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wertigon
Posted on 19-02-18, 09:44 in Nintendo Switch emulation is now among us (revision 1)
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Posted by neptronix
I think it's really sad how things turned out for nintendo. Once they decided to leap out of the mainstream console race and focus on cheap stuff for kids, it's just been headache after headache for them, piracy wise.

Seems like they spend more money on lawyers than clever programming and hardware design.


You seem to be operating on the false assumption that piracy hurt sales. In most instances, it actually helps you more than it hurts you.

Think about it; how many times have you downloaded a game from... Well, let's say questionable channels, found out you liked it, and invested in the sequel?

Let's take an example. You download and play Xenoblade Chronicles, and like the game so much you buy a Switch and XBC2. Or you play GTA3 and get so hooked you pick up GTA5. And so on.

Piracy does drive sales and help new fans find your games. And as DRM increases and more and more hackers say "fuck it", the more larger companies will realise they *need* the piracy, and not the opposite way around. The losers? Crapware/shovelware companies.

But hey, that's just a theory. A GAME TH... *gets clapped in iron, gagball and dragged away to gitmo*
wertigon
Posted on 19-03-15, 06:54 in Blackouts
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Posted by sureanem
So does America.


Uh yeah, could you provide a more updated map showing everything post-WWII?

Because I promise you, I could give you a similar map for the UK, though most of those influences would be pre-WWI. After WWI, british economy tanked and they had severe trouble keeping the empire together. In WWII, the empire collapsed completely, which is why Australia and India now are their own countries (among many other things).

Does that mean we should crucify the UK for everything that happened over a century ago?
wertigon
Post: #23 of 204
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My take on the entire Windows 7/8.1 nagging bullshit:

Sucks, but, if you want to keep running windows get on the fucking train. It's just going to be worse and worse from here on out.

What, you don't like that? Sucks. Run Linux, BSD or OSX. Linux even allows for passthrough mode, allowing you to run Windows 10 in a VM for those two must-have applications you're still hooked on.

You don't like that either? Perhaps ReactOS could be something for you then, though I doubt ReactOS will ever get the traction they need for mainstream support.

Microsoft the lord of windows hath spoken, and thy lord tells thou to to windows 10, or keep behind as the land dries up. Those are thy options!

On a more personal level, I feel for you, but trying to change things now is like trying to get Hillary elected for President in 2020. It ain't happening. Work from where you are not from how you want things to be.
wertigon
Post: #24 of 204
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Posted by sureanem
In other words, exactly what Win 10 AME is aiming to do?


Oh, you still don't get it, you poor soul. :/

If you run any Windows older than 10 at this point, Microsoft has you by the balls and squeezing hard. This is not opinion, this is well documented fact.

AME won't get anywhere. It's a C&D lawsuit waiting to happen, since copyright law expressly forbids every redistribution and modification of Windows 10. You do not have a legal means of fixing the Windows telemetry. Your best bet if you want to stay in Windows land besides that is ReactOS, which will always play second fiddle to Windows.

Sure you could do a whole lot of dodging and weaving, but running Windows 7 will soon be more painful than running NetBSD, and Windows 8.1 isn't far behind.
wertigon
Post: #25 of 204
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Posted by sureanem
I get that it's theoretically illegal


No. Not theoretically. It is illegal. Period. It is a crime punishable by jail time.

You don't like it, start changing international copyright law.
wertigon
Post: #26 of 204
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Posted by sureanem

If it's impossible, then how come you can go to https://sci-hub.tw/ and download any scientific paper for free?


For the same reason Nintendo isn't cracking down on every single ROMhack out there - it's not hurting the business enough to warrant resources spent to shut it down, and most of those ROMhacks is some teenager just messing about with old code. Then every once in a while you get things like Crimson Echoes and Paralell Worlds.

The AME project will only survive as long as less than 2% of Windows 10 users have it. Installing this kind of non-sanctioned script also comes with a certain measure of risk, since it in theory could be developed or taken over by unscrupulous russian hackers trying to gain access to your computer and thus installing backdoors. I deem the risk as quite likely in fact, but to each to their own.
wertigon
Posted on 19-03-26, 14:39 in Something about cheese!
Post: #27 of 204
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So. EU just brainfarted and voted for even more draconian laws (anyone surprised)?

Highlights from the adopted legislation:

* Link tax mandatory
* Screening of user content mandatory
* The copyright of any recording from any sporting event belong to the sporting event arranger.

The only comfort is that this will further erode public support for copyright completely...
wertigon
Post: #28 of 204
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Posted by wareya
I didn't just pull off the "make your own game engine" meme. I didn't just pull off the "make your own game logic scripting language" meme. I made an insane high-level programming language with support for runtime procedural metaprogramming and a simple game engine around it.


Wait, so if I read this right... You just made the emacs equivalent for game engines?

Looks... Promising. Might check it out further once I get a new gaming/developer rig. :)
wertigon
Post: #29 of 204
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Did a quick search for open source Dreamcast objects, came across washington-DC.

https://github.com/washingtondc-emu/washingtondc

It seems like the emulator to support if you care about Linux support and Open Source. Still in early development too. But yeah, only supports like 3 games at the moment...
wertigon
Posted on 19-04-11, 16:41 in Computer Technology News/Discussion
Post: #30 of 204
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Posted by sureanem
Cherish your legacy software while you still have it.


Or, you know, run Linux and Open Source.

The more I learn where proprietary software is headed, the more i realize Stallman was right on the money all along.

There are today open source applications as good as or even better than professional versions for content creation. Apps like Krita or Audacious.

So, if they ever try it... No in fact I dare them to try it. :)
wertigon
Posted on 19-04-11, 16:46 in Something about cheese! (revision 1)
Post: #31 of 204
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Posted by sureanem
They got Assange.

https://www.rt.com/news/456212-julian-assange-embassy-eviction/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-11/assange-charges-revealed-by-u-s-hours-after-london-arrest


Finally, an end.

Assange stopped being relevant years ago, as did Wikileaks as an organisation. The world has moved on to other things. Right now environment is #1 on the agenda, and that means putting an end to corruption... And unfortunately, Wikileaks proved to be a poor guard against corruption.

Sucks to be him, but at this point... Meh.
wertigon
Posted on 19-04-12, 16:53 in Computer Technology News/Discussion
Post: #32 of 204
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Regarding Saki - Why not simply bite the bullet and pay the $50 for something like this?

http://www.banana-pi.org/r1.html
wertigon
Post: #33 of 204
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Your solution brings two ugly problems just by scratching on the surface:

1. New libc would literally require the entire system to be recompiled. Ask any seasoned Gentooer how much time that will take. Same for any library that is more or less used ubiquitously, like GTK3, xorg or libssl.

I do not think you realise how much time it takes to recompile every single application on your system (hint; try downloading Chromium or Firefox and compile that alone - and that's with mostly dynamic linking). There is a reason source based distros never gained much traction, not even Gentoo.

2. Your solution require access to source code, which is not a guaranteed assumption. After all, it's why the GPL was invented in the first place.

And let's not forget even Windows has a few pieces dynamicly linked, like win32 and DirectX stuff.

But by all means, you do you - simply run one of these static distros for yourself if you think they are the answer. :)
wertigon
Post: #34 of 204
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Posted by sureanem

No, this wouldn't be source-based. It would be done by whatever party is usually responsible for builds, i.e. distro maintainers. In such contexts, build times aren't that big of a concern, I'd presume.


This sounds like a great setup until you realise you still need to update every single packet that gets recompiled, vs downloading a single packet. Bandwidth isn't exactly cheap, and I think the static compile would lose out even if that single packet is 10x larger in size.

Posted by sureanem

The easiest way is probably to handle it like Steam: each release ships with its own copy of dependencies that it's known to work with, and those dependencies update with the program, not with the OS.


Yay for running a Firefox from 2010, because that really sounds secure!

This kind of packaging makes sense for a very narrow set of programs, namely, programs you want to run which are not actively maintained anymore. Incidentally I consider games to be the only valid use case for this, but only for non-open source ones. FOSS game engines can always be ported to a newer API; proprietary game packs for these engines would not be impacted.


Posted by sureanem

It ought to be mentioned that the size of a static executable is far less than (size of libraries) + (size of program), because it can throw away portions of libraries it doesn't need.


Which is a moot point for a general purpose distro, which has hundreds of different programs that interchangeably use the same dynamic library.

Let us assume three programs take up a, b and c space and all use the same library with a (dynamic) size of L, and they use a portion of that library x, y and z respectively.

Size of staticly linked: (a+x) + (b+y) + (c+z) = a+b+c + x+y+z
Size of dynamicly linked: a + b + c + L

Since X, y and z are a subset of L, there is quite a big chance x+y+z > L, rendering any space savings moot. So statically linked will always in general take up more space simply because it use space less efficiently.

So, to summarize; static linking is great for the narrow subset of a single program that will not be maintained ever again. It is, however, pretty shoddy for everything else. :)
wertigon
Post: #35 of 204
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Posted by Wowfunhappy
While it makes sense to me for a very limited number of basic packages, like libc, to be dynamically linked, I would ideally like everything else to be static.


There is an open source OS that does this. It's called ReactOS and is a clone of Windows.

Or you could just, you know, keep using Windows. :)
wertigon
Posted on 19-04-26, 17:08 in bsnes v107.1 on macOS
Post: #36 of 204
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Posted by Screwtape
It seems the number of people with both macOS C++ development experience and SNES emulation interest is very close to zero, at least around here.

Maybe you could look on a macOS emulation forum?


One big reason is that macOS no longer supports OpenGL, which... Well... Is the de-facto graphics API used in most emulators. The increasing costs of using Mantle over Vulkan is really biting Apple in the ass, big time.

But who cares about supporting standard APIs when you have < 10% of the market and all the profits in the world, amirite?
wertigon
Posted on 19-05-16, 06:18 in Computer Technology News/Discussion
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If they un-EOL XP they also need to un-EOL Win98 SE. So, not going to happen.

Though why anyone would run Win98 connected to internet these days is beyond me. :)

As for XP, at some time you need to stop supporting old versions. Since win7 there were few reasons left to use XP (or Vista for that matter; 7 was a straight upgrade from that), and those reasons are fewer and fewer as time goes on.

You don't like it there's always ReactOS!
wertigon
Posted on 19-06-02, 20:34 in Mozilla, *sigh*
Post: #38 of 204
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Re: slow piece of crap hogs of website excuses for crapdog fests, I agree things *should* be more streamlined. After all, reddit - it's mostly text and images, amirite?

Yes, but modern websites *are* one of the most complicated pieces to write these days.

First off, you need four or five different expertise skills:

* UI Design (Photoshop)
* Front-End development (HTML, CSS and JavaScript)
* Back-End development (One of C#, PHP, JavaScript, Python or Ruby)
* Database development (Usually SQL of some sort)
* Server administration (Webserver, database and webapp environment)

Each of these layers require some glue connecting them together:

* The UI designer chops up the design in PNG and SVG files
* The Front End developer uses templates that describe how to render the HTML and CSS required for the JavaScript to work.
* The Back End developer uses the templates, as well as a REST-based JSON API to communicate with Front-End and SQL on the back-end
* The Database developer uses SQL. No really, that's all he or she does.
* The server admin, finally... Well, doesn't do much once everything is set up and logging properly I suppose.

So that's at least 9 exchanges in the chain where efficiency gets lost. It's 9 gears and each lose some efficiency. If we assume each translation lose 5% efficiency that means around 63% efficiency losses just from having 9 freaking layers.

Add to that that for each layer, there is network communication involved, not to mention the modern browser engine has to render as much as win32 apps on the screen, well... No wonder things are big and slow and bloated.

How to fix this? I have no fricken clue...

Disclaimer: IAAFSD (I Am A Full Stack Developer)
wertigon
Posted on 19-06-03, 17:58 in Mozilla, *sigh* (revision 2)
Post: #39 of 204
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Posted by sureanem

Whenever you ask people about this, the answer is that the websites have to look good. But this is a complete non-sequitur! I mean, it would not be difficult to re-theme this board to look exactly like Discourse, with circular avatars and all. There is no intrinsic difference between them, just that one of them consumes massive amounts of RAM, works like garbage, and fails at the most basic of tasks. Why does it have to be slow, just because it's "modern"?


I agree with a lot of what you are saying.

The basic gist of it is that very few people understand how CSS and HTML are supposed to work together, and refuse to use JavaScript in a sensible manner. Oh and the whole desktop-vs-mobile web.

That, and they want on-the-fly JS loading stuff. For instance, I tend to frequent the Level1 forums these days. They have a lot of cool stuff like an auto-updating editor that shows an automatic preview of what your post will look like, entirely JS driven. Not to mention these fancy scroll-down-for-more-content-loading thingie. Or links loading either previews or, in case of sites like Youtube, loads the movie frame.

The most sane thing I ever designed was a PHP mechanism that allowed me to load parts of a website. Basically, each template had a choice to either render in full, or only render the relevant parts. If you clicked the link with a JSON-call, it only loaded the relevant part. If you did not, you reloaded the entire site. This required a slightly ugly quirk for every template to be like this:

if ($minimal) {
  render_content();
  exit;
}

render_header();
render_content();
render_footer();


But otherwise worked like a charm. Of course, a JSON-driven JavaScript loader would have been even better but...
wertigon
Posted on 19-06-07, 22:16 in Something about cheese! (revision 1)
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Posted by sureanem

Whatever knowledge he has going into the test, that is the knowledge which will be used both at university and during the test. And you might say some people know less about, say, maths. But they'd also do worse in college.


This is true, to some extent. But there is a thing called learning on the job. If I start out as a web developer and then slowly learn how to program 2D games, my knowledge of vector graphics and some Calculus will come naturally - albeit slow.

Posted by sureanem

And you might say they could brush up on the maths they're missing out on between taking the SAT and going to college. But then why couldn't they do it before taking the SAT?


A lot of different reasons. For instance, it is proven that the oldest child of a family often takes a disproportionate amount of responsibility in raising their younger siblings. Especially if one or both parents are unable to step up - which is very common in poor families who often see all kinds of abuse and addictions of some sort, be it cocaine, gambling or video games.

As the child grows up to an adult, they may have a second chance.

Posted by sureanem

IQ


You are aware IQ is a very, very poor measure of anything, correct? Unprepared they may tell a persons ability to reason logically, but IQ tests do not do much of anything. I took a test once, think I scored around 130 or so. You can absolutely game these tests though, and by the third time I took it I raised it to 190.

If you have 60 seconds to answer a question, and one person gets it wrong in 45 seconds and the other gets it right in 90 seconds, which one is the better student? Learning is all about making mistakes, and the earlier you make them, the better. Not to mention, in most countries as education has risen, so has the IQ score of those countries.

Talent does not an athlete make. Talent, combined with practice and even MORE practice, that makes an athlete.

Posted by sureanem

Loans


U.S. system - Take a loan. It's only $500 000, covers only tuition, and we'll even be generous and let you pay off your loan within fifteen years, plus interest of course. That'll be $3000 a month.

Swedish system - Take a loan. It's only $50 000, covers living expenses, and we'll let you pay off your loan within 25 years, at a very low interest. That will be $150 a month.

This results in US loans being extremely, extremely high with many people taking a side job while in college, while Swedes only need to work if they want some extra spare cash to pursue some hobby or make travel plans. From my perspective, it's completely broken. But then there are nuances I'm probably missing here. :)

In closing, I think the U.S. school system is heavily skewed towards the already rich getting educated and the more unfortunate ones being left in the dust, which is sad because that means Ivy League universities will eventually lose out on the geniuses born into the working class. It will take decades for this to be apparent, however.

SATs in general though? Should only be used to ensure baselines are kept and little else.
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