrong about most calls to the OSX APIs being standard C calls (just not true for Cocoa apps) you should be aware that it is not that difficult to call Obj-C code using its conventions from plain old C. It does take a bunch of code but you really don't have to use Obj-C, despite it being easier (as in: less code to write and get right...)
About the only thing that you could theoretically object to about Obj-C (in an "objective" fashion) is the fact that the Obj-C calling convention is slower th
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If you really hate it that much, you can get away with writing a pretty thin wrapper of Obj-C to interface to the OSX specific APIs (most of your calls will probably be standard libc calls in C anyway), and have almost all of your code in C/C++.
While you are wrong about most calls to the OSX APIs being standard C calls (just not true for Cocoa apps) [...]
The poster was stating that OSX calls will be in Obj-C while other (non OSX-specific standard library calls) will be in C. I think your interpretation is a case British English versus American English.
Re:This just in.. (Score:5, Insightful)
What's wrong with Objective-C? How about the fact that it's based on C! How about the amazingly painful object initialization semantics? How about the fact that properties are locked by default? How about the fact that calling a method on a NULL pointer doesn't crash!
I am amazed that anybody thinks highly of this language. Just read the language spec and count the WTFs. I mean, C and C++ at least have the excuse of being around since forever and letting you write almost 100% optimal code. But as you point out, Objective-C doesn't even produce optimal code, and it wouldn't be around at all if Apple hadn't gone down to the cemetery and resurrected its decaying body.
But you don't have to believe me. If Objective-C was so great, it'd be used outside the Apple platform. It's not.
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And this is a fallacy that gets repeated a lot. Just because something is popular (computer language, video tape format, currency, etc.) doesn't mean it's good, or that it's good for you. Things become popular through a combination of factors, and dumb luck seems to be pretty high on the list. There are many cases where the "best" solution loses out to the cheaper solution that's "good enough.
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Generally, in order of preference I'd look at D, C# and then Java as what Objective-C should aspire to. But it'd have to change so radically why bother? If Apple insist on an obscure language with poor toolchain support D at least has the advantage of being a really well designed language, with lots of useful features.
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Objective-C on the iPhone does not have garbage collection, does it?
That's a serious drawback, because C/C++ programmers are not aplenty. There are many more programmers around with experience only in managed environments.
Re:This just in.. (Score:4, Informative)
Forgetting that both iPhone and Mac can be programmed with C/C++ and OpenGL for games...
Oh, you mean like id games:
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/25/carmack-quake-live-on-mac-linux-high-on-my-priority-list/ [joystiq.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_engine [wikipedia.org] "Originally developed on NeXT computers"
Or maybe you meant http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Business/NuclearStrike.html [stepwise.com]
There doesn't seem to be a shortage iPhone games...
Plus, Objective-C and Cocoa are Awesome(tm)
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Objective-C is more pleasant to use than C++. The Cocoa APIs are just fantastic. When I read comments criticizing Objective-C, I genuinely can't think of a reason behind it. The only thing I can think of is that you think brackets are ugly, and that's something you get used to as quickly as you got used to cur
another possibility (Score:2, Interesting)
With Jobs on the sidelines, we're back to the Sculley era at Apple, where senior executives and high-level techies are hired away from competitors to make a splash in the press and foster buzz around the stealth-mode projects. And incidentally rescue some careers that may have been in trouble.
Too bad that's not what creates great products. Usually what it does is create layers of non-accountability somewhere in the clouds above where the engineers and UI designers work.
Re:another possibility (Score:5, Insightful)
You're talking out of your ass. Jobs is not [macworld.com] on the sidelines. He's too much of a control freak to let Tim Cook or anyone else sabotage the juggernaut he helped to create. If you think Sculley's Apple will make a comeback then you're mistaken and don't know history.
Apple isn't desperate for low-level buzz dealing with obscure hirings. They can leak a single photo or make a "mistake" on the web store and dominate the news cycle for 2 weeks.
Blackberry is the biggest selling smartphone (Score:1, Troll)
The way you write betrays you:
He's too much of a control freak to let Tim Cook or anyone else sabotage the juggernaut he helped to create
Why would Cook be 'sabotaging'? We're talking incompetence here, not malice.
If you think Sculley's Apple will make a comeback then you're mistaken and don't know history.
Sorry - the downfall has already begun. RIM is again the biggest smartphone maker [npd.com].
Expect things to get worse when this xbox exec 'sexes up' the iPhone. Probably with some lime green styling. And make it bi
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It was implied in the post (which I'm sure was a troll).
Blackberry smartphones are selling more than iPhones because RIM is catering to the enterprise which tends to place orders by thousands. Secondly, Blackberry has more models and is available across different carriers. Third, and most important - iPhone is more than just a smartphone. It's a platfo
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Blackberry smartphones are selling more than iPhones because *snip* Third, and most important - iPhone is more than just a smartphone. It's a platform with which Apple will try to branch out into different markets
Blackberry is outselling the iPhone because the iPhone is a platform Apple will use to get to other markets?
That logic is.... curious.
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But Dr Evil, thats already happened [macworld.com].
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If you think Sculley's Apple will make a comeback then you're mistaken and don't know history.
Overstatement alert: not knowing what it's like in the board room of apple does not make you ignorant of history, it makes you ignorant of apple current events. While that isn't as bad as not knowing history, it is still a little bad, because those who don't know the state of leadership at apple computers are doomed to not really give a shit.
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And here in lies the problem, one man has absolute control and therefore no-one else can stop the mistakes they make. Apologies in advance for godwining this but its a good analogy, when Hitler took direct command of Army Group South in the Russ
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Bollocks. You have nothing. Jobs is no more on "on the sidelines" than a starting quarterback is.
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Apple Sphere 3000 (Score:1)
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I would hope they would make their games compatible with Apple PC, or at least easy to port. That way you didn't need both.
Stop adoration of exec's, the're human, they fail (Score:2, Insightful)
PLEASE
They don't make a difference, for every 'HOT' exec there are 10's (100's) of other brilliant people capable of doing the same thing.
Articles like this confirm the current executive manager payment scheme (overpayment by SHIT loads) that is one of the factors of the economic crisis
At the same time... (Score:3, Funny)
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Apple isn't losing money on the Apple TV, and certainly hasn't pumped $8billion into it.
Second year sales have jumped 3X, and the company has only ever halfassedly marketed it as a hobby.
To draw a parallel between Apple TV, a slow selling device that supports the success of iTunes against other set top boxes and services (including Microsoft's feeble attempts to enter this market) and the Xbox, which has only sold devices at huge subsidies and rang up massive hardware bills for Microsoft while only doing li
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Apple launched 1 model. Didn't sell well amongst a crowded market and poor marketing and high price tag. It was cancelled after 100,000 models.
MS launches 2 models of the Xbox. Both sell moderately well but at a loss. It takes MS 5 years to make a profit. Also during that time, their last model suffers major quality control issues that causes them $1.79 billion in extra repair charges on top of the $6 billion that they have already spent. Also the small profit disappea
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Re:Hilarious! The Apple Troll Is Trying To Talk Sh (Score:2)
The Bandai Pippin was not made or sold by Apple, which is why the Bandai brand is there.
Bandai (the Japanese company that licensed "Power Rangers") jumped on board when Apple offered to license Mac hardware designs to third parties, along with Panasonic and Motorola and a variety of companies that either did or did not actually bring a Mac clone to market.
Most of the Mac clones were just rebranded Mac models with more RAM or a faster CPU, but Bandai wrapped it up as a game console that was more of a web-cen
Not so simple Richard this time around (Score:4, Informative)
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They have limited hardware types to consider so it might a smaller job than DirectX.
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In fairness, though, it's true that PC ports are a heckuva lot easier on the Xbox 360, because of the exceedingly similar development model, compared to the PS3, which is far more ... idiosyncratic.
It's also possible that some developers were paid more to make the Xbox 360 version or port of a game superior. Or that they were paid to effectively cas
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Who is "everyone"? What makes the Xbox 360's graphics chip "better"? What definition of "better" are we using?
It's the old engineering tradeoff -- more general purpose cores or more special purpose processors that can offload certain tasks? In point of fact, while the Xbox 360 has 3 PowerPC cores which are equivalent to the single core of the C
I Like totems (Score:1)
Any chance we could add some more post icons? they look kinda pretty
Come inside the Reality Distortion Field (Score:2)
Now that Richard Teversham is cloaked in the RDF he no longer suffers the taint of Microsoft that many Slashdotters would otherwise sniff out.
Erm (Score:1, Redundant)
My initial reaction was "Eeeew."
Then I read it again and went "Oh, Apple Snags Former Xbox Exec."
Cool! (Score:2)
heat things up? (Score:1)
Maybe he will show them how to design the iPhone such that it overheats and dies.
Seriously hardware wise the Xbox 360 is pretty unreliable and nothing special. Timing of the release and price was well done but not the hardware.
Meh (Score:1, Troll)
Apple would be dumb to take on Nintendo in the handheld market.
A. It's been tried.
Everyone up to and including Sony has tried and failed. No one has ever taken the crown from N in portable gaming. And Sony gave it everything they had.
B. It's not possible without dedicated hardware.
So the Iphone can play games. Gee great. It has a nice screen. So did the PSP. But it doesn't have dedicated gaming inputs like the PSP had, and the PSP still failed. I remember people saying the PSP would be the one to finally ta
Re:Meh Assassin's Creed on iPhone vs DS version. (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPHS8TjQrcc [youtube.com]
Feel free to search Youtube for other iPhone game reviews.
Re:Meh Assassin's Creed on iPhone vs DS version. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and the DS version sells for 2-3 times the Iphone version. Ever wonder why? And why the consumer is okay with this?
The guy in that video you linked says the Iphone version of the game is better because it is graphically superior and cheaper in cost. He clearly know little about the hand-held market and its history. Every competitor who's ever challenged Nintendo's decades long dominance of the hand-held sector has come at them with the same thing 'better looking' (though not always cheaper games, but usually more expensive hardware) and has been devastated. If the Iphone were only a gaming device it would likely suffer the same fate.
So, you may think $10 for Assassin's Creed on the Iphone is a great deal. Sure. But what if you're the publisher? You might port the game to Iphone after making it for the DS and selling it there for awhile. But what if the DS was gone and Iphone was your primary system, could you afford to sell games at $10 a pop? No. So, publishers are not going to be happy with a $10 price for a game like AC. The only reason the price is so low anyway is because Apple no doubt put pressure on them to lower the price as much as possible, and they did it to test the waters.
Lastly, the graphics are are only marginally better. The battery life is much worse. The control scheme is much worse (Iphone control scheme even takes up screen real-estate!). The durability of the Iphone is worse (no clamshell). And the cost of the Iphone itself it far, far, far higher. Children are not going to be buying it, nor teens, nor parents for children or teens. It costs more than a PS3!
I assert again, Apple has no chance of displacing Nintendo in the hand-held market with the Iphone. It will continue to be at best a secondary market, a throw-away market, while the market-share remains with Nintendo.
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They are already taking them on, they are already have a mobile platform with games on it. They already have the touch which anyone can by, and doesn't have the recurring costs of the iphone, and is positioned at the ds already.
What are you afraid that they will do? Lower the price? Put buttons on it (I would be very surprised)?
And your logic is that other people have tried, therefore nobody will take the crown from Nintendo...do you realize how stupid a statement this is? I am glad there are plenty of peop
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It's not that 'people have tried and failed therefore no one can', my argument is that it sure as hell won't be the Iphone that does it.
You say the Iphone is "positioned at the DS already." Like hell it is. The Iphone costs some $500? You could buy three Nintendo DS's for that much money ($169 / per). And for that you get a machine that's actually designed to play games in every way.
You're right, Apple's never going to put buttons on the Iphone, yet another reason they are unlikley to eclipse the DS. Look a
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And outside Japan the PSP is a laughing stock. Nice try, no cigar.
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Sweet (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought the same thing, plus the following: who cares about either as an end user. "Waaa! These controllers are too similar, I'm always trying to plug the Xbox controller into the PS2 and vice versa!"
What's so bad about similar controller designs? Do you hear people complaining about how the keyboard and mouse for a PC is so similar to the keyboard and mouse for the mac? No, it makes sense that they're going to be similar, convergent evolution, good design is good design.
Too many games made for both systems? Put that another way: there were too few system exclusives for GP. Who the hell LIKES system exclusives besides the console companies themselves?!? "Woo! I don't get to play the game I want on the console I own! Awesome! Consumer choice sucks, hooray for monopolies!"
I think someone has pride in one console or the other. Which is strange, because they're things you buy, not something that should affect your identity. Then again, I don't understand people who have pride in their local sports team, and a lot of people do, so maybe I'm off here...
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I've always thought we could come up with a better term than "fanboy." What's wrong with being a fan of something? And most people who play games are guys. Anyway, I guess we're stuck with it now.
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And Sony slapped handlebars onto a SNES controller and called it a Playstation controller. But hey, you think that's bad, take a look at all these automakers blatantly plagiarizing the four wheels/two doors design.
Are you fucking high?
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Dude, you keep pimping your crazy vector processing "idea" and that particular blog entry non-stop. I know I've been accused of this in the past, so this may come off as hypocritical, but cripes, learn how to not be a one-issue commenter who hijacks any story or thread to try and promote your own brand of crazy. (And just FYI, I read your "How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis" article... blog rant... whatever you want to call it. You don't articulate your ideas very well, and you don't provide a
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I wouldn't say this comment is a troll. There are a lot of issues with trying to write generic source code that can be ported to any architecture or system.
There is pthreads - this allows you to create as many threads as you like, but you can't create a batch of threads in one call or bind specific threads to specific cores. You have to create them separately, with the result that in some tasks the first thread does a whole load of work, then waits for a cache reload, allowing another couple of threads to s
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There is nothing virtuous about "homogeneous". Quite the opposite
Homogeneous vs. Heterogeneous is an engineering tradeoff. Both have virtues, and both have drawbacks. This is an inescapable truth.
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Linux just isn't ready for the microwave oven yet. It may be ready for the toasters that you nerds use to distribute your toasted bread and bagels across the world wide web, but the average microwave user isn't going to spend months waiting for toast to toast and then hours compiling meals so that they can get a workable graphic interface to check their food with, especially not when they already have a Windows microwave oven which does its job perfectly well and is backed by a major corporation, as opposed
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Thanks. That was partially entertaining.
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[...] but the average microwave user isn't going to spend months waiting for toast to toast [...]
You don't toast toast. You do that to bread. ;)
[...] The last thing I want is Gordon Ramsay (haha) providing me my OS. [...]
I'm sure there is a Rachael Ray version, just for users like you!
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Probably, but Apple is working out parental controls for iPhone games (currently its only in place for music and video in iTunes and Apple's mobile devices), which is the rationale for not allowing adult content.
Once that is delivered in iPhone 3.0, Apple's objectionable content restrictions are likely to ease.
Apple hints App Store rules may loosen with iPhone OS 3.0 [appleinsider.com]
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Guys guys. I have nothing against Apple, when it is the right thing for some people. :)
And I would not know why to have anything against gays. I mean, how in the world would they hurt me? I don't get it...
But you totally and completely fell for it. Lol. Makes it even more funny. You guys are suuuch hypocrites, my children will not believe me when I tell them in 20 years. So funny! XD