The cost argument is getting increasingly moot. If you want to play PC games you need upgrade your graphics card about once every 2-3 years. The trick is purchasing the right graphics card at the right time. Processor, motherboard, and RAM are so inexpensive as to make them an almost insignificant part of the equation. Particularly if all you care about is getting performance equivalent to that which consoles provide. $300 every couple of years or so should keep you well ahead of the console market. And given that the modern generation of consoles has been hitting the market at $300 price points, you're not really spending a tremendous amount more money over the long haul.
On the short end the console market has a 3 year turn around between new generations of hardware. On the long side it hits 5 years. They can't afford to innovate any faster then that. The PC advances on at a 6 month to a year per generation rate. Consoles have some advantages in terms of design that allow them to squeeze some extra performance out of older hardware, but they are unlikely to catch up to the PC market any time soon.
Typically, the A-List Xbox, PS2, and Gamecube titles look like arse compared to A-List PC titles running on nearly identical hardware (meaning 3-4 generation old graphics cards on the PC side) and don't even show up on the radar when compared to those same PC titles running on latest generation graphics cards at 1600x1200 with all the detail settings cranked. The next gen consoles are talking about being able to run in 720p (1280x720), but even if they could hit 1080i (1920x1080) remember that this not only requires you to have a $1500+ television (effectively bringing your console up to the cost of a upper-middle end PC), but you would be stuck with an interlaced signal again. And PC's are capable of even higher resolutions (though finding monitors that support them is difficult).
People have been predicting the death of PC gaming since it came into existence. It is doubtful that the PC market is going to die out. Diminish from time to time? Sure. Have less market share? Definitely. The ease of use, portability, and general lowest common denominator effect of consoles pretty much guarantees that they'll maintain (or expand) their already thoroughly dominant market share.
The Mac argument is not a terribly strong one. The UI is not significantly easier to use that of Windows XP to a novice non-computer user and really the UI is a moot point when we're talking about the ease of playing games. The input devices for a Mac are the same as those for a PC, the hardware has just as many problems as a PC from a major OEM like Dell. When compared to the overall PC market Mac's have less reliability problems, basically because you only have one source to choose from. In terms of gaming, Macs have all the worst of both worlds. Restrictive hardware, high cost, some reliability issues and cumbersome form factor for the living room. OS X has a gorgeous interface (again not necessarily more intuitive, but gorgeous) running on top of a pretty nice operating system and I really enjoy using it, but it isn't really a console killer. Nor is it a PC killer so long as Apple retains tight control over the hardware.
As always the greatest strength of the respective platforms are also their greatest weaknesses.
The 626 is a nice car, but don't knock the hybrids. The Insight hits 73 mph in second gear and hits its governed speed of 113mph 3/4 of the way through 3rd. And at 90 mph I'm still getting around 55-60 mpg. If I drop to a more legal speed I can bring my gas mileage up into the 70-80 mpg range.
If I need to accelerate quickly on a short ramp, I can do it, 0-60 mph in just under 10 seconds ain't great, but it's better than most econoboxes, SUVs, and pickup trucks.
I own a 5 speed Insight, model year 2000 that I picked up used. Regarding your post...
Gas Mileage:
Really it depends on how you drive. I'm a lead foot (I enjoy occasionally doing burnouts in the Insight as it annoys me that people seem to think all hybrids are slow, boring, econo-boxes) and I still get 45-50 mpg City and 60-70 mpg highway. The previous owner obviously had no clue how to drive the car as their lifetime average over 35K miles was only 40.1 mpg. If you take the time to re-learn how to drive your car and take it easy with the acceleration it is more than feasible to get well over the EPA rated fuel economy for the Insight. Insight Central lists the best lifetime average fuel consumption recorded by them at 88.3 mpg and the community average as 65 mpg. The best single trip ratings recorded are 103.8 mpg one-way and 87.3 mpg round trip. The EPA ratings for the 5 speed, manual transmission, Insight are 60mpg City and 72mpg Highway. Your mileage will most certainly vary. Everyone drives differently. If you refuse to drive in an efficient manner, don't whine and moan about not getting the EPA rating. The ratings are a bit unrealistic for modern traffic patterns and driving habits, but they aren't unobtainable.
It is also important to note that the battery pack is affected by temperature. The batteries don't like cold very much. If you live in the north, your mileage will suffer during the winter.
Batteries:
Honda warranties the battery pack for 8 years. The cost of a replacement pack is $1500, or about as much as a modern transmission replacement. The battery pack is comprised of 120 smaller batteries (roughly the size of a D cell) welded together into a single 144V pack. These batteries use the NiMH (Nickel-Metal Hydride) chemistry and are not as toxic as NiCad (Nickel Cadmium) or even the PbA (Lead Acid) batteries that you find in your gas car.
Performance:
Yes, the Insight is a peppy little car. It only weighs about 1900 lbs and is made almost entirely out of aluminum and carbon fiber. With the IMA (integrated Motor Assist) active the car only has a peak of 73 hp and 90 lb-ft of torque, but the IMA's power remains fairly constant through the entire RPM band of the 3 cylinder so the oomph is a bit more than someone used to a pure ICE rating would expect. As I mentioned earlier, the small tires and decent torque mean that you can smoke the tires and do burnouts if you want (its murder on the fuel economy, though) and the Insight does 0-60 in about 10 seconds on its way to an 18.9 second 1/4 mile.
Regen:
This is actually in reference to a previous posters comment.
The Insight and Civic do not have little electric motors on each wheel used to recharge the battery pack. (for that matter neither does the Prius) The electric motor attached to the back of the engine block is an AC unit that acts as a generator when braking (and still in gear). Extra electric motors at each wheel just for recharging would just be a lot of dead weight 90% of the time.
Re:The DirecTiVo is the cheapest PVR out there...
on
TiVo Will Die
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Erm, except that the DirecTV TiVo's have dual tuners as well, capacity of up to 80 hours recording (more if you add additional hard drives), a $5/month subscription fee, more features, stable as hell, better interface, more functionality, and the DirecTV service costs less and gives you equivalent to more channels than Time Warner. At this point my DirecTV w/TiVo has not only paid for itself, but saved me hundreds of dollars vs getting stuck with Time Warner and then later suffering through two years of Scientific Atlanta using the TW customer base to QA their hardware and software.
Mental note: When correcting someone else's powers of observation, try not to engage in the same sort of error. Additionally, remember to purchase Firefly TV series on DVD since it is apparently stuck in your head.
The 60ft times on most electric cars (particularly the Series DC motor based ones) compeletly annihilate the gas cars. The electric gets up to top speed faster, but tends to wind up at a slower overall speed than the gas cars (right now anyway) meaning that the gas car catches up in the latter portion of the quarter mile. The current EV 1/4 record is an electric dragster in 8.801 seconds at 137.65 mph.
For a complete listing of EV record holders see the following list:
It's the latter. The T-Zero only has one gear. At the cost of a little bit of weight they could put an actual transmission in and it could easily have a higher top end.
Well, they are winning (at least in drag racing). Against a lot of ICE vehicles. Not necessarily against the funny cars and top fuel dragsters, but against a large section of the rest of the field.
The problem is not that they aren't winning. The problem is that there are not enough electric cars racing to make them very visible. Until there are hundreds of EV dragsters with full sponsorship (so that they can actually go to events around the country instead of just setting records at their local track) instead of dozens with little or no sponsorship the visibility will never get high enough.
All the misinformation about EVs out there and a century of being used to the ICE makes it all the more difficult to interest the public as well.
Various drag races. Some EV vs EV some EV vs ICE. The black electric dragster (near lane) vs white suped up gas pony car (far lane) about 1/5 of the way through the video is rather amusing. I'm sure the driver of the gas car was not pleased at getting beaten so thoroughly.
The Japanese have a breeder reactor. It is currently shutdown, however, due to a near run away reaction problem. Advances in breeder reactor design have eliminated a lot of the dangers, but the world-wide moratorium on breeder reactors (mainly because they produce military grade plutonium) prevents anyone from building them with a larger international hassle.
My original post was certainly a bit snippy, but I'd like to stress that I'm most certainly not anti-console (I own several myself). I just tend to get exceedingly tired of people predicting the end of the PC as a gaming platform. It is also tiresome to have to listen to console gamers running around at every new product launch attempting to convince everyone that this console or that is more powerful than a high end PC.
I wish people could just understand that all the various paltforms have their advantages and disadvantages. If you are a true gamer you're going to want to play the best games, regardless of the platform their on. And if you're hardcore you will want to play them on whichever platform gives you the greatest performance. When choosing between HL2 on a PC or the Xbox, I'm going to go with the PC.
Right the point is that the underlying architecture for both chipsets is actually fairly similar. I didn't say it was an R300 (actually I was eroneously comparing it to the R200 series), just that it is somewhat analogous to that series in terms of internal achritecture.
The "Flipper" chipset developed by ArtX does a lot more than just graphics processing (sound, I/O, memory, etc) but the ArtX team supposedly carried a lot of their design over into the core of the later ATI chips.
More to the point, the Flipper was designed expressly with the intent of making it easy to write for. They were smart enough to realize that making your system a pain in the arse to code for is a good way of killing it fast.
Of course while a lot of what makes HL2 so neat is not related to the graphics, it does still require significantly more horsepower for those other features. AI and advanced physics models do not necessarily come cheap in terms of processing.
As to graphics, if you've seen HL2 and Doom 3 running at high resolution in person I think you'd realize that HL2s engine actually looks better than Doom 3's. At the very least it's equivalent. And Carmack has stated that there may eventually be a Doom 3 port, but he has not stated that "Doom 3 will look the same on an Xbox as it will on a PC". Concessions will have to be made. There's nothing terribly wrong with the Xbox, but it is essentially an old specialized PC running on 3 generations old graphics hardware.
The PS2 has a fairly unique architecture, but he GameCube is a Power PC with an ATI Radeon 8500 (ish) graphics chipset. The Cube is not supposed to be a big pain to write for.
However it is highly unlikely that HL2 could be ported to ANY of the consoles without major reduction in capabilities. Remember the Xbox is about equivalent to a 1GHz Celeron running a GeForce 3 Reference (pre-Ti) chipset. (its actual clock is 700Mhz but it gains some speed advantage due to some mainboard and memory enchancements)
HL2's absolute minimum requirements (with nearly every detail setting lowered all the way) has been rumored to be in the 900Mhz GeForce 3 range. To play at anything remotely similar to the detail level of the E3 demonstration is going to require systems 2-3 times as powerful.
It's time for a new generation of console players to learn what the last one did. Consoles will always fall behind top end PCs in terms of graphics performance. And given the delay between new console products you will generally have one year in which you can attempt to claim your console is more powerful than any PC when it comes to games (you'd be wrong, but you can get away with it) followed by 2-3 years of being obviously less advanced.
Of course you won't be spending as much money on hardware as PC gamers so there are some benefits.;)
If I'm "hung up" on the terms it is because they are what he indicated he was describing. If he had meant "amateurish" and "demonstrating mastery" then that really would have been the beginning and the end of the comparison.
After all, that amounts to asking what could possibly be the difference between having moderate skill and great skill?
Hmmm, perhaps the answer would be more skill.
But we are not talking about the division between some sort of minor and major leagues of shareware software development. Rather, the article and our discussion are focused on the supposed and actual differences between the individual that develops shareware as a hobby/on their free time vs the person that makes it their living.
My real issue with his article is that he has decided to classify the amateur as a sloppy hobbyist and the professional as a savvy businessman. This doesn't invalidate his exceedingly simple overall point (target a niche/market, work hard, stay focused, listen to your users and peers, make sure all aspects of presentation are polished), but it is a very biased, and unscientific article full of supposition, broad generalization and the occasional wacky formula pulled out of thin air.
I know plenty of "amateur" developers cranking out better software than the pros and totally in their free time. I also know of people outside of shareware in highly funded retail software development firms that can barely include a file let alone write an entire program or develop a business plan.
The article (as written) is unnecessarily inflammatory and obfuscates what little useful opinion/guidance it contains within a cloud of exaggerated stereotyping and labeling. Stripped of the poorly constructed comparisons and misapplied terminology he actually has a moderately decent article on how to run a successful small business. And little else.
An amateur is defined as someone that is either not as skilled as a professional or someone that engages in a particular activity as a hobby rather than a profession. Amateur works are frequently (but not always) constructed more poorly than professional works, but there are certainly exceptions. And in general the entire shareware market is seen as an amateurâ(TM)s field with professionals not deigning to sink so low (this is a market perspective really, not necessarily my own).
The linked to article fails to address any new or particularly interesting aspects of shareware development and as a whole contains a lot of rather flame inducing, silly, generalizations. He should have called it, "Lazy and Ignorant Shareware Authors vs Motivated and Knowledgeable Shareware Authors." Of course then there would have been little point in writing the rest of the article.
Not all amateurs are lazy and mercurial.
Not all "professionals" are smart, savvy, and dedicated.
I saw this last Saturday. One of the most entertaining movie going experiences I ever had.
These guys did every sequence in the movie save one. After some frightening messing around with explosives they opted not to attempt the flying wing sequence despite having access to an aircraft and the part of the bald mechanic already cast.
Every other scene is there though and done with impressive skill given their ages and the era in which they made it.
You must have a newer issue of Wired than I do. The last time I saw an Archos in Wired was a couple months ago and it was the $350 model. Do you know what issue number the other one was in?
The one linked to here is a totally different unit that looks nothing like the one in Wired. I own one of the ones advetised in Wired.
The one you read about in Wired was the Archos Jukebox Multimedia. This unit is already out (you can find them easily at Circuit City). It has a 1.5" Active Matrix LCD screen, records and plays back MP3 audio, MPEG4 video, and can output to a TV.
For $350 it comes with:
A DVR module (that includes S-Video and Composite inputs) that has an IR nub on the top of it. A remote. Headphones (though this tiny little thing manages to drive my big arse AKG K501s with no problem). Two sets of separate audio cables. A USB 1.1 connector. A USB 2.0 connector. A/V cables And a carrying case.
It also has a 1.3 Megapixel camera attachment for it that goes for $100. The attachment does acceptable (but not great) still images and mediocre to poor 25fps video (still better than any cheapy $100 camera I've seen, though).
I get around 8-9 hours per charge off the Lithium Ion pack when playing MP3s.
Not battery swaps. Battery dump charging. Basically you have a battery pack fully charged and you slam that charge at max current (1500 amps or so) into the discharged pack in order to quick charge it.
If you are a one vehicle person and have no other vehicle laying around (and refuse to use public transportation) and have to travel more than 100 miles several times a year, don't care about saving money over the life of the vehicle (way less maintenance and slightly lower per mile cost including battery pack changes every 3 years or so), don't care about overall superior performance, don't care about reducing pollutants, and don't care about having a neat tech toy......then I guess an electric vehicle isn't for you. No biggie, no one is forcing you to purchase one. But just because you prefer gas doesn't mean everyone else does. Nor does it suddenly turn electric cars into golf carts.
As I've said in multiple other posts electric cars have gas beat in just about every way except range. If that range limitaion is a deal breaker for you, that's cool. It doesn't invalidate them as vehicles, however.
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The cost argument is getting increasingly moot. If you want to play PC games you need upgrade your graphics card about once every 2-3 years. The trick is purchasing the right graphics card at the right time. Processor, motherboard, and RAM are so inexpensive as to make them an almost insignificant part of the equation. Particularly if all you care about is getting performance equivalent to that which consoles provide. $300 every couple of years or so should keep you well ahead of the console market. And given that the modern generation of consoles has been hitting the market at $300 price points, you're not really spending a tremendous amount more money over the long haul.
On the short end the console market has a 3 year turn around between new generations of hardware. On the long side it hits 5 years. They can't afford to innovate any faster then that. The PC advances on at a 6 month to a year per generation rate. Consoles have some advantages in terms of design that allow them to squeeze some extra performance out of older hardware, but they are unlikely to catch up to the PC market any time soon.
Typically, the A-List Xbox, PS2, and Gamecube titles look like arse compared to A-List PC titles running on nearly identical hardware (meaning 3-4 generation old graphics cards on the PC side) and don't even show up on the radar when compared to those same PC titles running on latest generation graphics cards at 1600x1200 with all the detail settings cranked. The next gen consoles are talking about being able to run in 720p (1280x720), but even if they could hit 1080i (1920x1080) remember that this not only requires you to have a $1500+ television (effectively bringing your console up to the cost of a upper-middle end PC), but you would be stuck with an interlaced signal again. And PC's are capable of even higher resolutions (though finding monitors that support them is difficult).
People have been predicting the death of PC gaming since it came into existence. It is doubtful that the PC market is going to die out. Diminish from time to time? Sure. Have less market share? Definitely. The ease of use, portability, and general lowest common denominator effect of consoles pretty much guarantees that they'll maintain (or expand) their already thoroughly dominant market share.
The Mac argument is not a terribly strong one. The UI is not significantly easier to use that of Windows XP to a novice non-computer user and really the UI is a moot point when we're talking about the ease of playing games. The input devices for a Mac are the same as those for a PC, the hardware has just as many problems as a PC from a major OEM like Dell. When compared to the overall PC market Mac's have less reliability problems, basically because you only have one source to choose from. In terms of gaming, Macs have all the worst of both worlds. Restrictive hardware, high cost, some reliability issues and cumbersome form factor for the living room. OS X has a gorgeous interface (again not necessarily more intuitive, but gorgeous) running on top of a pretty nice operating system and I really enjoy using it, but it isn't really a console killer. Nor is it a PC killer so long as Apple retains tight control over the hardware.
As always the greatest strength of the respective platforms are also their greatest weaknesses.
The 626 is a nice car, but don't knock the hybrids. The Insight hits 73 mph in second gear and hits its governed speed of 113mph 3/4 of the way through 3rd. And at 90 mph I'm still getting around 55-60 mpg. If I drop to a more legal speed I can bring my gas mileage up into the 70-80 mpg range.
If I need to accelerate quickly on a short ramp, I can do it, 0-60 mph in just under 10 seconds ain't great, but it's better than most econoboxes, SUVs, and pickup trucks.
I own a 5 speed Insight, model year 2000 that I picked up used. Regarding your post...
Gas Mileage:
Really it depends on how you drive. I'm a lead foot (I enjoy occasionally doing burnouts in the Insight as it annoys me that people seem to think all hybrids are slow, boring, econo-boxes) and I still get 45-50 mpg City and 60-70 mpg highway. The previous owner obviously had no clue how to drive the car as their lifetime average over 35K miles was only 40.1 mpg. If you take the time to re-learn how to drive your car and take it easy with the acceleration it is more than feasible to get well over the EPA rated fuel economy for the Insight. Insight Central lists the best lifetime average fuel consumption recorded by them at 88.3 mpg and the community average as 65 mpg. The best single trip ratings recorded are 103.8 mpg one-way and 87.3 mpg round trip. The EPA ratings for the 5 speed, manual transmission, Insight are 60mpg City and 72mpg Highway. Your mileage will most certainly vary. Everyone drives differently. If you refuse to drive in an efficient manner, don't whine and moan about not getting the EPA rating. The ratings are a bit unrealistic for modern traffic patterns and driving habits, but they aren't unobtainable.
It is also important to note that the battery pack is affected by temperature. The batteries don't like cold very much. If you live in the north, your mileage will suffer during the winter.
Batteries:
Honda warranties the battery pack for 8 years. The cost of a replacement pack is $1500, or about as much as a modern transmission replacement. The battery pack is comprised of 120 smaller batteries (roughly the size of a D cell) welded together into a single 144V pack. These batteries use the NiMH (Nickel-Metal Hydride) chemistry and are not as toxic as NiCad (Nickel Cadmium) or even the PbA (Lead Acid) batteries that you find in your gas car.
Performance:
Yes, the Insight is a peppy little car. It only weighs about 1900 lbs and is made almost entirely out of aluminum and carbon fiber. With the IMA (integrated Motor Assist) active the car only has a peak of 73 hp and 90 lb-ft of torque, but the IMA's power remains fairly constant through the entire RPM band of the 3 cylinder so the oomph is a bit more than someone used to a pure ICE rating would expect. As I mentioned earlier, the small tires and decent torque mean that you can smoke the tires and do burnouts if you want (its murder on the fuel economy, though) and the Insight does 0-60 in about 10 seconds on its way to an 18.9 second 1/4 mile.
Regen:
This is actually in reference to a previous posters comment.
The Insight and Civic do not have little electric motors on each wheel used to recharge the battery pack. (for that matter neither does the Prius) The electric motor attached to the back of the engine block is an AC unit that acts as a generator when braking (and still in gear). Extra electric motors at each wheel just for recharging would just be a lot of dead weight 90% of the time.
Erm, except that the DirecTV TiVo's have dual tuners as well, capacity of up to 80 hours recording (more if you add additional hard drives), a $5/month subscription fee, more features, stable as hell, better interface, more functionality, and the DirecTV service costs less and gives you equivalent to more channels than Time Warner. At this point my DirecTV w/TiVo has not only paid for itself, but saved me hundreds of dollars vs getting stuck with Time Warner and then later suffering through two years of Scientific Atlanta using the TW customer base to QA their hardware and software.
*smacks forehead*
Make that "Dragonfly."
Mental note: When correcting someone else's powers of observation, try not to engage in the same sort of error. Additionally, remember to purchase Firefly TV series on DVD since it is apparently stuck in your head.
They are not talking about the VH-22, but rather the Boeing UAV Prototype "Firefly" craft which is the actual focus of the /. news post.
The 60ft times on most electric cars (particularly the Series DC motor based ones) compeletly annihilate the gas cars. The electric gets up to top speed faster, but tends to wind up at a slower overall speed than the gas cars (right now anyway) meaning that the gas car catches up in the latter portion of the quarter mile. The current EV 1/4 record is an electric dragster in 8.801 seconds at 137.65 mph.
For a complete listing of EV record holders see the following list:
NEDRA Records
The T-Zero tops out at 100mph because it is a single speed vehicle. At 100mph the motor is spinning close to its RPM failure limit.
It's the latter. The T-Zero only has one gear. At the cost of a little bit of weight they could put an actual transmission in and it could easily have a higher top end.
Well, they are winning (at least in drag racing). Against a lot of ICE vehicles. Not necessarily against the funny cars and top fuel dragsters, but against a large section of the rest of the field.
The problem is not that they aren't winning. The problem is that there are not enough electric cars racing to make them very visible. Until there are hundreds of EV dragsters with full sponsorship (so that they can actually go to events around the country instead of just setting records at their local track) instead of dozens with little or no sponsorship the visibility will never get high enough.
All the misinformation about EVs out there and a century of being used to the ICE makes it all the more difficult to interest the public as well.
If you want to see 1/4 mile electric beasts go visit the National Electric Drag Racing Association.
BTW The NEDRA rules have been officially incorporated into the NHRA's rulebook and electric cars can set records at any NHRA sanctioned track/event.
Of course video speaks louder than words (please don't attack me for the format types, I didn't make the dang things):
DC Electric Mazda RX-7 conversion beats a Viper RT/10
VIper just barely beats a home brew 1972 Datsun 1200 EV conversion
Various drag races. Some EV vs EV some EV vs ICE. The black electric dragster (near lane) vs white suped up gas pony car (far lane) about 1/5 of the way through the video is rather amusing. I'm sure the driver of the gas car was not pleased at getting beaten so thoroughly.
No, but how about this?
The Japanese have a breeder reactor. It is currently shutdown, however, due to a near run away reaction problem. Advances in breeder reactor design have eliminated a lot of the dangers, but the world-wide moratorium on breeder reactors (mainly because they produce military grade plutonium) prevents anyone from building them with a larger international hassle.
What you mean like the T-Zero?
http://www.austinev.org
http://www.heaa.org
http://geocities.com/nteaa
Interesting. Last I heard hardware T&L was required. That would eliminate anything older than a GF2.
I wonder how accurate Newell's stated minimum spec is. (he has been known to goof on technical aspects of their products in the past)
Your points are all certainly valid.
My original post was certainly a bit snippy, but I'd like to stress that I'm most certainly not anti-console (I own several myself). I just tend to get exceedingly tired of people predicting the end of the PC as a gaming platform. It is also tiresome to have to listen to console gamers running around at every new product launch attempting to convince everyone that this console or that is more powerful than a high end PC.
I wish people could just understand that all the various paltforms have their advantages and disadvantages. If you are a true gamer you're going to want to play the best games, regardless of the platform their on. And if you're hardcore you will want to play them on whichever platform gives you the greatest performance. When choosing between HL2 on a PC or the Xbox, I'm going to go with the PC.
Right the point is that the underlying architecture for both chipsets is actually fairly similar. I didn't say it was an R300 (actually I was eroneously comparing it to the R200 series), just that it is somewhat analogous to that series in terms of internal achritecture.
The "Flipper" chipset developed by ArtX does a lot more than just graphics processing (sound, I/O, memory, etc) but the ArtX team supposedly carried a lot of their design over into the core of the later ATI chips.
More to the point, the Flipper was designed expressly with the intent of making it easy to write for. They were smart enough to realize that making your system a pain in the arse to code for is a good way of killing it fast.
Of course while a lot of what makes HL2 so neat is not related to the graphics, it does still require significantly more horsepower for those other features. AI and advanced physics models do not necessarily come cheap in terms of processing.
As to graphics, if you've seen HL2 and Doom 3 running at high resolution in person I think you'd realize that HL2s engine actually looks better than Doom 3's. At the very least it's equivalent. And Carmack has stated that there may eventually be a Doom 3 port, but he has not stated that "Doom 3 will look the same on an Xbox as it will on a PC". Concessions will have to be made. There's nothing terribly wrong with the Xbox, but it is essentially an old specialized PC running on 3 generations old graphics hardware.
The PS2 has a fairly unique architecture, but he GameCube is a Power PC with an ATI Radeon 8500 (ish) graphics chipset. The Cube is not supposed to be a big pain to write for.
;)
However it is highly unlikely that HL2 could be ported to ANY of the consoles without major reduction in capabilities. Remember the Xbox is about equivalent to a 1GHz Celeron running a GeForce 3 Reference (pre-Ti) chipset. (its actual clock is 700Mhz but it gains some speed advantage due to some mainboard and memory enchancements)
HL2's absolute minimum requirements (with nearly every detail setting lowered all the way) has been rumored to be in the 900Mhz GeForce 3 range. To play at anything remotely similar to the detail level of the E3 demonstration is going to require systems 2-3 times as powerful.
It's time for a new generation of console players to learn what the last one did. Consoles will always fall behind top end PCs in terms of graphics performance. And given the delay between new console products you will generally have one year in which you can attempt to claim your console is more powerful than any PC when it comes to games (you'd be wrong, but you can get away with it) followed by 2-3 years of being obviously less advanced.
Of course you won't be spending as much money on hardware as PC gamers so there are some benefits.
If I'm "hung up" on the terms it is because they are what he indicated he was describing. If he had meant "amateurish" and "demonstrating mastery" then that really would have been the beginning and the end of the comparison.
After all, that amounts to asking what could possibly be the difference between having moderate skill and great skill?
Hmmm, perhaps the answer would be more skill.
But we are not talking about the division between some sort of minor and major leagues of shareware software development. Rather, the article and our discussion are focused on the supposed and actual differences between the individual that develops shareware as a hobby/on their free time vs the person that makes it their living.
My real issue with his article is that he has decided to classify the amateur as a sloppy hobbyist and the professional as a savvy businessman. This doesn't invalidate his exceedingly simple overall point (target a niche/market, work hard, stay focused, listen to your users and peers, make sure all aspects of presentation are polished), but it is a very biased, and unscientific article full of supposition, broad generalization and the occasional wacky formula pulled out of thin air.
I know plenty of "amateur" developers cranking out better software than the pros and totally in their free time. I also know of people outside of shareware in highly funded retail software development firms that can barely include a file let alone write an entire program or develop a business plan.
The article (as written) is unnecessarily inflammatory and obfuscates what little useful opinion/guidance it contains within a cloud of exaggerated stereotyping and labeling. Stripped of the poorly constructed comparisons and misapplied terminology he actually has a moderately decent article on how to run a successful small business. And little else.
Thus I consider the article to be weak.
An amateur is defined as someone that is either not as skilled as a professional or someone that engages in a particular activity as a hobby rather than a profession. Amateur works are frequently (but not always) constructed more poorly than professional works, but there are certainly exceptions. And in general the entire shareware market is seen as an amateurâ(TM)s field with professionals not deigning to sink so low (this is a market perspective really, not necessarily my own).
The linked to article fails to address any new or particularly interesting aspects of shareware development and as a whole contains a lot of rather flame inducing, silly, generalizations. He should have called it, "Lazy and Ignorant Shareware Authors vs Motivated and Knowledgeable Shareware Authors." Of course then there would have been little point in writing the rest of the article.
Not all amateurs are lazy and mercurial.
Not all "professionals" are smart, savvy, and dedicated.
I saw this last Saturday. One of the most entertaining movie going experiences I ever had.
These guys did every sequence in the movie save one. After some frightening messing around with explosives they opted not to attempt the flying wing sequence despite having access to an aircraft and the part of the bald mechanic already cast.
Every other scene is there though and done with impressive skill given their ages and the era in which they made it.
You must have a newer issue of Wired than I do. The last time I saw an Archos in Wired was a couple months ago and it was the $350 model. Do you know what issue number the other one was in?
The one linked to here is a totally different unit that looks nothing like the one in Wired. I own one of the ones advetised in Wired.
The one you read about in Wired was the Archos Jukebox Multimedia. This unit is already out (you can find them easily at Circuit City). It has a 1.5" Active Matrix LCD screen, records and plays back MP3 audio, MPEG4 video, and can output to a TV.
For $350 it comes with:
A DVR module (that includes S-Video and Composite inputs) that has an IR nub on the top of it.
A remote.
Headphones (though this tiny little thing manages to drive my big arse AKG K501s with no problem).
Two sets of separate audio cables.
A USB 1.1 connector.
A USB 2.0 connector.
A/V cables
And a carrying case.
It also has a 1.3 Megapixel camera attachment for it that goes for $100. The attachment does acceptable (but not great) still images and mediocre to poor 25fps video (still better than any cheapy $100 camera I've seen, though).
I get around 8-9 hours per charge off the Lithium Ion pack when playing MP3s.
Not battery swaps. Battery dump charging. Basically you have a battery pack fully charged and you slam that charge at max current (1500 amps or so) into the discharged pack in order to quick charge it.
...then I guess an electric vehicle isn't for you. No biggie, no one is forcing you to purchase one. But just because you prefer gas doesn't mean everyone else does. Nor does it suddenly turn electric cars into golf carts.
If you are a one vehicle person and have no other vehicle laying around (and refuse to use public transportation) and have to travel more than 100 miles several times a year, don't care about saving money over the life of the vehicle (way less maintenance and slightly lower per mile cost including battery pack changes every 3 years or so), don't care about overall superior performance, don't care about reducing pollutants, and don't care about having a neat tech toy...
As I've said in multiple other posts electric cars have gas beat in just about every way except range. If that range limitaion is a deal breaker for you, that's cool. It doesn't invalidate them as vehicles, however.