they are more fun than say shenmue, because they are innovative and imaginative, with very good play mechanics.
I would beg to differ on all counts.
Innovation? Shenmue was incredibly innovative... I know that games like The Sims go very in-depth about what your "Sims" are doing, including eating and...uh...ablutions, but Shenmue has the perfect balance of basically becoming someone else (Ryo) without becoming a bore-fest.
20 minutes of exploring usually equals one day, which is about right. You have until April 15th 1987 in game time to complete the game, (The game starts in November, 1986...don't exactly know why Suzuki Yu chose that time, but that was his decision and his prerogative) so it is infinitely more satisfying to savor the game and play through it at a relaxed pace.
Time actually speeds up in a very harrowing way in the QTE fighting sequences, where you have to push the same button as the flashing icon on the screen as fast as you can. Luckily you can usually "do over" QTE sequences until you get them right. They are a real adrenaline pumper.
And of course...the fights. If you know Virtua Fighter you already know the interface, pretty much. Remember, Suzuki Yu designed that game too.
Also there are two "classic" video games in their entirety on the first Shenmue: Hang On and Space Harriers. Again, another two SEGA classics created by Suzuki-san.
Don't tell me the combination of the three isn't innovative! It is, big time. Also it pushes the Dreamcast to its limit as far as gorgeous eye-candy goes. The cutscenes are so impressive looking they were all edited together as the Japanese OAV "Shenmue: The Movie."
One thing the animation in Shenmue has over just about any CGI animation I have seen, including some theatrical stuff, is that characters all seem to be influenced realistically by gravity. In "Shrek", all the characters seemed to be moonwalking through the film. They walked unrealistically. Physics were funny. This was the behavior of helium-filled balloons, not creatures with weight. I understand they used a lot of motion capture with Shenmue, and in this case it really works.
Flaws: hands in Shenmue look strange. For all the discussion of using mo-cap for realistic hand motions and live studies for modeling, the hands still moved like doll hands. And the animals, including that damn kitten (those who have played the game know what I'm talking about) kind of look like stuffed animals. Fur is also wrong, but what do you expect from a system which only has 16MB of system RAM??? "Monsters Inc."? I don't think so.
Shenmue is amazing. I look forward to finally finishing it...I am halfway through and haven't had time to play it much. Shenmue II is way too expensive at this point...either you have to get it as an import and use a boot disk to kick it over on Dreamcast or wait until it comes out on XBox, pony up the money for the BillyBox and then the game.
There has been a Resident Evil movie and a Final Fantasy movie. State of Emergency and Grand Theft Auto have both been optioned for movies. However, Shenmue, with its cinematic scope and rich story, should be made into a real movie. Give Suzuki Yu a translator and a really good screenwriter and a Pixar or Blue Sky-level CGI animation studio and you'd have something amazing.
Or just do it live-action and film in the actual places that inspired the games...little Japanese harbor towns (do towns like that still exist? Sugoi!) and Hong Kong. Maybe even get John Woo or the guy who did "Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon" to direct. It would rule.
I doubt anything great will come of a State of Emergency movie. But this could be amazing. Shenmue is way more than the sum of its graphics.
And oh yeah, they promised me my Tech TV so I could laugh at the assholes on The Screensavers. And they still haven't given it to me.
~grumbly face~ I hate Adelphia.
It's gonna get worse...I don't know where you live, but Adelphia is going to have to divest itself of 50% of its cable franchises to pay for the Rigas family's high-finance shenanigans. Can you say Enrondelphia? I knew you could.
If you live in the Greater Los Angeles, CA area and you have Adelphia as your cable company, kiss 'em goodbye.
It's worse...the accusation is that the CD fux0rs Open Firmware which is a "New World" Mac's BIOS. Basically this CD is the Chernobyl Virus for Macs. By "New World" I mean iMac, iBook, G3 Blue and White, and all G4 Macs.
That's a lot of Macs which could be rendered useless...consider all the iMacs that have been sold.
"On the German discussion boards at MacFixit, Mac users claim that the CD will not eject using normal methods and that the intentional corruption of the disc's session data could unpredictably affect the drive's firmware." But Sony said that the firmware problem is not real.
If the "firmware" they are talking about is OpenFirmware, then yes, this is a real and nasty problem. OpenFirmware is the Mac's bootloader. It exists whether you run MacOS X, Classic MacOS, or even Linux on Mac. It lives in FLASH ROM. It is VITAL to a New World Mac...if that gets fux0red you have a very shapely, very cute DOORSTOP until an Apple Authorized Service Center REFLASHES the ROM.
This is the Audio CD equivalent of the Chernobyl virus.
Of course if you play it in your PS2 or Sony DVD player and it screws it up, well then my neighbor, I would think you would have Sony by the Shorthairs.
Ah...and what if the CD fux0red your shiny new VAIO?
You don't have to stop seeing movies or hearing music. Just get your CDs and DVDs USED.
And, as another person in this thread suggested, support indie music/films.
Maybe this AC likes his monastic life, but I like my media. This is a guilt-free way of getting around the RIAA/MPAA hegemony while still getting your pop media fix. It might mean you have to wait a while before seeing that movie you wanted to see, but oh well. I sleep better at night this way.
MS is have (sic) trouble getting major clients to switch to Active Directory.
Damn right they are! For good reason too: it's cranky and fussy and likes to corrupt itself. When the school I went to threw the Microsoft Official Courseware labs out the window because they were impossible to implement, I got my first taste of why AD as it stands is pretty much useless.
If Microsoft had stayed standards-compliant with open standards like LDAP and Kerberos 5 and so forth AD would be much less of a nightmare than it is now. But no, typical MS, they had to "embrace and extend" it. As a consequence, they have shot themselves in the foot.
This is the reason why most MS shops hold desperately on to their NT4 PDCs even though 2K has NT4 beat nine ways to Sunday. 2K cannot do the old-fashioned SAM-based domain even if you cajole it, beat it about the head and shoulders, or ask it nicely. And for most shops, that kind of domain is all they need.
Of course if they went with Samba they could decommission their old fugly NT4 PDC, heh heh...
No, it's called the Classic MacOS. The Mac has used a database to store files and their attendant metadata since HFS was introduced.
It uses B-Trees which if you RTFA is thought not to be a very good solution, but it was revolutionary for its day.
The idea of having a resource fork to all files, a little name badge for every file that tells file type and creator type, is tremendously helpful too. However, the resource fork on Classic MacOS files tends to corrupt at the drop of a hat, rendering this little innovation, also introduced with HFS, fairly useless.
Oddly enough, however, I find good ol' MacOS fairly robust...so much so that there is no need to reformat and reinstall on a regular basis. Its memory management sucks, but aside from that glaring problem it's a beautiful operating system. I have PCs running Windows and PCs running Linux here at Catseye Labs, but it's my good ol' G3 that I do most of my work on.
That's one thing I don't like about Microsoft, you studied for less than a year and got to call yourself an Engineer.
The government of Canada and the State of Texas agrees with you and so do I. There was a period of time when Microsoft was going to change the word to "Expert" to placate the Canadians in particular, but they shelved those plans, unfortunately.
I would frankly be way more comfortable saying I'm a Microsoft Certified Systems Expert.
BTW the preparation you go through when the MCSE is taught CORRECTLY is a bit like a condensed version of an Associates in Information Systems. It's grueling stuff. You really DO learn Windows 2000 inside and out, or as much as you can learn an operating system that is Closed/Non-Free/Proprietary inside and out. You don't get the breadth of a 2-year degree, mind you, but you are preparing for seven very grueling tests. These are not the NT4 MCP tests, where a chimp pushing random buttons could pass. Some of the tests are based around case studies, and they are tough indeed. Only a simulations-based test or a live test with a proctor like the RHCE would beat the "design" exams.
I think the Engineer part of the title isn't worth the confusion it causes. MS should change the name. Microsoft Certified Systems Expert would be fine.
OK, first off let me confess that I actually *am* an MCSE. I spent the better part of a year learning Windows 2K inside and out. The school I went to does *not* turn out Paper MCSEs. You have to prove your knowledge before they let you test.
Get deep enough into either OS and you'll find they're pretty interchangable.
While 2K and now.NET are getting more UNIX-like as time goes on, they really *aren't* interchangeable. For example, even though I am MS certified, I would strongly advise a company against setting up their Internet presence using IIS. Outsource it, baby. Let someone else have the headaches. Besides, do you really want to have those downtimes for patching, patching, patching?
Windows 2K shines as a departmental-level thing, not as a full-enterprise solution. However, Samba is getting so much better with each release that maybe more 2K Server boxen can be replaced with Linux boxen running Samba. I think that's why MS is really scared.
When the labs in your MOC don't work because of arcane Active Directory crap, then you know that something is very, very wrong. There is a reason why most NT4 shops aren't upgrading. There is a reason why there are lots of 2K networks not deploying AD. When Samba v3 does "AD" better than MS does (with REAL versions of LDAP and Kerberos 5 and DynamicDNS, not the neutered, embraced and extended MS versions) MS knows that its goose will be thoroughly cooked and force-fed to them.
However, there is one thing MS excels in that Linux needs to improve...the desktop. You install 2K Pro and *everything works as expected*. Sure, you have to patch and patch and patch but dammit, it runs out of the box. My Linux desktop experiences have been like rolling the dice...sometimes you get all 7s, sometimes you get hit with Snake Eyes. And you really do have to be a Linux guru to sort things out when something doesn't quite work after installation. This is where Linux people should be focusing their attention. When Linux+KDE *just works* and installs with no *special surprises* we can think of challenging MS at the desktop.
Needless to say, THIS year will be spent getting a lot of experience with Linux.
...they need to stop designing CPUs and start designing whole solutions like Intel does.
Time and again AMD's superior CPUs get paired up with crappy VIA chipsets. AMD did make a half-assed attempt to make their own chipset but more often than not their Northbridge would be paired with a VIA Southbridge by manufacturers.
Hopefully NForce is going to change all that, but from what I understand the prudent geek is going to have to wait for the next rev of the current crop of motherboards for that chipset to really bear fruit. It would be even better if AMD would get back into the business of making their own chipsets tailored precisely to their CPUs but that might be asking too much.
As I understand it, if you buy a used CD, the right of first ownership applies and no money goes to the people you're boycotting.
Exactly! Give that man a cigar, or a spliff, or whatever floats his boat!
I will not buy new CDs unless the company that puts it out is NOT a member of the RIAA. I will not buy DVDs put out by signatories to the MPAA. This way, I do not have to deprive myself of the music and movies I like. It's great.
And even more importantly: support indie music! Support indie movies! Create your own music/movies, then SHARE AND ENJOY!!! This is the real reason Big Media is quaking in its boots.
The first joe who tries to fight the RIAA on this one better be rich or have powerful backing, because the one with the most money tends to win in disputes like this.
The "first joe" may very well be one with deep pockets indeed...Royal Dutch Philips. They're the ones saying that copy-challenged CDs are a violation of the Red Book, the standard for audio CDs, and they're the ones who may be first to sue.
HP is not the only "OEM" that puts crummy drives in its rebadged machines. Anything with an eMachines nameplate has some of the worst hard drives on the planet in it. Samsung. Not as crapulous as the legendary JTS but damn close.
Most of these rebadged computers have the crappiest parts they can get away with. The beauty of building a PC yourself is that you can actually put sane parts into it.
The problem is with the PHBs who expect a "brand name" on their computers. You might have to do some homework on marketdroid concepts like Return On Investment and making a "Business case" for going the white-box route, but I am confident that a business case can indeed be made for building you own machines or finding a trustworthy screwdriver shop and having them build a whole bunch of computers to your very exacting specifications. If you trust the screwdriver shop to come up with a spec themselves they will use the cheapest parts they can get away with, and you are back in the same place you were with rebadged crappy Chi-com computers.
Seriously...there is no reason to get a desktop from a "name brand." If you buy one for yourself you are a fool. If your PHB demands them it's up to you to educate him/her about the problems of "name brand" computers. Besides, if you build it yourself, you can fix it yourself. That's the best argument for beige boxen I can think of.
Then again if CBDTPA (The evil bill formerly known as SSSCA and commonly called the "Hollings/Disney Act") passes, "name brand" crappy computers with "digital rights management" boobytraps will be all you can buy legally in the US. Check my.SIG and fax your Congresscritter today!
Actually if the Dreamcast had a port for a hard drive of some sort it could be a pretty good mini-desktop, y'know. ^_^
I think all of us might do well to perhaps consider that stuffing Linux down the throat of a Playstation (or even a Dreamcast, despite my sentimental attraction to the idea) might not be the best possible way to create a Linux-based console. Sadly Indrema wasn't the way to go either...actually manufacturing consoles is a business best left to huge megacorporations.
The Nvidia Nforce Athlon chipset is very, very interesting indeed. There are decent ATX and mATX motherboards available featuring this little gem. This may very well be the first all-in-one mobo that will provide decent gaming performance. A buddy of mine just built a box using an Abit NV7M motherboard with the chipset and he is blown away...he was prepared to "help the board along" by adding a sound card, etc, but no need. Throw the thing in a case like the Casedge 1123 or 1300 and you might have the beginnings of a happening Linux gaming box.
I think this is more along the lines of what we should be thinking about. Certainly something like this would be easier to lug to LAN parties, that's for sure...
...that Sony is a member of both the MPAA and RIAA? Yeah, wow, sugoi andro-roboto and all that crap, but this is a product of a company with some of the nastiest intellectual property policies on the planet?
I mean, yeah, it's cool and all, but remember where it comes from.
A good reason to power down your computer...
on
IBM 120GXP Revisited
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· Score: 2
Seriously, for those of you with broadband, don't you keep your PC on all the time? Why would you shut it off?
I always power-down my systems when I am done using them. Why? Here's why.
Northridge Earthquake, January 17th, 1994. Two anecdotes.
Anecdote 1: One friend lives less than a mile from the epicenter. Whole house trashed. Powered-off Packard Hell computer literally flies 6 feet across the room. Computer written off as probably dead meat. One day, friend plugs the thing in just for the hell of it. Boots like a champ, keeps working for two years more before the Curse Of Packard Hell does the beast in.
Anecdote 2: Another friend runs a BBS. He is 5 miles from the epicenter and lives in the mountains where the house is literally sitting on bedrock. No liquifaction problem at all. Several computers on 24/7. Several hard drives lost.
Yes folks, I live in California. Earthquake country. Want to have your computer survive an earthquake? Keep it powered down unless you plan on using the thing. Hard drives had parking mechanisms and spin-down idle mode in 1994...the main things that have changed in the state-of-the-art on HDs is density and UDMA. Mechanically most HDs are pretty similar to those available in 1994.
If I wasn't living in California, I'd probably keep my machines on 24/7. Powercycling does take its toll. But earthquakes are a reality here and hard drives aren't at the disposable cost point yet. Ultimately you have to view hard drives as having a finite lifespan. But I want to maintain as much of a lifespan as possible.
BTW one last point...pre GXP IBM hard drives are very good. The Maxtor Diamond Max drive is based on an old IBM design. I wouldn't touch a GXP if you paid me but the old IBM hard drives are good stuff.
Acclaim is notorious for putting out CRAP games. "WWF Attitude" is the only game I know of that has managed to CRASH my Dreamcast. But this is really, really bad. I'm not going to buy any more of their crap games, either for my DC or for the next console I get.
Let's hope that when the CEO of Acclaim dies he gets an ad for adult diapers on his tombstone. Or worse.
The company I worked for who initially bought the G3 Yosemite I am now typing at right now decided on it rather than the previous edition "beige" G3 because the Yosemite was guaranteed to run the next gen Mac OS. Well guess what? It will run OS X. But very, very slowly.
There are so many Altivec optimizations in OS X that it really needs to run on a G4. Yeah, the iBook II will run OS X OK, but it's got a far faster G3 than my 350MHz one.
Tell me where to get on board the next class-action suit against Apple. I feel gypped. Thanks, Steverino.
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Sucks for us Dreamcast junkies though. [sigh]
I would beg to differ on all counts.
Innovation? Shenmue was incredibly innovative... I know that games like The Sims go very in-depth about what your "Sims" are doing, including eating and...uh...ablutions, but Shenmue has the perfect balance of basically becoming someone else (Ryo) without becoming a bore-fest.
20 minutes of exploring usually equals one day, which is about right. You have until April 15th 1987 in game time to complete the game, (The game starts in November, 1986...don't exactly know why Suzuki Yu chose that time, but that was his decision and his prerogative) so it is infinitely more satisfying to savor the game and play through it at a relaxed pace.
Time actually speeds up in a very harrowing way in the QTE fighting sequences, where you have to push the same button as the flashing icon on the screen as fast as you can. Luckily you can usually "do over" QTE sequences until you get them right. They are a real adrenaline pumper.
And of course...the fights. If you know Virtua Fighter you already know the interface, pretty much. Remember, Suzuki Yu designed that game too.
Also there are two "classic" video games in their entirety on the first Shenmue: Hang On and Space Harriers. Again, another two SEGA classics created by Suzuki-san.
Don't tell me the combination of the three isn't innovative! It is, big time. Also it pushes the Dreamcast to its limit as far as gorgeous eye-candy goes. The cutscenes are so impressive looking they were all edited together as the Japanese OAV "Shenmue: The Movie."
One thing the animation in Shenmue has over just about any CGI animation I have seen, including some theatrical stuff, is that characters all seem to be influenced realistically by gravity. In "Shrek", all the characters seemed to be moonwalking through the film. They walked unrealistically. Physics were funny. This was the behavior of helium-filled balloons, not creatures with weight. I understand they used a lot of motion capture with Shenmue, and in this case it really works.
Flaws: hands in Shenmue look strange. For all the discussion of using mo-cap for realistic hand motions and live studies for modeling, the hands still moved like doll hands. And the animals, including that damn kitten (those who have played the game know what I'm talking about) kind of look like stuffed animals. Fur is also wrong, but what do you expect from a system which only has 16MB of system RAM??? "Monsters Inc."? I don't think so.
Shenmue is amazing. I look forward to finally finishing it...I am halfway through and haven't had time to play it much. Shenmue II is way too expensive at this point...either you have to get it as an import and use a boot disk to kick it over on Dreamcast or wait until it comes out on XBox, pony up the money for the BillyBox and then the game.
There has been a Resident Evil movie and a Final Fantasy movie. State of Emergency and Grand Theft Auto have both been optioned for movies. However, Shenmue, with its cinematic scope and rich story, should be made into a real movie. Give Suzuki Yu a translator and a really good screenwriter and a Pixar or Blue Sky-level CGI animation studio and you'd have something amazing.
Or just do it live-action and film in the actual places that inspired the games...little Japanese harbor towns (do towns like that still exist? Sugoi!) and Hong Kong. Maybe even get John Woo or the guy who did "Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon" to direct. It would rule.
I doubt anything great will come of a State of Emergency movie. But this could be amazing. Shenmue is way more than the sum of its graphics.
~grumbly face~ I hate Adelphia.
It's gonna get worse...I don't know where you live, but Adelphia is going to have to divest itself of 50% of its cable franchises to pay for the Rigas family's high-finance shenanigans. Can you say Enrondelphia? I knew you could.
If you live in the Greater Los Angeles, CA area and you have Adelphia as your cable company, kiss 'em goodbye.
However, this may actually be A Good Thing (tm).
And news.com reporters *AREN'T* Microsoft PR flacks?
It's worse...the accusation is that the CD fux0rs Open Firmware which is a "New World" Mac's BIOS. Basically this CD is the Chernobyl Virus for Macs. By "New World" I mean iMac, iBook, G3 Blue and White, and all G4 Macs.
That's a lot of Macs which could be rendered useless...consider all the iMacs that have been sold.
If the "firmware" they are talking about is OpenFirmware, then yes, this is a real and nasty problem. OpenFirmware is the Mac's bootloader. It exists whether you run MacOS X, Classic MacOS, or even Linux on Mac. It lives in FLASH ROM. It is VITAL to a New World Mac...if that gets fux0red you have a very shapely, very cute DOORSTOP until an Apple Authorized Service Center REFLASHES the ROM.
This is the Audio CD equivalent of the Chernobyl virus.
Ah...and what if the CD fux0red your shiny new VAIO?
Be afraid, Sony. Be very afraid.
Linux baby...Linux. This *IS* /., after all...
I guess none of the guys running this IIS server took MCSE courses...ha ha ha....
You don't have to stop seeing movies or hearing music. Just get your CDs and DVDs USED.
And, as another person in this thread suggested, support indie music/films.
Maybe this AC likes his monastic life, but I like my media. This is a guilt-free way of getting around the RIAA/MPAA hegemony while still getting your pop media fix. It might mean you have to wait a while before seeing that movie you wanted to see, but oh well. I sleep better at night this way.
Damn right they are! For good reason too: it's cranky and fussy and likes to corrupt itself. When the school I went to threw the Microsoft Official Courseware labs out the window because they were impossible to implement, I got my first taste of why AD as it stands is pretty much useless.
If Microsoft had stayed standards-compliant with open standards like LDAP and Kerberos 5 and so forth AD would be much less of a nightmare than it is now. But no, typical MS, they had to "embrace and extend" it. As a consequence, they have shot themselves in the foot.
This is the reason why most MS shops hold desperately on to their NT4 PDCs even though 2K has NT4 beat nine ways to Sunday. 2K cannot do the old-fashioned SAM-based domain even if you cajole it, beat it about the head and shoulders, or ask it nicely. And for most shops, that kind of domain is all they need.
Of course if they went with Samba they could decommission their old fugly NT4 PDC, heh heh...
No, it's called the Classic MacOS. The Mac has used a database to store files and their attendant metadata since HFS was introduced.
It uses B-Trees which if you RTFA is thought not to be a very good solution, but it was revolutionary for its day.
The idea of having a resource fork to all files, a little name badge for every file that tells file type and creator type, is tremendously helpful too. However, the resource fork on Classic MacOS files tends to corrupt at the drop of a hat, rendering this little innovation, also introduced with HFS, fairly useless.
Oddly enough, however, I find good ol' MacOS fairly robust...so much so that there is no need to reformat and reinstall on a regular basis. Its memory management sucks, but aside from that glaring problem it's a beautiful operating system. I have PCs running Windows and PCs running Linux here at Catseye Labs, but it's my good ol' G3 that I do most of my work on.
The government of Canada and the State of Texas agrees with you and so do I. There was a period of time when Microsoft was going to change the word to "Expert" to placate the Canadians in particular, but they shelved those plans, unfortunately.
I would frankly be way more comfortable saying I'm a Microsoft Certified Systems Expert.
BTW the preparation you go through when the MCSE is taught CORRECTLY is a bit like a condensed version of an Associates in Information Systems. It's grueling stuff. You really DO learn Windows 2000 inside and out, or as much as you can learn an operating system that is Closed/Non-Free/Proprietary inside and out. You don't get the breadth of a 2-year degree, mind you, but you are preparing for seven very grueling tests. These are not the NT4 MCP tests, where a chimp pushing random buttons could pass. Some of the tests are based around case studies, and they are tough indeed. Only a simulations-based test or a live test with a proctor like the RHCE would beat the "design" exams.
I think the Engineer part of the title isn't worth the confusion it causes. MS should change the name. Microsoft Certified Systems Expert would be fine.
Get deep enough into either OS and you'll find they're pretty interchangable.
While 2K and now .NET are getting more UNIX-like as time goes on, they really *aren't* interchangeable. For example, even though I am MS certified, I would strongly advise a company against setting up their Internet presence using IIS. Outsource it, baby. Let someone else have the headaches. Besides, do you really want to have those downtimes for patching, patching, patching?
Windows 2K shines as a departmental-level thing, not as a full-enterprise solution. However, Samba is getting so much better with each release that maybe more 2K Server boxen can be replaced with Linux boxen running Samba. I think that's why MS is really scared.
When the labs in your MOC don't work because of arcane Active Directory crap, then you know that something is very, very wrong. There is a reason why most NT4 shops aren't upgrading. There is a reason why there are lots of 2K networks not deploying AD. When Samba v3 does "AD" better than MS does (with REAL versions of LDAP and Kerberos 5 and DynamicDNS, not the neutered, embraced and extended MS versions) MS knows that its goose will be thoroughly cooked and force-fed to them.
However, there is one thing MS excels in that Linux needs to improve...the desktop. You install 2K Pro and *everything works as expected*. Sure, you have to patch and patch and patch but dammit, it runs out of the box. My Linux desktop experiences have been like rolling the dice...sometimes you get all 7s, sometimes you get hit with Snake Eyes. And you really do have to be a Linux guru to sort things out when something doesn't quite work after installation. This is where Linux people should be focusing their attention. When Linux+KDE *just works* and installs with no *special surprises* we can think of challenging MS at the desktop.
Needless to say, THIS year will be spent getting a lot of experience with Linux.
Time and again AMD's superior CPUs get paired up with crappy VIA chipsets. AMD did make a half-assed attempt to make their own chipset but more often than not their Northbridge would be paired with a VIA Southbridge by manufacturers.
Hopefully NForce is going to change all that, but from what I understand the prudent geek is going to have to wait for the next rev of the current crop of motherboards for that chipset to really bear fruit. It would be even better if AMD would get back into the business of making their own chipsets tailored precisely to their CPUs but that might be asking too much.
Exactly! Give that man a cigar, or a spliff, or whatever floats his boat!
I will not buy new CDs unless the company that puts it out is NOT a member of the RIAA. I will not buy DVDs put out by signatories to the MPAA. This way, I do not have to deprive myself of the music and movies I like. It's great.
Here are some places to check out:
http://www.secondspin.com/
http://www.half.com/
And even more importantly: support indie music! Support indie movies! Create your own music/movies, then SHARE AND ENJOY!!! This is the real reason Big Media is quaking in its boots.
The "first joe" may very well be one with deep pockets indeed...Royal Dutch Philips. They're the ones saying that copy-challenged CDs are a violation of the Red Book, the standard for audio CDs, and they're the ones who may be first to sue.
HP is not the only "OEM" that puts crummy drives in its rebadged machines. Anything with an eMachines nameplate has some of the worst hard drives on the planet in it. Samsung. Not as crapulous as the legendary JTS but damn close.
.SIG and fax your Congresscritter today!
Most of these rebadged computers have the crappiest parts they can get away with. The beauty of building a PC yourself is that you can actually put sane parts into it.
The problem is with the PHBs who expect a "brand name" on their computers. You might have to do some homework on marketdroid concepts like Return On Investment and making a "Business case" for going the white-box route, but I am confident that a business case can indeed be made for building you own machines or finding a trustworthy screwdriver shop and having them build a whole bunch of computers to your very exacting specifications. If you trust the screwdriver shop to come up with a spec themselves they will use the cheapest parts they can get away with, and you are back in the same place you were with rebadged crappy Chi-com computers.
Seriously...there is no reason to get a desktop from a "name brand." If you buy one for yourself you are a fool. If your PHB demands them it's up to you to educate him/her about the problems of "name brand" computers. Besides, if you build it yourself, you can fix it yourself. That's the best argument for beige boxen I can think of.
Then again if CBDTPA (The evil bill formerly known as SSSCA and commonly called the "Hollings/Disney Act") passes, "name brand" crappy computers with "digital rights management" boobytraps will be all you can buy legally in the US. Check my
I think all of us might do well to perhaps consider that stuffing Linux down the throat of a Playstation (or even a Dreamcast, despite my sentimental attraction to the idea) might not be the best possible way to create a Linux-based console. Sadly Indrema wasn't the way to go either...actually manufacturing consoles is a business best left to huge megacorporations.
The Nvidia Nforce Athlon chipset is very, very interesting indeed. There are decent ATX and mATX motherboards available featuring this little gem. This may very well be the first all-in-one mobo that will provide decent gaming performance. A buddy of mine just built a box using an Abit NV7M motherboard with the chipset and he is blown away...he was prepared to "help the board along" by adding a sound card, etc, but no need. Throw the thing in a case like the Casedge 1123 or 1300 and you might have the beginnings of a happening Linux gaming box.
I think this is more along the lines of what we should be thinking about. Certainly something like this would be easier to lug to LAN parties, that's for sure...
I mean, yeah, it's cool and all, but remember where it comes from.
What? You mean like these PS2 peripherals?
Ph34r P1n6-ch4n!
Rock'em Sock'em Robots, baby!
I always power-down my systems when I am done using them. Why? Here's why.
Northridge Earthquake, January 17th, 1994. Two anecdotes.
Anecdote 1: One friend lives less than a mile from the epicenter. Whole house trashed. Powered-off Packard Hell computer literally flies 6 feet across the room. Computer written off as probably dead meat. One day, friend plugs the thing in just for the hell of it. Boots like a champ, keeps working for two years more before the Curse Of Packard Hell does the beast in.
Anecdote 2: Another friend runs a BBS. He is 5 miles from the epicenter and lives in the mountains where the house is literally sitting on bedrock. No liquifaction problem at all. Several computers on 24/7. Several hard drives lost.
Yes folks, I live in California. Earthquake country. Want to have your computer survive an earthquake? Keep it powered down unless you plan on using the thing. Hard drives had parking mechanisms and spin-down idle mode in 1994...the main things that have changed in the state-of-the-art on HDs is density and UDMA. Mechanically most HDs are pretty similar to those available in 1994.
If I wasn't living in California, I'd probably keep my machines on 24/7. Powercycling does take its toll. But earthquakes are a reality here and hard drives aren't at the disposable cost point yet. Ultimately you have to view hard drives as having a finite lifespan. But I want to maintain as much of a lifespan as possible.
BTW one last point...pre GXP IBM hard drives are very good. The Maxtor Diamond Max drive is based on an old IBM design. I wouldn't touch a GXP if you paid me but the old IBM hard drives are good stuff.
Acclaim is notorious for putting out CRAP games. "WWF Attitude" is the only game I know of that has managed to CRASH my Dreamcast. But this is really, really bad. I'm not going to buy any more of their crap games, either for my DC or for the next console I get.
Let's hope that when the CEO of Acclaim dies he gets an ad for adult diapers on his tombstone. Or worse.
There are so many Altivec optimizations in OS X that it really needs to run on a G4. Yeah, the iBook II will run OS X OK, but it's got a far faster G3 than my 350MHz one.
Tell me where to get on board the next class-action suit against Apple. I feel gypped. Thanks, Steverino.