I cant remember 100% my storyline progression but doesnt Harry become the Hobgoblin instead?
I don't remember the exact progression (which came first, GG or HG?), but I do know that Harry takes up the mantle of the Green Goblin. The Hobgoblin was someone else (Googled for it). I thought there were only three Green Goblins (though I couldn't remember other than Norman and Harry). It looks like there were four of them. There were also four different Hobgoblins. Apparently villains in the Spider-Man mythos like to recycle old ideas (see the page above, there are several different iterations of a number of villains).
The next sequel is foreshadowed at the end of the one. The Green Goblin will be back and it's going to be Harry, as yhou might expect. I don't know I just don't like the character of the Green Goblin, I don't think any amount of CGI can hide the lameness of that character.
Which is straight out of the comics. Given the first movie, anybody could see that this would come eventually. If not in Spider-Man 2 (doubtful, since Harry has to know that Peter is Spidey first), then in Spider-Man 3.
You can write a given query and number of different ways. This is not necessarily a SQL problem but due to this the query optimizers have to be enormously complex to handle complicated queries and by association you can have queries which describes two identical sets but have vastly different runtimes/costs.
Same for Perl, or C, or pretty much any other language out there. This just means you need to learn more about your chosen RDBMS platform, and how to investigate what it'll do for a particular query.
Non-updateable views (partially due to duplicate handling and/or allowing relations with no primary key)
I'd suggest that's a limitation of the engine you're using, and not of relational databases in general.
Weak support for complex integrity constraints (e.g. business rules)
Yes, there's only so much you can do with constraints, but CHECK constraints can be very powerful. Limit your database access to stored procedures, and implement your necessary business logic there. Then, if someone needs to insert data that you can't constrain through foreign keys, unique constraints, and check constraints, you can do more complex handling in the stored procedure.
Supports NULLs (Date/Pascal/Darwin do not like NULLs)
Waa. NULLs are not inherently evil. This argument is along the same lines as GOTO arguments. GOTOs aren't bad when used properly. The misuse of GOTOs is what's bad. The same goes for NULLs. For what it's worth, if I have a table where I expect to have some unknown values, I want to be able to get a NULL. I don't want to know that -1, or "", or some other magic value is equivalent to "unknown" when there's already a defined standard for "unknown" -- NULL.
There are plenty of criticisms for SQL databases, and even more so for individual implementations (why does MySQL suck so much? Why does every vendor have to add their own extensions to the SQL standards? Why is there no cross-platform way to mark a table as AUTOINCREMENT/IDENTITY/whatever other RDBMS engines use? etc). The arguments above are pretty weak, however.
Not very well where I went to school. Last fall, Network Services guys wondered hallways with laptops looking for wireless routers that were giving out DHCP addresses. They'd track down the offending port and shut it down. Then tell us (housing tech support) what they had done and let us explain the problem to the student. Secured wireless routers didn't really bother the Network Services folks that much.
I hadn't really thought in those terms. I was thinking more along the lines of, "Dormitories are typically big, hulking buildings built more like bunkers than houses, and a wireless signal probably won't propogate very far. Add to that the density of living quarters and what would happen if every dorm room had their own AP, and you've got chaos even if the signal can propogate." Then again, if network folk do a walkthrough to check for rogue APs, I'm sure they'd also notice an abundance of cat5 running into a single room, so my suggestion won't work very well with a proactive team.
Better, use the loophole already available. This only applies to Windows machines directly on the network. Get yourself a cheap old machine to run linux and use it as a NAT gateway, or go buy one of the many cheap routers available now (you should probably skip on the wireless routers; don't know how well that would go over in a dorm).
The only device you'll have directly connected to the network is either a linux box which is exempt because it's not running Windows, or a Linksys (or other) router that is exempt because it's obviously not a Windows box. Then you can run as many Windows boxes behind that gateway as you like, without worrying about the University invading your private property. Hell, you could even branch out and allow other concerned people on your floor to run cat5 into your room and use your NAT instead of connecting directly. And if the university gets wise and shuts off your port, just move the router/linux box to someone else's room and repeat. With a good group of 5-10 people, you should have no problems going through the year, even if the university shuts of your ports frequently.
What all Xbox games are now is Live-aware. This allows players on Live to see what game you are playing, even if it is a single player game, and send you invites to play with them. Its rather nice.
All games are not required to be XBox Live-aware. It's an optional feature that developers may or may not support. Developers do have to do work to be Live-aware. It's not something you just get "for free". If Ion Storm chose not to do that work for Thief, too bad. That means that you can't patch Thief, either.
It's a two-sided sword, though. If you promote your game as Live-aware, you're going to have fans begging you for downloadable content as soon as your game ships (yes, that makes no sense, since if the DLC was available at ship time, it would be shipped with the game, but that's the mentality out there). If you don't have any plans to do downloadable content, you'd better resign yourself to a pissed-off fanbase.
Okay, now you're just being totally unrealistic. Gas powered cars have been around for over a century, and you can't buy one of those brand new for even twice that price.
The Sparrow is more similar to an enclosed motorcycle than a car, and in fact has motorcycle status in most areas for HOV lane purposes (2 or 3 person car pools and motorcycles get to use a special lane). You can buy a very good commuter motorcycle for $3000. In my opinion, the original poster is correct. A price closer to $3000 rather than $14000 would be right for this vehicle (say, $5000-$8000). Unfortunately, so long as this is a small production-run specialty vehicle, it's not going to be able to enjoy wholesale price breaks that a major car or motorcycle manufacturer will have.
I believe you're thinking of the Quake 3 engine. The Quake 2 engine was in fact built on the Quake 1 engine -- heavily rewritten, of course (.DLLs as oppposed to QuakeC, different storage systems for textures and models, built-in OpenGL support, etc.), but built on it nevertheless. Quake 3 was pretty much a ground-up project.
No, I'm talking about Quake 2. While I'm sure theCarmack started with some Quake 1 bits, the engine is a major change from Quake 1. The rendering engine was rewritten, the networking engine was rewritting, the file formats were rewritten, etc. In other words, it was all new, unlike Half-Life that tacked on bits like skeletal animation while leaving other bits hardly changed at all. Of course, you can download the Quake 2 source code and Quake 1 source code and see for yourself. Also, theCarmack sometimes reads and posts on Slashdot, so perhaps he can clear this up once and for all.
theCarmack tends to rewrite engines for id games (non-id games like RTCW or the upcoming Q4 don't get brand new engines). This makes sense, because id games have recently existed solely for demonstration purposes (licensing of the Q2 engine, Q3 engine, upcoming Doom 3 engine). Doom was not a modified Wolf3D engine. Quake was not a modified Doom engine. Q2 was not a modified Q1 engine, and so on. This is in contrast to Epic, who are constantly refining rather than rewriting. The current Unreal 2 technology engine is still recognizably similar to the original Unreal engine, and I expect that the upcoming Unreal 3 technology will still have a common thread. Neither way is better or worse than the other. They're just different approaches taken by two different geniuses (theCarmack and Time Sweeney).
On a side note, since theHair's site was posted in the original article, it seems that John Rome"Hair"o is growing out his man-locks again. He was quite the pretty woman when he had his long hair, and many fanboys were disgusted to find out he really was a man when he cut it a few years back (apparently while in depression from the failure that was Daikatana).
I could be wrong, but I think the Q2 engine was just a highly modified Q1 engine.
You're wrong. The Quake 2 engine was new. While it may have taken concepts and possibly even some code from the Quake 1 engine (hey, they were both written by theCarmack, so that's to be expected), the Q2 engine was not built on top of Q1. Perhaps you're thinking about Half-Life, which was built on a highly modified Q1 engine (many people get confused and think that Half-Life was based on Q2, since it was released around the same time).
Oh, something else I should mention. The audio tracks that broadcast with HD channels typically use less compression (in the audio sense, not the data sense), so the tracks may sound softer than the SD channels. Turn up the volume on your receiver, and you'll be okay. Unless your receiver really sucks, you won't have to turn it up much, and you shouldn't be anywhere near the distortion point of your receiver. For example, I typically watch SD feeds at -30 (Denon receivers go from -50 or -100 to some positive value I've never tried to reach. A volume of "0" is very, very loud). When I switch to a HD channel, I'll typically need to bump up the volume to -20 (I'll put it up to -15, or sometimes even -10 when watching movies). My DVD player's DD5.1 output is the same, with the proper volume level being somewhere between -15 and -20 for most movies. Oddly, though, my XBox's DD5.1 (in games) rarely needs to go higher than -30, though some games do seem to be softer than others (PGR2 plays best at -25).
So, try playing with the volume of your receiver. It may be that the tracks seem to lose definition simply because they're playing too quietly.
I mean that when I go from the SD stream to the HD stream using the same hardware the sound appears to drop to mono, or at least loses a lot of definition
Maybe Australian DTV channels are just fucked up, but I really doubt they chose to sacrifice the analog audio tracks (DPL) and only provide DD5.1 and mono. I would guess there's some setup issue with your hardware. Either the audio is getting passed incorrectly from the tuner card to the Audigy2, or the Audigy 2 is sending the wrong signals to your DPL receiver. I'd guess the former, though I don't know how audio is handled by the tuner card. Also, you should think about upgrading your receiver. Receivers that support DD5.1 (and more) are damned cheap these days. Even the most basic Denon surround receiver you can buy these days supports DD5.1 (I'm a fan of Denon, but all of the other major brands and most of the minor brands are the same), and won't even set you back $200USD. Worthwhile upgrade, IMHO.
It's not the latest and greatest, but I think I can use it to determine that the sound quality of the HD stream is much worse than the SD stream.
No, the only thing you can determine is that the HD stream is much worse than the SD stream for your specific configuration. That's completely different than concluding that HD audio sucks in general.
While HD does look significantly better than SD (I can compare this on my Sony Trinitron 21" VGA monitor) , the cost of a big screen isn't worth it. Also, the sound quality drops.
Huh? Let me first note that I'm referring to matters in the States and not AU, since I know the States, and that all dollar figures are in USD. Now, you can buy good quality, reasonably-sized (45"+) rear projection TVs for under $2000 (significantly under, in many cases -- my own 48" Mitsubishi was $2000 three years ago, and prices have dropped since). If that's still too much, you can get HD-ready CRT sets starting around $750 for 32", or 27" CRTs starting around $430. Yes, the sets are smaller, and may not be available in a 16x9 configuration, but the HD picture quality is still vastly superior (as well, you'll also benefit from better DVD picture quality and be able to play in progressive scan with a proper player, and play GC or XBox games in 480p or higher depending on what resolutions the games and TV support).
Second, what exactly do you mean that sound quality drops? That's not been my experience. In fact, sound quality is better because most (all?) HD broadcasts are accompanied by DD5.1 sound, while most SD broadcasts don't do that (there's nothing stopping them, they just don't). If you mean that the built-in TV audio is lesser quality, I don't agree with that either. Sure, the cheapest HD-ready sets may skimp on the audio hardware, but my Mits has a decent set of speakers in it (certainly better than the speakers in my 6 year old 27" Magnavox SD CRT). That said, to get the true experience you really should opt for a home theater system. The "Home Theater in a Box" options are generally decent, if not awe-inspiring, and will at least get you positional audio for a low price. Try to find a package that's either built from individual components or at least doesn't preclude upgrades by using proprietary interconnects (for example, my own "HTiaB" was really just an in-store package deal on some Definitive satellite speakers, a Definitive subwoofer, and a lower-end Denon receiver. Not the best in the world, but it's adequate, and sounds better than a friend's Bose system that cost three times as much. The downside here is that you'll usually have to provide speaker wire yourself, which isn't a huge issue; be sure to buy wire in bulk of an appropriate gauge, and don't sucked into paying extreme amounts of money for "name brand" cables like Monster, since they're no better than good quality bulk wire, and you generally can only buy those in either useless pre-cut sizes or small spools that will wire perhaps one rear channel per spool).
Nope. Just out of interest, how do you record something for someone else with TiVo? Give me my Sony SLV-EZ2000S in long play with a BASF 5 hour tape doubled to 10 hours any day.
I don't, but that's not a selling point for me. I couldn't care less if I can share my Tivo'ed content with others. However, there are plenty of hacks out there for pulling Tivo recordings off of the Tivo and converting them into formats that you can then use on a PC or burn to a VCD or DVD. If I had anything worth saving long-term on my Tivo, I might consider playing with those hacks, but a) I've never found anything that I cared to keep that long term, and b) even if I did, I've never yet hit the size limit on my 80GB Tivo, and if I ever did I'd be more likely to do a hard drive upgrade hack first.
guess I'm special. Anyway, I wasn't comparing my PC to other PCs, it's much quieter, I was comparing it to my VCR, running at night, in my bedroom.
Any PC, even the quietest, is going to run louder than a VCR, since VCRs generally only make noise when playing or recording. However, my Tivo is very quiet, and while it does make constant noise, it's much quietter than a VCR in operation. My point, however, was that complaining that your PC is still loud even though you've replaced the PS with a noise reducing model is silly.
is that, as far as I know(please correct me if I am wrong), you really can't play consoles on it since the cards have a 1.5 second or so delay from when the video comes in to when you see it. Obviously this is fine for television, but not so hot for gaming.
That's only true for cards that do mpeg2 compression, like the Hauppage PVR-n50 line. The delay is similar to what you'd see from a Tivo or similar box that encodes to mpeg2 on the fly for recording purposes. Analog tuners that don't do any encoding should have no lag, either.
That said, why would you want to run a console through a TV tuner to play it on your monitor in the first place? I'll assume you're referring to the recent generation of consoles (PS2, XBox, GameCube, and Dreamcast). All of these either have component output (PS2, XBox, GC) or the ability to give a direct VGA output (Dreamcast, with a little hackery). Given that, for the price of a decent TV tuner, you can buy boxes that will do the proper conversion from YPrPb signals to RGBHV VGA (the cheap ones are little more than YPrPb->RGBHV transcoders, which works fine for any progressive scan output; the better, more expensive ones actually do 3-2 pulldown/line doubling to convert interlaced signals into a progressive scan signal suitable for a monitor).
If you want to play older consoles that only have S-vid or composite (or RF, gasp!) output, you're in for more work. Some have been hacked to output VGA video (search google), and others will need an analog tuner (stay away from the digital tuners as mentioned above -- a side effect of this is that you can find a good tuner for cheap). Alternatively, you could just buy a GBA SP and get most of that classic gaming in a handheld format (many NES, SMS, Genesis, and SNES classics have been either re-released, updated, or sequelized on the GBA).
Digital TV in Australia isn't worth bothering about.
I don't know what content is available in Ozland, but here in the States I find myself watching any random crap so long as it's in HD. For instance, one of Comcast's INHD channels had a Lingerie bowl (yes, women in lingerie playing football) not too long ago. Scantily clad women running around is pretty irresistable, especially in high-def, but it's not something I'd actively search for.
A VCR is still easier to tape Angel with than some sort of digital system
Is Tivo available in AU? If so, it blows the pants off of any VCR. I love my Tivo, and would never even consider switching back to a normal VCR.
My PC, while it has a Zalman NR power supply is still much noisier than a VCR
Power supplies are rarely the main source of noise in a PC. You really need to start with your other fans, especially on your CPU and GPU. Once you have those at an acceptable level, then you could start worrying about the PS. Changing to a noise reducing power supply without doing anything else is a waste of time and money IMHO.
The Thief engine was used sucessfuly in thief 1 and thief 2
Technically, it was the Dark engine used in those games, not the "Thief engine". It's also fair to note that the latest Thief game is based on the Deus Ex 2 engine (which in turn is ultimately based on Epic's Unreal engine, as with so many other games these days).
The same theif engine was used in System shock 1 and 2
System Shock 2 was based on the Dark engine (IIRC, it shipped between Thief 1 and Thief 2), but System Shock 1 certainly was not. Thief shipped in 1998, while System Shock 1 shipped in 1994. Graphically, System Shock is akin to Doom or Marathon.
Another hallmark of both thief and system shock, perhaps an artifact of an eninge that dose not focuse on combat, is that they are SCARY to play
This is no side effect. It's good game design. The Dark engine pulled this off very well, since it was purpose-designed especially for that feel (developed for Thief, and put to excellent use in SS2), but SS1 was able to pull of that creepy feeling just as well.
They are very good games, and thief three represents what could possibly represent a resurection of the 'thief type' engine, allowing for more 'thinking FPS' games
The Thief and System Shock series have always been closer to cult classics than mainstream, and I don't expect Thief 3 to change that much. However, the proliferation of stealth games these days with the Metal Gear Solid series, Splinter Cell, and even Manhunt (below the snuff film exterior, the game is another 3rd person stealth game) owe a lot to Thief (Splinter Cell's light meter is straight out of Thief 1 circa 1998), and their success is only good news for the Thief franchise.
You missed the most important fact -- computers (hardware and software) age exponentially faster than the physical counterparts you compare them to. Sidewalks are always useful, so long as they're in good repair. Sure, you may occasionally need to widen a walk to handle more human bandwidth, but in general you could pour some concrete for sidewalks and then leave it alone for decades (but for a periodic cleaning and weeding), and never have a problem.
Try doing the same thing with computers. Go ahead, get some ancient computing hardware from the 70s, 80s, or even early 90s. Install the ancient software. Now try to use that effectively in a technologically-advancing world. Oops! You can't! At least, not as user desktops and such, if you want to keep productive and happy users.
Now let's flip it around. What you're suggesting already exists. How often did you hear about banks and financial institutions using 20-30+ year old software because it still worked during the lead up and fizzle of the whole Y2K crap? And what did those institutions do when a serious threat came around? They started hiring people to fix the current software (patch the sidewalk). Very few chose to upgrade their systems instead (rip up the sidewalk and repave).
The answer is simple -- use an emulator. That way, you don't have to provide hardware to your students, and you can use a nicer assembly language without worrying that you're actually using a x86. In short, the answer is SPIM, the MIPS R2000/R3000 simulator. The MIPS assembly language is nice and simple, with an abundance of registers that let you get going with simple apps early on. As complexity grows and the students learn, you can bring in the concept of pushing data onto the stack. It's free, and runs on Unix/Linux and Windows, so you don't have to track down a bunch of old R2000 or R3000 machines for students to use.
If the end goal is to be able to write immediately-applicable code, x86 would be the way to go. If the goal is to learn about assembly languages and concepts, the platform doesn't much matter (or if it does, only to the extent that the language and hardware should be easy to learn).
It's not RMS's fault that the English language fails to distinguish between libre and gratis as meanings of the word "free."
No, it's RMS's fault for mindlessly insisting that "Free" != "free" despite the shortcomings of the English language. Instead of picking a suitable adjective, or even using libre (which most English speakers will understand anyway, and not confuse with the gratis meaning of "free"), he insists on using the ambiguous term "Free", explaining that the capital 'F' makes all the difference (as if you can hear a capital letter).
That's not what was meant at all. The Slashdotter's theory was that consumers addicted to free software would look for... wait for it... Free Software.
But Free Software doesn't have to be free software! (Thank you, RMS, for that genious naming scheme.) Remember, it's free as in speech, not free as in beer.
I mean the "16-bit era" (I use that term loosely since one could endlessly argue specs of the systems at the time.) had a solid amount of time to create very unique gameplay and push it boundaries wheras the 32-bit boom was merely a blink of an eye. The platforms were introduced, games were made and then new consoles took over.
(disclaimer: I didn't bother to verify dates, so I'm going by memory. I may be off by a year or so.)
I'm not sure I agree with you. The "16-bit era" started with the Genesis around 89-90, and really hit full-swing around 91 with the Super NES. The "32-bit era" started with the Saturn and PSX, which were released around 94-95. The "64-bit era" (which is a misnomer, really, since these machines are still 32-bit CPUs) kicked off with the Dreamcast (I'm counting the N64 in 32-bit era, since it was direct competition to the PSX) in 99, and the PS2 in 2000. Each console era has had overlap when you look at the market as a whole. The NES overlapped a few years with the Genesis before the SNES launched. The SNES overlapped with PSX until the N64 launched. The PSX overlapped with the Dreamcast, and the N64 overlapped even with the PS2 (Gamecube launched in 2001). Each era since 16-bit has been approximately 5 years (8-bit technically lasted longer, if you start counting from the NES, since it launched in Japan in 83-84, and I believe the SMS was around 84 as well). The next era (what people will call "128-bit", but will actually be truly 64-bit, based on the rumored specs for XBox Next and GameCube Next) is set to follow that trend, with announcements coming next year for late '05/early '06 launches. 16-bit was 90-95, 32-bit 95-00, and "64-bit" will be 00-05.
Can anyone clear up the whole "N-bit" naming scheme? Other than marketing purposes, where did this come from? The NES was 8-bit because it used an 8-bit CPU. The Genesis and SNES were 16-bit because they used 16-bit CPUs, but IIRC they had 8-bit sound. They couldn't display 16-bit color, with the Genesis limited to 64 colors on screen and the SNES limited to 256, so it can't be that (though I believe the SNES at least could pull from a palette of 2^16 colors, and the Genesis from 2^15 or so). I don't know why the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 was 16-bit, because IIRC it used an 8-bit CPU. The Saturn and PSX were 32-bit because they finally made the move to 32-bit CPUs. The Jaguar was "64-bit" because it had two 32-bit processors, and everybody knows that 32 + 32 = 64. How is the N64 64-bit? What about the Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, or XBox? The Xbox obviously uses a 32-bit Intel CPU, and the GameCube uses a 32-bit PowerPC (I'm pretty sure it's not running in 64-bit mode). The GBA is 16/32-bit, because while it uses a 32-bit ARM CPU, most games are actually written using the CPU's 16-bit THUMB mode because it's faster and more battery-efficient.
The game looks interesting.. I'm a huge fan of Ghost Recon, hope this comes to the PC.
Keep in mind that this game is only similar to Ghost Recon and other such games (SOCOM, the Rainbow 6 games, etc) in that it deals with squad-based tactical combat. In all other respects, it's completely different. It's not a first-person shooter, nor even a third-person shooter. In fact, you never actually pull the trigger on a gun yourself (excepting grenades, but even that is still just giving orders to your soldiers but that you can pick exactly where you want the grenades to go). It has a lot more in common with a real-time strategy game than Ghost Recon. Take a RTS like C&C:G, remove the need to manage resources and the ability to create new units and perform upgrades, put the viewpoint at a battlefield-level third-person view, and constrain your movement options to only what your soldiers can see, and you're getting close to what FSW is like.
Personally, I love the game. I've been playing it since Wednesday. The retail game is very Hollywood, and fairly easy on lower difficulty levels (I've yet to try Authentic difficulty). Gamespot's review was correct when they complain about cover being all or nothing, though the seem to have neglected the destructable cover (cars, wooden carts, crates, etc that provide cover but can be destroyed out from in front of you). It seems that this was a concession made for playability in the retail version. It does lead to some Naked Gun-esque firefights where you can be only a few feet away from a bad guy and they can't hit your nor you them because the cover is too strong, but it also prevents you from "cheap" kills where you think you're in cover but not. The army version "fixes" this. Cover is only as good as what it's made from. You still have perfect cover if you're hiding behind a stone wall, or around a corner, but if you put your back up against a wooden fence you can expect to take a few rounds in your soldiers. The army mode also lets the AI move around a lot more, so that they're not always in the same place on every mission. The retail version seems to always have the enemies in the same place initially, but they do have freedom to run to new cover, or get scared and run away (happens, but rarely).
In short, the game rocks, but you'll be disappointed if you go into it expecting a Ghost Recon copy. Gamespot's review is really an anomaly in my opinion, and GameRanking's review aggregation seems to validate this. Supposedly it will make its way to the PC, but if you're into military simulation games this one is definitely worth buying an XBox. It controls perfectly with the gamepad (I would expect it to be worse with a mouse, in all honesty), and DD5.1 is required to play this game properly (audio situational awareness is key).
Thing is, everyone keeps mentioning pulling the screen out, and replacing it. Except, as far as I understand it, there's not much else to an OLED except the inputs and bezel. Aren't the polymers in fact printed onto the circuitry that drives this stuff? That doesn't sound so detachable to me...
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that you're correct that the polymers are printed on the screen itself. However, you still need all of the "other stuff" that surrounds the screen. You need to get the video signal to the screen, and in such a way that the OLED polymers understand it (ie, conversion may need to happen between the DVI/YPrPb/RGBHV/S-vid/Composite inputs and the screen itself). Along with that, you need all of the hardware responsible for receiving an input, and preferably multiplexing multiple inputs (not a big deal for a PC monitor, but a huge deal for a TV set). Add in anything else you need, such as a tuner, IR or RF receiver, circuitry to decode and act upon that input, etc, and it turns out that there's more to a TV set than just the screen.
Right now, the screen is the largest cost, though, so if you could get high-quality screens at low prices the up-front cost of a TV set should drop drastically. How would you like to be able to buy a very thin (hangable!) 40" flat-screen HDTV for $300-500? Sure, you may have to spend $100 every 1000 hours for a new screen (or push it longer if you don't mind the decrease in quality, since OLEDs don't just suddenly stop working like a lightbulb, but instead fade away; I'm pulling the 1000 hours figure out of my butt, so don't recite it as religion -- mean time to failure could be much more or much less), but that's a drop in the bucket compared to paying $5,000-20,000 for a similar plasma set, or $2,000-10,000 for a similar LCD set. Plus, you'll no longer have to worry so much about accidental damage to the screen, because it would be easy to replace at a reasonable price (let's see you do that with an LCD!). I'd love it simply for the fact that I could replace my screen for $100 rather than have my set professionally calibrated every 2-3 years at $300-500 per calibration to keep everything in tune (settings drift over time as the projectors in a RPTV age). Even if the initial set was priced at RPTV prices ($1000-1500 for a ~40-45 inch set), replacing the screen would be cheaper and quicker than a re-calibration.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't remember the exact progression (which came first, GG or HG?), but I do know that Harry takes up the mantle of the Green Goblin. The Hobgoblin was someone else (Googled for it). I thought there were only three Green Goblins (though I couldn't remember other than Norman and Harry). It looks like there were four of them. There were also four different Hobgoblins. Apparently villains in the Spider-Man mythos like to recycle old ideas (see the page above, there are several different iterations of a number of villains).
Which is straight out of the comics. Given the first movie, anybody could see that this would come eventually. If not in Spider-Man 2 (doubtful, since Harry has to know that Peter is Spidey first), then in Spider-Man 3.
Same for Perl, or C, or pretty much any other language out there. This just means you need to learn more about your chosen RDBMS platform, and how to investigate what it'll do for a particular query.
I'd suggest that's a limitation of the engine you're using, and not of relational databases in general.
Yes, there's only so much you can do with constraints, but CHECK constraints can be very powerful. Limit your database access to stored procedures, and implement your necessary business logic there. Then, if someone needs to insert data that you can't constrain through foreign keys, unique constraints, and check constraints, you can do more complex handling in the stored procedure.
Waa. NULLs are not inherently evil. This argument is along the same lines as GOTO arguments. GOTOs aren't bad when used properly. The misuse of GOTOs is what's bad. The same goes for NULLs. For what it's worth, if I have a table where I expect to have some unknown values, I want to be able to get a NULL. I don't want to know that -1, or "", or some other magic value is equivalent to "unknown" when there's already a defined standard for "unknown" -- NULL.
There are plenty of criticisms for SQL databases, and even more so for individual implementations (why does MySQL suck so much? Why does every vendor have to add their own extensions to the SQL standards? Why is there no cross-platform way to mark a table as AUTOINCREMENT/IDENTITY/whatever other RDBMS engines use? etc). The arguments above are pretty weak, however.
I hadn't really thought in those terms. I was thinking more along the lines of, "Dormitories are typically big, hulking buildings built more like bunkers than houses, and a wireless signal probably won't propogate very far. Add to that the density of living quarters and what would happen if every dorm room had their own AP, and you've got chaos even if the signal can propogate." Then again, if network folk do a walkthrough to check for rogue APs, I'm sure they'd also notice an abundance of cat5 running into a single room, so my suggestion won't work very well with a proactive team.
Better, use the loophole already available. This only applies to Windows machines directly on the network. Get yourself a cheap old machine to run linux and use it as a NAT gateway, or go buy one of the many cheap routers available now (you should probably skip on the wireless routers; don't know how well that would go over in a dorm).
The only device you'll have directly connected to the network is either a linux box which is exempt because it's not running Windows, or a Linksys (or other) router that is exempt because it's obviously not a Windows box. Then you can run as many Windows boxes behind that gateway as you like, without worrying about the University invading your private property. Hell, you could even branch out and allow other concerned people on your floor to run cat5 into your room and use your NAT instead of connecting directly. And if the university gets wise and shuts off your port, just move the router/linux box to someone else's room and repeat. With a good group of 5-10 people, you should have no problems going through the year, even if the university shuts of your ports frequently.
All games are not required to be XBox Live-aware. It's an optional feature that developers may or may not support. Developers do have to do work to be Live-aware. It's not something you just get "for free". If Ion Storm chose not to do that work for Thief, too bad. That means that you can't patch Thief, either.
It's a two-sided sword, though. If you promote your game as Live-aware, you're going to have fans begging you for downloadable content as soon as your game ships (yes, that makes no sense, since if the DLC was available at ship time, it would be shipped with the game, but that's the mentality out there). If you don't have any plans to do downloadable content, you'd better resign yourself to a pissed-off fanbase.
The Sparrow is more similar to an enclosed motorcycle than a car, and in fact has motorcycle status in most areas for HOV lane purposes (2 or 3 person car pools and motorcycles get to use a special lane). You can buy a very good commuter motorcycle for $3000. In my opinion, the original poster is correct. A price closer to $3000 rather than $14000 would be right for this vehicle (say, $5000-$8000). Unfortunately, so long as this is a small production-run specialty vehicle, it's not going to be able to enjoy wholesale price breaks that a major car or motorcycle manufacturer will have.
No, I'm talking about Quake 2. While I'm sure theCarmack started with some Quake 1 bits, the engine is a major change from Quake 1. The rendering engine was rewritten, the networking engine was rewritting, the file formats were rewritten, etc. In other words, it was all new, unlike Half-Life that tacked on bits like skeletal animation while leaving other bits hardly changed at all. Of course, you can download the Quake 2 source code and Quake 1 source code and see for yourself. Also, theCarmack sometimes reads and posts on Slashdot, so perhaps he can clear this up once and for all.
theCarmack tends to rewrite engines for id games (non-id games like RTCW or the upcoming Q4 don't get brand new engines). This makes sense, because id games have recently existed solely for demonstration purposes (licensing of the Q2 engine, Q3 engine, upcoming Doom 3 engine). Doom was not a modified Wolf3D engine. Quake was not a modified Doom engine. Q2 was not a modified Q1 engine, and so on. This is in contrast to Epic, who are constantly refining rather than rewriting. The current Unreal 2 technology engine is still recognizably similar to the original Unreal engine, and I expect that the upcoming Unreal 3 technology will still have a common thread. Neither way is better or worse than the other. They're just different approaches taken by two different geniuses (theCarmack and Time Sweeney).
On a side note, since theHair's site was posted in the original article, it seems that John Rome"Hair"o is growing out his man-locks again. He was quite the pretty woman when he had his long hair, and many fanboys were disgusted to find out he really was a man when he cut it a few years back (apparently while in depression from the failure that was Daikatana).
You're wrong. The Quake 2 engine was new. While it may have taken concepts and possibly even some code from the Quake 1 engine (hey, they were both written by theCarmack, so that's to be expected), the Q2 engine was not built on top of Q1. Perhaps you're thinking about Half-Life, which was built on a highly modified Q1 engine (many people get confused and think that Half-Life was based on Q2, since it was released around the same time).
Happens every time.
Hell no! You'll get my inches, miles, and gallons when you pry them from my cold dead hands!
Loosing the probe was part of the mission design. To bad we lost it afterwards. It really sucks to lose something once you've set it loose.
Doubtful, considering Bill's house is on Lake Washington, not Lake Union.
Oh, something else I should mention. The audio tracks that broadcast with HD channels typically use less compression (in the audio sense, not the data sense), so the tracks may sound softer than the SD channels. Turn up the volume on your receiver, and you'll be okay. Unless your receiver really sucks, you won't have to turn it up much, and you shouldn't be anywhere near the distortion point of your receiver. For example, I typically watch SD feeds at -30 (Denon receivers go from -50 or -100 to some positive value I've never tried to reach. A volume of "0" is very, very loud). When I switch to a HD channel, I'll typically need to bump up the volume to -20 (I'll put it up to -15, or sometimes even -10 when watching movies). My DVD player's DD5.1 output is the same, with the proper volume level being somewhere between -15 and -20 for most movies. Oddly, though, my XBox's DD5.1 (in games) rarely needs to go higher than -30, though some games do seem to be softer than others (PGR2 plays best at -25).
So, try playing with the volume of your receiver. It may be that the tracks seem to lose definition simply because they're playing too quietly.
Maybe Australian DTV channels are just fucked up, but I really doubt they chose to sacrifice the analog audio tracks (DPL) and only provide DD5.1 and mono. I would guess there's some setup issue with your hardware. Either the audio is getting passed incorrectly from the tuner card to the Audigy2, or the Audigy 2 is sending the wrong signals to your DPL receiver. I'd guess the former, though I don't know how audio is handled by the tuner card. Also, you should think about upgrading your receiver. Receivers that support DD5.1 (and more) are damned cheap these days. Even the most basic Denon surround receiver you can buy these days supports DD5.1 (I'm a fan of Denon, but all of the other major brands and most of the minor brands are the same), and won't even set you back $200USD. Worthwhile upgrade, IMHO.
No, the only thing you can determine is that the HD stream is much worse than the SD stream for your specific configuration. That's completely different than concluding that HD audio sucks in general.
Huh? Let me first note that I'm referring to matters in the States and not AU, since I know the States, and that all dollar figures are in USD. Now, you can buy good quality, reasonably-sized (45"+) rear projection TVs for under $2000 (significantly under, in many cases -- my own 48" Mitsubishi was $2000 three years ago, and prices have dropped since). If that's still too much, you can get HD-ready CRT sets starting around $750 for 32", or 27" CRTs starting around $430. Yes, the sets are smaller, and may not be available in a 16x9 configuration, but the HD picture quality is still vastly superior (as well, you'll also benefit from better DVD picture quality and be able to play in progressive scan with a proper player, and play GC or XBox games in 480p or higher depending on what resolutions the games and TV support).
Second, what exactly do you mean that sound quality drops? That's not been my experience. In fact, sound quality is better because most (all?) HD broadcasts are accompanied by DD5.1 sound, while most SD broadcasts don't do that (there's nothing stopping them, they just don't). If you mean that the built-in TV audio is lesser quality, I don't agree with that either. Sure, the cheapest HD-ready sets may skimp on the audio hardware, but my Mits has a decent set of speakers in it (certainly better than the speakers in my 6 year old 27" Magnavox SD CRT). That said, to get the true experience you really should opt for a home theater system. The "Home Theater in a Box" options are generally decent, if not awe-inspiring, and will at least get you positional audio for a low price. Try to find a package that's either built from individual components or at least doesn't preclude upgrades by using proprietary interconnects (for example, my own "HTiaB" was really just an in-store package deal on some Definitive satellite speakers, a Definitive subwoofer, and a lower-end Denon receiver. Not the best in the world, but it's adequate, and sounds better than a friend's Bose system that cost three times as much. The downside here is that you'll usually have to provide speaker wire yourself, which isn't a huge issue; be sure to buy wire in bulk of an appropriate gauge, and don't sucked into paying extreme amounts of money for "name brand" cables like Monster, since they're no better than good quality bulk wire, and you generally can only buy those in either useless pre-cut sizes or small spools that will wire perhaps one rear channel per spool).
I don't, but that's not a selling point for me. I couldn't care less if I can share my Tivo'ed content with others. However, there are plenty of hacks out there for pulling Tivo recordings off of the Tivo and converting them into formats that you can then use on a PC or burn to a VCD or DVD. If I had anything worth saving long-term on my Tivo, I might consider playing with those hacks, but a) I've never found anything that I cared to keep that long term, and b) even if I did, I've never yet hit the size limit on my 80GB Tivo, and if I ever did I'd be more likely to do a hard drive upgrade hack first.
Any PC, even the quietest, is going to run louder than a VCR, since VCRs generally only make noise when playing or recording. However, my Tivo is very quiet, and while it does make constant noise, it's much quietter than a VCR in operation. My point, however, was that complaining that your PC is still loud even though you've replaced the PS with a noise reducing model is silly.
That's only true for cards that do mpeg2 compression, like the Hauppage PVR-n50 line. The delay is similar to what you'd see from a Tivo or similar box that encodes to mpeg2 on the fly for recording purposes. Analog tuners that don't do any encoding should have no lag, either.
That said, why would you want to run a console through a TV tuner to play it on your monitor in the first place? I'll assume you're referring to the recent generation of consoles (PS2, XBox, GameCube, and Dreamcast). All of these either have component output (PS2, XBox, GC) or the ability to give a direct VGA output (Dreamcast, with a little hackery). Given that, for the price of a decent TV tuner, you can buy boxes that will do the proper conversion from YPrPb signals to RGBHV VGA (the cheap ones are little more than YPrPb->RGBHV transcoders, which works fine for any progressive scan output; the better, more expensive ones actually do 3-2 pulldown/line doubling to convert interlaced signals into a progressive scan signal suitable for a monitor).
If you want to play older consoles that only have S-vid or composite (or RF, gasp!) output, you're in for more work. Some have been hacked to output VGA video (search google), and others will need an analog tuner (stay away from the digital tuners as mentioned above -- a side effect of this is that you can find a good tuner for cheap). Alternatively, you could just buy a GBA SP and get most of that classic gaming in a handheld format (many NES, SMS, Genesis, and SNES classics have been either re-released, updated, or sequelized on the GBA).
I don't know what content is available in Ozland, but here in the States I find myself watching any random crap so long as it's in HD. For instance, one of Comcast's INHD channels had a Lingerie bowl (yes, women in lingerie playing football) not too long ago. Scantily clad women running around is pretty irresistable, especially in high-def, but it's not something I'd actively search for.
Is Tivo available in AU? If so, it blows the pants off of any VCR. I love my Tivo, and would never even consider switching back to a normal VCR.
Power supplies are rarely the main source of noise in a PC. You really need to start with your other fans, especially on your CPU and GPU. Once you have those at an acceptable level, then you could start worrying about the PS. Changing to a noise reducing power supply without doing anything else is a waste of time and money IMHO.
Technically, it was the Dark engine used in those games, not the "Thief engine". It's also fair to note that the latest Thief game is based on the Deus Ex 2 engine (which in turn is ultimately based on Epic's Unreal engine, as with so many other games these days).
System Shock 2 was based on the Dark engine (IIRC, it shipped between Thief 1 and Thief 2), but System Shock 1 certainly was not. Thief shipped in 1998, while System Shock 1 shipped in 1994. Graphically, System Shock is akin to Doom or Marathon.
This is no side effect. It's good game design. The Dark engine pulled this off very well, since it was purpose-designed especially for that feel (developed for Thief, and put to excellent use in SS2), but SS1 was able to pull of that creepy feeling just as well.
The Thief and System Shock series have always been closer to cult classics than mainstream, and I don't expect Thief 3 to change that much. However, the proliferation of stealth games these days with the Metal Gear Solid series, Splinter Cell, and even Manhunt (below the snuff film exterior, the game is another 3rd person stealth game) owe a lot to Thief (Splinter Cell's light meter is straight out of Thief 1 circa 1998), and their success is only good news for the Thief franchise.
Now let's see System Shock 3, please!
You missed the most important fact -- computers (hardware and software) age exponentially faster than the physical counterparts you compare them to. Sidewalks are always useful, so long as they're in good repair. Sure, you may occasionally need to widen a walk to handle more human bandwidth, but in general you could pour some concrete for sidewalks and then leave it alone for decades (but for a periodic cleaning and weeding), and never have a problem.
Try doing the same thing with computers. Go ahead, get some ancient computing hardware from the 70s, 80s, or even early 90s. Install the ancient software. Now try to use that effectively in a technologically-advancing world. Oops! You can't! At least, not as user desktops and such, if you want to keep productive and happy users.
Now let's flip it around. What you're suggesting already exists. How often did you hear about banks and financial institutions using 20-30+ year old software because it still worked during the lead up and fizzle of the whole Y2K crap? And what did those institutions do when a serious threat came around? They started hiring people to fix the current software (patch the sidewalk). Very few chose to upgrade their systems instead (rip up the sidewalk and repave).
The answer is simple -- use an emulator. That way, you don't have to provide hardware to your students, and you can use a nicer assembly language without worrying that you're actually using a x86. In short, the answer is SPIM, the MIPS R2000/R3000 simulator. The MIPS assembly language is nice and simple, with an abundance of registers that let you get going with simple apps early on. As complexity grows and the students learn, you can bring in the concept of pushing data onto the stack. It's free, and runs on Unix/Linux and Windows, so you don't have to track down a bunch of old R2000 or R3000 machines for students to use.
If the end goal is to be able to write immediately-applicable code, x86 would be the way to go. If the goal is to learn about assembly languages and concepts, the platform doesn't much matter (or if it does, only to the extent that the language and hardware should be easy to learn).
No, it's RMS's fault for mindlessly insisting that "Free" != "free" despite the shortcomings of the English language. Instead of picking a suitable adjective, or even using libre (which most English speakers will understand anyway, and not confuse with the gratis meaning of "free"), he insists on using the ambiguous term "Free", explaining that the capital 'F' makes all the difference (as if you can hear a capital letter).
But Free Software doesn't have to be free software! (Thank you, RMS, for that genious naming scheme.) Remember, it's free as in speech, not free as in beer.
(disclaimer: I didn't bother to verify dates, so I'm going by memory. I may be off by a year or so.)
I'm not sure I agree with you. The "16-bit era" started with the Genesis around 89-90, and really hit full-swing around 91 with the Super NES. The "32-bit era" started with the Saturn and PSX, which were released around 94-95. The "64-bit era" (which is a misnomer, really, since these machines are still 32-bit CPUs) kicked off with the Dreamcast (I'm counting the N64 in 32-bit era, since it was direct competition to the PSX) in 99, and the PS2 in 2000. Each console era has had overlap when you look at the market as a whole. The NES overlapped a few years with the Genesis before the SNES launched. The SNES overlapped with PSX until the N64 launched. The PSX overlapped with the Dreamcast, and the N64 overlapped even with the PS2 (Gamecube launched in 2001). Each era since 16-bit has been approximately 5 years (8-bit technically lasted longer, if you start counting from the NES, since it launched in Japan in 83-84, and I believe the SMS was around 84 as well). The next era (what people will call "128-bit", but will actually be truly 64-bit, based on the rumored specs for XBox Next and GameCube Next) is set to follow that trend, with announcements coming next year for late '05/early '06 launches. 16-bit was 90-95, 32-bit 95-00, and "64-bit" will be 00-05.
Can anyone clear up the whole "N-bit" naming scheme? Other than marketing purposes, where did this come from? The NES was 8-bit because it used an 8-bit CPU. The Genesis and SNES were 16-bit because they used 16-bit CPUs, but IIRC they had 8-bit sound. They couldn't display 16-bit color, with the Genesis limited to 64 colors on screen and the SNES limited to 256, so it can't be that (though I believe the SNES at least could pull from a palette of 2^16 colors, and the Genesis from 2^15 or so). I don't know why the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 was 16-bit, because IIRC it used an 8-bit CPU. The Saturn and PSX were 32-bit because they finally made the move to 32-bit CPUs. The Jaguar was "64-bit" because it had two 32-bit processors, and everybody knows that 32 + 32 = 64. How is the N64 64-bit? What about the Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, or XBox? The Xbox obviously uses a 32-bit Intel CPU, and the GameCube uses a 32-bit PowerPC (I'm pretty sure it's not running in 64-bit mode). The GBA is 16/32-bit, because while it uses a 32-bit ARM CPU, most games are actually written using the CPU's 16-bit THUMB mode because it's faster and more battery-efficient.
Keep in mind that this game is only similar to Ghost Recon and other such games (SOCOM, the Rainbow 6 games, etc) in that it deals with squad-based tactical combat. In all other respects, it's completely different. It's not a first-person shooter, nor even a third-person shooter. In fact, you never actually pull the trigger on a gun yourself (excepting grenades, but even that is still just giving orders to your soldiers but that you can pick exactly where you want the grenades to go). It has a lot more in common with a real-time strategy game than Ghost Recon. Take a RTS like C&C:G, remove the need to manage resources and the ability to create new units and perform upgrades, put the viewpoint at a battlefield-level third-person view, and constrain your movement options to only what your soldiers can see, and you're getting close to what FSW is like.
Personally, I love the game. I've been playing it since Wednesday. The retail game is very Hollywood, and fairly easy on lower difficulty levels (I've yet to try Authentic difficulty). Gamespot's review was correct when they complain about cover being all or nothing, though the seem to have neglected the destructable cover (cars, wooden carts, crates, etc that provide cover but can be destroyed out from in front of you). It seems that this was a concession made for playability in the retail version. It does lead to some Naked Gun-esque firefights where you can be only a few feet away from a bad guy and they can't hit your nor you them because the cover is too strong, but it also prevents you from "cheap" kills where you think you're in cover but not. The army version "fixes" this. Cover is only as good as what it's made from. You still have perfect cover if you're hiding behind a stone wall, or around a corner, but if you put your back up against a wooden fence you can expect to take a few rounds in your soldiers. The army mode also lets the AI move around a lot more, so that they're not always in the same place on every mission. The retail version seems to always have the enemies in the same place initially, but they do have freedom to run to new cover, or get scared and run away (happens, but rarely).
In short, the game rocks, but you'll be disappointed if you go into it expecting a Ghost Recon copy. Gamespot's review is really an anomaly in my opinion, and GameRanking's review aggregation seems to validate this. Supposedly it will make its way to the PC, but if you're into military simulation games this one is definitely worth buying an XBox. It controls perfectly with the gamepad (I would expect it to be worse with a mouse, in all honesty), and DD5.1 is required to play this game properly (audio situational awareness is key).
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that you're correct that the polymers are printed on the screen itself. However, you still need all of the "other stuff" that surrounds the screen. You need to get the video signal to the screen, and in such a way that the OLED polymers understand it (ie, conversion may need to happen between the DVI/YPrPb/RGBHV/S-vid/Composite inputs and the screen itself). Along with that, you need all of the hardware responsible for receiving an input, and preferably multiplexing multiple inputs (not a big deal for a PC monitor, but a huge deal for a TV set). Add in anything else you need, such as a tuner, IR or RF receiver, circuitry to decode and act upon that input, etc, and it turns out that there's more to a TV set than just the screen.
Right now, the screen is the largest cost, though, so if you could get high-quality screens at low prices the up-front cost of a TV set should drop drastically. How would you like to be able to buy a very thin (hangable!) 40" flat-screen HDTV for $300-500? Sure, you may have to spend $100 every 1000 hours for a new screen (or push it longer if you don't mind the decrease in quality, since OLEDs don't just suddenly stop working like a lightbulb, but instead fade away; I'm pulling the 1000 hours figure out of my butt, so don't recite it as religion -- mean time to failure could be much more or much less), but that's a drop in the bucket compared to paying $5,000-20,000 for a similar plasma set, or $2,000-10,000 for a similar LCD set. Plus, you'll no longer have to worry so much about accidental damage to the screen, because it would be easy to replace at a reasonable price (let's see you do that with an LCD!). I'd love it simply for the fact that I could replace my screen for $100 rather than have my set professionally calibrated every 2-3 years at $300-500 per calibration to keep everything in tune (settings drift over time as the projectors in a RPTV age). Even if the initial set was priced at RPTV prices ($1000-1500 for a ~40-45 inch set), replacing the screen would be cheaper and quicker than a re-calibration.