Today I finished my last day ever at university. All I have left to do is write exams. (and an EVIL kernel hacking term project)
To the chase:
Five beers in, sitting in the middle of the grass with the sun shining, surrounded by people having nothing but a great time it occured to me why I was here.
Not for the educational experience, but for the life experience.
You only get one shot at it, dont let it slip pass and wonder what you may have missed 20 years later as you sit in your cubicle.
I bought a Viewsonic PT813 from onsale.com for $650USD. True its refurbished but other then the box it arrived more or less like new. (even has a 1 year warranty)
Once you run X at 1600x1200 @ 85Hz you aint goin back to anything less.:)
You just need to look in the right places for cheap stuff.
The "Emotion Engine" and other stories...
on
Playstation 2 Specs
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· Score: 1
A dongle is just a piece of hardware that sits on a serial/adb port to which the program can communicate. Normally they have a sn built into the hardware. The program can query the dongle at any moment in a variety of fashions for authenticity information.
A while is about 1.5 years to write a dongle emulator (the only feasable way to crack a hardware dongle if the program queries it alot and EIAS does alot of queries). Hardware dongles make very very very good copy protection as it takes an extremly high level of sophistication and time to crack one. Im surprised more vendors of high end ($500+) software dont use them as they only add perhaps $20 to the pricetag. (not sure about the actual number but it is small compared to the total price)
Hardware acceleration is still dependant on the cpu to feed it the data to display.
Indeed for many accelerator cards the CPU not the card is the bottleneck as even the the fastest CPUs cant really supply enough data to max out a top end accelerator.
Thus adding a second CPU to the mix can offer a massive speedup. I cant wait to get home and try this on the dual PII 400.:)
It amazes me how so many people can comment on Be who have not run it.
My initial introduction to Be was at a macworld a few years back. Being the weenie I am, I like to break demo systems by pushing them a bit.
So I walk up to the BeBox (dual 603e at the time) and go, "well this looks nice, but does it really suck less?", and start up a few demo apps.
I eventually find a movie and start it up. Plays nice at full screen, but im wondering if this new OS can deal with memory management and scheduling.
So I start up 10 more windowed ones. To my amazement they all run simultaneously with NO slowdown.
At this point the demo guy walks over and scoffs "Thats ALL you can do?" and proceeds to start up about 40 more.
Observe my evil grin as they not only run but run fast! I swear if I had the money to fork out for one of those boxes I would have singned up on the spot.
Try that in windows, or Linux (heh xanim), or anything other then a highend SGI and tell me what happens. (As if you dont already know)
Yes. That is 100% correct. It will be fixed within the year with the realease of OS X.
HOWEVER:
Depite that fact, in general Macs are just as stable as wintel boxen. (They also require a heck of a lot less reboots for every fscking trivial thing)
Lack of memory protection is a problem for the developer, not the end user. It also tends to result in programs that dont cause alot of segmentation violations as such violations tend to take out the whole machine; thus increasing reliabilty. (at pains to the developer:))
Bottom line: It will all be fixed within a matter of months and we wont be having this discussion anymore.
According to the press release the compatibility list should be at:
http://www.virtualgamestation.com
though that site doesent seem to be up yet. However based on the fact that Connectix rules, (one of the few software companies I have real faith in:)) I would wager almost complete support. At the very least significantly more games then the 50% or so that psemu supports. From the link off the press release you can see that both Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy Tactics both work which already puts it ahead of psemu.
That and though I have not yet seen the full specs the only required hardware is a G3 mac with 32MB of RAM, which would seem to include the powerbook series, whereas psemu requires as much hardware as you can throw at it including a voodoo board.
Slashdot Mirror
Some quotes from the article:
>The fact that Microsoft sponsored such a test
>doesn't invalidate it.
Not physically or temorally, but logically
hell yes. It tosses the whole concept of
unbiased testing out the window.
> I mean, the test did
> happen, right? Those hardware setups are pretty
> standard, aren't they?
Yes. Everyone and thier uncle is using quad
xeon webservers with RAID setups. I personally
own three of them.
Well.
Today I finished my last day ever at university.
All I have left to do is write exams. (and an
EVIL kernel hacking term project)
To the chase:
Five beers in, sitting in the middle of the grass
with the sun shining, surrounded by people having
nothing but a great time it occured to me why
I was here.
Not for the educational experience, but for
the life experience.
You only get one shot at it, dont let it slip
pass and wonder what you may have missed 20
years later as you sit in your cubicle.
I bought a Viewsonic PT813 from onsale.com
:)
for $650USD. True its refurbished but other then
the box it arrived more or less like new.
(even has a 1 year warranty)
Once you run X at 1600x1200 @ 85Hz you aint
goin back to anything less.
You just need to look in the right places for
cheap stuff.
BIG HINT TO SONY:
Instead of suing connectix, hire them!
A dongle is just a piece of hardware that sits
on a serial/adb port to which the program
can communicate. Normally they have a sn built
into the hardware. The program can query the
dongle at any moment in a variety of fashions
for authenticity information.
A while is about 1.5 years to write a dongle
emulator (the only feasable way to crack a hardware dongle if the program queries it alot
and EIAS does alot of queries). Hardware dongles make very very very good copy protection as it takes an extremly high level of sophistication and time to crack one. Im surprised more vendors of
high end ($500+) software dont use them as
they only add perhaps $20 to the pricetag. (not
sure about the actual number but it is small
compared to the total price)
Hardware acceleration is still dependant
:)
on the cpu to feed it the data to display.
Indeed for many accelerator cards the CPU
not the card is the bottleneck as even
the the fastest CPUs cant really supply
enough data to max out a top end accelerator.
Thus adding a second CPU to the mix can
offer a massive speedup. I cant wait
to get home and try this on the dual PII 400.
This is the funniest thing I have read all day.
:)
I love sarcasm.
Chris
It amazes me how so many people can comment
on Be who have not run it.
My initial introduction to Be was at a macworld
a few years back. Being the weenie I am, I like
to break demo systems by pushing them a bit.
So I walk up to the BeBox (dual 603e at the time)
and go, "well this looks nice, but does it really suck less?", and start up a few demo apps.
I eventually find a movie and start it up.
Plays nice at full screen, but im wondering if
this new OS can deal with memory management and
scheduling.
So I start up 10 more windowed ones.
To my amazement they all run simultaneously
with NO slowdown.
At this point the demo guy walks over and scoffs
"Thats ALL you can do?" and proceeds to start
up about 40 more.
Observe my evil grin as they not only run
but run fast! I swear if I had the money to
fork out for one of those boxes I would have
singned up on the spot.
Try that in windows, or Linux (heh xanim),
or anything other then a highend SGI and tell
me what happens. (As if you dont already know)
Moral? Dont knock it till youve tried it.
Chris
Yes. That is 100% correct. It will be fixed within
:))
the year with the realease of OS X.
HOWEVER:
Depite that fact, in general Macs are just as
stable as wintel boxen. (They also require a heck
of a lot less reboots for every fscking trivial thing)
Lack of memory protection is a problem for the
developer, not the end user. It also tends
to result in programs that dont cause alot of
segmentation violations as such violations tend
to take out the whole machine; thus increasing
reliabilty. (at pains to the developer
Bottom line: It will all be fixed within a matter
of months and we wont be having this discussion
anymore.
Chris
>Clue Factory: What the hell games are out for the >Mac to begin with? Oregon Trail Gold Edition? Sim >Hooker? Invasion of the Mutant Happy People?
The fact that you cannot name a single Mac game
implies you lack the clue you would have others
seek.
To answer your question (short list the top few):
Myth 2, Starcraft, Quake[1-2], Unreal, etc...
And what is this upgrade you speak of? Its a piece of software little man. Not some plugin board.
That and the price is $49.99USD, and it will likely be shipped for free with new iMac systems.
Chris
The press release is at:
:)) I would wager almost complete support. At the very least significantly more
:)
http://www.connectix.com/cvgs/index.html
According to the press release the compatibility list should be at:
http://www.virtualgamestation.com
though that site doesent seem to be up yet.
However based on the fact that Connectix rules,
(one of the few software companies I have real faith in
games then the 50% or so that psemu supports.
From the link off the press release you can
see that both Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy
Tactics both work which already puts it ahead
of psemu.
That and though I have not yet seen the full specs the only required hardware is a G3 mac with 32MB of RAM, which would seem to include the powerbook series, whereas psemu requires as much hardware as you can throw at it including a voodoo board.
Tekken on the bus anyone?
Chris