Thanks for telling everyone what to do, where would we be without you?:)
Yes, the NV30 will probably beat the 9700. But when it is arriving? Some estimates I've heard don't have it showing up until Feb '03. Six months.
Anytime you're ready to buy a new vid card (or CPU, or mobo) you can wait six months to get something better. But sooner or later, you have to buy something. Putting off a purchase because something better is coming down the road is never a good choice, because there will always be something better down the road. If you need a machine right now, but it now and get the best components for your needs.
And in six months or whenever the NV30 arrives, you know what? Most games will still be based on 5 year old GFX engines that run decently on a GF2.:)
No, it's not more or less a tie. Check the benchmarks again. It's more or less a tie in those apps that are already CPU bound. In those that aren't (including games with AA turned on), the 9700 clearly wins. No bias here.
No, no one else is confused. The point is money. Console games regularly outsell PC games on average. Just because you don't know anyone with an Xbox doesn't mean there aren't millions of Xbox owners out there who will buy this game. I would bet that by the time Doom III is released, the Xbox version will sell on par or in greater numbers than the PC version.
Think of it this way: everyone who buys an Xbox is buying it to play games; no one who buys an Xbox will have to upgrade their system to play Doom III. Most people who buy a PC are not buying it to play high-end games. Most people with PCs will need to upgrade their system if they want to play Doom III.
It definitely is worth it, at least for me, since I commute about 45 miles a day round trip.
How much of a premium does one pay for a hybrid car? I really don't know, that's why I'm asking. I have "heard" that it's a few thousand bucks above an equivalent conventional car.
I've often thought that the savings on gas would make up for the difference, but in reality it seems like it would take a couple years to reach the break-even point.
For example, if you drive 50 miles a day, you're using about 1 gallon per day in your Prius. Let's assume a conventional car (like my Honda) gets about 20 MPG. The Honda is using 2.5 as much gas as your Prius. So on a yearly basis, let's say the Prius is burning 365 gallons a year (a gallon per day, every single day), and the conventional car burns 912.5 (365*2.5) gallons.
A gallon of the good stuff around here is $1.50, but let's bump that up to $1.75 to try and avoid under-estimation for an average. Using these numbers, the Prius costs 1.75 * 365 = $638.75 in gas per year to run, and the conventional car costs 1.75 * 912.5 = $1596.88. The difference is roughly $1000.
So after three or four years, you reach the break-even point from gas savings due to the higher initial cost of a hybrid car. And remember that this is using what I would consider an over-estimation on savings; these figures assume you're putting over 18,000 miles on your car each year, which I believe is above the average. For someone like me, who commutes about 30 miles a day and where gas costs are lower, it would take about twice as long (6-8 years!) to make up the difference.
I know this wasn't the main point of your post, but it's something I'd thought about before and I was surprised that the gas savings weren't greater after I worked through the numbers.
I'll readily admit that the hybrid cars are becoming very attractive from an environment-friendly point of view, but from a purely economics standpoint, I don't think they're quite there yet.
Yes, I can certainly agree with that. If the service doesn't work as advertised (i.e. "turns to shit"), then I think everyone would agree that it wouldn't be worth the cost.
I was just making the case for why this type of service might be worth it, assuming it works of course.:)
I feel the exact same way. I used to hate MS with a passion, then I realized it just wasn't worth the angst and the taste of bile. I love games and want to play the latest and greatest, so I got an Xbox without a twinge of doubt or guilt. If MS makes a good product, I will support it. I do not support their OS or Office products; I do support the Xbox.
Keep in mind that my assumtions are pretty optimistic. There are how many PCs? 1 billion? 600 million? How many are primarily game systems? 200 million, maybe 300?
Considering that some of the best PC games (The Sims excepted) only sell a few hundred-thousand copies, I think the idea that there are 300 million game PCs out there is amazingly optomistic.
Halo has sold more than 1.5 million copies with an installed base of less than 4 million Xboxes. How many copies of Quake 3 were sold?
My point is: console games regularly out-sell PC games, so I would say there are not very many PCs out there that are primarily game machines (i.e. kept up to date enough to play the latest games).
When comparing the Xbox network to free games: Yes, you wouldn't pay a monthly fee for Diablo 2, et al, but those game servers are not hosted by the companies that made the games, they provide the server software to customers, who they depend upon to run the game servers -- so of course they are free. At most, all the company provides is a match-making service to hook you up with a server.
The question is: would you pay $10 a month to play ALL your PC games online with the following conditions: A) There will always be a fast server to connect to. B) You don't have to hunt down this server via gamespy, or whatever. You're auto-connected. C) This server will never be shut off. (e.g. shut off during a match or after a match, forcing you to hunt for another server). D) You have *good*, live voice communication over every game.
Basically, think of everything you dislike about online PC gaming. Would it be worth $10 to get rid of all that?
When comparing the Xbox network to EQ, AC, etc: Recall that these games have a monthly fee for EACH game, seperately. Xbox will have these type of games as well (Star Wars Galaxies, etc), but MS has stated that they will not charge extra for them. The door seems to be left open as to whether or not the game developers will be able to charge extra for them (support, ongoing development, add-ons, etc).
You have a good point, but take a look: six months to a year later the games for the newest consoles start to drop in price as well. You can already find the launch titles for the Xbox at $29.99 at most places.
It was a huge surprise to everyone that S-M made $114 million in it's first three days. The X-men, a comic which sells better than S-M, movie opened with $54 over it's first weekend. S-M's opening was so huge that it grossed more in it's first three days than most movies gross in their entire runs. Most of the predicitions for S-M topped out at $80 million, no slouch, admittedly, but no one expected this!
Predicting that those movies will make $200 million is easy. Which one's will make $300 million? $350 million? $400 million? Get within $25 million for each of those movies and I'll be impressed.
Spider-Man fans have been waiting for this movie for 40 years -- Spider-Man first appeared in a comic in 1962. Okay, perhaps more reasonably we've been waiting for this movie since the first Superman movie of the 1970's. That's still a long time.
Meanwhile, Star Wars fans have been waiting for Episode 2 for 3 years. And some lost interest 3 years ago. I used to be one of the most rabid Star Wars fans I knew. After Episode I, I convinced myself it was decent. Only after I got the DVD did I realize that I had been fooling myself. I will still see Episode 2, but I'm in no rush to see it opening weekend. A lot of us Star Wars fans are realizing that IV-VI are going to be the classics. These new episodes are all going to be disappointments, I fear.
Holy Hell! I believe you. Without personal experience I would be somewhat skeptical about these types of people, but I've had the misfortune of working with one several years ago.
I'm not sure how he was hired since I wasn't in the hiring process, but here are some of his stories:
- He was in the Air Force and Marines at various times in his career, including a stint as a Navy SEAL.
- While in the armed forces, he was picked to play for the 1980 US Soccer team. Of course, these games were boycotted by the US since they were being held in Moscow, so there are no records.
- He was witness to a super-secret airplane project (the name escapes me) in which the plane flew so fast that the pilot could not steer quickly enough to keep it in the atmosphere (due to the curvature of the Earth).
- While a SEAL, he was trying to get married (for the second time, same girl) when his beeper along with all his buddies' beepers in the congregation went off at the same time, they all ran out into the parking lot to meet a landing helicopter that wisked them away. ("Wasn't that in that movie 'Navy SEALs'?", a co-worker asked. "Yeah," he said. "I think they based that movie on us.")
- One time he lived in a bad neighborhood which was frequented by drug dealers. One day, seeing a dealer on his corner, he runs out and confronts him with a shotgun. The dealer takes off in his car, which this guy shoots up with the shotgun. The cops arrive and congratulate him on standing up to the druggies.
- At one time he was tapped to train snipers for the local police force. (He was a sniper for the Marines, BTW).
- One of his hobbies was potato-cannon construction. He developed a model that was so powerful that the FBI contacted him about it. They wanted the specs.
Man, I could go on and on, I heard so many of them. At first, we challanged some of his stories until we figured out that he REALLY believed them. That's when we started wondering when he was going to wander in some day with that shotgun of his...so we just nodded our heads after that.
You know, I could tell where a lot of the CG scenes were, but they didn't take me out of the movie and I didn't dwell on them because what other choice was there?
So you'd rather them wait 10 years to make this movie until CG get a little better? They did the best they could.
In fact, I applaud S-M for it's CG because it didn't take over the film. They used it for the swinging scenes that couldn't have been done as well any other way. Or would you rather have seen a guy half-assed swing his way in front of a blue screen? That could have been much worse!
Compare the relative scarcity of CG in S-M to the proliferation of it in TPM. They only used CG in S-M when they had no other choice.
Movies used to stay in theaters forever. Are you old enough to remember when Raiders of the Lost Ark opened? It was so huge that it stayed in theaters for nearly a year, if I remember correctly. Nowadays, the biggest blockbusters only hang around for a few months at most, and at ever decreasing theater counts.
So these days, people are more geared toward thinking that they need to see movies earlier before they leave the theater.
Also with the way movies are talked about on TV, magazines, and the internet, if you don't see a blockbuster early, you might feel like you're missing out on the discussion or you might have part of it spoiled for you.
Close, but a 10-20% dropoff is considered excellent! A dropoff of less than 10% is unheard of, not withstanding recent Oscar nominations or wins or holidays.
A 20-30% dropoff is very good, 35-45% is average, and 50% is expected for big hype machines. Anything more than 50% is poor.
The only film that has ever surprised me with it's dropoff was the Sixth Sense. It got such good word-of-mouth that it only dropped 2% from week one to two!
Well, you're going to be hating the sequel which reportedly stars Doc Ock and the Lizard and the villians!
I don't think Spider-Man's villans are all that bad. Yes, most of his classic villians are the one's from the 60's, so what do you expect? Venom is a 90's villian so naturally he's going to be "cooler" to our modern sense of villian "coolness".
I saw Dan Poole's 1992 film a couple years ago. It's not bad...for a blatantly amatuer effort. It looks like a film a couple of high-schoolers put together for a couple hundred bucks...oh yeah, that's what it is!
The lighting is poor in some scenes, the sound quality is awful in others, the acting is local "Little Theater" quality, but I still found some enjoyment in it. It's the kind of film we all wished we could have made with our parent's video cameras when we were teenagers.
The costumes were made by Poole's mom, and they look it. But after a while you're able to look beyond all that and marvel at what he was able to pull off. The stunts are really something else. I can just imagine how many times he busted his hump swing around like that.
If you're a spidey fan, definitely check it out. If not, give it a shot anyway; if you can look past the poot production values, you might enjoy it. As for myself, I was thinking about buying the DVD until I went to his website and found that sees selling it for $40! Geez! Of course, you can always get an autographed DVD for a "Limited Time" for $99! Holy greenbacks, spidey!
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for telling everyone what to do, where would we be without you? :)
:)
Yes, the NV30 will probably beat the 9700. But when it is arriving? Some estimates I've heard don't have it showing up until Feb '03. Six months.
Anytime you're ready to buy a new vid card (or CPU, or mobo) you can wait six months to get something better. But sooner or later, you have to buy something. Putting off a purchase because something better is coming down the road is never a good choice, because there will always be something better down the road. If you need a machine right now, but it now and get the best components for your needs.
And in six months or whenever the NV30 arrives, you know what? Most games will still be based on 5 year old GFX engines that run decently on a GF2.
No, it's not more or less a tie. Check the benchmarks again. It's more or less a tie in those apps that are already CPU bound. In those that aren't (including games with AA turned on), the 9700 clearly wins. No bias here.
No, no one else is confused. The point is money. Console games regularly outsell PC games on average. Just because you don't know anyone with an Xbox doesn't mean there aren't millions of Xbox owners out there who will buy this game. I would bet that by the time Doom III is released, the Xbox version will sell on par or in greater numbers than the PC version.
Think of it this way: everyone who buys an Xbox is buying it to play games; no one who buys an Xbox will have to upgrade their system to play Doom III. Most people who buy a PC are not buying it to play high-end games. Most people with PCs will need to upgrade their system if they want to play Doom III.
Dude, calm down.
If it's such a blow to the comics industry, then why are all the comic insiders (writers, artists, etc) collaborating on these projects?
It definitely is worth it, at least for me, since I commute about 45 miles a day round trip.
How much of a premium does one pay for a hybrid car? I really don't know, that's why I'm asking. I have "heard" that it's a few thousand bucks above an equivalent conventional car.
I've often thought that the savings on gas would make up for the difference, but in reality it seems like it would take a couple years to reach the break-even point.
For example, if you drive 50 miles a day, you're using about 1 gallon per day in your Prius. Let's assume a conventional car (like my Honda) gets about 20 MPG. The Honda is using 2.5 as much gas as your Prius. So on a yearly basis, let's say the Prius is burning 365 gallons a year (a gallon per day, every single day), and the conventional car burns 912.5 (365*2.5) gallons.
A gallon of the good stuff around here is $1.50, but let's bump that up to $1.75 to try and avoid under-estimation for an average. Using these numbers, the Prius costs 1.75 * 365 = $638.75 in gas per year to run, and the conventional car costs 1.75 * 912.5 = $1596.88. The difference is roughly $1000.
So after three or four years, you reach the break-even point from gas savings due to the higher initial cost of a hybrid car. And remember that this is using what I would consider an over-estimation on savings; these figures assume you're putting over 18,000 miles on your car each year, which I believe is above the average. For someone like me, who commutes about 30 miles a day and where gas costs are lower, it would take about twice as long (6-8 years!) to make up the difference.
I know this wasn't the main point of your post, but it's something I'd thought about before and I was surprised that the gas savings weren't greater after I worked through the numbers.
I'll readily admit that the hybrid cars are becoming very attractive from an environment-friendly point of view, but from a purely economics standpoint, I don't think they're quite there yet.
Yes, I can certainly agree with that. If the service doesn't work as advertised (i.e. "turns to shit"), then I think everyone would agree that it wouldn't be worth the cost.
:)
I was just making the case for why this type of service might be worth it, assuming it works of course.
Bravo. If I had mod points, I'd mod you up.
I feel the exact same way. I used to hate MS with a passion, then I realized it just wasn't worth the angst and the taste of bile. I love games and want to play the latest and greatest, so I got an Xbox without a twinge of doubt or guilt. If MS makes a good product, I will support it. I do not support their OS or Office products; I do support the Xbox.
Dude, how can Doom3 be cancelled for the Xbox if it was never announced?
All Carmack ever said was that the Xbox would be the only console that could possibly handle it.
Keep in mind that my assumtions are pretty optimistic. There are how many PCs? 1 billion? 600 million? How many are primarily game systems? 200 million, maybe 300?
Considering that some of the best PC games (The Sims excepted) only sell a few hundred-thousand copies, I think the idea that there are 300 million game PCs out there is amazingly optomistic.
Halo has sold more than 1.5 million copies with an installed base of less than 4 million Xboxes. How many copies of Quake 3 were sold?
My point is: console games regularly out-sell PC games, so I would say there are not very many PCs out there that are primarily game machines (i.e. kept up to date enough to play the latest games).
You're thinking about this wrong.
When comparing the Xbox network to free games:
Yes, you wouldn't pay a monthly fee for Diablo 2, et al, but those game servers are not hosted by the companies that made the games, they provide the server software to customers, who they depend upon to run the game servers -- so of course they are free. At most, all the company provides is a match-making service to hook you up with a server.
The question is: would you pay $10 a month to play ALL your PC games online with the following conditions:
A) There will always be a fast server to connect to.
B) You don't have to hunt down this server via gamespy, or whatever. You're auto-connected.
C) This server will never be shut off. (e.g. shut off during a match or after a match, forcing you to hunt for another server).
D) You have *good*, live voice communication over every game.
Basically, think of everything you dislike about online PC gaming. Would it be worth $10 to get rid of all that?
When comparing the Xbox network to EQ, AC, etc:
Recall that these games have a monthly fee for EACH game, seperately. Xbox will have these type of games as well (Star Wars Galaxies, etc), but MS has stated that they will not charge extra for them. The door seems to be left open as to whether or not the game developers will be able to charge extra for them (support, ongoing development, add-ons, etc).
Meanwhile, I'm waiting to see how much the Slashdot crowd turns on Spider-Man 2 and the Matrix Reloaded.
Only if they stink!
The same.
Is it better than Spider-Man?
Spider-Man rocked so hard that I'm having a hard time imagining that Ep. 2 will be the better movie.
It accomplishes the same thing.
Signed: your friendly neighborhood code reviewer.
You have a good point, but take a look: six months to a year later the games for the newest consoles start to drop in price as well. You can already find the launch titles for the Xbox at $29.99 at most places.
It was a huge surprise to everyone that S-M made $114 million in it's first three days. The X-men, a comic which sells better than S-M, movie opened with $54 over it's first weekend. S-M's opening was so huge that it grossed more in it's first three days than most movies gross in their entire runs. Most of the predicitions for S-M topped out at $80 million, no slouch, admittedly, but no one expected this!
Predicting that those movies will make $200 million is easy. Which one's will make $300 million? $350 million? $400 million? Get within $25 million for each of those movies and I'll be impressed.
Spider-Man fans have been waiting for this movie for 40 years -- Spider-Man first appeared in a comic in 1962. Okay, perhaps more reasonably we've been waiting for this movie since the first Superman movie of the 1970's. That's still a long time.
Meanwhile, Star Wars fans have been waiting for Episode 2 for 3 years. And some lost interest 3 years ago. I used to be one of the most rabid Star Wars fans I knew. After Episode I, I convinced myself it was decent. Only after I got the DVD did I realize that I had been fooling myself. I will still see Episode 2, but I'm in no rush to see it opening weekend. A lot of us Star Wars fans are realizing that IV-VI are going to be the classics. These new episodes are all going to be disappointments, I fear.
Holy Hell! I believe you. Without personal experience I would be somewhat skeptical about these types of people, but I've had the misfortune of working with one several years ago.
I'm not sure how he was hired since I wasn't in the hiring process, but here are some of his stories:
- He was in the Air Force and Marines at various times in his career, including a stint as a Navy SEAL.
- While in the armed forces, he was picked to play for the 1980 US Soccer team. Of course, these games were boycotted by the US since they were being held in Moscow, so there are no records.
- He was witness to a super-secret airplane project (the name escapes me) in which the plane flew so fast that the pilot could not steer quickly enough to keep it in the atmosphere (due to the curvature of the Earth).
- While a SEAL, he was trying to get married (for the second time, same girl) when his beeper along with all his buddies' beepers in the congregation went off at the same time, they all ran out into the parking lot to meet a landing helicopter that wisked them away. ("Wasn't that in that movie 'Navy SEALs'?", a co-worker asked. "Yeah," he said. "I think they based that movie on us.")
- One time he lived in a bad neighborhood which was frequented by drug dealers. One day, seeing a dealer on his corner, he runs out and confronts him with a shotgun. The dealer takes off in his car, which this guy shoots up with the shotgun. The cops arrive and congratulate him on standing up to the druggies.
- At one time he was tapped to train snipers for the local police force. (He was a sniper for the Marines, BTW).
- One of his hobbies was potato-cannon construction. He developed a model that was so powerful that the FBI contacted him about it. They wanted the specs.
Man, I could go on and on, I heard so many of them. At first, we challanged some of his stories until we figured out that he REALLY believed them. That's when we started wondering when he was going to wander in some day with that shotgun of his...so we just nodded our heads after that.
You know, I could tell where a lot of the CG scenes were, but they didn't take me out of the movie and I didn't dwell on them because what other choice was there?
So you'd rather them wait 10 years to make this movie until CG get a little better? They did the best they could.
In fact, I applaud S-M for it's CG because it didn't take over the film. They used it for the swinging scenes that couldn't have been done as well any other way. Or would you rather have seen a guy half-assed swing his way in front of a blue screen? That could have been much worse!
Compare the relative scarcity of CG in S-M to the proliferation of it in TPM. They only used CG in S-M when they had no other choice.
Movies used to stay in theaters forever. Are you old enough to remember when Raiders of the Lost Ark opened? It was so huge that it stayed in theaters for nearly a year, if I remember correctly. Nowadays, the biggest blockbusters only hang around for a few months at most, and at ever decreasing theater counts.
So these days, people are more geared toward thinking that they need to see movies earlier before they leave the theater.
Also with the way movies are talked about on TV, magazines, and the internet, if you don't see a blockbuster early, you might feel like you're missing out on the discussion or you might have part of it spoiled for you.
Close, but a 10-20% dropoff is considered excellent! A dropoff of less than 10% is unheard of, not withstanding recent Oscar nominations or wins or holidays.
A 20-30% dropoff is very good, 35-45% is average, and 50% is expected for big hype machines. Anything more than 50% is poor.
The only film that has ever surprised me with it's dropoff was the Sixth Sense. It got such good word-of-mouth that it only dropped 2% from week one to two!
Well, you're going to be hating the sequel which reportedly stars Doc Ock and the Lizard and the villians!
I don't think Spider-Man's villans are all that bad. Yes, most of his classic villians are the one's from the 60's, so what do you expect? Venom is a 90's villian so naturally he's going to be "cooler" to our modern sense of villian "coolness".
Wow, it took a whole 56 comments before someone pulled out the ol' MPAA boycott comment. I think that's a new record!
And we wouldn't be arguing about the feasability of a guy mutated by a radioactive spider?
Dude, get with the times! It's a genetically altered spider in the 2002 film. You're so 1963!
I saw Dan Poole's 1992 film a couple years ago. It's not bad...for a blatantly amatuer effort. It looks like a film a couple of high-schoolers put together for a couple hundred bucks...oh yeah, that's what it is!
The lighting is poor in some scenes, the sound quality is awful in others, the acting is local "Little Theater" quality, but I still found some enjoyment in it. It's the kind of film we all wished we could have made with our parent's video cameras when we were teenagers.
The costumes were made by Poole's mom, and they look it. But after a while you're able to look beyond all that and marvel at what he was able to pull off. The stunts are really something else. I can just imagine how many times he busted his hump swing around like that.
If you're a spidey fan, definitely check it out. If not, give it a shot anyway; if you can look past the poot production values, you might enjoy it. As for myself, I was thinking about buying the DVD until I went to his website and found that sees selling it for $40! Geez! Of course, you can always get an autographed DVD for a "Limited Time" for $99! Holy greenbacks, spidey!