Well I vote we make the "low end Macs have terrible video cards that are not upgradeable" our new, exciting argument.
I applaud Apple for finally releasing a Mac other than the PowerMac which doesn't have a built in monitor. I however am saddened that the video card (as was the case with the new iMac) is outdated and not upgradeable.
So I would still need to keep my PC for games.
(ok now it's time for the other troll to jump on with the "No you don't! Just get a Mac Mini and a game console!" argument.)
Well, it isn't the best example that's true but consider: If your game is in RAM and not accessing disk, even the low CPU usage on the DVD burning process might cause stutters in game play. If the DVD burning process were running on one core and the game on the other than theorectically there shouldn't be any stuttering added to the game. That being said, modern CPUs are fast enough to handle playing a game and burning a DVD without much problem. So long as something doesn't flood the PCI bus and cause an under run on the DVD burn. I guess a better example would be encoding a video and playing a game at the same time. Although there is still a lot of disk access involved, both processes are CPU demanding. That being said probably the real usage most people will get out of dual core is and extra CPU to balance out the spyware overhead on their Windows systems. Hey how about being a DDOS zombie computer AND playing Half Life 2 at 60+ FPS! Who said dual core isn't useful!
Well, I really found her funny most of the time. Especially the sex scenes in Atlas Shrugged which border on rape. Although the best parts of the book are when they smoke the special cigerettes that come from the magic land of John Galt. Now those were the greatest cigerettes in the whole world made by the greatest men of action. If it wasn't for the bazillion pages where she barfed her philosophy out on the page verbatim, Atlas Shrugged would have been a highly enjoyable, laugh a minute, pulp thrill ride.
Which is why Fundamentalism was taken OUT of Civilization 3. It created a game balance problem they couldn't resolve. Plus I think it was becoming politically unpopular. Now best government for Civ and Civ 2? Fundamentalism hands down. Nothing like a nice religious dictatorship with a huge army out in the field while the folks at home stay happy because they know they'll win the war since God is on their side.
Re:Xbox is a nice cheap wonderfully mod-able syste
on
State of the Xbox
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Well, that may be true for you - but I heard and saw about it from numerous friends. Most who are not techies at all. They play video games and don't read Slashdot. I also can do everything I listed with ease on my computer. However I wanted a media center pc for my living room and I didn't want to spend a lot of money. As for emulation on a pc vs. the xbox - all the Xbox emulation software benefits from the standardized controllers. On the pc it's a crapshoot as to whether a particular emulator will support say the dual analog sticks on your pc controller. The other nice thing is the Xbox software is easy to use with a remote or controller sitting on the couch. Just simple menu driven screens. If you don't think there is a market for this I suggest you take a look at how large the mod scene is. And yes the primary driving motivation for the mod may not be what I think is cool and what I use it for (video and emulation). It's more likely piracy seeing as a modded xbox can suck a game off a dvd in 15 minutes or so and can also play downloaded isos. Do you honestly think the only people who modded Playstation's were techs who post on Slashdot???
Xbox is a nice cheap wonderfully mod-able system
on
State of the Xbox
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Take a $150 Xbox, solder in a mod chip, throw in a big HD and even a USB keyboard if you like. What do you get? A great little media center box and an awesome box for emulation, oh yeah and it runs Linux too. I know it's all illegal but I swear one of the reasons for the Xbox's increase in popularity is the mod community. Because it is x86 based it's been pretty easy to port existing emulators over to the Xbox. Currently you have arcade machine emus, NES, SNES, Gameboy (up to Advance), Genesis, Sega Master System, Game Gear, Atari 2600 & 5200, Atari 8 bit computers, Atari ST, Commodore Pet, Vic 20 and 64, Amiga, PC Engine (Turbographix), Apple II and IIGS, Sinclair Spectrum, Lynx, Wonderswan, MSX computers, Colecovision, MS DOS, Intellivision, Neo Geo, Odyssey, Amstrad CPC even Playstation and N64 to a degree. All easy to use and play from your TV set. Plus XBMC for playing DIVX, XVID and other video files, viewing pictures and playing mp3s. Oh yeah it will show you a current weather report too. Amazing stuff. Let's see how hard MS works to kill off the mod community with XBox 2.
If the rumors are true about the flash based hard drive I don't see it as a good thing. Most likely it will allow MS to put some proprietary device in there making modding and upgrading harder. Flash also is not faster than a modern hard drive and has a much higher cost per megabyte.
Um. He died before his materials became a profit center. So no that is not fair - but it's not fair in the "life is cruel and unkind" kind of not fair, hardly in the copyright screwed PKD kind of not fair. So what would be better than having the money go to the next of kin? I know PKD had a rough time as a parent and husband, but from what I can tell he cared a great deal for his children, I think he would be happy to know that his hard work allows them a better standard of living then he was able to provide during his lifetime.
However, PKD's kids who manage his estate DO get the money. So while it's sad that he didn't live to enjoy it at least his family is well cared for thanks to the merits of his work. His writing was ahead of the times and it took 20 years for the concepts to become mainstream. What's really sad is that he died somewhat young and wasn't around to see his ideas get mainstream critical and commercial success. This happens to a lot of creative types - he's not unique. Besides if he had lived to see Total Recall, that might have finished him off anyway.
Irregardless of whether it's a trojan or a virus or whatever - the fact is that adware infestations make computers unusable. The antivirus companies have been slow to respond to this. Symantec has stated that while they are looking into adware removal antivirus is their prime business. Because of this a new category of software for adware/spyware removal has been born. You are pretty much stuck using things like Adaware and Spybot. For corporate environments there are server based removal tools such as Pest Patrol. Although these products are a bit immature. No one program seems to catch all installed spyware either.
You use telnet? What are you nuts? Oh telnet to your friend's server - your friend who was stupid enough to use telnet rather than ssh so you sniffed packets and got his logon.
I had a problem when I purchased Sim City 3000. You were supposed to logon to a website, enter your key and get additional content. Well, I tried that - but someone had already used my key to setup an account. Keep in mind the copy I bought was a sealed store-bought copy, not second hand. I guess someone used a keygen and got my key. I tried going through support and sending them a scanned image of the CD case with key. Nothing. Just a standard thank you for contacting support message. I feel for anyone who got their account wrongfully banned/disabled.
I was wondering about this the other day. I do occasionally shop at Wal-Mart, although not for computers. This past weekend I noticed they had an HP and a 17" CRT for $468. Specs were:
2.93GHz Celeron 256MB RAM (crappily shared with video of course) 40GB hard drive CDR
Ok so now before you flame about how the Celeron sucks and video is crap etc. I build my own computers and can't point out all the "suck" parts of this one BUT lets say you run office type apps and browse the Internet. Wouldn't this computer work fine for those tasks? I mean it's not like an Nvidia 6800 Ultra is going to make Word run better. And this whole computer with monitor is less than the cost of that Ultra. It'll run top Wal-Mart sellers, the Sims (version 1) and Rollercoaster Tycoon (version 1 and 2) just fine as well.
I would pretty much agree with this. One of the pluses of MMOs is finding people to play with. Now a lot of players are putting in 20+ hours. So you might meet them and make friends but you will find them leveling at a much faster rate than you. City of Heroes has a good system for sidekicking low level characters, but it's not perfect and many players don't want to sidekick. Most of the time when I'm playing it's when everyone else in the family is asleep or the spouse is watching TV (although you have to be careful about this as some women consider sitting together watching TV to be quality time). As for the big, super time consuming quests. In CoH you have some that last over 5 hours. To me even spare time consideration aside that is a bit excessive. In the entire time I've spent playing I have run 5 of these type of quests. And most of those were the shorter ones (2-3 hours). Also the type of character you play tends to be pretty important if you are not able to put in many hours. You may find yourself needing to solo at times. I ended up creating a character specifically because the type was good for soloing and had powers that reduced the time needed on a lot of missions (invisibility!).
I need the $50/month Internet connection for work let alone entertainment anyway. I do pay for my son's City of Heroes account. I enjoy playing with him. It's been a good way to teach him about working together in a team and about how different people have different skills and do different jobs. It may seem weird but a good MMO team is much like a good project team you might find at work. Considering that we've been playing City of Heroes since June and that as a result we have purchased less other games. The net result has been cheaper. Funny, but true.
Although yes there are free MMOs out there or server components you can setup - in general I don't think an online FPS and a full MMO compare exactly. Persistance is one big thing as well as development of your character over time. As for would it be cool to have an independent server? Well yes and no. One of the big draws in MMOs is the massively multiplayer part. Meeting people to play with is part of the game. I'm not sure I would want a City of Heroes server to play with 10 people. I sure wouldn't want to pay for the server/bandwidth to support opening up the server for free access to the masses. Not to mention troubleshooting, bug fixing, updating etc. As for community content, sure some of it might be good. A lot of it would be utter crap. Look at NeverWinter Nights.
It doesn't make any sense to think of MMO pricing in the same context as a standard offline game. Yes its a game and it plays on your computer but it is really a service you are paying for just like you pay the cable company for TV. I play City of Heroes more than I watch TV, yet I pay less a month then I do for cable. If you cut it down to hours its pretty cheap. Lets say you play 2 hours a day - 60 hours a month = $.25 per hour for a $15/month subscription. Even playing at half that amount of time is $.50/hour. Compared to a movie at say $9 for 2 hours it's pretty cheap entertainment. In the case of CoH that monthly fee has also included a subscription to the game's monthly comic book ($3 cover price) and quarterly updates with new content. Is it woth it? Obviously if you don't like MMO gameplay then you wouldn't pay for it. Just like I wouldn't pay extra for special sport programming on my cable service.
If only it were that simple. While I agree with you that the tactics used are terroristic there are logical reasons why when fighting back against occupation such tactics get employed. Ok - so lets say the USA is invaded and the military loses. Now you have the resistance on one hand and those who are choosing to work with the invaders. Those fellow countrymen working with the invaders can now be the direct cause of the destruction of the resistance. Attacks against civilians who work with the invaders to dissuade people from doing that. From the point of the resistance those countrymen are now "traitors". Do you think Germany could have occupied countries like France without help from French civilians?
Slashdot Mirror
I applaud Apple for finally releasing a Mac other than the PowerMac which doesn't have a built in monitor. I however am saddened that the video card (as was the case with the new iMac) is outdated and not upgradeable.
So I would still need to keep my PC for games. (ok now it's time for the other troll to jump on with the "No you don't! Just get a Mac Mini and a game console!" argument.)
Well, it isn't the best example that's true but consider:
If your game is in RAM and not accessing disk, even the low CPU usage on the DVD burning process might cause stutters in game play. If the DVD burning process were running on one core and the game on the other than theorectically there shouldn't be any stuttering added to the game. That being said, modern CPUs are fast enough to handle playing a game and burning a DVD without much problem. So long as something doesn't flood the PCI bus and cause an under run on the DVD burn.
I guess a better example would be encoding a video and playing a game at the same time. Although there is still a lot of disk access involved, both processes are CPU demanding.
That being said probably the real usage most people will get out of dual core is and extra CPU to balance out the spyware overhead on their Windows systems. Hey how about being a DDOS zombie computer AND playing Half Life 2 at 60+ FPS! Who said dual core isn't useful!
Well, I really found her funny most of the time. Especially the sex scenes in Atlas Shrugged which border on rape.
Although the best parts of the book are when they smoke the special cigerettes that come from the magic land of John Galt. Now those were the greatest cigerettes in the whole world made by the greatest men of action.
If it wasn't for the bazillion pages where she barfed her philosophy out on the page verbatim, Atlas Shrugged would have been a highly enjoyable, laugh a minute, pulp thrill ride.
Which is why Fundamentalism was taken OUT of Civilization 3. It created a game balance problem they couldn't resolve. Plus I think it was becoming politically unpopular.
Now best government for Civ and Civ 2? Fundamentalism hands down. Nothing like a nice religious dictatorship with a huge army out in the field while the folks at home stay happy because they know they'll win the war since God is on their side.
Well, that may be true for you - but I heard and saw about it from numerous friends. Most who are not techies at all. They play video games and don't read Slashdot.
I also can do everything I listed with ease on my computer. However I wanted a media center pc for my living room and I didn't want to spend a lot of money.
As for emulation on a pc vs. the xbox - all the Xbox emulation software benefits from the standardized controllers. On the pc it's a crapshoot as to whether a particular emulator will support say the dual analog sticks on your pc controller.
The other nice thing is the Xbox software is easy to use with a remote or controller sitting on the couch. Just simple menu driven screens.
If you don't think there is a market for this I suggest you take a look at how large the mod scene is. And yes the primary driving motivation for the mod may not be what I think is cool and what I use it for (video and emulation). It's more likely piracy seeing as a modded xbox can suck a game off a dvd in 15 minutes or so and can also play downloaded isos.
Do you honestly think the only people who modded Playstation's were techs who post on Slashdot???
Take a $150 Xbox, solder in a mod chip, throw in a big HD and even a USB keyboard if you like. What do you get? A great little media center box and an awesome box for emulation, oh yeah and it runs Linux too.
I know it's all illegal but I swear one of the reasons for the Xbox's increase in popularity is the mod community.
Because it is x86 based it's been pretty easy to port existing emulators over to the Xbox. Currently you have arcade machine emus, NES, SNES, Gameboy (up to Advance), Genesis, Sega Master System, Game Gear, Atari 2600 & 5200, Atari 8 bit computers, Atari ST, Commodore Pet, Vic 20 and 64, Amiga, PC Engine (Turbographix), Apple II and IIGS, Sinclair Spectrum, Lynx, Wonderswan, MSX computers, Colecovision, MS DOS, Intellivision, Neo Geo, Odyssey, Amstrad CPC even Playstation and N64 to a degree. All easy to use and play from your TV set.
Plus XBMC for playing DIVX, XVID and other video files, viewing pictures and playing mp3s. Oh yeah it will show you a current weather report too.
Amazing stuff.
Let's see how hard MS works to kill off the mod community with XBox 2.
If the rumors are true about the flash based hard drive I don't see it as a good thing.
Most likely it will allow MS to put some proprietary device in there making modding and upgrading harder.
Flash also is not faster than a modern hard drive and has a much higher cost per megabyte.
Um. He died before his materials became a profit center. So no that is not fair - but it's not fair in the "life is cruel and unkind" kind of not fair, hardly in the copyright screwed PKD kind of not fair.
So what would be better than having the money go to the next of kin?
I know PKD had a rough time as a parent and husband, but from what I can tell he cared a great deal for his children, I think he would be happy to know that his hard work allows them a better standard of living then he was able to provide during his lifetime.
...or you might spill your beer?
However, PKD's kids who manage his estate DO get the money. So while it's sad that he didn't live to enjoy it at least his family is well cared for thanks to the merits of his work.
His writing was ahead of the times and it took 20 years for the concepts to become mainstream.
What's really sad is that he died somewhat young and wasn't around to see his ideas get mainstream critical and commercial success.
This happens to a lot of creative types - he's not unique.
Besides if he had lived to see Total Recall, that might have finished him off anyway.
Irregardless of whether it's a trojan or a virus or whatever - the fact is that adware infestations make computers unusable.
The antivirus companies have been slow to respond to this. Symantec has stated that while they are looking into adware removal antivirus is their prime business.
Because of this a new category of software for adware/spyware removal has been born. You are pretty much stuck using things like Adaware and Spybot. For corporate environments there are server based removal tools such as Pest Patrol. Although these products are a bit immature. No one program seems to catch all installed spyware either.
Hey! Don't you laugh!
You should know "Home Taping is Killing Gaming"!
You use telnet? What are you nuts?
Oh telnet to your friend's server - your friend who was stupid enough to use telnet rather than ssh so you sniffed packets and got his logon.
So if I run a thousand of these in parallel do I get a microcomputer instead of a supercomputer?
I had a problem when I purchased Sim City 3000. You were supposed to logon to a website, enter your key and get additional content.
Well, I tried that - but someone had already used my key to setup an account. Keep in mind the copy I bought was a sealed store-bought copy, not second hand. I guess someone used a keygen and got my key.
I tried going through support and sending them a scanned image of the CD case with key. Nothing. Just a standard thank you for contacting support message.
I feel for anyone who got their account wrongfully banned/disabled.
Whatever they would say it would likely be amusing based on past events.
Sun will say Linux sucks and they don't do Linux and real computers run Solaris.
Sun will buy a company that has a Linux based product (you know something like those Cobalt guys).
Sun will say "We love Linux, we have Linux - you can buy your Linux from us!"
Sun will release x86 based servers running either Linux or Solaris.
Sun will kill off Linux based product line.
Sun will say Linux sucks and real servers run Solaris.
Sun will say we are open sourcing Solaris or Java sometime so you don't need to stop buying Sun to realize the benefits from open source.
Sun will say we are friends with Microsoft so we hate Linux.
Sun will say we have no problem with SCO.
And then of course Sun will....
Contradict itself repeatedly.
I was wondering about this the other day. I do occasionally shop at Wal-Mart, although not for computers. This past weekend I noticed they had an HP and a 17" CRT for $468.
Specs were:
2.93GHz Celeron
256MB RAM (crappily shared with video of course)
40GB hard drive
CDR
Ok so now before you flame about how the Celeron sucks and video is crap etc. I build my own computers and can't point out all the "suck" parts of this one BUT lets say you run office type apps and browse the Internet. Wouldn't this computer work fine for those tasks?
I mean it's not like an Nvidia 6800 Ultra is going to make Word run better. And this whole computer with monitor is less than the cost of that Ultra.
It'll run top Wal-Mart sellers, the Sims (version 1) and Rollercoaster Tycoon (version 1 and 2) just fine as well.
I would pretty much agree with this. One of the pluses of MMOs is finding people to play with. Now a lot of players are putting in 20+ hours. So you might meet them and make friends but you will find them leveling at a much faster rate than you.
City of Heroes has a good system for sidekicking low level characters, but it's not perfect and many players don't want to sidekick.
Most of the time when I'm playing it's when everyone else in the family is asleep or the spouse is watching TV (although you have to be careful about this as some women consider sitting together watching TV to be quality time).
As for the big, super time consuming quests. In CoH you have some that last over 5 hours. To me even spare time consideration aside that is a bit excessive. In the entire time I've spent playing I have run 5 of these type of quests. And most of those were the shorter ones (2-3 hours).
Also the type of character you play tends to be pretty important if you are not able to put in many hours. You may find yourself needing to solo at times. I ended up creating a character specifically because the type was good for soloing and had powers that reduced the time needed on a lot of missions (invisibility!).
I need the $50/month Internet connection for work let alone entertainment anyway.
I do pay for my son's City of Heroes account. I enjoy playing with him. It's been a good way to teach him about working together in a team and about how different people have different skills and do different jobs. It may seem weird but a good MMO team is much like a good project team you might find at work.
Considering that we've been playing City of Heroes since June and that as a result we have purchased less other games. The net result has been cheaper. Funny, but true.
That device seems to be lacking the in the playback video department.
Although yes there are free MMOs out there or server components you can setup - in general I don't think an online FPS and a full MMO compare exactly. Persistance is one big thing as well as development of your character over time.
As for would it be cool to have an independent server? Well yes and no. One of the big draws in MMOs is the massively multiplayer part. Meeting people to play with is part of the game. I'm not sure I would want a City of Heroes server to play with 10 people.
I sure wouldn't want to pay for the server/bandwidth to support opening up the server for free access to the masses. Not to mention troubleshooting, bug fixing, updating etc.
As for community content, sure some of it might be good. A lot of it would be utter crap. Look at NeverWinter Nights.
It doesn't make any sense to think of MMO pricing in the same context as a standard offline game. Yes its a game and it plays on your computer but it is really a service you are paying for just like you pay the cable company for TV.
I play City of Heroes more than I watch TV, yet I pay less a month then I do for cable. If you cut it down to hours its pretty cheap. Lets say you play 2 hours a day - 60 hours a month = $.25 per hour for a $15/month subscription. Even playing at half that amount of time is $.50/hour. Compared to a movie at say $9 for 2 hours it's pretty cheap entertainment.
In the case of CoH that monthly fee has also included a subscription to the game's monthly comic book ($3 cover price) and quarterly updates with new content.
Is it woth it? Obviously if you don't like MMO gameplay then you wouldn't pay for it. Just like I wouldn't pay extra for special sport programming on my cable service.
Yeah I remember using an archie client called Anarchie.
Completely forgot about archie, must be the alzheimer's.
It also states that once you pay for an expansion, regular monthly fees will apply.
If only it were that simple. While I agree with you that the tactics used are terroristic there are logical reasons why when fighting back against occupation such tactics get employed.
Ok - so lets say the USA is invaded and the military loses. Now you have the resistance on one hand and those who are choosing to work with the invaders. Those fellow countrymen working with the invaders can now be the direct cause of the destruction of the resistance. Attacks against civilians who work with the invaders to dissuade people from doing that. From the point of the resistance those countrymen are now "traitors".
Do you think Germany could have occupied countries like France without help from French civilians?