Intel put tighter patents on the PII socket so AMD built the Athlon on DEC's Alpha socket electrical design.
To add to this, specificially it was the Alpha EV6 bus that the Athlon adopted (K7). Most of the decision cane from the fact that the Compaq DEC merger had just occured, and many Alpha engineers left to join AMD. The funny part about "Slot A" is that physicially it was Slot 1, just flipped to orientate the other way. AMD did this to get into the market easier. Motherboard manufacturers could use nearly all the same parts to make an Athlon or Pentium II motherboard. OEMs could also then use the same CPU coolers on both the Athlon and PII slot chips.
AMD gained enough acceptance that when the slot went away, they sat in a decent position to be able to make their own socket, instead of attempting to nearly copy Intel again.
And now with the X86-64, it seems the tables have turned.
For the majority of users, there is no need to use further bandwith on optical drives. Even my 52x32x52 CDRW only runs at ATA-33. Why spend money to develop an ATA-150 model if it doesn't even use that much bandwith to begin with?
For the same reason we now use USB mice, keyboards and printers. SATA is the evolution of the internal storage interface, so we should migrate everything, not just the devices that can take full advantage of it. A USB mouse never even gets close to taking full advantage of the USB 1.1 bandwidth. But having all the devices on a new bus means you can simply the connectors the computer has. I could care less if my next PC has a PS/2 or parallel port since it has been years since I have used either port. And I'm glad my Mac lacks legacy ports. They have no use beyond complicating the mainboard.
I'm hoping for a dual layer DVD burner on SATA for my next PC system this summer.
Apple created a piece of software that doesn't allow people to play the music their paid for on the devices of their choice.
It's also clearly stated what these limitations are ahead of time. Last I knew, you could burn any song you bought from Apple onto a music CD, and play that. Or rerip that back to an MP3 to put on device X.
Oh, wait, the quality goes down, right? Well, explain what device it is that has AAC audio playback capabilities? There are very few beyond the iPod, so having the raw AAC does most people very little good, since it would still have to be transcoded into another format.
I don't like the idea of DRM and the DMCA much, but the print on the front door was pretty clear. Don't like it? Don't shop there and instead go buy a CD.
Twisted uninformed logic that could only come from a partisan. Lets have OS X (or any other OS) occupy 98% market share and we'll see how much attention it gets from virus authors. Lots of attention, yes. Lots of successful attacks, not likely.
Mail.app in OS X doesn't run attachments automaticially like Outlook Express does. Safari doesn't bombard users with install prompts for some virus hiding as an ActiveX plugin. And if something does get in and try to modify system files, I get a password prompt, instead of the virus trampeling all over kernel space on it's own. Why? Well, OS X does the proper thing and doesn't trust me to be logged in with full control. Where as on Windows, any user who bought a system from Best Buy is logged in as an administrator.
The best though is Windows Server 2003. It opens up enough of the components during setup that it can be infected by some RPC vunerability even before you can finish the install. This in a server OS MS touted as their first major attempt at security. I can't wait to see Windows XP SP2 do noting to stop all the crap flying around.
Also, see argument above about Code Red/Nimda, the most disruptive virus I have seen in a while. Coded for a product that holds 25% of the market, while the leader sits at 65%.
MS keeps choosing to make their own mistakes and repeat the history of Unix, where as Apple decided to help make the existing technology better. Konquer is now a better browser because of Safari, Apache has support for zero-conf now, and other improvemenet.
The company was bought by Rio, and their engineers are responsible for the Rio Receiver, Rio Central, Rio Karma, Rio Nitrus, and a few of the latest flash players.
Rio made a few thousand Rio Car units after they bought empeg, but they pulled out of the car market quickly.
If the patent is very broad, the empeg could fall under it. But, if it is so descriptive to literially mean exactly like the iPod interface, then noone really will get hit with this. Too hard to say, patent speak is too loose fitting in most cases.
http://riocar.org/upload/empeg1_low.mpg is a low quality MPEG of the first unit (Mark 1) in action with older beta software. The person here uses the remote for the demo, but the buttons on the front panel could have been used as well. The Mark 2 units added a knob that could also be used in navigation, bringing the interface oddly close to the first iPods, with a turnable control, button for it, then 4 other buttons.
The empeg has similar navigation, though it doesn't fill the entire screen. The empeg was in production in 1999, long before the iPod.
And it took things one step further. Hierarchal playlists to go along with the hierarchal navigation of other menus.
Looking at this patent though, the empeg wouldn't be prior art because they specificially state one of the menu displas artists, playlists, etc. The empeg has no such concept, and instead simply lets you use the hierarchal playlists to set your music lists up however you want. I personally have mine genre first. then artist, then CD. I also have a few links to the same music in a few places to make it easier to find things when not using search.
Do you think the Dish CEO is Mahatma Fucking Ghandi? of course not. No, but he is actually willing to talk to the customers of his company. About once a month, there is an hour long show on channel 101 where he talks about the state of things, will explain any rate increases, and will also take caller questions. I do choose to vote with my wallet, and Dish will always have my entertainment money.
I was a bit upset when I tried to sign up for Dish again after being in a situation where I shared it with a roomate. I shot an e-mail off to the CEO, and VP accounts. I, in 1 hour, had an e-mail response from the VP, and soon there after a phone call too. In the end, I not only got to sign back up, but also provided valuable feedback right to the VP about a program they rolled out to resubscribers.
From his article "To make the changes, Rubin urged developers to reverse their thinking. He feels that talent needs to force the change. Developers should look at publishers as people they hire to sell the game they made. The talent should view the publisher as a tool for marketing, public relations, and sales. They are the ones making the games and they are the ones that should be wielding more power."
I remember a publishing company called Gathering of Developers that started up using these ideals. Ideals like the developers deserve credit for their work, and other similar concepts. Great idea, but they were never taken seriously. And after seeing somewhat of how they ran and showed themselves, it's not a wonder. If someone attempts to do this again, they need to be a tad more mature, at least until they have a few top selling titles under their belt.
I do wish developers got the recognition they deserve. But by no means do they deserve the world, and some of them I think expect this.
No one's turned the GameCube into a Mac. Nope. Because the GameCube has very little in common with a PC. It has a G3 CPU, then a massive all in one control chip that contains the ArtX designed GPU and other components.
The XBox on the other hand was very much like a computer.
Thanks to you we can be assured that game developers will continue to develop for only a single platform. Thats the problem, most game developers only develop for one platform. Halo so far has 3 development houses behind it. Bungie for the XBox, Gearbox for Windows, and MacSoft for Mac.
Blizzard and id on the otherhand use *gasp* industry standard programming methods and thus have a much easier time getting the game out for both platforms. id even does 3 PC platforms, and console platforms. Epic is also now doing this, ensuring their engine is as cross platform as possible to help more games run on everything. These companies to me are much more deserving of my money. I appreciate the porting houses, but would rather see them break up, and get their programmers hired on at the big publishers to ensure more games come in one box, not two for a computer.
Yes, I'd rather support the guys going after industray standards. If they don't, well, sorry, I'm not paying $100 to play most games.
I have to admit I will never buy Halo on the Mac. Why? Well, I own it on the PC already. My Wintendo will always be my main computer box, since it does games better then my Powerbook. But, I personally enjoy a game of Warcraft 3 every once in a while on the road, so I pop in the same copy of the game I only had to buy once to play it on either my Powerbook or Wintendo desktop.
Use this same argument for Linux too. Many gamers see no reason to buy a Linux only version of a game over a Windows version. But a ton enjoy the fact that the Windows Quake disk also allows Linux play.
Macsoft also has the problem of not ensuring they keep up with patches. By what I understand, no Mac user could play online with a PC user for a while after release. Thats a bad thing for sure.
It amazes me that animation is repeating the same mistakes computer games did. I remember when the big buzz word in games was 3D, and somehow this magicially made a better game. With the advancement of 3D, we saw the loss of such awesome games like old Lucasarts adventure games. They switched to 3D, and have never felt the same since. And the move to 3D killed Warcraft Adventures, since they saw a preview of Grim Fandango and decided a 2D animated adventure game wouldn't make it.
And even outside the adventure genre, the bad effects of 3D can be seen. Who here actually liked Mario 64 over say Super Mario World? Sonic Adventure is another good example. It went from avazing speed along a 2D course, to a game that had very little speed areas. Why? Well, 3D speed areas take a lot longer to make, and for little return since the character will be zooming through there at insane speeds.
3D has done wonders for computer games as well, but some of the most interesting games today are still very 2D, or trying to immitate it anyhow. Notice the big trend to do cell shading for example. Also look at Viewtiful Joe, one of the most creative games out recently, and it's a 2D game (well, 3D and shaded, but 2D playing field).
Hand drawn 2D animation still has a huge place out there. I remember the animated films for their content and look, and unfortunatly you loose a bit of that personal touch you feel from 2D films. And not only does this impact movies, but also their TV shows it seems. Gargoyles was an awesome show, and was a shame to see it stopped.
So take the damn shoes off and run them through the metal detector then. Damn, I have metal in my shoes, and as long as I do that when I'm flying, it doesn't slow me down in the slightest
Agreed. I wear shoes with metal, and typicially a belt. Security has never stared at me oddly for taking my shoes and belt off before getting to the detector. Saves me the trouble of being pulled away and having to be searched.
My 15 inch Aluminum Powerbook says Radeon 9700 when it is a Mobility 9600. Your just seeing the generic driver load. The 9700 driver supports all 9500 and above cards, and the 8500 driver supports 8500-9200. Because all the 8500-9200 cards are R200 derived chips, while the 9500 and above are R300 derived chips.
I think the LAN ability of Mario Kart as an experiemental step for them.
A bad one at that. After actually getting through the effort of coordinating a time to play, bringing my equipment to a friends house, having to move around a TV, I was rather disappointed with the experience. There was no option to play the normal races with computer players, no ability to select a course, and no ability to select your racers and kart.
LAN parties for computer games are easy. LAN parties for Gamecube games are a bit harder to deal with since TVs are logisticially more to deal with then a computer monitor. And, well, after the poor experience playing the game, I doubt I will spend the money on any type of portable monitor for the Gamecube to make it easier to play.
Do I want Nintendo to do what Sega did? Not really, since I like their hardware quite a bit for other reasons (a controller with unique buttons, what an amazing idea). But if they don't expand their feature set at least a tiny bit, they may head down that route. And after seeing the poor quality control by Microsoft on XBox games (*cough* one player save game period for Panzer Dragoon Orta, how the hell did that pass quality control at MS before being published?), I hate to see the market reduced to two players.
Lack of online support. This is my only point against the Gamecube. I'd love to play some internet games of Mario Kart, or Mario Party and such, but even with my broadband adaptor, I can't. Several unique Nintendo only games would be awesome online.
And yes, I know about Warp Pipe. It sucks right now, unless you have a killer internet connection to the other system.
Beyond that, the Cube has the most innovative controller I have ever seen *gasp* different sized buttons instead of identical ones. It has the best wireless controller, since it's first party. It has the most unique games out of all the consoles. It's cheep, since it didn't try to include things like DVD playback (worthless to most tech savy people who already owned a DVD player).
And as many others have pointed out, the Gamecube is doing rather well, and I am sure will solidify the number two spot after the holiday numbers come in.
I guess noone writes XBox doom articles, since MS could afford to mail free XBoxes like AOL CDs if they really wanted to.
Go check Software Update. There is a Battery Update for laptops that supposedly increases their effective performance. You might find you'll get similar performance to the old Ti models.
I have it applied, and it helped a smidge. Aparently the power manager wasn't fully charging the batteries in all cases. Mine wasn't off too much, so now I get about 15 more minutes of battery life. Still absolutly horrible battery life compaired to even other Apple laptops.
And for the record, the 15 inch 1gHz Titanium Powerbook shipped with a 61-watt-hour battery.
So yes, I stick by what I said. The 15 inch Powerbook ships with the lowest capacity battery out of all Apple's currently shipping laptop, and it saw a decrease of 15 watt hours, aka 25%.
The new iPod is the exact opposite thing you want in engineering. A device that lasts less time on battery power. But this seems to be the general trend at Apple lately. With heavy use, I doubt the 3G iPods will have more then 4 hours battery life in two years. For an MP3 device, this is horrible.
The Rio Karma team had a goal of getting the same battery life that the first Rio MP3 player had. And they did it, the Karma lasts around 16 hours on a charge.
Back to Apple. I spent a decent amount of money on the new Powerbook 15 inch, only to discover it's horrible battery life. Checking the specifications, it ships with the lowest capacity battery out of their entire lineup, including the 12 inch Powerbook and iBook. See a problem with this? A bigger screen, faster processor, possibility for a second DIMM, and less battery power? With the move from the old Ti Powerbooks to the new, the battery lost 21 watt hours of power. But yet the laptop is slightly bigger and heavier.
Hopefully a class action lawsuit about the iPod battery issue will kick them into gear about improving batteries in all their products.
Unfortunatly a ton of programs do not adhere to the exact standards they should, and there really isn't a way around it. XP easially lets you grant someone full control, or none, but this dosen't mean every program is going to listen and act the same. The sad realty is to get anything done on a Windows box, you have to sit logged in as an admin. It's ironic that a Microsoft published game is one of the ones giving you pains...
Though, to address your current problem, you could create a new user, use the policy manager to only allow one of the troublesome games to be run, and grant them admin rights. Then use the "Run As" feature of XP to run that program as this new user, from the kids login. Just keep an eye on where the game is saving files, as it could be doing so in the new users home folder somewhere.
I do challenge the silent claim, and I own a Shuttle myself. It is quiet, but nowhere near silent. My G4 Cube with a liquid ball bearing hard drive, now thats silent. Of course my Shuttle does have a Radeon 9700 Pro making a decent amount of noise.
I got to LAN parties, work in IT, and I don't see anyone looking for smaller form fctors for gaming.
It is possible you are just overlooking the systems at LAN parties. Last one I went to, people only really noticed when my friend and I stacked our Shuttles on top of each other. Then they were almost as tall as a mid sized case.
But otherwise, with all the heat and the size of video cards, I don't see small form factor being the rage in gaming. In fact I see the opposite. People wanting lots of room in their case.
Odd. My Shuttle SB51 kicked the crap out of any other system at a LAN party in August 2002. Why? Well, I bought one of the first Radeon 9700 Pro boards to pair with my P4 2.26gHz processor. I decided it would be fine after seeing a Shuttle system running a 9700 Pro in 3dMark loops for 12 hours without a single problem. Thanks to the people at ATI and Shuttle sponsering Quakecon, I got a portable, and fast gaming machine assembled.
Expandability wise, I have everything I need in mine. Great video, decent storage between the 120GB and 160GB drives I have in there, DVD/CD buurning from one optical drive, built in ethernet and sound, and a PCI slot still open just in case. Two optical drives are pointless to me, since in the rare occasion I duplicate a cd, 52X reading is plenty fast for me. And now, there are SFF boxes that can hold two optical drives.
So, the question remains, why own an oversized PC?
Out of the box, you get nothing but deathmatch type games for multiplayer. To me, the game seemed rushed to meet the XBox Live launch date, and this content being pushed afterwords tends to support this suggestion. And now, aparently MS is trying to treat it like everyone underpaid for the game, by pushing out this "premium" update.
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Intel put tighter patents on the PII socket so AMD built the Athlon on DEC's Alpha socket electrical design.
To add to this, specificially it was the Alpha EV6 bus that the Athlon adopted (K7). Most of the decision cane from the fact that the Compaq DEC merger had just occured, and many Alpha engineers left to join AMD. The funny part about "Slot A" is that physicially it was Slot 1, just flipped to orientate the other way. AMD did this to get into the market easier. Motherboard manufacturers could use nearly all the same parts to make an Athlon or Pentium II motherboard. OEMs could also then use the same CPU coolers on both the Athlon and PII slot chips.
AMD gained enough acceptance that when the slot went away, they sat in a decent position to be able to make their own socket, instead of attempting to nearly copy Intel again.
And now with the X86-64, it seems the tables have turned.
For the majority of users, there is no need to use further bandwith on optical drives. Even my 52x32x52 CDRW only runs at ATA-33. Why spend money to develop an ATA-150 model if it doesn't even use that much bandwith to begin with?
For the same reason we now use USB mice, keyboards and printers. SATA is the evolution of the internal storage interface, so we should migrate everything, not just the devices that can take full advantage of it. A USB mouse never even gets close to taking full advantage of the USB 1.1 bandwidth. But having all the devices on a new bus means you can simply the connectors the computer has. I could care less if my next PC has a PS/2 or parallel port since it has been years since I have used either port. And I'm glad my Mac lacks legacy ports. They have no use beyond complicating the mainboard.
I'm hoping for a dual layer DVD burner on SATA for my next PC system this summer.
Apple created a piece of software that doesn't allow people to play the music their paid for on the devices of their choice.
It's also clearly stated what these limitations are ahead of time. Last I knew, you could burn any song you bought from Apple onto a music CD, and play that. Or rerip that back to an MP3 to put on device X.
Oh, wait, the quality goes down, right? Well, explain what device it is that has AAC audio playback capabilities? There are very few beyond the iPod, so having the raw AAC does most people very little good, since it would still have to be transcoded into another format.
I don't like the idea of DRM and the DMCA much, but the print on the front door was pretty clear. Don't like it? Don't shop there and instead go buy a CD.
Twisted uninformed logic that could only come from a partisan. Lets have OS X (or any other OS) occupy 98% market share and we'll see how much attention it gets from virus authors.
Lots of attention, yes. Lots of successful attacks, not likely.
Mail.app in OS X doesn't run attachments automaticially like Outlook Express does. Safari doesn't bombard users with install prompts for some virus hiding as an ActiveX plugin. And if something does get in and try to modify system files, I get a password prompt, instead of the virus trampeling all over kernel space on it's own. Why? Well, OS X does the proper thing and doesn't trust me to be logged in with full control. Where as on Windows, any user who bought a system from Best Buy is logged in as an administrator.
The best though is Windows Server 2003. It opens up enough of the components during setup that it can be infected by some RPC vunerability even before you can finish the install. This in a server OS MS touted as their first major attempt at security. I can't wait to see Windows XP SP2 do noting to stop all the crap flying around.
Also, see argument above about Code Red/Nimda, the most disruptive virus I have seen in a while. Coded for a product that holds 25% of the market, while the leader sits at 65%.
MS keeps choosing to make their own mistakes and repeat the history of Unix, where as Apple decided to help make the existing technology better. Konquer is now a better browser because of Safari, Apache has support for zero-conf now, and other improvemenet.
The company was bought by Rio, and their engineers are responsible for the Rio Receiver, Rio Central, Rio Karma, Rio Nitrus, and a few of the latest flash players.
Rio made a few thousand Rio Car units after they bought empeg, but they pulled out of the car market quickly.
If the patent is very broad, the empeg could fall under it. But, if it is so descriptive to literially mean exactly like the iPod interface, then noone really will get hit with this. Too hard to say, patent speak is too loose fitting in most cases.
http://riocar.org/upload/empeg1_low.mpg is a low quality MPEG of the first unit (Mark 1) in action with older beta software. The person here uses the remote for the demo, but the buttons on the front panel could have been used as well. The Mark 2 units added a knob that could also be used in navigation, bringing the interface oddly close to the first iPods, with a turnable control, button for it, then 4 other buttons.
The empeg has similar navigation, though it doesn't fill the entire screen. The empeg was in production in 1999, long before the iPod.
And it took things one step further. Hierarchal playlists to go along with the hierarchal navigation of other menus.
Looking at this patent though, the empeg wouldn't be prior art because they specificially state one of the menu displas artists, playlists, etc. The empeg has no such concept, and instead simply lets you use the hierarchal playlists to set your music lists up however you want. I personally have mine genre first. then artist, then CD. I also have a few links to the same music in a few places to make it easier to find things when not using search.
Do you think the Dish CEO is Mahatma Fucking Ghandi? of course not.
No, but he is actually willing to talk to the customers of his company. About once a month, there is an hour long show on channel 101 where he talks about the state of things, will explain any rate increases, and will also take caller questions. I do choose to vote with my wallet, and Dish will always have my entertainment money.
I was a bit upset when I tried to sign up for Dish again after being in a situation where I shared it with a roomate. I shot an e-mail off to the CEO, and VP accounts. I, in 1 hour, had an e-mail response from the VP, and soon there after a phone call too. In the end, I not only got to sign back up, but also provided valuable feedback right to the VP about a program they rolled out to resubscribers.
From his article "To make the changes, Rubin urged developers to reverse their thinking. He feels that talent needs to force the change. Developers should look at publishers as people they hire to sell the game they made. The talent should view the publisher as a tool for marketing, public relations, and sales. They are the ones making the games and they are the ones that should be wielding more power."
I remember a publishing company called Gathering of Developers that started up using these ideals. Ideals like the developers deserve credit for their work, and other similar concepts. Great idea, but they were never taken seriously. And after seeing somewhat of how they ran and showed themselves, it's not a wonder. If someone attempts to do this again, they need to be a tad more mature, at least until they have a few top selling titles under their belt.
I do wish developers got the recognition they deserve. But by no means do they deserve the world, and some of them I think expect this.
No one's turned the GameCube into a Mac.
Nope. Because the GameCube has very little in common with a PC. It has a G3 CPU, then a massive all in one control chip that contains the ArtX designed GPU and other components.
The XBox on the other hand was very much like a computer.
Thanks to you we can be assured that game developers will continue to develop for only a single platform.
Thats the problem, most game developers only develop for one platform. Halo so far has 3 development houses behind it. Bungie for the XBox, Gearbox for Windows, and MacSoft for Mac.
Blizzard and id on the otherhand use *gasp* industry standard programming methods and thus have a much easier time getting the game out for both platforms. id even does 3 PC platforms, and console platforms. Epic is also now doing this, ensuring their engine is as cross platform as possible to help more games run on everything. These companies to me are much more deserving of my money. I appreciate the porting houses, but would rather see them break up, and get their programmers hired on at the big publishers to ensure more games come in one box, not two for a computer.
Yes, I'd rather support the guys going after industray standards. If they don't, well, sorry, I'm not paying $100 to play most games.
I have to admit I will never buy Halo on the Mac. Why? Well, I own it on the PC already. My Wintendo will always be my main computer box, since it does games better then my Powerbook. But, I personally enjoy a game of Warcraft 3 every once in a while on the road, so I pop in the same copy of the game I only had to buy once to play it on either my Powerbook or Wintendo desktop.
Use this same argument for Linux too. Many gamers see no reason to buy a Linux only version of a game over a Windows version. But a ton enjoy the fact that the Windows Quake disk also allows Linux play.
Macsoft also has the problem of not ensuring they keep up with patches. By what I understand, no Mac user could play online with a PC user for a while after release. Thats a bad thing for sure.
You have to take the Aqua pill, but iSync works well with quite a few phones.
One of many reason I am happy that I did make the switch to OS X. The best of the Unix world mixed with some awesome productivity apps from Apple.
Of course, the solution may be pricy if tempted by their high end equipment. But *pats his Powerbook*, it's oh so worth it.
It amazes me that animation is repeating the same mistakes computer games did. I remember when the big buzz word in games was 3D, and somehow this magicially made a better game. With the advancement of 3D, we saw the loss of such awesome games like old Lucasarts adventure games. They switched to 3D, and have never felt the same since. And the move to 3D killed Warcraft Adventures, since they saw a preview of Grim Fandango and decided a 2D animated adventure game wouldn't make it.
And even outside the adventure genre, the bad effects of 3D can be seen. Who here actually liked Mario 64 over say Super Mario World? Sonic Adventure is another good example. It went from avazing speed along a 2D course, to a game that had very little speed areas. Why? Well, 3D speed areas take a lot longer to make, and for little return since the character will be zooming through there at insane speeds.
3D has done wonders for computer games as well, but some of the most interesting games today are still very 2D, or trying to immitate it anyhow. Notice the big trend to do cell shading for example. Also look at Viewtiful Joe, one of the most creative games out recently, and it's a 2D game (well, 3D and shaded, but 2D playing field).
Hand drawn 2D animation still has a huge place out there. I remember the animated films for their content and look, and unfortunatly you loose a bit of that personal touch you feel from 2D films. And not only does this impact movies, but also their TV shows it seems. Gargoyles was an awesome show, and was a shame to see it stopped.
So take the damn shoes off and run them through the metal detector then. Damn, I have metal in my shoes, and as long as I do that when I'm flying, it doesn't slow me down in the slightest
Agreed. I wear shoes with metal, and typicially a belt. Security has never stared at me oddly for taking my shoes and belt off before getting to the detector. Saves me the trouble of being pulled away and having to be searched.
My 15 inch Aluminum Powerbook says Radeon 9700 when it is a Mobility 9600. Your just seeing the generic driver load. The 9700 driver supports all 9500 and above cards, and the 8500 driver supports 8500-9200. Because all the 8500-9200 cards are R200 derived chips, while the 9500 and above are R300 derived chips.
I think the LAN ability of Mario Kart as an experiemental step for them.
A bad one at that. After actually getting through the effort of coordinating a time to play, bringing my equipment to a friends house, having to move around a TV, I was rather disappointed with the experience. There was no option to play the normal races with computer players, no ability to select a course, and no ability to select your racers and kart.
LAN parties for computer games are easy. LAN parties for Gamecube games are a bit harder to deal with since TVs are logisticially more to deal with then a computer monitor. And, well, after the poor experience playing the game, I doubt I will spend the money on any type of portable monitor for the Gamecube to make it easier to play.
Do I want Nintendo to do what Sega did? Not really, since I like their hardware quite a bit for other reasons (a controller with unique buttons, what an amazing idea). But if they don't expand their feature set at least a tiny bit, they may head down that route. And after seeing the poor quality control by Microsoft on XBox games (*cough* one player save game period for Panzer Dragoon Orta, how the hell did that pass quality control at MS before being published?), I hate to see the market reduced to two players.
Lack of online support. This is my only point against the Gamecube. I'd love to play some internet games of Mario Kart, or Mario Party and such, but even with my broadband adaptor, I can't. Several unique Nintendo only games would be awesome online.
And yes, I know about Warp Pipe. It sucks right now, unless you have a killer internet connection to the other system.
Beyond that, the Cube has the most innovative controller I have ever seen *gasp* different sized buttons instead of identical ones. It has the best wireless controller, since it's first party. It has the most unique games out of all the consoles. It's cheep, since it didn't try to include things like DVD playback (worthless to most tech savy people who already owned a DVD player).
And as many others have pointed out, the Gamecube is doing rather well, and I am sure will solidify the number two spot after the holiday numbers come in.
I guess noone writes XBox doom articles, since MS could afford to mail free XBoxes like AOL CDs if they really wanted to.
Planetside players have been running around with santa hats in the days leading up to Christmas.
Go check Software Update. There is a Battery Update for laptops that supposedly increases their effective performance. You might find you'll get similar performance to the old Ti models.
I have it applied, and it helped a smidge. Aparently the power manager wasn't fully charging the batteries in all cases. Mine wasn't off too much, so now I get about 15 more minutes of battery life. Still absolutly horrible battery life compaired to even other Apple laptops.
The "problem" is that it ships with the same battery, but uses more power because of the faster proc, large screen, etc.
... (12-inch Powerbook models) - M9324G/A ... (15-inch Powerbook models) - M9325G/A ... (17-inch Powerbook model) - M9326G/A ... (iBook G4 with 12.1-inch display) - M9337G/A ... (iBook G4 with 14.1-inch display) - M9338G/A
Umm, no. From the Apple Tech Specs:
# 47-watt-hour lithium-ion battery
# 46-watt-hour lithium-ion battery
# 58-watt-hour lithium-ion battery
# 50-watt-hour lithium-ion battery
# 61-watt-hour lithium-ion battery
And for the record, the 15 inch 1gHz Titanium Powerbook shipped with a 61-watt-hour battery.
So yes, I stick by what I said. The 15 inch Powerbook ships with the lowest capacity battery out of all Apple's currently shipping laptop, and it saw a decrease of 15 watt hours, aka 25%.
The new iPod is the exact opposite thing you want in engineering. A device that lasts less time on battery power. But this seems to be the general trend at Apple lately. With heavy use, I doubt the 3G iPods will have more then 4 hours battery life in two years. For an MP3 device, this is horrible.
The Rio Karma team had a goal of getting the same battery life that the first Rio MP3 player had. And they did it, the Karma lasts around 16 hours on a charge.
Back to Apple. I spent a decent amount of money on the new Powerbook 15 inch, only to discover it's horrible battery life. Checking the specifications, it ships with the lowest capacity battery out of their entire lineup, including the 12 inch Powerbook and iBook. See a problem with this? A bigger screen, faster processor, possibility for a second DIMM, and less battery power? With the move from the old Ti Powerbooks to the new, the battery lost 21 watt hours of power. But yet the laptop is slightly bigger and heavier.
Hopefully a class action lawsuit about the iPod battery issue will kick them into gear about improving batteries in all their products.
Unfortunatly a ton of programs do not adhere to the exact standards they should, and there really isn't a way around it. XP easially lets you grant someone full control, or none, but this dosen't mean every program is going to listen and act the same. The sad realty is to get anything done on a Windows box, you have to sit logged in as an admin. It's ironic that a Microsoft published game is one of the ones giving you pains...
Though, to address your current problem, you could create a new user, use the policy manager to only allow one of the troublesome games to be run, and grant them admin rights. Then use the "Run As" feature of XP to run that program as this new user, from the kids login. Just keep an eye on where the game is saving files, as it could be doing so in the new users home folder somewhere.
The SFFTech.com ST61G4 Review has noise levels from a few different SFF boxes, loaded with the same components.
I do challenge the silent claim, and I own a Shuttle myself. It is quiet, but nowhere near silent. My G4 Cube with a liquid ball bearing hard drive, now thats silent. Of course my Shuttle does have a Radeon 9700 Pro making a decent amount of noise.
I got to LAN parties, work in IT, and I don't see anyone looking for smaller form fctors for gaming.
It is possible you are just overlooking the systems at LAN parties. Last one I went to, people only really noticed when my friend and I stacked our Shuttles on top of each other. Then they were almost as tall as a mid sized case.
But otherwise, with all the heat and the size of video cards, I don't see small form factor being the rage in gaming. In fact I see the opposite. People wanting lots of room in their case.
Odd. My Shuttle SB51 kicked the crap out of any other system at a LAN party in August 2002. Why? Well, I bought one of the first Radeon 9700 Pro boards to pair with my P4 2.26gHz processor. I decided it would be fine after seeing a Shuttle system running a 9700 Pro in 3dMark loops for 12 hours without a single problem. Thanks to the people at ATI and Shuttle sponsering Quakecon, I got a portable, and fast gaming machine assembled.
Expandability wise, I have everything I need in mine. Great video, decent storage between the 120GB and 160GB drives I have in there, DVD/CD buurning from one optical drive, built in ethernet and sound, and a PCI slot still open just in case. Two optical drives are pointless to me, since in the rare occasion I duplicate a cd, 52X reading is plenty fast for me. And now, there are SFF boxes that can hold two optical drives.
So, the question remains, why own an oversized PC?
Out of the box, you get nothing but deathmatch type games for multiplayer. To me, the game seemed rushed to meet the XBox Live launch date, and this content being pushed afterwords tends to support this suggestion. And now, aparently MS is trying to treat it like everyone underpaid for the game, by pushing out this "premium" update.