Actually, yes, I have. At my current place of employment, we use four 650 Quad Xeon with 2 Gig of RAM a piece, each with an Adaptec RAID controller on it with 128MB of memory. They grind to a halt, being barely usable, but probably a lot like your situation, that is what we have to use. Another division has 1 Sun Enterprise server doing the equivalent and the thing doesn't break a sweat. Sounds like you, along with some of what we do, are using the wrong hardware for the job. Why use x86 when there is much faster hardware out there for vector crunching?
Why bother? Every iteration of processors that comes out has some special optimization that is required to run at peak performance. If you use one or the other, it gets you a marginal performance boost. Sure the P4 can do magic if you turn on this compile flag, and then disable this other. Who cares? Things are fast enough now that price should be considered the king. Why spend $100 - $200 more for a processor when all it gets you is a few more frames at 1600x1200 in Quake3. Until the P4 comes down in price (and they are making big inroads for this), the Athlon will be king.
Bryan R.
Where Were YOU When Quake Was Released...
on
Five Years of Quake
·
· Score: 1
Where was I?
I was working at Best Buy at the time. I remember clearly counting down the hours to when the shareware was released.
When did you download it?
I hit the net the hour id said it was released. I was at work, so I had to improvise. Well, BB had a tech center that wasn't being used at the time, so I mentioned I was going to do some paper work at the front of the store (I was a Product Specialist at the time). I went into that room for about an hour and a half.
How did you download it?
I tried over modem first, as that is what everyone had at the time. FTP sites were slow, and there was none of this FilePlanet B.S. as we have it today. I tried to go direct to my machine, but the FTP site would have none of that, so I telnetted into an university account I had at the time I was admin, and did a FTP session there.
How long did the download take?
To the university? Oh, about a minute and a half. Seriously, back when only the select few had broadband, it rocked. To get it home from there, oh, I would say about two hours. But, not much outbound traffic at that university;-).
First impression?
My computer really that slow? Damn, I need some new gear!
Redmond, WA Microsoft announced they were working with Volkswagon on a joint venture where WindowsXP would be used to power the Internet car of the future. Announced as possible features:
MicroCarSoft would use two forms of gasoline. One of the standard format, and another developed by Microsoft. Due to licensing agreements with the auto manufacturers, though, the standard format will burn far less efficently then the Microsoft format. Microsoft officials are even toying with the idea of going strictly with the Microsoft format gas. Microsoft gas will be available from common retailers such as CompUSA and Best Buy.
In beta test, the MicroCarSoft has been found to be fairly stable with only 1 out of 500,000 testers reporting system crashes which led the engine core dumping on the pavement right on the highway.
Finally, the MicroCarSoft will not accept gas from retailers that do not adhere to the P3P standard, as the car accepts cookies to allow Microsoft and Volkswagon to track where your family has been on vacation.
Taco, man, come on. The dude's name is Orlando Jones. Funny guy from The Replacements and not a bad actor. Next time, might want to do a little more research, as that type of thing makes it look like you wrote the review in 2 minutes, with a minute off to check spelling!
Maybe Apple's legal department should take a page from the Open Group's. If it had been Apple at the helm, I am sure they would have sued themselves ten times over to keep the Unix stamp off of the OSX webpage.....
I think they are just trying to build momentum towards the big launch at E3, by posting hype generating news like this. Nintendo is very secure, thank you very much, thanks to their Gameboy line of products. Even if the Gamecube does not do well, Nintendo can pull a Microsoft and pour cash into the Gamecube. Look at the N64. Good system at the time, but it was the games that made it. Still, the market share is nothing to write home to mom about. How does it still exist? Gameboy. Same will hold true for the Gamecube.
It will succeed. With the amount of kids out there, and the price point they are shooting for, it can only do well. Look at the Dreamcast! Since the pricedrop to $99, they have been selling faster then ever. One thing I admire about Nintendo, they are out for the gaming dollar, not this all-in-one home entertainment console.
In this case, I would be more concerned about the students who feel the need to lash out and put down a fellow student more then the boy who made the comment. How many of us nerds haven't been in this situation. Many more of us probably would have been suspended back in the day if this type of mentality had been around. You want a source for school aggravation. Look no further then your typical bully....
Since the site is slashdotted, I have some request for this hacked version:
That forbidden forest was too scary. Please change it to a forbidden HAPPY forest with some little furry animals running around.
Along with the forest, all that right right right, left left left stuff has to go. Please change it to up up down down left right left right. Got to keep it in line with other games. Thanks.
Give Link a spunky side kick that helps him fight crime. Pref a girl, but whatever you think is right. Heck, make it an animal and give it two tails. Worked for other games....
Give it that open source appeal. Make the old man look like Linus, the bosses look like goons from Apple, Oracle and Microsoft, and then the final boss have the heads of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison.
Finally, give link a dart gun and the ability to look around corners. That way, Link would only 'stun' his enemies. With all those Dodongos and Octoroks running around, it would be like a great espionage game with Link as some spy type.
I don't think this stuff is too much to ask. Please get on this right away.
This is simple, why not shoulder the burden of hardware cost on the user? I know, what the hell is he talking about, but hear me out. Idrema should change its business model. Create a hardware spec that says, in so many words, that if you have the following hardware, you can run our software. If you run our software, all you have to do is buy a CD with the game on it, mount it in your drive, and it will play with no hassles. After all, Idream was based on Intel and Linux stuff, why would this not work? Hardest thing would be to get past the different distros, but once that is done, you create a stable platform to develop games and play games. That way, Idrema can still get their money for the license, and they don't have the overhead of having to sell hardware. It could work....
So, NASA makes this announcement, and Sony goes right around and announces that they have been working closely with NASA to develop the Playstation 5 based on this technology. The PS5 which begat the Playstation 4 developed by the NSA which begat the Playstation 3 developed by IBM's super computer division will allow the game player to control the console from any NASA station in the world! Imagine playing Tekken Tag Tournament Hyper Z 2K10 Script Kiddie Edition with the folks on the International Space Station! From all that I have read, I think I will have to wait for the PS5 instead of the PS4 and PS3. Thanks Sony marketing engine!!!!!!!
HEY!!!! Where are Ken and Roberta Williams, founders of Sierra software?! They all but pioneered the graphical adventure in the late 80's. How many people remember playing the original Kings Quest or Police Quest? How about Space Quest and Leisure Suite Larry, both published by Sierra? As the poster said, it is post 90's, but give credit where credit is due!
I find it interesting that, even though critics have ripped Mr. Seagal a new hole over this movie, it still was number one at the box office. This is definately not a sign that the action movie is back in force, but more that the movie going populace is not worn out by this sort of thing, yet.
It seemed that during the 80's, all we could got was the action movie. How many Sly Stallone, Dalph Lungren, Chuck Norris, so on, so forth movies were made during that time period. Sure, the stories varied in plot, but overall the movies were the same thing over and over again. This continued for quite some time.
Flash forward to the late 90's and early 00's. People felt that the action movie required a message. Look at Sixth Day or End of Days which were both message ridden or biblical in scope. (As a side, I know both were Arnold flicks, but those popped in my head the quickest.) Both bombed. His last big hit was Eraser which was mindless and made $100 million in the US alone.
Where am I going with this? I am not quite sure. I have been up for the last 48 hours with little sleep. I think I am trying to say that the American movie going audience is finicky. It takes a lot to hold attention. If it is story driven, it had better be damn, DAMN good. For example, a great action movie that was primarily story driven was The Usual Suspects, but, if you also want to rake in the money, dumb it down enough and put so much action in that the audience doesn't have time to think. I saw Exit Wound. It was fun. Typical roller coaster analogy. I wouldn't see it again or even rent it, but it was fun.
I agree for the most part, but I think the whole point was, why doctor it if it can do it already. So if they had to doctor it some people are probably thinking that the xbox can't do it.
The only thing I would say to that is you are probably right for the most part. But, if you had a vision for a game, and it was not complete, would you modify the graphics to represent what you think the finished product would look like, or would you just post an image from the incomplete product?
Man, I have been a reader for the longest of times, and this just depresses me. They should change their logo to read "Rage against Microsoft. Any chance we get." Here we get game related news like this, when no one posted the fact that the president of Sega, one of THE gaming companies of the 80's and 90's, passed away last week, something that made every other EMU, game site, and some news organizations. This is dumb. Advertising has been doing this for the longest time! How many magazines have we seen that have had someone air brushed in some way?! Hell, that Microsoft/Borg icon Slashdot uses was probably touched up in some way, how about a four image document on how that was done! Plus, it is just retarded. Do you really believe that a lens flare is a huge deal, something that my original Voodoo would do with Wing Commander?! Get a life.
Wow, I couldn't agree more. For a little hint into what went down at Sierra, you might want to check out an interviewGamer's Depot did with Mrs. Williams some time back (thank you Google for finding that old review!) She gives a little insight as to what truly happened at Sierra. I guess it got pretty messy and she regrets the decision she and Ken made to sell.
As for looking back, I would have to agree that the Laura Bow mysteries were some of the best. Graphics were great for the time and it was all around fun that my mom and I would play (I was a youngin'). LSL was also a classic, but no one has mentioned Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist, another classic from the designer of LSL, Al Lowe and with some help from Mark Seibert. Yes, they will be missed.
We should really be more concerned with the developments of ATI and Matrox. Their 3D drivers are open source and are part of XFree4. NVidia has chosen to ignore DRI and stay closed source.
Why should I? As a user of Linux who does not play the "Open Source Or Die" game with my hardware and drivers, please give me a good reason as to why I should do this! From my vantage point, I see it as follows:
Currently, the nVidia driver is one of the fastest around. Could it be faster if it was open? Sure, I believe that fully, but it is pretty damn fast.
As a every day user of Linux who doesn't download the latest Enlightenment or KDE beta or XFree86 release, I can stand to be behind in my releases to keep compatible with my windowing server.
Carmack has said himself that when the next Doom game comes out in a test release, it will be nVidia only for Linux.
He then goes on to add that he himself will start working on the drivers for the ATI cards to bring them up to speed so it can play his game decently.
Sorry, but since this demo is probably a year away, and since JohnC typically knows his s#!t, he believes that nVidia is the best solution right now. From posts here to Slashdot, he seems to know his stuff.
I am not saying that he endorses nVidia for their driver practices or anything, this is stuff I have walked away with from things he has said.
So, as a gamer who would like to see the best performance out of my gear, and basing my current opinion off of things I have read, please convince me otherwise. I believe, though, most users of Linux feel this way and just want their stuff to work.
Reading in the local paper, the big draw of this super bowl were, as the paper put it, Matrix like replays. After having watching 3 quarters, I must say that it is a big let down. I guess a brief look at the technology is waranted:
They have setup thirty-some cameras around the stadium that allow a continuous feed of imagery to computer located in the bowels of the programming center. This is all done via fiber, and is supposed to create that cool camera panning effect where the camera stops, swings around, and you are behind the play.
That is a simple overview, but it gets the idea across. My take is that it is a little early to be seeing this. First off, only a select few plays even need this type of replay feature, and I believe the viewer only saw it two times before the half-time show. When it was used, it was jerky, and very, VERY pixelated. I don't see why they didn't just switch camera angles. This is specially true after hearing how much they spent to do something they hardly do. Maybe in a few years, computers can do interpolation, make it smoother, all that stuff, but for right now, leave it out of the game.
As for best commercial, I would have to vote for the new "Wassup" with the Wall Street guys. Too much fun!
... that journalist who has to write cute little Internet stories for online magazines. When interviewing folks from around the web, you can look no further then Joe Queenan, writer for Forbes. In an email interview, he had this to say:
It isn't all that hard. Thank godd above that I can yuse Microsofft Werd to do my spell checkin. Oh, this intervew is for a Pro-Linux website? Well, I meant Star Office, er' KOffice, er, VI. LINUX ROCKS! If anything was difficultt, it was finding the picture of the dog taking the ****."
How about the grueling demand of the all important deadline? When Queenan was asked this, he responded:
What deadlyn? I have hat that stori bruwing for weaks.
So, there you have it, the confessions from someone who works the sixth worst job in the Internet.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, yes, I have. At my current place of employment, we use four 650 Quad Xeon with 2 Gig of RAM a piece, each with an Adaptec RAID controller on it with 128MB of memory. They grind to a halt, being barely usable, but probably a lot like your situation, that is what we have to use. Another division has 1 Sun Enterprise server doing the equivalent and the thing doesn't break a sweat. Sounds like you, along with some of what we do, are using the wrong hardware for the job. Why use x86 when there is much faster hardware out there for vector crunching?
Bryan R.
Why bother? Every iteration of processors that comes out has some special optimization that is required to run at peak performance. If you use one or the other, it gets you a marginal performance boost. Sure the P4 can do magic if you turn on this compile flag, and then disable this other. Who cares? Things are fast enough now that price should be considered the king. Why spend $100 - $200 more for a processor when all it gets you is a few more frames at 1600x1200 in Quake3. Until the P4 comes down in price (and they are making big inroads for this), the Athlon will be king.
Bryan R.
Where was I?
I was working at Best Buy at the time. I remember clearly counting down the hours to when the shareware was released.
When did you download it?
I hit the net the hour id said it was released. I was at work, so I had to improvise. Well, BB had a tech center that wasn't being used at the time, so I mentioned I was going to do some paper work at the front of the store (I was a Product Specialist at the time). I went into that room for about an hour and a half.
How did you download it?
I tried over modem first, as that is what everyone had at the time. FTP sites were slow, and there was none of this FilePlanet B.S. as we have it today. I tried to go direct to my machine, but the FTP site would have none of that, so I telnetted into an university account I had at the time I was admin, and did a FTP session there.
How long did the download take?
To the university? Oh, about a minute and a half. Seriously, back when only the select few had broadband, it rocked. To get it home from there, oh, I would say about two hours. But, not much outbound traffic at that university ;-).
First impression?
My computer really that slow? Damn, I need some new gear!
Man, those were the days....Bryan R.
Redmond, WA Microsoft announced they were working with Volkswagon on a joint venture where WindowsXP would be used to power the Internet car of the future. Announced as possible features:
- MicroCarSoft would use two forms of gasoline. One of the standard format, and another developed by Microsoft. Due to licensing agreements with the auto manufacturers, though, the standard format will burn far less efficently then the Microsoft format. Microsoft officials are even toying with the idea of going strictly with the Microsoft format gas. Microsoft gas will be available from common retailers such as CompUSA and Best Buy.
- In beta test, the MicroCarSoft has been found to be fairly stable with only 1 out of 500,000 testers reporting system crashes which led the engine core dumping on the pavement right on the highway.
- Finally, the MicroCarSoft will not accept gas from retailers that do not adhere to the P3P standard, as the car accepts cookies to allow Microsoft and Volkswagon to track where your family has been on vacation.
As you can see, the future is now. Be prepared.Bryan R.
YES!!!! There it is. Completely forgot he had that small part is that classic movie. Snootch.
Bryan R.
Taco, man, come on. The dude's name is Orlando Jones. Funny guy from The Replacements and not a bad actor. Next time, might want to do a little more research, as that type of thing makes it look like you wrote the review in 2 minutes, with a minute off to check spelling!
Bryan R.
Maybe Apple's legal department should take a page from the Open Group's. If it had been Apple at the helm, I am sure they would have sued themselves ten times over to keep the Unix stamp off of the OSX webpage.....
Bryan R.
I think they are just trying to build momentum towards the big launch at E3, by posting hype generating news like this. Nintendo is very secure, thank you very much, thanks to their Gameboy line of products. Even if the Gamecube does not do well, Nintendo can pull a Microsoft and pour cash into the Gamecube. Look at the N64. Good system at the time, but it was the games that made it. Still, the market share is nothing to write home to mom about. How does it still exist? Gameboy. Same will hold true for the Gamecube.
It will succeed. With the amount of kids out there, and the price point they are shooting for, it can only do well. Look at the Dreamcast! Since the pricedrop to $99, they have been selling faster then ever. One thing I admire about Nintendo, they are out for the gaming dollar, not this all-in-one home entertainment console.
Bryan R.
In this case, I would be more concerned about the students who feel the need to lash out and put down a fellow student more then the boy who made the comment. How many of us nerds haven't been in this situation. Many more of us probably would have been suspended back in the day if this type of mentality had been around. You want a source for school aggravation. Look no further then your typical bully....
Bryan R.
- That forbidden forest was too scary. Please change it to a forbidden HAPPY forest with some little furry animals running around.
- Along with the forest, all that right right right, left left left stuff has to go. Please change it to up up down down left right left right. Got to keep it in line with other games. Thanks.
- Give Link a spunky side kick that helps him fight crime. Pref a girl, but whatever you think is right. Heck, make it an animal and give it two tails. Worked for other games....
- Give it that open source appeal. Make the old man look like Linus, the bosses look like goons from Apple, Oracle and Microsoft, and then the final boss have the heads of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison.
- Finally, give link a dart gun and the ability to look around corners. That way, Link would only 'stun' his enemies. With all those Dodongos and Octoroks running around, it would be like a great espionage game with Link as some spy type.
I don't think this stuff is too much to ask. Please get on this right away.Bryan R.
LOL, at least I have a UID, troll-meister.
Bryan R.
...less like King's "The Plant" idea, which was still dumb, IMHO.
Need to change "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters" to "Editorials for Nerds. Stuff that matters". It suits this place a little better.
Bryan R.
This is simple, why not shoulder the burden of hardware cost on the user? I know, what the hell is he talking about, but hear me out. Idrema should change its business model. Create a hardware spec that says, in so many words, that if you have the following hardware, you can run our software. If you run our software, all you have to do is buy a CD with the game on it, mount it in your drive, and it will play with no hassles. After all, Idream was based on Intel and Linux stuff, why would this not work? Hardest thing would be to get past the different distros, but once that is done, you create a stable platform to develop games and play games. That way, Idrema can still get their money for the license, and they don't have the overhead of having to sell hardware. It could work....
Bryan R.
Damn it. Don't post comments first thing in the morning without the proper ammount of coffee!
Bryan R.
So, NASA makes this announcement, and Sony goes right around and announces that they have been working closely with NASA to develop the Playstation 5 based on this technology. The PS5 which begat the Playstation 4 developed by the NSA which begat the Playstation 3 developed by IBM's super computer division will allow the game player to control the console from any NASA station in the world! Imagine playing Tekken Tag Tournament Hyper Z 2K10 Script Kiddie Edition with the folks on the International Space Station! From all that I have read, I think I will have to wait for the PS5 instead of the PS4 and PS3. Thanks Sony marketing engine!!!!!!!
Bryan R.
HEY!!!! Where are Ken and Roberta Williams, founders of Sierra software?! They all but pioneered the graphical adventure in the late 80's. How many people remember playing the original Kings Quest or Police Quest? How about Space Quest and Leisure Suite Larry, both published by Sierra? As the poster said, it is post 90's, but give credit where credit is due!
Bryan R.
I find it interesting that, even though critics have ripped Mr. Seagal a new hole over this movie, it still was number one at the box office. This is definately not a sign that the action movie is back in force, but more that the movie going populace is not worn out by this sort of thing, yet.
;-).
It seemed that during the 80's, all we could got was the action movie. How many Sly Stallone, Dalph Lungren, Chuck Norris, so on, so forth movies were made during that time period. Sure, the stories varied in plot, but overall the movies were the same thing over and over again. This continued for quite some time.
Flash forward to the late 90's and early 00's. People felt that the action movie required a message. Look at Sixth Day or End of Days which were both message ridden or biblical in scope. (As a side, I know both were Arnold flicks, but those popped in my head the quickest.) Both bombed. His last big hit was Eraser which was mindless and made $100 million in the US alone.
Where am I going with this? I am not quite sure. I have been up for the last 48 hours with little sleep. I think I am trying to say that the American movie going audience is finicky. It takes a lot to hold attention. If it is story driven, it had better be damn, DAMN good. For example, a great action movie that was primarily story driven was The Usual Suspects, but, if you also want to rake in the money, dumb it down enough and put so much action in that the audience doesn't have time to think. I saw Exit Wound. It was fun. Typical roller coaster analogy. I wouldn't see it again or even rent it, but it was fun.
The action star dead? Nah, just keep it dumb
Bryan R.
I agree for the most part, but I think the whole point was, why doctor it if it can do it already. So if they had to doctor it some people are probably thinking that the xbox can't do it.
The only thing I would say to that is you are probably right for the most part. But, if you had a vision for a game, and it was not complete, would you modify the graphics to represent what you think the finished product would look like, or would you just post an image from the incomplete product?
Bryan R.
Man, I have been a reader for the longest of times, and this just depresses me. They should change their logo to read "Rage against Microsoft. Any chance we get." Here we get game related news like this, when no one posted the fact that the president of Sega, one of THE gaming companies of the 80's and 90's, passed away last week, something that made every other EMU, game site, and some news organizations. This is dumb. Advertising has been doing this for the longest time! How many magazines have we seen that have had someone air brushed in some way?! Hell, that Microsoft/Borg icon Slashdot uses was probably touched up in some way, how about a four image document on how that was done! Plus, it is just retarded. Do you really believe that a lens flare is a huge deal, something that my original Voodoo would do with Wing Commander?! Get a life.
Bryan R.
Wow, I couldn't agree more. For a little hint into what went down at Sierra, you might want to check out an interview Gamer's Depot did with Mrs. Williams some time back (thank you Google for finding that old review!) She gives a little insight as to what truly happened at Sierra. I guess it got pretty messy and she regrets the decision she and Ken made to sell.
As for looking back, I would have to agree that the Laura Bow mysteries were some of the best. Graphics were great for the time and it was all around fun that my mom and I would play (I was a youngin'). LSL was also a classic, but no one has mentioned Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist, another classic from the designer of LSL, Al Lowe and with some help from Mark Seibert. Yes, they will be missed.
Bryan R.
...pornographic videos were never the same.
Bryan R.
Why should I? As a user of Linux who does not play the "Open Source Or Die" game with my hardware and drivers, please give me a good reason as to why I should do this! From my vantage point, I see it as follows:
- Currently, the nVidia driver is one of the fastest around. Could it be faster if it was open? Sure, I believe that fully, but it is pretty damn fast.
- As a every day user of Linux who doesn't download the latest Enlightenment or KDE beta or XFree86 release, I can stand to be behind in my releases to keep compatible with my windowing server.
- Carmack has said himself that when the next Doom game comes out in a test release, it will be nVidia only for Linux.
- He then goes on to add that he himself will start working on the drivers for the ATI cards to bring them up to speed so it can play his game decently.
- Sorry, but since this demo is probably a year away, and since JohnC typically knows his s#!t, he believes that nVidia is the best solution right now. From posts here to Slashdot, he seems to know his stuff.
- I am not saying that he endorses nVidia for their driver practices or anything, this is stuff I have walked away with from things he has said.
So, as a gamer who would like to see the best performance out of my gear, and basing my current opinion off of things I have read, please convince me otherwise. I believe, though, most users of Linux feel this way and just want their stuff to work.Bryan R.
Reading in the local paper, the big draw of this super bowl were, as the paper put it, Matrix like replays. After having watching 3 quarters, I must say that it is a big let down. I guess a brief look at the technology is waranted:
They have setup thirty-some cameras around the stadium that allow a continuous feed of imagery to computer located in the bowels of the programming center. This is all done via fiber, and is supposed to create that cool camera panning effect where the camera stops, swings around, and you are behind the play.
That is a simple overview, but it gets the idea across. My take is that it is a little early to be seeing this. First off, only a select few plays even need this type of replay feature, and I believe the viewer only saw it two times before the half-time show. When it was used, it was jerky, and very, VERY pixelated. I don't see why they didn't just switch camera angles. This is specially true after hearing how much they spent to do something they hardly do. Maybe in a few years, computers can do interpolation, make it smoother, all that stuff, but for right now, leave it out of the game.
As for best commercial, I would have to vote for the new "Wassup" with the Wall Street guys. Too much fun!
Bryan R.
... that journalist who has to write cute little Internet stories for online magazines. When interviewing folks from around the web, you can look no further then Joe Queenan, writer for Forbes. In an email interview, he had this to say:
It isn't all that hard. Thank godd above that I can yuse Microsofft Werd to do my spell checkin. Oh, this intervew is for a Pro-Linux website? Well, I meant Star Office, er' KOffice, er, VI. LINUX ROCKS! If anything was difficultt, it was finding the picture of the dog taking the ****."
How about the grueling demand of the all important deadline? When Queenan was asked this, he responded:
What deadlyn? I have hat that stori bruwing for weaks.
So, there you have it, the confessions from someone who works the sixth worst job in the Internet.
Bryan R.
Yes I have, and no you can't. Sorry.
Bryan R.