To be fair, the author does state it's a 'straw that broke the camel's back' scenario; the punctuation at the end of a long line of disliked behaviour, not just one comment.
Quite a few OS X games, particularly the ones from very large companies, use a DirectX wrapper, like Cider. While they are technically running on OpenGL, the coders wrote DirectX
From the point of view of the quantity of PC games that use DirectX, OpenGL is losing. WebGL, as you mentioned, may really be a turning point. If Internet Explorer implements it natively, then the OpenGL stack on Windows may become much stronger. If game manufactures then started using OpenGL, DirectX would finally start to die (although, it still has the XBox).
So from the point of view of only games that run on the only platform that supports DirectX, OpenGL is dying?
You don't think that's maybe a problematic sample to draw conclusions from?
I mean, from the point of view of iOS and PS3 games, DirectX is non-existent. Taking these kind of sub-samples of the total game market produces degenerate results.
If "the only platform that supports DirectX" you mean "Windows", and therefore that "only games that run on Windows" means what I imagine it would have to, then... well, I for one don't think that's a problematic sample to draw conclusions from. In fact, if you want to get an idea about video games, especially (but not only) ones that run on computers, this is actually one of the better samples you could pick ;)
He's saying there are more games on Windows than on the platforms that use OpenGL. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's a reasonable argument. It doesn't really matter how many platforms implement OpenGL if nobody uses it.
> It doesn't really matter how many platforms implement OpenGL if nobody uses it.
Except that it is used, extensively; it's just not used much on Windows. Therefore, looking at Windows games and proclaiming that OpenGL is dying/dead is a really silly thing to do -- OpenGL ES knowledge is an extremely hot commodity among iOS and Android devs, etc.
So true man. Big updates always screw my system over... everytime I change certain hardware there are bound to be problems that require lurking around wiki/forums.
Nontheless I've been using it for many years, I've yet to find a better and feel-at-home replacements.
I think you are spot on. Just like big sound system aren't really dead in an era of miniaturisation, or vinyls aren't really dead in an era of digitalization, PCs or laptop won't really die in an era of cloudification.
I'm not sure i'm convinced by the argument that the cloud is a good thing because the hardware failures will have less consequence.
Apple sold a laptop that melted two weeks after it was bought. They could, instead, have made a laptop that WOULD NOT melt two weeks after it was bought.
I see the cloud as the biggest threat to individual online freedom and privacy. I will continue to buy big Thikpads, and avoid the cloud and tablets and the likes, at all costs.
You'd have to be very narrow in your online usage to guarantee your privacy. I wouldn't say privacy is dead but complete privacy is impossible. One could argue as well that the cloud was the major force behind the Arab Spring so it isn't all bad.
Regarding the laptop, I haven't heard this being a widespread problem with the Air. Once in a while, everyone comes across a device that has problems regardless of the manufacturer. What I take out of the story is the quality customer service. Good support almost guarantees that they will be a returning customer.
No, I don't think it's great that his laptop melted after two weeks, quite the opposite. I do think it is a good idea to plan for failure though. One thing I like about Windows (from Vista onwards) is that it is really fault-tolerant. I've been using OS X for about 9 months now, and while programs lock up less frequently, when they do they do sometimes manage to lock up the entire O/S.
Windows used to do this, but programs on Windows go catastrophically wrong that it is now expected and planned for - it's rare that a user space program impacts performance to the point where I cannot kill it.
Whole system? No. X? Yes. And when X crashes so does every other program I am using, so other than the shorter recovery time that isn't a lot better than crashing the whole system (ok, I have to admit there is much less chance of catastrophic disk corruption, as all the higher level processes will continue unimpeeded).
While I do absolutely love being able to ctrl+alt+F(x) no matter how bad things are and regain control, the fact that Windows has been able to recover from the window manager, graphics card driver, or even graphics card crashing without my music even skipping a beat for years now makes the reliance on X (by far the least stable component at least on my install) feel wholly unnecessary.
> by far the least stable component at least on my install
This is often the result of bad graphics drivers. Would you like to share your setup?
My laptop has that ACPI bug (in that the BIOS enables ACPI on peripherals and reports they don't support it back to the OS which then makes terrible decisions). I had to change my screensaver to a non-3D one to prevent the machine from seizing when entering low-power mode.
When I joined reddit some 3 years ago, I was a Digg user that wanted fresher content. Eventually reddit's minimalist style converted me, since all the Digg content was showing up on reddit.
Coincidentally, I'm seeing myself frequenting HN more often to read actual content, instead of sifting through tons of memes and pictures. HN is also starting to display content faster, which doesn't really mean anything unless you like shouting 'First' in comment pages (even more so now that I'm working, so by the time I visit both sites, the stories are posted).
The community of reddit is nice, doubly appealing when you are having fellow celebrities among your members; however, with the influx of people, it becomes difficult to feel like you are actually contributing.
Honestly every community comes with its foibles. (Metafilter: kind of ridiculously liberal at times, overly anti-business, HN: not very good with racism/sexism (IMO), Reddit: kind of immature, dangerous libertarian streak) These are all awesome communities though (with reddit, the unit of community is the subreddit, rather than the whole site, and you do have to pick the right subreddits.)
I observed that also. I wonder if it's a flat cyclical fluctuation that popular public social news sites go through, or if it's a sloped cyclical movement (usually downward).
I believe it's just a function of how long you've been a member of the site - it's easy to fantasize about the "way things used to be", much harder to objectively rank the quality of a site and also keep track of that in your mind over time.
