Personally, I think it's quite nice to see more FPGA hardware for the masses. For me it opens a lot of possibilities in R&D of new approaches to algorithm optimization and discovery of new methods of processing existing data.
But more to the point of the hw/sw arguments, I do think this type of products could help everybody to see such things are really things of the past now and we need to move on.
Some guy at Tokyo University said: "Software without Hardware is nothing, but Hardware without Software is something". I don't think this is necessarily true anymore. I feel pain when I buy a piece of hardware that I cannot use on Linux because the manufacturers are too afraid to open the API, preventing OSS/Free Software people to write software support for it.
Obvious examples are 3D Video Chips and the dreaded Software Modems. If I'm buying a laptop, I can't have full control on the combination of hardware components, and there are very few laptops that will have fully supported Linux drivers for every single chipset.
I am always forced to sacrifice some functions, because even those vendors with fully supported linux laptops won't have models with the chips that are critical to my specific line of work. So I end up buying a laptop that can't satisfy my needs to the fullest.
Of what use is a piece of hardware if I can't use because I don't have the other "half" of its functions, which are contained inside a binary file? Before trying to bring hw/sw rants to the table, we should ask ourselves why we ended with such a stupid interdependence to one another. Heck, even Transmeta has a hw/sw hybrid CPU now. Ever wondered what would happened if Linus Torvalds were not on the staff and Linux support wasn't on their TODO list? I bet you would have a different opinion on Transmeta.
Really, FPGA could bring Software Development to another level, where we could have non-OS dependent (or maybe even non-arch dependent) firmware, and then we can focus on writing nice APIs instead of device drivers. After all, device support should be a task best suited for the manufacturer, not the systems programmer.
Actually, the translation several of you are using is very loose, just as mine. There's no way "raku" could literally translate as "painlessly". It is not accurate but it is fairly correct, too. You must have read it in some KOF FAQ, or do you speak japanese yourself?
Remember we are dealing with slang japanese dialogue, it can't be accurately translated to ANY other language. So better luck to you next time on finding KOF FAQs on Google's "I'm feeling lucky" option.
I'm quite a fan of KOF and fighting games and understand some Japanese, so I have a fair knowledge of what's going on.
In the first photos, you see these guys "Kyochin Yuzawa" and "Iorin Yamagi" facing off like their video game counterparts, Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami, respectively.
Kyo and Iori are fierce rivals, descendants of clans that have fought each other over the power of a god-like entity called Orochi (the Kusanagi to seal it, the Yagami to harness it).
In the game, choosing these two will produce the same taunt that's written below their pics: "Honou ga omae o yonderuze!" ("You called for this fire") says Kyo, "nara, moetsukiro, isagiyokuna!" ("Let's see if it's good enough") answers Iori.
The first animated GIF shows Kyo using his most powerful move (Orochinagi), which requires great reflexes and strategy to pull off and hit the enemy with it in the real game. Kyo executes it while shouting "kuraiyagaree!" (something along the lines as "take this!") and burn Iori.
The second GIF shows Iori performing his second most powerful move (Yaotome), Iori perfoms it while shouting "Raku ni shinenzo!", (something like "just die!") but they make fun when the flame comes short of reaching Kyo.
Then it begins to get weird. Kyo uses his second most powerful move (Mu Shiki), which has Kyo performing a series of flaming punches in the game. But this time, Iori actually blocks the punch (!) and counters it with his most powerful move (Saku Tsumagushi) in his greatest form, which ends with Iori pounding the opponent on the floor amidst purple flames.
But the funny thing is, Kyochin's hands were actually burning beyond the fireproof gloves, so he tries to put the fire off on the sea water, while he shouts "I'm gonna dieee!".
Re:Xbox mods should focus on a PURPOSE
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Xbox Linux Cluster
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· Score: 1
Although many people play XboxLive games on modded consoles (it involves disabling the mod chip thru a switch or some other method, and locking the hard drive, both very simple processes that basically reverts the Xbox back to a "pristine" unmodded state), you still have to initially mod the console to be able to use XBMP, which is of course an intrusive process.
This is exactly what I was referring to, it may be intrusive on the console hardware, but is should not be so on the games. The current Linux distros are tailored for installing themselves on the HDD, this will make the games unplayable.
The ideal thing would be to have a Linux LiveCD distro with the Media Player, and a little switch to change BIOS versions on the back of the console, then use it accordingly whenever playing media or a game.
As I said before, simplicity and ease-of-use are valued above all else, it's time to take advantage on a console's design to really make it better. Just look at the Dreamcast mods:)
Re:Xbox mods should focus on a PURPOSE
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Xbox Linux Cluster
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Well, yes and no. There is a reason why the bandwidth requirements for a video chip are so high. The GPU needs really fast access to Geometry, Texture and Shader data.
For a rendering farm node, the Xbox has some harsh limitations on memory size (64MB in UMA for both CPU and GPU), also the 100Megabits/s network interface (actually like 12MegaBytes/s) is not that fast when comparing to the 6 or so GigaBytes/s the chip needs.
So, the 64MB system memory will impose a big limit on how much data can be pumped to the GPU (remember you need to store the results in memory too, uncompressed), and the network interface will not help to alleviate the memory load fast enough. This makes it useless for something more complex than home-made graphics, and then a regular PC would make a better job for a home user.
If the Xbox had a lot more memory, it would be easier to make a valuable rendering farm node out of it.
Xbox mods should focus on a PURPOSE
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Xbox Linux Cluster
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Really, what would you expect? A cluster's main application is to increase the CPU cycles available for a given program. Raw CPU power is not Xbox's strength.
The Xbox mods should be focused on what makes them useful. No Wal-Mart PC would have Component Video Output or Digital Audio Output at $200. Xbox can be used as a cheap terminal but it will shine as a Media Player that allows you to use your existing content on your existing equipment in the same way a consumer electronics product would.
That's the real difference. A normal PC has many stupid quirks that are useful only when you have unpredictable hardware combinations, i.e. the dozens of volume controls (PCM, MIDI, Master, etc.) and different resolutions. These are not required in a DVD/TV/Stereo setup. And don't get me started on the so far terrible "desktop-on-your-TV" hacks on Video cards.
I'm looking for an Xbox mod that allows me to playback my content stored on ANOTHER computer through the network (the 10GB HDD on the thing would never be enough to store my files), and still be able to play my original, legally owned games in a non-intrusive way. Simplicity and ease-of-use are valued above all else in a console.
Now that would be a mod with a _real world_ purpose.
I'm Mexican and while I really feel embarrased this kind of idiocy happens in my country, looking closer it happened because the authorities and legal system are extremely broken and stupid when it comes to understanding the nature of the crime that is being pursued in regards to piracy, and the record companies can abuse the situation.
Funny, but I think this is the same case in almost ANY country. So, while it happened in Mexico because the system could be abused pretty easily, watch out for the same thing happening in other countries soon enough.
Before this happened, I had even seen commercials stating in a pretty explicit way some phrases equivalent to: "Piracy is theft". This shows it's not only a fault in our system, but because the record companies have the money and power to push their lame propaganda, laws and the perception of the crime can be shaped fairly easily by pulling the right strings.
As every educated/.ter should know, piracy IS a crime, only it's not related to theft, but to copyright infringement. This definition is blurred specifically by the record companies in Mexico so to be able to prompt the Police to take care of things as they command.
You see, there is a really strong music industry in Mexico, where we have literally hundreds of "artists" that sell their overrated, overpriced crap all over the continent, and predictably, this industry is controlled by the same RIAA companies we love to hate.
In fact, these events should come as no surprise, because in countries like mine, most people can't afford to pay the equivalent to US$15 for a single disk, priced as if it were an imported item, when it could be cheaper because the price markups don't need to be as high as in other countries, where everything from labor to land costs are more expensive. People DO buy and distribute bootlegs, there ARE criminals around here, but this is not the way to handle the situation. This is just a test of RIAA's power.
Companies that want to protect their profit margins and revenue sources at the expense of the user... Where do you see this happening next?
Mark my words, this is going to happen in another country and at a much bigger scale, sooner or later.
Now, who are the real "capos"?
The HOWTO needs a TODO section
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XBox Linux HOWTOs
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· Score: 2, Insightful
For all things that can be done with Linux installed in the console, I would like to be able to replace the Xbox drive with a higher capacity HDD and be able to partition it (one partition for a Linux filesystem, the other one for a regular 10GB Xbox filesystem).
If not possible, then how about mounting a NFS filesystem from another computer in the network, leaving the internal HDD untouched? I would still need to mount a remote filesystem in order to access my nearly 50GB worth of A/V files, as they won't fit into the regular Xbox HDD.
Lastly, a very important point here is that even though it is very useful to be able to convert the Xbox into a cheap and powerful $200 computer and use it as an A/V player in my huge TV, etc., I still want to use the machine in the way it was designed for, and that means running my legally owned games flawlessly.
What I really need is a non-intrusive Linux installation, such as the one in the Dreamcast. I know it might never be possible to run unsigned code without modifying the hardware, but THAT would be too much to ask.
I have experience working with Nintendo platforms since the SNES (circa 1991). And their designs have always been propietary or heavily customized.
Regarding the GameCube architecture, it should be noted that the main goal for the system is to maximize the usability of the hardware by achieving a perfect balance on how the components work.
You'll find out very easily on the PC architecture, you will get a lot of bottlenecks caused by the great diversity of design goals within each single component. Just think: CPU, RAM, GPU, GPU's RAM, I/O all are clocked independently.
The highest bottleneck of them all is the memory latency and response. (note that this is irrespective to the memory clock or bandwidth) CPU and GPU performance are greatly affected by this, and faster memory is always exponentially more expensive.
Marketing people will always focus on the theoretical performance, which can NEVER be achieved when other components such as RAM and CPU are involved. There is no use for a really fast GPU when you cannot timely access vectors and textures when you need them.
The truth is that, for solving bottlenecks, and bring down the cost, power consumption and thus maximize profitability in a platform, you NEED to go propietary.
GameCube uses the GPU also as the central I/O chip, meaning that even the CPU must get through it in order to access main memory. This architecture, combined with the fact that main memory is not conventional RAM, but much faster SRAM, ensures graphic performance is very predictable, which is a return to the NES/SNES days, when you could count CPU cycles for a given algorithm while having breakfast, unlike all other consoles where you cannot accurately tell your infuriated boss how fast you can get the machine to perform.
GameCube also uses a (proprietary) hardware based vector compression algorithm, which along texture compression dramatically reduces the memory bandwidth needed for sending data to the GPU. So the resources are very well managed.
In all, the Xbox may look better in paper, and it DOES have more brute force, but in reality a piece of hardware that has more research on the special data patterns a game utilizes such as the GC, will certainly do more for less.
Also, don't be fooled, GC could theoretically achieve 100 Million poly/s (just a little short of the Xbox), but that number would neglect the t&l and texture pipelines. That's why you will only see Nintendo advertise "in-game" performance.
ii. when an OEM removes End-User Access to a Middleware Product from any Personal Computer on which Windows is preinstalled, the royalty paid by that OEM for that copy of Windows is reduced in an amount not less than the product of the otherwise applicable royalty and the ratio of the number of amount in bytes of binary code of (a) the middleware Product as distributed separately from a Windows Operating System Product to (b) the applicable version of Windows.
I think this means that it will be very damaging to MS for an application to grow too much. Some "bound" applications like IE, are really big partly because of the great amount of garbage they contain, including advertising.
Many companies like Disney paid M$ to include their content as channels for IE in the standard Windows distribution, thus making IE bigger.
So when an OEM decides to take away IE the OS license will be reduced in terms of the percentage IE takes from a full Windows installation, not the "real" size of the application itself.
It's really ridiculous to see how many people in/. defend the use of pirated MP3 as if it was a Good Thing or regard the Metallica's action as an "invasion of privacy".
I have some points i'd like to share with you all/.ers:
Why do you keep thinking the MP3 should be treated in a different way as we treat software? Allow me to explain:
First of all, I live in a poor country, a perfect example country on how people say they can't afford paying the rent, but have two or more TV sets at home. Here I keep hear people saying all the same stupid excuse: "I don't have money, I'm a poor ______ (insert words like 'student' here)", while they dump the "few" bucks they have in overpriced pirate stuff.
Toys and software falls into this same category as people (who allegedly can't "afford" to pay even for food) buy PlayStation bootlegged games at the price of US$4~$30 ea., while the price for manufacturing here is like US$1 ea. Obviously they're being ripped off, yet they feel more comfortable throwing away their money, their rights and warranties instead of buying a fricking original product! Other countries I've been into are exactly the same, regardless of their economic situation.
I despise marketing-pushed music, and of course I also can compare it with my hate for monopolistic software BS that is marketing-pushed.
But don't get me wrong, when I like a band (let's say Depeche Mode, for example), I do buy all their discs, and the same with video games (I bought Metal Gear THREE times: the original, american and Integral versions). Why? Because I'm a FAN!!! And that can't be helped.
I'm not rich, yet I have what I like because I work hard for it! So I will NOT download BS (Britney Spears?:) MP3s because I don't like that stuff, but if I did, I'd go to buy the CD, thus promoting the things that I like. Needless to say, I don't consider "fans" those who don't get it the right way.
I also try to contribute in any way I can for the promotion of GNU, FSF, OSS, etc. So I do agree with those who say that MP3/Internet is a new way to hear and promote music that otherwise you wouldn't, like garage bands. But make no mistake, these bands are WILLING to give away their stuff, just like Linus Torvalds likes to license the Kernel through GPL.
So, my point is: Why defend the use of illegally obtained content, when we do exactly the opposite with commercial and open source software?
You can get Photoshop from a warez kiddie, yet we Open Source/Free Software advocates say: "No thanks, we like the free stuff better", and develop/promote things as good as GIMP.
Music really should go this way, too. But bootleggers, pirates and "counterfeiter stimulants" like Napster deserved to be punished. How do you feel to know that Napster as well as porn-sponsored pirates are making money out of your "freedom ideals"?
----------------------------------- PS: I own a licensed copy of Photoshop, I also love GIMP. I consider Metallica as marketed-BS so I hope they win this battle, lose all their fans and disappear. I really like good music and software, whether is free or not. I'm a developer and my parents are both musicians to boot.
To end the confusion, I would say there's really no way to compare these systems using synthetic benchmarks and/or performance numbers. The current (old) generation is exactly the same. The PS1 is comprised of a handful of different processing units, while the Sega Saturn uses dual cpus and other dedicated chips and the Nintendo64 only uses 2 chips for the whole thing.
The PS1 had a very primitive graphics setup, that could only render 360,000 poly/sec (that means only polygons, no texture, no geometry transforms, no game), but the key to their success was not the graphics, but the way they handled development. The 3rd party developers are still untapping power out of this thingie (look at Gran Turismo 2).
The N64 is the same also, the chips are too flexible (and in the same sense you could do 160,000 poly/sec with cool effects like texture mapping, trilinear mip-mapping, Antialiasing, but no audio, no transforms, and no game), and developers are also still untapping power from the thing (look at Perfect Dark). Their only problem is storage, yet there's Resident Evil 2, a game with near 20 minutes of FMV and better graphics than the PlayStation counterpart (PS version is 2 CDs, while N64 is a 64Megabyte cartridge).
But the real difference between them was development time and the production of the physical media (time-to-market, for the suits). PS was old technology thus not very complicated and the Saturn had a good but very hard to use idea. Also N64 developers had trouble deciding when and where to use all the tradeable features of the system. So PS1 ended being the best choice because of its relative simplicity and the business model.
Sony confused many people into thinking the real success was achieved because of some kind of "technical superiority". But indeed the PS1 was really developed with the help of Nintendo, as originally it was going to be a Super Nintendo 32bit add-on. So PS2 is really Sony's first console, and it's very difficult to say if they're going to have success at this early stage. They need developers finding hardware tricks, fast, the VU units are really great stuff, but current games don't even use antialiasing.
The Game Boy is by far the best example of a successful gaming console (11 years out there, 1MHz Z80 8bit processor), very primitive yet it can do FMV (There's Dragon's Lair, a game originally on Laser Disc), It can be used as an MP3 player (via the SongBoy cartridge), can use a fairly good digital camera and printer, hell, you can also use it as a universal, programmable TV/VCR controller and even hack your Furby. As a Nintendo person said: "there's more processing power in the microwave oven's display than on the Game Boy".
The bottom line is that it really all come down to the games. They are gaming consoles, not distributed.net crack boxes (though it would be cool to use the 6.2 GFLOPS of the PS2 for that purpose), what really matters is that the games are well coded. Someone mentioned there's still popup in the racing games, but it's the programmers' work to blame, not the machine (R4 for the PS1 has hardly any popup). So the first who really puts a good development environment will be the one to win, be either Sony, Sega, Nintendo or *yuck* Micro$oft.
Regardless of the WM, not all the applications are design with the keyboard as the only input in mind. For that matter, if rejecting the mouse is not related to a hardware problem or limitation, why not just change the way to use the pointer?
XInput allows to use a digitizer tablet or a joystick to control the pointer, it's very useful and comfortable, and in the case of the tablet it's sometimes even faster to use than the mouse (and you can use the mouse at the same time, to boot). For this to work you just need to load the appropiate kernel drivers/modules, then configure the XInput modules and parameters in XF86Config, and it's done!
For info about this, check the kernel's menuconfig for a list of joysticks and tablets supported, and "man XF86Config" for the parameters and configuration of XInput.
QNX is designed as a real time OS. It really isn't for consumer apps. It's pretty well regarded for RT work.
Exactly mi point, because comparing QNX to Win98, BeOS or V2 doesn't make any sense. I don't think of QNX as a "consumer app" OS as much as I don't think of Windows as a RTOS, and of course V2 isn't going to be for "consumer apps" anyway. It's true QNX/Neutrino can't fill everyone's needs, but does any (read:ANY, including Linux) OS fill them? That's exactly the reason there will always be startups as V2.
IMHO assembly is the right choice when it comes to speed, as i'm involved in game development and most of the time the extra speed is mandatory for complex algorithms and hardware tricks, but games are developed for common hardware and most of the time they don't really need to be very flexible.
But in the OS side, speed is definitely not as important as a clever design. If these guys want their OS to lift off they better be very thoughtful, because it doesn't make any sense to code the fastest hack if you can't really extend its capabilities or program applications easily. I think a good example of what does a well-built, small, fast AND portable OS look like is QNX. OS, GUI, Web server, browser and some more stuff fits in a floppy, and most of it is written in C/C++.
Personally, I hate coding the same thing twice for two different platforms, I really like the idea of using my code for more than one thing, and that's what standards like ANSI C and POSIX are all about.
These guys might as well win some Assembly '00 award with amazing code like the V2, but let's be serious, assembly should be used only when needed.
That said, coding in assembly is really fun (except when you have to explain your code either to other person or to yourself after some weeks of working at something else:)
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Personally, I think it's quite nice to see more FPGA hardware for the masses. For me it opens a lot of possibilities in R&D of new approaches to algorithm optimization and discovery of new methods of processing existing data.
But more to the point of the hw/sw arguments, I do think this type of products could help everybody to see such things are really things of the past now and we need to move on.
Some guy at Tokyo University said: "Software without Hardware is nothing, but Hardware without Software is something". I don't think this is necessarily true anymore. I feel pain when I buy a piece of hardware that I cannot use on Linux because the manufacturers are too afraid to open the API, preventing OSS/Free Software people to write software support for it.
Obvious examples are 3D Video Chips and the dreaded Software Modems. If I'm buying a laptop, I can't have full control on the combination of hardware components, and there are very few laptops that will have fully supported Linux drivers for every single chipset.
I am always forced to sacrifice some functions, because even those vendors with fully supported linux laptops won't have models with the chips that are critical to my specific line of work. So I end up buying a laptop that can't satisfy my needs to the fullest.
Of what use is a piece of hardware if I can't use because I don't have the other "half" of its functions, which are contained inside a binary file? Before trying to bring hw/sw rants to the table, we should ask ourselves why we ended with such a stupid interdependence to one another. Heck, even Transmeta has a hw/sw hybrid CPU now. Ever wondered what would happened if Linus Torvalds were not on the staff and Linux support wasn't on their TODO list? I bet you would have a different opinion on Transmeta.
Really, FPGA could bring Software Development to another level, where we could have non-OS dependent (or maybe even non-arch dependent) firmware, and then we can focus on writing nice APIs instead of device drivers. After all, device support should be a task best suited for the manufacturer, not the systems programmer.
Actually, the translation several of you are using is very loose, just as mine. There's no way "raku" could literally translate as "painlessly". It is not accurate but it is fairly correct, too. You must have read it in some KOF FAQ, or do you speak japanese yourself?
Remember we are dealing with slang japanese dialogue, it can't be accurately translated to ANY other language. So better luck to you next time on finding KOF FAQs on Google's "I'm feeling lucky" option.
I'm quite a fan of KOF and fighting games and understand some Japanese, so I have a fair knowledge of what's going on.
In the first photos, you see these guys "Kyochin Yuzawa" and "Iorin Yamagi" facing off like their video game counterparts, Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami, respectively.
Kyo and Iori are fierce rivals, descendants of clans that have fought each other over the power of a god-like entity called Orochi (the Kusanagi to seal it, the Yagami to harness it).
In the game, choosing these two will produce the same taunt that's written below their pics: "Honou ga omae o yonderuze!" ("You called for this fire") says Kyo, "nara, moetsukiro, isagiyokuna!" ("Let's see if it's good enough") answers Iori.
The first animated GIF shows Kyo using his most powerful move (Orochinagi), which requires great reflexes and strategy to pull off and hit the enemy with it in the real game. Kyo executes it while shouting "kuraiyagaree!" (something along the lines as "take this!") and burn Iori.
The second GIF shows Iori performing his second most powerful move (Yaotome), Iori perfoms it while shouting "Raku ni shinenzo!", (something like "just die!") but they make fun when the flame comes short of reaching Kyo.
Then it begins to get weird. Kyo uses his second most powerful move (Mu Shiki), which has Kyo performing a series of flaming punches in the game. But this time, Iori actually blocks the punch (!) and counters it with his most powerful move (Saku Tsumagushi) in his greatest form, which ends with Iori pounding the opponent on the floor amidst purple flames.
But the funny thing is, Kyochin's hands were actually burning beyond the fireproof gloves, so he tries to put the fire off on the sea water, while he shouts "I'm gonna dieee!".
Although many people play XboxLive games on modded consoles (it involves disabling the mod chip thru a switch or some other method, and locking the hard drive, both very simple processes that basically reverts the Xbox back to a "pristine" unmodded state), you still have to initially mod the console to be able to use XBMP, which is of course an intrusive process.
This is exactly what I was referring to, it may be intrusive on the console hardware, but is should not be so on the games. The current Linux distros are tailored for installing themselves on the HDD, this will make the games unplayable.
The ideal thing would be to have a Linux LiveCD distro with the Media Player, and a little switch to change BIOS versions on the back of the console, then use it accordingly whenever playing media or a game.
As I said before, simplicity and ease-of-use are valued above all else, it's time to take advantage on a console's design to really make it better. Just look at the Dreamcast mods :)
Well, yes and no. There is a reason why the bandwidth requirements for a video chip are so high. The GPU needs really fast access to Geometry, Texture and Shader data.
For a rendering farm node, the Xbox has some harsh limitations on memory size (64MB in UMA for both CPU and GPU), also the 100Megabits/s network interface (actually like 12MegaBytes/s) is not that fast when comparing to the 6 or so GigaBytes/s the chip needs.
So, the 64MB system memory will impose a big limit on how much data can be pumped to the GPU (remember you need to store the results in memory too, uncompressed), and the network interface will not help to alleviate the memory load fast enough. This makes it useless for something more complex than home-made graphics, and then a regular PC would make a better job for a home user.
If the Xbox had a lot more memory, it would be easier to make a valuable rendering farm node out of it.
Really, what would you expect? A cluster's main application is to increase the CPU cycles available for a given program. Raw CPU power is not Xbox's strength.
The Xbox mods should be focused on what makes them useful. No Wal-Mart PC would have Component Video Output or Digital Audio Output at $200. Xbox can be used as a cheap terminal but it will shine as a Media Player that allows you to use your existing content on your existing equipment in the same way a consumer electronics product would.
That's the real difference. A normal PC has many stupid quirks that are useful only when you have unpredictable hardware combinations, i.e. the dozens of volume controls (PCM, MIDI, Master, etc.) and different resolutions. These are not required in a DVD/TV/Stereo setup. And don't get me started on the so far terrible "desktop-on-your-TV" hacks on Video cards.
I'm looking for an Xbox mod that allows me to playback my content stored on ANOTHER computer through the network (the 10GB HDD on the thing would never be enough to store my files), and still be able to play my original, legally owned games in a non-intrusive way. Simplicity and ease-of-use are valued above all else in a console.
Now that would be a mod with a _real world_ purpose.
I'm Mexican and while I really feel embarrased this kind of idiocy happens in my country, looking closer it happened because the authorities and legal system are extremely broken and stupid when it comes to understanding the nature of the crime that is being pursued in regards to piracy, and the record companies can abuse the situation.
/.ter should know, piracy IS a crime, only it's not related to theft, but to copyright infringement. This definition is blurred specifically by the record companies in Mexico so to be able to prompt the Police to take care of things as they command.
Funny, but I think this is the same case in almost ANY country. So, while it happened in Mexico because the system could be abused pretty easily, watch out for the same thing happening in other countries soon enough.
Before this happened, I had even seen commercials stating in a pretty explicit way some phrases equivalent to: "Piracy is theft". This shows it's not only a fault in our system, but because the record companies have the money and power to push their lame propaganda, laws and the perception of the crime can be shaped fairly easily by pulling the right strings.
As every educated
You see, there is a really strong music industry in Mexico, where we have literally hundreds of "artists" that sell their overrated, overpriced crap all over the continent, and predictably, this industry is controlled by the same RIAA companies we love to hate.
In fact, these events should come as no surprise, because in countries like mine, most people can't afford to pay the equivalent to US$15 for a single disk, priced as if it were an imported item, when it could be cheaper because the price markups don't need to be as high as in other countries, where everything from labor to land costs are more expensive. People DO buy and distribute bootlegs, there ARE criminals around here, but this is not the way to handle the situation. This is just a test of RIAA's power.
Companies that want to protect their profit margins and revenue sources at the expense of the user... Where do you see this happening next?
Mark my words, this is going to happen in another country and at a much bigger scale, sooner or later.
Now, who are the real "capos"?
For all things that can be done with Linux installed in the console, I would like to be able to replace the Xbox drive with a higher capacity HDD and be able to partition it (one partition for a Linux filesystem, the other one for a regular 10GB Xbox filesystem).
If not possible, then how about mounting a NFS filesystem from another computer in the network, leaving the internal HDD untouched? I would still need to mount a remote filesystem in order to access my nearly 50GB worth of A/V files, as they won't fit into the regular Xbox HDD.
Lastly, a very important point here is that even though it is very useful to be able to convert the Xbox into a cheap and powerful $200 computer and use it as an A/V player in my huge TV, etc., I still want to use the machine in the way it was designed for, and that means running my legally owned games flawlessly.
What I really need is a non-intrusive Linux installation, such as the one in the Dreamcast. I know it might never be possible to run unsigned code without modifying the hardware, but THAT would be too much to ask.
I have experience working with Nintendo platforms since the SNES (circa 1991). And their designs have always been propietary or heavily customized.
Regarding the GameCube architecture, it should be noted that the main goal for the system is to maximize the usability of the hardware by achieving a perfect balance on how the components work.
You'll find out very easily on the PC architecture, you will get a lot of bottlenecks caused by the great diversity of design goals within each single component. Just think: CPU, RAM, GPU, GPU's RAM, I/O all are clocked independently.
The highest bottleneck of them all is the memory latency and response. (note that this is irrespective to the memory clock or bandwidth) CPU and GPU performance are greatly affected by this, and faster memory is always exponentially more expensive.
Marketing people will always focus on the theoretical performance, which can NEVER be achieved when other components such as RAM and CPU are involved. There is no use for a really fast GPU when you cannot timely access vectors and textures when you need them.
The truth is that, for solving bottlenecks, and bring down the cost, power consumption and thus maximize profitability in a platform, you NEED to go propietary.
GameCube uses the GPU also as the central I/O chip, meaning that even the CPU must get through it in order to access main memory. This architecture, combined with the fact that main memory is not conventional RAM, but much faster SRAM, ensures graphic performance is very predictable, which is a return to the NES/SNES days, when you could count CPU cycles for a given algorithm while having breakfast, unlike all other consoles where you cannot accurately tell your infuriated boss how fast you can get the machine to perform.
GameCube also uses a (proprietary) hardware based vector compression algorithm, which along texture compression dramatically reduces the memory bandwidth needed for sending data to the GPU. So the resources are very well managed.
In all, the Xbox may look better in paper, and it DOES have more brute force, but in reality a piece of hardware that has more research on the special data patterns a game utilizes such as the GC, will certainly do more for less.
Also, don't be fooled, GC could theoretically achieve 100 Million poly/s (just a little short of the Xbox), but that number would neglect the t&l and texture pipelines. That's why you will only see Nintendo advertise "in-game" performance.
I found this restriction quite interesting:
ii. when an OEM removes End-User Access to a Middleware Product from any Personal Computer on which Windows is preinstalled, the royalty paid by that OEM for that copy of Windows is reduced in an amount not less than the product of the otherwise applicable royalty and the ratio of the number of amount in bytes of binary code of (a) the middleware Product as distributed separately from a Windows Operating System Product to (b) the applicable version of Windows.
I think this means that it will be very damaging to MS for an application to grow too much. Some "bound" applications like IE, are really big partly because of the great amount of garbage they contain, including advertising.
Many companies like Disney paid M$ to include their content as channels for IE in the standard Windows distribution, thus making IE bigger.
So when an OEM decides to take away IE the OS license will be reduced in terms of the percentage IE takes from a full Windows installation, not the "real" size of the application itself.
Anyone's comments on this?
It's really ridiculous to see how many people in /. defend the use of pirated MP3 as if it was a Good Thing or regard the Metallica's action as an "invasion of privacy".
/.ers:
:) MP3s because I don't like that stuff, but if I did, I'd go to buy the CD, thus promoting the things that I like. Needless to say, I don't consider "fans" those who don't get it the right way.
I have some points i'd like to share with you all
Why do you keep thinking the MP3 should be treated in a different way as we treat software? Allow me to explain:
First of all, I live in a poor country, a perfect example country on how people say they can't afford paying the rent, but have two or more TV sets at home. Here I keep hear people saying all the same stupid excuse: "I don't have money, I'm a poor ______ (insert words like 'student' here)", while they dump the "few" bucks they have in overpriced pirate stuff.
Toys and software falls into this same category as people (who allegedly can't "afford" to pay even for food) buy PlayStation bootlegged games at the price of US$4~$30 ea., while the price for manufacturing here is like US$1 ea. Obviously they're being ripped off, yet they feel more comfortable throwing away their money, their rights and warranties instead of buying a fricking original product! Other countries I've been into are exactly the same, regardless of their economic situation.
I despise marketing-pushed music, and of course I also can compare it with my hate for monopolistic software BS that is marketing-pushed.
But don't get me wrong, when I like a band (let's say Depeche Mode, for example), I do buy all their discs, and the same with video games (I bought Metal Gear THREE times: the original, american and Integral versions). Why? Because I'm a FAN!!! And that can't be helped.
I'm not rich, yet I have what I like because I work hard for it! So I will NOT download BS (Britney Spears?
I also try to contribute in any way I can for the promotion of GNU, FSF, OSS, etc. So I do agree with those who say that MP3/Internet is a new way to hear and promote music that otherwise you wouldn't, like garage bands. But make no mistake, these bands are WILLING to give away their stuff, just like Linus Torvalds likes to license the Kernel through GPL.
So, my point is: Why defend the use of illegally obtained content, when we do exactly the opposite with commercial and open source software?
You can get Photoshop from a warez kiddie, yet we Open Source/Free Software advocates say: "No thanks, we like the free stuff better", and develop/promote things as good as GIMP.
Music really should go this way, too. But bootleggers, pirates and "counterfeiter stimulants" like Napster deserved to be punished. How do you feel to know that Napster as well as porn-sponsored pirates are making money out of your "freedom ideals"?
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PS: I own a licensed copy of Photoshop, I also love GIMP. I consider Metallica as marketed-BS so I hope they win this battle, lose all their fans and disappear. I really like good music and software, whether is free or not. I'm a developer and my parents are both musicians to boot.
To end the confusion, I would say there's really no way to compare these systems using synthetic benchmarks and/or performance numbers. The current (old) generation is exactly the same. The PS1 is comprised of a handful of different processing units, while the Sega Saturn uses dual cpus and other dedicated chips and the Nintendo64 only uses 2 chips for the whole thing.
The PS1 had a very primitive graphics setup, that could only render 360,000 poly/sec (that means only polygons, no texture, no geometry transforms, no game), but the key to their success was not the graphics, but the way they handled development. The 3rd party developers are still untapping power out of this thingie (look at Gran Turismo 2).
The N64 is the same also, the chips are too flexible (and in the same sense you could do 160,000 poly/sec with cool effects like texture mapping, trilinear mip-mapping, Antialiasing, but no audio, no transforms, and no game), and developers are also still untapping power from the thing (look at Perfect Dark). Their only problem is storage, yet there's Resident Evil 2, a game with near 20 minutes of FMV and better graphics than the PlayStation counterpart (PS version is 2 CDs, while N64 is a 64Megabyte cartridge).
But the real difference between them was development time and the production of the physical media (time-to-market, for the suits). PS was old technology thus not very complicated and the Saturn had a good but very hard to use idea. Also N64 developers had trouble deciding when and where to use all the tradeable features of the system. So PS1 ended being the best choice because of its relative simplicity and the business model.
Sony confused many people into thinking the real success was achieved because of some kind of "technical superiority". But indeed the PS1 was really developed with the help of Nintendo, as originally it was going to be a Super Nintendo 32bit add-on. So PS2 is really Sony's first console, and it's very difficult to say if they're going to have success at this early stage. They need developers finding hardware tricks, fast, the VU units are really great stuff, but current games don't even use antialiasing.
The Game Boy is by far the best example of a successful gaming console (11 years out there, 1MHz Z80 8bit processor), very primitive yet it can do FMV (There's Dragon's Lair, a game originally on Laser Disc), It can be used as an MP3 player (via the SongBoy cartridge), can use a fairly good digital camera and printer, hell, you can also use it as a universal, programmable TV/VCR controller and even hack your Furby. As a Nintendo person said: "there's more processing power in the microwave oven's display than on the Game Boy".
The bottom line is that it really all come down to the games. They are gaming consoles, not distributed.net crack boxes (though it would be cool to use the 6.2 GFLOPS of the PS2 for that purpose), what really matters is that the games are well coded. Someone mentioned there's still popup in the racing games, but it's the programmers' work to blame, not the machine (R4 for the PS1 has hardly any popup). So the first who really puts a good development environment will be the one to win, be either Sony, Sega, Nintendo or *yuck* Micro$oft.
Rolando "Rolman"
Regardless of the WM, not all the applications are design with the keyboard as the only input in mind. For that matter, if rejecting the mouse is not related to a hardware problem or limitation, why not just change the way to use the pointer?
XInput allows to use a digitizer tablet or a joystick to control the pointer, it's very useful and comfortable, and in the case of the tablet it's sometimes even faster to use than the mouse (and you can use the mouse at the same time, to boot). For this to work you just need to load the appropiate kernel drivers/modules, then configure the XInput modules and parameters in XF86Config, and it's done!
For info about this, check the kernel's menuconfig for a list of joysticks and tablets supported, and "man XF86Config" for the parameters and configuration of XInput.
QNX is designed as a real time OS. It really isn't for consumer apps. It's pretty well regarded for RT work.
Exactly mi point, because comparing QNX to Win98, BeOS or V2 doesn't make any sense. I don't think of QNX as a "consumer app" OS as much as I don't think of Windows as a RTOS, and of course V2 isn't going to be for "consumer apps" anyway. It's true QNX/Neutrino can't fill everyone's needs, but does any (read:ANY, including Linux) OS fill them? That's exactly the reason there will always be startups as V2.
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IMHO assembly is the right choice when it comes to speed, as i'm involved in game development and most of the time the extra speed is mandatory for complex algorithms and hardware tricks, but games are developed for common hardware and most of the time they don't really need to be very flexible.
:)
But in the OS side, speed is definitely not as important as a clever design. If these guys want their OS to lift off they better be very thoughtful, because it doesn't make any sense to code the fastest hack if you can't really extend its capabilities or program applications easily. I think a good example of what does a well-built, small, fast AND portable OS look like is QNX. OS, GUI, Web server, browser and some more stuff fits in a floppy, and most of it is written in C/C++.
Personally, I hate coding the same thing twice for two different platforms, I really like the idea of using my code for more than one thing, and that's what standards like ANSI C and POSIX are all about.
These guys might as well win some Assembly '00 award with amazing code like the V2, but let's be serious, assembly should be used only when needed.
That said, coding in assembly is really fun (except when you have to explain your code either to other person or to yourself after some weeks of working at something else
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