Whilst Google does undoubtedly make intriguing software, it remains to be seen how long this innovation can continue.
I would also question just how far they can take their existing product line, and how long they will remain safe from the other big players (e.g. MS, etc).
Google Earth, Google Maps, et al are funky little things in their own right, but they are somewhat reminiscent of applications you'd expect college students to come out with. High on technical merit, low on ROI.
Also, I think the original article was reflecting more on Googles (in)visibility rather than the strength of its product line. Perhaps Google is being intentionally misleading to analysts because it doesn't want the rigmarole of facts and financial figures to detract from the halcyon "its Google so it must by definition be grate!" (sic) public perception.
Presumably the expert was alluding to the fact that an incident such as this, so soon after WTC, could take on a greater significance than had it been looked at in isolation.
It could lead to an escalation in hysteria, racial hatred and so forth from otherwise-rational people who believe the end of the World is nigh, or something.
Case in point: Following the London attacks there was a bomb scare in Birmingham (about 120 miles North) which resulted in 20,000+ people being evacuated from the city centre. It turned out to be a firework. Taken in isolation I'm sure the response to something like this would be a lot more measured, but coming so soon after the events in London everyone (including the Police) reacted in a typical knee-jerk fashion.
I guess my point is that there is obviously never "a good time" for a plane to crash into a neighbourhood, but there is certainly a less dramatic time for it to happen.
If you discount the Windows-based BIOS updaters (which I don't fully trust anyway, I don't like the idea of some other extraneous process being able to pre-empt the BIOS flash) then aren't floppy disks the only viable solution to flash motherboard BIOS?
There's also plenty of other things that still require floppy drives/disks - e.g. Memtest, various hard drive low-level diagnostic tools, etc
Would I hesitate to kill a combine soldier if the face was too real? Would I develop a pathetic geek crush on Alex? I'm really curious about this. And I want to see this level of realism that they deemed to be too much.
Actually it's Alyx. If you're going to talk about super-hot babes like her at least do her the service of spelling her name right.
Smith & Wesson should absolutely fire someone who chooses to use a gun (whether it be made by S&W, or anyone else) in their personal life to shoot people indiscriminately, and then go on TV to tell the World about it.
Are you incapable of seeing the conflict of interests between someone saying they don't agree with copyright/IPR, and a company whose business depends on copyright/IPR ?
The problem is, you went on TV and to all intents and purposes openly supported what is by current Law an illegal practice.
If I went on TV and proudly proclaimed that I stole from shops on a regular basis, or even that I sympathised with those that did I would expect my employer to have a very dim view of my ethics from thereon.
The difference in this case from what I can gather is that your views on copyright infringement are in DIRECT contrast with the business objectives of the company you work(ed) for. It's not like you went on TV and expressed a view on cannabis legalisation. Your views as shown on the programme go against the principal business model of the company.
There is no tenable position they could've maintained by letting you continue to work there.
One exception to this that I can think of, for me, has been my NVIDIA card.
I have been an ATI fanboy for as long as I can remember, but having heard about ATIs dire driver support on Linux I plumped for a Nvidia card for my Shuttle. Installing the drivers for this simply involved me running the installer, clicking "Next" a couple of times - and that's it....well almost. I obviously had to manually tweak my Xorg config to use the accelerated driver - but that's not Nvidia's fault:)
It's a shame not all hardware is this simple to install.
I recently installed Fedora Core 4 at home to run a local DNS server, DynDNS daemon, MythTV and a few other things. I'm pretty savvy with Linux and sysadmin for a living (as well as programming) so you could say I have an affinity for problem-solving.
That said, I have struggled in recent days getting everything I've wanted to install working correctly. Largely this has been due to GCC4.0 incompatibilities (many apps just don't compile at all from source without patches), but also because lots of exotic RPMs (Myth being a prime example) have not yet been built for FC4.
A lot of things I have had to compile manually from sources when I had originally set out to use yum to manage everything (I've recently been converted to the ease-of-use and practicalities of RHEL and Redhat Network).
Another poster commented that Linux is perfectly capable as a desktop OS - until you need to install an application, play a game or upgrade their hardware. Joking aside, this statement is 100% accurate.
In my endeavours trying to install all of my "exotic" applications like a movie player (xine), NZB downloader (klibido) I have either run into problems where the currently available RPMs are buggy, or the sources just don't compile out of the box. How can any non-technical person be expected to deal with this?
If you contrast this with Windows, I think the only time I have had a failed installation with a piece of software I have downloaded has been when it has required.NET Framework, and I haven't got it installed. At no time have I ever downloaded something and it started telling me that various specific versions compiled against specific architectures are missing, and I cannot continue.
Linux will need to standardise itself a lot more if it is going to be a force on the desktop. RPM/yum/apt-get and so on is a step in the right direction, but its still voodoo for most people. Unfortunately I beleive this standardisation is in stark contrast with what most techies (myself included in some way) believe the strength of Linux to be - i.e. diversity and the "joy" of compiling things manually.
Hanff has made no secret of his views (which is why the Beeb interviewed him!); and it's reasonable to suspect that his employer was aware (or could reasonably be expected to be aware) of said views, and hired him anyway.
Whilst I agree with the bulk of your post, I disgree with the above statement.
Regardless of your personal stance on copyright/IPR anyone with half a brain must realise that disagreeing with it is a "negative viewpoint", particularly as exercising your beliefs in this context is actually illegal.
No one would knowingly walk into an interview for an IT company and say "By the way folks, I dont believe in copyright/IPR and actually provide a service [dvdr-core.com] to facilitate software piracy. What's the pension scheme like?".
By the same token you couldn't reasonably expect a company interviewing someone who has applied for a post to have such a radically opposing point of view on a subject which is core to the companys ideals.
As much as I think the company is actually in the right here in view of the circumstances, them offering him a revised 3 month severance package when he had only been with the company a week kinda sounds like even they aren't sure whether what they've done is legal.
They may have shot themselves in the foot legally with that offer.
Apologies if this is a stupid question, but since the DVD version is not available yet - can I create my own simply by copying all of the relevant files from the individial.isos into one big one?
The Brother Industries high speed inkjet printer in prototype form. Codenamed Cobra, this little puppy can spit out any size of print output at around 170 pages per minute. OK, you want me to back up and repeat that? Any size of printed inkjet paper output at 170 pages every sixty seconds. Demonstrated for the first time ever last week at a Brother press seminar. How are they doing it? Well....
So apparently the secret lies in the use of new Piezo Inkjet Line Head technology, which prints at 600×600 dpi, but doesn't actually move at all. The ink is transferred at high speed as the paper passes underneath the static nozzles. (see below left - click on all images for full view)
In order to get the throughput, the printer contains a separate head for each colour, so that the paper receives all the ink in one high speed sweep. The passel of assembled journalists at the demonstration last week saw this beast churn out 150 A6 pages a minute without drawing breath, which was pretty darn impressive. (see below right for a scan of the actual printed output)
The company boffins at the demo told us that in order to achieve this speed for larger paper sizes, they just need to connect up more heads in a wider array. For instance, two heads joined together longways would give A4 printing. The concept of poster sized inkjet prints being produced at offset litho printing speeds is little short of miraculous. But just think of the ink costs...ouch!
Apparently this technology also features the lowest power requirements of any inkjet head on the market, and is smaller than equivalent spec products, which should eventually mean good things for home as well as industrial users. Eventually? Well, the technology was first announced at this year's Cebit exhibition in Germany, but this was the first ever live demonstration to the media, and the company is being very coy on any production dates. In fact it seems that the tech needs some co-operative funding (i.e. a production partner?) in order to progress further. And no word on potential retail pricing was given either.
So for now the printer is seeing action only at the World Fair in Aichi, Japan, printing out A6 sheets for tourist visitors to the Brother pavilion. Here's hoping we see more of this amazing technology sooner rather than later. In the meantime here's a PDF of the technology paper.
Specification Notes. Head - 2656 nozzles per head, 600 dpi, 108 mm width (4.25 inches). Print speed - 800 mm per second. Energy saving - Deformable Piezo actuator provides 1/14 of the power requirement of conventional nozzles. For example, the A6 picture sample on the right requires only 3 watts of power, at 150 sheets per minute. Size - Trapezoidal nozzle zone shape provides for dense arrangement of cavities. The result is a head which is 152 mm wide, 22 mm deep and 1 mm high. Heads can be arranged in longer arrays as needed. Droplet size - Unspecified. 4 sizes available. Reliability - 10 billion dots/nozzle or more (still testing).
The scanned picture which the article mentions was continuously printed at 150 pages per minute is here. As sample images go it does contain a lot of colour, I would've assumed a "150 pages per minute" claim would've been in non-Real World cases like printing 8 coloured pixels on a piece of A4.
I think the first sentence of your second paragraph would me more appropriate if reworded to say:
"Frankly, I think you can find problems and features in most programs you hate"
Fact is - the principal of this application could be applied to any number of apps, and I'd wager there are just as many memory leaks in Firefox, Photoshop, CuteFTP or pretty much any program you care to mention.
You could write the same app and call it a "Firefox memory leak finder", but I doubt it'd make front page news as in this case.
Granted, but you have to wonder how impartial Rotten Tomatoes (or rather the reviewers upon which it bases its overall rating) are. My guess is that ~60% when taken in the context of being a Star Wars movie (which to many can do no wrong) is not that great a review.
As far as Star Wars movies go, the scale probably starts at around 50%:)
To be honest though Lucas didn't have an awful lot to do for this film - he already knew how it had to end. I'm no writer but I'd wager it is a lot easier to formulate a screenplay when you already know exactly what it has to achieve to be considered a success.
Contrast that with Episodes I and II, where Lucas had very little in terms of pre-ordained plot development - the result was obvious, Jar Jar Binks et al.
Not to mention of course that since Episodes I and II were poorly received (62% and 65% respectively), reviews of this film were (and are already) bound to draw comparisons and as such favour it accordingly anyway.
For me one of the worst things about the previous two films in the franchise is that because they were continuations (albeit prequels) of what had already become legendary - no one had to try very hard. As a result the acting is wooden, the dialogue stunted and insincere, etc. Reminds me of the cringeworthy Matrix sequels.
Anyway, I personally believe that if the film didn't happen to include the words "Star Wars" in the title, that we would be seeing completely different reviews. And I consider myself to be an avid Star Wars fan to boot.
the consensus appears to be that this is the best film of the prequels and it should satisfy fans who were unhappy with the first two...which isn't exactly difficult given the bar has been set so low by the previous two prequels.
It does look however as if the Star Wars prequels will actually achieve the polar opposite levels of critical acclaim as the Matrix trilogy did (i.e. Matrix/SWEP3:ROTS - great, Matrix Reloaded/SWEP2:AOTC - good-ish, Matrix Revolutions/SWEP1:TPM - dire)
It could just be that more and more people have resigned themselves to the fact that spam is here to stay. Whether you could (or should) attribute that to the spam having diminished impact on these people is questionable.
I get so much spam nowadays (which is thankfully filtered by SpamAssassin) that I no longer have time to sift through my spam folders looking for potential false positives, so using this articles logic you could argue I was more "accepting" of it, when really I have just resigned myself to forever receiving spam.
They are right about one thing though - CAN-SPAM has proven to be virtually useless.
Unless he is so gifted that he could decode whichever client/server protocol iTunes uses in one-shot without having to connect his partially-written client several times like us mere mortal programmers would, then at some point he will have connected to iTunes with an illegitimate application and thus broken the ToS. I imagine at the very least it will have been connected once to test that it actually works....unless he has also written an iTunes server as well, but that's a whole other ball game.
I was eagerly anticipating Tekken 5, but when I found out that they had removed the wall pushes (where you push an opponent into a wall to score a free combo) I was unsure. Having played the new game however, its clear that a huge amount of time has been spent balancing the characters out more.
Also, whereas the previous incarnations new characters were essentially just rehashes of existing ones in different costumes - the new game boasts completely different moves for all of the "clone" characters from the previous games. Lee, Asuka and Wang are all potent characters in their own right now - and not obvious clones of Law, Jun and Michelle respectively.
The graphics are considerably better than Tekken 4, which is no small feat when you consider the arcade board is - unlike Tekken 4 - significantly more advanced in terms of processing power than the PS2.
All in all the new game improves on everything that was good in the previous series.
My only real criticism is of the "costume" system, whereby after earning gold coins when defeating opponents in certain modes you can purchase different clothing, etc for the different characters. Unfortunately the selection of addons is very small and most people I suspect will find themselves quite frustrated.
Re:Maybe something I'll look into
on
SLI Primer
·
· Score: 1
The problem with that way of thinking is that 18 months after the initial purchase, the then current generation graphics cards would eclipse the performance of two, by then, older gen cards.
Not only that, but this equal performance would come at the cost of twice the space occupied inside your case, plus twice the power utilisation.
SLI is really only suitable for gaming fanatics, and it is as much a self-obsoleting technology as the cards it links.
Slashdot Mirror
Whilst Google does undoubtedly make intriguing software, it remains to be seen how long this innovation can continue.
I would also question just how far they can take their existing product line, and how long they will remain safe from the other big players (e.g. MS, etc).
Google Earth, Google Maps, et al are funky little things in their own right, but they are somewhat reminiscent of applications you'd expect college students to come out with. High on technical merit, low on ROI.
Also, I think the original article was reflecting more on Googles (in)visibility rather than the strength of its product line. Perhaps Google is being intentionally misleading to analysts because it doesn't want the rigmarole of facts and financial figures to detract from the halcyon "its Google so it must by definition be grate!" (sic) public perception.
Presumably the expert was alluding to the fact that an incident such as this, so soon after WTC, could take on a greater significance than had it been looked at in isolation.
It could lead to an escalation in hysteria, racial hatred and so forth from otherwise-rational people who believe the end of the World is nigh, or something.
Case in point: Following the London attacks there was a bomb scare in Birmingham (about 120 miles North) which resulted in 20,000+ people being evacuated from the city centre. It turned out to be a firework. Taken in isolation I'm sure the response to something like this would be a lot more measured, but coming so soon after the events in London everyone (including the Police) reacted in a typical knee-jerk fashion.
I guess my point is that there is obviously never "a good time" for a plane to crash into a neighbourhood, but there is certainly a less dramatic time for it to happen.
If you discount the Windows-based BIOS updaters (which I don't fully trust anyway, I don't like the idea of some other extraneous process being able to pre-empt the BIOS flash) then aren't floppy disks the only viable solution to flash motherboard BIOS?
There's also plenty of other things that still require floppy drives/disks - e.g. Memtest, various hard drive low-level diagnostic tools, etc
Would I hesitate to kill a combine soldier if the face was too real? Would I develop a pathetic geek crush on Alex? I'm really curious about this. And I want to see this level of realism that they deemed to be too much.
Actually it's Alyx. If you're going to talk about super-hot babes like her at least do her the service of spelling her name right.
Oh, darn.
Thanks for the Quake3-HOWTO, you saved me a few hours of head scratching and searching for obscure pages on Google.
Smith & Wesson should absolutely fire someone who chooses to use a gun (whether it be made by S&W, or anyone else) in their personal life to shoot people indiscriminately, and then go on TV to tell the World about it.
Are you incapable of seeing the conflict of interests between someone saying they don't agree with copyright/IPR, and a company whose business depends on copyright/IPR ?
The problem is, you went on TV and to all intents and purposes openly supported what is by current Law an illegal practice.
If I went on TV and proudly proclaimed that I stole from shops on a regular basis, or even that I sympathised with those that did I would expect my employer to have a very dim view of my ethics from thereon.
The difference in this case from what I can gather is that your views on copyright infringement are in DIRECT contrast with the business objectives of the company you work(ed) for. It's not like you went on TV and expressed a view on cannabis legalisation. Your views as shown on the programme go against the principal business model of the company.
There is no tenable position they could've maintained by letting you continue to work there.
I would agree with this 100%.
...well almost. I obviously had to manually tweak my Xorg config to use the accelerated driver - but that's not Nvidia's fault :)
One exception to this that I can think of, for me, has been my NVIDIA card.
I have been an ATI fanboy for as long as I can remember, but having heard about ATIs dire driver support on Linux I plumped for a Nvidia card for my Shuttle. Installing the drivers for this simply involved me running the installer, clicking "Next" a couple of times - and that's it.
It's a shame not all hardware is this simple to install.
I recently installed Fedora Core 4 at home to run a local DNS server, DynDNS daemon, MythTV and a few other things. I'm pretty savvy with Linux and sysadmin for a living (as well as programming) so you could say I have an affinity for problem-solving.
.NET Framework, and I haven't got it installed. At no time have I ever downloaded something and it started telling me that various specific versions compiled against specific architectures are missing, and I cannot continue.
That said, I have struggled in recent days getting everything I've wanted to install working correctly. Largely this has been due to GCC4.0 incompatibilities (many apps just don't compile at all from source without patches), but also because lots of exotic RPMs (Myth being a prime example) have not yet been built for FC4.
A lot of things I have had to compile manually from sources when I had originally set out to use yum to manage everything (I've recently been converted to the ease-of-use and practicalities of RHEL and Redhat Network).
Another poster commented that Linux is perfectly capable as a desktop OS - until you need to install an application, play a game or upgrade their hardware. Joking aside, this statement is 100% accurate.
In my endeavours trying to install all of my "exotic" applications like a movie player (xine), NZB downloader (klibido) I have either run into problems where the currently available RPMs are buggy, or the sources just don't compile out of the box. How can any non-technical person be expected to deal with this?
If you contrast this with Windows, I think the only time I have had a failed installation with a piece of software I have downloaded has been when it has required
Linux will need to standardise itself a lot more if it is going to be a force on the desktop. RPM/yum/apt-get and so on is a step in the right direction, but its still voodoo for most people. Unfortunately I beleive this standardisation is in stark contrast with what most techies (myself included in some way) believe the strength of Linux to be - i.e. diversity and the "joy" of compiling things manually.
That work didn't include proof-reading anything did it?
Hanff has made no secret of his views (which is why the Beeb interviewed him!); and it's reasonable to suspect that his employer was aware (or could reasonably be expected to be aware) of said views, and hired him anyway.
Whilst I agree with the bulk of your post, I disgree with the above statement.
Regardless of your personal stance on copyright/IPR anyone with half a brain must realise that disagreeing with it is a "negative viewpoint", particularly as exercising your beliefs in this context is actually illegal.
No one would knowingly walk into an interview for an IT company and say "By the way folks, I dont believe in copyright/IPR and actually provide a service [dvdr-core.com] to facilitate software piracy. What's the pension scheme like?".
By the same token you couldn't reasonably expect a company interviewing someone who has applied for a post to have such a radically opposing point of view on a subject which is core to the companys ideals.
As much as I think the company is actually in the right here in view of the circumstances, them offering him a revised 3 month severance package when he had only been with the company a week kinda sounds like even they aren't sure whether what they've done is legal.
They may have shot themselves in the foot legally with that offer.
Apologies if this is a stupid question, but since the DVD version is not available yet - can I create my own simply by copying all of the relevant files from the individial .isos into one big one?
Posted by Red in future tech | E-Mail This Entry
The Brother Industries high speed inkjet printer in prototype form. Codenamed Cobra, this little puppy can spit out any size of print output at around 170 pages per minute. OK, you want me to back up and repeat that? Any size of printed inkjet paper output at 170 pages every sixty seconds. Demonstrated for the first time ever last week at a Brother press seminar. How are they doing it? Well....
So apparently the secret lies in the use of new Piezo Inkjet Line Head technology, which prints at 600×600 dpi, but doesn't actually move at all. The ink is transferred at high speed as the paper passes underneath the static nozzles. (see below left - click on all images for full view)
In order to get the throughput, the printer contains a separate head for each colour, so that the paper receives all the ink in one high speed sweep. The passel of assembled journalists at the demonstration last week saw this beast churn out 150 A6 pages a minute without drawing breath, which was pretty darn impressive. (see below right for a scan of the actual printed output)
The company boffins at the demo told us that in order to achieve this speed for larger paper sizes, they just need to connect up more heads in a wider array. For instance, two heads joined together longways would give A4 printing. The concept of poster sized inkjet prints being produced at offset litho printing speeds is little short of miraculous. But just think of the ink costs...ouch!
Apparently this technology also features the lowest power requirements of any inkjet head on the market, and is smaller than equivalent spec products, which should eventually mean good things for home as well as industrial users. Eventually? Well, the technology was first announced at this year's Cebit exhibition in Germany, but this was the first ever live demonstration to the media, and the company is being very coy on any production dates. In fact it seems that the tech needs some co-operative funding (i.e. a production partner?) in order to progress further. And no word on potential retail pricing was given either.
So for now the printer is seeing action only at the World Fair in Aichi, Japan, printing out A6 sheets for tourist visitors to the Brother pavilion. Here's hoping we see more of this amazing technology sooner rather than later. In the meantime here's a PDF of the technology paper.
Specification Notes.
Head - 2656 nozzles per head, 600 dpi, 108 mm width (4.25 inches).
Print speed - 800 mm per second.
Energy saving - Deformable Piezo actuator provides 1/14 of the power requirement of conventional nozzles. For example, the A6 picture sample on the right requires only 3 watts of power, at 150 sheets per minute.
Size - Trapezoidal nozzle zone shape provides for dense arrangement of cavities. The result is a head which is 152 mm wide, 22 mm deep and 1 mm high. Heads can be arranged in longer arrays as needed.
Droplet size - Unspecified. 4 sizes available.
Reliability - 10 billion dots/nozzle or more (still testing).
The scanned picture which the article mentions was continuously printed at 150 pages per minute is here. As sample images go it does contain a lot of colour, I would've assumed a "150 pages per minute" claim would've been in non-Real World cases like printing 8 coloured pixels on a piece of A4.
Ahh the blissful irony of someone complaining about spelling whilst managing to spell "grammar" incorrectly. :)
I think the first sentence of your second paragraph would me more appropriate if reworded to say:
"Frankly, I think you can find problems and features in most programs you hate"
Fact is - the principal of this application could be applied to any number of apps, and I'd wager there are just as many memory leaks in Firefox, Photoshop, CuteFTP or pretty much any program you care to mention.
You could write the same app and call it a "Firefox memory leak finder", but I doubt it'd make front page news as in this case.
Granted, but you have to wonder how impartial Rotten Tomatoes (or rather the reviewers upon which it bases its overall rating) are. My guess is that ~60% when taken in the context of being a Star Wars movie (which to many can do no wrong) is not that great a review.
:)
As far as Star Wars movies go, the scale probably starts at around 50%
To be honest though Lucas didn't have an awful lot to do for this film - he already knew how it had to end. I'm no writer but I'd wager it is a lot easier to formulate a screenplay when you already know exactly what it has to achieve to be considered a success.
Contrast that with Episodes I and II, where Lucas had very little in terms of pre-ordained plot development - the result was obvious, Jar Jar Binks et al.
Not to mention of course that since Episodes I and II were poorly received (62% and 65% respectively), reviews of this film were (and are already) bound to draw comparisons and as such favour it accordingly anyway.
For me one of the worst things about the previous two films in the franchise is that because they were continuations (albeit prequels) of what had already become legendary - no one had to try very hard. As a result the acting is wooden, the dialogue stunted and insincere, etc. Reminds me of the cringeworthy Matrix sequels.
Anyway, I personally believe that if the film didn't happen to include the words "Star Wars" in the title, that we would be seeing completely different reviews. And I consider myself to be an avid Star Wars fan to boot.
the consensus appears to be that this is the best film of the prequels and it should satisfy fans who were unhappy with the first two. ..which isn't exactly difficult given the bar has been set so low by the previous two prequels.
It does look however as if the Star Wars prequels will actually achieve the polar opposite levels of critical acclaim as the Matrix trilogy did (i.e. Matrix/SWEP3:ROTS - great, Matrix Reloaded/SWEP2:AOTC - good-ish, Matrix Revolutions/SWEP1:TPM - dire)
It could just be that more and more people have resigned themselves to the fact that spam is here to stay. Whether you could (or should) attribute that to the spam having diminished impact on these people is questionable.
I get so much spam nowadays (which is thankfully filtered by SpamAssassin) that I no longer have time to sift through my spam folders looking for potential false positives, so using this articles logic you could argue I was more "accepting" of it, when really I have just resigned myself to forever receiving spam.
They are right about one thing though - CAN-SPAM has proven to be virtually useless.
Unless he is so gifted that he could decode whichever client/server protocol iTunes uses in one-shot without having to connect his partially-written client several times like us mere mortal programmers would, then at some point he will have connected to iTunes with an illegitimate application and thus broken the ToS. I imagine at the very least it will have been connected once to test that it actually works. ...unless he has also written an iTunes server as well, but that's a whole other ball game.
I agree with this.
Comparitively speaking sockets are cheap, bandwidth isn't.
It's a nice sentiment from IBM, but like Lycos' "Make Love Not Spam" it is a misguided one.
I was eagerly anticipating Tekken 5, but when I found out that they had removed the wall pushes (where you push an opponent into a wall to score a free combo) I was unsure. Having played the new game however, its clear that a huge amount of time has been spent balancing the characters out more.
Also, whereas the previous incarnations new characters were essentially just rehashes of existing ones in different costumes - the new game boasts completely different moves for all of the "clone" characters from the previous games. Lee, Asuka and Wang are all potent characters in their own right now - and not obvious clones of Law, Jun and Michelle respectively.
The graphics are considerably better than Tekken 4, which is no small feat when you consider the arcade board is - unlike Tekken 4 - significantly more advanced in terms of processing power than the PS2.
All in all the new game improves on everything that was good in the previous series.
My only real criticism is of the "costume" system, whereby after earning gold coins when defeating opponents in certain modes you can purchase different clothing, etc for the different characters. Unfortunately the selection of addons is very small and most people I suspect will find themselves quite frustrated.
The problem with that way of thinking is that 18 months after the initial purchase, the then current generation graphics cards would eclipse the performance of two, by then, older gen cards.
Not only that, but this equal performance would come at the cost of twice the space occupied inside your case, plus twice the power utilisation.
SLI is really only suitable for gaming fanatics, and it is as much a self-obsoleting technology as the cards it links.
I can think outside the square just fine, it's that damned box I have trouble with.