Most Linux distributions come with far more than you get with any Microsoft OS, and as a result, the chance for security holes in optional components will be greater. If Windows Vista came with a choice of several web browsers, ftp servers, libraries, developer tools, and so on, then of course it would also end up with security holes that apply to the individual packages. Trying to compare a Microsoft OS to Linux is really an apples to oranges comparison.
So, take every FTP server out there, and every web server, and program, bundle it with Vista, and then count the number of security holes. That would be the apples to apples comparison needed to compare security.
The other solution of course would be to compare the BASE distribution of Linux, without all the extras and optional components, and then see how the security would be. It should of course be pointed out that Linux has been around for a longer time than Vista, so there has been more time for people to find problems with Linux.
While the number of delegates may be the same, there is a trend that those who do not know who they want will side with whoever is ahead at that point. This is the "momentum" that can build up in these early primaries that is so important going into the big one(s).
Now, if Obama really did win in NH, that would be two victories, which would inspire those in SC, and if he were to win that one as well, Florida voters would be more inclined to vote for him. There is also the whole idea that most PEOPLE don't care about how many delegates, but they do care about who received the most votes. This is the issue with someone being able to win the popular vote yet lose the election type of problem.
So, these things may happen, but if it can be verified, then there should be a push to do a manual verification of ALL the numbers for every election, because these systems are so broken they should not be used at all.
The problem goes back to the number of people who are willing to start a new tech company. Back in 2000(before the stock market version of the tech crash), we were seeing a peak in the number of companies with some interesting ideas that attempted to come out with new products. In many cases, people NEED that venture money to develop the product they have in mind since they can't make it themselves, so with venture money being harder to come by after the crash of 2000, these ideas just don't get developed.
If the government were to actually encourage technology instead of treating technology like a necessary evil, we might see a new boom in the tech industry, and with it more great technologies. Governments all around the world have been encouraging technology, helping with fiber deployments, and getting high speed connections into homes. The government here in the USA has done so little to encourage the growth of technology that the USA is falling behind.
There are still some very cool things going on when it comes to technology, the problem is that the culture here in the USA has shifted from "we can start a company and turn our idea into a product" to "we do what we need to do just to survive". The consolidations we see with mergers and such are being caused by the economy stagnating, inflation being ahead of paychecks, and a feeling that it will be a long time before things improve.
So, when the ATTITUDE changes to a "we can do it", then we will see more new and great products being released. Until then, we will watch as the rest of the world makes progress and we see no progress here at home.
Considering what has been going on in the realm of hacking, I expect this will cause many Chinese hackers that are supported by their government to shift their focus to hacking and exploiting vulnerabilities in MacOS X.
The thing about Vista is that while it has almost no major improvements compared to Windows XP, if you add up all those tiny little "nice" additions, it does improve the overall user experience if you have a computer that doesn't suck. Honestly, if you turn off the idiotic UAC botherware and just use the OS for everything from productivity to games, you will probably find that things tend to run decently.
As for benchmarks, I really wonder when the last set of benchmarks have been run to compare Windows XP to Windows Vista. Driver support from NVIDIA and ATI/AMD has improved quite a bit, and I am curious at this point if the differences in performance have become minimal between the two operating systems or not.
Keep in mind that if you test with computers that only have one gig of memory, you are unfairly penalizing Vista in the same way that running Windows XP with only 256 megs of memory will be unfair if you compare it to a Windows 98 machine. If you starve the OS during testing, then you can't expect to get fair results. Vista has a number of additional services running for various things, and they do take a bit more memory and CPU power. How much of the reduced performance is caused by all of these services(many that may not be needed)?
So, Vista may not be fantastic, but if you compare Windows XP to Windows Vista with four gigs of system memory, Vista may not seem quite as bad as many would have you believe. If you tested the OS a year ago, the improved drivers may very well change how well it works for you. Just don't give me that garbage that it doesn't run well on your three year old computer, because Windows XP ran like crap on older computers too if they didn't have enough RAM.
When XP first came out, Dell was selling low-priced systems with 128MB of RAM, which really wasn't enough for the OS to run properly, Creative Labs refused for over a year to release decent drivers for the Sound Blaster Live series of sound cards, and the low end computers that didn't have much processing power ran Windows XP poorly.
Now, look at what we have today...some computers still are sold with only 512MB of RAM yet come with Vista pre-installed. You have older machines without the video card/GPU power to run the OS decently, and the driver support isn't great but isn't all that bad at this point.
The real issue is that in the years since Windows XP was first released, computers have become more powerful and can handle the demands of XP without any problems at all. Windows Vista won't seem to have problems in another year once people finally upgrade their ancient computers(the natural evolution) to machines that can handle the OS. I myself have seen a LOT of people upgrade from computers they purchased back in 2001 to a Vista based machine this year(2007), and they have NO problem with the performance of the OS.
What many people just don't seem to understand is that Vista comes with a lot of tiny little improvements that add up to an overall better computer experience. While there doesn't seem to be any major improvements, all the tiny improvements do add up. As a result, while there is no reason to upgrade from XP to Vista, there also isn't much of a reason to go from Vista back to XP(unless you are forced to run primitive software from Teleflora or some other company that can't handle having two years to develop a Vista compatible version of your software).
One thing that many people do not understand these days is why those old systems are still remembered so fondly. People scratch their heads and just don't understand it. As one of the people who got started on computers with machines like the TRS-80 model 1, Commodore PET(4016 and 4032), I like to think I have a bit of insight about what it was about those early days that makes many look back fondly on the games of the era.
If you look back, you see a lot of text based games, or ugly graphics by the standards of today, so it's no wonder that people do not understand. One thing that was true of most of the games back then, they all were NEW, and many really pushed the abilities of the computers of the time. Story, and fun were key, and while many were pretty bad, there was no shortage of good ideas that were different.
The differences are really what stand out in the minds of us "old timers". Think about it, you had a grand total of 16 colors that could be displayed at one time on a C-64, and yet, good games could be written that were not only fun, but had a story that stuck with us. Even into the early days of the PC, there were some really great games in those early days. The original Kings Quest with those really ugly 16 color graphics is an example of that same innovative spirit that makes those early days seem so wonderful. It wasn't the C-64 that was so great, it was the spirit of the game developers that made things seem to amazing.
Trying to say it was the computer just doesn't fit, because the old Apple 2 series had it, in the same way the Amiga had it. It was a love for experimentation and creation, and it seems that these things that made those old games so amazing is all but dead. How much innovation is out there in the game industry these days? New features or abilities added to older games with new graphics will NEVER seem as amazing as the "old days".
A big problem that people have with these comments is that the new games being released for the PS3 and Xbox 360 really are not so much better than what could be done on the previous generation of consoles.
Are PS3 and Xbox 360 games really THAT much better than the stuff for the Xbox and PS2? Graphics may be a bit better, but if you exclude the "HD" factor due to most people not having a screen that can do 1080p, then what is better about the new titles?
That is the key, when there is a substantial improvement in overall gameplay compared to previous generation machines. An advantage to the PC as a platform is that the idea of next generation is foolish because faster processors and more advanced video cards are released every three to six months. As a result, game companies are forced to aim at what will be available in 3-5 years, not at what is available currently. You want cutting edge, you get it from a PC game.
There are many issues why the music and cinema industries have been losing ground, and anyone who frequents Slashdot would know about the issues.
Between the high costs to buy a CD vs. downloading an individual track for $0.99 online, of course that will cut back on sales of CDs. It used to be that one or two good tracks on a CD would be enough for some to buy the whole CD, and that just doesn't work anymore. And that only accounts for losses from people who do things legally. You do have piracy that also accounts for SOME losses as well, though it accounts for less of the loss than the RIAA claims. The RIAA is probably a reason why many refuse to buy music, just to spite that organization. The retail costs of CDs vs. ordering the same CD online is quite a bit higher, so that is also why people do not buy them in stores. The cost of transportation is so high at this point that it drives up distribution costs, as well as electric and other costs, so that retail in general is not doing as well as it used to.
For movies, budgets have gone up, quality has gone up, and sales have gone up for DVDs. People do not want to go to the movies for many releases because when it costs $10 per person, people really question if it is worth it if a DVD movie only costs $20-$25 and you can watch it as many times as you want. The special effects budgets also have been going up, though that will eventually level off as the technology becomes cheaper. This is something many people do not seem to understand is that the whole area of special effects WILL eventually become cheaper as technology evolves. Look at commercials and in some cases, the effects used in a stupid commercial would have been considered amazing only 20 years ago.
The games industry at this point provides something that is cheaper in terms of cost/hour of entertainment than the movie industry, but don't think for a moment that it is the reason for problems in the movie industry. More people today have a premium movie channel than they have in the past, and many people will wait for a questionable movie to show up on HBO rather than paying per movie. When a game console costs $400 or more, and you hear about teenagers standing in line to buy a new console at midnight to buy one, or even about parents doing it for their children, that shows that the entertainment budget that these people have is high enough where if these people want to play games and go to the movies, they will do both. It's not about one or the other, it is about what they want. There are many people that only play games and never go to the movies, but these are probably the same type that wouldn't have gone to the movies 20 years ago. Without the game industry, these people might have been out doing other things.
It is hard to say because things like the culture of video game players encourages people to only play games and not to do anything else in some cases. And the whole MMO community tends to focus on playing the one game the player is playing at that time. Ask the hard-core WoW or EQ player about how many hours a week they spend on raids. That is the group that is killing movie sales, because the hard-core MMO players don't spend time doing ANYTHING else.
A global coordinate system really wouldn't be all that hard to implement. The big problem revolves around the number of "areas" that can be accessed from the current area.
In Dungeon Siege, there is almost always only three possible areas that connect to the current area, and these are always a good distance from each other. This means you never have multiple dungeon entrances next to each other, or even a dungeon entrance near an overland connection to another area. This allows for an EASY way to predict which area to pre-load.
On the flip side, take a game like The Witcher, which has many buildings and such that all connect into a "main area". If you try to pre-load every one of these areas at once, it would probably take an additional two gigs of memory just for the pre-load information.
The only people who would ask such a question do not have a background in either programming or in game design. So, here are just SOME of the reasons for having "levels"...
First, you need to look at what goes on behind the scenes.
In some cases where there do not seem to be "levels", there is one, but the transition is done without a pause. The new area is pre-loaded during game play. This assumes that the game areas are contiguous, where the entire game is played in the same area, and there is no "boring travel" that would bore the player between areas. For these contiguous areas, the plant and animal life may not be all the different, so loading new textures and unloading the old textures may not be needed, while for some, this would be a case of needing to predict which textures need to be removed from memory while loading the appropriate textures and objects on the fly.
When one fairly small area is enough to strain the average computer, the small size makes it even harder to predict and properly pre-load what is needed for a smooth transition between areas as well.
There are some very good reasons for having these breaks, including modularity, and allowing for custom content, in addition to saving memory. Back in the ancient days of computers, if you had 16KB of RAM, that was a good amount, but it also meant that you had to really work to reduce how much memory your program would take. Even into the days where 8 megabytes of memory, a programmer had to look at how much memory code would take, and spend a good amount of time trying to cut back on memory usage. So, what do you do to cut back on memory used? One method is to take code that is not needed and clear it out of memory so that more memory is available. By having "levels", it allows a game to clearly define what will be available at one time so that the old junk can be cleared out. If a "new area" will make a huge change to what is going on in the game, that would also be a good reason for a "transition", because the old "rules of gameplay" need to be swapped out for the new.
There is less of a reason for LONG load times these days, but if a game has a lot of options for which areas the player can enter, being able to pre-load the next area may not be a good option. What if the current area takes a gig of memory by itself? Pre-loading the next area may cause the game to go over the 2 gig mark, and may cause an application crash. There is an increasing number of people who are aware that if a game takes up more than 2048 megabytes of memory at once under 32 bit Windows, it can cause the application to crash due to the limits of 32 bit processors, and the design of Windows(blame Microsoft). You can adjust this number, but it risks the stability of the OS if you do.
So, if all you play are games that have ONE path, where you enter on one side, and leave on the other, it is easy to pre-load the next level when you get to a certain point. If there is any complexity to the path the player can take, it may not make sense to pre-load all the available areas that the player may choose to enter.
EA is riding that fine line between stagnation and paranoia, and if things do not change, they will be killed by the realities of human interest.
How long can they sell the same sports titles before people get bored with them? There WILL come a point when those tired games will run out of steam.
The Sims and The Sims 2 have been doing very well because they do NOT focus on the 13-23 year old male obsession with violence in games. EA does not learn why things work and do not work, so we see less innovation as they lean more and more on sequels that are "more of the same".
EA just bought Bioware, probably in the hopes that Bioware will be able to break them free of the looming stagnation, but their bad habit of buying a company because "it is different" and then screwing it up and turning the newly purchased company into an extension of what is wrong with EA may kill the value.
The game industry needs to learn from the movie industry, where art and special effects need to be combined to produce a real hit. Games that are only about violence, or sex, or horror by themselves may cater to a niche market, but true blockbusters come from a combination of different elements. The industry in general does NOT use a combination of these elements, so does not cater to a broader audience.
There is also a basic concept that seems to have escaped most game developers, and that is the majority of game players are over the age of 18, yet most games target teenagers. This means that most games do not appeal to the older players, and over time sales will decline.
The problem with comments like this are that we do not know how well Spore will do, both in terms of initial sales, as well as sustained sales over time. You and others expect that Spore will be a huge title, but it is not guaranteed.
Just because you dislike any game that isn't an action game doesn't make many of the Molyneux games bad. Black and White was a good game, and a lot of fun. Black and White 2 was better as a technical demo though.
Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and others are very memorable games, and unlike all the games that were straight clones of Warcraft, Populous: The Beginning was a RTS game that wasn't a clone, but had different mechanics for population growth.
Now, it has been a while since he came out with a new game that was really revolutionary, but the first Fable game was fun, even if it felt a bit childish. This may also reflect that the game was designed for consoles, so aiming at a younger audience was a good thing.
You really can't say that Black and White was a bad game either, and the creature AI was pretty good. If all you treated it as was a strict strategy game for multi-player it may have failed, but it was a DIFFERENT sort of game and was fun in that regard.
There also have not been many titles since the Bullfrog days if you look at it. Black and White 1&2, plus "The Movies". That isn't a lot of titles, and I didn't even check out The Movies, so I can't say if it was good or bad.
People talk about the difference between a normal PC and a gaming computer. That being the case, while you CAN upgrade an older 5-year-old computer, I go from a fairly modern computer(1-2 years old, not 5). There is also a big difference between the people who buy a clearance special(the $350-$400 range) and those who buy a new computer in the $550-$600.
It is expected that if you buy a computer that starts off as a cheap piece of garbage that it will cost more just to bring it up to the standards of the day, let alone turning it into a decent gaming machine. If games are even a possible use of a computer, you do NOT aim to start at the bottom of the barrel before you plan to upgrade it.
So, if you plan to go from a mainstream computer to a gaming machine, you look at the price difference between an AVERAGE computer and the gaming machine. Average these days includes a dual-core processor and at least 1 gig of system memory.
You seem to have missed my point. If you take a new computer(dual core processor, 2 gigs of system memory), and the rest of the components in your average $600 PC, you can consider that the non-gamer components of a computer. This means that the only parts that should be considered the "gamer components" will be the video card, perhaps one or two gigs of additional memory, and possibly a video card.
Now, until game consoles come with dual GPU video, if you want to compare costs between a PC with a gamer in mind, you can take the video power of a Xbox 360 or PS3 as the power of video for your gamer PC. In many situations, no additional power supply would be needed since you do NOT need a Geforce 8800 or Radeon HD X2900, so the normal power supply may be enough.
So, what is the cost of the video card then? Call it $300 or perhaps $350 to put it on par with a PS3? Then you can toss in an extra gig of system memory. You don't NEED to buy the top of the line video setup to meet the power of these consoles, so trying to compare the top of the line PC to a top of the line console isn't fair since a top of the line console could NOT compare.
As far as the lack of non-action games, that is the fault of the game publishers not understanding that there is a big market for other types of games, but if you try to compare the garbage of the other genres to the top of the action titles doesn't make sense when trying to compare demand. You can't say that just because porn is the most popular content on the Internet means that all other content isn't worth producing, but that is how the game industry seems to be looking at things.
What most people find offensive is that the artists deserve the money, and they don't get it from the sale of CDs or downloads. If even 50 percent of the price went to the artists who make the music, then there would be less support of piracy.
Now, there is a clear issue these days when it comes to the costs involved in retail. Starbucks may charge a huge amount, but a good chunk of the money goes into lease prices for the location and paying employees and utilities, not to mention supplies. This is a part of the reason Amazon and other online companies can sell things cheaper, because they have a lower overhead. That still doesn't excuse the record labels. The costs to manufacture a CD have dropped since the early 1990s, so all the increased costs we see are about money going into the pockets of the record labels. If the artists do not get more money when the record labels have increased the prices, that shows where the real problem is.
As for fair use, as long as I do not duplicate a CD with the intent to play it at the same time in multiple locations, there should be no violation of any rules. I should be able to make one copy of a CD for my car, one for work, and one for home(so the original stays protected). As long as other people do not have access to the duplicates while I am at another location, there really should be no issue.
I do see an issue with lower quality of downloaded music when purchased legally from an online store, even if most people can not hear the difference, it is still an inferior version compared to what you get on a CD. And then, there is the question of how much money the artists get from legally downloaded music from these purchases. If only one or two cents out of each dollar goes to the artist, that really doesn't help make a good case for ANYONE supporting the RIAA. Take the money the RIAA is paid and give it back to the artists who deserve more than they get.
People seem to miss a very basic concept behind gaming on the PC and the costs involved. When it comes down to it, you have your base computer(the non-gamer portion of the price) that gets used for things other than playing games. Then you have the extra cost to make it into a gaming computer, which is what SHOULD be compared to the price of consoles.
So, let's take a look at the prices out there...
$550-$600 for the base computer, the hard drive(non-RAID setup), integrated video, 2 gigs of memory.
To turn that machine into a game machine, you are looking at paying $400 or so for the video card. That's it, you already had a machine that was ready to play games except the video card. You can toss an additional gig of memory at it for under $100 if you feel it is needed.
All of those prices included the price of the pre-installed Windows Vista Home Premium that comes on many systems these days. No need for Linux and the issues that come with trying to get Wine installed on it, or other configuration headaches.
As for why people think that PC gaming is almost dead, it is because the only games many people look at are the action game market, which includes first person shooters. Companies like EA are afraid to try anything new, so innovative titles have been growing harder and harder to find. If you look at the console market, you see that "more of the same" did NOT work well for the PS3, and it isn't doing well for the PC or Xbox 360 either. Games that have a good storyline and dialog make a game stick with you for a lot longer than games that only add extra special effects.
You should note that the PC market lost a LOT when Interplay died(due to the stupid Frenchie that bought the company and then ran it into the ground). Interplay was the last big publisher that focused on the RPG genre in the way that Sierra was the last big developer of adventure games before Vivendi killed them.
That is the problem here, that it is questionable if these inventions were not independently developed. If you and someone else at exactly the same time came up with the same idea, the law grants the patent to the first to file. Now, the other person who came up with the idea would need to show that he/she also came up with the idea and that the idea was not developed on it's own.
This is the basis behind some of the so-called protections in patent law, including prior art, and the idea that if something is an obvious use of existing inventions, then it should not be patentable. The problem is that the patent office has clueless idiots working there that can NOT understand what is obvious and what is not. The use of a stapler as a paper-weight for example is an obvious use, yet it might be the sort of thing the patent and trademark office would grant a patent for. So, lawsuit after lawsuit, until someone has the nerve to go to court over the issue.
There is a huge split in the gaming community over this sort of issue. Many action gamers seem to think that storytelling in a game is a nuisance because their focus is in running around shooting at things. On the flip side, there are also gamers who WANT more story in their game, where they play through a story to see how the story plays out, with the gameplay elements being important, but secondary.
This split is often seen in the action RPG games that are out there, where even the first time some people play the games, they click through the interactions, skipping story and character development while others prefer to read and listen to the character interactions. I agree that there are times when the interactions/cut scenes are a bit too long, but at the same time, there will ALWAYS be a split between the people who want/prefer a storyline driven game, and those who don't care and just want to play.
The better developers understand this, so in some cases you see ways to skip past much of the NPC dialog. Neverwinter Nights 2 for example had some dialog options like, "Just skip it and I'll check the info in my journal".
This split in what people like is also seen in regular movies, where some people are put to sleep by character development and just want to see the big special effects, while others enjoy the whole movie, including the character development between characters. One is not necessarily better than the other as it is a subjective thing. There does seem to be a relationship between the age of the person and their preference, but I don't have the resources to do the study.
AMD has introduced fab process improvements and applied them to the "current" designs. Across the industry, it has been unusual to release both a process improvement and a major design change at the same time. Sure it may happen, but you very often see "new design on current process technology", then later down the road the new process technology is used to improve the designs of current products, followed by a new design on the process technology of the time.
Tick-Tock speeds the push toward the newer technologies, both on the process technology side as well as on the CPU design side is all. It will eventually run out of steam as it becomes more and more difficult to move toward a new process technology in the way the MHz race got too fast for the development of new CPU designs to keep up with. I am not saying it's not a nice idea, but in another seven to ten years, we will see how well Intel is able to keep up with their own Tick-Tock schedule.
This has been used across the entire industry, just without a cute catch-phrase for it, and without pushing for this quick an improvement to process technology.
Think about it, you would see the overall design come out, then that same design would be released on an improved process(going from 90 to 65nm for example). The design would be the same, just an improved process that would allow for faster versions of that design.
AMD has done it as well to an extent, but the high-end processors in the K8 generation are still on 90nm while the lower-clocked chips are at 65nm. Intel has more resources, so can throw more resources at fab process improvements while keeping the same number of resources focused on the overall CPU design.
Now, there are some disadvantages to Intel's method of approaching CPU innovation, including not looking for other ways to improve system performance. Think about it, AMD was able to do well due to the integrated memory controller and HyperTransport with a much smaller amount of cache. Even with these elements, will Intel come out with anything really NEW that will improve overall system performance?
So, Intel may hold the lead in terms of performance, or the AMD K10 architecture may allow AMD to catch back up. Either of these are possibilities at this point, and AMD is also working on things like adding some GPU functionality to their processors(Fusion being the first example of this). Even if the GPU power on the CPU is limited in terms of performance, it may add to the graphics processing power of an add-in video card to give an edge in terms of performance. Sure, Intel may be the platform for those who run MS Office, but for those who want some graphics power, AMD may end up with a clear advantage.
Tick-Tock is just an Intel way of saying they will do the same thing they always have, just pushing out improvements faster. AMD is focused more on figuring out ways to do things better because they can't keep up in a straight MHz competition, or on a straight fab process competition.
With any OS, there are ALWAYS two methods of sales/adoption of the new OS. The first and primary is having the OS pre-installed on computers sold. This number will fluctuate almost perfectly based on the number of computers sold during the period of time in question. You also have those who upgrade an existing computer or build their computer from scratch and need an OS to put on the new machine.
People have gotten the idea that if your existing computer can't handle Vista, don't do the upgrade. So, over the next year, the number of people who will upgrade to Vista will drop because those who COULD upgrade(fast enough processor, 1-2 gigs of RAM, and a decent video card/GPU) will have upgraded already.
So, why does it surprise anyone that the number of Vista sales will drop a bit until new Vista sales equal the number of new computers sold and built? No one expected the 1GHz Pentium 3 crowd to go to Vista, and even the Athlon XP/Pentium 4 users would probably buy a new computer rather than upgrading their existing machines to Vista.
Your comment touches on the real problem with the current generation of consoles without saying it. The consoles are able to do a lot more than the previous generation of consoles, but at this point, the only real improvements have been to the eye candy/graphics rather than being focused on the potential of the new consoles.
Games for the PC have been advancing a bit faster because game developers know that they can develop a game for what they expect the PC will be able to do, and make the game scale based on different computers. This allows a game dev to theoretically aim for 5 million polygon characters to interact with, but since the devs KNOW that not everyone will have that cutting edge equipment, they also make plans on how to scale the graphics down from "the best" settings.
Console game developers can NOT expect that what they are working on will apply to whatever the latest console is in four years, so they need to push games out faster, and hope the game is ready to ship before the next generation console stops sales of the game they designed to run on current consoles.
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Most Linux distributions come with far more than you get with any Microsoft OS, and as a result, the chance for security holes in optional components will be greater. If Windows Vista came with a choice of several web browsers, ftp servers, libraries, developer tools, and so on, then of course it would also end up with security holes that apply to the individual packages. Trying to compare a Microsoft OS to Linux is really an apples to oranges comparison.
So, take every FTP server out there, and every web server, and program, bundle it with Vista, and then count the number of security holes. That would be the apples to apples comparison needed to compare security.
The other solution of course would be to compare the BASE distribution of Linux, without all the extras and optional components, and then see how the security would be. It should of course be pointed out that Linux has been around for a longer time than Vista, so there has been more time for people to find problems with Linux.
While the number of delegates may be the same, there is a trend that those who do not know who they want will side with whoever is ahead at that point. This is the "momentum" that can build up in these early primaries that is so important going into the big one(s).
Now, if Obama really did win in NH, that would be two victories, which would inspire those in SC, and if he were to win that one as well, Florida voters would be more inclined to vote for him. There is also the whole idea that most PEOPLE don't care about how many delegates, but they do care about who received the most votes. This is the issue with someone being able to win the popular vote yet lose the election type of problem.
So, these things may happen, but if it can be verified, then there should be a push to do a manual verification of ALL the numbers for every election, because these systems are so broken they should not be used at all.
The problem goes back to the number of people who are willing to start a new tech company. Back in 2000(before the stock market version of the tech crash), we were seeing a peak in the number of companies with some interesting ideas that attempted to come out with new products. In many cases, people NEED that venture money to develop the product they have in mind since they can't make it themselves, so with venture money being harder to come by after the crash of 2000, these ideas just don't get developed.
If the government were to actually encourage technology instead of treating technology like a necessary evil, we might see a new boom in the tech industry, and with it more great technologies. Governments all around the world have been encouraging technology, helping with fiber deployments, and getting high speed connections into homes. The government here in the USA has done so little to encourage the growth of technology that the USA is falling behind.
There are still some very cool things going on when it comes to technology, the problem is that the culture here in the USA has shifted from "we can start a company and turn our idea into a product" to "we do what we need to do just to survive". The consolidations we see with mergers and such are being caused by the economy stagnating, inflation being ahead of paychecks, and a feeling that it will be a long time before things improve.
So, when the ATTITUDE changes to a "we can do it", then we will see more new and great products being released. Until then, we will watch as the rest of the world makes progress and we see no progress here at home.
Most computers come with 2GB of RAM right now, with a number selling with 3GB. Moving to four gigs really isn't that big of a jump.
Considering what has been going on in the realm of hacking, I expect this will cause many Chinese hackers that are supported by their government to shift their focus to hacking and exploiting vulnerabilities in MacOS X.
The thing about Vista is that while it has almost no major improvements compared to Windows XP, if you add up all those tiny little "nice" additions, it does improve the overall user experience if you have a computer that doesn't suck. Honestly, if you turn off the idiotic UAC botherware and just use the OS for everything from productivity to games, you will probably find that things tend to run decently.
As for benchmarks, I really wonder when the last set of benchmarks have been run to compare Windows XP to Windows Vista. Driver support from NVIDIA and ATI/AMD has improved quite a bit, and I am curious at this point if the differences in performance have become minimal between the two operating systems or not.
Keep in mind that if you test with computers that only have one gig of memory, you are unfairly penalizing Vista in the same way that running Windows XP with only 256 megs of memory will be unfair if you compare it to a Windows 98 machine. If you starve the OS during testing, then you can't expect to get fair results. Vista has a number of additional services running for various things, and they do take a bit more memory and CPU power. How much of the reduced performance is caused by all of these services(many that may not be needed)?
So, Vista may not be fantastic, but if you compare Windows XP to Windows Vista with four gigs of system memory, Vista may not seem quite as bad as many would have you believe. If you tested the OS a year ago, the improved drivers may very well change how well it works for you. Just don't give me that garbage that it doesn't run well on your three year old computer, because Windows XP ran like crap on older computers too if they didn't have enough RAM.
When XP first came out, Dell was selling low-priced systems with 128MB of RAM, which really wasn't enough for the OS to run properly, Creative Labs refused for over a year to release decent drivers for the Sound Blaster Live series of sound cards, and the low end computers that didn't have much processing power ran Windows XP poorly.
Now, look at what we have today...some computers still are sold with only 512MB of RAM yet come with Vista pre-installed. You have older machines without the video card/GPU power to run the OS decently, and the driver support isn't great but isn't all that bad at this point.
The real issue is that in the years since Windows XP was first released, computers have become more powerful and can handle the demands of XP without any problems at all. Windows Vista won't seem to have problems in another year once people finally upgrade their ancient computers(the natural evolution) to machines that can handle the OS. I myself have seen a LOT of people upgrade from computers they purchased back in 2001 to a Vista based machine this year(2007), and they have NO problem with the performance of the OS.
What many people just don't seem to understand is that Vista comes with a lot of tiny little improvements that add up to an overall better computer experience. While there doesn't seem to be any major improvements, all the tiny improvements do add up. As a result, while there is no reason to upgrade from XP to Vista, there also isn't much of a reason to go from Vista back to XP(unless you are forced to run primitive software from Teleflora or some other company that can't handle having two years to develop a Vista compatible version of your software).
One thing that many people do not understand these days is why those old systems are still remembered so fondly. People scratch their heads and just don't understand it. As one of the people who got started on computers with machines like the TRS-80 model 1, Commodore PET(4016 and 4032), I like to think I have a bit of insight about what it was about those early days that makes many look back fondly on the games of the era.
If you look back, you see a lot of text based games, or ugly graphics by the standards of today, so it's no wonder that people do not understand. One thing that was true of most of the games back then, they all were NEW, and many really pushed the abilities of the computers of the time. Story, and fun were key, and while many were pretty bad, there was no shortage of good ideas that were different.
The differences are really what stand out in the minds of us "old timers". Think about it, you had a grand total of 16 colors that could be displayed at one time on a C-64, and yet, good games could be written that were not only fun, but had a story that stuck with us. Even into the early days of the PC, there were some really great games in those early days. The original Kings Quest with those really ugly 16 color graphics is an example of that same innovative spirit that makes those early days seem so wonderful. It wasn't the C-64 that was so great, it was the spirit of the game developers that made things seem to amazing.
Trying to say it was the computer just doesn't fit, because the old Apple 2 series had it, in the same way the Amiga had it. It was a love for experimentation and creation, and it seems that these things that made those old games so amazing is all but dead. How much innovation is out there in the game industry these days? New features or abilities added to older games with new graphics will NEVER seem as amazing as the "old days".
A big problem that people have with these comments is that the new games being released for the PS3 and Xbox 360 really are not so much better than what could be done on the previous generation of consoles.
Are PS3 and Xbox 360 games really THAT much better than the stuff for the Xbox and PS2? Graphics may be a bit better, but if you exclude the "HD" factor due to most people not having a screen that can do 1080p, then what is better about the new titles?
That is the key, when there is a substantial improvement in overall gameplay compared to previous generation machines. An advantage to the PC as a platform is that the idea of next generation is foolish because faster processors and more advanced video cards are released every three to six months. As a result, game companies are forced to aim at what will be available in 3-5 years, not at what is available currently. You want cutting edge, you get it from a PC game.
There are many issues why the music and cinema industries have been losing ground, and anyone who frequents Slashdot would know about the issues.
Between the high costs to buy a CD vs. downloading an individual track for $0.99 online, of course that will cut back on sales of CDs. It used to be that one or two good tracks on a CD would be enough for some to buy the whole CD, and that just doesn't work anymore. And that only accounts for losses from people who do things legally. You do have piracy that also accounts for SOME losses as well, though it accounts for less of the loss than the RIAA claims. The RIAA is probably a reason why many refuse to buy music, just to spite that organization. The retail costs of CDs vs. ordering the same CD online is quite a bit higher, so that is also why people do not buy them in stores. The cost of transportation is so high at this point that it drives up distribution costs, as well as electric and other costs, so that retail in general is not doing as well as it used to.
For movies, budgets have gone up, quality has gone up, and sales have gone up for DVDs. People do not want to go to the movies for many releases because when it costs $10 per person, people really question if it is worth it if a DVD movie only costs $20-$25 and you can watch it as many times as you want. The special effects budgets also have been going up, though that will eventually level off as the technology becomes cheaper. This is something many people do not seem to understand is that the whole area of special effects WILL eventually become cheaper as technology evolves. Look at commercials and in some cases, the effects used in a stupid commercial would have been considered amazing only 20 years ago.
The games industry at this point provides something that is cheaper in terms of cost/hour of entertainment than the movie industry, but don't think for a moment that it is the reason for problems in the movie industry. More people today have a premium movie channel than they have in the past, and many people will wait for a questionable movie to show up on HBO rather than paying per movie. When a game console costs $400 or more, and you hear about teenagers standing in line to buy a new console at midnight to buy one, or even about parents doing it for their children, that shows that the entertainment budget that these people have is high enough where if these people want to play games and go to the movies, they will do both. It's not about one or the other, it is about what they want. There are many people that only play games and never go to the movies, but these are probably the same type that wouldn't have gone to the movies 20 years ago. Without the game industry, these people might have been out doing other things.
It is hard to say because things like the culture of video game players encourages people to only play games and not to do anything else in some cases. And the whole MMO community tends to focus on playing the one game the player is playing at that time. Ask the hard-core WoW or EQ player about how many hours a week they spend on raids. That is the group that is killing movie sales, because the hard-core MMO players don't spend time doing ANYTHING else.
A global coordinate system really wouldn't be all that hard to implement. The big problem revolves around the number of "areas" that can be accessed from the current area.
In Dungeon Siege, there is almost always only three possible areas that connect to the current area, and these are always a good distance from each other. This means you never have multiple dungeon entrances next to each other, or even a dungeon entrance near an overland connection to another area. This allows for an EASY way to predict which area to pre-load.
On the flip side, take a game like The Witcher, which has many buildings and such that all connect into a "main area". If you try to pre-load every one of these areas at once, it would probably take an additional two gigs of memory just for the pre-load information.
The only people who would ask such a question do not have a background in either programming or in game design. So, here are just SOME of the reasons for having "levels"...
First, you need to look at what goes on behind the scenes.
In some cases where there do not seem to be "levels", there is one, but the transition is done without a pause. The new area is pre-loaded during game play. This assumes that the game areas are contiguous, where the entire game is played in the same area, and there is no "boring travel" that would bore the player between areas. For these contiguous areas, the plant and animal life may not be all the different, so loading new textures and unloading the old textures may not be needed, while for some, this would be a case of needing to predict which textures need to be removed from memory while loading the appropriate textures and objects on the fly.
When one fairly small area is enough to strain the average computer, the small size makes it even harder to predict and properly pre-load what is needed for a smooth transition between areas as well.
There are some very good reasons for having these breaks, including modularity, and allowing for custom content, in addition to saving memory. Back in the ancient days of computers, if you had 16KB of RAM, that was a good amount, but it also meant that you had to really work to reduce how much memory your program would take. Even into the days where 8 megabytes of memory, a programmer had to look at how much memory code would take, and spend a good amount of time trying to cut back on memory usage. So, what do you do to cut back on memory used? One method is to take code that is not needed and clear it out of memory so that more memory is available. By having "levels", it allows a game to clearly define what will be available at one time so that the old junk can be cleared out. If a "new area" will make a huge change to what is going on in the game, that would also be a good reason for a "transition", because the old "rules of gameplay" need to be swapped out for the new.
There is less of a reason for LONG load times these days, but if a game has a lot of options for which areas the player can enter, being able to pre-load the next area may not be a good option. What if the current area takes a gig of memory by itself? Pre-loading the next area may cause the game to go over the 2 gig mark, and may cause an application crash. There is an increasing number of people who are aware that if a game takes up more than 2048 megabytes of memory at once under 32 bit Windows, it can cause the application to crash due to the limits of 32 bit processors, and the design of Windows(blame Microsoft). You can adjust this number, but it risks the stability of the OS if you do.
So, if all you play are games that have ONE path, where you enter on one side, and leave on the other, it is easy to pre-load the next level when you get to a certain point. If there is any complexity to the path the player can take, it may not make sense to pre-load all the available areas that the player may choose to enter.
EA is riding that fine line between stagnation and paranoia, and if things do not change, they will be killed by the realities of human interest.
How long can they sell the same sports titles before people get bored with them? There WILL come a point when those tired games will run out of steam.
The Sims and The Sims 2 have been doing very well because they do NOT focus on the 13-23 year old male obsession with violence in games. EA does not learn why things work and do not work, so we see less innovation as they lean more and more on sequels that are "more of the same".
EA just bought Bioware, probably in the hopes that Bioware will be able to break them free of the looming stagnation, but their bad habit of buying a company because "it is different" and then screwing it up and turning the newly purchased company into an extension of what is wrong with EA may kill the value.
The game industry needs to learn from the movie industry, where art and special effects need to be combined to produce a real hit. Games that are only about violence, or sex, or horror by themselves may cater to a niche market, but true blockbusters come from a combination of different elements. The industry in general does NOT use a combination of these elements, so does not cater to a broader audience.
There is also a basic concept that seems to have escaped most game developers, and that is the majority of game players are over the age of 18, yet most games target teenagers. This means that most games do not appeal to the older players, and over time sales will decline.
The problem with comments like this are that we do not know how well Spore will do, both in terms of initial sales, as well as sustained sales over time. You and others expect that Spore will be a huge title, but it is not guaranteed.
Just because you dislike any game that isn't an action game doesn't make many of the Molyneux games bad. Black and White was a good game, and a lot of fun. Black and White 2 was better as a technical demo though.
Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and others are very memorable games, and unlike all the games that were straight clones of Warcraft, Populous: The Beginning was a RTS game that wasn't a clone, but had different mechanics for population growth.
Now, it has been a while since he came out with a new game that was really revolutionary, but the first Fable game was fun, even if it felt a bit childish. This may also reflect that the game was designed for consoles, so aiming at a younger audience was a good thing.
You really can't say that Black and White was a bad game either, and the creature AI was pretty good. If all you treated it as was a strict strategy game for multi-player it may have failed, but it was a DIFFERENT sort of game and was fun in that regard.
There also have not been many titles since the Bullfrog days if you look at it. Black and White 1&2, plus "The Movies". That isn't a lot of titles, and I didn't even check out The Movies, so I can't say if it was good or bad.
People talk about the difference between a normal PC and a gaming computer. That being the case, while you CAN upgrade an older 5-year-old computer, I go from a fairly modern computer(1-2 years old, not 5). There is also a big difference between the people who buy a clearance special(the $350-$400 range) and those who buy a new computer in the $550-$600.
It is expected that if you buy a computer that starts off as a cheap piece of garbage that it will cost more just to bring it up to the standards of the day, let alone turning it into a decent gaming machine. If games are even a possible use of a computer, you do NOT aim to start at the bottom of the barrel before you plan to upgrade it.
So, if you plan to go from a mainstream computer to a gaming machine, you look at the price difference between an AVERAGE computer and the gaming machine. Average these days includes a dual-core processor and at least 1 gig of system memory.
You seem to have missed my point. If you take a new computer(dual core processor, 2 gigs of system memory), and the rest of the components in your average $600 PC, you can consider that the non-gamer components of a computer. This means that the only parts that should be considered the "gamer components" will be the video card, perhaps one or two gigs of additional memory, and possibly a video card.
Now, until game consoles come with dual GPU video, if you want to compare costs between a PC with a gamer in mind, you can take the video power of a Xbox 360 or PS3 as the power of video for your gamer PC. In many situations, no additional power supply would be needed since you do NOT need a Geforce 8800 or Radeon HD X2900, so the normal power supply may be enough.
So, what is the cost of the video card then? Call it $300 or perhaps $350 to put it on par with a PS3? Then you can toss in an extra gig of system memory. You don't NEED to buy the top of the line video setup to meet the power of these consoles, so trying to compare the top of the line PC to a top of the line console isn't fair since a top of the line console could NOT compare.
As far as the lack of non-action games, that is the fault of the game publishers not understanding that there is a big market for other types of games, but if you try to compare the garbage of the other genres to the top of the action titles doesn't make sense when trying to compare demand. You can't say that just because porn is the most popular content on the Internet means that all other content isn't worth producing, but that is how the game industry seems to be looking at things.
What most people find offensive is that the artists deserve the money, and they don't get it from the sale of CDs or downloads. If even 50 percent of the price went to the artists who make the music, then there would be less support of piracy.
Now, there is a clear issue these days when it comes to the costs involved in retail. Starbucks may charge a huge amount, but a good chunk of the money goes into lease prices for the location and paying employees and utilities, not to mention supplies. This is a part of the reason Amazon and other online companies can sell things cheaper, because they have a lower overhead. That still doesn't excuse the record labels. The costs to manufacture a CD have dropped since the early 1990s, so all the increased costs we see are about money going into the pockets of the record labels. If the artists do not get more money when the record labels have increased the prices, that shows where the real problem is.
As for fair use, as long as I do not duplicate a CD with the intent to play it at the same time in multiple locations, there should be no violation of any rules. I should be able to make one copy of a CD for my car, one for work, and one for home(so the original stays protected). As long as other people do not have access to the duplicates while I am at another location, there really should be no issue.
I do see an issue with lower quality of downloaded music when purchased legally from an online store, even if most people can not hear the difference, it is still an inferior version compared to what you get on a CD. And then, there is the question of how much money the artists get from legally downloaded music from these purchases. If only one or two cents out of each dollar goes to the artist, that really doesn't help make a good case for ANYONE supporting the RIAA. Take the money the RIAA is paid and give it back to the artists who deserve more than they get.
People seem to miss a very basic concept behind gaming on the PC and the costs involved. When it comes down to it, you have your base computer(the non-gamer portion of the price) that gets used for things other than playing games. Then you have the extra cost to make it into a gaming computer, which is what SHOULD be compared to the price of consoles.
So, let's take a look at the prices out there...
$550-$600 for the base computer, the hard drive(non-RAID setup), integrated video, 2 gigs of memory.
To turn that machine into a game machine, you are looking at paying $400 or so for the video card. That's it, you already had a machine that was ready to play games except the video card. You can toss an additional gig of memory at it for under $100 if you feel it is needed.
All of those prices included the price of the pre-installed Windows Vista Home Premium that comes on many systems these days. No need for Linux and the issues that come with trying to get Wine installed on it, or other configuration headaches.
As for why people think that PC gaming is almost dead, it is because the only games many people look at are the action game market, which includes first person shooters. Companies like EA are afraid to try anything new, so innovative titles have been growing harder and harder to find. If you look at the console market, you see that "more of the same" did NOT work well for the PS3, and it isn't doing well for the PC or Xbox 360 either. Games that have a good storyline and dialog make a game stick with you for a lot longer than games that only add extra special effects.
You should note that the PC market lost a LOT when Interplay died(due to the stupid Frenchie that bought the company and then ran it into the ground). Interplay was the last big publisher that focused on the RPG genre in the way that Sierra was the last big developer of adventure games before Vivendi killed them.
That is the problem here, that it is questionable if these inventions were not independently developed. If you and someone else at exactly the same time came up with the same idea, the law grants the patent to the first to file. Now, the other person who came up with the idea would need to show that he/she also came up with the idea and that the idea was not developed on it's own.
This is the basis behind some of the so-called protections in patent law, including prior art, and the idea that if something is an obvious use of existing inventions, then it should not be patentable. The problem is that the patent office has clueless idiots working there that can NOT understand what is obvious and what is not. The use of a stapler as a paper-weight for example is an obvious use, yet it might be the sort of thing the patent and trademark office would grant a patent for. So, lawsuit after lawsuit, until someone has the nerve to go to court over the issue.
There is a huge split in the gaming community over this sort of issue. Many action gamers seem to think that storytelling in a game is a nuisance because their focus is in running around shooting at things. On the flip side, there are also gamers who WANT more story in their game, where they play through a story to see how the story plays out, with the gameplay elements being important, but secondary.
This split is often seen in the action RPG games that are out there, where even the first time some people play the games, they click through the interactions, skipping story and character development while others prefer to read and listen to the character interactions. I agree that there are times when the interactions/cut scenes are a bit too long, but at the same time, there will ALWAYS be a split between the people who want/prefer a storyline driven game, and those who don't care and just want to play.
The better developers understand this, so in some cases you see ways to skip past much of the NPC dialog. Neverwinter Nights 2 for example had some dialog options like, "Just skip it and I'll check the info in my journal".
This split in what people like is also seen in regular movies, where some people are put to sleep by character development and just want to see the big special effects, while others enjoy the whole movie, including the character development between characters. One is not necessarily better than the other as it is a subjective thing. There does seem to be a relationship between the age of the person and their preference, but I don't have the resources to do the study.
AMD has introduced fab process improvements and applied them to the "current" designs. Across the industry, it has been unusual to release both a process improvement and a major design change at the same time. Sure it may happen, but you very often see "new design on current process technology", then later down the road the new process technology is used to improve the designs of current products, followed by a new design on the process technology of the time.
Tick-Tock speeds the push toward the newer technologies, both on the process technology side as well as on the CPU design side is all. It will eventually run out of steam as it becomes more and more difficult to move toward a new process technology in the way the MHz race got too fast for the development of new CPU designs to keep up with. I am not saying it's not a nice idea, but in another seven to ten years, we will see how well Intel is able to keep up with their own Tick-Tock schedule.
This has been used across the entire industry, just without a cute catch-phrase for it, and without pushing for this quick an improvement to process technology.
Think about it, you would see the overall design come out, then that same design would be released on an improved process(going from 90 to 65nm for example). The design would be the same, just an improved process that would allow for faster versions of that design.
AMD has done it as well to an extent, but the high-end processors in the K8 generation are still on 90nm while the lower-clocked chips are at 65nm. Intel has more resources, so can throw more resources at fab process improvements while keeping the same number of resources focused on the overall CPU design.
Now, there are some disadvantages to Intel's method of approaching CPU innovation, including not looking for other ways to improve system performance. Think about it, AMD was able to do well due to the integrated memory controller and HyperTransport with a much smaller amount of cache. Even with these elements, will Intel come out with anything really NEW that will improve overall system performance?
So, Intel may hold the lead in terms of performance, or the AMD K10 architecture may allow AMD to catch back up. Either of these are possibilities at this point, and AMD is also working on things like adding some GPU functionality to their processors(Fusion being the first example of this). Even if the GPU power on the CPU is limited in terms of performance, it may add to the graphics processing power of an add-in video card to give an edge in terms of performance. Sure, Intel may be the platform for those who run MS Office, but for those who want some graphics power, AMD may end up with a clear advantage.
Tick-Tock is just an Intel way of saying they will do the same thing they always have, just pushing out improvements faster. AMD is focused more on figuring out ways to do things better because they can't keep up in a straight MHz competition, or on a straight fab process competition.
With any OS, there are ALWAYS two methods of sales/adoption of the new OS. The first and primary is having the OS pre-installed on computers sold. This number will fluctuate almost perfectly based on the number of computers sold during the period of time in question. You also have those who upgrade an existing computer or build their computer from scratch and need an OS to put on the new machine.
People have gotten the idea that if your existing computer can't handle Vista, don't do the upgrade. So, over the next year, the number of people who will upgrade to Vista will drop because those who COULD upgrade(fast enough processor, 1-2 gigs of RAM, and a decent video card/GPU) will have upgraded already.
So, why does it surprise anyone that the number of Vista sales will drop a bit until new Vista sales equal the number of new computers sold and built? No one expected the 1GHz Pentium 3 crowd to go to Vista, and even the Athlon XP/Pentium 4 users would probably buy a new computer rather than upgrading their existing machines to Vista.
Your comment touches on the real problem with the current generation of consoles without saying it. The consoles are able to do a lot more than the previous generation of consoles, but at this point, the only real improvements have been to the eye candy/graphics rather than being focused on the potential of the new consoles.
Games for the PC have been advancing a bit faster because game developers know that they can develop a game for what they expect the PC will be able to do, and make the game scale based on different computers. This allows a game dev to theoretically aim for 5 million polygon characters to interact with, but since the devs KNOW that not everyone will have that cutting edge equipment, they also make plans on how to scale the graphics down from "the best" settings.
Console game developers can NOT expect that what they are working on will apply to whatever the latest console is in four years, so they need to push games out faster, and hope the game is ready to ship before the next generation console stops sales of the game they designed to run on current consoles.