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Re:Bitterness by oGMo · 2007-02-03 08:50 · Score: 1 · on Sony Open to Considering PS3 Price Cuts

Third, Sony did lie about the PS2 and (to a lesser degree) about the PS3. They lied about the tech specs, and they showed target renders which they must have known were not achievable with the final hardware (I have no yet seen games that look as good as the target renders, but admittedly, I'll have to give them the benefit of the doubt here - they may yet deliver this). Also: they promised WIFI standard, and (which I thought was most interesting) up to 7 controllers.

These are all a myth:

The "target renders" presented on the PS2 is the infamous FF8 dance-scene tech demo. People have said everything from "Sony never delivered" to "looked better than FF8 FMV". Neither of these are true. You can check and compare the screenshots I have stored for posterity. Compare them to the original scene here and here, and it's fairly evident they are nowhere near close. Additionally, compare them to older games like Gran Turismo 3, Jak II, and Final Fantasy X; or newer games like Black, Gran Turismo 4, Shadow of the Colossus; or upcoming games like God of War 2, and they all make that demo look downright primitive.
As for PS3 prerenders, compare Killzone PS3, a claimed prerender, and arguably the flashiest video Sony demonstrated, to Resistance, or Motorstorm, and you can see they're already very very close, if not exceeding, the prerender. And these are launch titles.
Wifi is indeed only in the 60GB model for now, but they have left the ability to later upgrade both HDD and wifi in the systems.
It should be theoretically possible to have 7 controllers, even all wireless. This is the maximum number of bluetooth devices one can attach to a single receiver, and while there may not be 7 lights on the controllers, it's not inconceivable that a firmware upgrade could enable this. Treat the lights as bits, not positions, and you can show up to 16. Also, the PS3 has 4 USB ports, where you can plug in 4 controllers in addition to 4 wireless controllers.

Most claims about "Sony lies!" come from people misremembering, misstating, misunderstanding, or outright lying. Yeah, Sony has changed a few things, but nothing like people would have you believe. They've even added a few arguably more important things: HDMI and HDD to all models, and the ability to upgrade.

Re:Eh kindof -- Idiot by oGMo · 2005-12-21 07:05 · Score: 1 · on Is Ruby on Rails Maintainable?

Criminy, that's a hard post to read. Use blockquote instead of bold! ;-) Anyway:

Which features are you talking about? Give an example. This should be pretty easy, but I've found I'll often try and automate something and down the road it turns out to be more maintenance than if I were to have just hacked it out.

Rails requires you do a lot of stuff like do manual updates on objects, write literal SQL strings in your code, and other similar little things that could, with some creative ruby, be done automatically. On the count of SQL, and at the risk of self-promotion, check out Criteria, which lets you write literal Ruby statements that are transformed into SQL, all in a ruby-esque manner.

For the latter count, it is easy (or at least, not very difficult) to implement a system that does implicit object persistence. I have such a system called mephle, which you can see the latest version of in the SVN repository, but it's not documented well enough for general use, and I wouldn't advertise it as such. However, it shows that such a thing is not only possible, but pretty straightforward.

Give an example. This should be pretty easy, but I've found I'll often try and automate something and down the road it turns out to be more maintenance than if I were to have just hacked it out.

This is just poorly-designed automation, then. There is a clear line for where automation should end and where manual usage should begin. Follow these rules:

If it's something the system can figure out automatically based on specified information, it should be automated. If it's something that's always unique, it should be manual. If the information has been specified once, it should not have to be specified again. If there can be special cases, it should be possible to hook in code to handle them.

If you have a system that follows the above rules, you will find yourself writing much, much less code and focusing almost entirely on the problem at hand. And it's possible to write such a system, especially in ruby---see above.

I'm not sure I know what you are talking about, because my interface is for the most part completely separate from my processing. Interface goes in my views and the processing happens in my controller. Explain this please.

The fact you have HTML in a separate file from the code is not sufficient for full separation. You should be able to entirely drop the web interface and instead write, say, a GTK or commandline app, without changing any of the backend code.

Pretty much tied to MySQL? It comes with connection adapters for both MySQL and PgSQL, and it works fine with both of them. This aught to be a pretty good reason not to trust anything you have said. You have no idea what you're talking about. It doesn't make use of any MySQL-specific features like enums, everything is abstracted down to basic SQL.

Then you have not seriously used it with other databases. I recommend you hop on #ruby-lang on irc.freenode.net (I'm there as oGMo as well), and ask around for people's experience with Rails and other databases.

There hasn't been nearly as much testing and development going on with those projects. I don't know how you could say they are for "more serious apps". You would probably spend at least twice as much time developing an application with one of those.

Uh, you have metrics for this where? All of the above modules are much older and more developed than Rails. Rails is the new kid on the block, and it's still got a lot of growing up to do.

Re:Eh kindof -- Idiot by oGMo · 2005-12-21 07:05 · Score: 1 · on Is Ruby on Rails Maintainable?

Criminy, that's a hard post to read. Use blockquote instead of bold! ;-) Anyway:

Which features are you talking about? Give an example. This should be pretty easy, but I've found I'll often try and automate something and down the road it turns out to be more maintenance than if I were to have just hacked it out.

Rails requires you do a lot of stuff like do manual updates on objects, write literal SQL strings in your code, and other similar little things that could, with some creative ruby, be done automatically. On the count of SQL, and at the risk of self-promotion, check out Criteria, which lets you write literal Ruby statements that are transformed into SQL, all in a ruby-esque manner.

For the latter count, it is easy (or at least, not very difficult) to implement a system that does implicit object persistence. I have such a system called mephle, which you can see the latest version of in the SVN repository, but it's not documented well enough for general use, and I wouldn't advertise it as such. However, it shows that such a thing is not only possible, but pretty straightforward.

Give an example. This should be pretty easy, but I've found I'll often try and automate something and down the road it turns out to be more maintenance than if I were to have just hacked it out.

This is just poorly-designed automation, then. There is a clear line for where automation should end and where manual usage should begin. Follow these rules:

If it's something the system can figure out automatically based on specified information, it should be automated. If it's something that's always unique, it should be manual. If the information has been specified once, it should not have to be specified again. If there can be special cases, it should be possible to hook in code to handle them.

If you have a system that follows the above rules, you will find yourself writing much, much less code and focusing almost entirely on the problem at hand. And it's possible to write such a system, especially in ruby---see above.

I'm not sure I know what you are talking about, because my interface is for the most part completely separate from my processing. Interface goes in my views and the processing happens in my controller. Explain this please.

The fact you have HTML in a separate file from the code is not sufficient for full separation. You should be able to entirely drop the web interface and instead write, say, a GTK or commandline app, without changing any of the backend code.

Pretty much tied to MySQL? It comes with connection adapters for both MySQL and PgSQL, and it works fine with both of them. This aught to be a pretty good reason not to trust anything you have said. You have no idea what you're talking about. It doesn't make use of any MySQL-specific features like enums, everything is abstracted down to basic SQL.

Then you have not seriously used it with other databases. I recommend you hop on #ruby-lang on irc.freenode.net (I'm there as oGMo as well), and ask around for people's experience with Rails and other databases.

There hasn't been nearly as much testing and development going on with those projects. I don't know how you could say they are for "more serious apps". You would probably spend at least twice as much time developing an application with one of those.

Uh, you have metrics for this where? All of the above modules are much older and more developed than Rails. Rails is the new kid on the block, and it's still got a lot of growing up to do.

Re:Eh kindof -- Idiot by oGMo · 2005-12-21 07:05 · Score: 1 · on Is Ruby on Rails Maintainable?

Criminy, that's a hard post to read. Use blockquote instead of bold! ;-) Anyway:

Which features are you talking about? Give an example. This should be pretty easy, but I've found I'll often try and automate something and down the road it turns out to be more maintenance than if I were to have just hacked it out.

Rails requires you do a lot of stuff like do manual updates on objects, write literal SQL strings in your code, and other similar little things that could, with some creative ruby, be done automatically. On the count of SQL, and at the risk of self-promotion, check out Criteria, which lets you write literal Ruby statements that are transformed into SQL, all in a ruby-esque manner.

For the latter count, it is easy (or at least, not very difficult) to implement a system that does implicit object persistence. I have such a system called mephle, which you can see the latest version of in the SVN repository, but it's not documented well enough for general use, and I wouldn't advertise it as such. However, it shows that such a thing is not only possible, but pretty straightforward.

Give an example. This should be pretty easy, but I've found I'll often try and automate something and down the road it turns out to be more maintenance than if I were to have just hacked it out.

This is just poorly-designed automation, then. There is a clear line for where automation should end and where manual usage should begin. Follow these rules:

If it's something the system can figure out automatically based on specified information, it should be automated. If it's something that's always unique, it should be manual. If the information has been specified once, it should not have to be specified again. If there can be special cases, it should be possible to hook in code to handle them.

If you have a system that follows the above rules, you will find yourself writing much, much less code and focusing almost entirely on the problem at hand. And it's possible to write such a system, especially in ruby---see above.

I'm not sure I know what you are talking about, because my interface is for the most part completely separate from my processing. Interface goes in my views and the processing happens in my controller. Explain this please.

The fact you have HTML in a separate file from the code is not sufficient for full separation. You should be able to entirely drop the web interface and instead write, say, a GTK or commandline app, without changing any of the backend code.

Pretty much tied to MySQL? It comes with connection adapters for both MySQL and PgSQL, and it works fine with both of them. This aught to be a pretty good reason not to trust anything you have said. You have no idea what you're talking about. It doesn't make use of any MySQL-specific features like enums, everything is abstracted down to basic SQL.

Then you have not seriously used it with other databases. I recommend you hop on #ruby-lang on irc.freenode.net (I'm there as oGMo as well), and ask around for people's experience with Rails and other databases.

There hasn't been nearly as much testing and development going on with those projects. I don't know how you could say they are for "more serious apps". You would probably spend at least twice as much time developing an application with one of those.

Uh, you have metrics for this where? All of the above modules are much older and more developed than Rails. Rails is the new kid on the block, and it's still got a lot of growing up to do.

Re:Guess which console I want! by oGMo · 2005-12-09 06:39 · Score: 4, Informative · on PS3 On Track For Spring 2006

I do hope history repeats itself, if they make good on the promises this time, like they did last, we're all in for a real treat.

I'd like to add some detail to this. There are two big myths regarding PS2 pre-launch claims:

Sony said the PS2 could render Toy Story in realtime
The Final Fantasy 8 demo was faked, and we haven't seen anything like it on the PS2 to date

The first myth is wrong; Sony never said this. If you don't believe me, try and find a quote, from a Sony spokesperson, that says this. Given all the articles are still on the web, this should be fairly easy to do, if this is true. However, it's fairly easy to find quotes from Microsoft spokespeople, like Bill Gates, that the XBOX would have "Toy Story quality graphics" (this particular case is from CES 2001).

The second myth is a result of people being wowed by realtime graphics that blew away the current stuff, and forgetting how crappy the graphics at the time were. Here are two screenshots I managed to find from the FF8 tech demo:

Decent. Way better than the PS1. (Note, in that screenshot, only the characters are 3D, the background is prerendered.) However, the original FMV was still far superior:

Now, regardless, the claim is that the original demo was faked, and they haven't matched the quality. You be the judge:

Gran Turismo 3, early 2001
Metal Gear Solid 2, 2, 3, late 2001
Jak and Daxter, late 2001 (and a realtime cutscene)
Silent Hill 3, 2, 3 (no, those are not prerendered, go play the game), early 2003
Gran Tursmo 4, 2, 3, late 2004

Most of these are at least as good, if not better than the screenshots for the FF8 demo, and most of them are early to mid PS2 games. There are many more examples, but this is enough to compare.

Re:Guess which console I want! by oGMo · 2005-12-09 06:39 · Score: 4, Informative · on PS3 On Track For Spring 2006

I do hope history repeats itself, if they make good on the promises this time, like they did last, we're all in for a real treat.

I'd like to add some detail to this. There are two big myths regarding PS2 pre-launch claims:

Sony said the PS2 could render Toy Story in realtime
The Final Fantasy 8 demo was faked, and we haven't seen anything like it on the PS2 to date

The first myth is wrong; Sony never said this. If you don't believe me, try and find a quote, from a Sony spokesperson, that says this. Given all the articles are still on the web, this should be fairly easy to do, if this is true. However, it's fairly easy to find quotes from Microsoft spokespeople, like Bill Gates, that the XBOX would have "Toy Story quality graphics" (this particular case is from CES 2001).

The second myth is a result of people being wowed by realtime graphics that blew away the current stuff, and forgetting how crappy the graphics at the time were. Here are two screenshots I managed to find from the FF8 tech demo:

Decent. Way better than the PS1. (Note, in that screenshot, only the characters are 3D, the background is prerendered.) However, the original FMV was still far superior:

Now, regardless, the claim is that the original demo was faked, and they haven't matched the quality. You be the judge:

Gran Turismo 3, early 2001
Metal Gear Solid 2, 2, 3, late 2001
Jak and Daxter, late 2001 (and a realtime cutscene)
Silent Hill 3, 2, 3 (no, those are not prerendered, go play the game), early 2003
Gran Tursmo 4, 2, 3, late 2004

Most of these are at least as good, if not better than the screenshots for the FF8 demo, and most of them are early to mid PS2 games. There are many more examples, but this is enough to compare.

Precisely Not by oGMo · 2005-05-26 09:38 · Score: 2, Informative · on Smoke and Mirrors from Sony and Microsoft

Here is an article where the chief financial officer of nVidia confirms that the supposedly "in-game" footage from the new PS3 is a load of cobblers

No, the specific quote from the article is "Burkett has commented that the visuals had been created on current nVidia hardware of roughly the same power as the RSX." That is, they don't have the RSX done, but they have hardware that's more or less equivalent to the specification in some form (maybe not on a single chip or card).

Sigh... it's the emotion engine/missile guidance systems all over again.

I hope so, because after some investigation, it appears Sony delivered on their promises.

For instance, one current myth is the FF8 tech demo was faked. Anyone who has played a modern PS2 game will not be impressed by those screenshots: the FFX engine was more impressive years ago (more colors, more textures, more geometry).

Another myth is Sony claiming that the PS2 can produce Toy Story level graphics. The original claim was the ability to render Toy Story in realtime, without shaders/T&L, and at a lower resolution. This is mostly a measure of the raw polycount the PS2 can push, not doing realtime Renderman in hardware. If you don't believe this, I suggest you go find a quote that claims anything more and is straight from the horse's mouth (a Sony press release or Sony spokesman). You won't. Everyone claiming anything else are either news media misunderstanding, or people in forums misquoting.

The PS2 has delivered quite a bit. Compare what it's been capable of over the past few years to what was available at the time (PS1, N64), and it was a pretty big leap. It's not hard to imagine people seeing original demos and overglamourizing, remembering things being a bit more than they were. We'll probably look at the PS3 demos someday and realize they're not all that great, when compared to the PS4 and other next-next-gen consoles. That's technological advance for you.

Give someone something unbelievable, and the first thing they'll do is not believe it. ;-)

Re:Forgive a curmudgeon, but... by oGMo · 2004-09-30 10:28 · Score: 2, Informative · on HP iPAQ hx4705 Reviewed

I've got a Zaurus SL-C860 running pdaXrom. My desktop looks like this. It's quite literally all the day-to-day Linux goodness I need in my pocket. The latest pdaXrom even has a native SDK. I can take notes during a meeting, organize my schedule, try a few lines of code, ssh to a host (bluetooth/gprs/802.11b), browse the web (firefox, konqueror, dillo), email (thunderbird, sylpheed), play nethack/Zangband/etc.

The idea is that I can be anyplace and have access to information I want. I drop by a store to get something, and see a product on sale, but I don't remember what the reviews said. Maybe I'm going to be out longer than expected, and I ssh back and set my PVR to record a show. Perhaps I need to get someplace, and grab them from mapquest. Or I want to see if someone is around, so I log into irc or fire off an email.

There are plenty of uses. Just make sure you have a PDA with an OS that has the software you need. :-)

(Note I haven't yet connected via bluetooth. I've got a symbol bluetooth card, but am still looking for an acceptable phone. 802.11b is wonderful however.)

You want a Zaurus SL-C860. by oGMo · 2004-09-01 18:05 · Score: 5, Informative · on Palmtop Nirvana?

No really. If you need a PDA, and you're a Linux geek like me, get one of these.

Yes, the default half-translated rom sucks. It'll at least let you boot the system and see the beautiful 640x480 screen though. An amazing sight to behold at over 200dpi. After you're done drooling, go get pdaXrom, follow the instructions, and get yourself a real desktop. Here's what mine looks like, using ROX as the desktop manager (with a nice .hack//SIGN wallpaper I found someplace). You have a number of choices, but I use (prepackaged) gvim as my editor, and sylpheed for mail (pretty much the same as my actual desktop!). You can use FireFox and Thunderbird for web/email if you really want (check the screenshots for more drooling material). I use the little Dillo browser personally, because it's ultra fast, but the choice is yours.

No, it doesn't have builtin wifi. It does have a CF slot so you can stick your own card in there, and doing so hasn't annoyed me yet. The biggest benefit (besides the amazing screen, keyboard, ability to use X, and general design) is the battery lasts quite awhile. I charged it last Friday (before PAX... where were you?), and it's only just down to 50% with "regular use". (On my old 5500, I'd have to charge it every day or so with the same use, and that's without wifi.)

This makes a killer PDA. It does most things a small Linux laptop would, and it fits in your pocket. If that's what you need, this delivers.

My keyboard... by oGMo · 2004-01-21 10:08 · Score: 1 · on A Glance At 24 Keyboards & Mice

I have a pair of Datahands, and they rock. They took about a weekend or so to get used to (the layout is QWERTY-ish, which helps), using gtypist (which I highly recommend as well).

Are they expensive? Yes. But if this is what you do with your life, they're worth the investment, IMO. These aren't your typical stock, mass-produced keyboards, either... they look hand-built, and they're pretty easy to take apart and completely clean out. The keys are optically-driven, so you can't gunk up switches or the like (although you can get the keys sticky, they're fairly easy to clean if you're not afraid to take things apart).

If anyone cares... by oGMo · 2003-10-27 13:54 · Score: 2, Interesting · on SCO Calls GPL Unenforceable, Void

I dunno if anyone saw this or cares, but I used my (lack of) GIMP skills to make some borg/SCO icons at the request of KilobyteKnight... it just got posted late so I don't know if anyone saw it.

As I said previously, these just differ by filter; I couldn't decide which I liked. Feel free to use them however.