I remember when the American spy plane had the collision with the Chinese fighter jet in 2001, almost every Chinese person I knew, despite being US citizens, was adamant that the US should apologize.
Umm... no shit? I'm Canadian mate, but that one is just obvious.
Their airspace, so their fighter had the right to be there. The US government may not recognize it as theirs, (it was over the sea, right?) but the US government has a history of ignoring the borders of sovereign nations when it pleases them.
My mother had an Acer laptop with XP. Battery life was about 2 hours. Several months later it started dropping. Within another couple months, it was 3 minutes. Now it's approximately 90 seconds.
I have visions of car crashes involving brilliant blue flashes and passengers exploding from the sudden discharge of electricity. Then again, we're already driving around in steel coffins filled with gallons of explosively flammable liquid so there's not much left to lose.
No sense adding more danger. Getting hit is already bad enough.
Ever poked around in a digital camera before? (wearing gloves) I watched as one of my parents prodded a cap with a screwdriver. Only 330V, but quite the spark! Ka-bang! The screwdriver has a black mark where it touched.
If your game gets on steam, and it's good, you're guaranteed 5 digit sales.
On a 6 digit budget game?
Some steam games sell 6 or 7 digits.
Guaranteed 5 digits is pretty good. The iPhone has a guaranteed 2 digits, and the Wii only ~4.:P
And why does this software have such a limitation? Based on everything I've read in other Slashdot comments, it's because there aren't enough customers in the PC gaming market who have the appropriate hardware. Major-label PC games aimed at the median PC gamer are designed for the median PC monitor, which is smaller than the median console monitor. This in turn is because the median PC gamer is less of a hardcore enthusiast than someone like you who runs dual head 1080p-class monitors. One person does not a market make.
There are plenty of customers out there. What publishers don't grasp, is we're not all on their schedule. People upgrade at different times. Although there's a big burst on release, you could get a steady stream of sales for years after release, especially if you drop the price every once and a while.
I know people with computers that will only play older games like Far Cry. When they see a deal like this week's on Steam, they pick it up. Places like GOG.com are a heaven for them.
Steam is a market. If your game gets on steam, and it's good, you're guaranteed 5 digit sales. Those are sales you would not have if you stuck with console-only distribution - and apparently the amount of sales is far superior to the Wii Shop channel.
Your arguments are poorly thought out. Most console ports support the same controllers - often they require them for the best experience.
is limited by the comparatively small median monitor of a PC
What is this? Are you a console fanboy?
My PC is more than capable of powering games across multiple monitors. It could do it with a combined res of 4096x1152 just fine, giving almost 50 inches of beautifully dense pixels.
But no PC games that I know of support such a hotseat mode. The limitations are with the software - not the hardware. (which is way way way superior)
Berate PC games as being buggy featureless pieces of crap if you must, but don't insult the hardware. The hardware is awesome.
People that work around x-ray machines do just fine too.
The problem with measuring damage caused by EM radiation is that old waterbucket scenario. The same one that applies to global warming. You can keep dumping water in until it spills over the edge. While dumping water in, you only get drops spilling over when it's approaching the brim. As soon as it passes it, you have a wet floor.
The problem is, EM radiation is everywhere. Would you give up electricity and powerlines - perhaps living in a log cabin - to get away from it? I would not. So although I acknowledge that in 50 years this'll probably bite me in the ass... oh well. I can't say I wasn't warned.
Knowledge of how large companies stagnate. It's all bureaucratic BS.
I'm sure there's a team at Adobe that wants to optimize flash - but they're probably being blocked by the higher ups that refuse to cut backwards compatibility.
Flash performance is horrible on any computer. Youtube used to be smooth on my old 2.2ghz Athlon XP, but now it barely plays. Even my 3.5ghz Athlon II has occasional stutters.
When Google does it, it's okay. Thats why Slashdot has the evil Borg for Bill Gates and the friendly Google logo for Google.
Google sells to the highest bidder?
I know they datamine to improve their ad targeting, and record every single thing you do... but that's for internal use, to improve the value of their services.
This sounds more like improving the value of Microsoft's shares.
Similar to HOMM, but more of an RPG/adventure. It has difficulty levels ranging from easy to impossible - but many unfamiliar with the genre will find "Normal" to be challenging.
I went with easy and challenged myself to lose as few units as possible. A very enjoyable game.
Right now I'm playing through Torchlight on the hardest difficulty. Good thing there's no death penalty if you respawn in town.;) I kill enemies in about 4 hits, but they do the same.
DRAM cache mostly helps with reading - not writing. I guess that's where the SSD comes in. Our filesystems just aren't set up to allow writing huge swathes of tiny files sequentially, so when random write speeds are important the SSD is king.
Although I suppose ZFS might be set up for exactly that... but few of the others are.
An HDD with a huge cache would be interesting. One company tried it a few years back.
Based on this 5400RPM drive's performance, I imagine a WD Black(7200RPM with dual heads) would come close to maxing out SATA2 if it had a gigabyte or two of cache.
I consider low bitrate to be about 256kbit - 1024kbit, depending on the resolution of the video.
I've noticed that for specific situations - like conferences where a speaker is talking for an hour with very little movement - H.264 does okay with ~64kbit. Aside from that, I wouldn't go lower than 256kbit.
My experience with 856x360 29.97 video (technically 480p, but the video had black bars encoded, which I removed) was H.264 doing fine with just 512kbit. "Fine" means few noticeable artifacts, but an obvious lack of detail when comparing to DVD side by side.
The XBox360 has won because of their broken DRM that lets pirates play whatever they want.
Pirates are vocal. Pirates play the best games, and tell their friends to play them. Whatever format pirates endorse ends up winning. All my pirate friends also like porn, so there may be some crossover.:P
But that's why I'm impressed the PS3 is doing so well.
Don't forget that x86 software keeps getting less and less efficient. Anything from Adobe needs a quad-core to run.;)
ARM is the reverse. Compilers are being improved - in the past year software destined for Android and Cortex-A8 platforms has gone up in performance. Also, I heard on the gp32x boards (OSS handheld console community) that replacing important sections in games with hand-coded assembly often has a 50% or more speedup, indicating compilers like GCC have a long way to go yet.
ARM has a lot of breathing room. I doubt they'll claim 90% of the market, but they will claim a large chunk.
It's never completely in your control that your DVDs will survive. Shit happens. An earthquake, or someone drops a lamp on one, or someone carelessly drops one, etc.
What it comes down to is, how much faith do you have that Steam/Valve won't go up in smoke? They're not publicly traded, so do you think they're rolling in money and are unlikely to go down?
Slashdot Mirror
I remember when the American spy plane had the collision with the Chinese fighter jet in 2001, almost every Chinese person I knew, despite being US citizens, was adamant that the US should apologize.
Umm... no shit? I'm Canadian mate, but that one is just obvious.
Their airspace, so their fighter had the right to be there. The US government may not recognize it as theirs, (it was over the sea, right?) but the US government has a history of ignoring the borders of sovereign nations when it pleases them.
My mother had an Acer laptop with XP. Battery life was about 2 hours. Several months later it started dropping. Within another couple months, it was 3 minutes. Now it's approximately 90 seconds.
I'm inclined to agree with you.
I have visions of car crashes involving brilliant blue flashes and passengers exploding from the sudden discharge of electricity. Then again, we're already driving around in steel coffins filled with gallons of explosively flammable liquid so there's not much left to lose.
No sense adding more danger. Getting hit is already bad enough.
Ever poked around in a digital camera before? (wearing gloves) I watched as one of my parents prodded a cap with a screwdriver. Only 330V, but quite the spark! Ka-bang! The screwdriver has a black mark where it touched.
My first result is "Why can't I own a Canadian" :/
If your game gets on steam, and it's good, you're guaranteed 5 digit sales.
On a 6 digit budget game?
Some steam games sell 6 or 7 digits.
Guaranteed 5 digits is pretty good. The iPhone has a guaranteed 2 digits, and the Wii only ~4. :P
And why does this software have such a limitation? Based on everything I've read in other Slashdot comments, it's because there aren't enough customers in the PC gaming market who have the appropriate hardware. Major-label PC games aimed at the median PC gamer are designed for the median PC monitor, which is smaller than the median console monitor. This in turn is because the median PC gamer is less of a hardcore enthusiast than someone like you who runs dual head 1080p-class monitors. One person does not a market make.
There are plenty of customers out there. What publishers don't grasp, is we're not all on their schedule. People upgrade at different times. Although there's a big burst on release, you could get a steady stream of sales for years after release, especially if you drop the price every once and a while.
I know people with computers that will only play older games like Far Cry. When they see a deal like this week's on Steam, they pick it up. Places like GOG.com are a heaven for them.
What does console vs PC have to do with it?
Steam is a market. If your game gets on steam, and it's good, you're guaranteed 5 digit sales. Those are sales you would not have if you stuck with console-only distribution - and apparently the amount of sales is far superior to the Wii Shop channel.
Your arguments are poorly thought out. Most console ports support the same controllers - often they require them for the best experience.
is limited by the comparatively small median monitor of a PC
What is this? Are you a console fanboy?
My PC is more than capable of powering games across multiple monitors. It could do it with a combined res of 4096x1152 just fine, giving almost 50 inches of beautifully dense pixels.
But no PC games that I know of support such a hotseat mode. The limitations are with the software - not the hardware. (which is way way way superior)
Berate PC games as being buggy featureless pieces of crap if you must, but don't insult the hardware. The hardware is awesome.
they do just fine.
People that work around x-ray machines do just fine too.
The problem with measuring damage caused by EM radiation is that old waterbucket scenario. The same one that applies to global warming. You can keep dumping water in until it spills over the edge. While dumping water in, you only get drops spilling over when it's approaching the brim. As soon as it passes it, you have a wet floor.
The problem is, EM radiation is everywhere. Would you give up electricity and powerlines - perhaps living in a log cabin - to get away from it? I would not. So although I acknowledge that in 50 years this'll probably bite me in the ass... oh well. I can't say I wasn't warned.
Plus, every new game Nintendo releases is a hit. Nintendo seems to make their own success rather than depending on third party developers.
If your game is high quality, you need to hit Steam.
But steam users love to complain about unstable shit, so if it isn't high quality, stay away. :P
Is there something that I'm missing?
Knowledge of how large companies stagnate. It's all bureaucratic BS.
I'm sure there's a team at Adobe that wants to optimize flash - but they're probably being blocked by the higher ups that refuse to cut backwards compatibility.
Flash performance is horrible on any computer. Youtube used to be smooth on my old 2.2ghz Athlon XP, but now it barely plays. Even my 3.5ghz Athlon II has occasional stutters.
Nope - because it does.
But selling out to the highest bidder is different than targeting advertising more efficiently.
What exactly did Google do to earn your trust that Microsoft never could?
Required a court order to hand over info to the US government.
Relevant sponsored links. (if I'm being mined, I at least want something useful out of it)
When Google does it, it's okay. Thats why Slashdot has the evil Borg for Bill Gates and the friendly Google logo for Google.
Google sells to the highest bidder?
I know they datamine to improve their ad targeting, and record every single thing you do... but that's for internal use, to improve the value of their services.
This sounds more like improving the value of Microsoft's shares.
Similar to HOMM, but more of an RPG/adventure. It has difficulty levels ranging from easy to impossible - but many unfamiliar with the genre will find "Normal" to be challenging.
I went with easy and challenged myself to lose as few units as possible. A very enjoyable game.
Right now I'm playing through Torchlight on the hardest difficulty. Good thing there's no death penalty if you respawn in town. ;) I kill enemies in about 4 hits, but they do the same.
DRAM cache mostly helps with reading - not writing. I guess that's where the SSD comes in. Our filesystems just aren't set up to allow writing huge swathes of tiny files sequentially, so when random write speeds are important the SSD is king.
Although I suppose ZFS might be set up for exactly that... but few of the others are.
An HDD with a huge cache would be interesting. One company tried it a few years back.
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2007/09/coming-soon-hard-drives-with-1gb-ddr-ram-cache.ars
Based on this 5400RPM drive's performance, I imagine a WD Black(7200RPM with dual heads) would come close to maxing out SATA2 if it had a gigabyte or two of cache.
I consider low bitrate to be about 256kbit - 1024kbit, depending on the resolution of the video.
I've noticed that for specific situations - like conferences where a speaker is talking for an hour with very little movement - H.264 does okay with ~64kbit. Aside from that, I wouldn't go lower than 256kbit.
My experience with 856x360 29.97 video (technically 480p, but the video had black bars encoded, which I removed) was H.264 doing fine with just 512kbit. "Fine" means few noticeable artifacts, but an obvious lack of detail when comparing to DVD side by side.
I agree with your post.
But H.264 really does rock when you have a high quality source.
And for low-bitrate video (512kbit or lower), it really is the king of preserving detail.
Nokia likes OSS. They're constantly releasing stuff for free. QT... Maemo...
Nokia makes money off hardware sales.
I don't believe Nokia is a patent troll, but they would likely keep these in their arsenal in case some other company (like Apple) sues them.
The XBox360 has won because of their broken DRM that lets pirates play whatever they want.
Pirates are vocal. Pirates play the best games, and tell their friends to play them. Whatever format pirates endorse ends up winning. All my pirate friends also like porn, so there may be some crossover. :P
But that's why I'm impressed the PS3 is doing so well.
Don't forget that x86 software keeps getting less and less efficient. Anything from Adobe needs a quad-core to run. ;)
ARM is the reverse. Compilers are being improved - in the past year software destined for Android and Cortex-A8 platforms has gone up in performance. Also, I heard on the gp32x boards (OSS handheld console community) that replacing important sections in games with hand-coded assembly often has a 50% or more speedup, indicating compilers like GCC have a long way to go yet.
ARM has a lot of breathing room. I doubt they'll claim 90% of the market, but they will claim a large chunk.
The new ARM SoCs are pretty fast. 720p H.264 decoding through a DSP - next gen will be 1080p.
What ARM has going for it is... very low power consumption, performance that is rapidly catching up to the Atom, and very strong Linux support.
For handhelds and embedded devices, Linux is a better experience than Windows. Why settle for WinCE when you can have a customized Linux distro?
Whether they'll take over the market remains to be seen - but you're understating the cards that are in their favour.
And that's totally incorrect.
It's never completely in your control that your DVDs will survive. Shit happens. An earthquake, or someone drops a lamp on one, or someone carelessly drops one, etc.
What it comes down to is, how much faith do you have that Steam/Valve won't go up in smoke? They're not publicly traded, so do you think they're rolling in money and are unlikely to go down?
That's pretty bad. They should lock down the game and prevent future purchases until resolved - not lock your entire account.
I've had a few transactions fall through with Paypal, and my account was never locked - but I use my credit card as my source.
You're right. Activation limits and all that crap do work against used games.
It didn't offer to start in offline mode?
What game was it? If I have it I'll test that particular one.