I saw RE on Friday and Blade II yesterday (Monday).
Let me say that the movies are HARDLY alike. The first scene from Blade II MAYBE, but that is it.
Resident Evil has you jumping up in your chair going "Holy shit!" (first time I've actualy been SCARED at a horror movie, LOL. VERY nice job Sony, w00t! Go see RE !NOW!)
Blade has the FIRST ORIGINAL USE OF SLOW MOTION EFFECTS SINCE THE MATRIX that literaly had the ENTIRE audiance cheering out loud. Yes it was THAT good. Well that and I think that all action movie fans by now are sick and f*cking tired of the same old cliche slow'mo effects in movies, hehe. The producers of Blade II got the slow motion thing out of the way right away and that was it.:)
RE has a good deal more story line in it then Blade II, and far less actual butt whooping. (there is hardly any but whooping in RE oddly enough, a lot of dead things being re-killed though.), Blade II had more of the humor that made the original Blade so darn kick ass.:)
Decent use of surround sound in what was not even a THX theater (rare!).
I thought that the story was pretty good too, nothing revolutionary, but it got the point done (reason to go around beating the sh*t out of things.)
Not as many things were killed in Blade II as in the original Blade, but it defintly made me keep on saying to myself "Man they hired one hell of a fight scene choragrapher."
Did some scenes of the fights (specificaly the parts up in the air) seems almost like they used clay animation or something? No I am serious, it almost looks like free form computer deformation based animation effects of some sort. In other words, very 'clay' like. During one scene the characters even took on a distiguishable NON-REAL apperance. I am VERY surprised that that scene made it past QA in its current form.:(
Figure out the number of different possible combinations that you can do with double clicking and without.
I for one LIKE being able to SELECT a file and have an operation done on it. Under your method either highlighting would be used to select a file (oh lovely, then what is a user supposed to do, nagivate the mouse through a maze TRYING to avoid highlighting any other icon) or the right click menu would have to be used for EVERYTHING.
Which would compleatly negate the purpose of a good portion of the top menu bars.
Which removes one possible set of pathways for the user to use to do stuff with.
Which is a BAD thing. Removing user flexability that is.
Now I do admit that for using a Pen that single clicking would be nice (my mouse came unplugged, heh, have to reboot sometimes in 2K to get windows to re-reconize it. My pentab, which also came unplugged, IS being reconized though, and I don't want to reboot!;P ), but for using a mouse where hand stability is not so much of an issue. . ..
Also, people can mis-click on files a lot. Do you REALLY want that 600meg file opened up right now? Especialy if the file is bound to opening up with say Image Ready (which take about 10-15 times longer then any other bleeping application to load up a file. One file that I have takes ~10 seconds to load up in any DECENT image editing application and can take up to HALF AN HOUR to load up in image ready!! Ick. Damn POS-ware. LOL!)
If you mess up setting jumpers NOTHING will go wrong at all. I have NO idea where in the world you heard that you could 'short out' devices this way. The WORST that can happen is that it WILL bootup but the wrong disk size will be reported and things will crash VERY quickly. (and in a nice and obvious "hey buddy your IDE jumpers are f*cked up" sort of way too.:) )
What happens the other 99.99% of the time is that one drive will assume master status when you bootup (normaly the same drive every time) and the other drive will just sit there going unnoticed.
Also a sign of IDE jumpers being flubbed.
You do NOT have to go into the BIOS, ever since, say, oh, around 1993 everything has automaticaly been setup in the BIOS for you depending on what you have plugged in. The ONLY time you may need to go into the BIOS is if you need to toggle the "Plug and Play OS installed?" setting, which should be on No for Win2K+ (NT4+ actualy) and Yes for the Win9x series of OSs.
Thats it.
Improper SCSI termination on the other hand CAN seriously screw some things up, especialy when you are get to the more serious high end SCSI equipment.:(
Jumpers come preset to Cable Select which means that whatever device you put on the first plug of the cable is master and whatever device comes in on the second plug on the cable is slave. Works rather well.:)
As I said, it is pretty much down to the "plug blue thingy into blue hole" now days.
"Hehe. I have my extra buttons set as copy and paste. I use them all the time."
Wireless keyboard, I keep it tilted by my side at all times.:) I have most of the hotkeys for Photoshop down pat.
Illustrator was apparently (obviously) designed by a separate group of wackos and there is a MASSIVE difference in the interfaces. Even something a simple as the deselect all command has a different hotkey! (actually in Illustrator I think that the deselect all commands actually LACKS a hotkey!!! Such a common command to. . ..)
Using Illustrator is painful. Heh.
Besides the zooming thing through, Photoshop as an EXCELLENT interface and could almost server as the poster child for a good Mac to PC conversion of software.
Bryce exists on the other side of the scale as all that about the Mac "user experience" which PC users HATE so damn much. Especially after we got used to using our second mouse buttons to go into rotating around mode for 3d applications.:( (Rhino3d has a WONDERFUL interface for this, hehe. I can get to ANY part of any scene in Rhino3d quickly and easily).
Corel keeps on changing interfaces, I last used version 9 or so, it blew. A lot. ^_^
Apparently it has changed a lot since then. Oh joy. I am not going to sink another few hundred $$$ into it to try and find out though. . . .
Bah. An Apple product wouldn't last but a moment in the forest, leaves would get all into it and compleatly clog everything up.
Betcha anything she is running an array of Vaxen to keep everything running smoothly.:)
You know She is not running any punchcard systems just for the sake that dirt, mud, and such would cake up in the holes and make reading them a pain.:)
That pool was so just an LCD with a wireless ethereal link connection to an SGI rendering farm.
(Oddly enough, Their SGI Onyx boxs glow a bright white. . ..)
I would rather just shift select (allows me to select long lists of items in a row) the lot of them and open them all at once. Total time, about 2 or three seconds for X number of items. X being darn nearly any number that you please!
(Of course accidents DO happen, one time I loaded up a few hundred images in Photoshop, heh. Took two or three minutes for the HD to stop thrashing.:)
It wouldn't be very quick if you had to double clicked it now would it?
Once again, notice that you PRESS those items. The images even depress. They are buttons, NOT icons. Buttons. Thus the reason that they look like buttons when you use them.
Icons look like Icons. They sit on your desktop and / or in folders and you use them. Icons represent files, buttons represent actions. There is a BIG difference. Verb VS a Noun.
You get me Rhino3d on *Nix and I will switch all my 3d rendering boxen over to *nix, until then shutup and get to writting those requests to McNeel software.
You know, the odd thing is that I am either getting blasted as being too anti-microsoft or getting blasted as being too pro-microsoft.
Damnit I think I now know what TheRegister has to go through. . . . bleh.
And I use GIF because of COMPATIBILITY. It works. On anything. I have some highly efficient GIF compression tools that let me do some rather nifty things with the file format to reduce the overall size below that which is normal and still keep compatibility at 100%.
I believe in small efficent design. I am thinking about making a PNG version of the gallery, but the main issue is, why? I have no moral problems with the LZW patent and considering how useful it has been I see no issue with the (soon to expire) patent being upheld. It is a legitimate contribution to society, the inventers have been appropriately compensated for their invention, the patent is soon to run out, nuff said. The FSF may not like it, and indeed it is a bit of a pain for them, but I myself having paid way to much money for a crudload of licensed GIF generating applications am entitled to use the damn file format any way that I please.:)
(I have nothing against for-pay software, I just have something against licenceware and lying scumbag marketers. I support the open source software movement SOLELY based around the principles of honesty. I fully believe in paying software programmers DIRECTLY, not through some third party marketer or distributor, and not for tech support or anything like that. )
The Japanese had this awful habit of using the same tired old PC systems for ages. . . . . I mean OOLD. They had a standard setup for PCs, basicaly windows3.1 machines, heh. Sucked.
Annyways. A TON of interactive storybook style adventures, nice Genre, but hardly hardware limited.:) Took'em forever to get off of 8bit color.:(
PC games and console games leap frog each other, and in fact it is one that encourages the continual development of the other.
Oh and if some asshole in finances says that a company is going to use Java to program their next 'big hit' in then guess what;
the company will end up (trying to) programing it in java.
You DRAG window boarders. Hey guess what, THEY ARE DOUBLE CLICKABLE TOO.
(at least under Windows they are).
ALL buttons are one click. What the hell ELSE would you expect a BUTTON to be like? Just like in REAL LIFE you press a button ONCE.
The menu bars, you are SELECTING THEM. Technicaly there ARE two clicks, one to select, the second to activate (just like icons!) of course with menu bars you select a MENU item. Thus the name *MENU* bars.
And hyperlinks aren't part of the OS (well, heh. MS is trying to change that but. . ..) the Web is a seperate interface.
I know that Java is ass end slow for games, but above posters DO have a point, as CPUs get faster odds are developers will get laaazzier and laaazzier and be willing to waste large amounts of CPU cycles for that one time reduction in time taken to program the game. Bleh.
The more advanced AI algoriths _DO_ rely upon hardware optimizations though, not to mention cache size (heh). And RAM size, if you cannot load the pathing files for the AI into RAM for a level. . . . well now that just plain ol' sucks! Thus a programmer might have to resort to using a less efficent but smaller pathing data format so as to get it all into the RAM on console X but on console Y be able to use the full blown deal.
"It's not that easy. My time is worth more than reading "Assembling PCs for Dummies." I'll gladly pay the $100 more to get a BTO system, with a superior OS to boot.
Apple uses pretty good hardware from what I've used. Plus, it's all durable. I've dropped laptops, gotten kicked desktops, and botched up SCSI termination, all without problems. Plus, they send replacement parts to me in 2 days, accross the US"
Heheheheheh
Dude
You complain about IDE and then mention SCSI terminators.
It took me TWO DAYS just to find a place that SOLD SCSI terminators!
SCSI termination alone is FAR more complicated then the ENTIRE PROCESS of setting up a PC.
And as long as a person does not have SCSI drives in there PC, you basically plug your HDs and CD-ROMs in and they work. most of them tend to come configured now days to automatically duke out who is master and who is slave at start up, which also tends to work quite well Thank You So Very Much.
Really, only rule is that you plug everything in,(hard to plug it in the WRONG way, notched plugs help to ensure that) and turn the darn thing on.
The price barrier between a top of the line PC and a top of the line Mac is quite extraordinary. For gaming machines the prices ARE similar (gee thanks Nvidia!) but for everything else. . ..
A NLE PC machine could be shoved together easily for well under $700, under $500 if you skimmed some edges (what, no RAID arrays? ^_^ Or at very least *Gasp* software RAID!)
A full photoshop machine for about the same.
Oh yah and for an extra $150 or so it would do high end sound editing as well. (or no extra $$$ depending on what you demand from your sound card. At the LEAST it would be 'merely' equal to that which is in a PC)
Oh, and for reliability, call me when said desktops have been dropped repeatedly from at least halfway decent heights, had various cables pulled and yanked out of them, been submitted to Who Knows What else, and then some.
If it cannot at least survive WW3 then I don't want it in MY computer room! (and would prefer it to not be in any labs that I am running support for either.;)
Basic question is, do you feel comfortable STANDING on your computer? Sitting? Jumping? Stacking them 10+ high? (seen PCs stacked that high, heh. Not by me mind you but. . . . Shnitz happens!)
I believe in nice SQUARE and BEIGE 90degree edges.
*COUGH* background in technical drawing *COUGH*
Besides, curvy things add NOTHING to the overall usefulness of the system but they DO add to the size of the code and the time that the OS takes to start up and do things. (more code to load equals more time to load, obviously).
Support for curvy things also add unneccisary complexity to the source thus increasing the chance that additional bugs will pop up.
The time that is spent implementing support for curvy things could BETTER be spent FIXING other bugs that surely exist within the OS. Or at very least improving performance (yah yah XP has performance increases, but there would be MORE if the time spent implementing curvy things had instead been spent on more performance increases. Not to mention that the performance increases already there would have a greater effect if curvy thing support was not eating performance up at least somewhat)
Window-Key R (Windows, Run. Run Windows Run.) type in path to program. In Win2K+ the OS is INSANLY intelligent about picking out what program you are trying to type in, it actualy does not just file name completion but it will actualy guess for RELVENCY. Meaning that it will first pop up a suggestion for a program or path that you have acceced RECENTLY or that you access OFTEN before it will just do standard alphapetical file name completion.
Which totaly and compleatly rocks.:) Really, it does! I can access almost ANY file on either of my HDs (a combined over 60GB of files, well over ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND files) in 15 keystrokes or less.
Now try and tell me that THAT is not exceedingly cool. Not to mention a miracle of UI design. (They may not be the first to implement it, but regardless it is a damn spiffy implementation!)
>> 2 - One Button Mouse
>The OS supports two-button mice, and pretty much >any USB mouse should work.
Applications do not always support two button mice, this is neccisary since a two button mouse can NEVER be assumed to be ALWAYS installed on a mac machine. On a PC applications CAN make this assumption, and thus have access to additional meta-key + mouse key combinations. (the 2nd mouse button on macs is mostly used to act as meta-key + mouse1)
Hell a good deal of proffesional level applications on the PC assume a third mouse button as well.
>> 3 - Customization and configuration is hard to grasp
>I don't understand what you mean by this.
How to configure damn nearly ANYTHING on a windows machine:
Start--> SETTINGS--->control panel. Click on the item. EVERYTHING for that subject is there.
on the macs you have things kind of spread about a bit. . . . configure half of your color settings here, another half there. . . . the layout and design is NOT standardized.
>> 4 - Expensive Hardware
>For what you get, it's been shown to be fairly >comparable with brand-name windows hardware.
BZZT! wrong. Try again. For what you get on a low end mac you can get a medium end PC. A medium end mac (~2k) will get you the HIGHEST end PC. (well, ok, minus SCSI everything, but hell, that is just. . . . hehe. SCSI rocks.:) )
>> 5 - Apple is unpredictable
>You mean they "think different"?
How about instead
"We'll aim towards the proffesional sector!"
"Oh now lets switch towards the home users!"
"Lets make our computers a fashion accessory!"
"Lets make out computers a functional tool!"
"Lets aim towards the home video enthusiast!"
And so forth.
One advantage of the PC, it is what _I_ want it to be. Nothing more and nothing less. If some company desides to 'change focus' so be it. I can still buy parts from who ever and put together a machine that can do what ever and for cheaper then a mac user can.
Example;
My TV in card. $20. w00t. Yes that includes s-video in. Kick ass. For $30 I could have gotten one with an FM tuner to.:)
>> 6 - Proprietary platform
>Like Windows?
No jack ass, like the damn ENITRE FUCKING COMPUTER.
Apple has been able to HAMPER *nix development on their platform. Sure it exists, but only because people had to reverse engineer a bunch of crap. (Apple WAS supporting Linux development on the PC for awhile, and then they changed their minds. . . )
On the PC I can run ANY damn OS that I feel like because there is this huge thing called a CHOICE out there. Sure my main box runs windows, but I have shoved some awfuly weird shit on my OTHER boxs.
Or hell, ANYBODY can go out and make their OWN OS for the x86. All open spec. Intel and AMD have whitepapers that give exacting detail on the platform availble for free from their respective websites.
>> 7 - OS X is kinda slow
>Hmmm, again, I don't agree with you.
Even Steve Jobs admitted that Mac OSX has some performance issues.
>> 9 - We've heard about Apple treatening many >>Open Source projects (ie. Themes.org OSX theme)
>Apple has shown over and over again that they ?>will defend their intellectual property. They've >also shown that they're willing to publish the >source to their new OS X as open source (Darwin.)
Give a dog a bone. . . . all while whiping him to death from the backside. Yah right, real kind that.
Once again, the Linux issue. First apple supported it, then they pulled support. Yippie. Sure copying the theme from apple may have not been compleatly kosher, but hell even MICROSOFT for crying outloud, MICROSOFT, has stopped complaining when people copy off their UI. The MS blue fugly theme has been copied numerious times (no idea why. . ..) for use with various skinning programs and such and they have not complained (yet).
"Why on earth do you need more than one button for the mouse? "
Once you go nine, you can't go back.:) (and no NOT seven of nine either!)
Seriously though, I am currently using a 'mere' wheel mouse (5 button equivalency), and I find using anything BUT a wheelmouse to be INSANELY painful. You would not imagine how much your browsing and overall computer use habits change once a mouse wheel is standardized across the ENTIRE interface and can be reasonably assumed to be present 100% of the time. (almost ALL new PCs ship with one)
Scroll bar? What for? LOL!
Zoom tool? Why? (Adobe STILL has NOT gotten this figured out. The image should zoom CENTERED ON WHERE THE MOUSE IS DAMNIT. ON WHERE THE MOUSE IS. NOT the upper left hand corner of the picture, NOT the absolute center of the picture, but where the MOUSE POINTER IS!!! Ugh. Damn stubborn bastards.:(:(:( )
Of course my nine button mouse is even better. Heh.
I laugh at those pathedic users with there mere gesture based systems.
I have my forwards and backwards buttons bound to my mouse.:) Only for when I am in my web browser though, other times they are bound to function keys for use in games. w00t. Strafing with da mouse, strafing with da mouse!:) (being able to circle strafe with just one hand is exceedingly cool.:) )
Annnyways.
Lots of mouse buttons come in handy. Trust me, they do.:)
(I would not mind one of those 16 button mice either, hehe. You can bind different buttons to various CAD commands, YAAH!:):):) Rhino3d rocks.:)
One great irony of computers is that the famed 'warranty' programs that you get when buying from a large outfit are only NEEDED if you buy from a large outfit.
Typically big companies use crud quality components in order to cut down on costs.
I got done not to long ago cleaning out the power supplies of computers by company that "shall not be named" that had glue all swirled around inside of them.
Glue?
Yup glue. Apparently the Glue was NOT heat resistant, the power supply got hot, the glue melted, fan blew it around, something shorted out. Luckily the power supply was smart enough to turn itself off and refuse to turn back on.
A good blowing out and some cotton swabs fixed most of the computers, but not all of them. Removing the (apparently slightly conductive) glue removed the short.
Lovely, OEMs, like that.::groans::. I f*cking hate OEM computers.:(
I have had my Gateway EV700 monitor replaced, uh, three times now. One time they shipped me a monitor that was DOA, another time one of the colors in the monitor gave out within a few weeks, the remaining time within a few months. . ..
Not exactly high quality kit. Lovely. . ..
(gateway also had this HORRIBLE CD-ROM drive that couldn't keep discs in it balanced worth a darn. ugh. Even ruined one of my CDs. Got a creative 56x CD-ROM drive for $40 or $50 instead of moving it into my new computer.)
Also remember that this is apple, the same company that made the oh so amazing spontaneously power cycling cube and the (I believe it was) Apple III of which official instructions to 'fix' it when chips popped out of place on the Motherboard was to raise it up an inch or two and drop it onto a desk.
(ok so not that bad of a track record, but come on, their computers are made out of PLASTIC damnit. P-L-A-S-T-I-C!!)
My OWN computer on the other hand is Bullet Proof. Hand built, dirt cheap.
PCs are NOT that hard to assemble.
I mean they are color coded after all. Inside and out. The few parts that are not color coded are are least shape keyed.
Quite frankly anybody who cannot figure out that the red round shape plugs into the red round hole should NOT be using a computer at all!
Prebuilt PCs are good for grannies and all, but to build an entire platform soley around the ideology that computers should cater to the LCD is just plain WRONG.
Apple is like the Monster Cable of computer manufacturers. Sure the product isn't THAT bad, but it is HORRIBLY overpriced for what it does and a lot of what it CLAIMS to be the only product capable of doing is pure bullshit. (the analogy is linked even more closely once you realize that both companies shove their products in overly colored cases just to make it look better but to which no functionality is imparted by.)
Wow, yah, I'll just give up my $500 1ghz system (screw platform differences, it is 1ghz and it was $500, that was a year ago, now days it is 1.4ghz or more for that price!) that can run a wide variety of OSs and use a crudload of different hardware products for. . ..
a system that locks me into one OS choice (well there ARE some other OSs, depending on what model mac exactly is purchased, but all in all it is definitely NOT an open platform) where a PHYSICAL (not just a life-induced) monopoly exists (HW AND software, oh joy!) with craptacular integrated every-fucking-thing systems and a user base that makes Windows users look down right brilliant.
(yes there are smart mac users, there are also smart windows users, at least the older windows users had to at one point or another in time use DOS, and a good fraction of them actually went about and LEARNED something about the underlying system to boot. While I am sad that MS decided to all but abandon the CLI in favor of a GUI that discourages learning in the same way that the mac environment does, at least even MS PC have a legacy someplace in the past of using a CLI. Mac users have what, the Apple II, which they cannot even lay claim to since they like to brag so much about how nice and "hands off" their platform is now days. . . . )
Oh yah and did I mention the UI? IT FUCKING SUCKS
Seriously.
You REALLY begin to appreciate the design that went into the more modern versions of Windows (excluding XP which looks like a piece of shit but is otherwise functionally the same as 2k) once you have been stuck on a mac for awhile.
I do some VERY funky things with my computer and Windows keeps on going through. If needs be I could do some rather freaky things with a bunch of OTHER OSs, or thanks to x86 emulators on my, err, x86, I can run those other OSs on my computer without repartitioning.
Thanks to emulation Mac users can of course run a lot of PC software too.
Heh.
If you want to call what they do "run". ^_^
(walk maybe. . . jog perhaps for some of the smaller applications. .." )
I can f*cking install a damn 8 disk raid array inside of my case and not have the damn thing break a sweat, or run out of room!
I have a $20 TV in card, a Matrox G400 MAX Duel Head video card that can do video out, and should I want too, I can easily purchase for a VERY reasonable price any number of prosumer grade sound cards to do damn nearly anything I want to do in THAT arena as well. (I do have a sound card, but it is just median level consumer quality. )
I have a damn f*cking Non-Linear Video Editing 3D rendering Photoshoping behemoth on my hands for less then what a cursed mac user pays for their d*mn wide screen monitor. (in all fairness though, that is just because being a PC user I am capible of looking at FUNCTION over form. Mac users would likely shiver when they found out that my two monitors aren't *GASP* color coordinated!! Oh the HORROR!! >;{} They are color CALIBRATED, but one has a beige casing, the other one a black casing. Deal.)
Did I mention the $30 wireless keyboard and mouse combos? Ooooh yaaah. Sweet.:)
It also helps that the default keyboard that comes with most PCs is made for somebody BESIDES MIDGETS. Really, what the hell is apple's intended audience here? ALL of their keyboards for their macintosh line of computers f*cking SUCK DAMNIT. Who the hell are those things geared towards, the little people? Seriously, I have nothing against the Fae, but when is the last time that the Elven Queen needed to use a computer?
(and we all know that if the Elven Queen ever used a computer that She would use one which had as many Arcane commands as possible. Likely a *nix box at the minimum.:) )
I was doing NLE on my 266mhz Pentium II, yet to figure out what is so good about those macs. . . I have USED them, but they just well. . . SUCK. Horribly. Sure they look good, well, if you have no Y chromosome and are missing at least part of your X as well.
Computers are supposed to be BEIGE DAMNIT BEIGE. I want my computer to be F*CKING BEIGE AND MADE OUT OF STEEL DAMNIT. My current computer case can support over TWO HUNDRED pounds on top of it. Two-Fricken-Hundred.
The fact that it is FLAT on top SERIOUSLY helps with balancing stuff on top of it too. As opposed many of apple's designs which tend to be. . . uh. . . fugly and curved. So to summarize:
The CPU is a limiting factor in some types of games, notable those that have complex physics engines. Just because Quake 3 can run in excess of 200FPS and is compleatly graphics card limited now days does not mean that ALL games are that way.
Hell playing multiple videos in different parts of the screen starts sucking away at your CPU power (if you are stuck with an Overlay graphics style system that is. May be different otherwise, I have no idea. ^_^ ). Hell applying basic transformations and morphs to the position/shape of the video play back will (most likely) require CPU usage as well.
Hopefuly with large storage formats, more games will begin to use video too.:)
Then there is AI. . . . . How is Java going to handle the VASTLY different ways that the CPU can do AI routines. Hell screw that, how is the poor PROGRAMMER going to handle the fact that his great new AI routine that totaly and compleatly Kicks Ass when running on the hardware of, say the Playstation 2 compleatly blows on the X-Box? Or vis versa, which ever.
Use a lesser AI routine? Or code two versions of it one for each console? Yup, that sure saves him a lot of work. . ..
Of course you can argue that it would have been done that way anyways, but under this Java system no longer will console programmers be as willing to go 'down to the metal' of the machines that they are programming for.
Of course in all fairness most games that are planned as being multi-plateform are made to the least common denominator in the first place with only minimal optimizations for each system it is ported to.
Slashdot Mirror
I saw RE on Friday and Blade II yesterday (Monday).
:)
:)
Let me say that the movies are HARDLY alike. The first scene from Blade II MAYBE, but that is it.
Resident Evil has you jumping up in your chair going "Holy shit!" (first time I've actualy been SCARED at a horror movie, LOL. VERY nice job Sony, w00t! Go see RE !NOW!)
Blade has the FIRST ORIGINAL USE OF SLOW MOTION EFFECTS SINCE THE MATRIX that literaly had the ENTIRE audiance cheering out loud. Yes it was THAT good. Well that and I think that all action movie fans by now are sick and f*cking tired of the same old cliche slow'mo effects in movies, hehe. The producers of Blade II got the slow motion thing out of the way right away and that was it.
RE has a good deal more story line in it then Blade II, and far less actual butt whooping. (there is hardly any but whooping in RE oddly enough, a lot of dead things being re-killed though.), Blade II had more of the humor that made the original Blade so darn kick ass.
I liked it.
:(
Decent use of surround sound in what was not even a THX theater (rare!).
I thought that the story was pretty good too, nothing revolutionary, but it got the point done (reason to go around beating the sh*t out of things.)
Not as many things were killed in Blade II as in the original Blade, but it defintly made me keep on saying to myself "Man they hired one hell of a fight scene choragrapher."
Did some scenes of the fights (specificaly the parts up in the air) seems almost like they used clay animation or something? No I am serious, it almost looks like free form computer deformation based animation effects of some sort. In other words, very 'clay' like. During one scene the characters even took on a distiguishable NON-REAL apperance. I am VERY surprised that that scene made it past QA in its current form.
I gave up on the game after the first time playing it.
Ten minutes (real life ten minutes) just to walk over to the fridge and open the door to get some food. . . . nooo thank you!
The Japanese do MUCH better LifeSims IMNSHO.
Besides, the game is WAAAAY to limited. Unless I can plot to control the world, what's the point?
Dude, listen;
;P ), but for using a mouse where hand stability is not so much of an issue. . . .
DO THE MATH.
Figure out the number of different possible combinations that you can do with double clicking and without.
I for one LIKE being able to SELECT a file and have an operation done on it. Under your method either highlighting would be used to select a file (oh lovely, then what is a user supposed to do, nagivate the mouse through a maze TRYING to avoid highlighting any other icon) or the right click menu would have to be used for EVERYTHING.
Which would compleatly negate the purpose of a good portion of the top menu bars.
Which removes one possible set of pathways for the user to use to do stuff with.
Which is a BAD thing. Removing user flexability that is.
Now I do admit that for using a Pen that single clicking would be nice (my mouse came unplugged, heh, have to reboot sometimes in 2K to get windows to re-reconize it. My pentab, which also came unplugged, IS being reconized though, and I don't want to reboot!
Also, people can mis-click on files a lot. Do you REALLY want that 600meg file opened up right now? Especialy if the file is bound to opening up with say Image Ready (which take about 10-15 times longer then any other bleeping application to load up a file. One file that I have takes ~10 seconds to load up in any DECENT image editing application and can take up to HALF AN HOUR to load up in image ready!! Ick. Damn POS-ware. LOL!)
Heh.
:) )
:(
:)
If you mess up setting jumpers NOTHING will go wrong at all. I have NO idea where in the world you heard that you could 'short out' devices this way. The WORST that can happen is that it WILL bootup but the wrong disk size will be reported and things will crash VERY quickly. (and in a nice and obvious "hey buddy your IDE jumpers are f*cked up" sort of way too.
What happens the other 99.99% of the time is that one drive will assume master status when you bootup (normaly the same drive every time) and the other drive will just sit there going unnoticed.
Also a sign of IDE jumpers being flubbed.
You do NOT have to go into the BIOS, ever since, say, oh, around 1993 everything has automaticaly been setup in the BIOS for you depending on what you have plugged in. The ONLY time you may need to go into the BIOS is if you need to toggle the "Plug and Play OS installed?" setting, which should be on No for Win2K+ (NT4+ actualy) and Yes for the Win9x series of OSs.
Thats it.
Improper SCSI termination on the other hand CAN seriously screw some things up, especialy when you are get to the more serious high end SCSI equipment.
Jumpers come preset to Cable Select which means that whatever device you put on the first plug of the cable is master and whatever device comes in on the second plug on the cable is slave. Works rather well.
As I said, it is pretty much down to the "plug blue thingy into blue hole" now days.
"Hehe. I have my extra buttons set as copy and paste. I use them all the time."
:) I have most of the hotkeys for Photoshop down pat.
.)
:( (Rhino3d has a WONDERFUL interface for this, hehe. I can get to ANY part of any scene in Rhino3d quickly and easily).
Wireless keyboard, I keep it tilted by my side at all times.
Illustrator was apparently (obviously) designed by a separate group of wackos and there is a MASSIVE difference in the interfaces. Even something a simple as the deselect all command has a different hotkey! (actually in Illustrator I think that the deselect all commands actually LACKS a hotkey!!! Such a common command to. . .
Using Illustrator is painful. Heh.
Besides the zooming thing through, Photoshop as an EXCELLENT interface and could almost server as the poster child for a good Mac to PC conversion of software.
Bryce exists on the other side of the scale as all that about the Mac "user experience" which PC users HATE so damn much. Especially after we got used to using our second mouse buttons to go into rotating around mode for 3d applications.
Corel keeps on changing interfaces, I last used version 9 or so, it blew. A lot. ^_^
Apparently it has changed a lot since then. Oh joy. I am not going to sink another few hundred $$$ into it to try and find out though. . . .
Bah. An Apple product wouldn't last but a moment in the forest, leaves would get all into it and compleatly clog everything up.
:)
:)
.)
Betcha anything she is running an array of Vaxen to keep everything running smoothly.
You know She is not running any punchcard systems just for the sake that dirt, mud, and such would cake up in the holes and make reading them a pain.
That pool was so just an LCD with a wireless ethereal link connection to an SGI rendering farm.
(Oddly enough, Their SGI Onyx boxs glow a bright white. . .
Uh. Why? That takes for-fricken ever.
:)
I would rather just shift select (allows me to select long lists of items in a row) the lot of them and open them all at once. Total time, about 2 or three seconds for X number of items. X being darn nearly any number that you please!
(Of course accidents DO happen, one time I loaded up a few hundred images in Photoshop, heh. Took two or three minutes for the HD to stop thrashing.
It wouldn't be very quick if you had to double clicked it now would it?
:)
Once again, notice that you PRESS those items. The images even depress. They are buttons, NOT icons. Buttons. Thus the reason that they look like buttons when you use them.
Icons look like Icons. They sit on your desktop and / or in folders and you use them. Icons represent files, buttons represent actions. There is a BIG difference. Verb VS a Noun.
Double click the nouns, single click the verbs.
You get me Rhino3d on *Nix and I will switch all my 3d rendering boxen over to *nix, until then shutup and get to writting those requests to McNeel software.
:)
You know, the odd thing is that I am either getting blasted as being too anti-microsoft or getting blasted as being too pro-microsoft.
Damnit I think I now know what TheRegister has to go through. . . . bleh.
And I use GIF because of COMPATIBILITY. It works. On anything. I have some highly efficient GIF compression tools that let me do some rather nifty things with the file format to reduce the overall size below that which is normal and still keep compatibility at 100%.
I believe in small efficent design. I am thinking about making a PNG version of the gallery, but the main issue is, why? I have no moral problems with the LZW patent and considering how useful it has been I see no issue with the (soon to expire) patent being upheld. It is a legitimate contribution to society, the inventers have been appropriately compensated for their invention, the patent is soon to run out, nuff said. The FSF may not like it, and indeed it is a bit of a pain for them, but I myself having paid way to much money for a crudload of licensed GIF generating applications am entitled to use the damn file format any way that I please.
(I have nothing against for-pay software, I just have something against licenceware and lying scumbag marketers. I support the open source software movement SOLELY based around the principles of honesty. I fully believe in paying software programmers DIRECTLY, not through some third party marketer or distributor, and not for tech support or anything like that. )
General rule of course is to never judge anything said by anybody after 10pm. :)
The Japanese had this awful habit of using the same tired old PC systems for ages. . . . . I mean OOLD. They had a standard setup for PCs, basicaly windows3.1 machines, heh. Sucked.
:) Took'em forever to get off of 8bit color. :(
Annyways. A TON of interactive storybook style adventures, nice Genre, but hardly hardware limited.
PC games and console games leap frog each other, and in fact it is one that encourages the continual development of the other.
Oh and if some asshole in finances says that a company is going to use Java to program their next 'big hit' in then guess what;
the company will end up (trying to) programing it in java.
the rule is quite simple.
.) the Web is a seperate interface.
If it is an icon you double click it
If not you don't.
DUH.
You DRAG window boarders. Hey guess what, THEY ARE DOUBLE CLICKABLE TOO.
(at least under Windows they are).
ALL buttons are one click. What the hell ELSE would you expect a BUTTON to be like? Just like in REAL LIFE you press a button ONCE.
The menu bars, you are SELECTING THEM. Technicaly there ARE two clicks, one to select, the second to activate (just like icons!) of course with menu bars you select a MENU item. Thus the name *MENU* bars.
And hyperlinks aren't part of the OS (well, heh. MS is trying to change that but. . .
And then how would I launch multiple items at once as well?
Or select multiple items but them deselect one and then run the rest of them. (think about it. . . . different from the above. . . . yes it is.)
Each 'stage' you remove from the pipeline reduces your overall freedom to do various different things.
Somebody name a SINGLE tool that this AC is refering too that does not have an equivlent (or superior) on the PC.
.)
(often times for free. . .
I know that Java is ass end slow for games, but above posters DO have a point, as CPUs get faster odds are developers will get laaazzier and laaazzier and be willing to waste large amounts of CPU cycles for that one time reduction in time taken to program the game. Bleh.
The more advanced AI algoriths _DO_ rely upon hardware optimizations though, not to mention cache size (heh). And RAM size, if you cannot load the pathing files for the AI into RAM for a level. . . . well now that just plain ol' sucks! Thus a programmer might have to resort to using a less efficent but smaller pathing data format so as to get it all into the RAM on console X but on console Y be able to use the full blown deal.
"It's not that easy. My time is worth more than reading "Assembling PCs for Dummies." I'll gladly pay the $100 more to get a BTO system, with a superior OS to boot.
.
;)
Apple uses pretty good hardware from what I've used. Plus, it's all durable. I've dropped laptops, gotten kicked desktops, and botched up SCSI termination, all without problems. Plus, they send replacement parts to me in 2 days, accross the US"
Heheheheheh
Dude
You complain about IDE and then mention SCSI terminators.
It took me TWO DAYS just to find a place that SOLD SCSI terminators!
SCSI termination alone is FAR more complicated then the ENTIRE PROCESS of setting up a PC.
And as long as a person does not have SCSI drives in there PC, you basically plug your HDs and CD-ROMs in and they work. most of them tend to come configured now days to automatically duke out who is master and who is slave at start up, which also tends to work quite well Thank You So Very Much.
Really, only rule is that you plug everything in,(hard to plug it in the WRONG way, notched plugs help to ensure that) and turn the darn thing on.
The price barrier between a top of the line PC and a top of the line Mac is quite extraordinary. For gaming machines the prices ARE similar (gee thanks Nvidia!) but for everything else. . .
A NLE PC machine could be shoved together easily for well under $700, under $500 if you skimmed some edges (what, no RAID arrays? ^_^ Or at very least *Gasp* software RAID!)
A full photoshop machine for about the same.
Oh yah and for an extra $150 or so it would do high end sound editing as well. (or no extra $$$ depending on what you demand from your sound card. At the LEAST it would be 'merely' equal to that which is in a PC)
Oh, and for reliability, call me when said desktops have been dropped repeatedly from at least halfway decent heights, had various cables pulled and yanked out of them, been submitted to Who Knows What else, and then some.
If it cannot at least survive WW3 then I don't want it in MY computer room! (and would prefer it to not be in any labs that I am running support for either.
Basic question is, do you feel comfortable STANDING on your computer? Sitting? Jumping? Stacking them 10+ high? (seen PCs stacked that high, heh. Not by me mind you but. . . . Shnitz happens!)
Sure as hell am not. :)
I believe in nice SQUARE and BEIGE 90degree edges.
*COUGH* background in technical drawing *COUGH*
Besides, curvy things add NOTHING to the overall usefulness of the system but they DO add to the size of the code and the time that the OS takes to start up and do things. (more code to load equals more time to load, obviously).
Support for curvy things also add unneccisary complexity to the source thus increasing the chance that additional bugs will pop up.
The time that is spent implementing support for curvy things could BETTER be spent FIXING other bugs that surely exist within the OS. Or at very least improving performance (yah yah XP has performance increases, but there would be MORE if the time spent implementing curvy things had instead been spent on more performance increases. Not to mention that the performance increases already there would have a greater effect if curvy thing support was not eating performance up at least somewhat)
This is going to be SOOO much fun!
:) Really, it does! I can access almost ANY file on either of my HDs (a combined over 60GB of files, well over ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND files) in 15 keystrokes or less.
:) )
:)
.) for use with various skinning programs and such and they have not complained (yet).
>> 1 - Confusing interface
>Really? I expect that most people wouldn't agree
How to run any program in Windows
Window-Key R (Windows, Run. Run Windows Run.) type in path to program. In Win2K+ the OS is INSANLY intelligent about picking out what program you are trying to type in, it actualy does not just file name completion but it will actualy guess for RELVENCY. Meaning that it will first pop up a suggestion for a program or path that you have acceced RECENTLY or that you access OFTEN before it will just do standard alphapetical file name completion.
Which totaly and compleatly rocks.
Now try and tell me that THAT is not exceedingly cool. Not to mention a miracle of UI design. (They may not be the first to implement it, but regardless it is a damn spiffy implementation!)
>> 2 - One Button Mouse
>The OS supports two-button mice, and pretty much >any USB mouse should work.
Applications do not always support two button mice, this is neccisary since a two button mouse can NEVER be assumed to be ALWAYS installed on a mac machine. On a PC applications CAN make this assumption, and thus have access to additional meta-key + mouse key combinations. (the 2nd mouse button on macs is mostly used to act as meta-key + mouse1)
Hell a good deal of proffesional level applications on the PC assume a third mouse button as well.
>> 3 - Customization and configuration is hard to grasp
>I don't understand what you mean by this.
How to configure damn nearly ANYTHING on a windows machine:
Start--> SETTINGS--->control panel. Click on the item. EVERYTHING for that subject is there.
on the macs you have things kind of spread about a bit. . . . configure half of your color settings here, another half there. . . . the layout and design is NOT standardized.
>> 4 - Expensive Hardware
>For what you get, it's been shown to be fairly >comparable with brand-name windows hardware.
BZZT! wrong. Try again. For what you get on a low end mac you can get a medium end PC. A medium end mac (~2k) will get you the HIGHEST end PC. (well, ok, minus SCSI everything, but hell, that is just. . . . hehe. SCSI rocks.
>> 5 - Apple is unpredictable
>You mean they "think different"?
How about instead
"We'll aim towards the proffesional sector!"
"Oh now lets switch towards the home users!"
"Lets make our computers a fashion accessory!"
"Lets make out computers a functional tool!"
"Lets aim towards the home video enthusiast!"
And so forth.
One advantage of the PC, it is what _I_ want it to be. Nothing more and nothing less. If some company desides to 'change focus' so be it. I can still buy parts from who ever and put together a machine that can do what ever and for cheaper then a mac user can.
Example;
My TV in card. $20. w00t. Yes that includes s-video in. Kick ass. For $30 I could have gotten one with an FM tuner to.
>> 6 - Proprietary platform
>Like Windows?
No jack ass, like the damn ENITRE FUCKING COMPUTER.
Apple has been able to HAMPER *nix development on their platform. Sure it exists, but only because people had to reverse engineer a bunch of crap. (Apple WAS supporting Linux development on the PC for awhile, and then they changed their minds. . . )
On the PC I can run ANY damn OS that I feel like because there is this huge thing called a CHOICE out there. Sure my main box runs windows, but I have shoved some awfuly weird shit on my OTHER boxs.
Or hell, ANYBODY can go out and make their OWN OS for the x86. All open spec. Intel and AMD have whitepapers that give exacting detail on the platform availble for free from their respective websites.
>> 7 - OS X is kinda slow
>Hmmm, again, I don't agree with you.
Even Steve Jobs admitted that Mac OSX has some performance issues.
>> 9 - We've heard about Apple treatening many >>Open Source projects (ie. Themes.org OSX theme)
>Apple has shown over and over again that they ?>will defend their intellectual property. They've >also shown that they're willing to publish the >source to their new OS X as open source (Darwin.)
Give a dog a bone. . . . all while whiping him to death from the backside. Yah right, real kind that.
Once again, the Linux issue. First apple supported it, then they pulled support. Yippie. Sure copying the theme from apple may have not been compleatly kosher, but hell even MICROSOFT for crying outloud, MICROSOFT, has stopped complaining when people copy off their UI. The MS blue fugly theme has been copied numerious times (no idea why. . .
"Why on earth do you need more than one button for the mouse? "
:) (and no NOT seven of nine either!)
:( :( :( )
:) Only for when I am in my web browser though, other times they are bound to function keys for use in games. w00t. Strafing with da mouse, strafing with da mouse! :) (being able to circle strafe with just one hand is exceedingly cool. :) )
:)
:) :) :) Rhino3d rocks. :)
Once you go nine, you can't go back.
Seriously though, I am currently using a 'mere' wheel mouse (5 button equivalency), and I find using anything BUT a wheelmouse to be INSANELY painful. You would not imagine how much your browsing and overall computer use habits change once a mouse wheel is standardized across the ENTIRE interface and can be reasonably assumed to be present 100% of the time. (almost ALL new PCs ship with one)
Scroll bar? What for? LOL!
Zoom tool? Why? (Adobe STILL has NOT gotten this figured out. The image should zoom CENTERED ON WHERE THE MOUSE IS DAMNIT. ON WHERE THE MOUSE IS. NOT the upper left hand corner of the picture, NOT the absolute center of the picture, but where the MOUSE POINTER IS!!! Ugh. Damn stubborn bastards.
Of course my nine button mouse is even better. Heh.
I laugh at those pathedic users with there mere gesture based systems.
I have my forwards and backwards buttons bound to my mouse.
Annnyways.
Lots of mouse buttons come in handy. Trust me, they do.
(I would not mind one of those 16 button mice either, hehe. You can bind different buttons to various CAD commands, YAAH!
One great irony of computers is that the famed 'warranty' programs that you get when buying from a large outfit are only NEEDED if you buy from a large outfit.
::groans::. I f*cking hate OEM computers. :(
.
.
Typically big companies use crud quality components in order to cut down on costs.
I got done not to long ago cleaning out the power supplies of computers by company that "shall not be named" that had glue all swirled around inside of them.
Glue?
Yup glue. Apparently the Glue was NOT heat resistant, the power supply got hot, the glue melted, fan blew it around, something shorted out. Luckily the power supply was smart enough to turn itself off and refuse to turn back on.
A good blowing out and some cotton swabs fixed most of the computers, but not all of them. Removing the (apparently slightly conductive) glue removed the short.
Lovely, OEMs, like that.
I have had my Gateway EV700 monitor replaced, uh, three times now. One time they shipped me a monitor that was DOA, another time one of the colors in the monitor gave out within a few weeks, the remaining time within a few months. . .
Not exactly high quality kit. Lovely. . .
(gateway also had this HORRIBLE CD-ROM drive that couldn't keep discs in it balanced worth a darn. ugh. Even ruined one of my CDs. Got a creative 56x CD-ROM drive for $40 or $50 instead of moving it into my new computer.)
Also remember that this is apple, the same company that made the oh so amazing spontaneously power cycling cube and the (I believe it was) Apple III of which official instructions to 'fix' it when chips popped out of place on the Motherboard was to raise it up an inch or two and drop it onto a desk.
(ok so not that bad of a track record, but come on, their computers are made out of PLASTIC damnit. P-L-A-S-T-I-C!!)
My OWN computer on the other hand is Bullet Proof. Hand built, dirt cheap.
PCs are NOT that hard to assemble.
I mean they are color coded after all. Inside and out. The few parts that are not color coded are are least shape keyed.
Quite frankly anybody who cannot figure out that the red round shape plugs into the red round hole should NOT be using a computer at all!
Prebuilt PCs are good for grannies and all, but to build an entire platform soley around the ideology that computers should cater to the LCD is just plain WRONG.
Apple is like the Monster Cable of computer manufacturers. Sure the product isn't THAT bad, but it is HORRIBLY overpriced for what it does and a lot of what it CLAIMS to be the only product capable of doing is pure bullshit. (the analogy is linked even more closely once you realize that both companies shove their products in overly colored cases just to make it look better but to which no functionality is imparted by.)
Mac OSX;
.
Proving that not just Microsoft can take something so simple as a OS and bloat it to hell!
Seriously, the damn OS had issues with SCROLLING of all things. Sure they fixed it, but that is STILL royaly screwed up.
Hell even Windows9x on a 486 can scroll. . .
Besides, any system that builds support for bouncy curvy things into the OS is just plain old fashion f*cking stupid.
Wow, yah, I'll just give up my $500 1ghz system (screw platform differences, it is 1ghz and it was $500, that was a year ago, now days it is 1.4ghz or more for that price!) that can run a wide variety of OSs and use a crudload of different hardware products for. . . .
." )
:)
:) )
:)
a system that locks me into one OS choice (well there ARE some other OSs, depending on what model mac exactly is purchased, but all in all it is definitely NOT an open platform) where a PHYSICAL (not just a life-induced) monopoly exists (HW AND software, oh joy!) with craptacular integrated every-fucking-thing systems and a user base that makes Windows users look down right brilliant.
(yes there are smart mac users, there are also smart windows users, at least the older windows users had to at one point or another in time use DOS, and a good fraction of them actually went about and LEARNED something about the underlying system to boot. While I am sad that MS decided to all but abandon the CLI in favor of a GUI that discourages learning in the same way that the mac environment does, at least even MS PC have a legacy someplace in the past of using a CLI. Mac users have what, the Apple II, which they cannot even lay claim to since they like to brag so much about how nice and "hands off" their platform is now days. . . . )
Oh yah and did I mention the UI? IT FUCKING SUCKS
Seriously.
You REALLY begin to appreciate the design that went into the more modern versions of Windows (excluding XP which looks like a piece of shit but is otherwise functionally the same as 2k) once you have been stuck on a mac for awhile.
I do some VERY funky things with my computer and Windows keeps on going through. If needs be I could do some rather freaky things with a bunch of OTHER OSs, or thanks to x86 emulators on my, err, x86, I can run those other OSs on my computer without repartitioning.
Thanks to emulation Mac users can of course run a lot of PC software too.
Heh.
If you want to call what they do "run". ^_^
(walk maybe. . . jog perhaps for some of the smaller applications. .
I can f*cking install a damn 8 disk raid array inside of my case and not have the damn thing break a sweat, or run out of room!
I have a $20 TV in card, a Matrox G400 MAX Duel Head video card that can do video out, and should I want too, I can easily purchase for a VERY reasonable price any number of prosumer grade sound cards to do damn nearly anything I want to do in THAT arena as well. (I do have a sound card, but it is just median level consumer quality. )
I have a damn f*cking Non-Linear Video Editing 3D rendering Photoshoping behemoth on my hands for less then what a cursed mac user pays for their d*mn wide screen monitor. (in all fairness though, that is just because being a PC user I am capible of looking at FUNCTION over form. Mac users would likely shiver when they found out that my two monitors aren't *GASP* color coordinated!! Oh the HORROR!! >;{} They are color CALIBRATED, but one has a beige casing, the other one a black casing. Deal.)
Did I mention the $30 wireless keyboard and mouse combos? Ooooh yaaah. Sweet.
It also helps that the default keyboard that comes with most PCs is made for somebody BESIDES MIDGETS. Really, what the hell is apple's intended audience here? ALL of their keyboards for their macintosh line of computers f*cking SUCK DAMNIT. Who the hell are those things geared towards, the little people? Seriously, I have nothing against the Fae, but when is the last time that the Elven Queen needed to use a computer?
(and we all know that if the Elven Queen ever used a computer that She would use one which had as many Arcane commands as possible. Likely a *nix box at the minimum.
I was doing NLE on my 266mhz Pentium II, yet to figure out what is so good about those macs. . . I have USED them, but they just well. . . SUCK. Horribly. Sure they look good, well, if you have no Y chromosome and are missing at least part of your X as well.
Computers are supposed to be BEIGE DAMNIT BEIGE. I want my computer to be F*CKING BEIGE AND MADE OUT OF STEEL DAMNIT. My current computer case can support over TWO HUNDRED pounds on top of it. Two-Fricken-Hundred.
The fact that it is FLAT on top SERIOUSLY helps with balancing stuff on top of it too. As opposed many of apple's designs which tend to be. . . uh. . . fugly and curved.
So to summarize:
Cheap
Open
Choices
Usability
ProperSizedPackInKeyboards
KickAssMouseSelection
That about sums it up.
Now that all depends.
:)
.
The CPU is a limiting factor in some types of games, notable those that have complex physics engines. Just because Quake 3 can run in excess of 200FPS and is compleatly graphics card limited now days does not mean that ALL games are that way.
Hell playing multiple videos in different parts of the screen starts sucking away at your CPU power (if you are stuck with an Overlay graphics style system that is. May be different otherwise, I have no idea. ^_^ ). Hell applying basic transformations and morphs to the position/shape of the video play back will (most likely) require CPU usage as well.
Hopefuly with large storage formats, more games will begin to use video too.
Then there is AI. . . . . How is Java going to handle the VASTLY different ways that the CPU can do AI routines. Hell screw that, how is the poor PROGRAMMER going to handle the fact that his great new AI routine that totaly and compleatly Kicks Ass when running on the hardware of, say the Playstation 2 compleatly blows on the X-Box? Or vis versa, which ever.
Use a lesser AI routine? Or code two versions of it one for each console? Yup, that sure saves him a lot of work. . .
Of course you can argue that it would have been done that way anyways, but under this Java system no longer will console programmers be as willing to go 'down to the metal' of the machines that they are programming for.
Of course in all fairness most games that are planned as being multi-plateform are made to the least common denominator in the first place with only minimal optimizations for each system it is ported to.
I got my last callus when I was 6 or 7 years old. Ok ok maybe 8. ^_^
Only wimps get callus's, true gamers have thumbs of STEEL!