Also... pushing an inferior standard down the throats of a web viewing public, isn't going to win the open source model any friends.
Inferior codec? Yes, IMO.
Inferior standard? Debateable.
Theora has... -Superior (lower) CPU usage. -Superior (smaller) patent minefield and licensing costs. -Superior (lower) encoding time. You might not think much of this, but I'm sure Youtube does, which probably encodes dozens of videos per second.
Theora lacks... -Hardware acceleration. (At the moment, although I'm sure DSP/GPU codecs could be designed. Someone just has to do it.) -Good quality at low bitrates. (Although to be honest, with all the settings Youtube has turned off for H.264, Theora and H.264 might actually be comparable)
I've found that FRAPS'd video between 640kbit and 1500kbit can have identical or better quality than Youtube's 2mbit, if you tweak the settings a bit.
The situation you're describing sounds like liquid heading downward. I'm pretty sure most doors aren't made in the floor. But if there was a pit, it might be fastest for people to jump into it from multiple directions.
You make some very valid points, which I'm also curious about. I had heard that LAN connections are still available, but you have to use Battle.net as a lobby. Rather throws a snag in your scenarios... and throws a snag in mine. During the Winter, when snow is coming down, it's not uncommon for my internet to cut out.
I also have another question regarding LAN - most games that support LAN utterly fail when mixing LAN with WAN. I had an online friend from Texas that wanted to play Supreme Commander with a real-life buddy and me. Unfortunately, only one computer from an IP can connect. Since then we've observed the same behaviour in just about every modern LAN-supporting game we've tried. Mixing LAN with WAN is a no go - which means huge bandwidth concerns if multiple people have to send data out/in (to each other) over the same modem.
Just imagine having a LAN party, but one of your friends moved away to go to university somewhere. He wants to connect in over the internet, but can't, because the game can't mix connections.:/ Really annoying.
So it's basically a Pandora phone, rather than console? And backed by a huge company, which means mass production in the hundreds of thousands to millions.
I don't really care how accurate my Kill-A-Watt is, so long as it isn't reporting a 300 watt computer as using 150 watts. After testing various devices, I'm fairly satisfied that this isn't the case.
I tried some 20w energy efficient bulbs, and they were consuming 25 watts each.:/ My 35w monitor only consumes 28w when on.
Out of curiosity I also tried an old CRT TV. That thing was a monster!;)
I wish more people were interested too. Power demands are always going up - but if we can make things more energy efficient, we can use more devices without hurting the environment as much, and avoid paying peak rates. However, it also delays much-needed infrastructure upgrades for the power grid, as they aren't a necessity yet.
Idle. Heavy load peaks it up to about 150, depending on whether the CPU, GPU, or both are stressed.
If I were to multitask and burn a DVD while video encoding on one core and playing Left4Dead, I have a feeling I could push it higher - but lets be honest... that isn't really average use.;)
And before anyone asks, I checked out the consumption of other stuff like lightbulbs, my monitor, microwave, etc. to make sure the Kill-A-Watt wasn't on the fritz.
Twice as fast again. x16 is 32GB/s. They're looking to support 3 graphics cards per PC, which is cool if you're into that whole supercomputer on your desk thing, but it's going to burn at least a kilowatt.
No.
Ever read those power consumption reviews, with beefy high end cards? Usually the computers(quad core, single high end GPU) use 200-300w load. Much of that comes from the CPU/mobo/RAM/HDD/etc. If you add a few more cards, it's unlikely you'll even hit 500 watts.
I picked up a Kill-A-Watt off newegg, a while back, and was surprised to find out my gaming computer only consumes ~100 watts from the wall. That's partly influenced by having a high efficiency PSU, and partly by parts not consuming nearly as much as everyone thinks.
I'm sad we haven't seen external PCIe implemented. It was in the v2 specification. The idea of an external interconnect with that much bandwidth probably made some heavy players nervous.
Some people tried playing a PS3 and XBox360 in a sauna. The XBox360 didn't last long before crashing, but the PS3 hummed away fine until they finished their multi-day gaming run.
And now a tip for you... turn your remote controls upside down when you go to sleep.;)
Either way, marketing this kind of NIC without addressing all of its security potentials/weaknesses would be hasty... and possibly even irresponsible.
Seems to be working fine for Bigfoot.:P
I don't think there's a huge number of vulnerabilities for an OS stripped down that much. The much reduced attack surface of the kernel and running applications will harden it to almost all exploits. Not all, but enough that it'll be rare to get hacked that way.
After all, technically you can hack current NICs, but it's not every day that it happens.;)
Wow you've convinced me. Bungie clearly should have thrown away 99% of their sales from that "poor little console" in order for them to instead port it to Linux!
I disagree. The console market is far bigger than the linux gaming market. It makes sense to try and tap in on the larger player base.
But if they had developed the game using OpenGL, porting it would be far simpler than it would be for a DirectX game. If you use cross-platform APIs when designing the first time around, the whole porting process might even be unnecessary.
But commercial games usually use APIs or engines locked to a single platform, which is where ludicrous costs and 1000-hour estimates for porting come into play.
The linux market is actually significantly larger than that. Some indy developers have reported thousands of sales. It's not millions, but thousands is several orders of magnitude larger than 15 sales per year.
For a high quality commercial game, 25-100k per year wouldn't be an unreasonable estimate.
Nah, Vista was horrible. It saturates your disk IO like crazy, which is especially bad on those older 5400RPM laptop drives that don't have much cache. 64bit CPU and 2GB of memory does no good when the other pipes are clogged.
Win7 is much closer to XP at not consuming all your disk IO.
This is the first time I've seen Valve act like a greedy corporate whore, and it's troubling because they're one of the few remaining PC developers who are worth a damn.
Now now, keep in mind that there's people behind all this stuff. Entire teams of dozens to hundreds of people.
Every team works a bit differently. Clearly the L4D team isn't so great at pushing extra content out the door, or fixing engine bugs. That doesn't change the company's philosophy, but it does mean we'll see this stuff pushed out to us at a much slower rate.
"New engine" is a stretch, IMO. Most of the actual content--new weapons, new campaigns, new enemy types--were supposed to be free DLC for L4D, according to interviews before L4D's release.
FYI, L4D is using the original HL2 engine. Not the Orange Box engine, or whatever they're working on now.
We may still see new weapons, but don't hold your breath on melee - that stuff is buggy. Best I'm hoping for new mounted weapons on the ground, and maybe a fourth T2 weapon or third T1 weapon if they can come up with a nitch to fill.
Also, you can't really pirate the DLC from a closed network, so it's guaranteed that people pay for it.
Or that they won't pay for it.
In which case you're paying for patches, and getting nothing in return. I wonder what the numbers are for people paying for DLC, vs people just sucking up patches? Maybe they have a legitimate money sinkhole, thanks to Microsoft charging for that stuff?
Your point would be valid, if your dollar amounts weren't so ludicrously off.
First - most people don't have $7k PCs. I myself have an $800 PC. It plays new games pretty well on my 19" monitor.;)
A console costs no more than $500 to make. Microsoft mass-produces millions of XBox360's. I'd actually estimate the parts cost to be between $200-300, but you have some hefty R&D costs to make up, which is why these companies can claim to be "selling at a loss". Even so, R&D can't be that much when split between millions of consoles. If R&D costs even $100 per console, then they spent well over $3,000,000,000 on R&D. I find that unlikely - but who knows with a huge company like Microsoft or Sony?
Slashdot Mirror
Also... pushing an inferior standard down the throats of a web viewing public, isn't going to win the open source model any friends.
Inferior codec? Yes, IMO.
Inferior standard? Debateable.
Theora has...
-Superior (lower) CPU usage.
-Superior (smaller) patent minefield and licensing costs.
-Superior (lower) encoding time. You might not think much of this, but I'm sure Youtube does, which probably encodes dozens of videos per second.
Theora lacks...
-Hardware acceleration. (At the moment, although I'm sure DSP/GPU codecs could be designed. Someone just has to do it.)
-Good quality at low bitrates. (Although to be honest, with all the settings Youtube has turned off for H.264, Theora and H.264 might actually be comparable)
I've found that FRAPS'd video between 640kbit and 1500kbit can have identical or better quality than Youtube's 2mbit, if you tweak the settings a bit.
Have to start somewhere. Lets get the DSP/GPU codecs out the door!? ;)
The situation you're describing sounds like liquid heading downward. I'm pretty sure most doors aren't made in the floor. But if there was a pit, it might be fastest for people to jump into it from multiple directions.
From the project page: "No downloads or plugins are necessary other than Flash ..."
And how do you propose you get the rendering done in IE6? If you have an SVG compatible browser, you don't need this... which means not lame.
Is SVG support really considered basic functionality in a web browser? Gif and Jpeg, I'd call those basic functionality for sure.
Is CSS2 support basic functionality?
SVG is older than CSS2.
Why is this modded funny?
You make some very valid points, which I'm also curious about. I had heard that LAN connections are still available, but you have to use Battle.net as a lobby. Rather throws a snag in your scenarios... and throws a snag in mine. During the Winter, when snow is coming down, it's not uncommon for my internet to cut out.
I also have another question regarding LAN - most games that support LAN utterly fail when mixing LAN with WAN. I had an online friend from Texas that wanted to play Supreme Commander with a real-life buddy and me. Unfortunately, only one computer from an IP can connect. Since then we've observed the same behaviour in just about every modern LAN-supporting game we've tried. Mixing LAN with WAN is a no go - which means huge bandwidth concerns if multiple people have to send data out/in (to each other) over the same modem.
Just imagine having a LAN party, but one of your friends moved away to go to university somewhere. He wants to connect in over the internet, but can't, because the game can't mix connections. :/ Really annoying.
So it's basically a Pandora phone, rather than console? And backed by a huge company, which means mass production in the hundreds of thousands to millions.
Hehe, sarcasm. ;)
I don't really care how accurate my Kill-A-Watt is, so long as it isn't reporting a 300 watt computer as using 150 watts. After testing various devices, I'm fairly satisfied that this isn't the case.
I tried some 20w energy efficient bulbs, and they were consuming 25 watts each. :/ My 35w monitor only consumes 28w when on.
Out of curiosity I also tried an old CRT TV. That thing was a monster! ;)
I wish more people were interested too. Power demands are always going up - but if we can make things more energy efficient, we can use more devices without hurting the environment as much, and avoid paying peak rates. However, it also delays much-needed infrastructure upgrades for the power grid, as they aren't a necessity yet.
Idle. Heavy load peaks it up to about 150, depending on whether the CPU, GPU, or both are stressed.
If I were to multitask and burn a DVD while video encoding on one core and playing Left4Dead, I have a feeling I could push it higher - but lets be honest... that isn't really average use. ;)
And before anyone asks, I checked out the consumption of other stuff like lightbulbs, my monitor, microwave, etc. to make sure the Kill-A-Watt wasn't on the fritz.
Twice as fast again. x16 is 32GB/s. They're looking to support 3 graphics cards per PC, which is cool if you're into that whole supercomputer on your desk thing, but it's going to burn at least a kilowatt.
No.
Ever read those power consumption reviews, with beefy high end cards? Usually the computers(quad core, single high end GPU) use 200-300w load. Much of that comes from the CPU/mobo/RAM/HDD/etc. If you add a few more cards, it's unlikely you'll even hit 500 watts.
I picked up a Kill-A-Watt off newegg, a while back, and was surprised to find out my gaming computer only consumes ~100 watts from the wall. That's partly influenced by having a high efficiency PSU, and partly by parts not consuming nearly as much as everyone thinks.
I'm sad we haven't seen external PCIe implemented. It was in the v2 specification. The idea of an external interconnect with that much bandwidth probably made some heavy players nervous.
Yes.
Some people tried playing a PS3 and XBox360 in a sauna. The XBox360 didn't last long before crashing, but the PS3 hummed away fine until they finished their multi-day gaming run.
And now a tip for you... turn your remote controls upside down when you go to sleep. ;)
Pidgin Adds Google Talk Voice and Video Support and patches a Vulnerability
Either way, marketing this kind of NIC without addressing all of its security potentials/weaknesses would be hasty... and possibly even irresponsible.
Seems to be working fine for Bigfoot. :P
I don't think there's a huge number of vulnerabilities for an OS stripped down that much. The much reduced attack surface of the kernel and running applications will harden it to almost all exploits. Not all, but enough that it'll be rare to get hacked that way.
After all, technically you can hack current NICs, but it's not every day that it happens. ;)
Defamation/slander? Didn't he say you couldn't break the law?
My phone must blow. Same issue over landline. :P
Or you could pop a quick email off explaining what you want to do, and get permission.
Wow you've convinced me. Bungie clearly should have thrown away 99% of their sales from that "poor little console" in order for them to instead port it to Linux!
I disagree. The console market is far bigger than the linux gaming market. It makes sense to try and tap in on the larger player base.
But if they had developed the game using OpenGL, porting it would be far simpler than it would be for a DirectX game. If you use cross-platform APIs when designing the first time around, the whole porting process might even be unnecessary.
But commercial games usually use APIs or engines locked to a single platform, which is where ludicrous costs and 1000-hour estimates for porting come into play.
There's no money in linux games. You need to sell enough copies to pay for the dev time to port it.
Which isn't really a problem, unless your engine is DirectX based. Then you're almost looking at an entire rewrite.
The linux market is actually significantly larger than that. Some indy developers have reported thousands of sales. It's not millions, but thousands is several orders of magnitude larger than 15 sales per year.
For a high quality commercial game, 25-100k per year wouldn't be an unreasonable estimate.
Hurray - this is good news! If winver reported the wrong internal version, I don't think I'd have any faith left for Microsoft.
Nah, Vista was horrible. It saturates your disk IO like crazy, which is especially bad on those older 5400RPM laptop drives that don't have much cache. 64bit CPU and 2GB of memory does no good when the other pipes are clogged.
Win7 is much closer to XP at not consuming all your disk IO.
This is the first time I've seen Valve act like a greedy corporate whore, and it's troubling because they're one of the few remaining PC developers who are worth a damn.
Now now, keep in mind that there's people behind all this stuff. Entire teams of dozens to hundreds of people.
Every team works a bit differently. Clearly the L4D team isn't so great at pushing extra content out the door, or fixing engine bugs. That doesn't change the company's philosophy, but it does mean we'll see this stuff pushed out to us at a much slower rate.
"New engine" is a stretch, IMO. Most of the actual content--new weapons, new campaigns, new enemy types--were supposed to be free DLC for L4D, according to interviews before L4D's release.
FYI, L4D is using the original HL2 engine. Not the Orange Box engine, or whatever they're working on now.
We may still see new weapons, but don't hold your breath on melee - that stuff is buggy. Best I'm hoping for new mounted weapons on the ground, and maybe a fourth T2 weapon or third T1 weapon if they can come up with a nitch to fill.
Also, you can't really pirate the DLC from a closed network, so it's guaranteed that people pay for it.
Or that they won't pay for it.
In which case you're paying for patches, and getting nothing in return. I wonder what the numbers are for people paying for DLC, vs people just sucking up patches? Maybe they have a legitimate money sinkhole, thanks to Microsoft charging for that stuff?
Your point would be valid, if your dollar amounts weren't so ludicrously off.
First - most people don't have $7k PCs. I myself have an $800 PC. It plays new games pretty well on my 19" monitor. ;)
A console costs no more than $500 to make. Microsoft mass-produces millions of XBox360's. I'd actually estimate the parts cost to be between $200-300, but you have some hefty R&D costs to make up, which is why these companies can claim to be "selling at a loss". Even so, R&D can't be that much when split between millions of consoles. If R&D costs even $100 per console, then they spent well over $3,000,000,000 on R&D. I find that unlikely - but who knows with a huge company like Microsoft or Sony?