No, I'm not claiming that I'm perfect, I never even claimed I could do what your saying.
What the article is about is various forms of lag inherent to certain types of monitors. Someone claimed that any lag at around 10 ms or less will have no effect on gameplay. That is false. When playing a game like Rock Band the timing window in which a note is open to be hit is probably around 40 ms, maybe a little less, maybe a little more. If your Video Lag as calibrated by Rock Band to offset the inherent lag of the TV is off my 2 ms, then you effectively handicap yourself out of 2 ms. Now 2 ms is not much in the grand scheme of things, but relative to the 40 ms window that I can hit the note in the first place, it is a loss of 5% of the perceived available time to hit the note.
BECAUSE I'M NOT PERFECT AND ALL MY STRIKES VARY IN ACCURACY, that 5% loss could mean the difference between an 100% full combo or a -1 note 99%. The difference will become especially striking when I'm playing a 2k+ note song or if I'm playing a song that is extremely fast paced like the one I used in the example.
The reality is not that I'm actually consciously noticing the video lag, but that through the interaction with the game I can tell if there is a lag of >10 ms. I threw out the 2 ms example because I recently changed the video lag and it made a big difference on a song that I have been struggling with.
And I'm not claiming I'm the only one who will notice an improvement from this. I have a friend who used to play only on hard and had a notable improvement in how well he played after I helped calibrate his TV for him. It took a couple tries to get the right delay, but once it was configured he began to ace songs relative to how he was playing them before, and his video lag was only changed from 0 to 6 ms IIRC.
I don't know about that, when playing Rock Band adjusting the Video or Audio lag as little as 2 ms can have a dramatic effect on my scores or note streaks, or on the harder songs whether I pass in the first place.
For example, on this song on expert, adjusting from a 6 ms video lag to a 4 ms video lag ment the difference between passing only by cheesing my way through the song and passing badly with strained arms (i'm not a real life drummer, and the song is faster paced that it seems on video so it dominates me endurance-wise).
Games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero are a little different in that you are reacting to things that you know are coming and can anticipate, but that doesn't change the fact that I can "feel" the difference between a perfectly tuned HD lag and one only 2 ms off, as well as differentiate whether the delay is to short or to long respectively.
1) MS does not get nearly as much revenue from a copy of Windows as it does from a copy of Office. (This is per copy revenue, not total, and besides, even if it is smaller, it doesn't mean it is insignificant.)
2) People are turning away from Windows because they do not like to pay for Windows, at least on the business desktop or in the server room. (Come on. Price is not the only reason for choosing an OS. Not even cost is.)
3) Ergo, Windows will need to be free(gratis) in order to keep market share. (What? Why? There are other ways to get/keep market share than competing on price. Windows is a nice case study.)
4) Windows needs market share so that MS can sell apps. (Why? They can't make apps for other operating systems?)
5) The author can't see why MS will make Windows free(gratis) without also making it free(libre). (What? Where on earth did that come from?)
Conlusion: Windows is going to go open source!
The premises are shaky, the logic is faulty, assumptions abound, and even if it were all true, MS is not necessarily going to be logical!
On point #4, the Macintosh Business Unit has been rumored for years to have the highest profit margins of all units in Microsoft's domain. Though I question the veracity of that claim, they still have an estimated $350 million dollar yearly revenue according to wikipedia. If Linux continues its slow rise to fame expect a LinBU to complement the MacBU.
Somebody clever will start offering a mail-in service for people to get eyeglass-quality anti-glare coatings applied to their Macbooks. It's not going to be cheap as a retrofit, though.
That doesn't mean that the technology doesn't exist to make the compilers better, but if it does, nobody's bothering because it isn't making a difference (on most x86, at least).
The LLVM + Clang project would probably disagree with you.
The real reason Vista really failed is the same people who are hyping up 7, the media.
Vista changed the way drivers needed to be written for security reasons, and because hardware vendors suck at writing drivers for whatever they make, there were all sorts of problems with hardware compatibility, ESPECIALLY with older hardware. Add to that UI changes ranging from minor to extensive in both Vista and Office 07, overzealous UAC, and a million other little things (on top of the million other little things that didn't make it into vista (i thought it was funny that theirs actually a wikipedia page for "Features removed from Windows Vista")), and obviously, almost no ones first impressions were good. Tech writers ravaged it, the mainstream media picked up on their stories and killed most of the little momentum Vista had by simply parroting the tech writers.
However, since then drivers have gotten good, service pack 1 has come out, and Vista has matured. You'd have a hard time finding a second impression review of the OS that did nothing but bash the OS like the first impression ones did. In fact, lots of reviews coming out now are actually praising Vista for becoming better than its predecessor (granted only with modern day hardware).
Windows 7 is Windows Vista++. A refined UI, refined UAC, drivers are mature now, performance is approximately as good or better than vista (which is as good or better than XP on the right hardware), IE8 is shaping up to be an improvement, and the whole package seems to just work better. Most of the tech writers have already been won over by Vista, windows 7 appears to be better than that (and its just a beta!), so obviously they write favorable reviews. The mainstream media is picking up on their stories and hyping up the slowly growing mass of momentum Windows 7 has by simply parroting the tech writers.
TL;DR: vista was killed by bad first impressions that the mass media ran with. windows 7 will succeed because of good first impressions that the mass media is running with.
I hate it when people say that. Apple (in the release of its 2nd gen iphone) released a phone with 3g, a sdk PLUS a centralized location for downloading, rating, and reviewing the apps made for the phone, GPS and location services, "real" internet + basic email services, 8+ gigs of storage, and native applications for: google maps, downloading itunes music, and watching youtube videos. Oh yea, and did I mention its _thinner_ than a Motorola Razr?
Since its release over 10,000 applications have been developed for the phone, and there have been over 300,000,000 million downloads from the app store (developer incentive much?).
The phone integrates with (maybe not the best, but certainly) the most popular music management/downloading software in the world in iTunes, and in doing so has support for calendar, address book, music, movie, photo, audiobook and podcasting syncing.
Being a close cousin of the iPod family, it has access to the largest 3rd party accessory market for any mp3 player and probably any cellular phone too.
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: the iPhone is a platform, not a phone. As everyone in the entire tech world has pointed out multiple times, there are phones with better hardware features. Newsflash: Its the software stupid.
When I got my iPhone 3g the software was still 2.0, and let me tell you, it was far from perfect. Safari crashed all the time, battery life was only average, the keyboard would lag when typing, and you had to reorganize every application when you updated it.
What makes the iPhone different from every other phone I've seen on the market is that IT GETS UPDATED. The 2.1 software came out and mostly fixed the problems I was having. Battery life got better (with the exception of when using GPS, which is inherent to GPS hardware from what I understand), typing lag was reduced, and Safari crashed probably 90% less than it did in 2.0. But then it was updated again in 2.2. Battery life got better again, typing lag is now non-existant, safari crashes about 90% less than it did in 2.1, updating applications now leaves their icons in the same place.
Is it perfect? Hardly. Will it ever be perfect? Probably never. Is it a great phone? Easily the best I've ever seen and used. And it will only get better as new apps come out, old apps mature and add features, and the underlying OS becomes more stable and snappier.
Compare this to say, the Pre, which while it looks like it has potential, is untested other than first impression reviews, has 0 3rd party applications for it, and probably won't be out till the middle of the year (first half of 09 is the only information on its release date).
I wish Apple would take OpenGL by the balls and do to it what they managed to do with OpenCL.
Right now DirectX's advantages (from what I understand) are its integration between all the necessary services needed to actually put together a game (video, sound, user i/o, etc.). If they could code an IDE that took a base of an improved OpenGL (what OpenGL 3.0 was supposed to be essentially) _and_ integrated its services with all the other necessary ingredients required to make a game, throw in some of Apples magical usability sprinkles, and Boom!, they have an oven to churn out delicious multi-platform cake that could turn another tide in the "Year of the Alternative Desktop".
Currently said cake is a lie, but oh god I can practically taste it now.
I've always wondered if there was some way that consumers could "get back" at the telecoms for sucking so hard.
Can someone file a class action lawsuit or something along those lines for the telecoms failing to serve the taxpayer/consumer despite being given so much aid from the government? Maybe throw in some analogy of how the banks over-sold the consumers with loans which led to a real estate crash and how the telecoms are over-selling the consumers with bandwidth which could potentially lead to an infrastructure crash. Add in a last quip about how their lazyness is what is causing the whole discussion of all protocols/websites/whatevers being equal in the idea of net neutrality and how if they just did their jobs the way they were supposed to the first time.
Update: This myth was revisited and it turns out that frozen chickens are more damaging (REVISIT)
Cool Myth #1: NASA builds a chicken gun to fire chicken carcasses at their windshields. A European company hears about this and uses a chicken gun to test their railroad cars. When they fire, the chicken flies through the windshield and embeds itself in a seat way back in the car. They write NASA about this, to which NASA replies, "thaw your chickens."
So, in essence, they were testing whether a frozen chicken does more damage than a thawed chicken. But I just think they wanted to build a chicken gun. And a chicken gun they did build.
Jamie ended up using a 250 psi tank with a butterfly valve on the cannon and a big fat lever to pull down in order to launch the chicken. This thing annihilated the chickens, turning them into puree. They also loaded in a pumpkin for good measure and managed to puncture the fuselage of the plane they were using for target practice. Result of myth: when a chicken is flying that fast, it don't matter what temperature it is."
According to the EULA, the retail boxed copies of OS X are meant as upgrades to prior versions of OS X.
What's really funny, is that usually discussions about "buying OS X" are explaining how it's cheaper than Windows because $129 gets you a "full version", rather than an "upgrade".
Actually, most people say that its cheaper than buying windows because $129 gets you the "full version" rather than the "Not-quite-Ultimate-non-business-but-still-better-than-basic 32-bit Vista Upgrade Edition".
Just for fun I checked on Newegg to see if it was still like this, and theres a Basic, Business, Premium, and Ultimate version, in both upgrade an non-upgrade variants, and in both 32-bit and 64-bit variants.
The "full version" of vista, Ultimate, is $169 on Newegg, which, if I need to remind you, is more expensive than the OS X "full version" upgrade.
You forgot to mention all the:
"iPhone Killer!!11"..
"gPhone Killer!@#!"..
"eee PC Killer?!?!@"..
headlines that were all over the place before any of those products were even out (and still arn't out in the case of android).
You figuring that out makes me think of Xfire, which tracks the amount of time played by people who have the Xfire client installed.
Some quick calculations using stats from the xfire site show that on today, a non-holiday sunday, approximately 44 man-years of time have been played only in the game World of Warcraft. Not to mention that leaves out all Mac WoW'ers (we do exist), and ever so rare wine linux WoW'ers. And even on top of that, all the people who did play on windows today but don't have the Xfire client installed.
The 1.0 milestone means almost nothing towards how actually feature-complete it is, but rather how stable it is at running a small number of extremely common Windows apps, like Word and Excel.
Slashdot Mirror
Steve-O and Steve Woz should get in a dance off during the show to see who gets the rights to the name Steve.
No, I'm not claiming that I'm perfect, I never even claimed I could do what your saying.
What the article is about is various forms of lag inherent to certain types of monitors. Someone claimed that any lag at around 10 ms or less will have no effect on gameplay. That is false. When playing a game like Rock Band the timing window in which a note is open to be hit is probably around 40 ms, maybe a little less, maybe a little more. If your Video Lag as calibrated by Rock Band to offset the inherent lag of the TV is off my 2 ms, then you effectively handicap yourself out of 2 ms. Now 2 ms is not much in the grand scheme of things, but relative to the 40 ms window that I can hit the note in the first place, it is a loss of 5% of the perceived available time to hit the note.
BECAUSE I'M NOT PERFECT AND ALL MY STRIKES VARY IN ACCURACY, that 5% loss could mean the difference between an 100% full combo or a -1 note 99%. The difference will become especially striking when I'm playing a 2k+ note song or if I'm playing a song that is extremely fast paced like the one I used in the example.
The reality is not that I'm actually consciously noticing the video lag, but that through the interaction with the game I can tell if there is a lag of >10 ms. I threw out the 2 ms example because I recently changed the video lag and it made a big difference on a song that I have been struggling with.
And I'm not claiming I'm the only one who will notice an improvement from this. I have a friend who used to play only on hard and had a notable improvement in how well he played after I helped calibrate his TV for him. It took a couple tries to get the right delay, but once it was configured he began to ace songs relative to how he was playing them before, and his video lag was only changed from 0 to 6 ms IIRC.
I don't know about that, when playing Rock Band adjusting the Video or Audio lag as little as 2 ms can have a dramatic effect on my scores or note streaks, or on the harder songs whether I pass in the first place.
For example, on this song on expert, adjusting from a 6 ms video lag to a 4 ms video lag ment the difference between passing only by cheesing my way through the song and passing badly with strained arms (i'm not a real life drummer, and the song is faster paced that it seems on video so it dominates me endurance-wise).
Games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero are a little different in that you are reacting to things that you know are coming and can anticipate, but that doesn't change the fact that I can "feel" the difference between a perfectly tuned HD lag and one only 2 ms off, as well as differentiate whether the delay is to short or to long respectively.
English site:
http://www.prad.de/en/index.html
Exactly. I read the article as follows:
1) MS does not get nearly as much revenue from a copy of Windows as it does from a copy of Office. (This is per copy revenue, not total, and besides, even if it is smaller, it doesn't mean it is insignificant.)
2) People are turning away from Windows because they do not like to pay for Windows, at least on the business desktop or in the server room. (Come on. Price is not the only reason for choosing an OS. Not even cost is.)
3) Ergo, Windows will need to be free(gratis) in order to keep market share. (What? Why? There are other ways to get/keep market share than competing on price. Windows is a nice case study.)
4) Windows needs market share so that MS can sell apps. (Why? They can't make apps for other operating systems?)
5) The author can't see why MS will make Windows free(gratis) without also making it free(libre). (What? Where on earth did that come from?)
Conlusion: Windows is going to go open source!
The premises are shaky, the logic is faulty, assumptions abound, and even if it were all true, MS is not necessarily going to be logical!
On point #4, the Macintosh Business Unit has been rumored for years to have the highest profit margins of all units in Microsoft's domain. Though I question the veracity of that claim, they still have an estimated $350 million dollar yearly revenue according to wikipedia. If Linux continues its slow rise to fame expect a LinBU to complement the MacBU.
Somebody clever will start offering a mail-in service for people to get eyeglass-quality anti-glare coatings applied to their Macbooks. It's not going to be cheap as a retrofit, though.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/01/techrestore-offering-matte-conversion-for-15-macbook-pro.ars
(a Q-Bert ripoff with ice cubes and a lunar lander clone that gained you fuel from answering math problems)
Math Blaster?
That doesn't mean that the technology doesn't exist to make the compilers better, but if it does, nobody's bothering because it isn't making a difference (on most x86, at least).
The LLVM + Clang project would probably disagree with you.
BOOM HEADSHOT!!
The real reason Vista really failed is the same people who are hyping up 7, the media.
Vista changed the way drivers needed to be written for security reasons, and because hardware vendors suck at writing drivers for whatever they make, there were all sorts of problems with hardware compatibility, ESPECIALLY with older hardware. Add to that UI changes ranging from minor to extensive in both Vista and Office 07, overzealous UAC, and a million other little things (on top of the million other little things that didn't make it into vista (i thought it was funny that theirs actually a wikipedia page for "Features removed from Windows Vista")), and obviously, almost no ones first impressions were good. Tech writers ravaged it, the mainstream media picked up on their stories and killed most of the little momentum Vista had by simply parroting the tech writers.
However, since then drivers have gotten good, service pack 1 has come out, and Vista has matured. You'd have a hard time finding a second impression review of the OS that did nothing but bash the OS like the first impression ones did. In fact, lots of reviews coming out now are actually praising Vista for becoming better than its predecessor (granted only with modern day hardware).
Windows 7 is Windows Vista++. A refined UI, refined UAC, drivers are mature now, performance is approximately as good or better than vista (which is as good or better than XP on the right hardware), IE8 is shaping up to be an improvement, and the whole package seems to just work better. Most of the tech writers have already been won over by Vista, windows 7 appears to be better than that (and its just a beta!), so obviously they write favorable reviews. The mainstream media is picking up on their stories and hyping up the slowly growing mass of momentum Windows 7 has by simply parroting the tech writers.
TL;DR: vista was killed by bad first impressions that the mass media ran with. windows 7 will succeed because of good first impressions that the mass media is running with.
-The iPhone is all about the hype
I hate it when people say that. Apple (in the release of its 2nd gen iphone) released a phone with 3g, a sdk PLUS a centralized location for downloading, rating, and reviewing the apps made for the phone, GPS and location services, "real" internet + basic email services, 8+ gigs of storage, and native applications for: google maps, downloading itunes music, and watching youtube videos. Oh yea, and did I mention its _thinner_ than a Motorola Razr?
Since its release over 10,000 applications have been developed for the phone, and there have been over 300,000,000 million downloads from the app store (developer incentive much?).
The phone integrates with (maybe not the best, but certainly) the most popular music management/downloading software in the world in iTunes, and in doing so has support for calendar, address book, music, movie, photo, audiobook and podcasting syncing.
Being a close cousin of the iPod family, it has access to the largest 3rd party accessory market for any mp3 player and probably any cellular phone too.
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: the iPhone is a platform, not a phone. As everyone in the entire tech world has pointed out multiple times, there are phones with better hardware features. Newsflash: Its the software stupid.
When I got my iPhone 3g the software was still 2.0, and let me tell you, it was far from perfect. Safari crashed all the time, battery life was only average, the keyboard would lag when typing, and you had to reorganize every application when you updated it.
What makes the iPhone different from every other phone I've seen on the market is that IT GETS UPDATED. The 2.1 software came out and mostly fixed the problems I was having. Battery life got better (with the exception of when using GPS, which is inherent to GPS hardware from what I understand), typing lag was reduced, and Safari crashed probably 90% less than it did in 2.0. But then it was updated again in 2.2. Battery life got better again, typing lag is now non-existant, safari crashes about 90% less than it did in 2.1, updating applications now leaves their icons in the same place.
Is it perfect? Hardly. Will it ever be perfect? Probably never. Is it a great phone? Easily the best I've ever seen and used. And it will only get better as new apps come out, old apps mature and add features, and the underlying OS becomes more stable and snappier.
Compare this to say, the Pre, which while it looks like it has potential, is untested other than first impression reviews, has 0 3rd party applications for it, and probably won't be out till the middle of the year (first half of 09 is the only information on its release date).
Hardly "all hype".
The _highest_ price is $1.29, and they claim "more songs will be $0.69 than will be $1.29".
Either way with DRM free music the consumer benefits.
I wish Apple would take OpenGL by the balls and do to it what they managed to do with OpenCL.
Right now DirectX's advantages (from what I understand) are its integration between all the necessary services needed to actually put together a game (video, sound, user i/o, etc.). If they could code an IDE that took a base of an improved OpenGL (what OpenGL 3.0 was supposed to be essentially) _and_ integrated its services with all the other necessary ingredients required to make a game, throw in some of Apples magical usability sprinkles, and Boom!, they have an oven to churn out delicious multi-platform cake that could turn another tide in the "Year of the Alternative Desktop".
Currently said cake is a lie, but oh god I can practically taste it now.
brb pastries
I've always wondered if there was some way that consumers could "get back" at the telecoms for sucking so hard.
Can someone file a class action lawsuit or something along those lines for the telecoms failing to serve the taxpayer/consumer despite being given so much aid from the government? Maybe throw in some analogy of how the banks over-sold the consumers with loans which led to a real estate crash and how the telecoms are over-selling the consumers with bandwidth which could potentially lead to an infrastructure crash. Add in a last quip about how their lazyness is what is causing the whole discussion of all protocols/websites/whatevers being equal in the idea of net neutrality and how if they just did their jobs the way they were supposed to the first time.
Could solve all our problems in one fell swoop!
"Chicken Gun
Update: This myth was revisited and it turns out that frozen chickens are more damaging (REVISIT)
Cool Myth #1: NASA builds a chicken gun to fire chicken carcasses at their windshields. A European company hears about this and uses a chicken gun to test their railroad cars. When they fire, the chicken flies through the windshield and embeds itself in a seat way back in the car. They write NASA about this, to which NASA replies, "thaw your chickens."
So, in essence, they were testing whether a frozen chicken does more damage than a thawed chicken. But I just think they wanted to build a chicken gun. And a chicken gun they did build.
Jamie ended up using a 250 psi tank with a butterfly valve on the cannon and a big fat lever to pull down in order to launch the chicken. This thing annihilated the chickens, turning them into puree. They also loaded in a pumpkin for good measure and managed to puncture the fuselage of the plane they were using for target practice. Result of myth: when a chicken is flying that fast, it don't matter what temperature it is."
http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2004/02/mythbusters_chicken_gun.html
Though tubal-cain is joking, he's kinda right. Vista is NT v6 and the next version is NT v7, hence its current codename being Windows Seven.
... when a major open source company/advocate isn't open. News at 11.
According to the EULA, the retail boxed copies of OS X are meant as upgrades to prior versions of OS X.
What's really funny, is that usually discussions about "buying OS X" are explaining how it's cheaper than Windows because $129 gets you a "full version", rather than an "upgrade".
Actually, most people say that its cheaper than buying windows because $129 gets you the "full version" rather than the "Not-quite-Ultimate-non-business-but-still-better-than-basic 32-bit Vista Upgrade Edition".
Just for fun I checked on Newegg to see if it was still like this, and theres a Basic, Business, Premium, and Ultimate version, in both upgrade an non-upgrade variants, and in both 32-bit and 64-bit variants.
The "full version" of vista, Ultimate, is $169 on Newegg, which, if I need to remind you, is more expensive than the OS X "full version" upgrade.
Is it just me or does this Karma Train not make any sense?
Yea, screw change, we want cents! Coyboyneal '08!
Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
You forgot to mention all the: "iPhone Killer!!11".. "gPhone Killer!@#!".. "eee PC Killer?!?!@".. headlines that were all over the place before any of those products were even out (and still arn't out in the case of android).
What does it help to have four different levels of passwords if the entire internet falls under "serious business" in the last rule?
Sounds like a lively datacenter.
You figuring that out makes me think of Xfire, which tracks the amount of time played by people who have the Xfire client installed.
Some quick calculations using stats from the xfire site show that on today, a non-holiday sunday, approximately 44 man-years of time have been played only in the game World of Warcraft. Not to mention that leaves out all Mac WoW'ers (we do exist), and ever so rare wine linux WoW'ers. And even on top of that, all the people who did play on windows today but don't have the Xfire client installed.
The 1.0 milestone means almost nothing towards how actually feature-complete it is, but rather how stable it is at running a small number of extremely common Windows apps, like Word and Excel.