Slashdot Mirror
Playstation 3 Gathering Components
briancnorton writes "Cnet has a story about how Sony has licensed some Rambus connection technology for the playstation 3. One technology is for chip-to-chip communications and the other for chip-to-RAM at over 100 Gbps. These are all parts of the 'Cell' processor system that is supposed to do over '1 trillion mathematical calculations per second.'"
I wonder if I should buy some rambus stock, it's at like 7 now.
So will the principled slashdotters put their money with their mouths are and not buy a PS3?
Just curious.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
"This new game console will do one million cagillion ... billion calculations per second!"
Obviously Sony was sold on the technology after seeing how much benefit intel got from it.
...are the games any good?
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
... so cue the comments about how great a Beo-bloody-wulf cluster this would make and how it'll be able to solve world peace despite the fact this is a carefully orchestrated scare tactic to keep ps2 owners from buying XBoxes (sp?)
Thing is it sounds impressive, but will that still be the case when it ships? If it was available now then of course things would be more interesting.
And Rambus: maybe this is their real market, PCs are too much of a commodity to employ their expensive memory. The only 'expensive' discrete component in a PC nowadays is Windows, and even that seems on the way out.
seany
The more and more I read about the PS3 the more it sounds like a supercomputer. From an architectural perspective, it seems the PS3 is designed like a small beowulf cluster, or at least with the ability to perform in a similar way. Very impressive specs too.
:)
I guess the question is: when will Sony have the Linux kit for this bad boy
--Kevin
XXX Box? Where you can only play BMXXX.. fiesty competition..
But in all honesty, if the price of the PS2 stays at 199, this thing (when it comes out in 5 years, after Everquest: the next expansion, Everquest 2, and Everquest for your bathroom) will probably be 400ish. I'll stick with the PS++.
Can be found here.
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
Anyone know if they are considering a Linux kit fpr PS3?
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
I suppose this is the beginning of all the hype about the next gen consoles as the current gen sales have started to dry up (post x-mas). There are only visible bumps in sales as various online applications and "killer app" titles emerge (vice city, etc etc). The reality is that the next generation platform is going to be much more dependent on networking and in-home broadband capabilities than on highly touted chip stats. At present there are approximately 12 million PS2's in the US market and about 5 million Xboxs. Assuming no overlap (and we know there is some), that 17 million represents approximately 17% of US households having a latest generation console. My theory is this number is strictly capped by the broadband capabilities of homes. If the telco's/cableco's/wirelessco's don't get the ball rolling all the chip stats on earth aren't going to bust this market open. Even more interestingly, we once again find ourselves in a position where the latest technology innovations are going to be hindered by the binge/purge internet infrastructure roll-out of the late nineties...
I think it's more likely that Mini-Me took over Sony, as the PS3 will be a smaller, "toiter" version of the PS2.
"Anyone for a shmoke and a pancake?"
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
When they announced the ps2 specs, they looked impressive... Look at it now.
With product sales and licensing fees in jeopardy, Rambus launched into its second life, as a litigant. Starting in 2000, the company began to seek patent royalties and pursue lawsuits against Micron, Infineon and other memory companies. The company said that patents it filed in 1990 entitled it to royalty payments on all of the SDRAM and DDR DRAM ever sold.
Lovely. Let's all go out and throw support to this wonderful company!
Seriously, though, I'm in the market for a new computer right now. I'm looking for a high end machine, but I refuse to buy one with RDRAM. It's just too expensive and not effective enough. Thankfully, you can now buy high-end DDR based Pentiums at Dell.
Rambus sucks.
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
Wasn't RDRAM villified on PCs for gaming because the serial nature of the bus made for high latency? Once the transfer got started, it was really fast, but the time between RAM request and data available was much longer than even SDRAM.
Tom's hardware blasted it at first, then turned around and said it was really keen. I think AnandTech did too.
IIRC, RDRAM was good for servers and other systems that don't need low latency.
So why use it on a gaming system?
TV sets are limited to 640x480 and 24 fps
Uh, I don't know what kind of TV you have, but analog TV has always run at 60fps interlaced for NTSC and 50fps for PAL.
what about the steady increase of HDTVs that are showing up on the market?? we are then talking about 1080x768 (ish) and at 60fps... still nothing radical in today's CPU and graphics power, but would you be suprised to see a VGA port on the back of the box??
Remember the cinematic effects rendering and the 'groundbreaking emotion engine' in the PS2 up till its launch? And then it barely leapfrogged the Dreamcast in terms of performance.
If they really had such advanced technology, would they really waste it on a 200$ video game console, instead of using it to completely dominate every aspect of the computing/tech industry?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Maybe if they chose a tile based graphics architecture, they wouldn't need to buy ludicriously expensive 100 gb/s RAM.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"What about XBox?!"
Trolling is a art,
There's just no market for a more powerful system. Game companies are going to stick to the current consoles rather than investing in new platforms whose advantages won't even be noticed. In fifteen years, we'll all still be playing our PlayStation 2 systems.
And who needs a 2400 Baud Modem? After all, text files transfer fast enough as it is? All that bandwidth is going to go to waste.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
Will it have enough processing power to crack the XBox key? :P
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
The current systems don't do as well on HDTV sets as they do on normal TVs. Another failing of the current systems is that they only have enough power to render full details of some games, when in single player mode. Bring in another camera or 2 and the detail drops.
There is still a market for more powerful game machines, and the developers always will find a use for eye-candy.
Starcraft RPG? only at
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
Don't you think that it will actually be optimized for HDTV? Come on think a little (yawn) Xbox already has an HDTV version, got to play it at a friends house an a 64 inch plasma...my 27" conventional Tv just makes me wanna cry
I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence. Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1845
Its great that these rumors of the PS3 are leaking out to get people excited, but we certainly won't be seeing the unit for a good while yet.
Console development is damn expensive (and getting worse each time around), and there is a *lot* of life left in the PS2. Hell, they're still selling PSOnes at a good clip!
I would expect Sony to milk the PS2 for all its worth before updating the hardware (and forcing updates from those developing for it, always a hassle). The only thing that would make them move more quickly is to one-up an opponent. And even then, they may wait; its the games that make money, and there are some pretty damn good games for the PS2.
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
In addition, all this power isn't used just for resolution. The power will be used to render more polygons, process more complex AI, and shift around bigger and more detailed textures.
I won't be happy until GTA is rendered on the fly with graphics on par with the Final Fantasy movie!
remember, the more triangles/polygons, the more realistic round/curved shapes can appear (ie: faces).
but forgetting 640 x 480- what about progressive scan and HD resolutions?
and as a matter of fact, my PS2 does bog down below 24 fps in tight battles scenes of Socom Online- a few too many M60/M63 users and a Grenade or 2 in the same area produce slight-but noticable frame drooop.
i'll take the more HP (as long as it'll play PS2 games, too!) any time!!If she floats, she's a witch.
The power of the PS3 if properly used won't go to making a more impressive FPS count, or even the more important polygon per second count. What it will do is enable game developers to use movie-quality CGI rendering techniques (or very nearly) in real time.
If used properly, and I'm not saying that it will be, then we could have games in which realistic-looking people (or very nearly) were the main characters *and* could be controled by the player rather than moving through pre-determined, pre-filmed action sequences rendered in compressed video.
With the kind of hardware Sony is putting into the PS3, it puts the burden on software developers to make games than can use it to acheive levels of realism indistinquishable from a hollywood movie or a TV sitcom.
Wether or not anyone will do that remains to be seen. The fact that people will gladly pay sony for this piece of hardware despite being one of the pillars of the **AA's is almost a given.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
While having super fast graphics/processors/etc is a very good thing (after all, it has to last at least 5 years before the PS4 comes out ;) ), here's my own wish list for the PS3:
1. Backwards compatible with the PSOne and PS2. Plenty of great games for those systems still out there, and I still like to play them.
2. Hard drive. This will be needed for the online games (which I don't care about) and add-ons (which I do). While there are games like RPG Maker 2 coming out which use the memory card, I'm more interested in seeing a PC like mod-community surround the PS3 - something we don't have now.
That, and I just don't like memory cards. I must have 20 PSOne memory cards (and most of those backed up to the PC through some third party units). I'd like to be able to swap save games with my friends just by connecting to them online.
3. Built in Ethernet/Modem: I'm assuming that come 2005 we'll still mostly be connecting via 56K modems in some areas, so let's assume that's going to be the case. I don't need a "$10 a month for a central line" - I don't play online that often, and I'd rather just have a few good friends who aren't assholes connect to my PS3 over the 'Net to play.
4. With the Ethernet/Modem, I want a CDDB system for my CD's to store them on the HDD.
5. And, of course, I want a Linux disk to be orderable with the system - just for those of us who like to tinker.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
To render Toy Story 2 at 24fps to DVD-quality TV took thousands of computer hours.
In fact, there's no reason why a trillion trillion operations per second couldn't be put to good use eve if the output resolution was only 640*480.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
Remember the cinematic effects rendering and the 'groundbreaking emotion engine' in the PS2 up till its launch? And then it barely leapfrogged the Dreamcast in terms of performance.
It was actually *much* better than the Dreamcast, but it required a different mindset in order to work with the hardware. The graphics hardware in the Dreamcast was very similar to that of the PC, whereas that of the PS2 was much stranger to the uninitiated.
Here's hoping that Sony funnels a reasonable percentage of the PS3's power toward making thing headache-free for developers, instead of even more complex.
60 fields per second, not frames.
It's equivalent to 30 frames per second, which is close enough to the parent poster's 24fps to not bitch about. Fucktard.
>> I suppose one day there will be a console which can actually run HDTV
Yes, and that console will be called XBox or GameCube. Both support HDTV 720p and 1080i. Rogue Leader, IIRC, was the first game to be wholly rendered in HDTV resolution, but it of course plays just fine on my ancient TV.
NTSC TV, btw is a pseudo-512x384 resolution - analog, dont ya know. A hi-res image actually looks better than a resolution matching image because it constantly rescans and kind of achieves a 'built-in' antialiasing effect.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If we are only limited by resolution, then why doesn't halo look photo-realistic, but TV does??
Resolution doesn't mean much, I can put CS in 1600x1200 and it won't look as nice as Doom 3 in 1024x768 =/
Microsoft announced the up and coming YBOX. Based on the intel platform, and manufactured by Dell, it will perform 2 trillion calculations per second, and will be marketed by Steve.....Dude..yer gettin a dell.
I'll just wait until the PlayStation 9 comes out.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
You're from N. America aren't you? I remember visiting the UK 3 or 4 years ago and seeing the plethora of wide screen TVs available. I'm sure more than half of the TVs sold there today are letterbox shaped, which is of course higher resolution. PAL is higher resolution than NTSC anyway, by about 100 lines. Europe is very Playstation friendly.
On top of that, this is aimed at several years from now and suspect it is expected to have a probable lifetime of at least 5 years. By then HDTV might be more commonplace. My XBox is HD capable, although I don't think any games are currently doing more than 480p, although they could go for 1080i.
This is for the ammount of information passed around from Chip to Chip and from Chip to Ram according to the post. This is not necessarily resolution. It means you can get more polygons and a more life-like image as well as more things on the screen acting independently.
3d was a great thing because it allowed us to move in another axis. However with the increase of information, you suffered with worse graphics at first (in terms of the detail) Things like this technology will allow Sony to add more complexity and detail to their games. Now all we need is developers to take full advantage of the ps2.
-Chris
Put it in a rack and throw *nix on it and sell it for 10x the price.
"Cell, which is expected to come out in late 2004 or early 2005"..."will have the ability to do north of 1 trillion mathematical calculations per second, roughly 100 times more than a single Pentium 4 chip running at 2.5GHz."
- First off I don't know if I like the fact that the word "north" was put in there - IMHO I think the wording could have been better.
Anyway my initial impression was "Cool in 1 -2 years there will be a new PS console as long as it stays backwards compatible like the PS2 I should be alright" but then I started thinking - with the Linux Kit for the PS2 and the ethernet adapter etc... the PS2 is really starting to get close to just becoming another "choice" as far as a pc (personal computer).
Example: John Doe doesn't own a computer. John Doe buys a PS2 with all the accessories - and can now surf the web, send email, code, run nix apps, and play video games - exactly what the average computer home user does (with the linux exception of course)
So if the PS3 is really going to be this "crazy fast machine of death to all other consoles" then would it surprise anyone if Sony started it's own line of Computers/Console crossovers? Where do you draw the line on what difines Computer and what defines Console with the wall beginning to crumble?
Ave Molech Setting
Someone doing something worthwhile in the multi-processor field.
Maybe now people will start to write propper multi-threaded apps.
More seriously, this should be great for AI's, streams of N dimensional data e.g. video
, synthsised sound and DSP (think reason), etc.....
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Who's discarding it as crap? I never said anything of the sort.
The PS3 is slated to come out in a hazy period when everyone in the US is *supposed* to switch to HDTV, but obviously the majority of people aren't going to. If the PS2 is HDTV-only, then that's great in a lot of ways, but it's also going to limit market. Heck, I have a 12 year old TV that suits me just fine, and I still buy new consoles. That same TV has lasted me through the Genesis, PS1 and PS2 (and probably a Game Cube one of these days).
I could see Sony delaying the PS3 until HDTV has taken over a majority of the market.
That doesn't make sense if you think about it for a bit.
You're basically saying anything you've ever seen on television can be modeled in real-time on a PS3 which is definitely not going to be true.
Imagine you had special glasses that made you view the real world at 640x480 and 30fps. Is the Ps3 overkill for simulating the real world through those glasses? Nope.
I've yet to see a PS2 title that wouldn't have been possible on dreamcast. It does some neat effects, rendering half the resolution (320x480) in two passes rather than the 640x480 the DC did, but nothing that's leaps and bounds beyond.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
No lets hope that developers pop there minds out of the linear programming concept for a while.
A good bit of prolog and Lisp should help in the training, then drop what they've learnt back into more predictable languages like C.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I heard a rumour from a couple folk who seem to think that sometime in February there will be a price drop on the PS2. I can't seem to find any evidence to go along with this, but I've heard it from more than one person, although they didn't point me to any sort of proof. Anybody know if this is true or if I'm being lied to?
do not read this line twice.
Some good games? The past 5 games I bought for the Ps2 at $50 a pop, I returned 3 of them because they were very disappointing. Great Hardware and Fantastic graphics are insignificant if the game sucks. Better yet, how about a new game genre?
Better yet, we could have sufficiently advanced AI that could behave as a person does. A rough estimate of the processing power of a human brain: 100 billion (1e11) neurons, each with 1000 synapses, and capable of firing 100 times/second. That translates to 1e16 flops, or 10000 CPUs at the mentioned trillion flops capacity.
Something tells me we're going to have a console that's really good at counting to 1 trillion. They don't exactly say *what* mathematical calculations it's so good at... or if it gets the calculations right. 1 + 1 = -37, anyone?
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
It is not 24 fps. Period. 24 fps is what is used in movie theaters. Analog TV is also not 640x480 resolution. The guy who posted this comment does not have a clue about the specifications of analog TV and so his comment should have been shot down.
Also, I do not believe "fucktard" is a word you moron.
-sirket
...is if the PS3 will be easier to program than the PS2? My impression of the PSX history was that it did well because it was the 3dfx of consoles. That is, like Glide on PCs, the PSX development tools made tossing 3D games together fairly easy, relative to the Saturn and possibly even the N64. Naturally, those that wanted to squeeze the very most out of the system found the tricks (by getting "down to the metal", so to speak) that would pull off things that weren't necessarily possible through the standard dev tools. This satisfied a great number of developers, as they could get be as deep or as shallow with the graphics as they wanted.
:^) Possibly off-topic, but this is a story about the PS3 tech...
Now, the PS2 comes out and everyone talks about how difficult it is to program for. Sure, we may be past that, but some devs definitely gave the impression of being turned off by Sony's new system and thought Sony had done a poor job the second time around in providing good dev tools. Naturally, the ability to get down and dirty with the hardware is still there, but perhaps those that didn't want to get too deep into the programming couldn't toss off games quite as easily as they had with the PSX. (Aside: Less shovelware might be a good thing for a console, come to think of it. But I digress...) I'd be interested to know if people still consider the PS2 to be a difficult system to work with.
Now, the PS3 is in the works and has this nebulous "cell" technology. If two processors were hard to work with in the PS2 (and Saturn and Jaguar) then how the hell can adding more be better, right? What I'd like to be hearing, if I were a game dev, is not that the system is going to be the most powerful thing to hit the industry but rather that it's powerful and easy to start programming for as soon as the dev kit arrives. If there is a high level system that allows you to just toss jobs as this group of cells and get them to do lots of dirty work for you without a lot of hand-holding, then that might very well be cool. But if every game programmer has to learn to corral a horde or CPUs into doing things in parallel, then it sounds like a losing prospect.
Ok, that's enough. Just wanted to get that out there.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
That's all fine and good - but i was promised the PS9 right after the PS2 came out!
Where the hell is my PS9, with neural integration?!
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
No lets hope that developers pop there minds out of the linear programming concept for a while.
That would be great, but that's not what I meant. If amazing parallel performance comes at the expense of having to write games entirely in hand-pipelined code for RISC vector processors with 256 registers, then that's not a win.
Any chance Slashdot could be the ONE PLACE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD where I might be safe from PS3 advertising?
Besides, weren't we burned bad enough with PS2? Sony's spec claims have always been 100% meaningness -- they obviously just throw outrageous BS out there when someone else has the more advanced system so people who buy for advanced will not see differences between sony and more advanced (in present case xbox and previously dreamcast) as nearly as significant when they think sony's next will be 100000^100000x better.
you must be insane. You really think that Gran Turismo Concept gfx are possible on the DC? Get a grip, man.
That was classic intercourse!
Human synapses don't do a single mathematical calculation per second. I don't know what the measurement is, but I know that not all brain cells do mathematical based calculations..
A Starcraft RPG? Only at
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
>> I suppose one day there will be a console which can actually run HDTV
PS2 linux supports this which means PS2 can also theoretically do if if any titles choose to. The hardware doesn't prohibit HDTV, but it doesn't make it particularly easy. In linux there is no auto-detect for HDTV/NTSC/VGA, but the boot loader CD does it somehow.
"Sometimes it's hard to tell the dancer from the dance." --Corwin Of Amber in CoC
I've heard that the music and sound for Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty had to occur in some tiny amount of memory, like 1MB of RAM. So there are some game studios that can fully utilize the PS2 hardware, but not that many.
Yeh, it isn't 640x480. It's less than that, once you take into account overscan and such.. 5** x 3*** or so, I think. His point was valid, and it was clear to people who cared to listen.
Maybe he deserved to be shot down, but not by an even bigger idiot. As a matter of fact, the reply was so much more extremely stupid, I felt moved to invent a "new word"... fucktard. English is a living language, you cretin, that means that there is no such thing as a non-word, especially when meaning is implied and a context exists that allows other people (stretching the definition I know, including you in "people") to understand that meaning. You sir, are what is meant when people use the word "fucktard". I only wish I could honestly claim I invented that beautiful, lovely word... how else would I tell my friends about quasi-persons like yourself?
Gamecube does NOT support 720p or 1080i. It supports 480p, which takes no more processing power than 480i since 480i is really rendered in 480p with half the pixels being thrown out.
Xbox, in theory, supports 720p and 1080i, but most games don't support it. Unless it's rendering simple geometry, 720p and certainly 1080i is just way beyond what the Xbox can handle.
If the code is well written for a parrell architecture then the compiler should be able to do a reasonable job at sorting things out.
A compiler that can understand locks would be handy, a more fine-grained locking mechanism would be useful too.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
1)Limited amounts of color can be loaded at one time...every notice how bland the color is in most PS2 games? Many look like Quake 1, studded in brown, green, and grey.
2)Not too many textures can be loaded at once. Most PS2 games have chunky, flat textures.
Also, the PS2 can't do antialiasing without a huge performance hit, so lots of games "cheat" by blurring. And boy, does that ever get annoying when playing redeyed into the wee hours...
The PS2 in general is more powerful than the Dreamcast, I won't debate that. It seems to have be designed to act as a node for a huge parallel computer (why this was done for a game console is anyone's guess).
But in terms of texture quality, color depth, etc, the Dreamcast wins out. Take a look at Phantasy Star Online; the graphics there beat any PS2 game out there. PS2 graphics are chunky, dull, and blurry, with few exceptions.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
There was a time when moron wasn't a word. Long ago the notion of a word didn't exist, but we and our language have evolved. You have been passed on old timer. The evolution of our species continues on around you and you remain oblivious. Do us all a favor and kill yourself before we are forced to do away with you.
Few people know it, but the PS2 is only backward-compatible with the PS1 due to a happy accident. As I understand it, the PS2 uses a PS1 CPU for its I/O and sound processing. When you pop a PS1 game into the system, the PS2 BIOS switches control of all the peripherals over to the PS1 CPU and busies itself emulating the PS1 graphics subsystem.
With the radical changes inherent in a cell design (as nebulously defined as the term is right now), I can't see how they could pull off the same trick twice. In theory, if they managed to do a full software emulation of PS2, they'd get free PS1 support.
maybe someone can expand on this, but I believe for import and export purposes, the definition of game console and personal computer becomes a financial issue.
that may play into the decision to market it one way or another.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
I don't agree the PS2 is such a big improvement over the DC in real world applications. You know the real world? programming ease counts there.
:)
If the PS3 holds true to the hype, we could be bruteforcing XBOX private key using PS3!! Now that's fun
"When's the last time you upgraded the RAM in your console?"
Right after Majora's Mask came out and I got the 4 meg memory upgrade for my N64.
Oh, you meant that to be rhetorical...oops
The Sony PlayStation 5, a 2,048-bit console featuring a 45-Ghz trinary processor, CineReal graphics booster with 2-gig biotexturing, and an RSP connector for 360-degree online-immersion play. See the specs at Playstation 5
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
The PS2 has no dedicated VRAM
So by that you mean that the dedicated VRAM in the PS2 is somehow now, um, dedicated VRAM?
They have sold over 20 million PS2's, and it is totally dominating the next-gen console market (For now.). It has the largest sell-through base of any platform for developers.
Well i Sure hope ole' saddam doesnt get his hands on any like he did with the PS2's http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/15584 .html Imagine what he could do with 4000 PS3's all doing a trillion operations per second!!
Well I have always loved the Sony Playstation line since day one. There has always been a sense of dedication and ingenuity about them. The companies that they contract for games, and the games they make themselves. I only buy a few games here and there but they are the games the Sony puts on their Playstation,, like Tekken, Final Fantasy, Grand Tourismo, Mortalcombat 4 and Robotech. Sure some games come out on other platforms and I have played them on others-but it "feels" more or better ( you damn English majors;-P ) to play them on a Playstation. ...now if they would only pay me for this creaking post! ;-) X2
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft make all their money on software sales. The second people can run UNLICENSED software on the system (Ie. Linux, which in turn can run Linux games, or emulators) will make it so there is little to no need to buy legit software for that console. You may think "Sure, but the percentage of people who will do this is small. So it wont hurt." - WRONG, losing ANY legit game sales hurts the developers. If you look at the XBox with it's mod chips, people can put 200GB drives in their systems, stick a Linux installation on the drive, stuff it with a NES, SNES, Genesis, GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, MAME, and god knows what else emulators on it, thats all people NEED for $200 bux! A lot of people are buying the XBox simply for that purpose, which Microsoft (And others) LOSE MONEY ON. You can blame this on bad console design, but Microsoft and Sony CAN NOT offer systems like this as cheap as we are seeing now if you want this. They will have to redo their entire marketing and we would see consoles for nearly $500 just so Sony / etc gets some sort of PROFIT by allowing people to opt out of buying their licensed software (Like the PS2 Dev kit).
Will they license Magic Gate technology for their memory cards??
I won't be able to sleep at night until that mystery is solved!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
This is neither easy nor fun. It's the main reason that PS2 games sucked for the first year.
The XBox is an Intel PC with a GEForce 3, so everybody knows how to program that. There was concern at Sony that developers might desert the PS2 for the XBox, since they could get product out the door faster that way. In response, Sony had been telling developers that, next time, their machine would be more standard.
But now that the PS2 is selling well, and developers have learned how to deal with the wierd engine, maybe Sony is more confident in proposing a nonstandard architecture for the next time.
In this context, "nonstandard architecture" means "doesn't run C". We're back in assembly language again. Probably a wierd assembly language. Post-superscalar assembly languages are painful, because they're used only for stuff you can't say in C. Try writing some MMX code to get a feel for this.
Let's not forget that with a few simple hacks, you'll be able to guide nuclear missiles you know...
-- Leeeter than leet
With those criminals on board, there might as well be a Grand Theft Semiconductor for the PS3.
This has been discussed several times. Sony is huge in home entertainment. They manufacture everything that you can plug into a television AND they make computers. They're big into Linux now that Microsoft has jumped in on their gaming profit shares.
... but I don't think they got very far.
... oh wait, nothing is missing. I'm going to go place my order for PS2 Linux now.
Panasonic was trying to do cool stuff with Nintendo's GameCube
I suspect the next generation of all gaming consoles will be more of an all around entertainment box with all the Internet connectivity of a home computer. The only thing missing from the XBox is a keyboard, mouse, and web browser. The only thing missing from the PS2 is
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Oh am I jealous of you!
All the widescreen TVs over here seem to be high definition too. This makes widescreen too expensive. None of the broadcasters use letterbox at all, although a lot of what I watch on BBC Canada and BBC World has black bars at the top and bottom, and presumably cropped sides. I would really like widescreen for DVD's and XBox though.
Hee hee... The title of this thread gave me the mental picture of a pile of disparate electronic components slowly moving toward each other under their own power and merging to form the Ultimate Gaming Device.
"All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - George Orwell
i cant find the /. article (nor did i bother to look) but i remember SONY owing nintendo significant amounts of money for every console sold under the 'playstation' name, and it seemed that sony would be foolish to continue naming them "playstation x"
Anybody who remembers the hype from the PS2's pre-release will remember exactly how much pure FUD they spread. There will no doubt be PS2 defenders who are going to reply to me and defend every claim that Sony has made, but the fact is (and I've seen the real world comparisons) that the PS2 isn't half of what Sony promised. They made outrageous polygon claims and bandwidth promises, all of which were in better than ideal, and horribly unrealistic conditions, and they were assuming you weren't actually doing anything in the first place (rendering single, untextured, unshaded, flat surfaced polygons).
There will be no doubt the next Playstation will be leaps and bounds beyond the PS2. It will probably be more powerful than either the Gamecube or the XBox combined. That happens. It's Moores Law (which is ending, or so they say).
But the fact is no matter how good the PS3 will or will not be, Sony is going to feed us as much hype and fud as they can generate until we all have a PS3 sitting in front of us (disappointing us).
And I'm not just trying to flame Sony, because I like many of the games I have for my PS2, as well as the fact that I can play all of my PS1 games on it. But the truth is, Sony as a gaming company really hasn't got any more of a clue than Microsoft. They only know how to market something, and it doesn't matter what it is. It can be anything from a featureless AM/FM radio the size of a quarter or it can be a really stupid mechanical Dog. If the engineers make it, Sony's marketing division can sell it to you.
I predict the PS3 will be either black again, or silverish like the Sony Vvega televisions. I predict the controller will change very little (or not at all) though perhaps it will gain a couple of new useful features. Really the PS2 controller has reached a height of evolution that, love or or hate it, is hard to fault (unless it doesn't fit your well in your hands...) It will be a big leap in technology blah blah blah but anymore that isn't mattering the way it used to. I predict that the first year of games will be rushed sequals to PS2 games and shoveled versions of PC games or XBox/Gamecube games that outshined the PS2 versions (this year will be the year the GCN and XBox really show their technical superiority as the developers have come to grips with the systems).
Most importantly, you can expect television commercials, signs, radio spots, magazine spots (even in no-gaming mag-rags), you can expect web-banners, signs in malls, signs in fast-food-joints, and basically all of the crap we've become used to, only pushed to a level only Sony has the stomach to do.
Share and enjoy.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Example: John Doe doesn't own a computer. John Doe buys a PS2 with all the accessories - and can now surf the web, send email, code, run nix apps, and play video games - exactly what the average computer home user does (with the linux exception of course)
Somehow I don't think that "John Doe" will be doing much coding or running nix apps if he already doesn't own a computer. Any person who is that into code or linux would most likely already have a computer at home.
SIGFAULT
I felt moved to invent a "new word"... fucktard.
Don't hurt your shoulder patting yourself on the back for that one, Chauncey - fucktard has been around for at least 25 years - I know, because it was used widely in my youthful vernacular. It's a compound word consisting of "fucking" and "retard".
-72
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
Hardly an accident I would imagine. Considering that the other game consoles weren't, at the time, marketing backwards compatibility and considering that Sony's money comes not from the consoles, but from game sales. They would have been stupid to not continue to milk their existing base of games and of future games to be made for the PS1 platform.
The PS1 cpu was also a RISC processor. This makes it an efficient IO controller as well as being a programmable one to boot.
Hardly an accident. Most likely planned strategy to garner continued income from the current base of software for the PS1.
As for Cell computing, it is essentially like a PVM or MPI system. Except with the kind of technology they are talking about for interconnects, it would be like comparing a homebuilt Beowulf cluster with 10mpbs connections to one which uses gigabit connections.
With Cell computing, they are just taking the PS2 scheme of using a PS1 chip as IO to the next level. Only more generalized. With on-chip integration, they would save on circuit board real estate as well as power consumption. The system would also be blazingly fast.
The only problem with multiple processors on the same chip die is the cost. :|
But basically, with Cell computing, they would be able to easily emulate the PS2 with special enhancements. Heck, they would be able to emulate mulitple PS2s so multiple people can play on multiple screens, all from the same box.
From their press releases, you would also be able to link up the various PS3's into one large computing unit.
That in my mind makes buying the PS3 a very desirable proposition. Owning more than one might actually be rather cool. >:)
Winged Power Photography
Haha. Then take a look at the last line.. ever hear of sarcasm?
Thanks though, I needed a fresh example to show people what it meant.
Since you can have a different page open in each bank... should allow for some graphics intensive computation, and good multitasking. The fact that rambus can have different pages open in each back lends well to SMP, too, so maybe they're thinking of using more than one CPU?
Food for thought..
Goodbye Bleem! www.bleem.com - where did it go? killed by the Sony killing machine. Since then, I've never touch PS1 or PS2... Long live MegaMan (on another console).
Looks fine to me! I've enjoyed many fine games on my PS2. Sure other things have eclipsed it, that is inevitable. But the PS2 does look impressive when compared to the previous PS1.
Thanks though, I needed a fresh example to show people what it meant.
Naw, I think you did an excellent job of that with your first post.
-72
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
One big word.
Encryption.
Vector subtraction implemented neurally: A neurocomputational model of some sequential cognitive and conscious processes
Artificial synapses copy brain dynamics
Computing and Learning with Dynamic Synapses (1999)
Computing at the Tissue / Organ Level
From neurobiology to silicon
Principle of Neuroinformatics and Neuroinformation Coding
In short. The synapse is a computer in it's own right.
Tekken 4 did support one of the HD modes (480p?, sorry can't remember)- wasn't wide screen but it still cleans up the image nicely. Many games seem to do anamorphic or letterbox widescreen, too bad I haven't seen one that was anamorphic AND HD yet, as stretching out the game really pixelates it.
PS2 can do a lot of interesting things (Like software DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1), if only it had a bit more RAM to throw around!!
There was a hoax that Sony owed money to Nintendo over the name of the Playstation. It turned out to a hoax. Here's the full story:
...slashdot really is no source for news, the "editors" are a joke ;).
/. posted their news the story has disappeared completely from the Consoletalk site. Who knows...
S NES+Playstation" target="_blank">here's the query I used.
Sony, Nintendo Playstation story "a hoax"
The Inquirer
Letters Amy beware
By INQUIRER staff: Thursday 19 December 2002, 13:37
Subject: Nintendo enjoys a 10 per cent slice of Sony's Playstation profits
Hi Paul,
Just read your article titled "Nintendo enjoys a 10 per cent slice of Sony's Playstation profits", and noticed you mention don't remember the original story.
I remember back in the days of owning my SuperNES, reading of a plan (and seeing some "artists impressions" of what it would look like) to produce a CD drive add on for the system. The SNES console would site on top of the unit, connected by its expansion port. The idea being, I believe, was to upgrade the capabilities of the SNES, and allow larger games to be loaded from CD-ROMS. The article I read at the time specifically mentioned that the CD unit was going to be produced by Sony.
I don't remember it being called anything along the lines of Playstation, I think it was to be called the SuperCD, similar to the MegaCD add-on for the Sega Megadrive.
I suspect Nintendo saw the "success" of the Sega MegaCD and canned it accordingly!
10% of the Playstation profits seems a rather large amount to be paid to Nintendo just off the back of this project alone, however I do recall more recently reading a related article which mentioned that the Playstation evolved out of this project, and in fact every Playstation more or less contained a SNES... This of course may just be something else to toss onto the rumour mill!
Ben
Subject: Nintendo enjoys a 10 per cent slice of Sony's Playstation profits
Hiya,
Nintendo might well have an interest in the Playstation name. It is indeed true that the original, never to be released, Playstation was a CDROM for the SNES. My memory is rusty over whether it was a genuine joint venture, I seem to remember that Nintendo paid Sony to develop the gizmo (which included an updated graphics chip). Nintendo, for whatever reason, decided they didn't like the project and Sony decided that they did like it. Hence Sony went off and developed a full on Playstation. However, it would not surprise me if Nintendo originally financing/sponsoring the project gave them some right to the name.
Arron
Subject: Nintendo enjoys a 10 per cent slice of Sony's Playstation profits
Hi
Inquirer often reports rumours, but please, you should do _some_ filtering at least. One source in the whole world for a _MAJOR_ news item (consoletalk). News that, if true, would have to be told to stock owners first (press release etc.) and that would make headlines at CNN.
Jussi Lassila
I think the story that was posted on the Consoletalk site was a hoax. Someone sent the story to me yesterday, but decided not to post it after i didnt find anything backing the story up. News that big would have been reported on the Sony/Nintendo websites, or if there was an announcement, in some Japanese newspapers at least. It seems right before
Fred
Subject: Nintendo enjoys a 10 per cent slice of Sony's Playstation profits
As I recall, Sony and Nintendo were working on advanced CD-ROM attachment for the Super Nintendo (SNES) Entertainment System. The name of this device, if I understand the article correctly, was to be "Playstation". No whether or not Nintendo filed paperwork or somehow trademarked/copyrighted the name, I don't know, but if Sony is agreeing with and conceding to Nintendo, one can only assume that there was indeed a valid interest in that name.
Here's some interesting URLs on this device with some quotes (forgive any URL wrapping)--
"At one time, Nintendo had deals going with both Phillips and Sony, to develop a CD-ROM for use with the SNES." - See here.
"It's true. Years ago, Sony was designing a CD-ROM add-on called PlayStation for Nintendo's SNES. After many delays due to contract disagreements, Nintendo's deals with Philips to also make a CD-ROM system compatible with SNES, and Nintendo's change of heart for the slow-loading CD-ROM format, the original PlayStation project died." - That's here. And here.
Google also appears to have these pages cached in case any of them should happen to not load, a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=Nintendo+CD+
Will
Subject: the console article thinger
Hi,
Just as some extra info, to supplement the article on Nintendo and the Playstation name⦠I remember reading a while back, that the Playstation was born, through Nintendoâ(TM)s ignorance.
Legend has it (or does it?) that Nintendo originally contracted Sony to design a "CD based console add-on" for the SNES. This, I surmise, was supposed to be the answer to Segaâ(TM)s add-on for the Genesis/Mega-Drive which was labeled the GenesisCD/Mega-CD. Nintendo then refused to have it made, bla bla, something or other â" and Sony ended up designing the console for itself, and the Playstation was born. I donâ(TM)t really know all the interim details (where I inserted bla bla) but I could do some Googling and give you anything I find.
Cheers
Christo van Gemert
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
That's called NTSC.
Sony's Spec claims, like anyone else's spec claims, are just that. Raw Performance specs. How the game designer and game coder makes use of that potential afterwards is the limiting factor, not the machine.
PS2 didn't burn people who had realistic expectations. They promised a great system and month after month of games lined up and they delivered.
The dreamcast was slightly more advanced than the PS2. However, what does that matter if the company can't remain stable? In that regards, Sega dropped the ball and Sony delivered by remaining and deciding to support their customers who owned PS1 game titles. Currently, Sega doesn't support DC anymore. Currently, Sony still supports the PS1 with new games and new hardware.
The Xbox was MS attempting to get into the game market. The box is basically a PC put inside of a large console box. Is it better than the PS2? From a raw performance standpoint, it is. From a game standpoint, it is a good system. But, will they be around in the game market long enough to know whether they will pull a Sega? Or perhaps a MS with constant revisions and upgrades? Who knows. They are the new kid on the block and they have to prove themselves. So far, they are holding their own even though their console sales are suffering.
The point is, you point out that Sony's specs are BS because consoles put out after it have higher specs. That is flawed logic.
Sony delivered the system they said they would deliver. Ie, one which was many fold more powerful than their previous Playstation.
Will Sony's next machine, the PS3, be just as impressive? I certainly hope so. But until it is delivered to the customers, it is a moving target. One which Sony will most likely update with new technology before putting the unit on the production lines.
Regarding Nintendo, my beef with them is their resistance of letting go the "game cartridge" mindset. Which is unfortunate since the cartridge design doesn't slow down pirating or hacking of their systems in the slightest, but it does increase their overhead and thin out their margins.
Regarding PS2 and Xbox, I prefer to think of it this way: If you are comparing the graphics quality of a system, The Xbox, released 2-3 years after another system, The PS2, that speaks pretty highly of the power of the hardware of the PS2 and that of the PS2 game designers and coders.
More reason why in my mind, Sony delivered on the PS2 and will continue to deliver in their future platforms. It is also the reason why I feel secure that my PS1 and PS2 games will still be playable when I'm running on a PS5. :)
Winged Power Photography
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=1, Total=1 Guess I am the only one that remembers. sigh
I guess they must have re-rendered the entire movie for DVD then.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
Probably the same people who said the X-box was going to drop in price after Thanksgiving. Here's a heads up, it didn't.
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
I'm not ready yet!
I'm still trying to gather myself after the amazing performance of the heart-rending "Emotion Engine" in the PS2!
*Sniff* It brings a tear to me eye...
Spread the RC luvin'
One might think that the programming interface was part of the security system. ;)
Seriously though, Cel computing would be kind of expensive for a one-use device. More likely, a cruise missle can be just as easily guided by say... a high speed DSP tied with a 32-bit RISC processor on a custom board to handle telemetry and image/position recognition.
Such a board would be smaller and cheaper.
One of the reasons why it's always been a mind boggling thing to me why people keep talking about "stealing missles" and/or needing to "steal technology" to build guided missles.
If you are launching a missle up into the air, then having it come back down in a arc, you basically want it to land somewhere within a 10' radius. That is basically a small Basic Stamp, GPS decoder, gyroscope, and digital compass system.
Ground based launch site for telemetry/guidance tracking during the launch and partway into the apogee. Internal guidance with image recognition on the descent.
It would be fair to say that most any 2nd or 3rd year computer science major who's done some image library coding, circuit board soldering, and Stamp programming can easily get a working missle guidance system.
The really hard part is the construction of the missle and the security protocols to lock down the missle. But if you ignore that, the "brain" is easy to build.
relatively speaking.
A PS2 or PS3 would be overkill and a waste of time and money.
IANA[EWdM]
(I Am Not A [Engineer/Weapons Developer/Mathematician])
Winged Power Photography
People keep asking for, and companies keep providing, new features for gaming consoles: - fast RAM - powerful processor - hard drive - network connection - DVD drive - outstanding graphics Seems to me, incidentally, that the more PC components (like RAMBUS) get thrown into consoles, the closer to being full-fledged computers they become. And on a related note, it won't be called a PS3. Didn't anyone read the /. story about how Nintendo sued Sony for the Playstation name and won?
You know, I hadn't considered that. But since neither of those games (Jet Set Radio Future and Sega GT, I think) held any interest for me, I never really thought of it as adding value. But yeah, I guess you're right.
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
Hmm.. I did some checking, seems you're right, and they were lyin^H^H 'misquoted' about Rogue Leader being 1080i, and is indeed 480p.
I never doubted the original claim because it's not a particularly polygon intensive game.
720p DVD playback can be enabled, IIRC, in the xbox dashboard at least.
Anyhow, it's all HDTV anyways. I'm usually too busy playing the games to count pixels, myself.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I think it should also have 2 TV outs... or 4 even
Hell, if I have 4 controllers, 4 players, and 4 TVs... I want to use them. It would kick ass to be able to play that way.
This post is brought to you by the letters T and A, and the number 69
I seem to recall something about Sony adding a BASIC interpreter to their console so that they could call it a computer.
Might just be in the UK though.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
The retail price is normally double, at least, of the wholesale price => $25.
Sony takes in about $12.50 from the sale of the game to the stores.
The wholesale price is normally double+ of the profit price. => $12.50
Depending on the royalty arrangement, Sony will probably end up taking another 20% of this: $2.50 or so.
So, after all is said and done:
Store: $25
Sony: $12.50 + $2.50 => $15.00 / game
sorry to burst your bubble, but retailers pay quite a bit more for the games than your figures. i work for suncoast and get the employee discount at best buy which is 5% over cost across the board (wish it was nice and simple like my discount at suncoast).
some things that works great on (i've gotten minor computer parts for up to 90% off the retail price), but on games i only save 5-10 dollars depending on the game (for ps2 games, haven't bought any xbox or gcn games, so i can't compare the prices there). that works out to roughly $40 per game as the cost for the store.
End of line..
Not really. A good clip is how well the GameCube is selling in Japan, usually around 75,000 units a week. The PSOne moves a couple thousand a week. The only people who buy a PSOne are people who want to give the kids a PS for a TV in the rec room, without taking away the PS2 they use for DVD playback.
The PS2 is nearing the end of its life. For people who only own one console, the PS2 still has some stuff coming out for it that they'll like, but for most of the rest of us the only things interesting on it are titles like Wild Arms 3 and Suikoden 3, which won't be released elsewhere. Things like Medal of Honour: Frontline are out on GameCube and Xbox with extras like multiplayer modes and better graphics. A lot of the titles for the PS2 just aren't as compelling when you have multiple consoles. Onimusha, Metal Gear, etc, are all showing up elsewhere. Why own it on the PS2 when you can have it better on a different console?
As for the exclusives themselves, there aren't too many. Enough for me to justify buying the console, but not too many in general (Devil May Cry series, Onimusha 2, a few PS2 RPGs, Mr. Mosquito).
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Extremely disappointing?
The PS2 has been out for years and I continue to
be impressed by it. Its specs might not look as
impressive as the Xbox, but it is plenty powerful
for the excellent games that continue to be
developed for it.
I'm looking forward to the PS3, but I don't see
the need for it. Th PS2 is plenty powerful for me.
*sigh* back to work...
"Ever hear of HDTV? By the time the PS3 hits the street HDTV should have a major foothold in the market. I'm sure Microsoft and Nintendo's next gen systems will support the higher resolutions offered by HDTV"
Next-gen?
Today I can hook up my Xbox and GameCube to an HDTV. Today I can get 480p (Shenmue 2x, Metroid Prime), 1080i (Dragon's Lair), and 720p (the hardest to do, but in THPS4 for Xbox).
Today I can do these things. Today I can play all my Xbox games in DTS surround, and almost all of my GameCube games in PL2 surround.
Today the PS2 boasts about 10 titles which have some kind of surround sound support, mainly being DTS or DD cutscenes with the odd game (Socom) which actually uses PL2 surround sound in game (it can't do DD or DTS in game). In terms of support for better than stereo sound and 512x384 NTSC, the PS2 is a joke.
Right now, the only reason to have a PS2 is for titles you can't get on the GameCube or Xbox (Devil May Cry series, etc). And even that's not guaranteed (Crash Bandicoot anyone? Resident Evil?). Sony has no strong first-party brands, like Nintendo does. Nor do they have the best hardware, like Microsoft does.
This announcement is Sony rattling its sabre for its PS2 fanboys. Everyone who's serious about gaming has all the consoles, and plays the good games regardless of platform. The PS2 is the weakest, oldest console out there in terms of features and progamability. That's why Sony is sabre rattling. They did the same thing to kill the Dreamcast. I don't think it'll work out the same this time.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
'1 trillion mathematical calculations per second.'
Goll-eee son, that'd flat outdrag a chevrolet, yep it would I tell ya.
Here is a snippet from the Inquirer about the PS3
"A reliable source close to Sony's plans explained the way the Playstation3 works to the INQUIRER.
He said that the computers are made of cells, each one containing a CPU, which will probably be a PowerPC, and eight APUs (vectorial processors) each with 128K of memory.
It will run at 4GHz, producing a not inconsiderable 256Gflops, with the cells connected to the central 64MB memory through a switched 1024 bit bus.
It's still not clear how many of these "cells" will be used in the Playstation3, but Sony reckoned some time ago it could be as many as one teraflops, probably making it a four cell architecture.
Optical links - perhaps even FireWire optical links - could be used to share computing power."
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7078
"My Xbox's hard-drive on the other hand is about fucking useless. Yes, it'll save my game on MY Xbox, but it doesn't do me any good when I go anywhere else.
A hard drive is a good thing. Big-Fat Memory cards are better. There is really no argument here."
You're revisiting the same arguments that applied to the N64 cartridges (similar to the HD in internal expandability) and N64 memory cards. Memory cards are great to keep all game saves in one centralized device. Memory cards aren't great for things like sports games which track hundreds of stats, games like Morrowind which cache things on the HD, Dead or Alive costume expansions, etc. These are all problems which lend themselves to a persistent storage method like a harddrive.
If you want to move games between a console, use a memory card. If you want to change how your games play, make the persistency of the world you play in much better, or like to expand entire new modes via online support (Mech Assault downloads, for example, of new levels, mechs, and map modes), you need something like a harddrive. A 64mb or 128mb memory card will not cut it the same way a 10 or 20gb drive will.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Yes, and that console will be called XBox or GameCube. Both support HDTV 720p and 1080i. Rogue Leader, IIRC, was the first game to be wholly rendered in HDTV resolution, but it of course plays just fine on my ancient TV.
I think you're a bit confused.
Out of the Xbox, Gamecube, and PlayStation 2, the only console that can support in-game 720p and 1080i is the Xbox. They all can support it theoretically with the component cable connections, and they all can support 480p just fine, but neither the Gamecube nor the PlayStation 2 have enough framebuffer memory to run at anything higher than 480p. It's actually impossible.
The Xbox can run at 720p and 1080i, but because very few people have TVs to run at the resolution and the performance hit it takes, very very few games use it. The only games I know of that use 720p are Tony Hawk 4 and NBA 2K3. Dragon's Lair 3D is the only game to use 1080i.
Zero games on the PS2 or Gamecube will ever use 720p or 1080i.
Rogue Leader runs in 480p. Which is an HDTV resolution to some, since it's progressive scan, but most people consider 720p and 1080i to be HDTV and 480p to just be "digital TV" rather than high definition.
there's already a dvi input on the back of my mitsubishi hdtv (ws-55111 or something like that) if that's what you're getting at. it's unfortunately limited to 640x480 @ 60Hz and i don't think i'll ever use it (though there are some interesting tinkering possibilities).
i would expect that in the future, more tvs will have them and they'll probably even support better resolutions. but if you want to send me a nice signal (from a console), i'd much prefer you just give me a regular hdtv signal.
i think that would be much nicer/convenient for many reasons -- not the least of which that it would be easier if my do-everything-console gave me the signal i want rather than my tv have to figure out a way to interpret the signal the console throws at me.
Intel just dropped them, and intel is pretty much the reason for them doing any sort of business at all. Now they got some smart geeks with nothing to do, and a bunch of good managers. They know their company will go under, so they offer product very cheap. Not suprizeing that a platform that is only ment for games would love to snatch rambus technology up.
After all, rambus has always owned any sort of DDR board when it comes to games. Try to find some old rambus vs ddr boards over at hardocp and you will find tons of examples of that. Just makes sense for a video game console producers to jump on a goldmine like that.
"And it came out years ago."
Erm... so did the PS2.
That was classic intercourse!
The Xbox2 will have 3 Teraflops peak performance, will cost a lot more, and will have a vast array of forgettably unprofitable games.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
"actually the graphics pretty well are..."
no they aren't - even through my VGA adaptor.
That was classic intercourse!
...ever wanted to play Gran Turismo with your fridge? I can see it now "Error.. toaster not in range for texture generation. Please network water cooler to complete game download."
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
Anyone who doesn't have a coomputer by the next console release is a complete loser, so it doesn't really matter anyway. Right now computers are like TV's in the 50's. In a couple years, every home will have a few. ( But we all know that )
20 years, but that the time is not what is comparable. Computers have made huge advancements, what major advancments has tv made? ( You cannot count 'features', I mean hardware advances) Besides smaller and more efficient electroncis, and slightly better tuners, they are the same. My tv changes channels no faster than my granparents 1960's tv in their day. The comment was ment as a joke, and you are nothing but another AC.
"Cell, which is expected to come out in late 2004 or early 2005"..."will have the ability to do north of 1 trillion mathematical calculations per second, roughly 100 times more than a single Pentium 4 chip running at 2.5GHz."
I guess it's a damn good thing my video card doesn't use a pentium 4 as the GPU. Quite frankly, with greater than a 2 year lead time, I'm amazed that their GPU can only muster a 100x computing advantage over a CPU. I thought that Nvidia and ATI's current high end already did greater than 100x the computations of a P4.
Of course, there is no comparison between a GPU running highly parallelized floating operations vs. a CPU running general order dependent machine code.
While it might be true that Sony could be making money now on the PS1 hardware sales, it isn't true of the PS2. At least, not yet.
As more machines are produced, their cost goes down significantly. The first year will be a break-even year. The second year will be major net profits.
So, initially... for the first year or so, hardware is sold at a loss.
yup. it's been about a year or more since the PS2 was launched, so they've pretty much recouped the cost of R&D.
moox. for a new generation.
but neither the Gamecube nor the PlayStation 2 have enough framebuffer memory to run at anything higher than 480p. It's actually impossible.
Tobal No. 1 for PlayStation was one of the smoothest 3D fighting games from the 32-bit console era because it 1. pushed 512x224 pixels at 60 fps and 2. turned on interlaced mode, giving 512x448 effective pixels. The same can be done at twice the resolution. If you have the VRAM to hold a pair of 480p framebuffers and a 480p Z-buffer, and you have the fill rate to render 60 fps at 480p (the GCN's on-die frame buffer and Z buffer help), you can render 960i by shifting all polygons up half a pixel on every other frame.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Yes, the PS3 will actually be using Linux as it's ROM loader, so in addition to running games you can start it up in console mode.
URL please?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Isn't that kind of what Sun, Silicon Graphics and a host of other companies who also make systems do?
Granted Sun systems do occassionally allow for Windows NT as i'm sure if Sony really wanted to merge home entertainment and a computer into one they would follow their same path and have both a Sony OS and allow for redhat based nix distro's as well.
Ave Molech Setting
I wouldn't be too impressed by the PS3's numbers. It all depends on the types of computations involved - my Radeon 9700 is easily 100 times faster than a p4 at some 3d-type stuff (matrix math would be one example, IIRC). I highly doubt that the PS3 is going to be the equivilent of a 250Ghz p4.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Have you actually tried running X on the ps2? It's ass-slow, because the ps2 is basically a graphics accelerator strapped to an auxiliary processor. Even with a version of XFree optimized for ps2, it'd still be subpar. Ultimately, game consoles are computers - just specialized ones. You could use a ps3 just fine, i'm sure, for web surfing, but that's like trying to word-process on your cell phone.
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Get back to me when my brain starts working.
Hopefully the PS3 will include an "Antialiasing Engine".
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Hey, if you're enjoying it, that's great, I enjoy it too. But I'm a graphics whore, so I'm not too busy to count pixels.
It's not all HDTV. 480p and 1080i or 720p is a world of difference.
And the Xbox definitely does not support 720p DVD playback since there is no such thing as a 720p DVD. You might mean 480p, but the answer is still no: the Xbox cannot play DVDs in 480p, even though there's no technical reason why it shouldn't be able to.
720p is really the ideal resolution for videogames, as opposed to 1080i. The reason is that while 720p and 1080i are similar in quality, 1080i requires that approximately twice as many pixels be actually rendered only to be thrown out. See, the Xbox can't selectively render pixels, so it has to render an entire frame just to make one field (interlaced frame). Interlacing, while nice for video, is incredibly wasteful for videogames.
PS2 has the most games.
The Nintendo GameCube has all Game Boy, GBC, and GBA games. Super Game Boy for GameCube. Coming in May.
Now who has the bigger back catalog?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Regarding Nintendo, my beef with them is their resistance of letting go the "game cartridge" mindset.
Nintendo let go of game cartridges for the tv console as soon as discs had a fast enough access time. When the N64 was designed, most CD games were either cart-style games with CD music or just plain weren't fun *cough*Night Trap*cough*, anything faster than 2x CD-ROM was cost prohibitive, and Mr. Miyamoto did not like to sit at a loading screen. But as disc technology became faster, Nintendo adopted it. Look at Super Smash Bros. Melee: when it freezes to load, it's done within two seconds.
So how do you think Nintendo's going to get rid of cartridges for a handheld system? First of all, carts for handhelds are usually handled much more roughly than carts for tv consoles ever were. Discs in such a handling environment would scratched to death real easily. A switch to discs would also ruin backward compatibility with software for the previous Game Boy systems. Finally, spinning a disc constantly would ruin battery life. Just look at the difference in battery life between a flash-based MP3 player and a portable CD player.
Will I retire or break 10K?
First off I don't know if I like the fact that the word "north" was put in there - IMHO I think the wording could have been better.
This is just another example of code-words that the Canadian Conspiracy is using to communicate. This particular reference informs me that the PS3 dev team has been infiltrated by our forces, and is preparing to corrupt the minds of your youth and turn them against you, rebelling with peace. All your kids are belong to us!
--Dan
Rumored specs taken from PS3 Resource Centre:
/Dev manager Carol Russman
This was posted by a guy named "Industry Insider" on the forums of Fatbabies (www.fatbabies.com). It's been pretty much unanimously panned by others on there as false due to the seemingly huge system specs (550Ghz processor seems more than a little unlikely), but hey...
"Just got a faxed memo over from PR at the LA office from SCEA, seems the CPU research and final process specs are bein handed to personel and division managers to leer at today, It's the below portion that must be the test results, but looks like they generalized it to the PR ppl, they have meetings with division managers to deal with licensing and everything, so I'd thought I drop some info on what was sent to me from my division managment people. Remember this was just a memo from SCEA handed to me from my license division realtions manager.
Sony Computer Entertainment America SCEA c.2002
IBM Tech/Research Labs
Sony Playstation 3 Mezzanine Rev 5/10/02 -
Division Licensing and Departments (Coded Mem)
Project Update Information Request:
Sony Playstation 3 Mezzanine (Latin for Steel/Metal) Processor Data: Microprocessor: IBM Grid 256-bit at 550 Gigahertz Primary Cache: 2-way set associative,32KB instruction/32KB data cache Secondary Cache: 8MB DDR,Full Speed SDRAM Main RAM: 1GB system SDRAM Texture Memory: 104Mb/VRAM Graphics SubSystem: Pipes: 16 Graphics pipelines, up to 8 channels per pipe Raster Managers: 4 Raster Managers per pipe - 864M pixels/sec fill rate - Pixel-accurate synchronization (Genlock) and swap sync - 8.3M pixel display and 8 display channels - Full Scene Anti Aliasing, 8 subsample/pixel, 6.1B samples/second - 48-bit RGBA Color - 256MB Texture Memory with texture lookup tables for interactive volume visualization - Hardware clipmapping and real time high resolution texture paging - Subsample round points IBM Grid 256-bit Processor - High clock rate accelerates every system function (550 Ghz) - Four-way superscalar architecture, dynamic out-of-order instruction issue, and speculative execution maximize utilization of processing - Large unblocking cache keeps essential data in fast memory Playstation 3(Grid/EE4/GS4) Graphics Architecture Each PS3 graphics subsystem,or pipe, is composed of a Geometry Engine, four Raster Managers, and a display generator. - Geometry Engine: Four high performance Geometry Engine processors perform lighting calculations and geometric transformations such as translations, rotation, and scaling. Geometry Engine processor also execute image-processing functions such as convolution and histogram equalization-a more effective approach then that of CPUs. - Raster Managers: Raster Managers scan-convert data from Geometry Engine processors into digital images. Raster managers perform pixel operations, including Z buffer testing, color and transparency blending, and texture mapping- and they do so with multisample anti-aliasing at real-time rates. - Display Generator: The Display Generator converts digital data from the Raster managers into analog or digital video signals for a maximum display of more then 8 million pixels per PS3 graphics pipeline or more then 130 million pixels per system. - 1.76TB per second Bus Bandwidth/ultra low latency memory (raw memory) I thought it was kinda odd they sent it here, but I figured it was a media move by the PR to tell me to keep my tongue in check with the other divisions, has to not leak any real definitive specs at the Expo next weekend. Sometimes being the president of Nfactor Studios is hard work, but I enjoy the company here so I'll let this snippet float in here till I get some more hard information for myself, hell next I'll get order claims for dev units soon for the PS3 Mezzanine. Well till then, have fun with the possibilties of this new info. I figured it would shed a focusable attension on this new technology."
"The Game Cube was released in 2001, it is no longer brand new."
The entire analogy was how in 1992, the SNES seemed slow and dead compared to the Sega Genesis (released in 1989). This very much applies to the GameCube 2002-end numbers as compared to the PS2 (released in January 2000 in Japan). Applicable? Very.
"The best thing that nintendo could do to reach any growth approaching that would be to focus on the connectivity with the GBA, which is by far the most popular device."
Someone wasn't paying attention to E^3, where Nintendo spoke about connectivity as a key part of their strategy. Zelda: Wind Waker will use GBA connectivity, as will FF: Crystal Chronicles. As do many current games (AX, Sonic Adventure 2, Metroid, etc). Nintendo feels that connectivity is easier for people to enjoy than online gaming (due to reach), more affordable to people (one time fees rather than constant fees), and more profitable (all connectivity games boost sales of GameCube and GBA titles).
Nintendo's very strong. They learned from their mistakes with N64, and they learned from GBA v1. They are the only company I know of which has perfected emulation as a feature (Pokemon Stadium series, AX, etc). Sega has done good work with their Smash Pack series/Phantasy Star collection, but Nintendo is the only game company to release an emulator than has a 2x speed up mode (Pokemon Stadium 2's GBC emulation layer).
I can't wait to see how Ruby and Saphire will connect to the announced Pokemon GameCube game.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
they could have done the same just as easily with the next step.
The saturn uses a 68000 (Megadrive cpu) as its sound chip.
don't know about yours. My VGA adapter (why didn't the PS2 have one of these?) is plugged in to the B input on my Sony G400 - great image quality but it lacks the 16:9, 28" impact of the more subtly detailed images coming from the PS2 plugged into my TV. DC is a great console, it's also a DEAD console with NO new development coming. PS2, on the other hand, is middle aged at worst and likely to have it's best games to come - just look at the strides developers managed over the life of the PSX, with PS2's radical architecture and new-found network play I'm looking to some great stuff over the next year or two.
GT Concept is a generation ahead of Le Mans, however great a game (and it's one of the best drivers EVER) that is.
That was classic intercourse!
> First of all missles don't go in a Arch.
Ballistic ones do, but also need minor corrections during flight. And the first cruise missiles were the German V-1s, and were mechanically simple devices (a pulsejet, a gyroscope and some electromechanical bits and pieces). Their control logic, such as it was, is well within the reach of a a good 2nd-year CSer.
GPS would improve both types immensely, as in the first they could provide feedback to maintain the proper ballistic (arc) trajectory, and in the second they could just say "stop flying...NOW!".
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
Today I can hook up my Xbox and GameCube to an HDTV. Today I can get 480p (Shenmue 2x, Metroid Prime), 1080i (Dragon's Lair), and 720p (the hardest to do, but in THPS4 for Xbox).
Today I can do these things. Today I can play all my Xbox games in DTS surround, and almost all of my GameCube games in PL2 surround.
Today the PS2 boasts about 10 titles which have some kind of surround sound support, mainly being DTS or DD cutscenes with the odd game (Socom) which actually uses PL2 surround sound in game (it can't do DD or DTS in game). In terms of support for better than stereo sound and 512x384 NTSC, the PS2 is a joke.
Take a look at this website:
http://www.hdtvarcade.com/
It gives a list of HDTV and DD/DTS ready games for each system. The PS2 has the capability to display upto 480p and some games do support Dolby Digital (I'll have to check my version of Vice City since I have a PS2 hooked up via an optical cord to a Dolby Digital receiver).
The only complaint I have with the GameCube is that there is no optical cable output and the component cables are not available in Canada yet.
" and some games do support Dolby Digital"
you forgot "during cutscenes only" since the PS2 does not support real-time encoding of DD or DTS audio (nothing does, except the Xbox which has a special chipset exactly for that encoding). The PS2 can do in-game PL2 encoding, but few games use it. I think this might be what that site is saying when they say, "gameplay is 4.1 only" -- except PL2 is 5.0 (no specific LFE channel).
I wasn't aware that there were any PS2 games that supported 480p. I don't see any that support above that, and there aren't many games which do 480p. I think that's probably the best you'll see from the PS2 ever.
Maybe you don't know what ProLogic 2 encoding is. It's a matrix encoding where 2 analog channels can contain 5 channels of surround information. That's why the GameCube has no optical cable -- because it doesn't use DD/DTS. It uses PL2. The component cables are easily available within Canada -- just call your nearest Nintendo store. I know there's one in Winnipeg which has the compnonent cables for ~$42 something with tax.
Check into it sometime.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
"Jesus Christ people, I am not attacking the GameCube."
;))
..." you imply the GameCube is going to fail, and fairly soon at that.
(Note: I am not a "Jesus Christ people" -- I am very areligious.
When you say something like "The gamecube would have to sell much more than its entire userbase in one single year. The market is too saturated for that. The best thing that nintendo could do to reach any growth approaching that would be to
I simply gave you numbers to go with that statement. If you'd said what you said in this message there, we wouldn't be having this misunderstanding.
You say that the PS2 will have good games. I don't argue that (and didn't originally). I do argue that it's probably not worth having a PS2, since most of those good games for it will be out on other systems with better graphics and features. As I said originally, "For people who only own one console, the PS2 still has some stuff coming out for it that they'll like, but for most of the rest of us the only things interesting on it are titles like Wild Arms 3 and Suikoden 3, which won't be released elsewhere. Things like Medal of Honour: Frontline are out on GameCube and Xbox with extras like multiplayer modes and better graphics. A lot of the titles for the PS2 just aren't as compelling when you have multiple consoles. Onimusha, Metal Gear, etc, are all showing up elsewhere. Why own it on the PS2 when you can have it better on a different console?"
The PS2 has few exclusive games that make it worth it. So why buy it on PS2 if you have a GameCube/Xbox? You can go buy Splinter Cell on the PS2 when it comes out, or you could not get a crappy port by buying it on the Xbox. That is what I said: that there is no reason to buy those multi-platform games, because you can get it better elsewhere.
To summarize: Sony has practically no first-party and second-party titles that are famous and popular (unlike Nintendo, and Microsoft with Rare). If you are the weakest platform (PS2), and the best you can offer is third-party gaming which shows up elsewhere (with better graphics, sound, and features), you will eventually fail. Vice City does not an entire platform make (and I really question the logic of people who buy a console for one game).
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
While you make an excellent point, I'd like to share my experience with Metal Gear. I've been a fan of the series since the first one, on the NES. I bought a PS2 in part so I could play Metal Gear Solid II, and I quite enjoyed it.
Then Metal Gear Solid: Substance came out for the Xbox, and I decided it was time to get an Xbox.
I've only put MGS:S in the Xbox once. I was that disappointed. First off the extras aren't compelling enough to make the difference, but secondly, the game runs slower and more jerkily on the Xbox than on hte PS2! And as far as I could tell, all the models, lighting, and graphics resources were ported from the PS2, so there wasn't any discernable graphic improvement.
However, I picked up Splinter Cell for the Xbox, and am very, very, very happy with my purchase.
-Chris
Please re-read my original post. You missed some points.
Not all missles are the same. There are cruise missles, as you note. They are low-flight, radar evasion missles which uses a sophisticated computer with on-board terrain maps and visual images to compare against. They are designed to detect and evade key targets and strike effectively, being only detected by their explosion or when it is already too late.
That isn't the kind of missle I'm talking about.
Then, there are the smart bombs which are dropped from planes. They essentially course correct on their way down from the point of being dropped, being guided by laser to their targets.
Then, there are ballistic missles. Otherwise known as ICBM's(Inter-Continental Ballistic Missles) which uses an Apogee flight path to head up into the atmosphere and come back down after hitting their apogee. From that point on, they are then self-guided to their destinations from a programmed flight plan.
These are the kinds of missles I'm talking about.
A variation of which would be the Multiple warhead ICBMs.
So you are wrong in regards to the issue of apogee in missle flight paths.
All of the above are hard/nearly impossible to defend against.
The reason is not that one is more intelligent than the other. The reason is because of their relative speeds. In the case of the MW-ICBMs, the sheer number of warheads and their relative distances from each other adds to the difficulty.
We have problems creating a missle defense system because the incoming warheads are travelling towards their targets at speeds which by the time the engaging missle were to detonate, even near the missle, the explosion would have missed the targetted missle. The incoming missle would not even need to evade detection.
With multiple warheads, the problem is made worse by the fact that the warheads now cover a greater region of the sky and it is already unlikely to hit even one with multiple missles. To hit multiple warheads(dozens or hundreds) would be impossible in theory and in practice.
To borrow your cannon example, if a country could launch mortors into the air towards America from a sufficient distance, we would still not be able to do anything about it. On descent, the relative speeds would be high enough to evade our attempts to stop the projectile. Now, imagine hundreds of such mortors.
A "stupid" mortor shell with sufficient range would be able to decimate a city and we would have no way to stop the shells from landing.
It isn't because missles change speed. Planes change speed and we can hit those. It is because of the relative speeds of missles and their relatively small size and profile.
Missles benefit from guidance systems. I never implied or said that they don't. I suggested that a guidance system would be easy to make. Not that it would be "stupid" or that it would be defficient. My post noted that a guidance system can be made simply. Nothing more, nothing less.
For your information, the programming language doesn't matter as much as the response time from the guidance system. If your compiler for C or even Basic is efficient, then the resulting code for the chip(s) in question would be effective as a guidance system.
Btw, if you are in Information Systems, then you are not a CS major. You are headed for a management position. As a CS major, I started programming assembly in a 100 level course. The same was true for C and C++. Both were in my 2nd year of college. And that was only because I was taking plenty of electives. Most people I knew wrote their own programs to control small cars with a modified 8086 motherboard. Ie, self-contained guidance system. You seem to lack the understanding of the underlying hardware and software to really make an informed statement about this topic.
Since I already pointed out that I never implied or said a guidance system wasn't required, the GPS point is moot since a simple program with a serial interface is all that is needed to communicate with a GPS unit. Any micro controller can be wired to interface with such a standard off-the-shelf unit and to the flight control systems.
On the issue of flight control systems. Fins are only part of the equation. I would use minimal profile fins in conjunction with vector controlled thrusters. They would be more effective at higher altittudes to make the missle more effective against high flight spy planes and for long range flight through the atmosphere as an ICBM.
Your lack of understanding of how missles in general work along with your lack of knowledge about how computer systems work results in your flawed interpretation of my post.
In the future, it might be beneficial to yourself if you actually understood what you were talking about or at least research a little before posting with such an derogatory tone.
It is obvious what is wrong with you.
Winged Power Photography
Maybe I'm an idiot, but the biggest difference between a game console experience and a PC experience is that I don't need four PC's to play a game with three of my friends...I can just use my console which either has four plugs available, or I buy a component for less than fifty bucks to make it happen. Just saying...some of us have friends who DON'T want to spend half an hour to an hour getting everything set up so we can play a game.
I'd really enjoyed Splinter Cell, so I went looking into MGS2:S. When I noticed how choppy it was, I knew that the Xbox wasn't the place to buy it. Ditto for Genmu Onimusha. They changed the play mechanics so much that it's not the same game.
:)
I own the NES cart of Metal Gear, have Solid for PSX (but not VR missions... yet), and Sons of Liberty for the PS2. I totally agree that what Konami did with the port is a joke. That's probably why they've been aggresively dropping the price on it.
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2x, though, that takes advantage of the Xbox
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
You just don't play that many games - if your playig a game like Blaze and Blade and have the Sidewinder game pad you can play with up to 4 people on the same computer - as well as if your using emulators like snes9x you can play almost every sports games with multiple people (except basebal for obvious reasons).
Ave Molech Setting
You can attach a monitor to the PS2 tho?
Ave Molech Setting
You're right. I don't play that many games, and I don't have a monitor that does better than my TV with games. Granted, my monitor has higher capability, but it's no 27" TV.
I would argue that I'm in the vast majority here, and the distinction can still be made for most people who play video games: computer games usually mean one person to a monitor, while console games equal multiple people to a TV.
It's not "way beyond" what the Xbox can handle. Two examples off-hand: Dragon's Lair 3D supports 1080i and Tony Hawk 4 supports 720p. You're welcome to argue that the games are just "simple geometry" but then again virtually all games are just geometry. Having picked up Tony Hawk 4 a couple weeks ago I can say that it is by no means "simple" with its huge areas and very nicely rendered graphics - while it isn't cinema quality it looks very good.
While it's unlikely that we'll be seeing something looking like Unreal Tournament 2003 (PC) rendered in 720p or 1080i in the current console generation (Unreal Championship looks good but it's not UT2003 with maxed out graphics options at 1600x1200), it's absolutely certain that we'll see something like it (and many others) in the next. The tech is there and it's only getting better.
To put the final nail in this particular coffin, there's really little reaosn all Xbox games couldn't be in 720p mode. While not all would have the full 1280x720 resolution, not all high-def televisions can display that full resolution anyway. With 1080i, even the broadcast HD signals aren't going out at the full 1920x1080 (interlaced) that is possible and virtually none of the "affordable" HD televisions can display that resolution anyway. It's pretty trivial to render a game at, say, 1024x768 (well within the capabilities of the Xbox) and then output it as a 720p signal, which I would imagine is what the games marked as 720p are doing, and you still get a huge quality bump compared to rendering internally at 640x480 and outputting NTSC or even 480p.
I think Slashdot needs to change its slogan to "News for 12 year old nerds."
:)
That said, I do appreciate the irony of being called a cretin by a child who has not begun to master the English language. Your grammar is atrocious. Your manners boorish.
In truth, the only "fucktard" in that entire thread was you. The poster who you so colorfully called a "Fucktard" stated a simple fact and did so quite politely. It was you who chose to drag the thread into the gutter by childishly calling another poster names. When you grow up I do hope you understand just how childish you were acting
-sirket