Microsoft is many things, but it isn't stupid. They realize everything you said. Most likely, the OS in the X-Box won't be "based on Windows" other than it will have the Windows name, and support for DirectX APIs. The internals, i'm sure, will be very different. Probably based off the next version of CE.
DVD streaming! Look at the specs of the Dreamcast, for example.. Once you can standardize the platform and ensure you can write a background-streaming file loading system that can get a guaranteed DVD speed because of hardware standardization, lots of memory becomes less useful.
Also, the OS SHOULD be really light weight, compared to desktop Windows.
In the console world, 64 MB of RAM is a lot. It doesn't say anything about video mem...whether it uses AGP, etc. My guess would be 32 meg of dedicates video ram on top of the 64 MB system ram.
Once you have a nice DVD streaming system in place that you can rely on due to standardization of hardware, that's more than enough. Try playing Soul Reaver on a Playstation (2 MB of system memory!!), it uses great CD streaming that allows it to load everything in the background -- you never see a "Loading" screen once the game first loads.
Let's face it, M$ is gonna need some serious expertise if they want to pull this off. Their onlook on Operating Systems right now is, as long as it's stable enough, it'll fly. They also have a tendency to rush a production and issue bugs afterwards.
Microsoft has a fair bit of experience due to Windows CE. Windows CE may be a lot of things, but its not unstable. Try using a CE device. The OS for this console will almost certainly be a light-weight wrapper over DirectX, winsock, and very little else. Even Microsoft isn't likely to fuck that up much.
Did you ever hear about the PSX needing upgrades and service packs?
Comparing a console to a PC is useless. PSX doesn't have to worry about new hardware, non-standard hardware, etc. I don't really understand why people rip on Microsoft for service packs -- I mean, does anyone rip on Linux for having so frequent kernel upgrades?
Finally, if they need a 1 GHz processor to work this thing, then they're doing something wrong. The PS2 achieves 25M pps with only a dedicated 266 processor. A 1 GHz processor sounds like infinitely more than what's needed to power a cutting-edge gaming platform at this time.
Using Intel processors basically means you need more mhz than other true-RISC processors for the same type of performance. This need for high mhz numbers is offset by the bonus of having a standard CPU, allowing developers to easily create XBox apps on a regular PC and the Intel CPU economies of scale.
This is gonna bomb. M$ is not ready for this.
Maybe it'll bomb, but I doubt it. How many people said Sony wasn't ready to jump into the console market? Don't underestimate the power of brand and marketing. Microsoft hasn't, that's why Bill Gates is richer than God.
Patches don't need to be code patches...My guess would be that the kind of patches you'd see for this system would be in the form new maps, sound packs, etc. Due to the standardized nature of the hardware, code patches SHOULD be rare, as they are on current console systems.
Typical Microsoft nature. Step 1: Release product as fast as possible. Step 2: Release a flurry of patches to make product work.
That's not Microsoft-specific. Its the nature of virtually all closed-software companies to do that that days. Its even in the nature of most open source projects to take that same path, but due to the nature of open-source its more of a benefit than a drawback.
They won't use it as a PC replacement because it wont be as flexibly upgradable in the standard sense.
This is not entirely unlike the new generation of "WebPCs" that companies like Dell are pushing...on-paper great PCs at really low prices, but no real way to upgrade them.
The Dreamcast is more or less "off the shelf" (SH4, NEC 3D accelerator) parts and its doing fine.
Current mid-Range PC hardware is as (or mroe) powerful as a current consoles (including Dreamcast). The comparable PC, sans monitor, of course, would be about $500 retail. Streamline and standardize the case, streamline the hardware (surface mount stuff, stamp the HW out in an automated fashion, forget about standard PC-style expandability and upgradibility) and you're down into console price territory.
The reason AAA games on the Dreamcast look better than most current PC games is on the PC, you don't know what video card, sound card, etc the user is using, so you have to be fairly generic, unless you want to optimize for all potential configurations (hah hah! not likely!). Once everything is standard, companies will know what to expect, and the XBox specific distribution of these games can be fully hardware optimized.
I don't understand why people on Slashdot expect a device to be super-hackable just because it is based on Linux. This is a consumer electronics device. Any (moderately easy) access they give for hackers would result in lots of end-users who aren't tech savvy doing Something Bad to their unit and having to return it.
I'm sure that if they made any internal changes to the kernel, they'd redistribute them to avoid an Open Source backlash. However, I'm equally sure the source changes would be 100% useless for the general Linux population, just like the TIVO modifications are.
I agree that the button placement on modern controllers has gotten nothing but worse. However, I think the analog sticklets are great. They are absolutely essential to having a good experience with games like Mario64, Zelda, Soul Reaver (DC), etc. They suck ass for Capcom-style fighting games, though. IIRC (only played it once) Marvel vs Capcom 1 for the DC doesn't even support the analog stick.
For some reason, when I connect a monitor to it x won't display on the second monitor. Anyone know why this is?
Did you try plugging the monitor in before turning the system on? Many laptops will look for connections at power on, and if a monitor isnt detected, they will disable power to that circitry to save battery life.
Basically the network couldnt handle 200 people all playing quake at the same time. As if that wasnt bad enough.. people started trading warez across the network, congesting it even more so.
Umm. I'd be willing to bet the people were trading warez when the network wasn't fast enough for 200 quake players. Either that or the network was poorly setup. 200 people playing quake is not all that much. Also, I am assuming they were playing on different local servers? Although Quake2/3 can technically be boosted up to support 200+ users, the code isn't really architectured to support more than 64 players comfortably (not to mention the strain on the clients from having so many potentially viewable models).
if you open soucre that application you are not dependent on them and get additonal people working for you for free!
I think the general idea of the government supporting Open Source software is great. It will solve a lot of their problems.
However, the argument that "if you Open Source it, They will come" is easily shown to be false based on the history of open sourced projects. Getting Open Source hacker types to work on something as unsexy as groupware, especially when it was started by evil BIG BROTHER would be a neat trick. I don't see it happening.
Luckily, Linux has no decent, scalable, as-of-now-available, groupware products at all, saving us from being bashed by the Navy about their shoddy quality!!
Also, its a good thing nobody really formally tests Linux and the software built on top of it in a typical server distribution (such as Apache, a mailer daemon, etc.)!! That lucky fact allows us to ignore that "Linux", taken as any actual distribution rather than just the kernel, very likely has as many, if not more, aggregrate bugs than W2K was reported as having!!!
Do you really have any games you play where 100mbps isn't already fast enough? Even on a 10 mpbs network, the game server's cpu, or each clients individual cpu/video card is going to bottleneck way, way before the network bandwidth.
I'm being a bit anal here, but you can of course connect more than 2 computers with a crossover cable, assuming you don't mind installing multiple ethernet cards in at least one system.
A part of the problem that most people ignore is that these countries will CONTINUE to be 2nd and 3rd world if their best and brightest keep coming to America to work for American companies.
Perl has far out grown its usefulness. Its a nice language for writing report generators (surprise!). Using it as a general purpose or generic glue language is dumb, as its a horribly designed throw-in-everything-including-the-kitchen-sink-wit h-no-regard-for-consistency-or-sane-desi gn language.
I hate to be the one to piss on everyone's parade, but if you look around with Google or other such search engines, you HAVE to admit that a fair percentage of the web sites that have DeCSS do promote it as a DVD "ripping" tool, allowing it to be downloaded along-side programs which take the DVD.vob data and encode it into VCD formats which can be practically traded (by those with broadband connections) over the net.
Now, I'm not saying that minority of losers promoting DeCSS for this purpose should cause the program itself -- or the ideas within -- to be illegal. I think the MPAA/DVD-CCA are overreacting to the extreme, and should be shot down in court..But in both cases, to completely ignore the fact that (DeCSS|MP3) these technologies ARE being used to promote piracy kind of weakens us as a group. Perhaps someone has ideas on how we could HELP combat the piracy sites as a means of legitimizing DeCSS?
As you can see, unless the open source community does something pretty quick, the future for streaming media on Free Software systems won't be rosy,
Unfortunately for the "Open Source Community" it seems to be made up of 5% of people who can actually write useful source, 5% of people that do nothing but bash Microsoft or any other company that doesn't support Open Source and 90% of people that loudly proclaim what the programmers of the "Open Source Community" *MUST DO*.
I dont have the resources to mirror this, but here's the text:
Copyright (C) Playboy!!
If you think man's best friend is his pet dog, then you haven't seen the portable Model 2001 PET home computer that Commodore, an international electronics company, has just introduced at the mind-boggling price of only $595. The PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) features a TV screen, a keyboard that's as simple to use as a typewriter, a self-contained cassette recorder that is the source for programs and for storing data and a memory system. What's it do? Just about everything from maintaining personal records to answering the telephone.
Pictured here is just a sampling of PET's capabilities, beginning with a doodle of Starship Enterprise that's been drawn on the screen via one's punching keyboard keys that activate various graphic symbols, such as squares, line segments, etc.
If you don't recognize this electronic sketch, Charley, you've got no business buying a computer.
PET will also maintain your personal checkbook records on a program that logs a cumulative record of your deposits and expenses. Furthermore, it can also be programmed to give monthly balances and records of how the money was spent.
The obvious end-solution to this arms race is for the Universities to block everything by default, and then only open sites and ports deemed okay by the administration.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft is many things, but it isn't stupid. They realize everything you said. Most likely, the OS in the X-Box won't be "based on Windows" other than it will have the Windows name, and support for DirectX APIs. The internals, i'm sure, will be very different. Probably based off the next version of CE.
Also, the OS SHOULD be really light weight, compared to desktop Windows.
Once you have a nice DVD streaming system in place that you can rely on due to standardization of hardware, that's more than enough. Try playing Soul Reaver on a Playstation (2 MB of system memory!!), it uses great CD streaming that allows it to load everything in the background -- you never see a "Loading" screen once the game first loads.
Microsoft has a fair bit of experience due to Windows CE. Windows CE may be a lot of things, but its not unstable. Try using a CE device. The OS for this console will almost certainly be a light-weight wrapper over DirectX, winsock, and very little else. Even Microsoft isn't likely to fuck that up much.
Did you ever hear about the PSX needing upgrades and service packs?
Comparing a console to a PC is useless. PSX doesn't have to worry about new hardware, non-standard hardware, etc. I don't really understand why people rip on Microsoft for service packs -- I mean, does anyone rip on Linux for having so frequent kernel upgrades?
Finally, if they need a 1 GHz processor to work this thing, then they're doing something wrong. The PS2 achieves 25M pps with only a dedicated 266 processor. A 1 GHz processor sounds like infinitely more than what's needed to power a cutting-edge gaming platform at this time.
Using Intel processors basically means you need more mhz than other true-RISC processors for the same type of performance. This need for high mhz numbers is offset by the bonus of having a standard CPU, allowing developers to easily create XBox apps on a regular PC and the Intel CPU economies of scale.
This is gonna bomb. M$ is not ready for this.
Maybe it'll bomb, but I doubt it. How many people said Sony wasn't ready to jump into the console market? Don't underestimate the power of brand and marketing. Microsoft hasn't, that's why Bill Gates is richer than God.
Typical Microsoft nature. Step 1: Release product as fast as possible. Step 2: Release a flurry of patches to make product work.
That's not Microsoft-specific. Its the nature of virtually all closed-software companies to do that that days. Its even in the nature of most open source projects to take that same path, but due to the nature of open-source its more of a benefit than a drawback.
This is not entirely unlike the new generation of "WebPCs" that companies like Dell are pushing...on-paper great PCs at really low prices, but no real way to upgrade them.
The Dreamcast is more or less "off the shelf" (SH4, NEC 3D accelerator) parts and its doing fine.
Current mid-Range PC hardware is as (or mroe) powerful as a current consoles (including Dreamcast). The comparable PC, sans monitor, of course, would be about $500 retail. Streamline and standardize the case, streamline the hardware (surface mount stuff, stamp the HW out in an automated fashion, forget about standard PC-style expandability and upgradibility) and you're down into console price territory.
The reason AAA games on the Dreamcast look better than most current PC games is on the PC, you don't know what video card, sound card, etc the user is using, so you have to be fairly generic, unless you want to optimize for all potential configurations (hah hah! not likely!). Once everything is standard, companies will know what to expect, and the XBox specific distribution of these games can be fully hardware optimized.
All in all this is a disappointing Slashdot post...The "specs" are still very vague and nothing that hasn't been previously speculated upon.
Yeah, I'm talking to you..the one with the moderation points, motherfucker.
DO IT NOW!!!
I don't understand why people on Slashdot expect a device to be super-hackable just because it is based on Linux. This is a consumer electronics device. Any (moderately easy) access they give for hackers would result in lots of end-users who aren't tech savvy doing Something Bad to their unit and having to return it.
I'm sure that if they made any internal changes to the kernel, they'd redistribute them to avoid an Open Source backlash. However, I'm equally sure the source changes would be 100% useless for the general Linux population, just like the TIVO modifications are.
I agree that the button placement on modern controllers has gotten nothing but worse. However, I think the analog sticklets are great. They are absolutely essential to having a good experience with games like Mario64, Zelda, Soul Reaver (DC), etc. They suck ass for Capcom-style fighting games, though. IIRC (only played it once) Marvel vs Capcom 1 for the DC doesn't even support the analog stick.
Did you try plugging the monitor in before turning the system on? Many laptops will look for connections at power on, and if a monitor isnt detected, they will disable power to that circitry to save battery life.
Umm. I'd be willing to bet the people were trading warez when the network wasn't fast enough for 200 quake players. Either that or the network was poorly setup. 200 people playing quake is not all that much. Also, I am assuming they were playing on different local servers? Although Quake2/3 can technically be boosted up to support 200+ users, the code isn't really architectured to support more than 64 players comfortably (not to mention the strain on the clients from having so many potentially viewable models).
I think the general idea of the government supporting Open Source software is great. It will solve a lot of their problems.
However, the argument that "if you Open Source it, They will come" is easily shown to be false based on the history of open sourced projects. Getting Open Source hacker types to work on something as unsexy as groupware, especially when it was started by evil BIG BROTHER would be a neat trick. I don't see it happening.
Also, its a good thing nobody really formally tests Linux and the software built on top of it in a typical server distribution (such as Apache, a mailer daemon, etc.)!! That lucky fact allows us to ignore that "Linux", taken as any actual distribution rather than just the kernel, very likely has as many, if not more, aggregrate bugs than W2K was reported as having!!!
Oh yeah!!! Life is good in LINUXLAND!!!
Do you really have any games you play where 100mbps isn't already fast enough? Even on a 10 mpbs network, the game server's cpu, or each clients individual cpu/video card is going to bottleneck way, way before the network bandwidth.
I'm being a bit anal here, but you can of course connect more than 2 computers with a crossover cable, assuming you don't mind installing multiple ethernet cards in at least one system.
A part of the problem that most people ignore is that these countries will CONTINUE to be 2nd and 3rd world if their best and brightest keep coming to America to work for American companies.
...
Also, Tom Christensen is a fucking asshole.
Yeah but don't forget that the general effect was in commercials BEFORE being in The Matrix!
Now, I'm not saying that minority of losers promoting DeCSS for this purpose should cause the program itself -- or the ideas within -- to be illegal. I think the MPAA/DVD-CCA are overreacting to the extreme, and should be shot down in court..But in both cases, to completely ignore the fact that (DeCSS|MP3) these technologies ARE being used to promote piracy kind of weakens us as a group. Perhaps someone has ideas on how we could HELP combat the piracy sites as a means of legitimizing DeCSS?
Unfortunately for the "Open Source Community" it seems to be made up of 5% of people who can actually write useful source, 5% of people that do nothing but bash Microsoft or any other company that doesn't support Open Source and 90% of people that loudly proclaim what the programmers of the "Open Source Community" *MUST DO*.
I dont have the resources to mirror this, but here's the text:
Copyright (C) Playboy!!
If you think man's best friend is his pet dog, then you haven't seen the portable Model 2001 PET home computer that Commodore, an international electronics company, has just introduced at the mind-boggling price of only $595. The PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) features a TV screen, a keyboard that's as simple to use as a typewriter, a self-contained cassette recorder that is the source for programs and for storing data and a memory system. What's it do? Just about everything from maintaining personal records to answering the telephone.
Pictured here is just a sampling of PET's capabilities, beginning with a doodle of Starship Enterprise that's been drawn on the screen via one's punching keyboard keys that activate various graphic symbols, such as squares, line segments, etc.
If you don't recognize this electronic sketch, Charley, you've got no business buying a computer.
PET will also maintain your personal checkbook records on a program that logs a cumulative record of your deposits and expenses. Furthermore, it can also be programmed to give monthly balances and records of how the money was spent.
The obvious end-solution to this arms race is for the Universities to block everything by default, and then only open sites and ports deemed okay by the administration.