[Malgon]

Some more thoughts from Carmack on the acquisition:

http://www.shacknews...ook-oculus-deal

[Person of Color]

LOL

[Daedolon]

But money has always been more important that innovation.

Just take a look around you.

[MrBlackCat]

Daedolon, on 01 April 2014 - 06:30 AM, said:

But money has always been more important that innovation.

Just take a look around you.

Exactly... take Windows for example.

MrBlackCat

[Malgon]

And here's another former Valve employee joining the ranks of Oculus. I wonder how many more guys from Valve are going to join with the Oculus team.

[Lunick]

I wonder if Plagman is interested

[Hendricks266]

Plagman's project is SteamOS, so no.

[RunningWild]

MrBlackCat, on 01 April 2014 - 02:20 PM, said:

Exactly... take Windows for example.

Well, to be fair, innovate in what way? This is the problem with making a "perfect product". Once you make it, how to you keep your business alive when everyone who's going to buy your product already has it? Post-WinXP, the differences in functionality have been negligible. How else are they going to compete with the tablet market or just keep income coming in period without at least giving people something new, regardless of actual new features or anything even remotely resembling innovation?

[Plagman]

well i joined oculus guys you better like my facebook profile

[Person of Color]

Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Blow us on YouPorn.
Stalk us on Street View.

[Fox]

RunningWild, on 02 April 2014 - 06:42 PM, said:

Well, to be fair, innovate in what way? This is the problem with making a "perfect product". Once you make it, how to you keep your business alive when everyone who's going to buy your product already has it? Post-WinXP, the differences in functionality have been negligible. How else are they going to compete with the tablet market or just keep income coming in period without at least giving people something new, regardless of actual new features or anything even remotely resembling innovation?

Since you mentioned a "perfect product", Windows is far from being one, if not the last one on the line. Which answer your question of how could Windows improve, instead of what they are doing now.

Windows 8 shows the problem of making a product that sells rather than fulfill the user needs, it's a product that exists for the sake of the product itself and not the user.

[Inspector Lagomorf]

Fox, on 02 April 2014 - 11:28 PM, said:

Windows 8 shows the problem of making a product that sells rather than fulfill the user needs, it's a product that exists for the sake of the product itself and not the user.

Yep, they're using the same marketing model employed by Apple, Mercedes-Benz, and Abercrombie & Fitch.

It's not that you need Windows 8 for productivity. It's that you dare not be seen without it if you're a "real" person. This is evident in all of the television commercials pimping out Microsoft Surface and similar ilk of its kind; if you haven't upgraded to it yet, you're second fiddle to the guy who is brilliant, likeable, kills it at the board meeting, gets all the girls, etc.. This sort of marketing tactic is no less evident on tech forums and comment threads, where Windows 8 users accuse those who haven't upgraded from Windows 7 of being cavemen or resistant to all change. This sort of marketing has always fallen flat on its face when subject to actual scrutiny.

Windows 9 promises to bring back the desktop users that have been isolated due to not caring a whit about the mobile computing hype machine. The damage has already been done, though. Steve Ballmer's planned "retirement" immediately after the colossal flop of the Microsoft Surface is no coincidence.

[Plagman]

didnt get enough likes so they fired me oh well was worth a try pls like more next time ty

[MrBlackCat]

RunningWild, on 02 April 2014 - 06:42 PM, said:

Well, to be fair, innovate in what way? This is the problem with making a "perfect product". Once you make it, how to you keep your business alive when everyone who's going to buy your product already has it? Post-WinXP, the differences in functionality have been negligible. How else are they going to compete with the tablet market or just keep income coming in period without at least giving people something new, regardless of actual new features or anything even remotely resembling innovation?

This was mostly a stab at Microsoft/Windows in general for not being reliable when compared to other OS's. I am/was a Novell CNE in the 90's for instance, but I also was an MCSE. All I learned from my Microsoft training was that I never wanted to actually work with NT... ever. The up-time (time without reboot) was over a year on average for Novel Netware. Windows NT was PROUD of their average up-time being somewhere in the 30 day area. Things like Memory requirements were extreme also... Netware was faster by about 100 percent (relative to processing and request handling on matching motherboards/hardware) and required about 1/4 the RAM of an NT Machine.

Nothing wrong with updating and innovating your product... and perfect isn't a point that is achieved, it is a path which is followed. The business could thrive on constantly keeping up with technology increases for instance. Speaking relative to computer OS's anyway...

All I meant with my post is that if Peter Norton had created an OS like DOS and Microsoft had never existed, I believe the world would be years ahead of where we are today relative to Home PC OS's.

MrBlackCat

[RunningWild]

Fox, on 02 April 2014 - 11:28 PM, said:

Since you mentioned a "perfect product", Windows is far from being one, if not the last one on the line. Which answer your question of how could Windows improve, instead of what they are doing now.

Windows 8 shows the problem of making a product that sells rather than fulfill the user needs, it's a product that exists for the sake of the product itself and not the user.

Yeah, but you can't realistically have perfect in a technological product that leaves the customizability up to the users. It'll never happen. But, at least in the past, Windows was pretty damn good. I've run a few Win98 machines since that OS came out which are still perfectly functional. And I have a few XP machines (including the one I'm typing from) that run great. Do they run all the time with never an issue? No, of course not. Does anything? Do they run problem free 95+% of the time and let me do what I need to do? Absolutely!

You'll hear no argument from me on Win8 though. That's what I was getting at in the post you replied to. The reasoning was to centralize the OS so that the tablet space MS is attempting to compete in and the desktop space are integrated; no more divergent OS's across different platforms.

Answer your own question : What would you like to see from Win that you aren't seeing currently (or in past incarnations)?

MrBlackCat, on 03 April 2014 - 03:14 PM, said:

This was mostly a stab at Microsoft/Windows in general for not being reliable when compared to other OS's. I am/was a Novell CNE in the 90's for instance, but I also was an MCSE. All I learned from my Microsoft training was that I never wanted to actually work with NT... ever. The up-time (time without reboot) was over a year on average for Novel Netware. Windows NT was PROUD of their average up-time being somewhere in the 30 day area. Things like Memory requirements were extreme also... Netware was faster by about 100 percent (relative to processing and request handling on matching motherboards/hardware) and required about 1/4 the RAM of an NT Machine.

Nothing wrong with updating and innovating your product... and perfect isn't a point that is achieved, it is a path which is followed. The business could thrive on constantly keeping up with technology increases for instance. Speaking relative to computer OS's anyway...

All I meant with my post is that if Peter Norton had created an OS like DOS and Microsoft had never existed, I believe the world would be years ahead of where we are today relative to Home PC OS's.

MrBlackCat

Ha, I gathered that.

I had to administrate and set up a NT server (4) back when I worked as a lead programmer doing custom document imaging solutions. Our server never in my memory went down and we left it up for months, if not over a year (I don't recall exactly), on end without any problems. It was a bit of a pain to set up initially, but was fairly problem-free after that. I do recall one time when I went to our main office elsewhere and there was a $60k Sun SparcStation that had run for years without being reset. Though, it didn't see heavy use.

Anyhow, my reply was intended to point out that innovation is fine provided it's actual innovation and not just the appearance of it. For instance, Win8 and, even to a degree, Win7. Win7 cleaned up the untidy parts of Vista pretty well, which was needed, but did it really bring anything new or necessary to the table? Innovative? It probably could've been released as a service pack. Win8 is an attempt for MS to converge their codebase towards a common OS for both tablets and PCs. But, does it really let people do anything they couldn't do before (let's leave the DirectX tying to the OS out of the discussion for the moment)? I really doubt it.

What I'm getting at if it's not already clear is I'm not advocating change for change's sake. That's what I'd term as fake innovation. I also don't think reliability is a replacement for functionality. All things considered, it's obviously best if they coalign. I have to be able to actually be productive on the thing for it to add value for me.

To use another example I've run multiple Linux installations and they've been universally flakey (with the exception of my PS2 Linux Kit) and I always hear people go on about the reliability of that OS. I'm just not convinced that in practice end-users collectively create a superior product. I saw how people coded back when I was in CompSci in college and the idea that these people can be editing essential parts of the OS I need to create a livelihood on frankly jolts me out of a sound sleep in cold sweat. And the alternatives (other OS's) don't really add the functionality I need to program, play games, and do whatever else I use my PC for on a daily basis.

I do debate your last paragraph though. I have to ask what would it allow us to do? I draw blanks on that. That's what I mean when I say innovate in what way.

Comrade Major, on 03 April 2014 - 04:31 AM, said:

Steve Ballmer's planned "retirement" immediately after the colossal flop of the Microsoft Surface is no coincidence.

I'm just going to leave this here : https://xkcd.com/323/

[DustFalcon85]

FTC approves Facebook's acquisition of Oculus VR.

Moral of the story: Do let big companies inject you w/ huge amount of money in your coffers in exchange of being you it's bitch!

[Kyanos]

Looks like fun. Fucking with someone wearing it, not the VR rollercoaster.

[Micky C]

What happened when they pushed him? Did the rollercoaster rapidly accelerate?

[Kyanos]

The push was about a minute into the video, just as the roller coaster started its decent.

[Mr. Tibbs]

Zenimax is claiming that John Carmack stole tech when leaving id. Yep, there's legal action.

http://www.engadget....s-oculus-stole/

https://twitter.com/...918500307472384

[Malgon]

I don't know who is in the right here, but I'm sure many are looking at this as more than a little convenient that it's happening after the Facebook acquisition. There's another tweet from Carmack about it below.

Quote

Oculus uses zero lines of code that I wrote while under contract to Zenimax.

Source

[OpenMaw]

On the one hand. It's The Carmack. You don't dare question The Carmack.

On the other hand, stealing shit is sorta how id Software started. If not for jacking computer hardware from their real jobs they never would have gotten id Software up and running. SO... I could see it being either way evenly split.

[Hank]

Commando Nukem, on 02 May 2014 - 04:53 PM, said:

On the one hand. It's The Carmack. You don't dare question The Carmack.

On the other hand, stealing shit is sorta how id Software started. If not for jacking computer hardware from their real jobs they never would have gotten id Software up and running. SO... I could see it being either way evenly split.

have yo read this?
http://www.giantbomb...tware/3010-347/
how the fuck is related to writing game engines, or the claim by Zenishit?

Zenimax is a private firm financed by even more private investors, for them it's the bottom line. I doubt any slave masters at Zenishit know a line code even if it danced naked in front of their fat stinking nose. We are witnessing another sample of powerful money grabbing more money because money made the rules of the land for them in the first place.

I stick to Carmack

[OpenMaw]

Hank, on 02 May 2014 - 05:27 PM, said:

!!!

Hank, on 02 May 2014 - 05:27 PM, said:

have yo read this?
http://www.giantbomb...tware/3010-347/

Yeah, I read it. I find the whole thing to be the typical over-the-top horseshit that Zenimax has been doing in recent years.

Though I would hasten to add I find the simplistic way in which Corporations are whited washed as "fat" and "stupid" by some forumers to be both anti-intellectual and totally fucking funny. It's a bit of a contradiction, and reads more like a bitter resentment of success as a whole, and not just the corruption that occurs within corporations. Zenimax may be run by greedy assholes, but I very much doubt they are on-the-whole stupid. They know exactly what they are doing. That doesn't make it right, but at the same time, these people practically live with their lawyers. So I don't see them raising a lawsuit just for shits and giggles. They're not going to waste the money trying something like this unless they perceive themselves having a leg to stand on.


All of that aside, I was merely, and in humorous light, pointing out that Carmack does indeed have a history of being caught committing acts of theft in the development of his projects.

Hank, on 02 May 2014 - 05:27 PM, said:

I stick to Carmack

No. The Carmack. How DARE you slander the Demigod of engine coding. The titan of polygons. The supreme ruler of raycast!


I should have given my post another reading before posting. I was, as the Brits would say, "taking the piss." Probably should have used an emoticon or something...

[Hank]

You see, this is why I prefer to go out for a beer, at least then we could have talked on the same wave length from the start.

[Kyanos]

Quote

Zenimax canceled VR support for Doom 3 BFG when Oculus refused Zenimax’s demands for a non-dilutable equity stake in Oculus.

I can hardly believe that. I'll make a game for your VR machine, if I can take ownership of your VR machine.

[MusicallyInspired]

Petty.

[termit]

Oculus responds to ZeniMax intellectual property claims: http://www.destructo...ms-274280.phtml

[MusicallyInspired]

ZeniMax should die. The game industry needs to be primarily about making games again, not money.

[DustFalcon85]

And now ZeniMax sues Oculus Rift.