American companies have huge interests in the Alberta oil sands and are putting tens of billions of dollars into tapping them every year. Production is just a tiny fraction of what it's expected to be 10 years down the road once all of the projects announced are completed (and once new ones are announced).
All of the major American oil companies have huge interests in Alberta. China has next to none, but they are now quite interested and are starting to invest.
Or have they actually revamped the kernel no longer requires or assumes a GUI at all? Have they finally caught up to 1970?
I wasn't aware that pre-1970 kernels assumed the existence of a GUI? How does making the assumption that a Windows application have a Window make it on the level of a pre-1970 applications?
I think it's a pretty safe assumption most Windows apps will have a Window. If they don't, just pass null in those parameters.
I don't understand what makes a copycat these days. How is something basics like running graphics in usermode something where people can be called "copycats" for doing? You can run it in kernelmode or usermode, it's not like switching it from one to the other is an incredible innovation and people would never come to on their own. Clearly they looked at X11 and thought "what a magnificient technology! Let us copy its architecture..." or not...
There are design tradeoffs made in doing operating system design. Back when NT4.0 came out, Microsoft decided that the performance of the kernel-mode graphics system was superior to that of the user-mode graphics system. Now that the hardware is so much faster, there's virtually no difference in performance...so now they're moving it back into userland.
Moving the graphics from kernel into userspace doesn't make it "very similar" to X11. X11 is nothing like the graphical system in Windows, aside from it is a graphical system and it will soon run in userland...
Why do you assume games would use MPEG2 streams for in-game video?
It's also an assumption that there would be a use for FMV...with the kind of graphical fidelity on the upcoming systems, there's less need for FMV...which I personally find annoying, it's not as immersive.
Having used Intel's compiler, I would think that you would know better. What about inter-module optimizations? Who's going to do that? The compiler or linker. It's the linker buddy. Optimizations aren't just source level. Once you have the assembly, there is still a lot of stuff you can do. Instruction reordering, vectorizations, etc.[/i]
I don't know Intel's compilers very well, but IBM's compiler does inter-modular optimizations (inter-procedural analysis) as part of the "compiler". It's a tool that is only included with the compiler and is not part of the linker -- in fact, the linker team at IBM is on a completely different continent from the compiler team and they don't do any optimizations.
Oh man, why not just kick them in the balls too while you're at it!
Can that really be true?
He's likely referring to single-threaded performance, likely from PC developers who ported PC applications to the consoles in a month or two.
In-order cores like Xenon and Cell require a lot more careful optimizations, they don't have the Out Of Order Execution logic on the CPU to dynamically re-order the instructions more optimally.
I see the reality distortion field is in full effect these days.
The Windows XP Home upgrade is $93.99, the XP Pro upgrade is $179.99.
I don't care that OS X is not an upgrade, if you read the original post you'd see it was a comment about "price of upgrades".
Not to mention that the vast majority of people do not need the Pro featureset (go name a few that Grandma needs on her computer...)
The simple fact is the upgrade costs of Windows for most users are lower than MacOS. Want to do some math?
Let's do the math for the average user: Windows XP Home upgrade, purchased in 2001: $93.99 Total cost = $93.99
MacOS X, 2001: $129.99 MacOS X 10.2: $129.99 MacOS X 10.3: $129.99 MacOS X 10.4 (april): $129.99 Total cost = $519.96
Even if the user bought Windows XP Professional, as a brand new install, this is a significant savings.
It's irrelevant that MacOS X doesn't have an upgrade package, it's just another example of Apple's milking practices. They even put MS to shame, and that's quite an accomplishment.
$93.99 for an XP Home upgrade: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 2423YK/qid=1110650156/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/103-9649 965-7565415?v=glance&s=software&n=507846
$114.99 for MacOS X 10.3: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail /-/B000 0E6NK9/ref=pd_ts_c_th_1/103-9649965-7565415?v=glan ce&s=software&n=229652
That article is about 2 years old, the Xbox and Gamecube both have much larger audiences now than in 2002, so software sales are likely higher. I can't help but think linking to 2002 annual figures was just a sleight of hand on your part, because the PS2 had already been on the market a year or two and the Xbox and Gamecube were newer with a fraction of the install base.
A quick comment on the iTMS vs Napster/Others. A feature that a lot of people overlook that I have found quite pleasing is the integration of your purchased iTMS songs with iMovie & iDVD. I don't believe Microsoft's WMA stuff is able to integrate into their "Movie Maker" program. With iMovie I can just drag purchased songs onto tracks, same with iDVD..
WMA does integrate into Movie Maker just like that, actually.
This comment in particular strikes me as a bit odd. Not only can you use the protected WMA files in things like Windows Media, but any other program that uses DirectShow or DirectSound, like Winamp. You're not limited to iTunes and the iPod like you are with iTMS.
That, I believe, is a feature commonly overlooked. Windows Media codecs (including support for DRM) is built into the entire OS, so any program using OS APIs that use the OS' codecs (I can't think of any that don't, aside from iTunes) has access to them and can use them.
19MB download? Holy bloatware batman! A full install of Winamp is 2.2MB, and it plays videos as well.
The install is typical of the annoying Apple installs we were used to with Quicktime. It doesn't even ask you, it simply installs QuickTime 6.4. Not only that, but it adds some **** to your startup so you have a gloriously useless memory-hogging QuickTime tray icon by default.
It's also somewhat weird how iTunes demanded access to the internet the second I opened it, even at the configuration wizard's first screen.
It requires "special" drivers for burning to CDs and DVDs -- huh? What kind of design is this? This also requires a reboot after an install.
The GUI seems to be remarkably inefficient, when I resize the window there is a noticable delay of when I move the mouse to resize and when the window redraws -- and it's choppy when it does so. And the CPU is an Athlon 64 3200+...
It doesn't recognize WMA as an audio format whatsoever, which is somewhat of a pain considering 95% of my audio files are in WMA format. The least they could've done is take a couple hours and simply call DirectSound's WMA decoder, doesn't add to file size nor complicate the program. But I suppose for political reasons they want to shun MS' format and only support MP3 and AAC (no OGG either).
The interface is huge, and virtually uncustomizable. I'm not a fan of the brushed-metal look. There is no equivalent window shade mode (Winamp) or taskbar mode (WMP) I could find, which is annoying for playing it in the background. Closest thing is you can minimize it, and then use the tray icon to do basic controls (play, stop, next song, etc). The taskbar entry is still there.
It's a resource hog: Playing a simple 4 minute MP3 it uses 32MB of RAM and 3-5% of my Athlon 64 3200+. The exact same song in Winamp 2.91 uses "0%" of my CPU consistently and 7.6MB of RAM.
It's a very expensive product geared towards the professional. What the RIAA would REALLY hate would be an iPod with SPDIF inputs and the ability to connect to other iPods via firewire. You could then connect your cd player directly to your iPod and then transfer directly from iPod to iPod, all without leaving the digital domain and with no lossy compression.
The FireWire version of the Nomad Zens allow you to transfer from Zen to Zen with the latest firmware.
I think right now the Athlon XP 3000+ based on the Barton CPU core is the right first step, but I think the CPU that will REALLY worry Intel will likely come later this spring when we see Barton core Athlon XP's that take full advantage of DDR400 DDR-SDRAM.
Remember, under pure-CPU tests the Athlon XP 3000+ has almost the same performance as the Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz CPU with HyperThreading; what will happen when the Athlon XP gets the Front Side Bus speed bump necessary to support DDR400 memory? Not much I'd imagine, the bump to a 333MHz system bus did next to nothing. The P4 is far more sensitive to memory bandwidth than the Athlon.
And in April P4s at 3.2GHz with an 800MHz system bus come out...
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.
My PS2's 8 meg card is about half full, and I get to take it with me when I go to a friend's house which has been useful. 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. Has it occured to you that both are nice?
On my Xbox I save games to the harddrive (I also use it for ripping my music to so I don't need to listen to the crap soundtracks that come with Tony Hawk 4, etc and for downloading extra levels via the built in ethernet port too...) and when I want to bring games to my friends house, I save it to the MEMORY CARD.
Nobody is advocating not using memory cards at all in favor of a harddrive. A harddrive is WAY better than a memory card for storage most of the time. It can hold MUCH more data, it can be used as a level cache, it can be used to hold custom music/movies (upcoming consoles will likely have VCR-like capabilities if you'd like), etc. A memory card, in comparison, is slow and expensive and doesn't hold much data.
That's why it's great to have both.
Honestly, why do you think there's *TWO* ports on the back of each Xbox controller? The top one is for the voice communicator, the bottom one is for a memory card.
If you want to bring a game to a friends house, SAVE TO THE MEMORY CARD.:) Simple...
Slashdot Mirror
American companies have huge interests in the Alberta oil sands and are putting tens of billions of dollars into tapping them every year. Production is just a tiny fraction of what it's expected to be 10 years down the road once all of the projects announced are completed (and once new ones are announced).
All of the major American oil companies have huge interests in Alberta. China has next to none, but they are now quite interested and are starting to invest.
Not all of the HD-DVD demos were a bust.
c tion/1136757415 )
BetaNews has some screencaptures of HD-DVD running on a Windows Vista PC (playing the Bourne Supremecy).
It's mostly a profile of "iHD", which as I understand it is a mix of EMCA Script and XML for the titles and interactivity of HD-DVDs.
(Oops: a link would help: http://ces.betanews.com/entry/HD_DVD_and_iHD_in_A
Not all of the HD-DVD demos were a bust.
BetaNews has some screencaptures of HD-DVD running on a Windows Vista PC (playing the Bourne Supremecy).
It's mostly a profile of "iHD", which as I understand it is a mix of EMCA Script and XML for the titles and interactivity of HD-DVDs.
I think it's a pretty safe assumption most Windows apps will have a Window. If they don't, just pass null in those parameters.
I don't understand what makes a copycat these days. How is something basics like running graphics in usermode something where people can be called "copycats" for doing? You can run it in kernelmode or usermode, it's not like switching it from one to the other is an incredible innovation and people would never come to on their own. Clearly they looked at X11 and thought "what a magnificient technology! Let us copy its architecture..." or not...
/., but come on guys...
There are design tradeoffs made in doing operating system design. Back when NT4.0 came out, Microsoft decided that the performance of the kernel-mode graphics system was superior to that of the user-mode graphics system. Now that the hardware is so much faster, there's virtually no difference in performance...so now they're moving it back into userland.
I realize this is
Moving the graphics from kernel into userspace doesn't make it "very similar" to X11. X11 is nothing like the graphical system in Windows, aside from it is a graphical system and it will soon run in userland...
Why do you assume games would use MPEG2 streams for in-game video?
It's also an assumption that there would be a use for FMV...with the kind of graphical fidelity on the upcoming systems, there's less need for FMV...which I personally find annoying, it's not as immersive.
[i]Wrong.
Having used Intel's compiler, I would think that you would know better. What about inter-module optimizations? Who's going to do that? The compiler or linker. It's the linker buddy. Optimizations aren't just source level. Once you have the assembly, there is still a lot of stuff you can do. Instruction reordering, vectorizations, etc.[/i]
I don't know Intel's compilers very well, but IBM's compiler does inter-modular optimizations (inter-procedural analysis) as part of the "compiler". It's a tool that is only included with the compiler and is not part of the linker -- in fact, the linker team at IBM is on a completely different continent from the compiler team and they don't do any optimizations.
IBM never promised 3GHz G5s, that was Steve Jobs making the promise hoping to put publish pressure on IBM to make the 3GHz themselves.
He's likely referring to single-threaded performance, likely from PC developers who ported PC applications to the consoles in a month or two.
In-order cores like Xenon and Cell require a lot more careful optimizations, they don't have the Out Of Order Execution logic on the CPU to dynamically re-order the instructions more optimally.
It's not a dreamworld.
Do you really think IBM would put all the R&D of putting SMT into an old core? Power5 already has it.
The Xbox 360 CPU is a castrated Power5, like the G5/PowerPC is a castrated Power4.
The Xbox 360's CPU is derived from the POWER5.
The PowerPC 970 (G5) is derived from the POWER4.
I see the reality distortion field is in full effect these days.
The Windows XP Home upgrade is $93.99, the XP Pro upgrade is $179.99.
I don't care that OS X is not an upgrade, if you read the original post you'd see it was a comment about "price of upgrades".
Not to mention that the vast majority of people do not need the Pro featureset (go name a few that Grandma needs on her computer...)
The simple fact is the upgrade costs of Windows for most users are lower than MacOS. Want to do some math?
Let's do the math for the average user:
Windows XP Home upgrade, purchased in 2001: $93.99
Total cost = $93.99
MacOS X, 2001: $129.99
MacOS X 10.2: $129.99
MacOS X 10.3: $129.99
MacOS X 10.4 (april): $129.99
Total cost = $519.96
Even if the user bought Windows XP Professional, as a brand new install, this is a significant savings.
It's irrelevant that MacOS X doesn't have an upgrade package, it's just another example of Apple's milking practices. They even put MS to shame, and that's quite an accomplishment.
Does XP Home have Fast User switching?
;)
Yes, it does...
It had it before OS X did, too.
The parent was talking about the price to upgrade.
I really don't think "for a fair comparison" you should look at the non-upgrade packages.
If you're looking at the price to upgrade, you can get an XP upgrade. You need to buy the full-out version of OS X every time.
consider the upgrade price for Windows XP
0 2423YK/qid=1110650156/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/103-9649 965-7565415?v=glance&s=software&n=507846
l /-/B000 0E6NK9/ref=pd_ts_c_th_1/103-9649965-7565415?v=glan ce&s=software&n=229652
Have I missed something?
$93.99 for an XP Home upgrade: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00
$114.99 for MacOS X 10.3:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai
'Manos' and the Hands of Fate must've been truly terrible: four of its cast members committed suicide after its release in 1966:
John Reynolds, Diane Mahree, Sherry Proctor, and Joyce Molleur.
That article is about 2 years old, the Xbox and Gamecube both have much larger audiences now than in 2002, so software sales are likely higher. I can't help but think linking to 2002 annual figures was just a sleight of hand on your part, because the PS2 had already been on the market a year or two and the Xbox and Gamecube were newer with a fraction of the install base.
WMA does integrate into Movie Maker just like that, actually.
This comment in particular strikes me as a bit odd. Not only can you use the protected WMA files in things like Windows Media, but any other program that uses DirectShow or DirectSound, like Winamp. You're not limited to iTunes and the iPod like you are with iTMS.
That, I believe, is a feature commonly overlooked. Windows Media codecs (including support for DRM) is built into the entire OS, so any program using OS APIs that use the OS' codecs (I can't think of any that don't, aside from iTunes) has access to them and can use them.
19MB download? Holy bloatware batman! A full install of Winamp is 2.2MB, and it plays videos as well.
The install is typical of the annoying Apple installs we were used to with Quicktime. It doesn't even ask you, it simply installs QuickTime 6.4. Not only that, but it adds some **** to your startup so you have a gloriously useless memory-hogging QuickTime tray icon by default.
It's also somewhat weird how iTunes demanded access to the internet the second I opened it, even at the configuration wizard's first screen.
It requires "special" drivers for burning to CDs and DVDs -- huh? What kind of design is this? This also requires a reboot after an install.
The GUI seems to be remarkably inefficient, when I resize the window there is a noticable delay of when I move the mouse to resize and when the window redraws -- and it's choppy when it does so. And the CPU is an Athlon 64 3200+...
It doesn't recognize WMA as an audio format whatsoever, which is somewhat of a pain considering 95% of my audio files are in WMA format. The least they could've done is take a couple hours and simply call DirectSound's WMA decoder, doesn't add to file size nor complicate the program. But I suppose for political reasons they want to shun MS' format and only support MP3 and AAC (no OGG either).
The interface is huge, and virtually uncustomizable. I'm not a fan of the brushed-metal look. There is no equivalent window shade mode (Winamp) or taskbar mode (WMP) I could find, which is annoying for playing it in the background. Closest thing is you can minimize it, and then use the tray icon to do basic controls (play, stop, next song, etc). The taskbar entry is still there.
It's a resource hog: Playing a simple 4 minute MP3 it uses 32MB of RAM and 3-5% of my Athlon 64 3200+. The exact same song in Winamp 2.91 uses "0%" of my CPU consistently and 7.6MB of RAM.
It's a very expensive product geared towards the professional. What the RIAA would REALLY hate would be an iPod with SPDIF inputs and the ability to connect to other iPods via firewire. You could then connect your cd player directly to your iPod and then transfer directly from iPod to iPod, all without leaving the digital domain and with no lossy compression.
The FireWire version of the Nomad Zens allow you to transfer from Zen to Zen with the latest firmware.
Cool, what will we get in 40 years? Do we get the ENIAC back? Now _that_ is what I call a computer. Woohoo!
I realize you meant this as a joke, but Moore's Law talks about transistors, not speed. It's just that historically they've tended to go hand in hand.
I think right now the Athlon XP 3000+ based on the Barton CPU core is the right first step, but I think the CPU that will REALLY worry Intel will likely come later this spring when we see Barton core Athlon XP's that take full advantage of DDR400 DDR-SDRAM.
Remember, under pure-CPU tests the Athlon XP 3000+ has almost the same performance as the Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz CPU with HyperThreading; what will happen when the Athlon XP gets the Front Side Bus speed bump necessary to support DDR400 memory?
Not much I'd imagine, the bump to a 333MHz system bus did next to nothing. The P4 is far more sensitive to memory bandwidth than the Athlon.
And in April P4s at 3.2GHz with an 800MHz system bus come out...
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.
My PS2's 8 meg card is about half full, and I get to take it with me when I go to a friend's house which has been useful. 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.
:) Simple...
Has it occured to you that both are nice?
On my Xbox I save games to the harddrive (I also use it for ripping my music to so I don't need to listen to the crap soundtracks that come with Tony Hawk 4, etc and for downloading extra levels via the built in ethernet port too...) and when I want to bring games to my friends house, I save it to the MEMORY CARD.
Nobody is advocating not using memory cards at all in favor of a harddrive. A harddrive is WAY better than a memory card for storage most of the time. It can hold MUCH more data, it can be used as a level cache, it can be used to hold custom music/movies (upcoming consoles will likely have VCR-like capabilities if you'd like), etc. A memory card, in comparison, is slow and expensive and doesn't hold much data.
That's why it's great to have both.
Honestly, why do you think there's *TWO* ports on the back of each Xbox controller? The top one is for the voice communicator, the bottom one is for a memory card.
If you want to bring a game to a friends house, SAVE TO THE MEMORY CARD.