Given that, for good or evil, M$ had a hand in spreading PCs and desktop computing to the level it is today, the real question is what is M$'s future value?
What can they do to advance/spread the future of computing? What will they do, for better or worse, that will influence how you use your computing power in the next 10 years? How long will M$ last? How will they need to restructure/change to adapt to the future? Keep in mind IBM and their corporate makeover(s), and what it took to change from a market leader to a market staple. It really isn't that difficult to imagine M$ getting pushed off the desktop in the near future; Apple's OSX/OS10 utilizes BSD and NeXTStep, both Intel compatible, and thus code wise a viable Windows replacement. Linux is making headway, and in the near future will become a viable desktop consumer OS. There also stands in the shadows BeOS, and even alternative chipsets/OSes as well, like Apple/PowerPC and Linux/Alpha, or Linux/PowerPC.
Is this the same person who always posts M$4VR, or are there copycats now? So much for originality =)
But in a twisted way, he's sorta half right...
Note SGIs VisualPCs running WinNT. Not exactly a point ofr NT, of course, but a point for SGI. Given the fact that they already have to modifiy and patch M$ source and bins to run on the system, I don't think it will hurt them any to adopt Linux instead, and rely upon the open source model of things. So for now we can get kick-butt systems with awesome hardware capabilities, a mediocre and passable OS, and maybe later, support for Linux as well!
So if you're going to support NT, use SGI's VPCs, for 3000$ each you cannot beat the performance, and then, as a loyal SGI customer, lobby for Linux support because NT is too unstable, its unreliable, its a resource/performance hog, and because it will actually be easier for SGI to maintain with the open source available to them =)
Well, you could just get a Celeron instead, and spend the extra money on a VooDoo2. Or Two of them, hee hee. Of course it won't be faster, but the offset gained by the second VooDoo2 should be more than enough, for games. Or if you already have the 3d accelerator of your choice, get a 17" monitor. Or a 19" monitor. Gee, this is almost hedonistic.
When I see PIII I want to see Pill; Abortion PIII. Suicide PIII. PIIIbug. Hee hee, I'm giddy
Last I heard, wasn't VCR also doable on PC133? The other thought was that Rambus had latencies slightly lower than the fastest SDRAM, with the point of the comparison that you would only use the fastest SDRAM against RDRAM or whatever Rambus call's its memory.
Rambus2 I may very well believe to be a useful technology, just as EPICs second generation of the newest IA-64 architecture will be better than current generation IA-32, PowerPC, or Dec Alpha. In the meanwhile, it is cheaper, easier and more effective to go from PC100-PC133, double the data rate by using both clock edges, using a slightly faster speed to increase the data rate to 2.667 times, and then use VCR and cacheing algorithms to further reduce latency times...
Its really an argument of Intel pushing an expensive, proprietary, royalty ridden architecture slightly before it's cost is feasible, vs a slight evolution of the current design. It's the same argument that a 1GHz Dec Alpha or a 600MHz PowerPC would more than likely outperform the newly released 700MHz Merceds, next year.
We'll see if industry standard PC133 or Intel endorsed Rambus succeeds. BTW, there are 2 Rambus standards; 600MHz and 800MHz. The 600MHz is for manufactureres and motherboard designers that can't cut the mustard, and can only go halfway =)
Rambus, to offer an analogy, is like a big-rig truck going 90mph; faster and carries more in a day than a mini-van at 55mph; but it's acceleration/deceleration is crap.
PC133 offers some solutions, especially with the ddr; read/write on rise and fall of clocks, so not only is latency reduced/minimized, throughput is simultaneously increased by 2.6 times as well.
And it will be cheaper too. Gotta love Intel's marketing machine. Go read some articles on new tech and what competitors offer; Intel may be more reliable yes, but innovation from companies willing to take risks to outperform the incumbent is vital.
Ask them when they will be updating the PPro core to reflect the more competative CPU industry, ala the newer AMD K7 and Alpha 21264 CPUs. Do they believe in innovation and creative design? While their PIIIs make very nice space heaters(P2 actually, but close enough, under my desk... Mmmm, toasty), will they offer the capability to toast bread to varying degrees and perhaps keep my coffee hot and fresh?
Thailand, a neighbor to Japan, does pirate extensively.
Games that should have been bought and paid for are found for 6$ a pop on highways, where traffic can crawl at 3mph, or sidewalk vendors, along with a good teryaki stick, or in malls, stores, and shops. The real loss occurs if/when these things get exported out to other countries. Sony tries to control when and where the CDs go via country codes to prevent the spread of these 'imports'
I know that Japense music is imported in pirate form here. Go to any Asian marketplace, video store, music store, or shopping center, and look out for 'import' CDs with the SM label. They are not original, nor are they legitimate, but they sell 30$ CDs for 15$, and they look, feel, sound quite good. I'm sure games get imported here the same way(heck, a larger profit margin for the same CD! 15$ music or 20$ game on a CD!)
I've never looked for pirate games, because I want to be legit, but I'm sure they exist. Go see Thailand, and then come back here, and tell me how bad it gets...
Ignoring the copy protection means the CD isn't readable; the data is twice encrypted, in a way. The holographic key encrypts it once, and the playstation decrypts it.
If you brute force decrypt the CD, it would take years! Of course, this is very dependent upon the processing power to decrypt and encrypt on the fly.
I'm modeling this on PGP, in which the CD has something like a public key, and the PSX has a private key and a public key. The combination of the PSX's public key and the CD's public key is then used to encrypt the CD, and the PSX's private key decrypts it.
Without any encryption or decryption, the data files are unreadable; they just look like garbage. The CD format itself would remain unchanged I think, otherwise crackers could just crack it looking for standard file header stuff.
How about, for consoles like PSX, holograms? Each CD has a hologram integral to decrypting the data to a certain phase. Each PSX also has a hologram. When a laser shines through both holograms, a bit pattern(128 bit encryption key) is used to encrypt the data. Without the encryption, the data is meaningless. This also makes the data read into each PSX unique.
Now, taking this data stream, the PSX decrypts it using an internal private key. Something like PGP, I guess.
So to pirate a game on PSX, you could copy the CD and hologram; but you would be limited to playing withing the same region. However, I don't think its a simple thing to copy a hologram.
Each playstation has a unique matched hologram and decrypt key; To actually mod a playstation, you would need to copy the encrypt hologram, match it with the CD(Each game would have a different holographic key, but not necessarily each CD. 10 copies of FFVIII would have the same hologram, but FFVIII and FFVI would not). Then you would have some way to encrypt the data for the PSX to decrypt; however, that would only work for that PSX, and for that game. Each new PSX would need to be done individually, for any game a person wanted to play. Thus each game's key would need to be stored in a modchip on each individual PSX; not 2 would have the same data. The kicker would be that PSXs could be identified, regionally, by their holographic key, so that you would need the internal decrypt key for the PSX, the encrypt key from the PSX, and the encrypt key from the game before you could play an illegal copy. Thus the PSX would be the dongle, and it would need to be modified for every single game that came out, and for every single PSX as well.
It would be relatively simple to disassemble the PSX to get at the unique encryption key. However, once applied, the data is encrypted, and would require some amount of computing power to decrypt, if a 128bit key were used, and that would only get you the decrypt key for that 1 psx. The only way I can think around that would be to copy and replace holographic keys on the PSXs with copies of legitamite ones, and then mod the machines to decrypt them, bypassing the default decrypt inside the PSX.
Wow. I had forgotten totally Barren Realms, TradeWars, and other door games. I remember ascii and CGI art. I was never part of the boxes, but I had friends who were =)
Ah, that was real fun. I do get some sense of that community in/. I wonder if we could have a poll? I wonder if there could be a/. IRC channel? I'm continually suprised by how cordial(despite disagreeing =) people are when I email them from/. posts.
Sigh. I think I prefer my old 286/386 BBS days to the P2 10bT I have today, for all the community and entertainment it had.
You can't get a legitimate PSX game in Thailand. You can get copies from roadside vendors on the freeway(since it is often crawling at 3mph) or sidewalks, or in stores in malls. Only 6 or 7 US dollars a pop.
Why do they pirate so much? Maybe because they can't get a translated copy. So where does the cycle end? If Sony could get a decent profit out of translating for the market, they would, I'm sure. But in the current system, piracy is too prevalent, encouraged, accepted, condoned, and practiced for Sony to even consider spending the money translating. They hope that keeping it in a foreign(Japanese) language, and with some minimal copy protection, they won't get bitten too hard.
There are real reasons for country lockouts; the question I wonder is how/why Thailand even gets PSXs in the first place? AS
For the technical minded... How about holograms? Seriously!
So, instead of PSX's barcode thingy on the inside ring, you have a hologram. The PSX would have a matching hologram on a lens; a laser would shine through the CD, modulating the beam, and through the lens, modulating it again, producing an encryption key. Shining the laser through the CD hologram produces meaningless nonsense, and through the lens would also create meaningless nonsense.
Thus the convolution(Is this correct? I'm a little weak on the math) of the 2 holograms produces a encryption key, that when applied to the content of the disk as it is streamed of the CD, would become a form of encrypted data. The PSX itself would have a private key that would decrypt the data. Thus each PSX has a unique decrypt key; each game would have a unique half of an encrypt key, with the other half provided by the PSX. The PSX's encrypt and decrypt would be matched, so encrypt/decrypt is possible, but switching lenses with another PSX would render them useless.
One obvious way around that is to copy the holographic media. I'm not sure how one would copy hologram, however. Any experts?
So each game would have its own encoding, with different games (and regions) with their own key. If you had access to the PSX lens, through disassembly, one could try to just crack the key until header data for the CD appeared, but if the key is 128 bit, it should be sufficiently encrypted that it would take longer than the game was worth to crack it. And even so, once you crack it, you would need a modchip that could be updated with cracks, depending on which game was being played. One would also need to do this for each PSX, since each has a unique identity. Thus for every game release, you would need to get an illegal copy without the hologram after someone cracked a 128 bit encryption key with a copy of your holographic lens, maybe a year or so if you are really optimistic and had tremendous amounts of computing power(Is this possible?), and somehow download into your modchip the encryption key. It also assumes that you have already modded the console to ignore the holographic scan, and instead hardcode the decrypt.
If you can copy holograms easily, then the design is moot. If you disassembled a PSX to get at both holograms, then you would have the encryption pattern, but only for one PSX.
Any comments? Pointless waste of computing resources? A decent attempt and method to prevent piracy in Asian countries? AS
Hey, I want to make a living writing games in two years. Rent the darn thing if you want to try before you buy!
I understand fully not wanting to waste money on games you won't keep/play/enjoy. I really think rental of PC games should be somehow available, and feasible, without further feeding the largely negative pirate circle. Yes, rent a game, have fun, relax, but contribute to the life cycle of the game by paying four 4 or 5 dollars for it at a local Blockbusters! Please!
If startup game companies starve because of pirating, you'll only get Microsofts and Suns making games; you need the small, nimble, innovative, and risky small groups to drive the market!
If I tried to do this in raw html, I would say there would be six cells in each elemental cell... AAB AAC DDDDDD EEEEEE
And outside each cell are blank border cells... ABBBBBBC DE DE DE FGGGGGGH In order to create the outlines... Not to mention the legend, groups, captions, and the rare earths... It is a very convoluted, but relatively pure, html. If they had a frame on the right, they could have forgone the javascript entirely, as well as included some more info(like valency, radioactivity, reactivity, etc...) AS
The biggest reason Sony even tries to do country lockout is because their biggest pirates lie across the Sea of Japan and Sea of China.
This protection is intended to keep non-sanctioned countries from stealing/copying millions of dollars worth of games. In Thailand you can buy these things in open air carts on the sidewalks and freeways!
While it is regretable that it makes imports awkward, I don't think that is it's most important goal. For you, perhaps, it is a freedom of choice/import issue. For many others it isn't and involves a fair degree of piracy.
I agree totaly with your assesment of the situation. I was ranting mainly because this guy was griping about the slow state of technology...
Miracles were happening under his nose that he didn't realize. I forgot to mention that IBM had a hand in the UPC, the bar code affixed to everything today as well...
Copper is not ultra efficient, you're right. An exaggeration on my part, but it is more efficient and robust than the current aluminum wires =)
I'm wondering if the clever electron lithography technique involves constructive and destructive interference of 'electron waves', or is something else entirely.
I liked your analysis =) AS
Sounds Like a Killer Card - Status Summary?
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Voodoo3 Debut
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On the high-end, the AGP-only Voodoo 3 3500 will run at 183MHz and include 16MB of SGRAM, rather than the SDRAM featured in the other cards. Like the 2500, it will offer TV-out capabilities, a 350-MHz RAMDAC, and a game bundle. In addition, it will feature 3Dfx's proprietary LCDfx technology for supporting digital flat-panel displays.
Ripped straight out of gamecenter.com
Unfortunately, it will be a $200+ solution and still only 16mb onboard, without real AGP DME texturing, and I doubt the DVD acceleration is available under Linux yet... And it is still only 16bit acceleration, of course, if you care.
Some things IBM(among others) have researched that you are currently using... The ultra dense disc drives currently sold and used. OF course it isn't the absolute densest, but no one would pay for that until the data becomes overwhelming! With their magneto-resistive technologies, IBM changed the hard disc industry.
IBM also pioneered the phase variation and modulation of multiple optical data layers. They had a seven layer CD stack operational; today you will see this in your average DVD drive and disc. IBM also found a way to use copper substrate in their CPUs, and you will see these in newer Apples, as well as in their Power3 and Netfinity servers.
Things invented we use that perhaps IBM didn't do(THey also might have, but I don't know). Sony's(?) ultra high power diode lasers, found in newer DVD drives, rather than conventional IR lasers. Heck, diode lasers period, which are found in CD players. Whoever originally thought lasers were geeky toys probably are regretting it now. IBM has now discovered double gate transistors, for ultra small gates, x-ray lithography, for extra small layout, gallium arsenide transistors, for the ultra fast transistor, and copper substrate, for the ultra efficient wire. Put all 4 together, and expect to see, in a few years, some of the fastest CPUs in the world. Moore's Law is alive, dammit!
If you don't see change fast enough, its because you, and others, including me, don't pay enough in early adoption fees to get this new Technology. That means to see better LCDs, you should go out now and buy a large SGI flat panel. If you want to see better faster processors, go and dump money for a Quad Dec Alpha system; show them there is demand. If you want better faster video, go and buy a VooDoo3 3000 when they get out, or the Riva TNT2, and let them know affordable consumer level devices aren't enough; you want bleeding edge!
I grant the K7 will be fast; 3x is something I have to see to believe. The cache on chip is 200MHz, I believe. PCI bus is still 33 MHz, and AGP is 66MHz. Memory may go up to 133MHz, but expect 100MHz because that is currently standard. I don't know that K7 is a hell of a lot cheaper; Cheaper than a comparable P2 Xeon, which retails for 1900$ for a single CPU at 450MHz and 1 mb cache at 450MHz... But not cheaper than a 190$ 450MHz Celeron, or an overclocked dual Celeron300A at 60$ each, running at 450MHz.
The Vortex2 with A3d, like Diamond's MX300, would seem to have better 3d support for games, while the Sound Blaster Live! has much better studio, mixing, and media authoring capabilities.
You go with IBM; I think they are the best in the business. 19" monitor is also feasible. So total of your system: 700$ per CPU, 300$ for motherboard, 100$ for MX300, 300$ for an IDE IBM, 160$ for 128mb ram, and 600$ for a decent monitor all now. Assuming the 180$ V3 card... $3400 dollars =) And I really doubt you will outperform the SGI bus, with its UMA between video and system, and its total bypass of AGP entirely. V3 will still rely on a 33MHz PCI bus, or a 66MHz AGP bus, at 32bit, whereas the SGIs gets a direct 3.2gb/s pipeline from memory to video. What is AGP right now? AGP Pro is something like 1gb/s, and right now is something like 500mb/s? Also, each component in the SGI gets something like a 1.6gb/s pipe to the CPU. I don't see anything match that; its not even shared bandwith, but individual, like audio, net, hard disk, etc. Of course, its 4000 for a single 350MHz, 128 mb, and some 19" monitor... But I don't think any architecture can beat that combination. You're also stuck running WinNT4 until SGI sees the lite and ports to Linux AS
But do they work in Linux?
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Sucks to be vendor locked, doesn't it? To be held hostage in an open market by one company, whether they realize it or not, whether the market realizes or not...
Wonders how soon Real Soon is, since there is open source 2d for TNT under Linux. How long until 3d? Sigh. AS
That's like saying Macintosh support for games is good, there just aren't any games released for the OS... Until the hardware is supported under OpenGL/Mesa, and such, there isn't really any 3d support in Linux, is there? At least no hardware 3d...
All gamers might know, but the money really isn't in the gamer's pockets, are they?
What 3dfx needs is a good enough board with 32bpp color depth and 32mb of memory and good AGP2x/4x support, as well as DVD support (See ATI Rage128 and TNT2)
For real cash, 3dfx wants to bundle in OEM systems, and attract more for business machines, soho, and sub-1000 machines, since all those are targeted for high volume growth in 1999. It's boards, spec wise, don't live up because of lack of features... S3, Matrox, nVidia, and ATI all have better looking specs, even if they don't dominate in 3d.
I'm curious if ACs come back to read the responses to their questions... A minor benefit to registration is the ability to track all your posts, and read all the correspinding responses...
Anyway, I think the 3500 would have both LCD and regular monitor support; at that price range it would be ridiculous not to support both. Heck, it comes with TV out, so I assume that all the reviewers feel a standard VGA connector is so standard that they fail to mention it.
VooDoo3 will only support "windowed QuakeGL", and probably most other games, but I don't know about "real GL" yet. Anyone know how far 3dfx has gotten on it's GL drivers, ICD, and such? Right now Quake games and derivatives all rely on a miniGL driver, ie, the driver only contains the calls made by Quake, and no others.
Heh, that makes me wonder if it's possible, on a dual CPU system, whether 2 games of Quake2 in GL are possible in 2 windows...
Slashdot Mirror
Given that, for good or evil, M$ had a hand in spreading PCs and desktop computing to the level it is today, the real question is what is M$'s future value?
What can they do to advance/spread the future of computing? What will they do, for better or worse, that will influence how you use your computing power in the next 10 years? How long will M$ last? How will they need to restructure/change to adapt to the future? Keep in mind IBM and their corporate makeover(s), and what it took to change from a market leader to a market staple. It really isn't that difficult to imagine M$ getting pushed off the desktop in the near future; Apple's OSX/OS10 utilizes BSD and NeXTStep, both Intel compatible, and thus code wise a viable Windows replacement. Linux is making headway, and in the near future will become a viable desktop consumer OS. There also stands in the shadows BeOS, and even alternative chipsets/OSes as well, like Apple/PowerPC and Linux/Alpha, or Linux/PowerPC.
Any comments?
AS
Is this the same person who always posts M$4VR, or are there copycats now? So much for originality =)
But in a twisted way, he's sorta half right...
Note SGIs VisualPCs running WinNT. Not exactly a point ofr NT, of course, but a point for SGI. Given the fact that they already have to modifiy and patch M$ source and bins to run on the system, I don't think it will hurt them any to adopt Linux instead, and rely upon the open source model of things. So for now we can get kick-butt systems with awesome hardware capabilities, a mediocre and passable OS, and maybe later, support for Linux as well!
So if you're going to support NT, use SGI's VPCs, for 3000$ each you cannot beat the performance, and then, as a loyal SGI customer, lobby for Linux support because NT is too unstable, its unreliable, its a resource/performance hog, and because it will actually be easier for SGI to maintain with the open source available to them =)
AS
AS
Why not their VisualPCs, despite NT? They have future Linux xupport being decided upon, so you may even be in luck in the future...
Of course, much more than the 1000$ per system, but no where else can you get this performance for 3000$ or less...
AS
AS
Well, you could just get a Celeron instead, and spend the extra money on a VooDoo2. Or Two of them, hee hee. Of course it won't be faster, but the offset gained by the second VooDoo2 should be more than enough, for games. Or if you already have the 3d accelerator of your choice, get a 17" monitor. Or a 19" monitor. Gee, this is almost hedonistic.
When I see PIII I want to see Pill; Abortion PIII. Suicide PIII. PIIIbug. Hee hee, I'm giddy
AS
AS
Last I heard, wasn't VCR also doable on PC133?
The other thought was that Rambus had latencies slightly lower than the fastest SDRAM, with the point of the comparison that you would only use the fastest SDRAM against RDRAM or whatever Rambus call's its memory.
Rambus2 I may very well believe to be a useful technology, just as EPICs second generation of the newest IA-64 architecture will be better than current generation IA-32, PowerPC, or Dec Alpha. In the meanwhile, it is cheaper, easier and more effective to go from PC100-PC133, double the data rate by using both clock edges, using a slightly faster speed to increase the data rate to 2.667 times, and then use VCR and cacheing algorithms to further reduce latency times...
Its really an argument of Intel pushing an expensive, proprietary, royalty ridden architecture slightly before it's cost is feasible, vs a slight evolution of the current design. It's the same argument that a 1GHz Dec Alpha or a 600MHz PowerPC would more than likely outperform the newly released 700MHz Merceds, next year.
We'll see if industry standard PC133 or Intel endorsed Rambus succeeds.
BTW, there are 2 Rambus standards; 600MHz and 800MHz. The 600MHz is for manufactureres and motherboard designers that can't cut the mustard, and can only go halfway =)
AS
Rambus, to offer an analogy, is like a big-rig truck going 90mph; faster and carries more in a day than a mini-van at 55mph; but it's acceleration/deceleration is crap.
PC133 offers some solutions, especially with the ddr; read/write on rise and fall of clocks, so not only is latency reduced/minimized, throughput is simultaneously increased by 2.6 times as well.
And it will be cheaper too.
Gotta love Intel's marketing machine. Go read some articles on new tech and what competitors offer; Intel may be more reliable yes, but innovation from companies willing to take risks to outperform the incumbent is vital.
AS
Ask them when they will be updating the PPro core to reflect the more competative CPU industry, ala the newer AMD K7 and Alpha 21264 CPUs. Do they believe in innovation and creative design? While their PIIIs make very nice space heaters(P2 actually, but close enough, under my desk... Mmmm, toasty), will they offer the capability to toast bread to varying degrees and perhaps keep my coffee hot and fresh?
AS =)
Thailand, a neighbor to Japan, does pirate extensively.
Games that should have been bought and paid for are found for 6$ a pop on highways, where traffic can crawl at 3mph, or sidewalk vendors, along with a good teryaki stick, or in malls, stores, and shops.
The real loss occurs if/when these things get exported out to other countries. Sony tries to control when and where the CDs go via country codes to prevent the spread of these 'imports'
I know that Japense music is imported in pirate form here. Go to any Asian marketplace, video store, music store, or shopping center, and look out for 'import' CDs with the SM label. They are not original, nor are they legitimate, but they sell 30$ CDs for 15$, and they look, feel, sound quite good. I'm sure games get imported here the same way(heck, a larger profit margin for the same CD! 15$ music or 20$ game on a CD!)
I've never looked for pirate games, because I want to be legit, but I'm sure they exist. Go see Thailand, and then come back here, and tell me how bad it gets...
AS
Is there any more information on this theme?
Just curious
AS
Ignoring the copy protection means the CD isn't readable; the data is twice encrypted, in a way. The holographic key encrypts it once, and the playstation decrypts it.
If you brute force decrypt the CD, it would take years!
Of course, this is very dependent upon the processing power to decrypt and encrypt on the fly.
I'm modeling this on PGP, in which the CD has something like a public key, and the PSX has a private key and a public key. The combination of the PSX's public key and the CD's public key is then used to encrypt the CD, and the PSX's private key decrypts it.
Without any encryption or decryption, the data files are unreadable; they just look like garbage. The CD format itself would remain unchanged I think, otherwise crackers could just crack it looking for standard file header stuff.
AS
How about, for consoles like PSX, holograms?
Each CD has a hologram integral to decrypting the data to a certain phase. Each PSX also has a hologram. When a laser shines through both holograms, a bit pattern(128 bit encryption key) is used to encrypt the data. Without the encryption, the data is meaningless. This also makes the data read into each PSX unique.
Now, taking this data stream, the PSX decrypts it using an internal private key. Something like PGP, I guess.
So to pirate a game on PSX, you could copy the CD and hologram; but you would be limited to playing withing the same region. However, I don't think its a simple thing to copy a hologram.
Each playstation has a unique matched hologram and decrypt key; To actually mod a playstation, you would need to copy the encrypt hologram, match it with the CD(Each game would have a different holographic key, but not necessarily each CD. 10 copies of FFVIII would have the same hologram, but FFVIII and FFVI would not). Then you would have some way to encrypt the data for the PSX to decrypt; however, that would only work for that PSX, and for that game. Each new PSX would need to be done individually, for any game a person wanted to play. Thus each game's key would need to be stored in a modchip on each individual PSX; not 2 would have the same data. The kicker would be that PSXs could be identified, regionally, by their holographic key, so that you would need the internal decrypt key for the PSX, the encrypt key from the PSX, and the encrypt key from the game before you could play an illegal copy. Thus the PSX would be the dongle, and it would need to be modified for every single game that came out, and for every single PSX as well.
It would be relatively simple to disassemble the PSX to get at the unique encryption key. However, once applied, the data is encrypted, and would require some amount of computing power to decrypt, if a 128bit key were used, and that would only get you the decrypt key for that 1 psx. The only way I can think around that would be to copy and replace holographic keys on the PSXs with copies of legitamite ones, and then mod the machines to decrypt them, bypassing the default decrypt inside the PSX.
AS
Wow. I had forgotten totally Barren Realms, TradeWars, and other door games. I remember ascii and CGI art. I was never part of the boxes, but I had friends who were =)
/. /. IRC channel? /. posts.
Ah, that was real fun. I do get some sense of that community in
I wonder if we could have a poll?
I wonder if there could be a
I'm continually suprised by how cordial(despite disagreeing =) people are when I email them from
Sigh. I think I prefer my old 286/386 BBS days to the P2 10bT I have today, for all the community and entertainment it had.
Sigh
AS
You can't get a legitimate PSX game in Thailand. You can get copies from roadside vendors on the freeway(since it is often crawling at 3mph) or sidewalks, or in stores in malls. Only 6 or 7 US dollars a pop.
Why do they pirate so much? Maybe because they can't get a translated copy. So where does the cycle end? If Sony could get a decent profit out of translating for the market, they would, I'm sure. But in the current system, piracy is too prevalent, encouraged, accepted, condoned, and practiced for Sony to even consider spending the money translating. They hope that keeping it in a foreign(Japanese) language, and with some minimal copy protection, they won't get bitten too hard.
There are real reasons for country lockouts; the question I wonder is how/why Thailand even gets PSXs in the first place?
AS
For the technical minded... How about holograms?
Seriously!
So, instead of PSX's barcode thingy on the inside ring, you have a hologram. The PSX would have a matching hologram on a lens; a laser would shine through the CD, modulating the beam, and through the lens, modulating it again, producing an encryption key. Shining the laser through the CD hologram produces meaningless nonsense, and through the lens would also create meaningless nonsense.
Thus the convolution(Is this correct? I'm a little weak on the math) of the 2 holograms produces a encryption key, that when applied to the content of the disk as it is streamed of the CD, would become a form of encrypted data. The PSX itself would have a private key that would decrypt the data. Thus each PSX has a unique decrypt key; each game would have a unique half of an encrypt key, with the other half provided by the PSX. The PSX's encrypt and decrypt would be matched, so encrypt/decrypt is possible, but switching lenses with another PSX would render them useless.
One obvious way around that is to copy the holographic media. I'm not sure how one would copy hologram, however. Any experts?
So each game would have its own encoding, with different games (and regions) with their own key. If you had access to the PSX lens, through disassembly, one could try to just crack the key until header data for the CD appeared, but if the key is 128 bit, it should be sufficiently encrypted that it would take longer than the game was worth to crack it. And even so, once you crack it, you would need a modchip that could be updated with cracks, depending on which game was being played. One would also need to do this for each PSX, since each has a unique identity. Thus for every game release, you would need to get an illegal copy without the hologram after someone cracked a 128 bit encryption key with a copy of your holographic lens, maybe a year or so if you are really optimistic and had tremendous amounts of computing power(Is this possible?), and somehow download into your modchip the encryption key. It also assumes that you have already modded the console to ignore the holographic scan, and instead hardcode the decrypt.
If you can copy holograms easily, then the design is moot. If you disassembled a PSX to get at both holograms, then you would have the encryption pattern, but only for one PSX.
Any comments?
Pointless waste of computing resources?
A decent attempt and method to prevent piracy in Asian countries?
AS
Hey, I want to make a living writing games in two years. Rent the darn thing if you want to try before you buy!
I understand fully not wanting to waste money on games you won't keep/play/enjoy. I really think rental of PC games should be somehow available, and feasible, without further feeding the largely negative pirate circle. Yes, rent a game, have fun, relax, but contribute to the life cycle of the game by paying four 4 or 5 dollars for it at a local Blockbusters!
Please!
If startup game companies starve because of pirating, you'll only get Microsofts and Suns making games; you need the small, nimble, innovative, and risky small groups to drive the market!
AS
If I tried to do this in raw html, I would say there would be six cells in each elemental cell...
AAB
AAC
DDDDDD
EEEEEE
And outside each cell are blank border cells...
ABBBBBBC
DE
DE
DE
FGGGGGGH
In order to create the outlines...
Not to mention the legend, groups, captions, and the rare earths...
It is a very convoluted, but relatively pure, html.
If they had a frame on the right, they could have forgone the javascript entirely, as well as included some more info(like valency, radioactivity, reactivity, etc...)
AS
The biggest reason Sony even tries to do country lockout is because their biggest pirates lie across the Sea of Japan and Sea of China.
This protection is intended to keep non-sanctioned countries from stealing/copying millions of dollars worth of games. In Thailand you can buy these things in open air carts on the sidewalks and freeways!
While it is regretable that it makes imports awkward, I don't think that is it's most important goal. For you, perhaps, it is a freedom of choice/import issue. For many others it isn't and involves a fair degree of piracy.
AS
I agree totaly with your assesment of the situation. I was ranting mainly because this guy was griping about the slow state of technology...
Miracles were happening under his nose that he didn't realize. I forgot to mention that IBM had a hand in the UPC, the bar code affixed to everything today as well...
Copper is not ultra efficient, you're right. An exaggeration on my part, but it is more efficient and robust than the current aluminum wires =)
I'm wondering if the clever electron lithography technique involves constructive and destructive interference of 'electron waves', or is something else entirely.
I liked your analysis =)
AS
On the high-end, the AGP-only Voodoo 3 3500 will run at 183MHz and include 16MB of SGRAM, rather than the SDRAM featured in the other cards. Like the 2500, it will offer TV-out capabilities, a 350-MHz RAMDAC, and a game bundle. In addition, it will feature 3Dfx's proprietary LCDfx technology for supporting digital flat-panel displays.
Ripped straight out of gamecenter.com
Unfortunately, it will be a $200+ solution and still only 16mb onboard, without real AGP DME texturing, and I doubt the DVD acceleration is available under Linux yet... And it is still only 16bit acceleration, of course, if you care.
AS
Some things IBM(among others) have researched that you are currently using...
The ultra dense disc drives currently sold and used. OF course it isn't the absolute densest, but no one would pay for that until the data becomes overwhelming! With their magneto-resistive technologies, IBM changed the hard disc industry.
IBM also pioneered the phase variation and modulation of multiple optical data layers. They had a seven layer CD stack operational; today you will see this in your average DVD drive and disc. IBM also found a way to use copper substrate in their CPUs, and you will see these in newer Apples, as well as in their Power3 and Netfinity servers.
Things invented we use that perhaps IBM didn't do(THey also might have, but I don't know). Sony's(?) ultra high power diode lasers, found in newer DVD drives, rather than conventional IR lasers. Heck, diode lasers period, which are found in CD players. Whoever originally thought lasers were geeky toys probably are regretting it now. IBM has now discovered double gate transistors, for ultra small gates, x-ray lithography, for extra small layout, gallium arsenide transistors, for the ultra fast transistor, and copper substrate, for the ultra efficient wire. Put all 4 together, and expect to see, in a few years, some of the fastest CPUs in the world. Moore's Law is alive, dammit!
If you don't see change fast enough, its because you, and others, including me, don't pay enough in early adoption fees to get this new Technology. That means to see better LCDs, you should go out now and buy a large SGI flat panel. If you want to see better faster processors, go and dump money for a Quad Dec Alpha system; show them there is demand. If you want better faster video, go and buy a VooDoo3 3000 when they get out, or the Riva TNT2, and let them know affordable consumer level devices aren't enough; you want bleeding edge!
AS
I grant the K7 will be fast; 3x is something I have to see to believe.
The cache on chip is 200MHz, I believe. PCI bus is still 33 MHz, and AGP is 66MHz. Memory may go up to 133MHz, but expect 100MHz because that is currently standard.
I don't know that K7 is a hell of a lot cheaper; Cheaper than a comparable P2 Xeon, which retails for 1900$ for a single CPU at 450MHz and 1 mb cache at 450MHz... But not cheaper than a 190$ 450MHz Celeron, or an overclocked dual Celeron300A at 60$ each, running at 450MHz.
The Vortex2 with A3d, like Diamond's MX300, would seem to have better 3d support for games, while the Sound Blaster Live! has much better studio, mixing, and media authoring capabilities.
You go with IBM; I think they are the best in the business.
19" monitor is also feasible.
So total of your system: 700$ per CPU, 300$ for motherboard, 100$ for MX300, 300$ for an IDE IBM, 160$ for 128mb ram, and 600$ for a decent monitor all now. Assuming the 180$ V3 card...
$3400 dollars =) And I really doubt you will outperform the SGI bus, with its UMA between video and system, and its total bypass of AGP entirely. V3 will still rely on a 33MHz PCI bus, or a 66MHz AGP bus, at 32bit, whereas the SGIs gets a direct 3.2gb/s pipeline from memory to video. What is AGP right now? AGP Pro is something like 1gb/s, and right now is something like 500mb/s?
Also, each component in the SGI gets something like a 1.6gb/s pipe to the CPU. I don't see anything match that; its not even shared bandwith, but individual, like audio, net, hard disk, etc.
Of course, its 4000 for a single 350MHz, 128 mb, and some 19" monitor... But I don't think any architecture can beat that combination.
You're also stuck running WinNT4 until SGI sees the lite and ports to Linux
AS
Sucks to be vendor locked, doesn't it? To be held hostage in an open market by one company, whether they realize it or not, whether the market realizes or not...
Wonders how soon Real Soon is, since there is open source 2d for TNT under Linux. How long until 3d?
Sigh.
AS
That's like saying Macintosh support for games is good, there just aren't any games released for the OS... Until the hardware is supported under OpenGL/Mesa, and such, there isn't really any 3d support in Linux, is there? At least no hardware 3d...
AS
All gamers might know, but the money really isn't in the gamer's pockets, are they?
What 3dfx needs is a good enough board with 32bpp color depth and 32mb of memory and good AGP2x/4x support, as well as DVD support
(See ATI Rage128 and TNT2)
For real cash, 3dfx wants to bundle in OEM systems, and attract more for business machines, soho, and sub-1000 machines, since all those are targeted for high volume growth in 1999. It's boards, spec wise, don't live up because of lack of features... S3, Matrox, nVidia, and ATI all have better looking specs, even if they don't dominate in 3d.
Any comments?
AS
I'm curious if ACs come back to read the responses to their questions... A minor benefit to registration is the ability to track all your posts, and read all the correspinding responses...
Anyway, I think the 3500 would have both LCD and regular monitor support; at that price range it would be ridiculous not to support both. Heck, it comes with TV out, so I assume that all the reviewers feel a standard VGA connector is so standard that they fail to mention it.
VooDoo3 will only support "windowed QuakeGL", and probably most other games, but I don't know about "real GL" yet. Anyone know how far 3dfx has gotten on it's GL drivers, ICD, and such? Right now Quake games and derivatives all rely on a miniGL driver, ie, the driver only contains the calls made by Quake, and no others.
Heh, that makes me wonder if it's possible, on a dual CPU system, whether 2 games of Quake2 in GL are possible in 2 windows...
AS