No. By most accounts, the only really good game for it was Knuckes Chaotix. Sega supported the console for less than two full years, and they supported it poorly during that time. Everyone could see the console was just going to be abandoned soon, so both gamers and 3rd party developers mostly stayed away.
I didn't get the impression the Saturn was which is why I was unsupprised to see it die.
The Saturn sold a grand total of almost 10 million consoles, which isn't terrible but it's not a success either. The overwhelming majority of these 10 million were sold in Japan, so many of the great games were never localized for other markets, forcing American gamers to import Japanese copies of many games. The Saturn was a respectable system, and it had a lot of superb games. Compared to the N64 and PSX, the Saturn was far better at 2d graphics and this fact is reflected in its rich library of excellent 2d fighting games and shooters. But Sega only supported this console for about 3 years after its release - this is something they've developed a track record for doing, and IMO it's one of the major reasons people stopped buying their consoles. There are some other factors, including poor marketing decisions on Sega's part WRT to the Saturn. But Sega has used up most of the goodwill their hardcore fans used to give them, in fact it's the hardcore fans they've been the least considerate to. They make great games but they've been shafting their most loyal customers for a long time.
I've snipped the part where you cherry-picked a console (the PSX) showing only its years of slowest sales, and compared it to the Dreamcast. All you've proved is that you can make a case for anything if you just drop enough context. And I don't know what the hell you think you're proving by pointing to Japanese-only sales and UK-only sales. We are talking about worldwide sales.
IT launched in 94, so PSX and DC were at the same level, DC was set to domonate,
No, it wasn't set to "domonate." Even after Sega more than halved the DC's initial price, sales continued to slow down. Also, do you realize how inconsistent your claims are? First you claim Sega shouldn't have launched the DC. Then you claim they shouldn't have killed it, since it was poised to take over the world, according to you.
Sega lost their third parties, mostly due to Sonys bribing,
You are one of the most blinded fanboys I've ever seen. Sony didn't bribe anybody. It's just that everyone could see that the PS2 was going to sell faster. And they were right - worldwide PS2 sales were about 8 million for Jan.-March 2002.
Sega was in the situation Nintendo was in with N64
Except that Nintendo was still the most profitable video game company in the world during the N64 years. Whereas Sega experienced losses for three years straight.
N64 made money with 10 million, PSX made money with 10 million, Genesis made money with 16 million.
I'm not sure what you mean by these numbers, but every one of these consoles eventually sold far more than those amounts.
10 million DCs in 2 years? Come on, thats better than N64, better than PSX, better than Saturn, better than Genesis, better than SNES and better than NES sales, basically no system ever sold faster than DC at that point in time
You are wrong in every instance, except about the Saturn. All of these consoles have had 2-year runs with over 10 million sales, although not in every case was it the first 10 years.
The poor sales would have HELPED keep Sega alive due to Sega not losing so much money on system sales.
You have it totally backwards. First of all, the Dreamcast's launch price was supposedly less than the unit cost of making the hardware, so that's not exactly why they were losing money. They were losing money because they manufactured far, far more Dreamcasts than the public was buying, which is why ultimately they had to drop the price from an initial $250, down to $50, and they still weren't able to sell them all within 2 years. It is also known that Sega still had a very large inventory of unused PowerVR chips which ultimately will probably have to be liquidated at a big loss. So it was slower-than-expected sales that helped cause Sega to lose money.
Okawa brought business sense back to Sega before he died, he broke up the third parties and made them all seperate companies so Sega itself couldnt go down because AM2 spent a billion dollars on Shenmue 3 which wont sell.
See, this is why I called you hysterical earlier. AM2 did not spend a billion dollars on Shenmue. I've heard it was $70 million, which is still far too much, but you are off by an order of magnitude. Also, Okawa did not "break up the third parties," he split off Sega's development studios, which were first parties.
Also lack of third party royalties kept Sega from making money on third party game sales, dont forget about that
Perhaps it's just sloppy wording on your part, but if you mean to say Sega didn't charge licensing fees, you're wrong. Part of the reason licensing revenues were relatively low was that developers kept jumping ship because they saw Dreamcast console sales were below expectations. 2000 and particularly 2001 was just a series of one cancelled game after another - adding insult to injury, some of these cancelled releases were Sega games. Anyway, this phenomenon explains why lower sales had a tendency to hurt Sega's finances, not help them. I still can't believe you hold the absurd position that lower hardware sales would have helped them.
It was because of DCs GREAT sales that Sega lost so much money, Sega didnt expect DC to do as well as it did.
Wrong, the DC sold much worse than they expected, particularly in 2000. As a matter of fact, they even lied about the sales numbers to make the Christmas 2000 sales look less-bad than they actually were. This, incidentally, is one of the reasons Irimajiri had to step down from his role as president. And while I'm at it, your estimate of Sega's loss per console is probably far too high.
Your whole view of the DC's history is inconsistent, and more than a little hysterical. Mostly it is an unstructured series of vague or untrue claims ("When Sega launched DC they DIDNT have a business plan"). But there is a shadow of an argument in it. First you claim its failure was all Sony's fault. Then you point out that Sega has poor business sense. But then you blame its demise on the loss of Okawa, even though all he was doing was throwing good money after bad by largely continuing the pattern of mistakes, i.e., showing poor busienss sense. These three reasons can't all be true at the same time. Also, it doesn't help your arguments any that you can't seem to find the period key.
Yes, much (most) of the PS2's early hype was terribly unjustified, and this had some role in hurting Dreamcast sales - but most of the blame rests squarely on Sega's shoulders. Their marketing was poor and they spent massive - even unprecedented - amounts of money on games that didn't sell very well. And they did exactly what so many gamers were betting they'd do: they abandoned their loyal customers yet again, just like they did with the 32X and the Saturn.
From what I've read of Sokal, his goal is to rescue leftism from some of its irrational attitudes toward science. I see little room for any claim that he blames all leftists for those attitudes (nor should he, obviously). Both sides have stretched the truth a bit by claiming that he's made much of a direct attack on Derrida; anyone who takes his words at face value can see that's not really what he's doing.
Also, I think you're evading the key questions: was his hoax article total nonsense, or was it not? Did it deserve to be published in a serious journal, or did it not?
What it really comes down to is that many theoretical physicists have to have this feeling that they are discovering absolute truth and thus have an irrational hatred of folk who tell them their idea is nuts.
That's not the real point of contention. The issue is whether scientific theories are attempts at objective explanations, or if they're actually just social constructs.
I don't exactly want to "take sides" in this issue, and FWIW I happen to know of some of Michael's opinions and actions that I don't agree with. (I've never met him. For all I know he's a really nice guy.)
But Seth really is an odious creature. Michael's description of his loopy behavior is perfectly fair. Seth also comes across as obsessive; once he finds an enemy, he sometimes makes a point of finding that person and fighting with him as often as possible. And when he's proven completely wrong, he doesn't acknowledge it, as someone arguing in good faith might. I've only seen a small glimpse of Seth's "handiwork" and he is someone I wouldn't want to meet, much less work together with.
Surely what Michael did with censorware.org was rash, and it makes him look bad to outsiders. And for all I know Michael is a complete asshole (I've never met him). But nobody should be held accountable for failing to get along with Seth. Seth is an intelligent man who has a strange attraction to using his wit to stir up shit. He has no scruples. I, too, would feel bad about helping him win an award from an otherwise honorable organization.
The super game boy even let you colorize your original game boy games!
Something the GBA doesn't do to my knowledge....
It does "colorize" them in the same way the SNES SGB did it: Nintendo gave developers the ability to place "hints" in their graphics data that would tell future color consoles what 4 colors to use in place of the 4 shades of gray. Not all games took advantage of it, but many first-party (Nintendo-made) games did, most impressively Metroid 2 and Super Mario Land 2 : The 6 Golden Coins. The GBA and the SGB both have ways of letting you alter the colors yourself, but to my memory, the SGB was much more flexible.
All that being said, the Genesis DID have the faster processor, which could handle more moving
things on the screen at once.
It turns out the CPU has less impact on graphics than you'd think. The more important factor was the SNES's custom graphics chip. : the SNES can display a maximum of 128 simultaneous sprites, the maximum for the Genesis is 80. The Genesis can display up to 20 (small-sized) sprites per line, the SNES can display a maximum of 32 per line. The genesis is capable of displaying sprites up to 32x32 pixels; SNES sprites go up to 64x64 pixels.
Definitely there were a lot of slowdown problems in the first SNES games, but the same thing was true of the first few Genesis games. Developers hugely improved their skills with the SNES, and around the time Space Megaforce came along in 1992, major slowdown ceased to be a problem in most SNES games. Try Space Megaforce out, to see what I mean. For a direct comparison of an earlier game with loads of slowdown, try something like Super R-Type.
I can't believe 3 people signed their names on it. I know many people have already complained about its numerous errors, omissions, and distortions, so I will confine myself to the problems with the comparison chart on this page.
There are three types of problems in this chart. In many places the authors put "N/A" because they were simply too lazy to find out the correct specifications. Uninformed readers might get the impression this means the console lacked any features in that category. Secondly, some of the numbers are just wrong. Finally, many of these numbers are comparing apples to oranges. Since the errors seem to be concentrated on the Gamecube, and that's the console I know the most about, I'll just stick to correcting their mistakes on that column in the table.
Graphics Processing Unit_____162.5 MHz, not 200
Memory Bandwidth_____________2.6 GB/s, not 3.2
Simultaneous Texture Fills___8
Compressed Textures__________6:1 (S3TC)
Storage______________________Standard.5 meg and up cards, an
+____________________________adapter will allow the use of flash
+____________________________cards up to 64 megs in size
Maximum Resolution___________1920x1080
Many of these categories aren't directly comparable. Even the RAM comparison is misleading, because Nintendo decided to use several different types of RAM. There are 24 MBs of so-called "1T-SRAM," which is actually a new type of DRAM offering improved and more consistent access times and transfer rates. There are also 16 megs of 83 MHz SDRAM, for sound and (speculatively) "other" unspecified purposes. Flipper has 3MB of embedded memory in the form of 2MB frame buffer and a 1MB texture cache. This totals 43 megs. On the other hand, the Xbox is a UMA machine with 64 MB of 200 MHz DDR-Dram. It has more memory and memory bandwidth, but actual performance is further from the peak numbers listed, in comparison to the Gamecube, and UMA designs are less bandwidth efficient. Therefore the memory bandwidth numbers aren't comparable either. The Gamecube is really the most bandwidth efficient of all 3 consoles, for a handful of reasons.
The polygon performance numbers given are meaningless, and clearly whoever posted those numbers has no idea what they mean. "6-12M/s" is Nintendo's conservative estimate of what developers would achieve in game. The PS2 and Xbox numbers are probably for flat-shaded triangle meshes - a number which is nearly useless in revealing what the hardware can do in a real game. Unless, of course, I, Robot becomes popular again.
Pardon my shitty chart, but the <pre> tag isn't allowed anymore, and the lameness filter was driving me nuts.
I cannot tolerate your slander of Ikari Warriors. First of all, it's your own mistake that you weren't playing the game the proper way: on the arcade machine. SNK is not really to blame for whatever was wrong with he NES version, which was published by K Amusement, and presumably butchered in the translation. I myself had Ikari Warriors for the C64, which was largely ruined in the translation by Data East.
If you were just no good at the game, that is your fault too. It certainly draws your expertise into question when you describe getting to "the third level," when there are no separate levels in the original game. This discrepancy could be K Amusement's fault, but either way, you cannot be permitted to defile the good name of this truly excellent game, or its benevolent creators at SNK.
No it doesn't have optical out. Factor 5's work with prologic 2 is itself just a clever hack. Not that I'll ever know, since there is absolutely no chance I'd pay the money for a DD5.1 setup. Actually, jut getting prologic 2 receivers would set you back a few hundred dollars, but it would certainly be cheaper than going for 5.1.
It's interesting that now it is Sony who sells the console that's most difficult to develop for (PS2), and Nintendo's GameCube is reputed to be the easiest to develop for. For example, most of the work on Rogue Leader was done during an 8-month period, which is a very short development time for a game. Reportedly, Tony Hawk 3 was ported in a matter of weeks, with only 2 people working on the project full-time. I also recall someone from Sega stating that Amusement Visions chose the Gamecube to port Monkey Ball to, purely because it was the easiest platform to program for.
I work at UPS, and my comments are only partly relevant to this event because I have essentially no contact with UPS Ground shipments. I work at one of the export hubs, so my work involves international shipments going Next-Day Air or 2nd Day Air. Packages commonly get dropped a foot or two, as well as slid long distances (20 feet or more) across a concrete floor, so I would definitely say you need to buy good quality boxes that are well-taped on the outside and VERY well packed on the inside. In the part of the operation I have contact with, it's really unthinkable that anyone would maliciously handle a package, especially if it were marked "fragile." That mindset just doesn't prevail. However, when you pack your shipment, you should be picturing employees who believe speed is more important than carefulness - sliding packages 20 feet across a concrete floor is a perfect example of this (and I have to admit that those people who have mastered the technique are using it very effectively). Clearly some of the mishandling can be attributed to laziness, as well. All package handlers are unionized (caveat: I sometimes handle packages to an extent, and I don't belong to a union) so they tend not to be very accountable.
Most of the screw-ups I encounter have to do with the complications in clearing customs with international shipments. One of the things I've learned from it is that *some* of the UPS hubs do a disgustingly bad job of this, and other hubs (probably including my own) are reasonably conscientious. It's probably the same way when it comes to package handling. Some hubs are very disciplined, some just suck. At the hub I work at, theft is nearly unheard-of: I've heard of one instance, second-hand, which happened years ago. It's an issue that's taken very seriously. On the other hand, it's clear from other posts that some hubs don't have their act together at all.
I would also like to register my agreement with the comments that a package will fare better if it spends as few days as possible in transit. Boxes that sit around for a while have a tendency to end up in bad shape. At a bare minimum, they will get terribly dirty after a few days in a warehouse. This is why those of you who are sending shipments out of the country should make my job easier by knowing what you're doing, and filling out your invoice properly, and writing clear contact information on every box you send in case something goes wrong. But 90% of the packages I see miss their flight are UPS's fault: not because they were processed incorrectly at the hub I work at, but usually because of screw-ups at the air hub they were at first.
If you find that every package you send/receive through UPS is mishandled, I'd bet it's because the nearest hub to you is a shitty one. It's as simple as that. On the other hand, if you're used to getting good results along a certain route, congratulations - you live near a hub that's actually run well. The amount of inconsistency between the different facilities is really amazing. Equally amazing is how little accountability the shitty hubs have for their overall incompetence, poor training, and lack of adequate management and supervision. I have long been of the opinion that some of the hubs need to be cleared out with mass firings... ah, how I hunger to see that - it would actualy make my job a lot easier. But it won't happen.
Hopefully you're joking. For readers who don't get the joke, AC has shown that a year's worth of rooftop water flow could run a single small flourescent light for 2 1/2 days. This literally would not be worth the money if the setup costs any more than about $10.
It should surprise no educated person that there are great advantages in using stored chemical energy, as compared to using mechanical energy, to generate electricity. Energy stored in atomic nuclei can be better still.
FDA approval
is a shockingly arduous process. Remember, this is the same
fda that dragged its feet over beta-blockers -
this seems to have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.
People shouldn't get too worked up over this invention. You may never
see it hit the market.
For some reason, everyone
Is upset by attempts to
Fix the financial difficulties of space
Travel through tourism.
Having thought about this, I've changed my mind.
Practically every country with a space program
Owes more than 60% of its GDP in government bonds. Some coincidence That is.
(yes I know I missed it, but I didn't want to let this go to waste.)
(a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
Hmm, you may in fact be related to a triangular alluvial deposit at the mouth of a river. Or the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet. Either way, I really wish you could use at least minimal puncutation.
--
This is a serious blow to the illuminati.
on
Crystal Clear Mars
·
· Score: 2
There was a time when the illuminati could plan to imminentize the eschaton in complete secrecy. They used Mars as a safe place from which to base their secret operations. They even found the time to build huge faces and pyramids. I expect them to find a new base, probably on the planet located directly opposite the sun (it's rarely been detected because the sun is always blocking our view of it).
Slashdot Mirror
No. By most accounts, the only really good game for it was Knuckes Chaotix. Sega supported the console for less than two full years, and they supported it poorly during that time. Everyone could see the console was just going to be abandoned soon, so both gamers and 3rd party developers mostly stayed away.
I didn't get the impression the Saturn was which is why I was unsupprised to see it die.
The Saturn sold a grand total of almost 10 million consoles, which isn't terrible but it's not a success either. The overwhelming majority of these 10 million were sold in Japan, so many of the great games were never localized for other markets, forcing American gamers to import Japanese copies of many games. The Saturn was a respectable system, and it had a lot of superb games. Compared to the N64 and PSX, the Saturn was far better at 2d graphics and this fact is reflected in its rich library of excellent 2d fighting games and shooters. But Sega only supported this console for about 3 years after its release - this is something they've developed a track record for doing, and IMO it's one of the major reasons people stopped buying their consoles. There are some other factors, including poor marketing decisions on Sega's part WRT to the Saturn. But Sega has used up most of the goodwill their hardcore fans used to give them, in fact it's the hardcore fans they've been the least considerate to. They make great games but they've been shafting their most loyal customers for a long time.
IT launched in 94, so PSX and DC were at the same level, DC was set to domonate,
No, it wasn't set to "domonate." Even after Sega more than halved the DC's initial price, sales continued to slow down. Also, do you realize how inconsistent your claims are? First you claim Sega shouldn't have launched the DC. Then you claim they shouldn't have killed it, since it was poised to take over the world, according to you.
Sega lost their third parties, mostly due to Sonys bribing,
You are one of the most blinded fanboys I've ever seen. Sony didn't bribe anybody. It's just that everyone could see that the PS2 was going to sell faster. And they were right - worldwide PS2 sales were about 8 million for Jan.-March 2002.
Sega was in the situation Nintendo was in with N64
Except that Nintendo was still the most profitable video game company in the world during the N64 years. Whereas Sega experienced losses for three years straight.
N64 made money with 10 million, PSX made money with 10 million, Genesis made money with 16 million.
I'm not sure what you mean by these numbers, but every one of these consoles eventually sold far more than those amounts.
You are wrong in every instance, except about the Saturn. All of these consoles have had 2-year runs with over 10 million sales, although not in every case was it the first 10 years.
The poor sales would have HELPED keep Sega alive due to Sega not losing so much money on system sales.
You have it totally backwards. First of all, the Dreamcast's launch price was supposedly less than the unit cost of making the hardware, so that's not exactly why they were losing money. They were losing money because they manufactured far, far more Dreamcasts than the public was buying, which is why ultimately they had to drop the price from an initial $250, down to $50, and they still weren't able to sell them all within 2 years. It is also known that Sega still had a very large inventory of unused PowerVR chips which ultimately will probably have to be liquidated at a big loss. So it was slower-than-expected sales that helped cause Sega to lose money.
Okawa brought business sense back to Sega before he died, he broke up the third parties and made them all seperate companies so Sega itself couldnt go down because AM2 spent a billion dollars on Shenmue 3 which wont sell.
See, this is why I called you hysterical earlier. AM2 did not spend a billion dollars on Shenmue. I've heard it was $70 million, which is still far too much, but you are off by an order of magnitude. Also, Okawa did not "break up the third parties," he split off Sega's development studios, which were first parties.
Also lack of third party royalties kept Sega from making money on third party game sales, dont forget about that
Perhaps it's just sloppy wording on your part, but if you mean to say Sega didn't charge licensing fees, you're wrong. Part of the reason licensing revenues were relatively low was that developers kept jumping ship because they saw Dreamcast console sales were below expectations. 2000 and particularly 2001 was just a series of one cancelled game after another - adding insult to injury, some of these cancelled releases were Sega games. Anyway, this phenomenon explains why lower sales had a tendency to hurt Sega's finances, not help them. I still can't believe you hold the absurd position that lower hardware sales would have helped them.
Wrong, the DC sold much worse than they expected, particularly in 2000. As a matter of fact, they even lied about the sales numbers to make the Christmas 2000 sales look less-bad than they actually were. This, incidentally, is one of the reasons Irimajiri had to step down from his role as president. And while I'm at it, your estimate of Sega's loss per console is probably far too high.
Your whole view of the DC's history is inconsistent, and more than a little hysterical. Mostly it is an unstructured series of vague or untrue claims ("When Sega launched DC they DIDNT have a business plan"). But there is a shadow of an argument in it. First you claim its failure was all Sony's fault. Then you point out that Sega has poor business sense. But then you blame its demise on the loss of Okawa, even though all he was doing was throwing good money after bad by largely continuing the pattern of mistakes, i.e., showing poor busienss sense. These three reasons can't all be true at the same time. Also, it doesn't help your arguments any that you can't seem to find the period key.
Yes, much (most) of the PS2's early hype was terribly unjustified, and this had some role in hurting Dreamcast sales - but most of the blame rests squarely on Sega's shoulders. Their marketing was poor and they spent massive - even unprecedented - amounts of money on games that didn't sell very well. And they did exactly what so many gamers were betting they'd do: they abandoned their loyal customers yet again, just like they did with the 32X and the Saturn.
Also, I think you're evading the key questions: was his hoax article total nonsense, or was it not? Did it deserve to be published in a serious journal, or did it not?
What it really comes down to is that many theoretical physicists have to have this feeling that they are discovering absolute truth and thus have an irrational hatred of folk who tell them their idea is nuts.
That's not the real point of contention. The issue is whether scientific theories are attempts at objective explanations, or if they're actually just social constructs.
But Seth really is an odious creature. Michael's description of his loopy behavior is perfectly fair. Seth also comes across as obsessive; once he finds an enemy, he sometimes makes a point of finding that person and fighting with him as often as possible. And when he's proven completely wrong, he doesn't acknowledge it, as someone arguing in good faith might. I've only seen a small glimpse of Seth's "handiwork" and he is someone I wouldn't want to meet, much less work together with.
Surely what Michael did with censorware.org was rash, and it makes him look bad to outsiders. And for all I know Michael is a complete asshole (I've never met him). But nobody should be held accountable for failing to get along with Seth. Seth is an intelligent man who has a strange attraction to using his wit to stir up shit. He has no scruples. I, too, would feel bad about helping him win an award from an otherwise honorable organization.
(actually 256 out of a palette of 32768, or 5 bits per gun)
when you bring in H-DMA, you could reprogram the palette during the H-blank and display many more than that.
This is something I didn't know about. Can you give examples of games that best take advantage of H-DMA?
It does "colorize" them in the same way the SNES SGB did it: Nintendo gave developers the ability to place "hints" in their graphics data that would tell future color consoles what 4 colors to use in place of the 4 shades of gray. Not all games took advantage of it, but many first-party (Nintendo-made) games did, most impressively Metroid 2 and Super Mario Land 2 : The 6 Golden Coins. The GBA and the SGB both have ways of letting you alter the colors yourself, but to my memory, the SGB was much more flexible.
It turns out the CPU has less impact on graphics than you'd think. The more important factor was the SNES's custom graphics chip. : the SNES can display a maximum of 128 simultaneous sprites, the maximum for the Genesis is 80. The Genesis can display up to 20 (small-sized) sprites per line, the SNES can display a maximum of 32 per line. The genesis is capable of displaying sprites up to 32x32 pixels; SNES sprites go up to 64x64 pixels.
Definitely there were a lot of slowdown problems in the first SNES games, but the same thing was true of the first few Genesis games. Developers hugely improved their skills with the SNES, and around the time Space Megaforce came along in 1992, major slowdown ceased to be a problem in most SNES games. Try Space Megaforce out, to see what I mean. For a direct comparison of an earlier game with loads of slowdown, try something like Super R-Type.
There are three types of problems in this chart. In many places the authors put "N/A" because they were simply too lazy to find out the correct specifications. Uninformed readers might get the impression this means the console lacked any features in that category. Secondly, some of the numbers are just wrong. Finally, many of these numbers are comparing apples to oranges. Since the errors seem to be concentrated on the Gamecube, and that's the console I know the most about, I'll just stick to correcting their mistakes on that column in the table.
Graphics Processing Unit_____162.5 MHz, not 200 .5 meg and up cards, an
+____________________________adapter will allow the use of flash
+____________________________cards up to 64 megs in size
Memory Bandwidth_____________2.6 GB/s, not 3.2
Simultaneous Texture Fills___8
Compressed Textures__________6:1 (S3TC)
Storage______________________Standard
Maximum Resolution___________1920x1080
Many of these categories aren't directly comparable. Even the RAM comparison is misleading, because Nintendo decided to use several different types of RAM. There are 24 MBs of so-called "1T-SRAM," which is actually a new type of DRAM offering improved and more consistent access times and transfer rates. There are also 16 megs of 83 MHz SDRAM, for sound and (speculatively) "other" unspecified purposes. Flipper has 3MB of embedded memory in the form of 2MB frame buffer and a 1MB texture cache. This totals 43 megs. On the other hand, the Xbox is a UMA machine with 64 MB of 200 MHz DDR-Dram. It has more memory and memory bandwidth, but actual performance is further from the peak numbers listed, in comparison to the Gamecube, and UMA designs are less bandwidth efficient. Therefore the memory bandwidth numbers aren't comparable either. The Gamecube is really the most bandwidth efficient of all 3 consoles, for a handful of reasons.
The polygon performance numbers given are meaningless, and clearly whoever posted those numbers has no idea what they mean. "6-12M/s" is Nintendo's conservative estimate of what developers would achieve in game. The PS2 and Xbox numbers are probably for flat-shaded triangle meshes - a number which is nearly useless in revealing what the hardware can do in a real game. Unless, of course, I, Robot becomes popular again.
Pardon my shitty chart, but the <pre> tag isn't allowed anymore, and the lameness filter was driving me nuts.
If you were just no good at the game, that is your fault too. It certainly draws your expertise into question when you describe getting to "the third level," when there are no separate levels in the original game. This discrepancy could be K Amusement's fault, but either way, you cannot be permitted to defile the good name of this truly excellent game, or its benevolent creators at SNK.
No it doesn't have optical out. Factor 5's work with prologic 2 is itself just a clever hack. Not that I'll ever know, since there is absolutely no chance I'd pay the money for a DD5.1 setup. Actually, jut getting prologic 2 receivers would set you back a few hundred dollars, but it would certainly be cheaper than going for 5.1.
It's interesting that now it is Sony who sells the console that's most difficult to develop for (PS2), and Nintendo's GameCube is reputed to be the easiest to develop for. For example, most of the work on Rogue Leader was done during an 8-month period, which is a very short development time for a game. Reportedly, Tony Hawk 3 was ported in a matter of weeks, with only 2 people working on the project full-time. I also recall someone from Sega stating that Amusement Visions chose the Gamecube to port Monkey Ball to, purely because it was the easiest platform to program for.
I work at UPS, and my comments are only partly relevant to this event because I have essentially no contact with UPS Ground shipments. I work at one of the export hubs, so my work involves international shipments going Next-Day Air or 2nd Day Air. Packages commonly get dropped a foot or two, as well as slid long distances (20 feet or more) across a concrete floor, so I would definitely say you need to buy good quality boxes that are well-taped on the outside and VERY well packed on the inside. In the part of the operation I have contact with, it's really unthinkable that anyone would maliciously handle a package, especially if it were marked "fragile." That mindset just doesn't prevail. However, when you pack your shipment, you should be picturing employees who believe speed is more important than carefulness - sliding packages 20 feet across a concrete floor is a perfect example of this (and I have to admit that those people who have mastered the technique are using it very effectively). Clearly some of the mishandling can be attributed to laziness, as well. All package handlers are unionized (caveat: I sometimes handle packages to an extent, and I don't belong to a union) so they tend not to be very accountable.
Most of the screw-ups I encounter have to do with the complications in clearing customs with international shipments. One of the things I've learned from it is that *some* of the UPS hubs do a disgustingly bad job of this, and other hubs (probably including my own) are reasonably conscientious. It's probably the same way when it comes to package handling. Some hubs are very disciplined, some just suck. At the hub I work at, theft is nearly unheard-of: I've heard of one instance, second-hand, which happened years ago. It's an issue that's taken very seriously. On the other hand, it's clear from other posts that some hubs don't have their act together at all.
I would also like to register my agreement with the comments that a package will fare better if it spends as few days as possible in transit. Boxes that sit around for a while have a tendency to end up in bad shape. At a bare minimum, they will get terribly dirty after a few days in a warehouse. This is why those of you who are sending shipments out of the country should make my job easier by knowing what you're doing, and filling out your invoice properly, and writing clear contact information on every box you send in case something goes wrong. But 90% of the packages I see miss their flight are UPS's fault: not because they were processed incorrectly at the hub I work at, but usually because of screw-ups at the air hub they were at first.
If you find that every package you send/receive through UPS is mishandled, I'd bet it's because the nearest hub to you is a shitty one. It's as simple as that. On the other hand, if you're used to getting good results along a certain route, congratulations - you live near a hub that's actually run well. The amount of inconsistency between the different facilities is really amazing. Equally amazing is how little accountability the shitty hubs have for their overall incompetence, poor training, and lack of adequate management and supervision. I have long been of the opinion that some of the hubs need to be cleared out with mass firings... ah, how I hunger to see that - it would actualy make my job a lot easier. But it won't happen.
SCO Xenix 286, maybe. Linux and *bsd are out of the question.
Hopefully you're joking. For readers who don't get the joke, AC has shown that a year's worth of rooftop water flow could run a single small flourescent light for 2 1/2 days. This literally would not be worth the money if the setup costs any more than about $10.
It should surprise no educated person that there are great advantages in using stored chemical energy, as compared to using mechanical energy, to generate electricity. Energy stored in atomic nuclei can be better still.
Please mod me up. My karma is very low right now.
is a shockingly arduous process. Remember, this is the same
fda that dragged its feet over beta-blockers -
this seems to
have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.
People shouldn't get too worked up
over this invention. You may never
see it hit
the market.
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Is upset by attempts to
Fix the financial difficulties of space
Travel through tourism.
Having thought about this, I've changed my mind.
Practically every country with a space program
Owes more than 60% of its GDP in government bonds.
Some coincidence
That is.
(yes I know I missed it, but I didn't want to let this go to waste.)
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Also, I got fifth post.
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Yeah, and it's 485 MHZ. The original post by yerricde had too many errors to bother with.
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Hmm, you may in fact be related to a triangular alluvial deposit at the mouth of a river. Or the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet. Either way, I really wish you could use at least minimal puncutation.
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Oh, and, fifth post.
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You can just pretend I closed that first italics tag properly. I really don't care anymore - I've lost 78% of my karma in the last 3 weeks or so.
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No. This knowledge would be dangerous in the hands of ordinary slashdot readers.
Thanks, Travis forkspoon@hotmail.com
You're welcome Travis!
Oh, and fifth post.
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