As a UK resident, it's really gratifying to see some headway being made. A lot of this is thanks to the hard work put in by many to make sure that the general public is aware of what's happening, along with the alertness of some media quarters to bring the story out as much as possible.
All of this has meant that the technology hasn't just been introduced with nobody noticing, or putting up some resistance (as I'm sure the music industry would have loved...) - bringing the damage here to the attention of the public is surely greatly influential in BMG and Virgin's decision to back down somewhat.
This is indeed only the beginning, but at least it's a beginning, before it's too late. Pressure needs to be kept up. At Cato's recent The Future of Intellectual Property in the Information Age conference, Mitch Glazier, legislative counsel for the RIAA stated (somewhat hypocriticaly, imho):
"There's only one huge question nobody knows: what the consumer wants, what will succeed... At the end of the day, I think consumers will be pretty happy with the number of competing services out there."
I can't speak for everybody else, but the RIAA doesn't seem to be anywhere closer to the answer than it was a year ago...
Also, from the related Talking Point page at the BBC...
"It never ceases to amaze me that you Microsoft lemmings allow yourselves to be continually ripped off by Dollar Bill. If Microsoft made cars you would all happily accept that three mornings out of five you would not make it to work." - Brian S
AMD's Sledgehammer "simulator is quite slow. It runs at speeds like PCs 15 years ago," said a source with a software company, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
So... there's no way of telling how well your code is actually performing? Nice step forwards with regards to translatable code and stuff, but you wouldn't exactly develop a 3d engine on a 386 these days...
Also, what are the implications for the Transmeta chip? If interoperability is one of the USPs, then a 15-year old performance isn't good. However, the article also mentions:
In turn, Transmeta has obtained a license that will allow it to make chips that rely in part on the Sledgehammer design.
...so hopefully this performance would improve drastically, probably by the time that the Sledgehammer actually ships, of course.
Personally, I never look at pop-ups either. If I have a dozen browser windows open, as I am wont to do, then any more unnecessary ones are gone before any animated gifs can even display their Alt-ness. I suspect the same would happen if it popped up before, during, after or wherever viewing a page.
If people want adverts to work (at least, for me;) then, as is hinted at in the article, the content should start to take precedence over the manner in which it is presented, much like any other form of advertising. The last banner ad I clicked on was probably the first time I realised that advertising had progressed from crap animated gifs to tiny Java applets - not very impressive, but hey, it caught my attention. Especially with the eternal advent of broadband, can we expect to see more innovation, in terms of the technology used (interactive 3d?) to attract our gaze? Or have they been around for years, but I keep ignoring them? (Fun with Mozilla's image blocking...)
Along the same lines... it seems somewhat unjustified and impractical to force a processor-intensive technology such as Virtual Reality into an environment originally designed for the very flat presentation of (mostly textual) information. Removing the 3D element into a dedicated net application would make more sense, and from there integration with existing services (not just web - e-mail, ftp, et al) could develop as 3D video cards become de facto, and increasingly people have the ability to cope with some decent effects.
Of course, once that happens, we find out if there really is a suitable, more effective way to present data in a three dimensional manner... haven't seen one yet that isn't just for novelty value.
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The contents of this post are in no way to be considered the views or opinions of the author.
Yeah, just played through the big gunship level yesterday, and had to keep reloading after dying by my team"mates"' hands. In the end I just let them get on with going ahead of meBut other than that, the AI is good - I was afraid my team would be a bunch of gormless sheep constantly getting stuck on corners and shooting me, but the Icarus AI seems to be doing a fair job.
Graphic-wise, what is going on? For some reason in Holomatches (DMs), I'm getting framerates of around 20fps whenever someone starts shooting at me! 500MHz Athlon, GeForce, usually no problems in Q3. But for some reason... Any ideas, anyone?
Oops, should probably have elaborated this a bit;)
TBH, I don't rate Q3 as better than UT as such. I play more Q3 simply because that's what everyone else on the house LAN prefers, and it's very enjoyable because it's fast and fun - most of the weapons aren't that precise, and it's quite easy to take out a few people before someone else kills you.
UT, on the other hand, I think is better thought out (I'm a sucker for secondary fire - one of the best things about Elite Force), with features that Q3 badly misses in comparison (ordering of weapons is fantastic), and I just find it's slightly more, um, "technical" than Q3 - accuracy and a tactical approach will generally lend itself better, whereas I usually adopt a run-in-and-shoot-like-mad approach in Quake.
Elite Force, mainly down to its selection of weapons, has weapons lying somewhere between the two, with a nice blend of accuracy and rapid fire needed. If that makes sense:) Oh, and people die in cool ways (like being vaporised).
Bought this at Live 2000 in London last weekend after playing a few deathmatches there. DM wise, it's standard fare with some cool weapons that are perhaps more balanced than Q3, and that place the game somewhere between Q3 and UT in terms of rampaging death.
Where the game really comes into itself, and where it really shows that it's not just a cool Q3 mod, is the single player game. As if to counterbalance the onslaught of multiplayer-only games, the Elite Force team have come up with a (great) plot, involving a decent variety of locations/enemies/puzzle things, along with some *usable* AI for your accompanying team mates (they don't get stuck anywhere but, hmm, they have been known to shoot me to death for letting them get shot by the enemy a few times...)
I think it's fair to say that this has drawn me in even more than Half-Life did. Only gripes are that it has a quick save, but no quick load function and loading takes far too long, especially when the level being loaded is already in memory.
The demonstration began with a 1.5GHz chip and raised its clock speed to 2GHz. The chip was air cooled, without special cooling technology.
So.. the chip itself is "officially" down as 1.5GHz? - Is this the first case of overclocking a chip to the 2GHz mark? Get some fans and gel in there and I bet they could get this baby up to 2.5...
A 1.5GHz Pentium 4 system was then tested against an 800MHz Pentium III system in video capture. The 1.5GHz Pentium 4 was able to capture more frames of video than the 800MHz Pentium III.
It was also hinted at that the newer chip would make Windows run faster, but Intel is refusing to comment on such speculation.
I've no idea what the level of insight usually is at Forbes ASAP, but this article seems to be taking the idea of prediction back to the same era as the vehicle-tubed, silver-suited, plastic b-movie period of the 50s.
While some of the "details" appear to be semi-plausible extensions of current technology-in-progress (there's some holographic storage in there, and it sounds like there's a bit of work being done on optical connections), most come across as partially fanciful, attention-grabbing fictions with a vague or shortsighted basing in reality, but with no real reason for being there apart from they're different to what we have now.
For instance, a lack of keyboard is a ridiculous idea. Perhaps it might work for simple dictation processes, but that assumes that there will be some device/method that will be faster for navigation (I probably use my keyboard more than my mouse to get around screen) and for non-dictionary input.
Other "advancements" are more in tune with the author's desire for the PC to become a fashion accessory, rather than a practical tool. "Digital Butler"? Come on... While there is certainly a (growing) market for this, the majority of sales will still (yes, even in the future...) be for the purposes of functionality. And for functionality, one needs... practicality!
Further, while it may look good, it's also been designed to be very general purpose - plug it into this wall/that desk/an eyepiece. Surely the author could see that separate appliances (PDAs, desktop terminals, servers) is the way things are going, rather than having a single versatile unit acting as all things?
Just had a look at the JaNET (the UK Uni thing) policy over at http://www.ja.net/documents/use.html which says:
"9.2. the creation or transmission of material which is designed or likely to cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety;"
and then
"9.4. the transmission of material such that this infringes the copyright of another person;"
Obviously there's no copyright infringement with a CSS-removal program, so 9.4 doesn't apply. But, to Oxford Uni's credit, rule 9.2 handily steps in and covers any other eventuality possible, including this one... Winner: JaNET, MPAA, Oxford Uni, et al.
I guess a protest or petition outside a library would be fine (see enough of 'em...), but take the argument to a new, under-understood electronic forum, and you can't do a thing. Freedom of speech appears to be a myth. Still, with all these rules as to how we can speak, maybe an AI English-Language Finite State Machine is just around the corner....
Slashdot Mirror
All of this has meant that the technology hasn't just been introduced with nobody noticing, or putting up some resistance (as I'm sure the music industry would have loved...) - bringing the damage here to the attention of the public is surely greatly influential in BMG and Virgin's decision to back down somewhat.
This is indeed only the beginning, but at least it's a beginning, before it's too late. Pressure needs to be kept up. At Cato's recent
The Future of Intellectual Property in the Information Age conference, Mitch Glazier, legislative counsel for the RIAA stated (somewhat hypocriticaly, imho):
I can't speak for everybody else, but the RIAA doesn't seem to be anywhere closer to the answer than it was a year ago...
Also, from the related Talking Point page at the BBC...
But then, that's just me I guess.
(Or not.)
Cheers.
So... there's no way of telling how well your code is actually performing? Nice step forwards with regards to translatable code and stuff, but you wouldn't exactly develop a 3d engine on a 386 these days...
Also, what are the implications for the Transmeta chip? If interoperability is one of the USPs, then a 15-year old performance isn't good. However, the article also mentions:
If people want adverts to work (at least, for me ;) then, as is hinted at in the article, the content should start to take precedence over the manner in which it is presented, much like any other form of advertising. The last banner ad I clicked on was probably the first time I realised that advertising had progressed from crap animated gifs to tiny Java applets - not very impressive, but hey, it caught my attention. Especially with the eternal advent of broadband, can we expect to see more innovation, in terms of the technology used (interactive 3d?) to attract our gaze? Or have they been around for years, but I keep ignoring them? (Fun with Mozilla's image blocking...)
Of course, once that happens, we find out if there really is a suitable, more effective way to present data in a three dimensional manner... haven't seen one yet that isn't just for novelty value.
--
The contents of this post are in no way to be considered the views or opinions of the author.
Think I just whupped both the turrets with a couple of photon blasts before either of my team rounded the corner, in the end... ;)
Graphic-wise, what is going on? For some reason in Holomatches (DMs), I'm getting framerates of around 20fps whenever someone starts shooting at me! 500MHz Athlon, GeForce, usually no problems in Q3. But for some reason... Any ideas, anyone?
TBH, I don't rate Q3 as better than UT as such. I play more Q3 simply because that's what everyone else on the house LAN prefers, and it's very enjoyable because it's fast and fun - most of the weapons aren't that precise, and it's quite easy to take out a few people before someone else kills you.
UT, on the other hand, I think is better thought out (I'm a sucker for secondary fire - one of the best things about Elite Force), with features that Q3 badly misses in comparison (ordering of weapons is fantastic), and I just find it's slightly more, um, "technical" than Q3 - accuracy and a tactical approach will generally lend itself better, whereas I usually adopt a run-in-and-shoot-like-mad approach in Quake.
Elite Force, mainly down to its selection of weapons, has weapons lying somewhere between the two, with a nice blend of accuracy and rapid fire needed. If that makes sense :) Oh, and people die in cool ways (like being vaporised).
I really need to play more UT though...
Where the game really comes into itself, and where it really shows that it's not just a cool Q3 mod, is the single player game. As if to counterbalance the onslaught of multiplayer-only games, the Elite Force team have come up with a (great) plot, involving a decent variety of locations/enemies/puzzle things, along with some *usable* AI for your accompanying team mates (they don't get stuck anywhere but, hmm, they have been known to shoot me to death for letting them get shot by the enemy a few times...)
I think it's fair to say that this has drawn me in even more than Half-Life did. Only gripes are that it has a quick save, but no quick load function and loading takes far too long, especially when the level being loaded is already in memory.
While some of the "details" appear to be semi-plausible extensions of current technology-in-progress (there's some holographic storage in there, and it sounds like there's a bit of work being done on optical connections), most come across as partially fanciful, attention-grabbing fictions with a vague or shortsighted basing in reality, but with no real reason for being there apart from they're different to what we have now.
For instance, a lack of keyboard is a ridiculous idea. Perhaps it might work for simple dictation processes, but that assumes that there will be some device/method that will be faster for navigation (I probably use my keyboard more than my mouse to get around screen) and for non-dictionary input.
Other "advancements" are more in tune with the author's desire for the PC to become a fashion accessory, rather than a practical tool. "Digital Butler"? Come on... While there is certainly a (growing) market for this, the majority of sales will still (yes, even in the future...) be for the purposes of functionality. And for functionality, one needs... practicality!
Further, while it may look good, it's also been designed to be very general purpose - plug it into this wall/that desk/an eyepiece. Surely the author could see that separate appliances (PDAs, desktop terminals, servers) is the way things are going, rather than having a single versatile unit acting as all things?
Wildly inaccurate. I would hope.
Oh, if only I had webspace on my Uni account...
Winner: JaNET, MPAA, Oxford Uni, et al.
I guess a protest or petition outside a library would be fine (see enough of 'em...), but take the argument to a new, under-understood electronic forum, and you can't do a thing. Freedom of speech appears to be a myth.
Still, with all these rules as to how we can speak, maybe an AI English-Language Finite State Machine is just around the corner....