Slashdot Mirror
Playstation 2 to compete with Pentium III?
Anoop Sarkar
writes "Interesting article in Gaming news
about how Sony and Toshiba are likely to compete with Wintel
in the near future (not just for the gaming market). I heard
about it first on the Marketplace morning report on NPR. The
actual release is sometime today so more news should be on
its way. We need a Linux port to Playstation 2!"
In related news,
Intel is working on Pentium III only sites which will not
only use KNI, but also that... cough! Serial Number.
Playstations, as you know, run MIPS chips (an R3K to be precise) and Indy systems also run MIPS chips (R4K through R5K). The Indy port of Linux should run on the Playstation with some modifications...
KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Sony is gonna regret not targetting this thing DIRECTLY at gamers. If they make it a general purpose machine that costs twice as much as other game-only machines THEY ARE GONNA LOSE!
I am waiting for the PS2 before I decide what my next game system will be, and I don't want some overly complex piece of crap like a PC just for games, I want "PUT CD IN, GO" level complexity.
This should not be asking too much for a game system.
From Windows, I have no doubt there's some bogus ActiveX backdoor to run arbitrary native code. But Unix? They can run some Javascript, they can run Java, but they can't run arbitrary native binaries. So how exactly could they read this PSN on a Unix machine?
--
Infuriate left and right
intel propaganda makes me vomit
Pathetic.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Damn! I was just about to submit that pentium/// only page! Well, I knew it couldn't be long. Of course they're not only going to put the universal-bar-code-for-your-forehead in all their processors, they're going to work with software developers to insure that you need it. That's just what we need, a quark installer that requires a psn. I'll stick with linuxPpc thank you.
Which, as Intel has pointed out, will run faster and have a quicker internet experience for those fortunate souls running the Pentium III. Sheesh. Maybe if they gave away a free T1 hookup w/ each p3. Now, That would be marketing.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Excuse me, but isn't it a really bad idea to execute downloaded machine code, which is what running a PIII-only site would require? Why doesn't somebody startup some PIII-only sites that do something usefull, like say, erasing the hard disk (and installing Linux?). I say that anybody stupid enough to execute downloaded code deserves whatever they get!
Isn't this chip co-developed by Toshiba? If the response from Toshiba regarding IrDA is any indication, chances are good that Toshiba will not freely give out information regarding "Emotion Chip".
Incidentally, Japanese English is often funny. They sometimes name product using English words that often have hilarious, unintended effect.
Don't believe me? Look for yourself.
So, what's in it for these PIII-only sites. I mean, how long can you stay in business if you exclude 95% of your potential customers from entering? The only way they can continue to operate and stay in business is if Intel subsidizes these site, which would effectively be a tax on PIII sales. Yet another reason to not buy Intel's latest "No faster than a Celeron but costs a lot more" mistake...
Part of the http user agent variable is the platform, as interrogated by the browser, which often includes the processor type. I don't think they'll be actually using the P3 id #.
Anyway, what's the point until Unix/Linux supports the new P3 instructions? How many of us have kernels+apps that even use MMX?
Well consedering that the Pentium 3 is not much I can understand this. Try to compete with the K7 when its released :) AMD all the way, stay away from Intel there marked with the Beast just like M$. Everyone know Bill Gates true given name is 666 . Beware of MS and Intel.
Natas
http://www.mp3.com/pedophagia
Music made with Linux!
If morons buy into this bullshit, then the WWW will become so diluted, as to be pathetic.
What happened to ONE standard? HTML! If you author for more than that, you should be shot on sight.
Put the Internet back where it belongs...
TO EVERYONE. Not the haves and have-nots and the don't-choose-to-bes
I'm sure the PS2k will effectively be nice clean black box; put in DVD, press power, and play.
Any 'OS' features would probably be a combination of ROM and CD, ie auto-booting you see on today's PCs.
It's pretty easy to actually outperform a PC, since there is nowhere near as much overhead in a PS than in the traditional PC. Sony's strength is the plug and play(Sorry for that =) nature of the PSX, and most likely, the PS2k.
Their machine may cost twice as much, but it will also probably have DVD playback, 3d sound via Dolby AC3 5.1, as well as support for 3d glasses(why not? Technology has almost made it feasable!), multiple inputs, and maybe even modem/internet accessability!
It may be a good idea to create a PS2k and a PS2k+ with extra features not needed to play the traditional PS2k games.... Just an idea to separate into a chrome and black 400$ game machine, and a flat white 200$ game machine..
AS
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I almost ran my car off the road on, ummm, Friday, I think, listening to some Intelinside guy on the radio spout off how much richer the 'net experience will be w/ a p3. Good lord. I mean.....people will believe this stuff. But what happens when folks get their new shiny p3's and find that the access bandwidth they have w/ a 56k is just the same? Heh.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Let's see....If you turn off the Serial Number in your new PIII, You can't view PIII content, which means you basically bought the equivilant of a slightly faster PII. BUT, if you turn ON the Serial Number, you hand your privacy over to Intel in a Gift-Wrapped box.
I think I can live without Intel's marketing crap.
As for the Playstation II, I don't find it very interesting. A computer can do far more than a Game Console anyway. I must admit, Linux running on a Playstation WOULD be very interesting, but it's not enough to get me to run out and buy one. I'll take a well-equipped PC over a Game System any day.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
My questions are thus:
-What drugs is Sony on?
-WHERE CAN I GET SOME!?!?!?
They can't. That's why Unix users are all evil subversionist hackers. :-)
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
so in other words, in an effort to force people to buy the new, barely-improved Pentium III, Intel is now going to start paying web sites to install software to lock out non-PIII computers.
Intel just makes me like them more and more.
/. seems to jump on every little rumor about the
ps2, while ignoring the dreamcast. I will laugh
really hard if, and when, dreamcast kicks butt.
Right now the 128 bit system I made is faster than
sony's. What's that you say? I don't have a 128
bit system -- well neither does Sony. And it will
be at least a year and a half before they do.
Dreamcast will land in 7 months with a kick butt
in house developement team and at least a year to grab the third party support. If sony isn't careful sega is going to kick their butt.
Now, I have no idea what the difference between a typical R3000 and an R3000A is, nor do I particularly care, but I'd wager it's all in the packaging, voltage, etc. to make it cheaper and embedable. It make my PSX work very nicely, and gosh darnit, I like it that way! :)
If Intel is developing compresion technologies ala MPEG video, which takes hours to compress into incredibly tiny efficient packages, and significant(but easily done via SSE/KNI) processor time to decompress, then they really do have a solution to add richer more vibrant internet experiences...
However, I can only think of one place where this may be applicable...
Online porn. PIII and XXX campaigns? Eh, maybe!
AS
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
The websites that succumb to Intel marketing kwap are the ones to lose out on this deal. I mean... If Intel manages to push PIII to 10% market share (not total Intel marketshare, but PIII only), that leaves the website managers with just a tiny fraction of users they would've otherwise served.
My question is: How different is this from tracking the IP address of the machine or using browser cookies?
--> Any fool can criticize - and many do --
The idea is that they will have content for PIII-only plugins, not ActiveX controls and stuff like that. At least that's how I understood the article.
I really don't care if my CPU has an ID or not, but if Intel is going to try and market sites so that they require the ID to be turned on, that's just stupidity. I can't believe after all of the pounding Intel has taken over this from consumer privacy groups they would continue this subject. Gee, I wonder why AMD outsold Intel for the first time.
AMD & Cyrix could have a lot of fun by also putting a CPU ID in their chips. They just need to put the SAME number in all of their chips. That would make Intel's site statistics real interesting.
Who do you want to know where you're going today?
I'm just getting over a terrible head cold / food poisoning bout, and my brain is like a PIII w/o cache. Glad to know I haevn't lost it all just yet...
--
Infuriate left and right
However, this is even dumber. No one is claiming that Intel chips and Windows aren't the parts with the most prevelance in the market currently. But whither the poor Linux user with a dual Pentium II 450? S/he obviously has enough power to run both X and Netscape with these websites open, but can't, because s/he lacks a processor ID and "KNI," which IMHO isn't all that great a step up from 3dnow!. Believe me, these sites will be few, far between, and used mainly for Intel to say "Wow, look how amazing our processor is! Now your web experience will be many times better, more efficient, and faster!"
Since many of us run Linux or some free OS, how hard would it be to write a driver that can be configured to spit out any PSN that the user desired? Hell, it might not even require modifying the kernel. If it is implemented in Netscape, a patch for mozilla might be all you need. So then people would start trading around PSN's just the same as they used to do those porn passwords. It would be easy for websites to pull PSN's from people's computers, thus destroying the validity and usefulness of the PSN. I have a strong feeling that this thing will be short lived.
--
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
I was under the impression that it would use a plugin to check up on your cpu. I suspect the Open Source(Tm) version will allow us some "flexibility" as to info. gets sent back to the web site. Maybe this can even be added to Junkbuster.
You wouldn't(I wouldn't, at least) want the PSX to do 'more', like your computer.
A game console is not supposed to be a computer, any more than a TV is supposed to toast your bread, or your VCR to polish your shoes. My microwave can do things your well-equipped PC can't, so there =P
But if you're not into games, then of course the PS2k won't be interesting to you, just like a new reflective/convective microwave wouldn't be of interest to me or you either. For developers it is much easier to target a PSX, with its fixed specs, APIs, and hardware, than a PC, what with Win98, WinNT, Linux and BeOS, and PowerPC with MacOS, Linux, and BeOS, as well as staggering amounts of APIS, hardware, and drivers to deal with...
In reverse, it's the same in trying to get a game to run acceptably on a PC as opposed to a standard console...
AS
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Ah, but until games for Linux mature, you can spend the $100+ you would have spent on Windows to use your machine for games and put it towards a console. My only problems are that consoles do not have good strategy/rpg games (FFVII does not count, thank you very much) and because of licensing, games cost more for consoles.
hmm.. well i had been wondering about those commercials (like the one last night during xfiles) which openly lie that the PIII will somehow affect your internet experience..
but maybe they're telling the truth. Of course! they make it more fun by attempting to make sites incompatible, and..
wait a minute. that just makes things more complex, not more fun.
anyway, here's my question: HOW do they make it PIII-only? i suppose they'd require you to send in your PIII ID number, but it isn't the processor sending the ID number: it's the browser. so you could very easily have the browser _tell_ the remote website that you are using a PIII when in fact you are not. Or just write a small extention/daemon that sits in the background, listens for PIII-specific calls, and returns lies.
of course it's a moot point, since there won't be any websites worth visiting that will require the PIII, because that would be stupid. So nobody will be bothered to write a chip spoofer for linux/macos; it wont be worth it, except as a ha-ha-intel-sucks excersise.
Sega tends to be first. They were there first with the Genesis and then the SegaCD. They were there first with the Saturn. They'll be there first with Dreamcast. The Genesis worked out. The second two did not. We'll see how this last one goes.
It should be possible to hack the binary plugins in such a way that they return a random number whenever the infamous get_psd (or whatever its called) instruction is called. It would basically be a search and replace on the assemblycode.
This is no different than MS getting ISP's to make their "services" IE enhanced (read: IE ONLY). How did MS convince them to take this deal? Simple, pony up a large number of FREE NT licenses and Windows 95 licenses for the ISP.
... it's surprising that Intel isn't learning from MS's anti-trust follies.
How is Intel getting people to do PIII only content? Simple, free hardware.
This is a world of monopolistic bribery
Oh well, my last Pentium chip is my PII 450, next will be an AMD K7 most likely.
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
First DreamCast has to derail the jaugernaut that is the current PlayStation before it even has to deal with the PS2k...
Who cares about performance and numbers if the games don't live to the hype? First of all, Sega needs to deal with the fact that it has to deal with 2 market leaders, N64 and PSX. Can you imagine, 2 million pre-orders for FFVIII in Japan for a measly PSX? Or a half million pre-orders for Zelda64 on the 64 bit N64? First target would be to woo Square and simliar companies to DreamCast...
Good Luck!
AS
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I never said that Game Consoles didn't serve their purpose. They do, and do it very well. My point was, when you buy a game console, that's what you're buying. Games. And if you're into games, by all means, Spend your money on a Console! :)
(P.S.: The intro to Resident Evil 2 was INCREDIBLE!)
Accipiter
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
I'd LOVE to know how they are going to do this *and* guarantee that the serial number is real.
It all reeks of security through obscurity.
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
http://www.intel.com/home/PentiumIII/surf.htm?iid= {showroom=body}
"Simplify your surfing. Tell your Web browser where to take you with simple, natural speech or navigate the Web in other new ways, like visual searching. The performance of an Intel® Pentium® III processor in your PC helps make it possible."
User: "Computer, go to aitch tee tee pee colon slash slash intel dot com"
Computer: Connecting to http://www.intel.com/
User: "Computer, go to aitch tee tee pee colon slash slash slash dot dot org slash"
Computer: Connecting to http:///..org/
"HTTP_ACCEPT","image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, image/x-jg, */*". co.us/texts/sorority.html"
"HTTP_USER_AGENT","Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; Update a; AOL 3.0; Windows 95)"
"HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE","798781954"
"REMOTE_ADDR","205.188.154.10"
"SERVER_PROTOCOL","HTTP/1.0"
"REQUEST_METHOD","GET"
"HTTP_REFERER","http://wonderland.illtel.denver
"HTTP_ACCEPT-LANGUAGE","en"
"HTTP_UA-PIXELS","800x600"
"HTTP_UA-COLOR","color8"
"HTTP_UA-OS","Windows 95"
"HTTP_UA-CPU","x86"
"HTTP_HOST","phobos.illtel.denver.co.us"
"HTTP_EXTENSION","Security/Remote-Passphrase"
"HTTP_MAX-FORWARDS","65535"
"HTTP_VIA","1.0 AOL tserver2[ a9abccd] (Traffic-Server/1.1.7(8) [ 1])"
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I know, they must be talking about better PORN sites. And they want to know WHO YOU ARE!
...because then I can build one snazzy Beowulf out of 'em.
Hey, at least one Ultima was released on a
console -- I remember playing some version
of Ultima on my old NES. It was pretty sweet,
except it was too easy to run out of food, if
I remember right. Reminds me a bit of ADOM in
that respect.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Go back and reread the article.
That $840 price they mentioned was the price of PCs there run around $840... not the Playstation. It said it will cost *less* than a PC, so you've got a max price of $840.
I'm guessing $349 to start...
You're right about the DCT using integer...
I'm actually curious what prevents a modern day P2-450 from doing full-screen DVD playback acceptably? Usually constrained to a 320-200 window or something...
Is it just Win-Bloat interfering?
AS
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Don't be daft.
Everyone knows links are best clicked with iMac mice. Only one button. Easier to click. Impossible to get friendly fire accidents.
User: "Computer, go to aitch tee tee pee colon slash slash intel dot com" Computer: Connecting to http://www.intel.com/ User: "Computer, go to aitch tee tee pee colon slash slash slash dot dot org slash" Computer: Connecting to http:///..org/
More likely:
User: "My car sucks..."
Computer: "Connecting to carpoint.msn.com..."
User: "...and I want to Hawaii...
Computer: "Connecting to expedia.msn.com..."
User: "...And I need a new TV..."
Computer: "Connecting to sidewalk.msn.com..."
User: "...and I forgot, what is the difference between a compiled and interpreted language..."
Computer: "Connecting to encarta.msn.com..."
Scary?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I imagine that the PSN query is a single instruction that places the value in a specified register. It don't think you can circumvent that via any software hooks, but it makes it really easy to find in binary code. So write a smart patching program that finds those instructions and replaces them with the equivalent of "load immediate" with the value of your fake PSN. You could run it on any plugin or activex control you download.
I'm sure I'm oversimplifying tho..
l
Yeah, and in English too. I'm sick of pages I can't read. One standard!
Is it just me? Or is this complaint getting Tired really quickly?
Is it just me? Or is it time to clock off already?
http://www.eetimes.com/story/industry/semiconducto r_news/OEG19990219S0002
/ 17952.html
http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story
I had a much better version of the article, but here are the highpoints:
*250Mhz processors with bus running at 125Mhz
* with compiler optimizations will deliver 500 Dhrystone Mips
* three processing units which work in relative independence, linked by internal 128-bit buses to
deliver estimated performance of 5 Gflops or 30 million polygons/second with lighting and fog features enabled.
* effective bus bandwidth of 1.7 Gbytes/second and supports two Direct Rambus channels
* implements all the MIPS III and most MIPS IV instructions in addition to 107 new SIMD multimedia instructions such as parallel add/subtract, multiply/divide and min/max operations. Toshiba and Sony are not disclosing details on 17 of the new instructions
* Includes hardware support for Bezier curves in 3D (stuff used by Carmak for cool shapes) and DVD playback
* Many details of the system are still unclear-including a graphics chip designed by Sony that is said to contain as many as 20 million transistors
From memory, this is supposed to be able to support HDTV-resolutions and the API's/hardware will be optimized with this as the max number of pixels to deal with.
All said and done, this thing has the potential to outperform even a Voodoo3. Given the general quality/optimization of currently playstation API's and code, programmers will be able to make games with almost DVD-quality. I'm routinely stunned by the quality squeezed out of the measly 33Mhz R3k.
Since I don't own a DVD player, I'll pay $500 for one of these things. I want it. Bad.
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
Now that AMD was giving them some competition I was ready to try supporting Intel again.
But to see them working on PIII-ONLY pages is simply satanic. Death to Intel. If you can't compete, try to lock out. That is ridiculous.
Mark
As a frequent reader of the HTML newsgroups (and
the daily battle over specs and accessibility),
I remember that someone mentioned a new law in
Australia that all sites must be accessible to
anyone with a computer and modem, as part of a disability law. And as a result, several sites did have to shut down to compily with this law.
Hmm, Intel wanting another lawsuit?
(Remember, it's ok to offer something like video
or audio that you need certain requirements for,
as long as you have either duplicated the content
in a more accessible format (text), or if its
unnecessary to get to the content).
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
The descriptions (admittedly, in the notoriously-
inaccurate media) given by Intel suggested that whatever plugin they use could encrypt the number,
so you couldn't just easily send your own fake one. (Of course, you could search for the
instruction that loads the number from hardware,
but if Intel was smart, they would use self-modifying code to generate the load instruction on the fly.)
You could still get around that by writing a Pentium III emulator and "running" the entire plugin under the emulator.
I don't know about the original poster, but I'm looking for a console RPG that acutally has some "RP". In other words, a game that lets me choose a role/persona and play that role through a nonlinear plot that allows me to solve problems in a manner consistent with the role I've chosen. Something like Fallout/Fallout2. I've played Wild Arms and FFVII and neither one had it. As far as I'm concerned, consoles are great for sports games and that's about it.
Oh yeah, I'd also like a console RPG where the characters didn't all look like mutant 12 year olds.
Games like Ultima and Nethack, IMHO, define what an RPG should be. Nice graphics and sound, a decent plot/story, and (this is were Square blows it) freedom to do most anything.
If I want to walk into a shop and kill the owner, I can do that. If I want to get the Armageddon(sp?) spell and waste everybody in the world, so be it. If I want to waste my time baking bread for hours on end, I can do that to. Following a pre-made sequence of events ala Final Fantasy X without any real choice in what happens gets real boring real fast. (and destroys replayability as well)
Anyway, that's my 2.
Scott Banwart
---
Better to stay silent, and let people think
you're an idiot than to open your mouth and
I see nothing in BG that couldn't be replicated on a console system (using CD's mind you) except for the hotkeys. Criminy, it's diablo with cool backgrounds.
Long as you're willing to put up with a lousy cumbersome interface, you could run pretty much any game. I know I wouldn't want to play Alpha Centauri without a keyboard, for example.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Maybe we'll see sites that are only for Pentium III VA Research PC's running Redhat linux
---
I've heard there will be some kind of networking device on the PS2, but I expect it to be fairly limited in ability.
However, if someone could acquire (or reverse-engineer) the network pinout and protocol specifications, then interfacing it with a cheap ($40) diskless PC shouldn't be difficult (amazing things can be done with a parallel port), and then you're off and running. I've considered the possibilities of building clusters from playstations, but it remains to be seen whether doing so will be more cost-effective than just using inexpensive Alphas (the $200 800MHz 21164PC should be hitting the streets at about the same time as the PS2).
We should maintain patience and an open mind.
-- Guges
No kidding. I was doing that under OS/2 something like 2 years ago on a P75. I'm sure the tech. has gotten better since then.
User: "Windows sucks"
Computer: "Connecting to www.linux.org..."
Ahaa now that's better.
should get off their asses and reverse engineer the consoles so we wave the source.
That way we could make Laura Croft's boobs even bigger!
who get's in where...
Sounds like segretation to me.
What? You use Intel's crap? Get lost!
Heh? What's that? You a AMD user? Go somewhere else.
Huh? Cyrix? Stop taking up server bandwidth!
It would be so simple to turn the PIII id code into an ANTI-PIII screening process. The irony might just be a web message to PIII users:
Error: Insufficient Processing Power to access this web page.
Please upgrade upgrade to AMD K7 or better.
- Wing
- Reap the fires of the soul.
- Harvest the passion of life.
- Wing
- Reap the fires of the soul.
- Harvest the passion of life.
You need to use a pre-emptive multitasking OS like Unix or NT or you're limited to 2 or maybe 3 programs at MOST hogging the CPU while the OS tries to do the cooperative multitasking that Win9x does. (And no amount of trying is going to convince me that Win9x is pre-emptive multitasking!) For one thing printing a damned file should NOT slow the system down to a crawl on a PPro. Copying files to a network share should NOT slow the system down. Having an error reading a CD should NOT cause the system to drop into single user mode with a blue screen of death saying you need to hit enter to continue. These things are RIDICULOUS.
Your right, the WWW probably is headed downhill. :P :P
I find myself using gopher as much as possible
If only there was a way to democratically monitor and regulate the web
And no, I'm not putting a company in charge
--bugg
I'm a proud owner of a PSX and I agree with ALL of the posts here regarding people not wanting a console as complex as a computer
Thats understandable, but if the kernel is hacked enough it wouldn't even resemble linux..
But what if it was possible to compile programs onto the playstation with ease?
You could take any old software program you have (GPL) , spend a few hours with it, and then burn it to a CD.
Makes it MUCH easier for console development-- anyone who knows C is good to go
... Well? The possibilities are endless for the hackers, yet invisible to normal users.
From what I've read, the performance increase is very modest. After checking some prices, it looks like you can get a PIII 450 for about $50 more than a PII 450, so many people may go ahead and buy a PIII instead. I just hate the fact that they spew all that crap about how it will make the net a much richer experience. The chip isn't going to do that. It takes bigtime bandwidth to make things more interesting. Unfortunately, they are allowed to make totally unsupported statements (stated as if they were fact) and then proceed to shout them from the mountaintop. People recognize this kind of thing when it comes from a shoe company or a even a car company sometimes, but when a tech company says things like this and then backs it up with meaningless techno-jargon, they believe it. Sad really.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
What do you do if you want to include content that goes beyond what is defined by the HTML standard?
I'm actually posing a serious question, not flaming. I'm developing (make that: trying to develop) a website right now that has all sorts of fancy, on-the-fly stuff (actually an online game). Except I've run into the problem that a lot of the stuff I want to do simply isn't supported by HTML. I'm basically left with only a couple of options:
So what do you reccomend? If anyone has any ideas, I'd be more than glad to entertain them!
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
websites that only work on a certain type of CPU? That's got to be the stupidest thing I've heard in months... Intel is really desparate to preserve market share now... wow.
Just don't go to PIII-only sites that require a PSN? ;-) I can't ever imagine any of the sites I go to now would be switching to that stupid setup so who cares if the PHB's and lusers with Win00 are the only ones that can view the lame sites?
The Dreamcast is an amazing platform; I played one a few months ago at the MIT Media Lab. during the overly-hyped Jr. Summit. Just about all of the Japanese entertainment industry was there, along with Sega and three Dreamcast consoles.
The graphics were nothing short of amazing, but the web browser (some weird incantation of Internet Explorer for Windows CE) was a bit flaky.
Well, I'm afraid I have to disacree with you on this one.
:-)
Personally, never liked the FF series that much; my speed is more Daggerfall, Ultima Online, Civilization, etc... where in the first, you have absolutely no obligation to follow the storyline, and the game can still be just as entertaining, in the second, there is no set storyline, or in the third, you can happily ignore everyone else (except for the occasional border defense), and do whatever the hell you wanna do with the game for a couple of centuries.
I've been playing the same character in Daggerfall for getting on 2 years now, and still haven't advanced much past about 1/4 the way through the "official" story. In fact, I pretty much ignore the built-in storyline except for when I come across it accidentally, and yet, I'm still having a lot of fun with the game.
Civilization (Civ 1... still the best), I still play 2 or 3 times through per week. It's freeform, randomized maps, with little to no enforced direction make for infinite playability, which I love!
Once those types of games come out for a console system, I may seriously consider getting one, otherwise I'll stick to playing games on my PC.
But again, that's just my $0.02...
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Has anyone heard the rumors going around that Intel might try to get the cable modem people to build the equivalent of "winmodems" that need a PIII to work?
That could be one way the PIII could enhance (quote unquote) your internet experience.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
Yeah, but we're also talking about greater than V3-4000 level performance, where a V3-3500 itself costs 249$...
So take your Cyrix for 400$, slap in 2 V3-3500 just to be generous, and the price goes to 900$ for a barely comparable system...
It will still be a bargain.
AS
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Ok, I think I see what you mean by losing nothing and gaining some by using Java. But what I was really trying to get at was that any way I did it, there was no way of writing the pages without excluding some browsers, much as I hate to do it (note that I actually agree with the original poster, in that on general principle, people who knowingly exclude users from using their stuff should be shot).
And the thing with Java is that I would have to load all the graphics in one huge lump at the beginning, which would be many, many megabytes (as it currently stands). The way I'm currently doing it, you just load the graphics that you need on each page, which would currently come out to less than 50k per page, absolute max (actually, usually a lot less). The game itself spreads out across several hundred pages, not all of which are necessarily loaded. Only about 1/6th of the total pages are needed to be accessed to finish the game, the rest are just there for extra "diversions" and stuff. Basically, there are a lot of graphics which may not ever be seen by any given player. I tend to regard it as being a bit of a waste to make each player download all of that, regardless of whether or not they need it.
Of course, I will be releasing the source (prolly GPL or something), so anyone who wants to make a port (to Java, or whatever else) will be able to.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Well, hopefully that will be part of the PS2k standard, won't it?
Then no one would ever need to buy a PC to play games; PC for work, console for games!
Whatever =) Still, specialization and distribution of responsibility works in general, rather than having one device try to do everything(See Win98 as the OS that does everything, and nothing well...)
AS
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Easy; most non-PIII processors don't have enough power to run the plug-ins. The SSE instructions can do a peak of 2 GFLOPS; the only other CPUs that could do that are probably the Alpha and PowerPC G4. If you can afford an Alpha, you can probably afford a PIII.
The point of the PIII-only sites isn't really that they require a PIII specifically, but they require so much CPU power that only a PIII or a high-end workstation could run them.
This page best viewed with a monitor.
This information best processed with a brain.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
---By the way i made some spelling errors so deal with it----
The Sega DreamCast has a modem and uses widows ce of the cds so lets hope that playstation does not do the same thing, it seams like they are not.....
Also so i have read that playstation2 will not be able to play normal dvd's due to the fact that it would take money away from sony dvd sales......
One bad thing about sony it they are so damb propiatary with there stuff. Did you ever try to buy a battery for a sony phone. You pay twise at much just because there plug is a little different than the cheaper one.
just my 2 cents
also i do have a playstation and use it allot
--
Joshua Curtis
Lancaster Co. Linux Users Group
Yeah... you're right... I prolly shouldn't have said that... I'm not sure anymore exactly what I was disagreeing with.
/me ambles off to try and sort out his confused state of mind.
Actually, still not quite sure why I posted that in the first place... some innate desire to make my voice heard, whether I had anything useful to say or not.
Just like right now...
...
Peace, brothers!
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Thats dumb,
1. did sony disable normal music Cd player in psx1 because that would slow down their Cd sales? NO
2. if it can play DVD movies , then people will buy all those Sony DVD movies, sony does make movies....
=CB
Hey for a free T1 i'd buy a pIII, i'd even keep the serial number turned on, of cource i'd run linux on the system so I'd know that it wouldn't actually be read by anything.
-matt
Wow! I managed to not understand a word the Intel spokesman said. I guess that means I'm not allowed to buy a PIII or something, huh?
Posted by OGL:
Console wars are fine for 12 year olds, but lets keep them out of slashdot. If you really like console gaming that much, but BOTH systems and stop whining about which one is better.
-W.W.
Folks, windows ce is on some dreamcast cd's. It is
not, and never will be in the rom. Most games use
Sega's os and there is no reason why the dreamcast
can't run other os's as well.
I think this is a great idea. I don't want to have
to boot to winblows each time I play a winblows
game. With dreamcast just pop in a cd and play windows games.
I can finally leave my pc on linux all the time!!
More people would use linux if linux software were like this.
Um, ActiveX controls are always written in native code. Sorry to spoil any illusions of safety you might have had. ActiveX controls intended for use with IE should be considered similar to plugins and treated with the same degree of caution.
I meant out for those of us who don't speak
Japanese. The Saturn did just fine in Japan. The
true test of the Dreamcast will be to see
how the rest of the world likes it.
today in one of the major newspapers (The Australian,www.theaustralian.com.au ) Toshiba have taken out full-page colour advertisments along the lines of 'toshiba, your trust friend'. Wonder why?
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Why wait? They did this with the PII in a limited way. see:
s w.html
x .htm
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/silverbank/sh
"You'll need CosmoPlayer. This tour, whose details were optimized for virtual reality, works best with the Intel Pentium® II processor."
or from:
http://www.intc.com/cpc/explore/stonehenge/inde
"Virtual Stonehenge features special effects such as detailed textures, dynamic lighting, and fog that benefit from the power of a Pentium® II processor. You can run the model on an older system, but you'll experience lower levels of detail and slower frame rates which will make your experience less lifelike. "
Don't you guys remember this? It caused a minor buzz on the web developer circle.
into every CPU the manufacturer will
hardwire a PGP encododer/decoder in such a way
that the private key cannot be reverse-
engineered. they will then be able to identify
the CPU with absolute certainty. this will
change *everything* about the internet that makes
it different from the rest of the world. they
will call the new feature "e-money".
What the P3 serial code allows is the creation of "*Only* viewed by Pentium III" web content.
Intel stoops to yet another level of lameness.
Can someone 'splain to me how a new CPU - faster, slower or indifferent - is going to speed up Internet access?? Can it cram more bits into the phone line? Can it speed up electricity?
We need someone in the public eye (someone to whom the media listens) to break through the public ignorance that makes these damn PIII commercials look good to the average shmoe.
We need the public to know that Wintel preys on the public's lack of technical knowledge.
An informed customer is a wannabe monopolists worst nightmare. All my chips thus far have been Intel's, but the next one won't be, unless this PIII abomination dies in pain.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
That's what Legions is for!
</plug>
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Ok.
I confess I don't know a hell ofr a lot about Java. I honestly didn't know that you could do that (stream it using HTTP).
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
In 1994 and 95 there were 2 really expensive consules that tried to do everything. One of them was 3do. I can't remember the name of the other one :-( . Basically 3do or this other consule that I can't remember tried to make it do everything like true mpeg2 video at 30 fps to 3d to advancded sound to just about everything. They screwed up. They tried to make it a "everyones machine" and it was too expensive and people only bought them for games and didn't care about the extra features like multimedia encyclopedia apps support and so on. The playstation2 may even end up like neo/geo with cool technology but price and complexity killed it and the super nintendo caught up technoligcally with it 2 years later when the technology was cheaper. I bet a year and a half later nintendo will show its next game consule that will outperform the playstation2 for cheaper. You should never try to provide the latest technology because price will kill you. YOU always include the latest and greatest technology from last year. ALso with no hard drive and no i/o and no smp, it will be impossible to port linux to it. Even if you have a linux cd for it, you would have to take it out of the machine to run apps or games because they are also on cd.
I heard a rumour that the ps2 has a few lines of code in its rom that looks to see if the dvd movie or the audio cd is from sony and will refuse to paly it if its not. THose bastards also will make audio cd's that only work with its own players and since the music artists only work for one company because of exclsive contracts, you can bet you have to buy 2 cd plaers in your car if you want to hear jewel or another band that has a deal with sony or buy 2 different stereos. I hate them.
Thank you Bill for showing the world how proprietary hooks are the wave of the future.
the PPC G4 will be able to do that too, only maybe better (altivec)
anyway that's not something that would be PIII specific; just something that is better on a faster microchip.
and any company deeply involved with MS is whoring itself anyway, so it wouldn't be _that_ much of a stretch.
Anybody know how the PS2 and Dreamcast will ramp up with HDTV? The current generation of consoles are fast, but they're displaying at 320x200 and nobody can tell the differenc. I hear some PSX games run at a higher resolution, but it's not like that does any good. So, does anybody know if the next-gen consoles will take advantage of the higher resolution (still not quite a computer's, but it'll do) or even the widescreen format?
Well, this is how they are going to make their marketing slogan true.
I heard some rumours that the mysterious multimedia chip which the new Amigas are being based upon, actually are the new Sony chips. This would explain them taking on Intel.
Yeah... /. as desktop environment wars, or OS wars, or distribution wars, or future CPU standard wars...
Console wars have as much place on
Um, well...
Take it either way, I guess, but I think they all belong or go as a group. As long as it's discussion and fairly civil, and not just flamebait or trash talking...
AS
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Personally, never liked the FF series that much; my speed is more Daggerfall, Ultima Online, Civilization, etc... where in the first, you have absolutely no obligation to follow the storyline, and the game can still be just as entertaining, in the second, there is no set storyline, or in the third, you can happily ignore everyone else (except for the occasional border defense), and do whatever the hell you wanna do with the game for a couple of centuries.
There's something very distinct that every one of these games lacks, and does a damn good job of lacking at - plot.
I like playing these games, but they only get so entertaining.... I have a friend who has a score of over 800% (and he has a copy of the save for anyone who disputes it) in Civ II, just because, well, it's a multiplayer version of Civ I with a few more toys and some live action video. The game NEVER changes, the same goes with daggerfall.. I've seen more plot in a Burt I. Gordon movie (watch MST3k if you don't know what i'm talking about).
And just *DON'T* get me started on UO. I am not the slightest bit interested in getting winnuked because I played the game better than some shithead 14 year old 3133+ hax0r d00d.
While the FF series can get old in it's "leading by the nose" philosophy, at least there is something to follow and a sense of completion to the game. IMO, FF 5 Japanese is the only one that does a good job of bringing the "Role" in Role Playing.
But when it comes down to it, Civ, the entire Ultima series, Master Of Orion, (which IMHO is the best of all three) etc, are just glorified versions of solitaire or minesweeper, they only evolve in thier own environment, incapable of changing the mechanics or direction of the game at at all, hence, lacking plot, and getting old.
-Erik-
Boycott PIII and PIII-serial code using sites!
Also, boycott Windows 95/98/NT3/NT4/NT5 because it is required to activate the serial code.
DES Khaddafi KGB genetic jihad Uzi Rule Psix Qaddafi cryptographic Peking Mossad Legion of Doom Albanian Serbian Saddam
And indeed if you go back to original article from the Japanese paper where Gamespot seems to have got its info from (http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/AC/TNKS/Nni19990302DN BN302X.htm) they're talking about it costing "50,000 yen or less" which is half the price of the average cost of a Japanese PC if these things cost 100,000 yen there. So that's rougly $420.
Gaming Age also had some details about the demonstration, which included Square rotating the animated head from the FF Movie in realtime, and Namco controlling the racing chick from Ridge Racer 4 in realtime. Also, Gamefan had a report that EA have announced that they've ceased development for the Dreamcast, in favour of the PS2. So, they appear to have the tech, and the 3rd party. Also a report in a few places that the figure was mistranslated: it should have been $200-$450. In which case, here's my money! Gimme! Gimme!
Also, I really like that fact that (a) it's backwards compatible with all the PS1 software and hardware, and (b) it has the clockcycles to improve on the old graphics.
afarrell@maths.tcd.ie
Ive tried to port Linux to psx a while ago, but since PSX has only 2 MB (dev: 8MB) and no MMU it was too much work (remember the palmpilot linux port with 1MB ram and flat memory model ?)
He he heh. HAH HA HA HAHA AHAHA.
Ohohoh.
Oh how such a short period of time can change everything. It's going to piss all over the Dreamcast.
> For what it is worth the dreamcast will be backwardly compadible with the Saturn.
No it isn't. But the PSX2 is backwardly compatible with the PSX. How? It has a R3000A embedded in the IO chip.
Hoho.
Sorry, I meant konami, not kanomi. Add midway, acclaim, and many many more. check out dreamcast.ign.com for a complete listing upcoming games.
Square and EA are big names in the game biz. But if that is all psx2 gets, and everyone else goes to dreamcast, psx2 is toast. Keep in mind no matter what happens sega has the sonic team and tons of great arcade titles to convert to dreamcast.
It's only got 2, you probably read that it has 16Mbit of RAM, since until recently (and still in the Nintendo world) cartridges, memory, etc were expressed in bits. Oh, btw, Gamespot Japan is reporting that the PSX2 will be using Linux as the Development OS ;)
Okay, the Playstation 2 will be fast. But will it run rc5des?
-Chris
You may want to look at Crossfire. Crossfire is a multiplayer graphical adventure game that has a java client. See http://www.bolthole.com/jcrossclient/
tried to use the 1.2.x kernels? I recall that there was a patch to get it down below 250k, but then again, I doubt that there was any MIPS support then. :(
The dreamcasts video subsystem is much better than that of any game console on the market, windows ce sux but the hardware is supposedly up to arcade level quality.
Let's boycott Slashdot. It uses cookies -->
Big brother tactics.