There's error correction on CDs, the problem is that a 'bad' burner could produce a disk which is correctable to the proper data, but later on as some material degrades, will become unreadable, as opposed to simply requiring some error correction.
There used to be some brands that the firmware would show stats of that, however there haven't for a number of years, barring a few firmware hacks. (Amusing having to hack the firmware to get information that used to be semi-common.)
Indeed, the first CD I purchased, Civilization 2, is now useless, as anything other than a conversation piece/example to pull up online of why CDs aren't backup/example to pull up online of why I 'pirated' something that I 'own'.
Lots of mileage out of that disk, both for games, and for smacking down online arguments.
I know 40+ year olds who are good at games like Supreme Commander. (I speak as someone who was in the top 100 of FA, in the months after it launched.) Reason being, not because they click like crazy, but because they are devious. (Old age & Trickery, etc) Where Supreme Commander is slow enough people can use thought, and not have to fight the interface, as with Starcraft.
There are games where you are fighting the interface. It shouldn't be that way, games should have a good interface. If the game requires a clickfest, then the problems are deeper, in it's design. I consider games like that to have flawed designs, if they want to be played by people like me.
I'm sure someone has done something as crazy as 'real-time' chess, or such. Funny how well that game holds up even in the computer game era.
First of all, I'd suggest not wireless if you are worried about it 'moving' around with you not looking. Almost any wireless mouse I've used does that sometimes, with the exception of Gyration. (Microsoft, Logitech, and several off brands)
Second of all, if you want sturdy feeling, you might go for one of the cases based on the Logitech mx500 (including the G5) or some of the similarly shaped Microsoft mice. (Unless you are left-handed.)
The Logitech mx518 I'm using has at least 3 buttons which can be mapped to something useful. (Intended as forward, back, and app-switch. I think you can remap the +/- resolution buttons, but I haven't bothered)
What's funny is when this article got posted on/., and last night, it was pretty much impossible to play online, due to something with their servers. For
The game itself is good. Stardock's ImpulseReactor is bad. Impulse isn't so great. The engine isn't really to blame (some fundamental bugs though) I've played about 120 games online, and win about 50% of those.
Here are some of the problems, having played it since pretty much the first day: In the initial release, they always tried to use NAT punchthrough. This includes when it wasn't needed. This put more load on their servers and made it slow to connect. Maybe piracy played some role, but given how it worked after it was 'fixed' I rather doubt piracy was the main problem, but more of an excuse. There are some ISPs (and routers) that mess with port numbering for UDP receive. This screws up the P2P network connection. Demigod/Supreme Commander speak a sandboxed lua in communication. Impulse sends and receives XML, and they wrote some translation layer in there, which was losing messages. Stardock implemented some proxies for fixing some problems, unfortunately the proxies are in my opinion, buggy. I've been sitting next to two people, and the same person connects to two of us fine, then proxied to the other. Uhhh, wtf? Additionally, they seem to have a tendency to crash, fucking up the game. According to Stardock, Stardock didn't write the NAT punchthrough, but licensed it from Raknet. Also, now Raknet of that denies it's used in Demigod. (And technically, it's not used in the engine, only the connection making, which is the real place where the BIG FUCKING PROBLEM is.) Impulse needs to be smacked with even the GNOME HIG guidelines, Apple's, even CDE's. Seriously, wtf? (I know it's trying to look like the latest office. There are so many people that have problems with the interface because of that. Unless you've seen Office a lot you won't recognize that the orb in the upper left is a menu, and even if you have seen office, you will likely miss it because it looks like an oversize decoration. Disclaimer: I don't like Office's new interface style in the first place.) Impluse's chat is a webpage, even though it's IRC, which requires IE's security settings to be set to default, it doesn't work if that's set higher.
Demigod itself: Suffers from the problem of being designed with Microsoft's tools that have been focused on the Xbox, and using similar ideas. For example, running at the speed of the slowest isn't a problem when you have a homogeneous environment. PCs aren't homogeneous. Has some issues with the UI and communications due to all computers running the sim, and having to wait for every other computer's packets. Occasionally a desync (sim wasn't the same across all computers), which I have only seen about 3 times. Crashes occasionally, usually on connecting to a port, due to a UPNP call. (This might really belong under Impulse.)
Plus sides: Less so now, but Stardock people are commonly on their IRC. If they are on, they generally try to be helpful, or such. The game is *very good*, especially on a LAN (or the internet when it works). Remarkably balanced in my opinion, for a newly released game. There are a couple of things which I think might need to be hit with a nerf bat, but they aren't very many.
Oh, and while there is single player, it's not designed for it. For anyone wanting to play it, play a few games against the AI to understand the basic game, then DON'T PLAY AGAINST THE AI, if you ever intend to play humans. It teaches you bad habits. For example I played with friends against AIs a few games, getting something like a 33-1 K:D ratio against the 'hard' AI. The next games I played against humans, I got waxed.
Fire a DU round from a tank down the road, all the IEDs go "boom" and the insurgents waiting on the side go "slwooop" as the massive air pressure changes suck them inside out.
Microsoft thanks you for your devotion to their fixed pixel sizes.
Linux, or Mac, I've not really had a problem excluding some old apps (think xlib programmed things).
Windows on the other hand...
First: Are you talking about their (expensive) scsi drives, or their standard drives? Because frankly, there's a big difference. One is highly reliable, the other... not so much. I had Seagate's RMA on speed dial for a while.
I've heard that on the client it did a little processing, unit AI for that player, but I'll put that as heresay. (But reasonable, based on my own experience.)
As far as there being a computer powerful enough to do so, yes. Most Core 2 duos and Core duos should be capable of 10 player (minus the problem of there only being support for 8-players...), at realtime speeds. The problem is if a single player has a machine which isn't capable of it, the game will slow down for all players.
All the machines run the sim, and right now machines are capable of 4v4 games. (All machines running the sim, works great for anti-cheating measures, suddenly something deterministic doesn't match, and either there's a bug, or someone cheated.)
However, even while Vista has about 8%, Vista + DX 10 is 2.3% of users. That's about half as many as are using DX 7. About 15% use DX 8, and the rest are DX9 types.
In terms of being able to sell one's product to the most people, it then makes more sense to make sure DX 7 runs it well, than it does for DX10. Unless you want to jack the price up, to compensate. Let's see, to make a new game for just DirectX 10, that would be about... 2000$ for the same revenue stream, based on steam's percentage.
The other thing people forget, is how Microsoft's tools are no longer targetted at the PC, instead they are targeted at the Xbox. This has had rather (IMO) disastrous consequences for one game I play, Supreme Commander. GPG was being partly funded by Microsoft (or would have been, my memory is foggy), and it was intended to be the first DX10 game and use Microsoft's networking, etc.
This is great and all, but the way Microsoft and GPG used it, it has to be peer to peer. And each computer runs the sim. Which would be fine, if it weren't one of the most taxing games on a cpu currently existing. This would be fine in a homogeneous environment, such as the Xbox. However, PCs aren't. So if one person has a crappy computer, it will slow EVERYONE down.
Microsoft stands to make more money from Xbox, so they are either intentionally, or unintentionally, doing things which are killing the PC games market.
I'll disagree, but not for the same reasons. If you have a reference which contains something you want, you'll need to search out where to find it. Be it at your local library (thankfully, the most common case), on the Internet (and then roll the die to see if it's one of the ones your university has paid for.), or via interlibrary loan. (And hope it gets to you by the end of the semester, sometimes it won't even more than a month after the request is submitted)
If there's some critical piece of information that you should have included in your term paper, you might (and, honestly, should) get marked down. As such, one might well argue that it's your search that's at fault.
In a paper that's actually submitted, you'd BETTER know the subject, including what other people have done, and you'd better find those papers before you try to publish.
Strange, my old monitors seem to have about 133ppi.
Perhaps it's partly because Windows looks bad at high resolution, there (unfortunately) isn't much of a demand for them?
Of course, it's only recently that LCDs have had anything near a decent response time, and a whole lot of them *still* don't.
Was a switch to 2.6. I personally was using it in 2.4, however, when 2.6 rolled out, OpenMosix wasn't going to support it for some time. This caused a lot of users to stop using it, because for NOW, there wasn't really a way to justify staying on 2.4, when the responsiveness of 2.6 was so much better.
I see now that they have an alpha version out for 2.6.
Yet, to activate it, you have to download their software. So all it's doing is saving them a little bit by not bundling a CD, extending their DRM control (and apparently getting them fanboyish comments.)
Slashdot Mirror
Will all the employees have to wear a red ring?
There's error correction on CDs, the problem is that a 'bad' burner could produce a disk which is correctable to the proper data, but later on as some material degrades, will become unreadable, as opposed to simply requiring some error correction.
There used to be some brands that the firmware would show stats of that, however there haven't for a number of years, barring a few firmware hacks. (Amusing having to hack the firmware to get information that used to be semi-common.)
Indeed, the first CD I purchased, Civilization 2, is now useless, as anything other than a conversation piece/example to pull up online of why CDs aren't backup/example to pull up online of why I 'pirated' something that I 'own'.
Lots of mileage out of that disk, both for games, and for smacking down online arguments.
Solution: Don't play Starcraft.
I know 40+ year olds who are good at games like Supreme Commander. (I speak as someone who was in the top 100 of FA, in the months after it launched.) Reason being, not because they click like crazy, but because they are devious. (Old age & Trickery, etc) Where Supreme Commander is slow enough people can use thought, and not have to fight the interface, as with Starcraft.
There are games where you are fighting the interface. It shouldn't be that way, games should have a good interface. If the game requires a clickfest, then the problems are deeper, in it's design. I consider games like that to have flawed designs, if they want to be played by people like me.
I'm sure someone has done something as crazy as 'real-time' chess, or such. Funny how well that game holds up even in the computer game era.
How the hell does your *neck* get strained from moving a regular mouse?
First of all, I'd suggest not wireless if you are worried about it 'moving' around with you not looking. Almost any wireless mouse I've used does that sometimes, with the exception of Gyration. (Microsoft, Logitech, and several off brands) Second of all, if you want sturdy feeling, you might go for one of the cases based on the Logitech mx500 (including the G5) or some of the similarly shaped Microsoft mice. (Unless you are left-handed.) The Logitech mx518 I'm using has at least 3 buttons which can be mapped to something useful. (Intended as forward, back, and app-switch. I think you can remap the +/- resolution buttons, but I haven't bothered)
You believe any rumors surrounding Apple?
What's the track record on that?
What's funny is when this article got posted on /., and last night, it was pretty much impossible to play online, due to something with their servers. For
The game itself is good. Stardock's ImpulseReactor is bad. Impulse isn't so great. The engine isn't really to blame (some fundamental bugs though)
I've played about 120 games online, and win about 50% of those.
Here are some of the problems, having played it since pretty much the first day:
In the initial release, they always tried to use NAT punchthrough. This includes when it wasn't needed. This put more load on their servers and made it slow to connect. Maybe piracy played some role, but given how it worked after it was 'fixed' I rather doubt piracy was the main problem, but more of an excuse.
There are some ISPs (and routers) that mess with port numbering for UDP receive. This screws up the P2P network connection.
Demigod/Supreme Commander speak a sandboxed lua in communication. Impulse sends and receives XML, and they wrote some translation layer in there, which was losing messages.
Stardock implemented some proxies for fixing some problems, unfortunately the proxies are in my opinion, buggy. I've been sitting next to two people, and the same person connects to two of us fine, then proxied to the other. Uhhh, wtf? Additionally, they seem to have a tendency to crash, fucking up the game.
According to Stardock, Stardock didn't write the NAT punchthrough, but licensed it from Raknet. Also, now Raknet of that denies it's used in Demigod. (And technically, it's not used in the engine, only the connection making, which is the real place where the BIG FUCKING PROBLEM is.)
Impulse needs to be smacked with even the GNOME HIG guidelines, Apple's, even CDE's. Seriously, wtf? (I know it's trying to look like the latest office. There are so many people that have problems with the interface because of that. Unless you've seen Office a lot you won't recognize that the orb in the upper left is a menu, and even if you have seen office, you will likely miss it because it looks like an oversize decoration. Disclaimer: I don't like Office's new interface style in the first place.)
Impluse's chat is a webpage, even though it's IRC, which requires IE's security settings to be set to default, it doesn't work if that's set higher.
Demigod itself:
Suffers from the problem of being designed with Microsoft's tools that have been focused on the Xbox, and using similar ideas. For example, running at the speed of the slowest isn't a problem when you have a homogeneous environment. PCs aren't homogeneous.
Has some issues with the UI and communications due to all computers running the sim, and having to wait for every other computer's packets.
Occasionally a desync (sim wasn't the same across all computers), which I have only seen about 3 times.
Crashes occasionally, usually on connecting to a port, due to a UPNP call. (This might really belong under Impulse.)
Plus sides:
Less so now, but Stardock people are commonly on their IRC.
If they are on, they generally try to be helpful, or such.
The game is *very good*, especially on a LAN (or the internet when it works). Remarkably balanced in my opinion, for a newly released game. There are a couple of things which I think might need to be hit with a nerf bat, but they aren't very many.
Oh, and while there is single player, it's not designed for it. For anyone wanting to play it, play a few games against the AI to understand the basic game, then DON'T PLAY AGAINST THE AI, if you ever intend to play humans. It teaches you bad habits. For example I played with friends against AIs a few games, getting something like a 33-1 K:D ratio against the 'hard' AI. The next games I played against humans, I got waxed.
Doesn't matter, it still wouldn't detect viruses.
People should read some history: focus specifically on Windows and the NSA.
Hint: SP5
Fire a DU round from a tank down the road, all the IEDs go "boom" and the insurgents waiting on the side go "slwooop" as the massive air pressure changes suck them inside out.
Why don't you look up what DU rounds are for?
+ Kurdish terrorists now attacking Turkey
Iraqis killed each other, not a US problem.
----
And everyone in Turkey is an Iraqi?
Define win please.
Supreme Commander
Microsoft thanks you for your devotion to their fixed pixel sizes. Linux, or Mac, I've not really had a problem excluding some old apps (think xlib programmed things). Windows on the other hand...
Yet, the general idiot rejects nuclear power. So, were is your problem?
First: Are you talking about their (expensive) scsi drives, or their standard drives? Because frankly, there's a big difference. One is highly reliable, the other... not so much. I had Seagate's RMA on speed dial for a while.
Nah, they still use college student labor.
Though cost cutting will probably result in them moving down a link or two.
Actually, TA was a client/server setup.
I've heard that on the client it did a little processing, unit AI for that player, but I'll put that as heresay. (But reasonable, based on my own experience.)
As far as there being a computer powerful enough to do so, yes. Most Core 2 duos and Core duos should be capable of 10 player (minus the problem of there only being support for 8-players...), at realtime speeds. The problem is if a single player has a machine which isn't capable of it, the game will slow down for all players.
All the machines run the sim, and right now machines are capable of 4v4 games. (All machines running the sim, works great for anti-cheating measures, suddenly something deterministic doesn't match, and either there's a bug, or someone cheated.)
However, even while Vista has about 8%, Vista + DX 10 is 2.3% of users. That's about half as many as are using DX 7. About 15% use DX 8, and the rest are DX9 types.
In terms of being able to sell one's product to the most people, it then makes more sense to make sure DX 7 runs it well, than it does for DX10. Unless you want to jack the price up, to compensate. Let's see, to make a new game for just DirectX 10, that would be about... 2000$ for the same revenue stream, based on steam's percentage.
The other thing people forget, is how Microsoft's tools are no longer targetted at the PC, instead they are targeted at the Xbox. This has had rather (IMO) disastrous consequences for one game I play, Supreme Commander. GPG was being partly funded by Microsoft (or would have been, my memory is foggy), and it was intended to be the first DX10 game and use Microsoft's networking, etc.
This is great and all, but the way Microsoft and GPG used it, it has to be peer to peer. And each computer runs the sim. Which would be fine, if it weren't one of the most taxing games on a cpu currently existing. This would be fine in a homogeneous environment, such as the Xbox. However, PCs aren't. So if one person has a crappy computer, it will slow EVERYONE down.
Microsoft stands to make more money from Xbox, so they are either intentionally, or unintentionally, doing things which are killing the PC games market.
I'll disagree, but not for the same reasons. If you have a reference which contains something you want, you'll need to search out where to find it. Be it at your local library (thankfully, the most common case), on the Internet (and then roll the die to see if it's one of the ones your university has paid for.), or via interlibrary loan. (And hope it gets to you by the end of the semester, sometimes it won't even more than a month after the request is submitted)
If there's some critical piece of information that you should have included in your term paper, you might (and, honestly, should) get marked down. As such, one might well argue that it's your search that's at fault.
In a paper that's actually submitted, you'd BETTER know the subject, including what other people have done, and you'd better find those papers before you try to publish.
Strange, my old monitors seem to have about 133ppi. Perhaps it's partly because Windows looks bad at high resolution, there (unfortunately) isn't much of a demand for them? Of course, it's only recently that LCDs have had anything near a decent response time, and a whole lot of them *still* don't.
Was a switch to 2.6. I personally was using it in 2.4, however, when 2.6 rolled out, OpenMosix wasn't going to support it for some time. This caused a lot of users to stop using it, because for NOW, there wasn't really a way to justify staying on 2.4, when the responsiveness of 2.6 was so much better.
I see now that they have an alpha version out for 2.6.
Note that 2.6.0 was released in 2003.
Yet, to activate it, you have to download their software. So all it's doing is saving them a little bit by not bundling a CD, extending their DRM control (and apparently getting them fanboyish comments.)
Oh, and shall we ignore the vendor lock in?
You've not looked at many of Apple's comparison charts have you?