OK, I can't vouch for the trustworthiness of Timbro, and you still may be right, but I've heard from so many sources that the EU countries have a GDP that is far behind the GDP of the US, and the gap is widening due to the much slower growth - I think it would be too much to explain with political motivation.
More polygons don't necessary make the scene cluttered and hard to see; they may make it smooth, natural looking. The renderers used for making movies usually tesselate the scene into "micropolygons", polygons much smaller than a pixel. So, with the proper geometry decompression support (curved surfaces, subdivision schemes and displacement mapping) the 30 mil/sec polys can go to good use.
120 000 polygons per second is very, very meagre. For a relatively smooth framerate of 20 fps, this means only 6000 polygons per frame, which is what you need to display e.g. five barely recognizable humans in front of two barely recognizable houses and three barely recognizable trees. It's "checkbox" 3D, not the real thing.
OK, now that everybody has said (three times, no less) "it seems they invented threaded view, duh", can you please go read the linked article? This is NOT threaded view, it's something more complicated (and seemingly useful).
It's an excellent product, already at 2.0, with much thought put into ease of use and user experience. It has a personal edition which is free, and the full edition is cheap. Definitely better than Wikis (they usually are a mess for non-technical users). Maybe an account at Blogspot or TextAmerica would be even simpler, but a blog is not a website... you decide what you need.
The Windows NT kernel is very portable - it was initially developed for a (now defunct) Intel RISC chip, used to run on PowerPCs and MIPS RISC CPUs, and has recently been ported to Intel's IA-64 (Itanium) architecture.
I strongly suspect they will mandate development of games using the.NET CLR to allow for easier porting between PC and the next Xbox.
It would be only fair to note why VirtualPC for the G5 isn't just a simple port or recompile: IBM removed the little-endian mode in PowerPC 970, which was what VirtualPC extensively uses. Implementing a mode where VirtualPC emulates a little-endian CPU on a big-endian CPU, while technically possible, is an enormous task, and it even might not be feasible (as in "resulting emulation runs too slow").
Besides the other obvious arguments against pointed out in the thread, think about multiplayer games. The game would have to take care of making a connection - which means knowing about your wacky winmodem, or proprietary-protocol cable modem, and you'd have to enter a zillion settings every time you boot. Do you think it's okay to configure your network settings anew for each new application you run? That's what OSes are for.
And while we're on the topic of compression, by far the best compression ratio crown under Windows belongs not to RAR, not to bzip2, but to a tiny simple archiver called 7-zip. Compression is slow, but it's worth it.
Same friend, can't download the drivers from creative, and to use the drivers, he has to install the base software. But the software he prefers to use for syncin' needs the drivers. So to use one software, he's forced to use another.
Like, on the iPod, you can even dream about using *another* software besides iTunes? But, oh, I forgot, Apple software is perfect, no one would ever want to use an alternative.
And I'm sure your strong, argumented, educated opinion on Windows CE is right-on-spot relevant to the Nomad Zen vs. iPod discussion.
First, there are different kinds of rechargeables -- NiCd, NiMh, Lithium
Actually, there are no Lithium AA rechargeables, because the native voltage a LiIon cell produces is a bit above 3 Volts, and taking it down to the standard 1.5 Volts for AAs would eat quite a lot of the tiny space inside the battery. LiIons are popular for products where the rechargeable battery is designed-in, rather than leaving a bay for standard AA (or AAAs).
It doesn't prove how one is better than the other. I'm not sure a definition of what a "better" console even exists, and I'm fairly sure it doesn't matter, as the console is just a vehicle for expressing the game designers' ideas.
The sales of a widely publicized, all-platform title definitely bear some relation to the market situation.
And that particular title didn't appeal to anyone, not just the "core" Gamecube users:-)
I'm not sure where (and if) this info is published online - it probably isn't, because it costs a lump (and that's the kind of information that DOESN'T want to be free) - but month-by-month, the US dollar share of the market of the Xbox is rising, and that of the Gamecube is diminishing. Overall, the distribution of all sales is very similar to the above cited distribution for Enter the Matrix.
Whatever. I'm not being religious. Buy whatever console you need depending on the games you like (Final Fantasy X for the PS2 is the best game I've ever played). But "Xbox is 3rd place close after Gamecube" is repeated too frequently and is too far from the truth for my liking.
Heh, you wish. The Xbox is wiping the floor with Gamecube in the US. E.g. Infogrames recently published the platform distribution of sales for the Enter The Matrix... "product". 50% PS2, 25% Xbox, 15% PC, 10% Gamecube. Watch gaming news for a month and you'll see where's the exciting stuff coming. Most PS2 titles the websites rave about have titles like "Kokimichi Gunochi 3" (I hope I didn't come up with something particularly offensive in Japanese) and all the 17 gaijin who played Kokimichi Gunochi 2 are babbling about how good they will be. Microsoft got their foot firmly in the door on this round.
But he's saving their immortal souls by freeing them from the slavery to the Borg... It's not about technical superiority or day-to-day convenience, it's about changing the world!
Think about it: if he succeeds, he'll have 20% less hair on his head, a few colleagues less and maybe half the documents prepared - but Bill Gates will be a whopping $2000 poorer!
Slashdot Mirror
That, and for the non-tinfoil crowd...
Non-tinfoil crowd? Hellllooo? This is Slashdot...
OK, I can't vouch for the trustworthiness of Timbro, and you still may be right, but I've heard from so many sources that the EU countries have a GDP that is far behind the GDP of the US, and the gap is widening due to the much slower growth - I think it would be too much to explain with political motivation.
here
The EU is lagging very far behind the US in terms of GDP, and the gap is widening:
Now, China is another matter...
More polygons don't necessary make the scene cluttered and hard to see; they may make it smooth, natural looking. The renderers used for making movies usually tesselate the scene into "micropolygons", polygons much smaller than a pixel. So, with the proper geometry decompression support (curved surfaces, subdivision schemes and displacement mapping) the 30 mil/sec polys can go to good use.
120 000 polygons per second is very, very meagre. For a relatively smooth framerate of 20 fps, this means only 6000 polygons per frame, which is what you need to display e.g. five barely recognizable humans in front of two barely recognizable houses and three barely recognizable trees. It's "checkbox" 3D, not the real thing.
OK, now that everybody has said (three times, no less) "it seems they invented threaded view, duh", can you please go read the linked article? This is NOT threaded view, it's something more complicated (and seemingly useful).
It's an excellent product, already at 2.0, with much thought put into ease of use and user experience. It has a personal edition which is free, and the full edition is cheap. Definitely better than Wikis (they usually are a mess for non-technical users). Maybe an account at Blogspot or TextAmerica would be even simpler, but a blog is not a website... you decide what you need.
The Windows NT kernel is very portable - it was initially developed for a (now defunct) Intel RISC chip, used to run on PowerPCs and MIPS RISC CPUs, and has recently been ported to Intel's IA-64 (Itanium) architecture.
.NET CLR to allow for easier porting between PC and the next Xbox.
I strongly suspect they will mandate development of games using the
YDRC (you don't remember correctly). Do a simple google search, e.g. for "PowerPC endian mode 970".
It would be only fair to note why VirtualPC for the G5 isn't just a simple port or recompile: IBM removed the little-endian mode in PowerPC 970, which was what VirtualPC extensively uses. Implementing a mode where VirtualPC emulates a little-endian CPU on a big-endian CPU, while technically possible, is an enormous task, and it even might not be feasible (as in "resulting emulation runs too slow").
Next hardest is Cyrilic languages like Greek or Russian
Ooops, you were a Mac developer at Microsoft? I hope their Windows developers know that Greek is NOT Cyrillic. It's Greek.
I was hoping for a free-beer alternative :-)
I would consider Microsoft Money (or an equivalent; can somebody recommend one?) essential for a home PC.
Besides the other obvious arguments against pointed out in the thread, think about multiplayer games. The game would have to take care of making a connection - which means knowing about your wacky winmodem, or proprietary-protocol cable modem, and you'd have to enter a zillion settings every time you boot. Do you think it's okay to configure your network settings anew for each new application you run? That's what OSes are for.
you insensitive clod!
Obviously you've never seen a PS2...it IS a sufficiently advanced toaster, especially when propped up on its side.
And while we're on the topic of compression, by far the best compression ratio crown under Windows belongs not to RAR, not to bzip2, but to a tiny simple archiver called 7-zip. Compression is slow, but it's worth it.
Same friend, can't download the drivers from creative, and to use the drivers, he has to install the base software. But the software he prefers to use for syncin' needs the drivers. So to use one software, he's forced to use another.
Like, on the iPod, you can even dream about using *another* software besides iTunes? But, oh, I forgot, Apple software is perfect, no one would ever want to use an alternative.
And I'm sure your strong, argumented, educated opinion on Windows CE is right-on-spot relevant to the Nomad Zen vs. iPod discussion.
First, there are different kinds of rechargeables -- NiCd, NiMh, Lithium
Actually, there are no Lithium AA rechargeables, because the native voltage a LiIon cell produces is a bit above 3 Volts, and taking it down to the standard 1.5 Volts for AAs would eat quite a lot of the tiny space inside the battery. LiIons are popular for products where the rechargeable battery is designed-in, rather than leaving a bay for standard AA (or AAAs).
And, to keep learning from Java, stuff needs to be added again after a few years. (enums, generics, ...)
It doesn't prove how one is better than the other. I'm not sure a definition of what a "better" console even exists, and I'm fairly sure it doesn't matter, as the console is just a vehicle for expressing the game designers' ideas.
:-)
The sales of a widely publicized, all-platform title definitely bear some relation to the market situation.
And that particular title didn't appeal to anyone, not just the "core" Gamecube users
I'm not sure where (and if) this info is published online - it probably isn't, because it costs a lump (and that's the kind of information that DOESN'T want to be free) - but month-by-month, the US dollar share of the market of the Xbox is rising, and that of the Gamecube is diminishing. Overall, the distribution of all sales is very similar to the above cited distribution for Enter the Matrix.
Whatever. I'm not being religious. Buy whatever console you need depending on the games you like (Final Fantasy X for the PS2 is the best game I've ever played). But "Xbox is 3rd place close after Gamecube" is repeated too frequently and is too far from the truth for my liking.
Heh, you wish. The Xbox is wiping the floor with Gamecube in the US. E.g. Infogrames recently published the platform distribution of sales for the Enter The Matrix ... "product". 50% PS2, 25% Xbox, 15% PC, 10% Gamecube. Watch gaming news for a month and you'll see where's the exciting stuff coming. Most PS2 titles the websites rave about have titles like "Kokimichi Gunochi 3" (I hope I didn't come up with something particularly offensive in Japanese) and all the 17 gaijin who played Kokimichi Gunochi 2 are babbling about how good they will be. Microsoft got their foot firmly in the door on this round.
But he's saving their immortal souls by freeing them from the slavery to the Borg... It's not about technical superiority or day-to-day convenience, it's about changing the world!
Think about it: if he succeeds, he'll have 20% less hair on his head, a few colleagues less and maybe half the documents prepared - but Bill Gates will be a whopping $2000 poorer!
You mean, each $ wasted is an American life endangered, right?