The real key phrase is skilled immigrants here. The problem that needs to be addressed isn't the legal immigrants, it is the swarm of illegal(if they come in without permission, they are breaking the law) and generally unskilled immigrants who don't speak English and who take the money they earn in this country and send it south of the border.
Intel has always been pushing for ways to improve the current system architecture out there, and only makes a change when they run out of room and competition is too hot for them. AMD on the other hand has continued to look forward toward that time when their current processor design will run out of room, and works to improve the overall system architecture.
Now, the whole multi-core race idea really was started by AMD when the K8 architecture was released. At that time, AMD knew there would be an issue with ramping CPU speeds well before that, so designed the K8 with dual-core in mind. HyperTransport and integrated memory controllers were the two really defining technologies that AMD came up with(with the help of others). So, dual-core finally was released, and AMD really had an almost easy way to take the current K8 design and with additional HT links, expand to quad-core, though more pins might be needed to add additional memory bandwidth between the CPU and memory.
Intel finally got their act together and released a good dual-core processor with a number of things that allowed them to beat AMD in terms of performance per core. AMD had their K8L design in the works, but "keeping up with Intel" is no longer what AMD aims for, they look for how to get ahead of Intel. So, the system architecture needs to advance faster. How do you make the entire computer run better? AMD continues to work on this while Intel only looks at taking current designs and tweaking them. Quad-core is where we are going right now, Intel looks at hundreds of cores. AMD looks at it and sees that individual applications will hit a point where adding cores will NOT improve performance. So, AMD looks at other ways to improve application performance.
Intel may have advantages over AMD in terms of technology and resources, but they follow AMD when it comes to the direction the computer industry will eventually go in. Multi-threaded applications won't necessarily go beyond 8 threads, except perhaps things like AI or server applications where MANY connections are being handled at once.
For those who feel that going with multiple processes to handle this sort of thing, no matter what operating system you are running, starting a new process has a certain overhead, and all these different processes can cause administrative headaches, both for the user and the OS. Multi-threading tends to be a better way to go, even if the majority of programmers don't have a lot of experience with this type of program design. Multi-threading requires the application designer to design first before programming begins, and too many companies out there don't do this.
There are two areas you need to look at on this issue, and to not look at each, you miss possible solutions.
The first area is the BIOS boot time, which has nothing to do with how long it takes Windows to load. On many systems, it takes a while for the BIOS to check for hardware, hard drives, and even devices that may or may not be there before booting. Now, this is an area that many can improve, but in some cases, the BIOS itself will never allow you to tweak things properly.
In the "old days", you had the option to set the drive parameters yourself in the BIOS, and to avoid having the BIOS scan for devices. Or you could do a one-time scan, and it would put in the parameters for you so the system doesn't need to check them every time you boot. I honestly miss that since on most systems today, you need to wait for the system to check what type of hard drives and CD drives you have every time you boot the machine.
Next, you have support for all sorts of devices that many people never use. If you disable the integrated firewire controller(IEEE 1394) for example, there should improve performance. You should be able to disable the integrated audio if you have a sound card as well. Or the floppy controller. There is a LOT of this junk that gets checked every time you boot the system. The sad thing is that it seems the BIOS STILL checks all this unused stuff at boot time. It may be a little faster, but the BIOS still knows the features are there, and it bloats the process. More features are generally not better when it comes to the time it takes the BIOS to finish checking.
So, the BIOS finally lets you boot.
And now, Windows starts to check every last feature in your system so it can set it as a device for Plug and Play. Even if you disable the feature in the BIOS, Windows will find it, and try to get a driver working for it. You may be able to avoid this by using jumpers on the motherboard to disable features rather than the BIOS/CMOS setup, but not always.
Microsoft ships Windows XP and Vista with all sorts of features enabled by default, which increases the load time. You have to love how Microsoft auto-enabled Wireless Zero configuration for every copy of Windows XP, even if you are looking at a desktop system without a wireless card in it. Windows Time, and many other services get turned on by default, and that is where most of the problem comes from as well. If you have Norton Anti-Virus, that will add to it, and Internet Security is worse still.
Now, it's not always the fault of Microsoft, Dell is one of the worst offenders when it comes to "adding features". When you get a Dell, unless you specifically ask them not to pre-load all their garbage, you get Dell support agents, and software to "make it easier for them to help you". What it really does is make them money because they get to sell more hardware when angry customers want to throw their monitor across the room because of stupid garbage like this.
The speed of the hard drive is another thing to look at when it comes to how long it takes to boot. If you have a 4200RPM hard drive, that's slow by the standards of today, but most systems come with either a 4200RPM or 5400RPM hard drive in them, rather than the faster 7200RPM or 10,000RPM drives. You can have two identical machines except for the hard drive, and you will find that a faster hard drive can trim 25 percent off the time it takes to boot.
System memory is the final area that can slow down your boot speed. If you have under 512 megs of system memory, that's too little for Windows XP, and generally you want 1 gig or more of system memory to make Windows XP load and run well. With Vista, this jumps to 1 gig really being required to load/run decently, with 2 gigs for what you really want.
If you have multiple physical hard drives, because of all the above issues, it really does pay to consolidate down to a single drive. I have recently done such a consolidation, going from 4 physical hard drives down to a single drive, and it has done wonders.
Isn't that because most people never bother to reboot, which is when the system diagnosis will detect problems? S.M.A.R.T TELLS most users(except those who buy a Dell with the feature turned off from the factory) before their hard drive fails on them. As a result, turning a system on IS dangerous, because the hard drive needs to spin up, and if the motor is having problems, it will have problems.
Most computer systems you see in an office are fairly low-end without a lot of extra stuff in them. As a result, the power supply is more than enough for the demands. The majority of problems with power supplies, motherboards, and such having problems because you reboot are caused by having too many components in the system. My 4 hard drives, 2 DVD-RW drives, and video card in my system put a much greater strain on the motherboard and power supply, so of COURSE I will have more problems. That doesn't mean that most people shouldn't shut down just because re-booting puts a strain on various components, it just means that those who work their machines hard need to buy higher-end components that can handle it.
The issue is where the taxes go, not if the the income generated is taxed. This varies by locality, county, and state. In many cases, while it is acceptable to rent out a house, you have many cases where it's a one family dwelling yet you have 12-24 immigrants living in that home. Do you think the tax money goes back to the school in these cases, even if the home owner pays the income tax?
Or in the case of some areas, it's legal to rent a room, but school taxes paid don't increase as a result of having a rental unit in the house.
That's all a part of it. If everyone who lives in an area contributes to the school system, then the cost per person goes down. As a part of the whole school tax issue I would add that every student who goes to school should be checked to make sure that the family does in fact live in that school district. Nothing is worse than having illegal immigrants sending their children to school and costing those who are in this country legally(immigrant or citizen) a lot of money.
As a side note, I am not against those who come to this country legally, just those who come to this country without permission or stay longer than allowed by immigration law. Those with children who don't speak the English language should be expected to have their children learn English BEFORE having the children go to a public school since they take up more resources and prevent students from getting the education they deserve. Education during the "learning of English" phase is a different issue.
Smaller breaks would help reduce how much is forgotten between grades, but still doesn't solve the problem where those who love English and History tend to generate very little interest in math or science in their students the same way a math major won't generate a lot of excitement in history.
How do you get younger students interested in learning if both parents are out working? This goes back to society as a whole, but if the school system is expected to pick up the slack when it comes to education, then making improvements to the school system as a whole may be the only way to deal with the situation. My solution of having teachers dedicated to their subject teaching from grades 1-12, not just 5(or 6) through 12 would help as long as the teachers don't end up burned out and still teaching for 10 years after they should have retired.
Even in your area, where school funding isn't an issue, I am sure that a dedicated science teacher could get kids in first and second grade interested in science, and a dedicated math teacher could teach kids different ways to approach solving problems so that they may come to enjoy these subjects that tend to get neglected until years later.
Property taxes going up due to the schools would be eliminated by removing school funding from property taxes in the first place. Again, the problem with school funding is that those who rent do not pay into the school system, yet in MANY places in this country, the majority of students come from families who rent.
If you consider it, if you complain about the quality of the education system in this country, then you should be willing to be a part of funding the education system. I rent myself and have no kids, but know that the only way to make sure the schools get proper funding is for EVERYONE who lives in an area to support the things that they expect. Fire, police, hospitals, etc. These should ALL be funded fully rather than send the money to the state and federal government and then hope that the funding comes back down in your area where it's needed. Property taxes should only be used to pay for the local government since the same government services are expected to serve everyone in that area, not just home owners. I mean that property taxes should be lower by these ideas as well.
Those who rent instead of own a home don't pay ANY money into the education system. The current school tax that comes as a part of property tax would be eliminated under my proposed change to school funding.
I don't know about how it is where you live, but many home owners have NO children, yet are already paying taxes to send children to school. By saying, "Why should those who don't use the education system be required to fund it?", you then imply that the only people who should be paying taxes for education are those in school or those with children in school, meaning there should be NO tax at all, and just have parents pay for the education of their children. I happen to live in an area where most children come from homes where the parents rent, meaning the renters, not the home owners are the reason the schools need to increase their budgets. As a result, I feel that it makes more sense to charge EVERYONE in a community a small amount than to have only those who own a home fund the entire education system with some help from the state. You may be free of the influx of people from "Spanish speaking" countries where you are as well, but where I live, the school population has doubled in size, and most rent. So, double the school tax for those who own, and don't expect the parents of all these kids to pay into the school system is what you expect if nothing changes.
Now, I am NOT saying that children should be in classes a full 40 hours per week, but the school day DOES need to be longer to handle the increased need for things like required computer education(which wasn't even available until high school for me). As the number of subjects that students are expected to know increases, the amount of time students are in school also needs to increase. Having 2.5 months off during the sumer where most students don't have exposure to what they were "learning" during the school year is just too long and students forget too much.
As others have said, the problem is with our elementary schools as well as high schools and colleges/universities. There is also the stupid idea that ANYTHING can be fixed by making some minor changes.
If you get into a big accident in your car, you KNOW the car will never be the same again, it just CAN'T be fixed properly. The American education system faces a similar situation.
Elementary schools are treated like a combination of one room schoolhouses where one teacher needs to instill a love of learning about every subject. It just doesn't work since no person loves Engish, History, Science, and Math to the point where they can really radiate an excitement for all of these subjects. The schools want/need to teach more subjects, but don't want to extend the school year and school day to the point where school is a full-time thing for students(with a bit more time off at different times of the year).
With dedicated math, science, english, and history teachers who love(or at least really enjoy) their subject, most students will tend to discover an interest in one or more of these subjects themselves. Without an interest in one or more subjects, schools are nothing more than a babysitting service while parents are out working.
It is unfortunate that most governments don't have leaders who understand that if something is seriously broken, doing a full replacement of the system as a whole is required. Here in the USA, what is needed is:
Shrink the summer vacation from 2-2.5 months down to 3 weeks, and to extend the school day to go from 8am to 4pm.
Get rid of elementary school and go to a system where different subjects have different teachers. To help younger students, the teachers can move from classroom to classroom instead of having the students go from room to room.
Focus on conceptual learning as well as memorization since understanding the why of things is generally more important in future problem solving than JUST being able to come up with the right answer.
Move school funding to being a part of income taxes, not just property taxes as well since those who rent instead of own tend not to pay into the school system.
If the above ideas are not enough, make it so you have 16 grades, not just 12. College should be where people go for EXTRA education, and should not be required to get most jobs. Now that the USA(and most of Europe for that matter) have shifted from blue collar/manufacturing jobs as the focus and have shifted to white collar educated jobs as the focus of the economy, that should be the focus for the minimum the standard public education system should have as a focus. If a public education system could be brought back to properly preparing students for most jobs, it would solve the problem.
Let me guess, you work in the auto industry where the same design with MINOR changes is pushed out year after year with no improvements. In the computer industry, progress is being made, and process technology advances are a part of that.
The key is that by shrinking, the amount of power required goes down, which means you can either add more features, cache, or you can increase the speed of the chip.
Actually, patents are granted to those who either manufacture or plan to manufacture a product with the proposed "new idea". You don't NEED to have a product to get a patent, but you do need to have a desire to make the product.
So, if a company files a patent, but then doesn't act to turn the idea into a product, the patent should go away.
So, come up with an idea, patent it, and then continue on to manufacture that product, or sell the rights to someone else.
The problem with these shows going "behind closed doors" is that there will be zero reason for any company going to the show at all, in any form. The same companies can easily just invite the press to their own events at different places if all they want is a place to show reporters their recently announced products.
As for the "booth babes" being either good or bad, it depends. The web sites that show them as a feature in the reporting are a big part of the problem since the idea really is to show off the products the company will be selling. For those who attend the shows though, they were considered a part of the entertainment and atmosphere of the show to attract people to their booths.
The cost for vendors to go to the shows may have gotten out of control, and moving the location somewhere else may have been in order, but the nature of the shows should not have been changed in my opinion. It's FUN to go to these type of shows in person, and they will be missed by those who really did understand that the shows really were about seeing the new products that were being developed, and not just about being a source of information.
A part of the problem may also be that the game market has been imploding with more sequels that show off the next generation of the same crap we see today for the most part. New graphics and effects engines may have a certain "cool" factor associated with them, but they don't change the gameplay all that much. When physics processing gets to the point where you can blow a hole in ANY wall(perhaps with repeated shots or explosions), and allow the player to move through that hole it will finally make a PPU worth buying for the average gamer, but until then, it's the type of thing that won't make the average person want to buy one as just one example of a hyped product doing nothing for gameplay.
PCI is on it's way out, PCI Express is the next stage, or HTX(HyperTransport slot).
Dedicated co-processors are a good idea, the problem is the costs involved. AMD is pushing for these companies to just make their new co-processors work with an existing socket type so instead of trying to sell cards(which cost more money to make due to the PCB), we will buy just the chip itself.
To be honest, this is a better way to go since if a GPU were implemented in this way, you could easily just buy a GPU, toss it on the motherboard, and bingo, easy upgrade without the expense of buying a new graphics card and memory. Sure, you might see generational jumps in the memory used for the graphics and how it connects to the GPU, but that problem could be solved in multiple ways.
The difference is that there are companies out there that sell in-game items or money for RL money. That being the case, there is a real dollar value that can be associated with in-game scams.
I could be wrong, but the difference is in the distribution rights, not in the end result.
If you are required to download the ATI drivers as a seperate piece, but have the code in place to allow for third party drivers, then there is no problem with the GPL.
ATI doesn't re-distribute anything, they just make a module that can be dropped in. No changes to the software were done by ATI.
So, if IChessU made their stuff as a seperate package without distribution of JIN, that's fine. The problem is that IChessU is taking JIN, making changes, then re-distributing the modified product.
If IChessU made an installer that downloaded the JIN package, patch it, and do so automatically, that might work as long as the proper copyright notices were put in place.
JIN is NOT the work of IChessU, and as a result, IChessU doesn't have the rights to take JIN and distribute a modified version.
A great program known as BartPE works in the way I suggest IChessU should if they wanted to avoid a legal problem. It asks for the original Windows CD, and builds the resulting CD image. For legal purposes, BartPE requires that you have the rights to run WindowsXP(meaning you have a valid product key), but when it comes down to it, BartPE doesn't include any part of the Windows XP code in the distribution.
Another way to look at it is that you are allowed to make any changes you want for your own personal use as long as you don't re-distribute any modified versions without also providing the full source code. That's the short version. If you keep it in house, then it's generally not a problem. The moment you try to sell something that takes source code written by someone else, then you run into problems.
Civ 4 is a turn based strategy game, not a Real Time Strategy game. As a result, the focus is on thinking about your overall strategy, as well as to handle individual units. The situation you put yourself may require you to micro-manage things more or less, and it's not necessarily the fault of the game.
Now, Civ 4 was a huge step forward for the series from Civ 3. It's not Civ 3 with some new features and slightly improved graphics, so of course some people will complain without playing it enough to understand the changes.
If you are at war(which doesn't happen all that often if you keep your military strength up), then of course you need to control your military units. You can't avoid that, but being at war isn't the only way to win in Civ 4. You have the space race, you have culture, you have the old domination method, and so on. You can also use religion as a primary way to handle your economy.
The trick is that many things can be automated, but it's up to you if you want to play that way. If you want to spam-grow your empire, that won't work in Civ 4 without reducing your science output. Things change, in this case for the better. There is room for improvement, but complaining about clicking is like complaining that Chess gets too complicated in the mid and end game. Strategy means you have a lot of things to think about, but you don't need to move EVERY piece each turn.
If all you play are action "console style" games, then you are right. Of course, some of us like to play games that require more thinking and don't need lightning reflexes to do well.
Do you honestly think a game like Civilization 4 would be a good fit for a console? The game may not need that much CPU or GPU power to play, but I love how some people think every game is suited to a console.
[quote]What they can't do is deceive the rating board about the content.[/quote]
That is the key, isn't it? If content is disabled and it takes reverse engineering to even find it, has Take 2 done anything wrong? So, they removed the "offending content" from new versions of the game. Since reverse engineering in order to find the content is a violation of the game license, Take 2 could theoretically sue the person who made the mod for damages.
The vast majority of applications out there, not just games, have code that has been disabled because it just didn't work. The original Diablo had a bunch of quests and such on the original CD that were bugged and disabled(and never fixed and added back in later). It's all a function of that push to release quickly that we all know exists in the game industry.
So, Take 2 turned off content, but never purged it from the code. That's not an intentional attempt to fool anyone about the content in the game, so there really shouldn't have been a problem. I can understand the ESRB making the company remove the content from the code, but the fault is on the person who released the mod since he violated the terms of the game license.
Re:DnD is NOT a Solo Game
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DDO Goes Solo
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The reason for this change is because there are times like at 2am where the population on some of the servers is VERY low, and grouping becomes very difficult. So you have people who play at those times who can't do anything due to a lack of people.
Turbine's solution is to make the new "solo" difficulty provide a 50 percent reduction in experience reward. So if you want to solo, the reward will be MUCH lower, but the choice is still there. Some classes will still be unable to solo, and some adventures will never be able to be completed solo due to the requirements of the adventure. Ranged may be needed for some things, arcane casters for others, and so on. So people won't be able to "beat the game" solo.
I always recomend that players find a guild, since a guild will generally have a better selection of good players to group with compared to "the general public".
Unlike other MMOs, DDO has every adventure set as an instance. When you start an adventure with a group, that adventure will only have your group. No need to share spawns, or camp one spot because of others who are also playing.
So, you form your group BEFORE you start your adventure, you go through the adventure from start to finish. You can add people to the group once you have started, but generally, you go through the adventure with your original group. Some quests have multiple parts, with each part seperated. This means that you can do the entire quest from start to finish, or you can pick up where you left off. You just need to finish after an individual adventure in order to get credit for finishing that part of the quest.
Most adventures are designed with a 4-6 person group in mind, so the way the quests will be made "soloable" is to take the adventure and tone down the difficulty(which also results in less experience).
Experience in DDO is awarded for finishing an adventure, not just killing one monster(unless that monster is a quest objective). So you don't sit in one place killing respawns over and over. You may repeat the same adventure multiple times, but at least it's not killing the same spawn over and over and over again just waiting for a rare-spawn.
The original Tomb Raider game was different in more ways than the gender of the main character. For starters, it was a BIG change from first person shooters, and looking back, it still stands out for it's differences.
In 1996, first person shooters were already a huge hit with gamers. In general, they tended to be somewhat brainless "if it moves, shoot it" type games(and still are for the most part). There were still some adventure games out there where you had to think your way through the adventure, but the popularity of first person shooters had already started to dominate the thinking of some people. And that's where Tomb Raider came in, as an alternative to that.
Tomb Raider featured extensive puzzle solving as a part of the gameplay. Jump from here to here to flip a lever to open a door, with a time limit on some parts of the puzzle. In many ways, the game would have done well with a male main character but using the same game.
Another feature that helped it do well was the support for 3D accelerators, which were JUST showing up on the market. Before that time, you had software rendering of everything, and to keep the game performance at the proper level, Eidos just couldn't provide high quality graphics(for the time) in software. Hardware acceleration(the original 3Dfx Voodoo chip being the dominant one) made the game look and play a LOT better. So for eye candy, this also had a large effect on how well the game did.
Then you had the subject matter, with Indiana Jones and treasure hunting being popular, a game that had the plot about going into ruins to look for treasure was a good one and it worked well.
You also had HUGE levels for the time. To come out of a pool of water to look UP at some large ruins that for whatever reason were now underground, and feel like the character is small in comparison was different from just about all the other game of the time was a very cool experience. Most of the ruins had animals in them to deal with, not people, so there was the sense that violence wasn't the core of the game.
And then, FINALLY, you had your female main character, with her trying to get all the pieces to the artifact. Obviously teenage boys tend to be drawn to women with large breasts, and many try to make this the center of any theories on why the original Tomb Raider game did well without looking at the other aspects of the game. There were a number of women as well as older players who enjoyed playing for the game design as the primary reason for enjoying the game. It's true that some women enjoyed playing a game where the main character was a woman, and the vast majority of men will enjoy seeing attractive women in a game, but I feel that the other aspects don't get enough attention when Tomb Raider gets mentioned.
Tomb Raider may not have done quite as well without a woman as the main character, but it was still an amazing game, and would have done well.
An action game tends to be all about the gameplay, with storyline being an afterthought. First person shooters are ALL about gameplay, with storyline being so far down on the list of priorities that many players skip the storyline reasons for what they do in the game.
You have roleplaying games which tend to be on the other end of the spectrum. You have a lot of story(not all of these are good), with graphics being the less important.
The games that make the most money are the action games, you end up with 15 clones or sequels, and the movie studios think that's where the money is, and fail miserably.
Now, you see the rare game that tries to deliver both, such as Tomb Raider-Legend. It's not a bad game, and you can see that there was a bit of effort put into the story. The gameplay itself seems to be made for the lowest common denominator, the consoles the game was planned to run on, and it's why the game feels a bit small and simple. The engine and graphics are decent, but it's just too small and the "levels" a bit too straight forward to fully revitalize the series, but it's a good start. They could just as easily have made the game a movie since the elements are there.
Baldur's Gate could be a decent movie(or series of movies) with some changes, because it's more about the story and less about special effects.
Games that start with a story, and then have the gameplay be developed to tell the story tend to fail because storytellers often have no clue what would be fun to play. But at the same time, if someone manages to pull it off, the GREAT games are the result. Movies have an easier time of it because they can stick to the story without needing to worry about gameplay.
This is exactly how I feel about it, as well as blogs and most of the "content" out there on the Internet. I have opinions on many different things, but don't see a reason to put them "out there" because I don't have a big enough ego to think I would get all that many people interested in what I have to say.
Personal web pages are similar, and I've never understood why so many people set up a web page. Do they really think that ANYONE out there would want to go to a web page when an e-mail would be a better way to share news and such? An e-mail can be viewed offline once you download it as well, so if your goal is to share some pictures, either use Kodak Gallery or something similar, or e-mail them.
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The real key phrase is skilled immigrants here. The problem that needs to be addressed isn't the legal immigrants, it is the swarm of illegal(if they come in without permission, they are breaking the law) and generally unskilled immigrants who don't speak English and who take the money they earn in this country and send it south of the border.
Intel has always been pushing for ways to improve the current system architecture out there, and only makes a change when they run out of room and competition is too hot for them. AMD on the other hand has continued to look forward toward that time when their current processor design will run out of room, and works to improve the overall system architecture.
Now, the whole multi-core race idea really was started by AMD when the K8 architecture was released. At that time, AMD knew there would be an issue with ramping CPU speeds well before that, so designed the K8 with dual-core in mind. HyperTransport and integrated memory controllers were the two really defining technologies that AMD came up with(with the help of others). So, dual-core finally was released, and AMD really had an almost easy way to take the current K8 design and with additional HT links, expand to quad-core, though more pins might be needed to add additional memory bandwidth between the CPU and memory.
Intel finally got their act together and released a good dual-core processor with a number of things that allowed them to beat AMD in terms of performance per core. AMD had their K8L design in the works, but "keeping up with Intel" is no longer what AMD aims for, they look for how to get ahead of Intel. So, the system architecture needs to advance faster. How do you make the entire computer run better? AMD continues to work on this while Intel only looks at taking current designs and tweaking them. Quad-core is where we are going right now, Intel looks at hundreds of cores. AMD looks at it and sees that individual applications will hit a point where adding cores will NOT improve performance. So, AMD looks at other ways to improve application performance.
Intel may have advantages over AMD in terms of technology and resources, but they follow AMD when it comes to the direction the computer industry will eventually go in. Multi-threaded applications won't necessarily go beyond 8 threads, except perhaps things like AI or server applications where MANY connections are being handled at once.
For those who feel that going with multiple processes to handle this sort of thing, no matter what operating system you are running, starting a new process has a certain overhead, and all these different processes can cause administrative headaches, both for the user and the OS. Multi-threading tends to be a better way to go, even if the majority of programmers don't have a lot of experience with this type of program design. Multi-threading requires the application designer to design first before programming begins, and too many companies out there don't do this.
There are two areas you need to look at on this issue, and to not look at each, you miss possible solutions.
The first area is the BIOS boot time, which has nothing to do with how long it takes Windows to load. On many systems, it takes a while for the BIOS to check for hardware, hard drives, and even devices that may or may not be there before booting. Now, this is an area that many can improve, but in some cases, the BIOS itself will never allow you to tweak things properly.
In the "old days", you had the option to set the drive parameters yourself in the BIOS, and to avoid having the BIOS scan for devices. Or you could do a one-time scan, and it would put in the parameters for you so the system doesn't need to check them every time you boot. I honestly miss that since on most systems today, you need to wait for the system to check what type of hard drives and CD drives you have every time you boot the machine.
Next, you have support for all sorts of devices that many people never use. If you disable the integrated firewire controller(IEEE 1394) for example, there should improve performance. You should be able to disable the integrated audio if you have a sound card as well. Or the floppy controller. There is a LOT of this junk that gets checked every time you boot the system. The sad thing is that it seems the BIOS STILL checks all this unused stuff at boot time. It may be a little faster, but the BIOS still knows the features are there, and it bloats the process. More features are generally not better when it comes to the time it takes the BIOS to finish checking.
So, the BIOS finally lets you boot.
And now, Windows starts to check every last feature in your system so it can set it as a device for Plug and Play. Even if you disable the feature in the BIOS, Windows will find it, and try to get a driver working for it. You may be able to avoid this by using jumpers on the motherboard to disable features rather than the BIOS/CMOS setup, but not always.
Microsoft ships Windows XP and Vista with all sorts of features enabled by default, which increases the load time. You have to love how Microsoft auto-enabled Wireless Zero configuration for every copy of Windows XP, even if you are looking at a desktop system without a wireless card in it. Windows Time, and many other services get turned on by default, and that is where most of the problem comes from as well. If you have Norton Anti-Virus, that will add to it, and Internet Security is worse still.
Now, it's not always the fault of Microsoft, Dell is one of the worst offenders when it comes to "adding features". When you get a Dell, unless you specifically ask them not to pre-load all their garbage, you get Dell support agents, and software to "make it easier for them to help you". What it really does is make them money because they get to sell more hardware when angry customers want to throw their monitor across the room because of stupid garbage like this.
The speed of the hard drive is another thing to look at when it comes to how long it takes to boot. If you have a 4200RPM hard drive, that's slow by the standards of today, but most systems come with either a 4200RPM or 5400RPM hard drive in them, rather than the faster 7200RPM or 10,000RPM drives. You can have two identical machines except for the hard drive, and you will find that a faster hard drive can trim 25 percent off the time it takes to boot.
System memory is the final area that can slow down your boot speed. If you have under 512 megs of system memory, that's too little for Windows XP, and generally you want 1 gig or more of system memory to make Windows XP load and run well. With Vista, this jumps to 1 gig really being required to load/run decently, with 2 gigs for what you really want.
If you have multiple physical hard drives, because of all the above issues, it really does pay to consolidate down to a single drive. I have recently done such a consolidation, going from 4 physical hard drives down to a single drive, and it has done wonders.
Isn't that because most people never bother to reboot, which is when the system diagnosis will detect problems? S.M.A.R.T TELLS most users(except those who buy a Dell with the feature turned off from the factory) before their hard drive fails on them. As a result, turning a system on IS dangerous, because the hard drive needs to spin up, and if the motor is having problems, it will have problems.
Most computer systems you see in an office are fairly low-end without a lot of extra stuff in them. As a result, the power supply is more than enough for the demands. The majority of problems with power supplies, motherboards, and such having problems because you reboot are caused by having too many components in the system. My 4 hard drives, 2 DVD-RW drives, and video card in my system put a much greater strain on the motherboard and power supply, so of COURSE I will have more problems. That doesn't mean that most people shouldn't shut down just because re-booting puts a strain on various components, it just means that those who work their machines hard need to buy higher-end components that can handle it.
The issue is where the taxes go, not if the the income generated is taxed. This varies by locality, county, and state. In many cases, while it is acceptable to rent out a house, you have many cases where it's a one family dwelling yet you have 12-24 immigrants living in that home. Do you think the tax money goes back to the school in these cases, even if the home owner pays the income tax?
Or in the case of some areas, it's legal to rent a room, but school taxes paid don't increase as a result of having a rental unit in the house.
That's all a part of it. If everyone who lives in an area contributes to the school system, then the cost per person goes down. As a part of the whole school tax issue I would add that every student who goes to school should be checked to make sure that the family does in fact live in that school district. Nothing is worse than having illegal immigrants sending their children to school and costing those who are in this country legally(immigrant or citizen) a lot of money.
As a side note, I am not against those who come to this country legally, just those who come to this country without permission or stay longer than allowed by immigration law. Those with children who don't speak the English language should be expected to have their children learn English BEFORE having the children go to a public school since they take up more resources and prevent students from getting the education they deserve. Education during the "learning of English" phase is a different issue.
Smaller breaks would help reduce how much is forgotten between grades, but still doesn't solve the problem where those who love English and History tend to generate very little interest in math or science in their students the same way a math major won't generate a lot of excitement in history.
How do you get younger students interested in learning if both parents are out working? This goes back to society as a whole, but if the school system is expected to pick up the slack when it comes to education, then making improvements to the school system as a whole may be the only way to deal with the situation. My solution of having teachers dedicated to their subject teaching from grades 1-12, not just 5(or 6) through 12 would help as long as the teachers don't end up burned out and still teaching for 10 years after they should have retired.
Even in your area, where school funding isn't an issue, I am sure that a dedicated science teacher could get kids in first and second grade interested in science, and a dedicated math teacher could teach kids different ways to approach solving problems so that they may come to enjoy these subjects that tend to get neglected until years later.
Property taxes going up due to the schools would be eliminated by removing school funding from property taxes in the first place. Again, the problem with school funding is that those who rent do not pay into the school system, yet in MANY places in this country, the majority of students come from families who rent.
If you consider it, if you complain about the quality of the education system in this country, then you should be willing to be a part of funding the education system. I rent myself and have no kids, but know that the only way to make sure the schools get proper funding is for EVERYONE who lives in an area to support the things that they expect. Fire, police, hospitals, etc. These should ALL be funded fully rather than send the money to the state and federal government and then hope that the funding comes back down in your area where it's needed. Property taxes should only be used to pay for the local government since the same government services are expected to serve everyone in that area, not just home owners. I mean that property taxes should be lower by these ideas as well.
Those who rent instead of own a home don't pay ANY money into the education system. The current school tax that comes as a part of property tax would be eliminated under my proposed change to school funding.
I don't know about how it is where you live, but many home owners have NO children, yet are already paying taxes to send children to school. By saying, "Why should those who don't use the education system be required to fund it?", you then imply that the only people who should be paying taxes for education are those in school or those with children in school, meaning there should be NO tax at all, and just have parents pay for the education of their children. I happen to live in an area where most children come from homes where the parents rent, meaning the renters, not the home owners are the reason the schools need to increase their budgets. As a result, I feel that it makes more sense to charge EVERYONE in a community a small amount than to have only those who own a home fund the entire education system with some help from the state. You may be free of the influx of people from "Spanish speaking" countries where you are as well, but where I live, the school population has doubled in size, and most rent. So, double the school tax for those who own, and don't expect the parents of all these kids to pay into the school system is what you expect if nothing changes.
Now, I am NOT saying that children should be in classes a full 40 hours per week, but the school day DOES need to be longer to handle the increased need for things like required computer education(which wasn't even available until high school for me). As the number of subjects that students are expected to know increases, the amount of time students are in school also needs to increase. Having 2.5 months off during the sumer where most students don't have exposure to what they were "learning" during the school year is just too long and students forget too much.
As others have said, the problem is with our elementary schools as well as high schools and colleges/universities. There is also the stupid idea that ANYTHING can be fixed by making some minor changes.
If you get into a big accident in your car, you KNOW the car will never be the same again, it just CAN'T be fixed properly. The American education system faces a similar situation.
Elementary schools are treated like a combination of one room schoolhouses where one teacher needs to instill a love of learning about every subject. It just doesn't work since no person loves Engish, History, Science, and Math to the point where they can really radiate an excitement for all of these subjects. The schools want/need to teach more subjects, but don't want to extend the school year and school day to the point where school is a full-time thing for students(with a bit more time off at different times of the year).
With dedicated math, science, english, and history teachers who love(or at least really enjoy) their subject, most students will tend to discover an interest in one or more of these subjects themselves. Without an interest in one or more subjects, schools are nothing more than a babysitting service while parents are out working.
It is unfortunate that most governments don't have leaders who understand that if something is seriously broken, doing a full replacement of the system as a whole is required. Here in the USA, what is needed is:
Shrink the summer vacation from 2-2.5 months down to 3 weeks, and to extend the school day to go from 8am to 4pm.
Get rid of elementary school and go to a system where different subjects have different teachers. To help younger students, the teachers can move from classroom to classroom instead of having the students go from room to room.
Focus on conceptual learning as well as memorization since understanding the why of things is generally more important in future problem solving than JUST being able to come up with the right answer.
Move school funding to being a part of income taxes, not just property taxes as well since those who rent instead of own tend not to pay into the school system.
If the above ideas are not enough, make it so you have 16 grades, not just 12. College should be where people go for EXTRA education, and should not be required to get most jobs. Now that the USA(and most of Europe for that matter) have shifted from blue collar/manufacturing jobs as the focus and have shifted to white collar educated jobs as the focus of the economy, that should be the focus for the minimum the standard public education system should have as a focus. If a public education system could be brought back to properly preparing students for most jobs, it would solve the problem.
Let me guess, you work in the auto industry where the same design with MINOR changes is pushed out year after year with no improvements. In the computer industry, progress is being made, and process technology advances are a part of that.
The key is that by shrinking, the amount of power required goes down, which means you can either add more features, cache, or you can increase the speed of the chip.
Actually, patents are granted to those who either manufacture or plan to manufacture a product with the proposed "new idea". You don't NEED to have a product to get a patent, but you do need to have a desire to make the product.
So, if a company files a patent, but then doesn't act to turn the idea into a product, the patent should go away.
So, come up with an idea, patent it, and then continue on to manufacture that product, or sell the rights to someone else.
The problem with these shows going "behind closed doors" is that there will be zero reason for any company going to the show at all, in any form. The same companies can easily just invite the press to their own events at different places if all they want is a place to show reporters their recently announced products.
As for the "booth babes" being either good or bad, it depends. The web sites that show them as a feature in the reporting are a big part of the problem since the idea really is to show off the products the company will be selling. For those who attend the shows though, they were considered a part of the entertainment and atmosphere of the show to attract people to their booths.
The cost for vendors to go to the shows may have gotten out of control, and moving the location somewhere else may have been in order, but the nature of the shows should not have been changed in my opinion. It's FUN to go to these type of shows in person, and they will be missed by those who really did understand that the shows really were about seeing the new products that were being developed, and not just about being a source of information.
A part of the problem may also be that the game market has been imploding with more sequels that show off the next generation of the same crap we see today for the most part. New graphics and effects engines may have a certain "cool" factor associated with them, but they don't change the gameplay all that much. When physics processing gets to the point where you can blow a hole in ANY wall(perhaps with repeated shots or explosions), and allow the player to move through that hole it will finally make a PPU worth buying for the average gamer, but until then, it's the type of thing that won't make the average person want to buy one as just one example of a hyped product doing nothing for gameplay.
PCI is on it's way out, PCI Express is the next stage, or HTX(HyperTransport slot).
Dedicated co-processors are a good idea, the problem is the costs involved. AMD is pushing for these companies to just make their new co-processors work with an existing socket type so instead of trying to sell cards(which cost more money to make due to the PCB), we will buy just the chip itself.
To be honest, this is a better way to go since if a GPU were implemented in this way, you could easily just buy a GPU, toss it on the motherboard, and bingo, easy upgrade without the expense of buying a new graphics card and memory. Sure, you might see generational jumps in the memory used for the graphics and how it connects to the GPU, but that problem could be solved in multiple ways.
The difference is that there are companies out there that sell in-game items or money for RL money. That being the case, there is a real dollar value that can be associated with in-game scams.
I could be wrong, but the difference is in the distribution rights, not in the end result.
If you are required to download the ATI drivers as a seperate piece, but have the code in place to allow for third party drivers, then there is no problem with the GPL.
ATI doesn't re-distribute anything, they just make a module that can be dropped in. No changes to the software were done by ATI.
So, if IChessU made their stuff as a seperate package without distribution of JIN, that's fine. The problem is that IChessU is taking JIN, making changes, then re-distributing the modified product.
If IChessU made an installer that downloaded the JIN package, patch it, and do so automatically, that might work as long as the proper copyright notices were put in place.
JIN is NOT the work of IChessU, and as a result, IChessU doesn't have the rights to take JIN and distribute a modified version.
A great program known as BartPE works in the way I suggest IChessU should if they wanted to avoid a legal problem. It asks for the original Windows CD, and builds the resulting CD image. For legal purposes, BartPE requires that you have the rights to run WindowsXP(meaning you have a valid product key), but when it comes down to it, BartPE doesn't include any part of the Windows XP code in the distribution.
Another way to look at it is that you are allowed to make any changes you want for your own personal use as long as you don't re-distribute any modified versions without also providing the full source code. That's the short version. If you keep it in house, then it's generally not a problem. The moment you try to sell something that takes source code written by someone else, then you run into problems.
Civ 4 is a turn based strategy game, not a Real Time Strategy game. As a result, the focus is on thinking about your overall strategy, as well as to handle individual units. The situation you put yourself may require you to micro-manage things more or less, and it's not necessarily the fault of the game.
Now, Civ 4 was a huge step forward for the series from Civ 3. It's not Civ 3 with some new features and slightly improved graphics, so of course some people will complain without playing it enough to understand the changes.
If you are at war(which doesn't happen all that often if you keep your military strength up), then of course you need to control your military units. You can't avoid that, but being at war isn't the only way to win in Civ 4. You have the space race, you have culture, you have the old domination method, and so on. You can also use religion as a primary way to handle your economy.
The trick is that many things can be automated, but it's up to you if you want to play that way. If you want to spam-grow your empire, that won't work in Civ 4 without reducing your science output. Things change, in this case for the better. There is room for improvement, but complaining about clicking is like complaining that Chess gets too complicated in the mid and end game. Strategy means you have a lot of things to think about, but you don't need to move EVERY piece each turn.
If all you play are action "console style" games, then you are right. Of course, some of us like to play games that require more thinking and don't need lightning reflexes to do well.
Do you honestly think a game like Civilization 4 would be a good fit for a console? The game may not need that much CPU or GPU power to play, but I love how some people think every game is suited to a console.
[quote]What they can't do is deceive the rating board about the content.[/quote]
That is the key, isn't it? If content is disabled and it takes reverse engineering to even find it, has Take 2 done anything wrong? So, they removed the "offending content" from new versions of the game. Since reverse engineering in order to find the content is a violation of the game license, Take 2 could theoretically sue the person who made the mod for damages.
The vast majority of applications out there, not just games, have code that has been disabled because it just didn't work. The original Diablo had a bunch of quests and such on the original CD that were bugged and disabled(and never fixed and added back in later). It's all a function of that push to release quickly that we all know exists in the game industry.
So, Take 2 turned off content, but never purged it from the code. That's not an intentional attempt to fool anyone about the content in the game, so there really shouldn't have been a problem. I can understand the ESRB making the company remove the content from the code, but the fault is on the person who released the mod since he violated the terms of the game license.
The reason for this change is because there are times like at 2am where the population on some of the servers is VERY low, and grouping becomes very difficult. So you have people who play at those times who can't do anything due to a lack of people.
Turbine's solution is to make the new "solo" difficulty provide a 50 percent reduction in experience reward. So if you want to solo, the reward will be MUCH lower, but the choice is still there. Some classes will still be unable to solo, and some adventures will never be able to be completed solo due to the requirements of the adventure. Ranged may be needed for some things, arcane casters for others, and so on. So people won't be able to "beat the game" solo.
I always recomend that players find a guild, since a guild will generally have a better selection of good players to group with compared to "the general public".
Unlike other MMOs, DDO has every adventure set as an instance. When you start an adventure with a group, that adventure will only have your group. No need to share spawns, or camp one spot because of others who are also playing.
So, you form your group BEFORE you start your adventure, you go through the adventure from start to finish. You can add people to the group once you have started, but generally, you go through the adventure with your original group. Some quests have multiple parts, with each part seperated. This means that you can do the entire quest from start to finish, or you can pick up where you left off. You just need to finish after an individual adventure in order to get credit for finishing that part of the quest.
Most adventures are designed with a 4-6 person group in mind, so the way the quests will be made "soloable" is to take the adventure and tone down the difficulty(which also results in less experience).
Experience in DDO is awarded for finishing an adventure, not just killing one monster(unless that monster is a quest objective). So you don't sit in one place killing respawns over and over. You may repeat the same adventure multiple times, but at least it's not killing the same spawn over and over and over again just waiting for a rare-spawn.
The original Tomb Raider game was different in more ways than the gender of the main character. For starters, it was a BIG change from first person shooters, and looking back, it still stands out for it's differences.
In 1996, first person shooters were already a huge hit with gamers. In general, they tended to be somewhat brainless "if it moves, shoot it" type games(and still are for the most part). There were still some adventure games out there where you had to think your way through the adventure, but the popularity of first person shooters had already started to dominate the thinking of some people. And that's where Tomb Raider came in, as an alternative to that.
Tomb Raider featured extensive puzzle solving as a part of the gameplay. Jump from here to here to flip a lever to open a door, with a time limit on some parts of the puzzle. In many ways, the game would have done well with a male main character but using the same game.
Another feature that helped it do well was the support for 3D accelerators, which were JUST showing up on the market. Before that time, you had software rendering of everything, and to keep the game performance at the proper level, Eidos just couldn't provide high quality graphics(for the time) in software. Hardware acceleration(the original 3Dfx Voodoo chip being the dominant one) made the game look and play a LOT better. So for eye candy, this also had a large effect on how well the game did.
Then you had the subject matter, with Indiana Jones and treasure hunting being popular, a game that had the plot about going into ruins to look for treasure was a good one and it worked well.
You also had HUGE levels for the time. To come out of a pool of water to look UP at some large ruins that for whatever reason were now underground, and feel like the character is small in comparison was different from just about all the other game of the time was a very cool experience. Most of the ruins had animals in them to deal with, not people, so there was the sense that violence wasn't the core of the game.
And then, FINALLY, you had your female main character, with her trying to get all the pieces to the artifact. Obviously teenage boys tend to be drawn to women with large breasts, and many try to make this the center of any theories on why the original Tomb Raider game did well without looking at the other aspects of the game. There were a number of women as well as older players who enjoyed playing for the game design as the primary reason for enjoying the game. It's true that some women enjoyed playing a game where the main character was a woman, and the vast majority of men will enjoy seeing attractive women in a game, but I feel that the other aspects don't get enough attention when Tomb Raider gets mentioned.
Tomb Raider may not have done quite as well without a woman as the main character, but it was still an amazing game, and would have done well.
An action game tends to be all about the gameplay, with storyline being an afterthought. First person shooters are ALL about gameplay, with storyline being so far down on the list of priorities that many players skip the storyline reasons for what they do in the game.
You have roleplaying games which tend to be on the other end of the spectrum. You have a lot of story(not all of these are good), with graphics being the less important.
The games that make the most money are the action games, you end up with 15 clones or sequels, and the movie studios think that's where the money is, and fail miserably.
Now, you see the rare game that tries to deliver both, such as Tomb Raider-Legend. It's not a bad game, and you can see that there was a bit of effort put into the story. The gameplay itself seems to be made for the lowest common denominator, the consoles the game was planned to run on, and it's why the game feels a bit small and simple. The engine and graphics are decent, but it's just too small and the "levels" a bit too straight forward to fully revitalize the series, but it's a good start. They could just as easily have made the game a movie since the elements are there.
Baldur's Gate could be a decent movie(or series of movies) with some changes, because it's more about the story and less about special effects.
Games that start with a story, and then have the gameplay be developed to tell the story tend to fail because storytellers often have no clue what would be fun to play. But at the same time, if someone manages to pull it off, the GREAT games are the result. Movies have an easier time of it because they can stick to the story without needing to worry about gameplay.
This is exactly how I feel about it, as well as blogs and most of the "content" out there on the Internet. I have opinions on many different things, but don't see a reason to put them "out there" because I don't have a big enough ego to think I would get all that many people interested in what I have to say.
Personal web pages are similar, and I've never understood why so many people set up a web page. Do they really think that ANYONE out there would want to go to a web page when an e-mail would be a better way to share news and such? An e-mail can be viewed offline once you download it as well, so if your goal is to share some pictures, either use Kodak Gallery or something similar, or e-mail them.