Actually, language support for fixed-point is useful. Ada has it. When the compiler understands fixed point, some useful optimizations are possible. And you avoid errors due to incorrect shifting by programmers.
Sony can't afford to lose too much per unit. The PS2 became profitable quite early. I agree, though, that those $800-$900 component costs per unit sound high.
Why do Blu-Ray drives cost so much more than DVD drives, anyway? They're not that different.
Games, as a rule, don't give a damn about 64-bit floating point.
You wish. In a big 32-bit game world, effort has to be made to
re-origin the data as you move. Suppose you want vertices to be positioned to within 1cm (worse than that and you'll see it), and
you're 10km from the origin. The low order bit of a 32-bit floating point number is now more than 1cm.
It's even worse for physics engines, but that's another story.
If the XBox 360 had simply been a dual- or quad-core IA-32, life would have been much simpler for the game industry.
First, there's the price point problem. Rumors of the PS3 launching at $800-$900 are distressing. At that price, it just won't sell. Even the $299 for the XBox 360 is high, and trying to pump the price up higher by bundling overpriced extras isn't helping. Remember, the PS2 is only $99, and developers have already figured it out. It's going to take a few years before developers really figure out how to use the Xbox 360 and PS3 hardware effectively.
After going to a talk at Stanford by the chief architect of the Cell processor, I'm convinced that the Cell people don't know how to use their array of eight little 256K CPUs for gaming. The speaker was clear on how you did things like RF processing for cell sites, but asked about what to do in games, said "that's Sony's problem". Remember, in the PS3, the Cell processors don't do the graphics; there's an NVidia chip for that. In the PS2, the vector processors do the graphics. From a developer perspective, these wierd machines are a huge pain. What we'd like is a multicore shared memory multiprocessor with a good graphics chip, so we can work on the game software instead of fussing with the hardware. From a business perspective, wierd architecture means that game profitability comes later in the life cycle of a console. Not good.
Second, there really is no XBox 360 shortage. Want one? Go to eBay. 1461 systems for sale today. Core system prices are steady, around $325. When and if Microsoft gets their production problems straightened out, will anybody care? Probably not, until a nice big price cut.
Now, at $199...
Third, the attempt by the consumer electronics industry to put a premium price tag on HDTV players and drives may be a major flop. DVD players are going for $29 and up. Blu-Ray players at $500 to $1000 are overpriced. Lots of people can't tell the difference, anyway. It's amusing to visit the display of large-screen TVs at Fry's. Most of them are displaying the same signal, which is from an HDTV source, but about half of the "HDTV" units are actually getting their video from an NTSC signal. Most customers don't notice the difference. Sometimes the NTSC pictures look better, because the blurring masks the motion compression artifacts.
What this all looks like is a desperate attempt by the consumer electronics industry to push prices up. Way up. Probably won't work.
Playing movies on PCs isn't that useful. PC play of HDTV movies will be so locked down that it won't be worth doing. The MPAA would prefer it if you couldn't play movies on PCs at all.
Microsoft's position thus really doesn't matter all that much.
SCO teleconference Monday - call in and listen
on
SCO Denied Again In Court
·
· Score: 4, Informative
SCO is having a teleconference at noon Eastern time on
Monday, February 27, 2006. That's when they get to explain this latest loss to analysts. This should be entertaining.
Toll Free within North America: (800) 481-7713
Toll call: (719) 457-2730
Passcode to enter call: 7134691
Netnews is ideal for this sort of thing. Once users subscribe, they'll see new messages as they are added to any of the relevant groups. No need for complicated RSS feeds, no endless paging through blogs, and no struggling to get people to visit your web site frequently. Google will even archive and index your newsgroup for you.
"The prize is a coupon for KFC's new, sauce-drenched $0.99 Buffalo Snacker chicken sandwich."
Big thrill.
KFC is scary. The smallest dinner they sell is a reasonably-sized meal. Most of the meals they sell are far, far bigger. And I see "wide loads" in there buying entire buckets for themselves.
After "Jaws" first came out, shark sales started to pick up. This was about the time the Japanese whaling ban kicked in, so whaling ships were being used to go after sharks (which is like using a sledgehammer to kill ants). Soon there was a glut of shark meat. It even started showing up in school lunch programs.
Now it's rare again. Not clear why.
If you haven't had shark, it's a tougher meat than trout or salmon. Try it broiled with lemon or lemon butter; don't overdo the sauces.
Right on schedule, about four to six hours after posting, the downward moderation appears. This happens every time a posting criticizes Steve Jobs. I wonder if there's a program searching for anti-Jobs statements, or just his fan club.
WoW is just like the airlines in this respect. If you spend enough time and money with them, you get to level up. This has nothing to do with skill; it's based entirely on how much paid time you've put in.
In the game world, when you level up, you get better armor, better weapons, and more hit points. In the airline world, you get better seats, better meals, and more peanuts.
This reads like a planted story, intended to build public support for the "tiered Internet" concept that Verizon and other incumbent carriers have been pushing.
Then there's a plug for "Itiva", which has some technology they call "Quantum Streaming" (tm). Itiva's web site is vague, but this seems to be more about DRM than transmission: "Itiva enables publishers and media content owners to monetize media content. The technology protects copyrighted material, supports embedded advertising, and defines the future direction of video publishing over the Internet." Itiva has done a demo, one that basically demonstrates that if you have 5.5Mb/s to the user, streaming works reasonably well.
No, that's the e-Ink hype. The e-Ink reality is this prototyping kit, a 6" active matrix electrophoretic display with a sheet of e-ink's film laminated on the front. Only $3000. Runs Linux!
All e-Ink really makes is this imaging film, which is laminated to the front of displays made by others.
The cheap, flexible, paper-like display is pure hype at this point. If it happens, it probably won't be from e-Ink.
What the e-ink people actually have working is a front layer for an LCD panel which provides persistence with power off. This is not an "really cheap electronic paper". It costs as least as much as an LCD and has most of the same limitations.
Persistent, reflective displays have been around for years. They're used mostly for signs, and for sunlight-readable military displays. (One of the military features - displays readable with IR night vision equipment.) These haven't been used much for e-books, but prototypes have been built.
The Bush Administration tends to act like a group of unsupervised open source programmers. They work on the things they want to work on, instead of the real problems. There's way too much attention given to concealing information, law enforcement, starting wars, rewarding contributors, and "faith based" activities. There's not enough attention given to preparing for disasters, stopping large scale white collar crime, finishing wars, stopping corruption, and making schools and social services work right.
Because of the emphasis on coverups, we find out about the failures when they become disasters too big to cover up. (Katrina, Enron, Iraq, Abramoff, and the "no child left behind" mess come to mind.) For each of those, there was enough advance warning to deal with the problem, but that didn't happen. For each, there were official denials of the problem in the early stages. For each, appropriate corrective action wasn't taken in time.
This is what happens to organizations that believe their own spin.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, language support for fixed-point is useful. Ada has it. When the compiler understands fixed point, some useful optimizations are possible. And you avoid errors due to incorrect shifting by programmers.
Why do Blu-Ray drives cost so much more than DVD drives, anyway? They're not that different.
You wish. In a big 32-bit game world, effort has to be made to re-origin the data as you move. Suppose you want vertices to be positioned to within 1cm (worse than that and you'll see it), and you're 10km from the origin. The low order bit of a 32-bit floating point number is now more than 1cm.
It's even worse for physics engines, but that's another story.
If the XBox 360 had simply been a dual- or quad-core IA-32, life would have been much simpler for the game industry.
After going to a talk at Stanford by the chief architect of the Cell processor, I'm convinced that the Cell people don't know how to use their array of eight little 256K CPUs for gaming. The speaker was clear on how you did things like RF processing for cell sites, but asked about what to do in games, said "that's Sony's problem". Remember, in the PS3, the Cell processors don't do the graphics; there's an NVidia chip for that. In the PS2, the vector processors do the graphics. From a developer perspective, these wierd machines are a huge pain. What we'd like is a multicore shared memory multiprocessor with a good graphics chip, so we can work on the game software instead of fussing with the hardware. From a business perspective, wierd architecture means that game profitability comes later in the life cycle of a console. Not good.
Second, there really is no XBox 360 shortage. Want one? Go to eBay. 1461 systems for sale today. Core system prices are steady, around $325. When and if Microsoft gets their production problems straightened out, will anybody care? Probably not, until a nice big price cut. Now, at $199...
Third, the attempt by the consumer electronics industry to put a premium price tag on HDTV players and drives may be a major flop. DVD players are going for $29 and up. Blu-Ray players at $500 to $1000 are overpriced. Lots of people can't tell the difference, anyway. It's amusing to visit the display of large-screen TVs at Fry's. Most of them are displaying the same signal, which is from an HDTV source, but about half of the "HDTV" units are actually getting their video from an NTSC signal. Most customers don't notice the difference. Sometimes the NTSC pictures look better, because the blurring masks the motion compression artifacts.
What this all looks like is a desperate attempt by the consumer electronics industry to push prices up. Way up. Probably won't work.
Application developers who used Metrowerks would disagree. They're faced with a rewrite (or dropping Mac support) because of the transition to IA-32.
Because Google doesn't own the copyright, and that would constitute a "false claim of copyright", a criminal offense.
There's plenty of material about Allied codes. Look harder. Read "Between Silk and Cyanide". Look up SIGSALY. See "Windtalkers".
Playing movies on PCs isn't that useful. PC play of HDTV movies will be so locked down that it won't be worth doing. The MPAA would prefer it if you couldn't play movies on PCs at all. Microsoft's position thus really doesn't matter all that much.
Toll Free within North America: (800) 481-7713
Toll call: (719) 457-2730
Passcode to enter call: 7134691
Netnews is ideal for this sort of thing. Once users subscribe, they'll see new messages as they are added to any of the relevant groups. No need for complicated RSS feeds, no endless paging through blogs, and no struggling to get people to visit your web site frequently. Google will even archive and index your newsgroup for you.
Big thrill.
KFC is scary. The smallest dinner they sell is a reasonably-sized meal. Most of the meals they sell are far, far bigger. And I see "wide loads" in there buying entire buckets for themselves.
Sucker!
"People like you helping people like us help ourselves" - Processed World.
Internet 2.0. Does the same things as Internet 1.0, but more complicated and costs more.
Now it's rare again. Not clear why.
If you haven't had shark, it's a tougher meat than trout or salmon. Try it broiled with lemon or lemon butter; don't overdo the sauces.
Right on schedule, about four to six hours after posting, the downward moderation appears. This happens every time a posting criticizes Steve Jobs. I wonder if there's a program searching for anti-Jobs statements, or just his fan club.
This sort of thing is why few will develop for Apple's proprietary technologies.
Remember OpenDoc.. Never forget.
In the game world, when you level up, you get better armor, better weapons, and more hit points. In the airline world, you get better seats, better meals, and more peanuts.
Then there's a plug for "Itiva", which has some technology they call "Quantum Streaming" (tm). Itiva's web site is vague, but this seems to be more about DRM than transmission: "Itiva enables publishers and media content owners to monetize media content. The technology protects copyrighted material, supports embedded advertising, and defines the future direction of video publishing over the Internet." Itiva has done a demo, one that basically demonstrates that if you have 5.5Mb/s to the user, streaming works reasonably well.
If Slashdot must accept infomercials, could they at least get a more interesting class of advertiser?
And please, put "Advertisement" on the sponsored articles. Thanks.
All e-Ink really makes is this imaging film, which is laminated to the front of displays made by others.
The cheap, flexible, paper-like display is pure hype at this point. If it happens, it probably won't be from e-Ink.
Persistent, reflective displays have been around for years. They're used mostly for signs, and for sunlight-readable military displays. (One of the military features - displays readable with IR night vision equipment.) These haven't been used much for e-books, but prototypes have been built.
When I retire the Windows 2000 machine, that will be the end of Microsoft here.
Because of the emphasis on coverups, we find out about the failures when they become disasters too big to cover up. (Katrina, Enron, Iraq, Abramoff, and the "no child left behind" mess come to mind.) For each of those, there was enough advance warning to deal with the problem, but that didn't happen. For each, there were official denials of the problem in the early stages. For each, appropriate corrective action wasn't taken in time.
This is what happens to organizations that believe their own spin.