There are several other software packages with a similar problem. Microsoft SMS is a big one, as well as most McAfee Enterprise Virus scan products. I think Mark's saying this to conveniently avoid updating his software to work with Windows Vista/Windows 7 =)
So I would love to RTFA to make sure about this, but their high-performance web servers running on FreeBSD jails are down, so I can't...
But here's what I do know. FreeBSD hasn't been a supported OS on ESX Server until vSphere came out less than two weeks ago. That means that either: A) They were running on the Hosted VMware Server product, whose performance is NOT that impressive (it is a Hosted Virtualization product, not a true Hypervisor) or B) They were running the unsupported OS on ESX Server, which means there was no VMware Tools available. The drivers included in the Tools package vastly improve things like storage and network performance, which means no wonder their performance stunk.
But moreover, Jails (and other OS-virtualization schemes) are different tools entirely - comparing them to VMware is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Parallels Virtuozzo would be a much more apt comparison.
OS-Virtualization has some performance advantages, for sure. But do you want to run Windows and Linux on the same physical server? Sorry, no luck there, you're virtualizing the OS, not virtual machines. Do you want some of the features like live migration, high availability, and now features like Fault Tolerance? Those don't exist yet. I'm sure they will one day, but today they don't, or at least not with the same level of support that VMware has (or Citrix, Oracle or MS).
If you're a company that's trying to do web hosting, or run lots of very very similar systems that do the same, performance-centric task, then yes! OS Virtualization is for you! If you're like 95% of datacenters out there that have mixed workloads, mixed OS versions, and require deep features that are provided from a real system-level virtualization platform, use those.
Disclosure: I work for a VMware and Microsoft reseller, but I also run Parallels Virtuozzo in our lab, where it does an excellent job of OS-Virtualization on Itanium for multiple SQL servers...
Existing content contributed to Wikipedia was done under the GFDL license, which like the standard GPLv2 includes a "or later version" clause. Wikipedia's license includes this clause. The latest version of the GFDL now contains a section I think written to specifically allow Wikimedia to do this. See section 11, "Relicensing" here: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
For those of you thinking that this is a solution in search of a problem, let me outline where VMware is going with this. At VMworld this year, Paul Maritz (VMware CEO) outlined their strategy for the future of the desktop - a world where users are given access to applications and data regardless of the end device. Today we see desktops as more device-centric, rather than people centric. VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) is a step in the direction of device-independence. It doesn't matter if I'm at work, at home, or on the road, I can get to the same desktop, applications, and data. But going forward VMware is looking at delivering the entire desktop steamed down as a VM to a "client hypervisor", so instead of viewing as it runs remotely in a datacenter, the data is streamed down and processed locally so there's no lag induced by a high-latency link or something like that. This works great for ordinary PCs or x86-based thin clients. Where VMware is going is taking their hypervisor layer and moving it to the mobile device, so that a user can get their same desktop (or a subset of its functionality) even from their PDA/smartphone. That's the purpose of this technology long term - it's not so you can run Android in a VM on your iPhone.
Disk drives are made up of surfaces on platters. Generally, disk drives have multiple platters, with each platter having a top and bottom surface.
Currently, in a disk if one chunk of a surface has a problem, the whole disk is bad. The disk has no way to communicate which part has died. Xiotech's hooks into the firmware allow it to write around bad areas on the surface of a disk, and when a portion of a surface does fail it only has to rebuild that portion, rather than the entire disk drive.
You don't need to replace a module, because it doesn't break. See the failure rates/service event numbers from their presentations.
People are so used to disks failing. Disks shouldn't fail as often as they do, and most of the time they don't fail at all - the storage controller is at fault because the drive and the controller have such a limited language (SCSI) to talk to each other with. ISEs do away with this limitation.
I play almost exclusively on 24/7 dustbowl servers, and I actually think the map is properly balanced. The problem comes from yes, you need more teamwork on offense and on public servers this is generally in short supply. However, I will say that "more teamwork" can come down to just 2 people, a medic and a demoman. You complain about those two parts in dustbowl pt3 being impossible to break. No matter how great the defense, it's pretty easy to just pick it apart completely with an uber demo. I've popped 4 sentries in a single uber in the first cap point in part 3, and then my whole team just rushes past and destroys the remaining defense. It just takes slightly better planning and communication.
I think the other problem is stupid instant-respawn servers. These totally unbalance the map in favor of red. I no longer play on any server like that, regardless of map, but it pretty severely impacts the two pure attack/defend maps, gravelpit and dustbowl, and I think this is reflected in the stats since those are the only two maps skewed in Red's favor.
Yes, I know it sucks to sit there for 15 seconds waiting to respawn when you're defending. But guess what? The other team has to travel the whole map to get to the cap point, whereas you spawn there. Instaspawn breaks the map.
Something to remember about the 2fort death map...
The big red hot spot has 3 levels of height in play: there's the area right outside the spawn, the area below it just before the ramp room, and the area with health in the sewer pathway. All three occupy the same x,y coordinates on the map. I think this contributes to the heat of that particular spot. Would be interesting to see a vertical cross-section of that one area.
I would beg to differ. We've done testing with many tools, and VMware ESX is the fastest true virtualization suite that we've tested. First off, Virtuozzo isn't a real Virtual Machine hypervisor at all, it's a way to jail applications in a Windows environment so they don't interfere with each other; it doesn't create all-out VMs like the others. Second, your view on "hardware virtualization" assist is flawed - Intel VT and AMD-V (which are the two virtual assist features out there) both simply make it *easier* to write a Virtual Machine Monitor, not faster. VMware doesn't require AMD-V or VT except in a specific case (64-bit VMs on Intel hardware) because VMware's Binary Translation stuff is *faster* than the built-in CPU instructions. They've had more than half a decade to perfect their virtual machine monitor, and their performance is very, very good.
You see all these new Virtualization products out on the market now that require VT or AMD-V (Xen needs it for windows VMs, KVM needs it period) because now, anyone can write a reasonably-performing VM Monitor by using the build-in CPU features. But that doesn't make it faster! See this presentation from VMworld 2006 for more info: http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac9463.p df
Sonic the Hedgehog on the Genesis/Mega Drive gave SEGA the kind of killer app which propelled them to the #1 spot in the US console market in the early 90's after being far behind Nintendo and their (S)NES Juggernaut.
SAS is not designed to be used by a SATA controller. If you wanted your cheapo SATA controller to work with SAS drives, it wouldn't be a cheapo controller. The difference between SAS and SATA is that SAS uses SCSI as its command language, which requires a whole different set of logic on the controller end. If you're a workstation user looking for a speed boost, then you use SCSI or SAS drives with a proper controller like workstations have since 1990.
And Flash drives have almost no chance of penetration in the server market, which is where this drive is being targeted (not at Laptop or Workstation users). Don't let the 2.5" form factor make you think it's for laptops, it's for high density servers or blades.
Server 2003 is a whole lot more than XP Pro. Where as Windows 2000 Professional and Windows 2000 Server shared a lot of underlying tech, XP Pro is a whole different internal version (windows 5.1) than 2003 (windows 5.2), and the additional functionality added by 2003 R2 makes it do even more.
1080i is 1080 lines of resolution, they're just not all refreshed in the same frame. The resolution of the stream is still 1920x1080. I don't know where you got 576 from, but even if you're talking about one field of a 1080i stream then it's 540 lines, but there's two of those every 30th of a second. So no, if you have a TV that isn't 1920x1080, then you'd want 1280x720 - not 640x480...
...how the hell are you supposed to stack anything on top of it??
Cause, y'know, stacking things on top of a massive-heat-producing electronics device which is probably sitting in a poorly insulated stereo cabinet or on the carpet is a great idea!
I'm not a Linux person, but I know a way you could do this with Windows Server 2003 DNS Server... It has an option called "conditional forwarding" where you can forward anything ending with "example.com" to the DNS server x.x.x.x - just set up the DNS server and then set conditional forwarding of the domains you want to allow to a real DNS server. We use this for setting up trusts between separate Active Directories but it could conceivably be used for this purpose as well.
Google's whitepaper is interesting but the fact is that DC in the Datacenter is already happening, and it's not gaining much momentum for multiple reasons. Google's perspective is rather unique, they use super-cheap desktop systems that individually do not use a lot of power and thus running them off 12v DC might make sense. But in any other, more conventional datacenter, servers have multiple power supplies that can EACH pull 800w of power. Now when you're running 110v AC that means you're pulling ~7 amps through a single cable. You need datacenter grade power cables for this, but it's still sane. Now you can get datacenter equipment that runs 48v DC, but those cables end up running ~15 amps through them, so now you need substantially stronger cable - cable so thick that running it becomes a seriously difficult task due to the guage of the wire! More likely the direction people are going (and have been for some time) is to 208v AC or 3 phase 220v AC. Now you've just halved the current draw, meaning that your PDUs don't need to be as hefty, your wire doesn't have to be as thick, your coils don't get as hot, etc. Running 12v DC in any real data center would be ludicrous - the amount of current you'd have to draw through your cables would be way beyond a safe level. Also AC/DC conversions are cheap these days. And remember, DC can kill you just as easily as AC when your DC Voltage is that low.
...but in a corporate setting. At home I wouldn't dare run without admin, too much stuff doesn't work. But in an office setting like that it's very easy to manage without admin.
My recommendation is setup shortcuts that use runas.exe whenever you have something that needs admin access. Use/env to use the current uesr's profile as this fixes most problems that installers and programs have. As long as you setup things to use admin that need them, you can have a workable system. I've done that for a couple family members and it's worked out fine. And no spyware for them!
The actual computer is not a "hard drive". The thing that the monitor sits on top of is the computer.
A Mac is a PC (is a Mac)
A floppy/diskette drive and a zip drive are not the same.
The CD-ROM is not a cupholder.
No matter what the web page says, you did not win anything. You never win anything online.
Someone does not have "The Internet", just like someone does not have "The Highway."
The monitor is not a "TV Screen."
Unless you continually try to win things online by clicking on the web page (in blatant violation of the aforementioned rule), if there's some folder and you don't know what it does, chances are it's important.
While the guy makes some good points, there's one point I think he's overlooking. He claims motive for this would be to allow Microsoft or someone else to get into older/current Windows systems as an intentional backdoor...
If that's the case, they chose a dumb place to put it, because the exploit doesn't even work on Windows 2000 and below without some program installed to handle WMF files. From Larry Seltzer's blog (linked from F-Secure):
Except for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, no Windows versions, in their default configuration, have a default association for WMF files, and none of their Paint programs or any other standard programs installed with them can read WMF files. One ironic point to conclude is that not until their most recent operating system versions did Microsoft include a default handler - the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer - for what has been, for years, an obsolete file format. And now it comes back to bite them.
That means that unless Microsoft used some OTHER backdoor to install a handler for it, this backdoor is useless. I suspect this is merely an oversight on their part, and that it just ends up looking bad when you view it from the outside. The only way to know is to see the source code and well, we know how likely that is.
A real backdoor would be something remotely exploitable via the network, as opposed to hiding inside a file or something like that.
allowing you the chance to step into the shoes of Abraham Lincoln or Ghengis Khan, as you choose.
Gee, that's interesting, considering http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/home.htmCiv4 doesn't have Lincoln as a leader! (click Civilizations in the flash thingy, it's the first civ selected in the next screen).
Seriously, these reviews could be written after playing the games in question for an hour. It's spitting out the feature list of each game but devoting a paragraph to each feature.
How do the new characters in SC3 actually play? Do they fit in well? What about The Movies, what are some of the interesting scripts you come across? What are some of the genres you have access to? Are there any sort of ties between real movies and the fictional ones? Or are there actor stereotypes like the Arnold-ripoff or something like that? How well does Civ4 play now that it's 3D? (Answer: poorly)
BTW for my opinion on Civ4: 3 was a better game, and it ran a HELL of a lot faster. 4 is a dog, even on a 3GHz with Geforce6600GT. I ran Civ3 on a freaking 366MHz laptop, and it performed decently. Yes, 3D means you need more horsepower but the game runs rediculously slow even on modern PCs. I can't even use the numpad to move units around anymore because you have to hit the direction, wait for the unit to move, then hit it again, because moving the damn unit one square takes 3 seconds and the game will not queue up movement commands input via the keyboard! Does something that obvious make it into the review, though? No.
Why does Hemos think that backing things up to a RAID0 which is "slower" is a convenient thing?
RAID0 is FASTER than a single drive configuration, because you're doubling the number of spindles and heads working together. It also offers NO REDUNDANCY so backing up anything to a RAID0 is completely and utterly retarded. He's got everything ass-backwards.
This is why reviews on Slashdot are moronic, whether it's Zork's misinformed and useless game reviews or hardware reviews by the tech-uneducated editors. Stick to linking to real review sites guys, please.
Now watch in a day there will be a Slashdot story linking to Hemos's review...
No, I think you underestimate the "average home theater buff." The home theater buffs I know (including myself) would be appalled at the quality of a recompressed DVD movie, nevermind the fact that you lose out on any extras the disc might have in almost any standard consumer-viewable, downloadable format. Most home theater buffs are waiting for one of the two High Def DVD formats to really take off so they can get content for their HD sets... not waiting to feed it subpar standard def video that's poorer quality than their DVD collection.
The people interested in this will be the same people interested in iTunes - the average consumer of music (or in this case, movies). Most people want their music to sound "good enough" - no self-respecting audiophile would settle for 128kbps AAC, let alone the headphone jack on an iPod.
Slashdot Mirror
There are several other software packages with a similar problem. Microsoft SMS is a big one, as well as most McAfee Enterprise Virus scan products.
I think Mark's saying this to conveniently avoid updating his software to work with Windows Vista/Windows 7 =)
So I would love to RTFA to make sure about this, but their high-performance web servers running on FreeBSD jails are down, so I can't...
But here's what I do know. FreeBSD hasn't been a supported OS on ESX Server until vSphere came out less than two weeks ago. That means that either:
A) They were running on the Hosted VMware Server product, whose performance is NOT that impressive (it is a Hosted Virtualization product, not a true Hypervisor)
or B) They were running the unsupported OS on ESX Server, which means there was no VMware Tools available. The drivers included in the Tools package vastly improve things like storage and network performance, which means no wonder their performance stunk.
But moreover, Jails (and other OS-virtualization schemes) are different tools entirely - comparing them to VMware is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Parallels Virtuozzo would be a much more apt comparison.
OS-Virtualization has some performance advantages, for sure. But do you want to run Windows and Linux on the same physical server? Sorry, no luck there, you're virtualizing the OS, not virtual machines. Do you want some of the features like live migration, high availability, and now features like Fault Tolerance? Those don't exist yet. I'm sure they will one day, but today they don't, or at least not with the same level of support that VMware has (or Citrix, Oracle or MS).
If you're a company that's trying to do web hosting, or run lots of very very similar systems that do the same, performance-centric task, then yes! OS Virtualization is for you! If you're like 95% of datacenters out there that have mixed workloads, mixed OS versions, and require deep features that are provided from a real system-level virtualization platform, use those.
Disclosure: I work for a VMware and Microsoft reseller, but I also run Parallels Virtuozzo in our lab, where it does an excellent job of OS-Virtualization on Itanium for multiple SQL servers...
Existing content contributed to Wikipedia was done under the GFDL license, which like the standard GPLv2 includes a "or later version" clause. Wikipedia's license includes this clause.
The latest version of the GFDL now contains a section I think written to specifically allow Wikimedia to do this. See section 11, "Relicensing" here:
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
For those of you thinking that this is a solution in search of a problem, let me outline where VMware is going with this.
At VMworld this year, Paul Maritz (VMware CEO) outlined their strategy for the future of the desktop - a world where users are given access to applications and data regardless of the end device. Today we see desktops as more device-centric, rather than people centric. VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) is a step in the direction of device-independence. It doesn't matter if I'm at work, at home, or on the road, I can get to the same desktop, applications, and data.
But going forward VMware is looking at delivering the entire desktop steamed down as a VM to a "client hypervisor", so instead of viewing as it runs remotely in a datacenter, the data is streamed down and processed locally so there's no lag induced by a high-latency link or something like that.
This works great for ordinary PCs or x86-based thin clients. Where VMware is going is taking their hypervisor layer and moving it to the mobile device, so that a user can get their same desktop (or a subset of its functionality) even from their PDA/smartphone. That's the purpose of this technology long term - it's not so you can run Android in a VM on your iPhone.
Disk drives are made up of surfaces on platters. Generally, disk drives have multiple platters, with each platter having a top and bottom surface.
Currently, in a disk if one chunk of a surface has a problem, the whole disk is bad. The disk has no way to communicate which part has died.
Xiotech's hooks into the firmware allow it to write around bad areas on the surface of a disk, and when a portion of a surface does fail it only has to rebuild that portion, rather than the entire disk drive.
You don't need to replace a module, because it doesn't break. See the failure rates/service event numbers from their presentations.
People are so used to disks failing. Disks shouldn't fail as often as they do, and most of the time they don't fail at all - the storage controller is at fault because the drive and the controller have such a limited language (SCSI) to talk to each other with. ISEs do away with this limitation.
I play almost exclusively on 24/7 dustbowl servers, and I actually think the map is properly balanced. The problem comes from yes, you need more teamwork on offense and on public servers this is generally in short supply. However, I will say that "more teamwork" can come down to just 2 people, a medic and a demoman. You complain about those two parts in dustbowl pt3 being impossible to break. No matter how great the defense, it's pretty easy to just pick it apart completely with an uber demo. I've popped 4 sentries in a single uber in the first cap point in part 3, and then my whole team just rushes past and destroys the remaining defense. It just takes slightly better planning and communication.
I think the other problem is stupid instant-respawn servers. These totally unbalance the map in favor of red. I no longer play on any server like that, regardless of map, but it pretty severely impacts the two pure attack/defend maps, gravelpit and dustbowl, and I think this is reflected in the stats since those are the only two maps skewed in Red's favor.
Yes, I know it sucks to sit there for 15 seconds waiting to respawn when you're defending. But guess what? The other team has to travel the whole map to get to the cap point, whereas you spawn there. Instaspawn breaks the map.
Something to remember about the 2fort death map...
The big red hot spot has 3 levels of height in play: there's the area right outside the spawn, the area below it just before the ramp room, and the area with health in the sewer pathway. All three occupy the same x,y coordinates on the map. I think this contributes to the heat of that particular spot. Would be interesting to see a vertical cross-section of that one area.
A headshot gives 2 points.
Of course Blackberry requires a Microsoft Exchange backend - so it's very very closely tied to a lucrative Microsoft platform.
I would beg to differ.
p df
We've done testing with many tools, and VMware ESX is the fastest true virtualization suite that we've tested.
First off, Virtuozzo isn't a real Virtual Machine hypervisor at all, it's a way to jail applications in a Windows environment so they don't interfere with each other; it doesn't create all-out VMs like the others.
Second, your view on "hardware virtualization" assist is flawed - Intel VT and AMD-V (which are the two virtual assist features out there) both simply make it *easier* to write a Virtual Machine Monitor, not faster. VMware doesn't require AMD-V or VT except in a specific case (64-bit VMs on Intel hardware) because VMware's Binary Translation stuff is *faster* than the built-in CPU instructions. They've had more than half a decade to perfect their virtual machine monitor, and their performance is very, very good.
You see all these new Virtualization products out on the market now that require VT or AMD-V (Xen needs it for windows VMs, KVM needs it period) because now, anyone can write a reasonably-performing VM Monitor by using the build-in CPU features. But that doesn't make it faster!
See this presentation from VMworld 2006 for more info:
http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac9463.
Sonic the Hedgehog on the Genesis/Mega Drive gave SEGA the kind of killer app which propelled them to the #1 spot in the US console market in the early 90's after being far behind Nintendo and their (S)NES Juggernaut.
SAS is not designed to be used by a SATA controller. If you wanted your cheapo SATA controller to work with SAS drives, it wouldn't be a cheapo controller. The difference between SAS and SATA is that SAS uses SCSI as its command language, which requires a whole different set of logic on the controller end.
If you're a workstation user looking for a speed boost, then you use SCSI or SAS drives with a proper controller like workstations have since 1990.
And Flash drives have almost no chance of penetration in the server market, which is where this drive is being targeted (not at Laptop or Workstation users). Don't let the 2.5" form factor make you think it's for laptops, it's for high density servers or blades.
Server 2003 is a whole lot more than XP Pro. Where as Windows 2000 Professional and Windows 2000 Server shared a lot of underlying tech, XP Pro is a whole different internal version (windows 5.1) than 2003 (windows 5.2), and the additional functionality added by 2003 R2 makes it do even more.
1080i is 1080 lines of resolution, they're just not all refreshed in the same frame. The resolution of the stream is still 1920x1080. I don't know where you got 576 from, but even if you're talking about one field of a 1080i stream then it's 540 lines, but there's two of those every 30th of a second. So no, if you have a TV that isn't 1920x1080, then you'd want 1280x720 - not 640x480...
Cause, y'know, stacking things on top of a massive-heat-producing electronics device which is probably sitting in a poorly insulated stereo cabinet or on the carpet is a great idea!
I'm not a Linux person, but I know a way you could do this with Windows Server 2003 DNS Server...
It has an option called "conditional forwarding" where you can forward anything ending with "example.com" to the DNS server x.x.x.x - just set up the DNS server and then set conditional forwarding of the domains you want to allow to a real DNS server.
We use this for setting up trusts between separate Active Directories but it could conceivably be used for this purpose as well.
Google's whitepaper is interesting but the fact is that DC in the Datacenter is already happening, and it's not gaining much momentum for multiple reasons.
Google's perspective is rather unique, they use super-cheap desktop systems that individually do not use a lot of power and thus running them off 12v DC might make sense. But in any other, more conventional datacenter, servers have multiple power supplies that can EACH pull 800w of power. Now when you're running 110v AC that means you're pulling ~7 amps through a single cable. You need datacenter grade power cables for this, but it's still sane. Now you can get datacenter equipment that runs 48v DC, but those cables end up running ~15 amps through them, so now you need substantially stronger cable - cable so thick that running it becomes a seriously difficult task due to the guage of the wire!
More likely the direction people are going (and have been for some time) is to 208v AC or 3 phase 220v AC. Now you've just halved the current draw, meaning that your PDUs don't need to be as hefty, your wire doesn't have to be as thick, your coils don't get as hot, etc.
Running 12v DC in any real data center would be ludicrous - the amount of current you'd have to draw through your cables would be way beyond a safe level.
Also AC/DC conversions are cheap these days. And remember, DC can kill you just as easily as AC when your DC Voltage is that low.
...but in a corporate setting. At home I wouldn't dare run without admin, too much stuff doesn't work. But in an office setting like that it's very easy to manage without admin.
/env to use the current uesr's profile as this fixes most problems that installers and programs have. As long as you setup things to use admin that need them, you can have a workable system. I've done that for a couple family members and it's worked out fine. And no spyware for them!
My recommendation is setup shortcuts that use runas.exe whenever you have something that needs admin access. Use
The actual computer is not a "hard drive". The thing that the monitor sits on top of is the computer.
A Mac is a PC (is a Mac)
A floppy/diskette drive and a zip drive are not the same.
The CD-ROM is not a cupholder.
No matter what the web page says, you did not win anything. You never win anything online.
Someone does not have "The Internet", just like someone does not have "The Highway."
The monitor is not a "TV Screen."
Unless you continually try to win things online by clicking on the web page (in blatant violation of the aforementioned rule), if there's some folder and you don't know what it does, chances are it's important.
Confirmation dialog boxes are there for a reason.
Feel free to add more.
If that's the case, they chose a dumb place to put it, because the exploit doesn't even work on Windows 2000 and below without some program installed to handle WMF files. From Larry Seltzer's blog (linked from F-Secure):
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/seltzer/archive/2006/01/ 03/39684.aspx
That means that unless Microsoft used some OTHER backdoor to install a handler for it, this backdoor is useless. I suspect this is merely an oversight on their part, and that it just ends up looking bad when you view it from the outside. The only way to know is to see the source code and well, we know how likely that is.
A real backdoor would be something remotely exploitable via the network, as opposed to hiding inside a file or something like that.
Gee, that's interesting, considering http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/home.htmCiv4 doesn't have Lincoln as a leader! (click Civilizations in the flash thingy, it's the first civ selected in the next screen).
Seriously, these reviews could be written after playing the games in question for an hour. It's spitting out the feature list of each game but devoting a paragraph to each feature.
How do the new characters in SC3 actually play? Do they fit in well? What about The Movies, what are some of the interesting scripts you come across? What are some of the genres you have access to? Are there any sort of ties between real movies and the fictional ones? Or are there actor stereotypes like the Arnold-ripoff or something like that? How well does Civ4 play now that it's 3D? (Answer: poorly)
BTW for my opinion on Civ4: 3 was a better game, and it ran a HELL of a lot faster. 4 is a dog, even on a 3GHz with Geforce6600GT. I ran Civ3 on a freaking 366MHz laptop, and it performed decently. Yes, 3D means you need more horsepower but the game runs rediculously slow even on modern PCs. I can't even use the numpad to move units around anymore because you have to hit the direction, wait for the unit to move, then hit it again, because moving the damn unit one square takes 3 seconds and the game will not queue up movement commands input via the keyboard! Does something that obvious make it into the review, though? No.
It's missing The Animated Adventures, which Paramount has said they plan on releasing on DVD at some point next year.
And I think it's sad that of the Star Trek stories to be posted, this makes the front page where as the passing of Michael Piller doesn't.
Why does Hemos think that backing things up to a RAID0 which is "slower" is a convenient thing?
RAID0 is FASTER than a single drive configuration, because you're doubling the number of spindles and heads working together. It also offers NO REDUNDANCY so backing up anything to a RAID0 is completely and utterly retarded. He's got everything ass-backwards.
This is why reviews on Slashdot are moronic, whether it's Zork's misinformed and useless game reviews or hardware reviews by the tech-uneducated editors. Stick to linking to real review sites guys, please.
Now watch in a day there will be a Slashdot story linking to Hemos's review...
No, I think you underestimate the "average home theater buff." The home theater buffs I know (including myself) would be appalled at the quality of a recompressed DVD movie, nevermind the fact that you lose out on any extras the disc might have in almost any standard consumer-viewable, downloadable format. Most home theater buffs are waiting for one of the two High Def DVD formats to really take off so they can get content for their HD sets... not waiting to feed it subpar standard def video that's poorer quality than their DVD collection.
The people interested in this will be the same people interested in iTunes - the average consumer of music (or in this case, movies). Most people want their music to sound "good enough" - no self-respecting audiophile would settle for 128kbps AAC, let alone the headphone jack on an iPod.