Maybe I was too hard-core, but being a VGA game developer (and later SVGA, what pain!) I had no choice. Direct-to-the-metal was the only way to get things going fast enough on a 486 to rival Nintendo & Sega consoles.
I remember a certain 12 year old student who couldn't afford MASM and didn't like TASM so he wrote his own macro preprocessor in C. Then the code was fed back to Debug.com and BEHOLD it worked.
Young programmers today don't realize how spoilt they are. Back in the day we all had our copy of the Intel386 assembler document, and a heavily modified version of Abrash's Zen Timer. Have you ever seem a man shuffle assembler instructions by hand to alleviate register contention, or deliberately NOT'ing AX and reversing the following branch to lull the Pentium into correctly predicting the jump, wasting one cycle but saving 4-7 (depending on whether the code following the branch accessed RAM or not, since the prefetch would have been invalidated).
For that matter, do you even remember when we used fancy tricks to either cope with the 64kb code segment limit, or trounce all over it. I hate to say it, but I miss those days, because back then it took more than an optimizing compiler and a few www tutorials for someone to be called a programmer. You actually had to know at least a little bit what was going on under the hood. It wasn't about compilers and libraries and distributed object frameworks, it was about making a limited machine do limitless things.
Unfortunately I have no idea how to build such a system, and looking at ebay auctions isn't helping. Wouldn't I need some fancy hardware on my workstation PC to be able to interface to the fibre array ?
The thought of fibre channel had crossed my mind extremely briefly, but all the places I remember that had those toys, were places that didn't care about the noise or placement or their hardware (or quality of their techies). There were also hooked up to "Storage racks" where they'd just pop in new hard drives as fast as their budget allowed to purchase them, because some sub-genius wiseass was storing thousands of raw uncompressed 24-bit 300dpi multi-page scans to the tune of 7 gigs per day.
Me, all I want is a terabyte of elbow room for video editing:)
Yes but the max data a cell phone can put out is around 30-35 kbaud. Nasty-ass slow, compared to 802.11, and definitely useless for home/office networking.
Let me take a step back and ask why the hell would a flash chip need a complex device driver ? It's a fricking storage array, here's my data, and there's where I want to store it. If the thing needs help figuring out how to do that simple task, then that help should be built right into the device. It's like a boss/slave relationship. The boss issues a high-level request and the slave carries out the individual tasks. The boss doesn't need to tell the slave to get a file, open it, take out the sheets and write things on them. Why not apply the same level of indirection to hardware so we can all just have a break and get back to creating innovative gadgets ?
I do have a firewire enclosure, it's slower than the drive that's in it.
If someone out there has an external bus that manage 300mb/sec sustained throughput (megaBYTES), they can have my money. Something that can keep up with a modern Raid-5 array at full speed. Something like dual or quad-channel external SCSI-160... yeah, right! I wish!
Okay let's go back to pre-capitalist law enforcement. You don't want me to drive above the speed limit ? Then make a car that doesn't go above the speed limit.
Making a car that goes to 200km/h, then putting in a chip that tells the cops when you go over 50, is ENTRAPMENT. Make a car that stops accelerating at 50 instead. It's already nasty enough that speed limits are being calculated according to income possibilities, not safety. I would be quite happy to drive the black box up the designer's ass at 200km/h.
One is fine, but I have FIVE. My whisper-quiet case sure helps, but it's still annoying. I just wish there was some uber-high-speed external interconnect so that I could hide the hard drives a few feet away in a dampened box.
If you ever find the answer to this I hope you'll send such enlightenment to my inbox.
I have a strong disliking for those born with mental illness. If you're going to be a dumb vegetable all your life and make your family suffer, why bother ? It's one thing to go senile of old age, but it's another to be totally helpless from the get-go. At least have them neutered so they don't propagate the pain. There are already too many Timmy's in this world, they suffer, we suffer, everyone suffers. Put an end to the suffering.
Raise the speed limits, or better yet just invalidate them entirely. Speeders aren't nearly as dangerous as all-round-bad drivers.
You know there is one very brutal point that has been raised in my hometown, following a freak accident where a drunk driver killed two teenagers. The driver got away with barely a scratch. The argument is to design cars that will dampen a collision from the sides and rear, but not the front. Traffic law stipulates that whoever is behind, is responsible in that you're looking ahead and it shouldn't be the front car's duty to watch out for idiots in the back. Making front-weakened cars would simply Darwinize that logic. If and when speeders and drunks have accidents in these cars, they will pay with their lives and not the innocent. After a while people will get the message (or the idiots will be exterminated - a win in any case). Cruel? yes. Fair? i think so. It seems radical because we're used to even protecting pedophiles and terrorists, but maybe it's time for some tough love.
The virus problem isn't about world-writable directories. The virus problem is about ignorants on P2P networks downloading warez all day long, and the virus writers who know damn well how to lure ignorants : with WAREZ!
Comparatively, I miss the old QUALITY viruses that used to float around in the days of Dos. Boot sector viruses, bios-killing viruses, viruses that involved more than adding themselves to the StartUp folder and/or registry keys and hogging resources blindly. We once had truly malicious viruses coded by angry wizards that wanted to enact their revenge against the ignorants.
But like everything in modern america, the ignorants won.
Why do we pay taxes ? To fund services provided by the government.
What service is provided by gov't when I go pick up a 61" Plasma TV for 9999$ that justifies blowing another 1100$ in taxes ? NOTHING!
Property tax is reasonable (water/police/firemen), driver's license is another honest tax (to pay for road maintenance). Income tax is kind of fishy since gov't has little to do with my work and employer, but it is one way of taxing somewhat fairly across working classes. Now to be 100% fair they should get rid of the indexing/bracketing and just charge a fixed percentage for everyone.
Sales tax ? Why should we pay the state/country for someone else's product and labor ? Because they will hunt us down and lock us up if we don't ? That's no good reason, that's racketeering no better than the mob.
[soapbox ON] The only reason such excess funds are required is because gov't is grossly inefficient and corrupt. It's all been said before, but the main problem is that gov't is getting special treatment. The truth of it is that it should be no different from any other private company. If you put an owner on top, someone whose wealth is in the hands of the company, then suddenly you will see efficiency improve tenfold, but when you're spending other people's money you really don't care if you're being overcharged for this or whether such-and-such project is bullshit. [soapbox OFF]
It's been what, less than one year since NGage hit retail ? It has sucked beyond suckage, and yet they're already talking about NG2.
Take a hint from Nintendo: buyers appreciate longevity. I don't want to replace hardware every 6 months (unless it's in my bleeding-edge PC workstation). Sell ONE good platform that's ready for the future, keep on churning out software titles for years to come, reaping massive royalties over time, and then when you've done it all, start over with a fresh hardware platform that will BLOW YOUR USERS AWAY!
The world looks more and more like a never-ending Jerry Springer episode. The point is that AOL had no business seizing this man's Porsche, they should have sued him dry and let the prison dogs drill him a new asshole.
Let's see here: the Bush gov't has spent bazillions to seek out and destroy Bin Laden/Saddam etc. We catch this one little spammer prick that we'd just love to have drawn and quartered on national TV, and yet they just say "Give us your shiny red car" and let him loose. And now make a media crazy by raffling away the car. Good lord, I'd rather raffle away the privilege of slicing this guy to pulp with an AOL-CD launcher. Naw, I'd be cheap and keep that entertainment for myself.
If I could find a way of making someone pay me 6 million to dump a bucket full of 'stuff' in SOMEONE ELSE'S YARD, I'd buy/build 5 million worth of weapons and kill off every last retard on this crazy beachball. The other mil I'd spend on funky audio equipment and bitches:)
I'm going to stick my neck out and declare that RTOS are overrated. You don't need a full-blown operating system to operate a microwave or even a heat-seeking missile. You need dedicated code that performs whatever specific tasks are required and nothing more.
The whole point of an "operating system" is to serve as a generic host for other software. DOS, even in the early days, was really just a series of tools to organise and manipulate files on various storage media. Windows is the same thing, with a bunch of generic hardware interfaces thrown in. Ditto for Linux, except we actively distinguish between OS and GUI. These things have no place in single-purpose devices.
Sure it might be easier to install a stripped-down linux on your toaster and use a USB webcam to monitor the color and apparent texture of the bread and pop it out once it's just perfect, but that's the unprofessional, lazy way out. Use a simpler CPU with dedicated code to perform the same task, and ONLY that task.
Heck even the XBOX is proof : everyone's yakking about how the Xbox uses a "stripped-down version of the Windows 2000 kernel". Bullsh!t! You've got 256kb of rom code that presents a DirectX-like interface to the underlying hardware, as well as basic I/O for disk and networking. An API, nothing more. There is no OS, just 'device drivers', to borrow a PC concept.
Why do I care ? Because right now I'm putting together a homebrew car stereo unit. Do I need my car to be running cron, X and apache ? hell no. a full-blown operating system is much overkill for just playing music and maybe showing navigational aids.
The whole concept of PC-everything is just sickening and counter-evolutionary. Use the right tools for the right solution.
Usually there is little point in porting console games to PC or vice-versa. Different interface, different market. Sure we all fire up an emulator every now and then, but unless you have a USB gamepad that's really close to the console pad (or a native adapter), well it just doesn't feel right.
Tight handling is one of the most important aspects of game programming. If your jaw drops at the graphics & 5.1 sound but you can't aim for shiat using the d-pad, chances are that game disc will be found in the microwave rather soon. Prime example: Halo vs Turok Evolution (on XBOX). Halo plays great, the joystick aim is non-linear so you can let off more precise shots. Turok plays like shiat, impossible to aim adequately so you die young (and often). Same game on the PC would probably do OK thanks to the mouse.
It's like every other design paradox in the world: you have a limited set of resources that you have to deal with. In the game world this is called Tweaking. Playtest the game; if the mouse aim is awkward, throw in some clever interpolation to smooth it out. If gamepad aim is unruly, try some form of light auto-aim assistance to keep the player focused on progress rather than tedium.
Same thing can be applied to graphics. Stuff that looks good in 640x480 on a tv set will look chunky as hell and over-focused on SVGA, so we throw in some heavy AA and selective blurring.
Worse (in my opinion): Sound. TV sets have sucky paper-cone speakers chosen to adequately represent human voice. Bass/treble is typically weak and so you lose all the neat sound effects. You have to compress your sound to fit mostly within that limited bandwidth. Then there's the other end of the spectrum, people with bigass stereos. What sounded good on the 25" TV with stock speakers, now sounds like an Atari 2600 on the good system. Pan over to the gaming PC. It either has a semi-decent set of 2.1 or 4.1 speakers, so now not only do you want mid-bass but you also want surround effects. More headaches.
Multi-platform game development isn't a science, it's a labor of love. That, or a marketing ploy to pass on 3 poor products instead of one good one. If Microsoft has a solution to all this, they will become GODS whether we like it or not. They certainly now possess the experience and expertise on the topic, and it is a very strategic move to corner the exploding mobile entertainment market (games for non-gamers). They are not to be underestimated.
Mine's got nekkid people all over. Really though it's just a big dynamic page that gathers a wealth of information about the various paysites I operate. How big will my commission check be this month ? blue box 3rd cell from the top. What's the trend for new memberships per day ? Graph in the bottom left corner.
Oh, and I have a google strip that hovers over all that, because y'know, you always need to google something.
True, I both loved and hated Descent, and I was probably the only guy in my circle of geeks to play it for more than one evening. The main problem was that you really needed a flight stick to play it well; key+mouse was just hell. The game itself was also very difficult, with blowing up the generator and then you had only a limited amount of time to get out of there, meaning you had to spot the exit ahead of time and make sure you remembed the escape route.. kind of took the "instant action" aspect away from the game because you could literally spend hours on the same level just trying to find your way around.
A few years later there was Forsaken, which took the old Descent genre, dumbed it down a tiny bit and gave it amazing visuals (for its time). It was a fun multiplayer experience but laggy players were essentially invincible (you were shooting at their 'ghost' and they wouldn't register the damage). Descent 3 came out shortly after, fixed many technical issues but it was back to the hyper-difficult mazelike levels, focusing on exploration rather than action.
And now I'm waiting for someone to one-up Forsaken, which probably never will happen because the market is smaller due to most people being too dumb to fly a ship.
Of course they will, and just like the 500$/ft cables, the 15000$ filters will never enter my living quarters lest their carrier be pummelled by my skeptical fists of enlightenment.
But seriously, just my stupid 2.0ghz notebook pumps back enough HF noise into the power system to induce loud buzzing in any audio component on the same circuit. And that's with only the power adapter cord.. hell to pay if I dare plug the 1394 across to my desktop.
Another poster mentioned that mhz and ghz frequencies are way beyond the audible range. True, but those super high frequencies are generated by super-cheap components that spill harmonic distortion all over the spectrum. Just sit near a kilowatt radio station with a spectrum analyzer and you'll see not only your 96.1 FM signal but lots and lots of lesser-powered yet undesirable side bands, often squashing or at least impeding other radio stations within a short radius.
If I have mhz/ghz signal running through the miles of electrical wiring in the average home, then my audio receiver is literally bathed in radio noise waves, bouncing off each other, interacting to form nodes and antinodes of varying octaves.
What now ? miniature tinfoil hats on my headphones ?
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I was too hard-core, but being a VGA game developer (and later SVGA, what pain!) I had no choice. Direct-to-the-metal was the only way to get things going fast enough on a 486 to rival Nintendo & Sega consoles.
I remember a certain 12 year old student who couldn't afford MASM and didn't like TASM so he wrote his own macro preprocessor in C. Then the code was fed back to Debug.com and BEHOLD it worked.
Young programmers today don't realize how spoilt they are. Back in the day we all had our copy of the Intel386 assembler document, and a heavily modified version of Abrash's Zen Timer. Have you ever seem a man shuffle assembler instructions by hand to alleviate register contention, or deliberately NOT'ing AX and reversing the following branch to lull the Pentium into correctly predicting the jump, wasting one cycle but saving 4-7 (depending on whether the code following the branch accessed RAM or not, since the prefetch would have been invalidated).
For that matter, do you even remember when we used fancy tricks to either cope with the 64kb code segment limit, or trounce all over it. I hate to say it, but I miss those days, because back then it took more than an optimizing compiler and a few www tutorials for someone to be called a programmer. You actually had to know at least a little bit what was going on under the hood. It wasn't about compilers and libraries and distributed object frameworks, it was about making a limited machine do limitless things.
You're the 2nd person to mention fibre channel.
Unfortunately I have no idea how to build such a system, and looking at ebay auctions isn't helping. Wouldn't I need some fancy hardware on my workstation PC to be able to interface to the fibre array ?
The thought of fibre channel had crossed my mind extremely briefly, but all the places I remember that had those toys, were places that didn't care about the noise or placement or their hardware (or quality of their techies). There were also hooked up to "Storage racks" where they'd just pop in new hard drives as fast as their budget allowed to purchase them, because some sub-genius wiseass was storing thousands of raw uncompressed 24-bit 300dpi multi-page scans to the tune of 7 gigs per day.
:)
Me, all I want is a terabyte of elbow room for video editing
Yes but the max data a cell phone can put out is around 30-35 kbaud. Nasty-ass slow, compared to 802.11, and definitely useless for home/office networking.
Let me take a step back and ask why the hell would a flash chip need a complex device driver ? It's a fricking storage array, here's my data, and there's where I want to store it. If the thing needs help figuring out how to do that simple task, then that help should be built right into the device. It's like a boss/slave relationship. The boss issues a high-level request and the slave carries out the individual tasks. The boss doesn't need to tell the slave to get a file, open it, take out the sheets and write things on them. Why not apply the same level of indirection to hardware so we can all just have a break and get back to creating innovative gadgets ?
Not fast enough, I'm afraid.
I do have a firewire enclosure, it's slower than the drive that's in it.
If someone out there has an external bus that manage 300mb/sec sustained throughput (megaBYTES), they can have my money. Something that can keep up with a modern Raid-5 array at full speed. Something like dual or quad-channel external SCSI-160... yeah, right! I wish!
Okay let's go back to pre-capitalist law enforcement. You don't want me to drive above the speed limit ? Then make a car that doesn't go above the speed limit.
Making a car that goes to 200km/h, then putting in a chip that tells the cops when you go over 50, is ENTRAPMENT. Make a car that stops accelerating at 50 instead. It's already nasty enough that speed limits are being calculated according to income possibilities, not safety. I would be quite happy to drive the black box up the designer's ass at 200km/h.
Someone invent a WiFi that can reach from my frickin' basement bedroom to my car parked outside 8 feet away.
Better yet, invest a WiFi that will allow a local ISP to broadcast over a 10-mile radius so I can read Slashdot in the goddamn taxi in heavy traffic.
One is fine, but I have FIVE. My whisper-quiet case sure helps, but it's still annoying. I just wish there was some uber-high-speed external interconnect so that I could hide the hard drives a few feet away in a dampened box.
If you ever find the answer to this I hope you'll send such enlightenment to my inbox.
I have a strong disliking for those born with mental illness. If you're going to be a dumb vegetable all your life and make your family suffer, why bother ? It's one thing to go senile of old age, but it's another to be totally helpless from the get-go. At least have them neutered so they don't propagate the pain. There are already too many Timmy's in this world, they suffer, we suffer, everyone suffers. Put an end to the suffering.
Raise the speed limits, or better yet just invalidate them entirely. Speeders aren't nearly as dangerous as all-round-bad drivers.
You know there is one very brutal point that has been raised in my hometown, following a freak accident where a drunk driver killed two teenagers. The driver got away with barely a scratch. The argument is to design cars that will dampen a collision from the sides and rear, but not the front. Traffic law stipulates that whoever is behind, is responsible in that you're looking ahead and it shouldn't be the front car's duty to watch out for idiots in the back. Making front-weakened cars would simply Darwinize that logic. If and when speeders and drunks have accidents in these cars, they will pay with their lives and not the innocent. After a while people will get the message (or the idiots will be exterminated - a win in any case). Cruel? yes. Fair? i think so. It seems radical because we're used to even protecting pedophiles and terrorists, but maybe it's time for some tough love.
The virus problem isn't about world-writable directories. The virus problem is about ignorants on P2P networks downloading warez all day long, and the virus writers who know damn well how to lure ignorants : with WAREZ!
Comparatively, I miss the old QUALITY viruses that used to float around in the days of Dos. Boot sector viruses, bios-killing viruses, viruses that involved more than adding themselves to the StartUp folder and/or registry keys and hogging resources blindly. We once had truly malicious viruses coded by angry wizards that wanted to enact their revenge against the ignorants.
But like everything in modern america, the ignorants won.
The concept of sales tax is ridiculous in itself.
Why do we pay taxes ? To fund services provided by the government.
What service is provided by gov't when I go pick up a 61" Plasma TV for 9999$ that justifies blowing another 1100$ in taxes ? NOTHING!
Property tax is reasonable (water/police/firemen), driver's license is another honest tax (to pay for road maintenance). Income tax is kind of fishy since gov't has little to do with my work and employer, but it is one way of taxing somewhat fairly across working classes. Now to be 100% fair they should get rid of the indexing/bracketing and just charge a fixed percentage for everyone.
Sales tax ? Why should we pay the state/country for someone else's product and labor ? Because they will hunt us down and lock us up if we don't ? That's no good reason, that's racketeering no better than the mob.
[soapbox ON]
The only reason such excess funds are required is because gov't is grossly inefficient and corrupt. It's all been said before, but the main problem is that gov't is getting special treatment. The truth of it is that it should be no different from any other private company. If you put an owner on top, someone whose wealth is in the hands of the company, then suddenly you will see efficiency improve tenfold, but when you're spending other people's money you really don't care if you're being overcharged for this or whether such-and-such project is bullshit.
[soapbox OFF]
The bottom line: taxes suck. =)
It's been what, less than one year since NGage hit retail ? It has sucked beyond suckage, and yet they're already talking about NG2.
Take a hint from Nintendo: buyers appreciate longevity. I don't want to replace hardware every 6 months (unless it's in my bleeding-edge PC workstation). Sell ONE good platform that's ready for the future, keep on churning out software titles for years to come, reaping massive royalties over time, and then when you've done it all, start over with a fresh hardware platform that will BLOW YOUR USERS AWAY!
That's how it's done, now where's my check ?
Maybe it's just me being hyperreal, but I think this guy needs to lay off the acid. These graphics are seriously damaging my gray matter.
The world looks more and more like a never-ending Jerry Springer episode. The point is that AOL had no business seizing this man's Porsche, they should have sued him dry and let the prison dogs drill him a new asshole.
Let's see here: the Bush gov't has spent bazillions to seek out and destroy Bin Laden/Saddam etc. We catch this one little spammer prick that we'd just love to have drawn and quartered on national TV, and yet they just say "Give us your shiny red car" and let him loose. And now make a media crazy by raffling away the car. Good lord, I'd rather raffle away the privilege of slicing this guy to pulp with an AOL-CD launcher. Naw, I'd be cheap and keep that entertainment for myself.
If I could find a way of making someone pay me 6 million to dump a bucket full of 'stuff' in SOMEONE ELSE'S YARD, I'd buy/build 5 million worth of weapons and kill off every last retard on this crazy beachball. The other mil I'd spend on funky audio equipment and bitches :)
I'm going to stick my neck out and declare that RTOS are overrated. You don't need a full-blown operating system to operate a microwave or even a heat-seeking missile. You need dedicated code that performs whatever specific tasks are required and nothing more.
The whole point of an "operating system" is to serve as a generic host for other software. DOS, even in the early days, was really just a series of tools to organise and manipulate files on various storage media. Windows is the same thing, with a bunch of generic hardware interfaces thrown in. Ditto for Linux, except we actively distinguish between OS and GUI. These things have no place in single-purpose devices.
Sure it might be easier to install a stripped-down linux on your toaster and use a USB webcam to monitor the color and apparent texture of the bread and pop it out once it's just perfect, but that's the unprofessional, lazy way out. Use a simpler CPU with dedicated code to perform the same task, and ONLY that task.
Heck even the XBOX is proof : everyone's yakking about how the Xbox uses a "stripped-down version of the Windows 2000 kernel". Bullsh!t! You've got 256kb of rom code that presents a DirectX-like interface to the underlying hardware, as well as basic I/O for disk and networking. An API, nothing more. There is no OS, just 'device drivers', to borrow a PC concept.
Why do I care ? Because right now I'm putting together a homebrew car stereo unit. Do I need my car to be running cron, X and apache ? hell no. a full-blown operating system is much overkill for just playing music and maybe showing navigational aids.
The whole concept of PC-everything is just sickening and counter-evolutionary. Use the right tools for the right solution.
Poor guidebot, he/she/it was always getting obliterated so early on in the game.
Usually there is little point in porting console games to PC or vice-versa. Different interface, different market. Sure we all fire up an emulator every now and then, but unless you have a USB gamepad that's really close to the console pad (or a native adapter), well it just doesn't feel right.
Tight handling is one of the most important aspects of game programming. If your jaw drops at the graphics & 5.1 sound but you can't aim for shiat using the d-pad, chances are that game disc will be found in the microwave rather soon. Prime example: Halo vs Turok Evolution (on XBOX). Halo plays great, the joystick aim is non-linear so you can let off more precise shots. Turok plays like shiat, impossible to aim adequately so you die young (and often). Same game on the PC would probably do OK thanks to the mouse.
It's like every other design paradox in the world: you have a limited set of resources that you have to deal with. In the game world this is called Tweaking. Playtest the game; if the mouse aim is awkward, throw in some clever interpolation to smooth it out. If gamepad aim is unruly, try some form of light auto-aim assistance to keep the player focused on progress rather than tedium.
Same thing can be applied to graphics. Stuff that looks good in 640x480 on a tv set will look chunky as hell and over-focused on SVGA, so we throw in some heavy AA and selective blurring.
Worse (in my opinion): Sound. TV sets have sucky paper-cone speakers chosen to adequately represent human voice. Bass/treble is typically weak and so you lose all the neat sound effects. You have to compress your sound to fit mostly within that limited bandwidth. Then there's the other end of the spectrum, people with bigass stereos. What sounded good on the 25" TV with stock speakers, now sounds like an Atari 2600 on the good system. Pan over to the gaming PC. It either has a semi-decent set of 2.1 or 4.1 speakers, so now not only do you want mid-bass but you also want surround effects. More headaches.
Multi-platform game development isn't a science, it's a labor of love. That, or a marketing ploy to pass on 3 poor products instead of one good one. If Microsoft has a solution to all this, they will become GODS whether we like it or not. They certainly now possess the experience and expertise on the topic, and it is a very strategic move to corner the exploding mobile entertainment market (games for non-gamers). They are not to be underestimated.
Mine's got nekkid people all over. Really though it's just a big dynamic page that gathers a wealth of information about the various paysites I operate. How big will my commission check be this month ? blue box 3rd cell from the top. What's the trend for new memberships per day ? Graph in the bottom left corner.
Oh, and I have a google strip that hovers over all that, because y'know, you always need to google something.
True, I both loved and hated Descent, and I was probably the only guy in my circle of geeks to play it for more than one evening. The main problem was that you really needed a flight stick to play it well; key+mouse was just hell. The game itself was also very difficult, with blowing up the generator and then you had only a limited amount of time to get out of there, meaning you had to spot the exit ahead of time and make sure you remembed the escape route.. kind of took the "instant action" aspect away from the game because you could literally spend hours on the same level just trying to find your way around.
A few years later there was Forsaken, which took the old Descent genre, dumbed it down a tiny bit and gave it amazing visuals (for its time). It was a fun multiplayer experience but laggy players were essentially invincible (you were shooting at their 'ghost' and they wouldn't register the damage). Descent 3 came out shortly after, fixed many technical issues but it was back to the hyper-difficult mazelike levels, focusing on exploration rather than action.
And now I'm waiting for someone to one-up Forsaken, which probably never will happen because the market is smaller due to most people being too dumb to fly a ship.
Of course they will, and just like the 500$/ft cables, the 15000$ filters will never enter my living quarters lest their carrier be pummelled by my skeptical fists of enlightenment.
But seriously, just my stupid 2.0ghz notebook pumps back enough HF noise into the power system to induce loud buzzing in any audio component on the same circuit. And that's with only the power adapter cord.. hell to pay if I dare plug the 1394 across to my desktop.
Another poster mentioned that mhz and ghz frequencies are way beyond the audible range. True, but those super high frequencies are generated by super-cheap components that spill harmonic distortion all over the spectrum. Just sit near a kilowatt radio station with a spectrum analyzer and you'll see not only your 96.1 FM signal but lots and lots of lesser-powered yet undesirable side bands, often squashing or at least impeding other radio stations within a short radius.
If I have mhz/ghz signal running through the miles of electrical wiring in the average home, then my audio receiver is literally bathed in radio noise waves, bouncing off each other, interacting to form nodes and antinodes of varying octaves.
What now ? miniature tinfoil hats on my headphones ?
Might as well use the inbuilt LCD to display the bestest reruns of "All My Children" that will lull the intruder into committing hara-kiri