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The #100 on that list (bottom of the page) had 24 cores and a peak GFLOPS of 192.

The AMD Radeon 6850, which is a mainstream or low-end gaming graphics processor and available for around $200 as we speak, has 960 cores with a theoretical peak performance of 1.5 TFLOPS. I haven't seen LinPack numbers for it and I'm not sure AMD has it working under LinPack just yet.

The numbers of a workstation using OpenCL or CUDA on even one high-end graphics card would put it in the top ten from 2000. Some systems for professional workstations and clusters are specified with four or more GPGPU cards specifically for use as general-purpose accelerated vector processors.

NVidia's Tesla C2050 in a dual GPU dual CPU (Xeon X5670) single system had an actual test at 656.1 GFLOPS. That's a single 1U system. Granted, it had 48 GB of RAM installed and a street price of around $11k. Still, that's a far cry from a supercomputer price. These GPU cards are being put into supercomputer clusters being built as they offer about 8x the performance per node or a 2x Xeon node without the use of the GPUs. One node would be in the top 30 from ten years ago.

When measurements move from GFLOPS to TFLOPS, make sure you notice the difference. It's a big one. The top supercomputers are now in PFLOPS territory.

Every time there is a new Diablo 3 announcement, I scan through to see if they mention the item dropping/picking up system. Racing strangers to click the item the fastest was probably the worst thing about Diablo 2, and brought in lots of 3rd-party programs/cheats.

Then perhaps you would find this article "Blizzard Explains Diablo III's New Loot System" enlightening:

Yeah, drops for everything, bosses, normal enemies, chests, etc. all drop items per player. If you see an item drop, it's for you. If you pick up an item and don't want it, when you drop it then everyone else can see it.

Basically what you see is for you and you alone. No one else may see or touch it until you drop it. As World of Warcraft illustrated, they learned from that. They learned a lot from that.

Here's some support for your argument: BioWare RPG Cliche Chart.

When RealID was rolled out, they said it's for friends and family and people you trust.

But you have to trust all of your friends' friends. You know, people who may or may not be friends, family, and anyone else you know.

You could ignore that and never be able to chat across games, servers, or factions.

With the forums, there is no opt-in. You post, you're name is revealed. From the sound of it, you don't need to be logged in to the website to see people's real names. They're doing this to... what'd they say again? Bring responsibility and accountability to posters? To prevent trolling? Chilling effect is what I believe it's called.

A community manager offered his name to placate the masses. This has led to a new word: Whippled. Definition: Trying to ease the worries expressed by your captive audience only to show that those worries are well founded.

http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Americans-are-bad-at-games/Real-Names-on-the-Official-Forums-New-REAL-ID-function?gr_i_ni

Other people have said it's not a bad idea. This was one of them (note the tense): http://seewhatyoudidthere.com/2010/07/07/realid-changes-the-very-real-ease-of-stalking-in-the-internet-age/

Others still are saying they will opt-out and never post on the forums. That's nice but it's not ending here. Oh, far from it. They've got a deal with Facebook and, by the looks of it, they're going ahead full steam.

Official topic is well on its way to 40k replies now. http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25712374700&sid=1&pageNo=1

And here's what happened: http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Americans-are-bad-at-games/Real-Names-on-the-Official-Forums-New-REAL-ID-function?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wowriot+(Latest+Wowriot+Blog+Posts+-+Wowriot.Gameriot.com)

Rumors are abound that Blues will not be showing their names now.

BTW, the original thread is over 1200 pages and 24,000 replies now. It is interesting that people are up in a huff over this and not, say, Facebook but the audiences probably differ both in makeup and what they expect.

A Blizzard employee went ahead and put his name out there as detailed on this site. In short, a little digging has found the guy's phone number, home address, the names and home address of his parents, his siblings' names, the valuation of his property, the name of his spouse, his facebook account, pictures of his home, pictures of him, his twitter account, his age, and so on.

Guess that is the last game I will be buying from them. I like my pseudo anonymity.

A Blizzard employee went ahead and put his name out there as detailed on this site.

In short, a little digging has found the guy's phone number, home address, the names and home address of his parents, his siblings' names, the valuation of his property, the name of his spouse, his facebook account, pictures of his home, pictures of him, his twitter account, his age, and so on.

Hi, Micah Whipple!

"To alleviate people's concerns, Blizzard employee Bashiok decided to say his real name on the forums, his real name is Micah Whipple Address: 473 Avenue B Lakeport, CA 95453-6032 Phone Number: (707) 263-0190 Age: 28 Family: Kimberly K Whipple, age: 54 Jason Stephen Whipple, age 34".

> we need *MAPS* ... A new game mode isn't going to make mercy more exciting.

Agreed.

What the really weird part is, that you can _already_ play Survival mode. A co-worker (accidently?) invented a new game mode about 2 weeks ago since we were getting bored on Expert. We call it "Don's Survival Mode" after him.

Details are: After contacting the rescue mission, run _back_ to the safe house (!), and try to stay alive as long as possible as you get wave after wave of zombie and tank rushes. (We count each Tank(s) spawn as a wave.)
Recommended Difficulty: Easy
Recommended Campaign: 2nd Campaign, "Death Toll"
Recommended Map: 5th Chapter, "Boathouse Finale" (For a tougher challenge, try to hold out at the mini-gun.)

We've introduced this alternate game style to a few co-workers and they'd absolutely loved it. The best part is that it doesn't require any mods -- just "house rules" so to speak.

But yeah, we definitely need more maps -- we've checked out some of the player created maps, but they all suck. As a game programmer, I now how hard it is to design, texture, and play balance a map; can't do anything but wait...

Little bit of L4D humor: "Life Imitates Art..."

L4D Road Sign?! :)
http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/274/48/

The real Zoey (scroll down to end)
http://hellforge.gameriot.com/blogs/Boys-Club/IRL-The-Pretty-People-Who-Inspire-Pretty-Game-Heroes

Fan Photoshoot
http://pixelatedgeek.com/2009/03/left-4-dead-photoshoot-looks-perfect/?ea

Cheers

Any time I've ever lived with people who game, all of us had their own PCs.

You have a point about M rated games like Diablo III is expected to be, as each player is expected to either be in college or have a job. But E, E10+, or T rated games have players under 18, who due to school and child labor laws usually can't work to buy their own PCs and have to play on the family PC. Besides, two copies of a $40 game without single-screen multiplayer are more expensive than one copy of a $60 game that includes it.

you had to both huddle over 1 PC

A sufficiently large monitor should not require "huddling".

with a split screen

Diablo shouldn't have to split anything if both players' characters stick within a few meters of each other. Secret of Mana didn't.

I think they have stopped now, or got kicked out, I havent seen any more similar activity from the bunch....

Tm

http://www.gameriot.com/blogs/SK-Gaming-my-Hearthstone/New-Deathknight-Info-Gameplay-features-and-WallpapersScreenshots-etc Posted by the best rogue in World of Warcraft, no less.

http://www.gameriot.com/news/4084/BlizzCon-Footage -StarCraft-2/