LCDs and DLPs don't burn in because they use filters over white light to emit colors.
Certainly DLP's don't suffer from burn in (though they have a lot of other issues of course, the infamous rainbow effect being the biggest problem - though things seem to be improving on that front) but the same can't be said for LCD TV's. Although Plasma screens seem to burn in more easily, LCD displays do suffertoo, however mostly it seems to only be an issue with larger displays (e.g. 30" or larger - the sort of size used in LCD TV's). I am not sure why that is though.
Your backlight may go out, but that's replaceable. Good luck replacing individual phosphors when they burn out.
That's a bit of a red herring to be fair. As with the back lights on an LCD display, Plasma screen will indeed burn out eventually (mine is rated for something like 8 years continuous usage - i.e. so even if I watch 12 hours a day (which obviously I'm not going to) it should be good for 14 years, which I'm comfortable with. Good luck getting either replaced though!
The depressing reality is, unless you have a good 3rd party repair shop in your area that are comfortable with this sort of thing, or you are willing to take your TV apart yourself you are SOL. Vendors like Sony, Phillips (etc.) just don't want to know and that ones that will talk to you invariably give you a price that is equal to or more than the cost of a brand new unit (especially on smaller screens), and of course new sets of better quality will almost certainly be available for 1/4 of the price by then.
Example: I bought a brand new model 32" Sony CRT 8 years ago for 1,500 UKP (the most expensive set in the store as it happened). I'm going to give it to someone in the office who can use a better TV as there is almost no point in trying to sell it - you can get a better set for about 250 UKP now. It has a long-standing problem with powering up from being completely off (it's okay if you leave it on standby, but otherwise you might need to flick it on and off a couple of times), but it would cost about the same as a new set just to get that issue resolved.
I can attest to this actually being true for Plasma screens as well (though it works for slightly different technical reasons obviously). I came across this solution when I found this article on Apple.com when searching Google for more information on what to do about "burn in". It's not quite the as same burn in as on CRT monitors in that it seems to be readily reversible, the trend seems to be to refer to it as 'persistence', though that may be in part because 'persistence' doesn't sound as scary to consumers.
I get burn in on my Plasma (a 50") after watching BBC News 24 (which has a large bright red box with the news logo and time on it in one corner) or when leaving my PVR menu on screen for a few minutes or leaving it outputting my Mac Mini desktop for some time (the bright icons in the Dock tend to burn in). As per the manual, if I watch another channel - particularly something bright - it goes away quickly. How quickly it goes away depends how long it was displaying the image (I think that's actually stated in my manual too).
Plasma does seem much more susceptible to "burn in"/persistence than LCD, but for the moment Plasma displays are the only way to go if you are looking for a large set (because you simply can't by very large LCD's). Plasma sets are also typically quite a bit cheaper, which makes them attractive. Lastly, they are also brighter than both back projection displays and LCD displays - my Pioneer Plasma is brighter than my old 1,500 UKP Sony CRT! Plasma sets seem to be the only ones that are able to deliver a bright picture, even with bright direct sunlight bouncing right off them (not a major selling point perhaps, but I was impressed).
I completely expect LCD displays to ultimately take over from Plasma's though. They are (potentially) a fair bit sharper, and they don't generate nearly as much heat - having the Plasma TV on is quite literally like having a radiator on in the room - particularly if it's a bright image, it gets as hot as the bottom of my PowerBook G4. It's just a matter of time before they can be made cost effectively at large sizes with little to no defects. If I was looking for a second (smaller) display I would definitely consider an LCD as it is. That said, I still expect Plasma TV's will be around and selling well for another 5 years yet (not least because it's much better than back projection and it's still kicking around).
I'm not surprised the US is the only real market for large displays. Not only do people have larger houses in the US (than say in Europe or in Asia) - you shouldn't really go bigger than about 42" unless you have a decent sized room -, and have more disposable income (due to lower taxation) but things like electronic goods are just so much cheaper (down to due to a combination of low taxation and economy of scale, I assume).
e.g. The cheapest price for my 50" Pioneer Plasma on Froogle (or indeed anywhere else) in the UK was ~3,500 UKP (with near identical pricing in stores on the continent). It a bit more expensive than most, as it's noticeably above average in terms of picture quality. At current exchange rates, that's over 6600 USD. When searching US stores in Froogle it was not only less than 3,500 US Dollars it was more like 2,000-2,800 (just under 1,500 UKP). Definitely worth a weekend trip to NYC if you are looking for something similarly expensive (but more portable;), like a new high end laptop.
Re:The Wii simply can't output at 720p
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Oh dear, you didn't get anything I just said at all do you?:-(
The reality distortion bubble is strong in this one...
Re:The Wii simply can't output at 720p
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The card in the Wii is more than capable of doing over 1600x1200.
That's pretty funny. For a start it only has 3 MB of VRAM, and not all of that is usable as a framebuffer (a large portion is reserved by the Wii for texture memory). Even if you didn't bother with a z-buffer (i.e. it's purely a 2D image) you still are not left with enough VRAM for anything like that sort of resolution. Maths for the win!
For the Wii to do even anything like 1600x1200 not only would need to be able to handle a larger framebuffer than it currently can and the RAMDAC would have to be fast enough to support the desired output resolution. God himself could not make a Wii output at 720p.[1]
[1] Well maybe, if it was a 2D image at 256 colours and at 10 frames per second.
No I'm not missing the point, I suspect you also don't really understand the technology.
The ability to output at only 480p is all but certainly a hardware limitation in the case of the Wii, a limitation that was deemed acceptable for reasons of cost no doubt. While I don't know what video encoder chip the Wii uses, I'd easily bet the cost of a Wii that it's not able to do 720p or Nintendo would obviously have supported it in software in the first place (it would be insane for them not to - at least for things like the "dashboard" and Opera).
Just because a console has a video card with a few megabytes of VRAM and is capable of some fancy shaders and also supports Component or VGA interfaces does not mean a mere 'software upgrade' can enable the console to be able to output at higher resolutions - if a system is only able to output at 480p it's almost certainly a hardware limitation (and I would guess down to the video encoder). The original X-Box, Dreamcast and GameCube support VGA output too, and all had enough VRAM to support resolutions like 720p (so in theory you could render at that sort of resolution internally), but the hardware was simply unable to output higher resolutions like 720p (though with the the X-Box you could at least get to 1024x768).
The only reason the 360 was recently able to be patched to support 1080p (in addition to HD resolutions 1080i and 720p) was because the hardware already supported the higher resolution (it's just that no one was really shipping 1080p displays and the 360 - like the PS3 - is going to struggle to render any native content at that sort of resolution, so it's was mostly pointless and only a worthwhile exercise in so far as it gave the PS3 one less unique selling point to tout).
The PS2 also supported high resolution outputs, though I only know of it being used in Gran Turismo.
"Adding the component cables can give you 1080i resolution on a monitor that can handle it"
Not so - the Wii does not support 720p, never mind 1080i or 1080p - so adding a component cable won't automagically result in it outputing anything higher than 480p (it will just give you a less blury picture than you'd get from using the bundled composite cable).
"even at 480p you would have decent enough resolution to write an email, type a letter or document, browse the Web"
480p (in square pixels) gives you a screen resolution of 640x480. Most people are going to disagree with you about that being a decent resolution. Even Windows XP knows that 640x480 isn't a workable desktop resolution, and alerts the user that their display resolution is too low if it's not set to at least 800x600.
The Wii has better specs than my G3, and my G3 is great for email, typing documents, Web, chat.....
I really hope your G3 can do more than 640x480! I keep my old G3 around for kicks (along with my Mac Plus), but the G3 desktop range is 10 years old now. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, 'great' for browsing the web IME.
The Wii is the only of the latest generations of console that isn't HD capable, it's not feasible to use a display at Standard Definition resolutions for things like email or web browsing or modern GUI based productivity software. It's just a horrible experience (as demonstrated by Web TV).
This makes the PS3 the only viable option, unless it's just a distribution intended to allow viewing of specificly tailored made-for-tv-viewing content (e.g. news stories in large print and videos - with a custom interface to Google Videos/YouTube). I don't think mainstream PS3 users are going to have any interest in using it as a computer though, that will be restricted to the same sort of people who were into modding X-Boxes to do the same thing.
For anyone who does want a PC, it's a LOT cheaper just to buy a computer at your local Wall Mart / ASDA, complete with TFT display and Windows than it is to buy a PS3. The only thing about the PS3 running Linux to me, is that it means it ought to be very easy to turn it into a flexible media center, but I'm waiting to find out more about Apple's "iTV" system in January.
FWIW, I can see how my post reads, I would actually say I'm generally center-left politically. I'm just getting a bit pissed off with things in London I think.
I come from the North East of Scotland, which I don't really rate - the people are by and large very friendly, but somewhat quite small minded and can be bit like characters out of The League of Gentlemen. They are forever always saying things like "I hear you can get on a train in London and not see another white face." and "Sure, your a bit racial yourself there as well?" (I assume they mean 'racist' rather than 'ethnic' as I'm about as pale as you get).
In particular I am from Aberdeen, which is really going down the pan by virtually unanimous consensus (I lived in Dundee, for a while, which has a much worse reputation but is a much nicer place to live). You know it's bad when pubs in town start serving pints only in plastic cups, because of all the glassing incidents.
The best options within the UK seem to be somewhere like moving back up to Edinburgh or Glasgow (which, like Dundee has a bad former reptuation, but is actually pretty nice now) though that would be more difficult for work (given there is much less demand for what I'm really good at outside of London - though at least I'd be familer with the area), or commuting into London from the suburbs. I've been here for 7 years or so and I still don't really know where would be both nice, easily commutable and affordable. I guess I just need to do some research.
Those are very interesting statistics, and they fly in the face of what I've read previously about crime in New Zealand (I found this related link (on the same site) even more disturbing). It's curious how things appear to so bad in supposedly 'civillised' countries. I wonder how much of that is down to better reporting (and people being willing to report crime) and how much of it is down to genuinely higher instances of violent crime, I suppose unfortunatley it's practically impossible to tell.
I think that the fact we have one of the highest prison populations per capita (along with the US), along with some of the highest rates of assault, says something about the 'lock them up' policy so beloved of right-wingers and the Daily Mail (i.e. it doesn't work).
Currently we arn't locking up lots of people who should be in a secure facility and who are not fit to be out in society. We do need to fix what's broken in our society and address the root causes of crime, but we also need to protect the majority from the criminal minority.
Not everyone is of a mind to assault random strangers or break into someone elses house or car, if you restrict the freedoms of the criminal minority crime statistics will go down drastically - that's really quite indisputable. Personally, I'm very willing to pay more taxes as required to facilitate that (without ignoring the importance and better value of preventative measures and attempts at rehabilitation).
Cinematic gaming never suceeded and it will never succeed because it's based on communications, not empowering the user to create their own world and play in it.
That's not very concinving argument when it's a model that has already succeeded. Games like GRAW, the Call of Duty series and Max Payne were cinematic games and that was integral to their success. Gears of War falls certainly short of the gameplay in those titles, but that's got nothing to do with the fact it's a cinematic experience and is down to flaws in the execution, like having bad AI and (although they went to the trouble to create a significant amount of back story and do scene setting) little to no narrative.
Talk of "empowering users to create their own world" is shorthand for "don't bother to create any content or narrative". Case in point: Star Wars Galaxies empowered users to create their own world and play in it like no other, but without any bascially gameplay underneath, it died horribly (despite having the mother of all licenses - the only reason it was even vaguely popular in the first place). WoW, in contrast, allows the player to do very little (very shallow crafting system, very little diversity between players, nothing like player housing), but has much better basic mechanics (in contrast to SWG's rather clunky engine).
It would seem that overwhelmingly, both strong narratives and solid baisc gameplay are more popular with than titles that focus on player content creation. That's not to say many gamers wouldn't like to see an MMO like SWG that also had much more solid basic gameplay and strong narratives (or alternatively, WoW, but with meaningful player content).
I can certainly see the argument for that, I dropped out of school by 16 (that was over a decade ago). I got a job for terrible pay pretty much right away, and I bought my first place, a one bedroomed apartment, at 18. by the time I was 21 I was earning 40k UKP (75k USD) a year [ about double what my high school teachers were being paid ] and I've never looked back. I quite liked that I didn't have any debt to work as a result of this approach.
The time I spent at school after the age of about 10 was indeed a complete waste of my time and a whole lot of money. I would have been happier and learned more by being allow to roam around the local public library, museum and art gallery educating myself (something I was aware of at the time, which made it all the more frustrating).
However, it seems to me that lowering the leaving age would leave a lot of 12-16 year old kids roaming around the streets in gangs as a result of comparatively few companies willing to take them on, even at next-to-nothing wages (not least because many of them would probably be, by definition, 'less desirable' candidates and companies would essentially just be babysitting, which is the position most teachers are in today).
Re:Is everybody hankering to exist in such a world
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Demand is high for this sort of title because playing a game where you get to kill things with a chainsaw that's mounted on your gun is more fun than say, playing game where you save the rainforest (and that's even though the melee option in GoW isn't very well executed). That's true no matter how much fun you make saving the rainforest. Unless maybe, where you get to kill loggers with an axe. That has a chainsaw on it. And I'm so much of a tree hugging hippy, I don't even eat meat.
I much prefer the co-operative aspects of FPS games though - from Doom (and mods like Aliens:TC) to BF2/BF2142. I love a game I can get lost and wonder round in (i.e. Morrowind, and to some extent Oblivion, but I am not a huge fan of the non sensical leveling system in Oblivion so I gave up early on - I'll have to try again with some of the mods to 'correct' that installed).
Morrowind and Oblivion are the only games that have come particularly close to being 'holodeck' style experiences - worlds you can almost immediately explore a huge world at your will and get completely immersed in. Though RPG's like KoToR are well done, they are much more 'on the rails' affairs, and MMO's are all basically treadmills rather than sandboxes (by virtue of the subscription model).
I would much rather pay more per game to be able to play and explore in a larger world (maybe co-operatively with one or two friends at the same time, at most - but without having to compromise the immersiveness and overall experience by having to interact with random stangers as in an MMO). I can quite happily spend hours exploring areas, reading books and solving problems without any skeleton bashing (as fun as that is).
As a UK citizen, as much as I really like Americans (who by and large are individually great people, some of the nicest anywhere) I actually feel the same way about the US, given how things are in the states now. That is based on my own experiences over the years of American officialdom and what I see in the media (students, even children being tazer'd, seemingly regularly reported incidences of police brutality, farcical conditions at airports, overbearing traffic laws).
Personally, given the street crime rate here I'm more than happy to see cameras up. Unlike the US, we have deliberate development policies that try to prevent having areas where some citizens are segregated from others because of wealth - though we do sort of have US style suburbs to some extent, in the UK you are never usually far away (i.e. a short walk) from a council housing estate. Partly this is down to geography (we have quite a sizable population living on a small island, smaller than a large US state).
Personally I prefer the US in this respect, much of the UK is frankly a cesspit (it's would be unfair to say the government have done nothing to change this - but in focusing on trying to improve things for the poorest in society it seems they've left the rest of us - i.e. MOST of us - out to dry). I'd much rather live in a nice quiet suburb (but my 2 bedroom flat in a reasonable middle of the road area in London cost me 340,000 USD - and I'm single, so it will be another 5 years or so, assuming the housing market doesn't crash and I get stuck in negative equity, before I can really afford a house in a quiet, safe suburb).
This is not to say I'm in favour of things like ID cards for example, I'm very much against them (not least because you could essentially achive the same thing by simply linking existing databases together, and using existing social security numbers (it's a National Insurance Number here) in the same way they are used in the US, and because it's would mean another government IT project, which is bound to be an expensive disaster).
I've don't know why you think public surveillance in the form of street cameras is "100% wrong", "regardless of benefit" though - if it means that I'm less likely to be mugged or randomly assaulted again, I'm all for it (I've been involved in maybe 4 or 5 incidents in the last 3 years, usually in broad daylight in a 'safe' area - including once incident I've intervened to protect a random stanger (and not including another just a couple of weeks ago on the Tube, when some volient nutter tried to pick a fight with a tourist) - it seems like everyone I know has a story).
If London were more like New York is today (and less like New York was ~20 years ago) then I wouldn't see the point in so many cameras, but street crime in the UK is unpleasantly high that it has the potential to be a real asset (particularly in urban areas - it's not a problem unique to London or even England though, it's just as bad in towns across the UK).
Sadly, even with the ability to view crimes on cameras, the UK police can seldom be bothered to go and look up the footage (something I have heard numerous tails about, and know of first hand two seperate occations when serious random assaults took place but the issue was not chased up and footage not retrieved).
The biggest single problem is our criminal justice system is clogged. Our sentances are nothing like US sentencing. Life usually means out in 18 years in the UK, for example, and we don't have 'three strikes' rules (sadly), even for serious offences. There are thousands of criminals with tens of convictions out walking free, having never been imprisioned (at least not for more than a handful of weeks), this is primarily because we don't have anywhere to put them, as our jails our full (the home office have just in the last month introduced emergency measures to cope with over crowding, it's worth Googling for more info if you want to see what a mess we are in).
We actually have one of the higest jail populations in Eu
Oracle typically costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to run on an enterprise DB server like an E20K or E25K. The commercial version retails for around, if I'm not mistaken, tens of thousands of dollars per CPU (and these things can have up to 75 processors in them, though anywhere between say 8-24 is closer to what most have in them) and most companies with an Oracle DB on them are going have at least two systems.
Microsoft SQL Server is indeed cheaper than Oracle for commercial use, but it requires you run Windows (which you also have to pay for - not forgetting relevant per-client license fees), which is a dubious enough prospect on it's own if you have a commercial service relying on it - the real kicker is Windows only retails for x86 systems (i.e. only suitable for low to mid range use). Even the X4600 systems (which support up to 8 dual core AMD64 CPU's, and indeed are insanely fast) are not going to be suitable big iron DB server replacements any time soon.
An experienced DBA can set up a new installation in a couple of minutes.
Well given the cost of the system compared to what's freely available anyway, I should hope it would be quick.
Installing it and getting a DB up and running still takes longer than this does though: #apt-get install mysql-server #mysqladmin create my_database #mysql mysql> GRANT ALL on my_database.* TO user_account@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'p4ssw0rd'; mysql> exit;
You can install MySQL on a Mac with only basic motor skills in your right hand in about two minutes (just double click the icon, click "Next"->(etc)->"Next"->"Done"), and it has a GUI control panel to start and stop it too, so you literally don't need to open a terminal window.
The real cost is in the time spent compensating for whatever your database platform's tool support shortcomings are. I love Microsoft SQL Server for this reason: I rarely have to reinvent anything.
I completely agree with the sentiment that having tools is a worth consideration. Apart from the pretty good CLI interface on MySQL (one of the reasons I think it has wider adoption than PostgreSQL, which is less user friendly), I use CocoaMySQL, though phpMyAdmin is more popular of course. There are also Windows utilities, and a range commercial tools from MySQL AB. There are similar offerings for other databases like PostgreSQL.
Personally I only tend to prefer something liek Oracle over a free, open source database when I know I need good performance and a reasonable level of reliability and I have to store a metric truckload of data (I work in the telcoms/large network provider industry so it's not uncommon), and coming up with a way of doing the same thing with something like MySQL or PostgreSQL just isn't worth the overhead.
I actually try to avoid using something like Oracle if I can, not because I have a problem with the product (and not because of cost) but more because the more Oracle databases you have, the greater chance some muppet (9 times out of 10, a consultant, who knows bupkis) will break it performing routine maintenance.
I think something that's worth bearing in mind is you don't always need to use a database, even when using one seems like the obvious thing to do. This might sound odd to some people, but it's becoming increasingly common to consider other approaches, now people are being asked to build systems that need to store ever more data. Basically, you can store you data in much the way as large service providers have been storing mail and web content for years.
For example, say you have to store a record of a list of transactions going through a system. Could be authentication logs, could be B2B data, something generic (it's not an approach suitable for everything, but it is a very flexible method of storage).
You might be better off using a disk base format like this: /data-storage-
It is a change that Peter Jackson thought would be better than the original story, or make for more exciting film, or whatever. And no offense PJ if you're reading this - but I seriously doubt you're a better story teller than the Old Professor.
I think he has proven that when it comes to movies, he is. I don't think for a minute Tolkien would have been able to pull off a result nearly as sucessful as Peter Jackson and the crew managed on screen. Can you really imagine what the movies would have been like if Tolkien had been in Jackson's position? Frankly, I for one suspect they would have been much more drawn out, more ponderous and less emotionally engaging affairs.
This reminds me of the LP of Arthur C. Clarke reading "2001: A Space Odyssey". I thought it would be really interesting to hear him tell the story but it was absolutely terrible, really awful, he was so ineloquent I couldn't listen to it. I got the impression this was perhaps partly due to his age at the time of the recording, but also that he simply wasn't a very good dramatic speaker.
Douglas Adams famously re-wrote the HHGTTG, producing quite different versions for radio, book and television, as appropriate to the medium. Incidentally, his reading of HHGTTG (the book) is superb.
It's not as if there is even is a 'definative' Tolkien vision for Middle Earth, he is renowned for constantly revising the series and for the contradictions between the books. For example, there are several inconsistencies between The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings - and indeed between books in The Lord Of The Rings (let alone between them and The Silmarillion or any of the other unfinished works). If Tolkien had made a movie, given his past form he would have changed the story much more drastically in transition.
I had a character in WoW that lost tens of thousands of XP points (and was de-levelled) due to a bug (logged off okay, next time I logged in that evening it was screwed). I lost all the 'gold' I'd spent on skill points for the character, but the quests I'd done were all marked as 'completed' still, meaning grinding would have been required to re-level the character.
Even though the AUP explicitly states they will do "everything possible to restore lost items" due to bugs (as long as it wasn't as a result of a forced server wide rollback). Nothing but BS generic responses from GM's who were not willing to do anything (and who didn't even read try to read the tickets properly), customer care didn't either and didn't even bother respond when I contacted them via the only method provided web site.
I was clear and polite throughout but Blizzard support is just very poor quality. The support staff are not only lazy but apparently not very bright either (based on ponderous exchanges where I ended up saying things like "No there was not a server wide roll back yesterday, that's simply not true.", "No I'm not imagining it, the character I had last week was higher level than my current character - something should be verifiable from the weekly backups.", etc.).
The high level of attention to detail in game sharply contrasts with the lack of care or even basic competance when it comes to management of the actual service (which also manifests itself in the form of frequent problems, including high latency and packetloss, between their only upstream in Europe (Telia) and other carriers and providers and internal network and system performance issues on the servers, even on 'Low' populated systems). Many problems have been persistant and gone on for months too.
Seems to be a company with some great games developers (with plenty of decent programmers designers and artists) but no expertise in how to professionally manage an online service like an MMO. I can't help thinking they should have expanded the team by bringing on board some people with the right experience (particularly competent people with experience in online service provision and in customer care). Instead, they seem to be winging it with management apparently not hiring the right people.
Agreed, the interface is terrible and the performance engine is very poor (and that's on an AMD FX with SLI GTX cards and 2 GB of RAM). It does not look good to the extent the graphics are barely serviceable (it's just about possible to work out what's going on on screen).
The quality of the character animation and movement isn't smooth and the bad collision detection makes it a pain to use too. User Interface Design doesn't seem to be something that gets much of a focus at Linden, I guess they figure that usability is completely secondary next to the product marketing.
It's been said before, but SL really does seem to only be only full of people trying to make money from it, rather than primarily people just hanging out having fun. Even though people have made some cool items you can buy that look like they could be fun to use in the right setting, I don't see the point if the software is so low quality it's not fun to be in the environment in the first place.
I am concerned that you think this issue is really a big problem. I am very worried if NASA thinks this is a big problem too - especially after all these years. While you don't want to underestimate potential problems like this, handling something as trivial as a date change is hardly 'rocket science' by NASA standards. Banks, financial institutions, air traffic control and military and emergency services systems handle this sort of thing just fine.
The reality is that decent testing procedures make issues like this routine to handle, and of course you set out a documented roll back procedure if something goes wrong (and list post-change checks to perform to see if something did go wrong or not). NASA have the ability to easily replicate the conditions for a test like this on the ground. If you didn't test a scenario like this on the ground and it was really a problem, there is no reason why it couldn't just as easily seem to work fine, but then only cause problems once the systems were up in the air.
I really can't believe the justification for not doing missions over Christmas and New Year is fear of a potential technical problem, even if it is a quote from Joan Higginbotham (who is evidently very experienced and ought to know a lot more about than this than I do). I can't see any reason why they couldn't easily have tested this on the ground (and would be surprised if they hadn't tested this sort of thing as part of Y2K compliance evaluations).
I am inclined to think the real reason they don't like doing missions over the Christmas period has a lot more to with culture and staffing issues (what with everyone bound to want time off), rather than them being worried their code is that much shonkier than the software that powers our electricity grids, phone lines, air traffic control and avionics systems that all run happily over the New Year period.
I suppose another possibility is that NASA is tangled up in bureaucracy and is so risk averse now that they feel they can't do something like this without a great deal of highly formalized testing - which they don't have the budget to do.
I once had the honour of speaking briefly to an astronaut from space on Skylab 4 (he is one of NASA's ASF speakers I think, I have is details somewhere - I think it was either Gerald Carr or Edward Gibson but I couldn't be 100% certain) and I ask him a question relating to when, in his opinion, we might realistically expect to see a manned mission to Mars and where, back in the 70's, he had expected us to be now in 2001 (this was in the November after 9/11).
As I recall, he said he had expected us be on Mars already and he seemed almost annoyed and was just barely perceptibly emotional that this wasn't the case (I got the impression he response made the NASA PR representative near by unconformable because they started fidgeting). While trying to avoid being insensitive I asked him why he thought we weren't there yet, and - after pausing briefly - he said the primary reason was a lack of investment and a lack of political will, he was quite emphatic on insisting that he thought we absolutely had the ability to undertake a manned mission, if their was enough political will and sufficient investment was made.
I'd never really thought about it before, but the state of the current current space programme must be a big disappointment for those who did so much pioneering work in the 60's and 70's. We have greatly superior technology and there is plenty of money flowing around elsewhere but NASA only seem to be able to scrape by, keeping things ticking over (not that they arn't trying - stuff like the SRB separation video, the NASA TV podcast and the website are all good things IMO).
Thanks, I've just re-read it now and it seems a bit rough around the edges. I'm putting that down to re-typing the thing after Vista[1] BSOD'd on me, the first version was better I think.
[1] I'm willing to say it's not Vitsa fault and put it down to a loose SATA cable... for now.
For the record, I don't actually dislike Sony, and buy individual products on their own merits (with a few exceptions - I'm more likely to by a product from a vendor I like - such as Apple - in part on trust, based on positive past experience, and I'm a little less likely to by from a vendor I've been recently burned by - but I can't think of any one that fits into that category at the moment).
Sony just seem to have stopped making so many products I used to like from them, including decent radios, great alarm clocks, decent home stereo's and Clie PDA's (and I don't think much of their current portable music player range). They really seem to be lost, I wonder what the problem is - it definately seems to be in senior management.
I wonder if the media (music/movies) wing has too much influence over strategic decisions - such as in the decision to include a wallet busting Blu Ray drive on every model. With MS and Nintendo not including an HD format in their consoles it's not as if they were forced to. I'm sure MS are only bringing out an HD-DVD accessory for the 360 in response to Sony including a Blu Ray drive.
The PS2 origionally had a region free DVD drive (deliberately), it was only a week or two after the launch (according to an interview with a Sony exec from around that time - the head of SCE Japan possibly - in something like Wired) that senior executives insisted on an immediate recall of all units (including ones that had sold at retail - though not many people handed them back I would guess!) so they could be made region locked.
I can understand why the did that, given Sony's position as a publisher (even if I think I think region encoding is a lousy idea), but interventions like that which are bound to hurt product sales for the Sony Computer Entertainment division must smart for those at SCE - something that was effectively claimed in that interview. I imagine interferance (in the form of the Blu Ray drive) is surely even more resented now SCE are, if I'm not mistaken, propping up the whole company - at least according to the offical balance sheets.
what's more likely is that the naysayers will say that they were right all along, except Sony deceived everyone and their superior marketing and name brand influenced the ignorant masses.
The PlayStation 2 sucked quite badly given what was claimed, what was delivered and when it was delivered (with reference to the now infamous E3 demos, how much better it would be than than the Dreamcast, that it would have 'Toy Story' quality graphics). When the PS2 Dead or Alive port had 2D spites in the scenery, in places where the DC one had fully 3D backgrounds, it was clear they'd misrepresented the systems ability.
Sony didn't really use 'superior marketing', they just flat out lied. People still bought the PS2, and the name brand got people to buy it. They have flat out lied again with the PS3 hype, claiming several instances of CGI footage are 'real in game footage' (which only people who know very little about video games let alone rendering technology could possibly be fooled by). For example, they said Lairwas going to look like this unfortunately, it really looks like this.
Edge recently did a splash on it where it comes out looking pretty good - I've seen this title in motion on 50" plasma though, and it looks for all the world like an title for the original X-Box (and not one of the good ones). Even for a launch title, that's pretty bad.
The hardware is grossly over-hyped, again, but most people don't know much about it, or take the time to find out.
Sure the PS3 has '8 cores'. What they are not making much point of is it has a single general purpose core, with the other 7 being being limited co-processors (with the system supporting 9 threads in total). You may think that sounds better than the X-Box 360, which has 3 general purpose cores (with multiple FPU and SIMD units in each core), and in some ways it is. However, try writing real world software (games included) that runs faster on the cell processor than on the 360 and I'm quite sure you'd be in for a real mission.
I don't have any experience writing console software (unfortunately, it doesn't usually pay as well as more mundane enterprise work) but do have experiencing running my own software on different hardware platforms. I've taken software I've written and run it on a Sun Fire X4200 (2 x dual core AMD CPU's) and on a T2000 (8 core Ultra Sparc, with an insane 32 threads) and I know the straight forward really-fast-generic-core approach blows rings around a fancy, unique CPU design for all practical purposes. Everyone said this about the much touted 'emotion engine' on the PS2 though - few developers ever really managed to fully utilise the hardware because of it's uncommon nature.
You'd have to spend a huge amount of time just optimising your software to work with an esoteric architecture, in way that doesn't help when you come to port the title to other platforms (and most will be looking to do a multi format release) - and that sort of investment just isn't warrented except on first party titles. In the same way that Gran Turismo (one of the best looking, if not the best looking PS2 title) was published by Sony and the best looking 360 title, Gears of War, was for made exclusively for Microsoft Game Studio, only first party / flagship titles are going to have enough time and money spent on them to make the most out of the system. Everything else will come out being as good as can be done relatively easily - and Microsoft having an SDK that allows you to build Windows and 360 versions of your game side by side doesn't help Sony's case on that front.
I would say that the PS3's multi-threaded cell design does genuinely mean it's better suited to developing games with better AI. However, and I'm genuinely glum about this, developers do not have a good track record of implementing good AI even when they do have the ability to do so (od
I think Microsoft manage to to fall foul of "preventing or hindering access to a program or data held on a computer, or impairing the operation of any program or data held on a computer" even when Windows is behaving normaly.
I'm certainly going to get a Wii - it's cheap and the controler has high novelty value - but I would want to play a game like Gears of War on it (at any price point). Given it's not able to do high definition (and the graphics appear to be better than but not all that far off GC quality), a game with a much detail as GoW is going to look nasty on my 50" HDTV Plasma, in just the same way that quite a few old origional X-Box games do. They would have to really take the polygon count down right down too, to the point it would be hard to tell if your hiding behind a rock or something that's supposed to be a burnt out car. The game would be a mess (unless they changed it almost beyond recognition).
When you have graphics with lots of bright colours and cartoonish graphics (e.g. Super Mario Sunshine) it's a lot easier to get away with a lower resoltion, lower polygon count and less video memory than if your trying to depict something that looks gritty and realistic (though RE4 did very well on the GC of course, but it did have the rare advantage of a fixed camera angle).
It's not just about graphics though - as much as I'm looking forward to the Wii's controller, I don't belive for minute it's going to be as comfortable as the Dreamcast-inspired X-Box controller for extended play or games like this (and GRAW, Rainbow 6 and certain racing titles). I've loved that controller style on the DC, origional X-Box and 360 - quite liked the not disimilar GC one (a evolution of the N64 controller) but found it too small for extended play. The vaguely NES inspired controller for Wii looks alright - and perfect for retro SNES titles - but SNES style controllers arn't as comfortable as more recent designs, and having to plug it into the remote is just going to be alkward (I don't see why it's not wireless in it's own right).
With regard to both the controller issue (which they can at least do something about - and I'm sure 3rd parties will if they don't) and the graphical limitations, as much as there are some games that will really only be suited to the Wii, there are some game types that just won't be - and 'gritty' FPS/over-the-shoulder-shooter titles like GoW, GRAW and Rainbox 6 are games that just won't work well on a limited platform.
Even though there are bound to be fanboys that will claim otherwise Nindendo and developers know some game styles will work on the Wii and some won't and it's not a market they are going after, which I think is a good move for them and for consumers, as it gives us more choice. I'm sure someone will try to do a more realistic FPS title on the Wii (probably another "Golden Eye", and someone is bound to do a WWII shooter god help us) and while it's bound to please some, it's going to look pretty nasty to anyone who's been exposed to similar titles on PC's or other current consoles. Ubisoft's Red Steel looks like it's going that way, though I am keen to slice and dice with the controller so I might be able to see past that if reviews are good enough.
(By way of pre-empting some replies, I don't subscribe to the cult of "worse graphics makes for games that are more enjoyable" that's quite popular or even the more widely accepted belief "gameplay > graphics" because I think they are both vital to a good game. In modern 3D games in particular, if you know the target platform can't handle rending something then you simply can't put that into your game, even if you think it would be really fun to have it in. If you're on a more limited hardware platform, it doesn't mean the games on it are going to be more fun, it just means designers have to work harder so that any platform limitations are not noticeable or distracting - I fully expect the Wii's controller will help in that regard and I should think that's a good part of the reason they've come up with it, because Nindendo's executives knew they needed an edge.)
Slashdot Mirror
LCDs and DLPs don't burn in because they use filters over white light to emit colors.
Certainly DLP's don't suffer from burn in (though they have a lot of other issues of course, the infamous rainbow effect being the biggest problem - though things seem to be improving on that front) but the same can't be said for LCD TV's. Although Plasma screens seem to burn in more easily, LCD displays do suffer too, however mostly it seems to only be an issue with larger displays (e.g. 30" or larger - the sort of size used in LCD TV's). I am not sure why that is though.
Your backlight may go out, but that's replaceable. Good luck replacing individual phosphors when they burn out.
That's a bit of a red herring to be fair. As with the back lights on an LCD display, Plasma screen will indeed burn out eventually (mine is rated for something like 8 years continuous usage - i.e. so even if I watch 12 hours a day (which obviously I'm not going to) it should be good for 14 years, which I'm comfortable with. Good luck getting either replaced though!
The depressing reality is, unless you have a good 3rd party repair shop in your area that are comfortable with this sort of thing, or you are willing to take your TV apart yourself you are SOL. Vendors like Sony, Phillips (etc.) just don't want to know and that ones that will talk to you invariably give you a price that is equal to or more than the cost of a brand new unit (especially on smaller screens), and of course new sets of better quality will almost certainly be available for 1/4 of the price by then.
Example: I bought a brand new model 32" Sony CRT 8 years ago for 1,500 UKP (the most expensive set in the store as it happened). I'm going to give it to someone in the office who can use a better TV as there is almost no point in trying to sell it - you can get a better set for about 250 UKP now. It has a long-standing problem with powering up from being completely off (it's okay if you leave it on standby, but otherwise you might need to flick it on and off a couple of times), but it would cost about the same as a new set just to get that issue resolved.
I can attest to this actually being true for Plasma screens as well (though it works for slightly different technical reasons obviously). I came across this solution when I found this article on Apple.com when searching Google for more information on what to do about "burn in". It's not quite the as same burn in as on CRT monitors in that it seems to be readily reversible, the trend seems to be to refer to it as 'persistence', though that may be in part because 'persistence' doesn't sound as scary to consumers.
;), like a new high end laptop.
I get burn in on my Plasma (a 50") after watching BBC News 24 (which has a large bright red box with the news logo and time on it in one corner) or when leaving my PVR menu on screen for a few minutes or leaving it outputting my Mac Mini desktop for some time (the bright icons in the Dock tend to burn in). As per the manual, if I watch another channel - particularly something bright - it goes away quickly. How quickly it goes away depends how long it was displaying the image (I think that's actually stated in my manual too).
Plasma does seem much more susceptible to "burn in"/persistence than LCD, but for the moment Plasma displays are the only way to go if you are looking for a large set (because you simply can't by very large LCD's). Plasma sets are also typically quite a bit cheaper, which makes them attractive. Lastly, they are also brighter than both back projection displays and LCD displays - my Pioneer Plasma is brighter than my old 1,500 UKP Sony CRT! Plasma sets seem to be the only ones that are able to deliver a bright picture, even with bright direct sunlight bouncing right off them (not a major selling point perhaps, but I was impressed).
I completely expect LCD displays to ultimately take over from Plasma's though. They are (potentially) a fair bit sharper, and they don't generate nearly as much heat - having the Plasma TV on is quite literally like having a radiator on in the room - particularly if it's a bright image, it gets as hot as the bottom of my PowerBook G4. It's just a matter of time before they can be made cost effectively at large sizes with little to no defects. If I was looking for a second (smaller) display I would definitely consider an LCD as it is. That said, I still expect Plasma TV's will be around and selling well for another 5 years yet (not least because it's much better than back projection and it's still kicking around).
I'm not surprised the US is the only real market for large displays. Not only do people have larger houses in the US (than say in Europe or in Asia) - you shouldn't really go bigger than about 42" unless you have a decent sized room -, and have more disposable income (due to lower taxation) but things like electronic goods are just so much cheaper (down to due to a combination of low taxation and economy of scale, I assume).
e.g. The cheapest price for my 50" Pioneer Plasma on Froogle (or indeed anywhere else) in the UK was ~3,500 UKP (with near identical pricing in stores on the continent). It a bit more expensive than most, as it's noticeably above average in terms of picture quality. At current exchange rates, that's over 6600 USD. When searching US stores in Froogle it was not only less than 3,500 US Dollars it was more like 2,000-2,800 (just under 1,500 UKP). Definitely worth a weekend trip to NYC if you are looking for something similarly expensive (but more portable
Oh dear, you didn't get anything I just said at all do you? :-(
The reality distortion bubble is strong in this one...
The card in the Wii is more than capable of doing over 1600x1200.
That's pretty funny. For a start it only has 3 MB of VRAM, and not all of that is usable as a framebuffer (a large portion is reserved by the Wii for texture memory). Even if you didn't bother with a z-buffer (i.e. it's purely a 2D image) you still are not left with enough VRAM for anything like that sort of resolution. Maths for the win!
For the Wii to do even anything like 1600x1200 not only would need to be able to handle a larger framebuffer than it currently can and the RAMDAC would have to be fast enough to support the desired output resolution. God himself could not make a Wii output at 720p.[1]
[1] Well maybe, if it was a 2D image at 256 colours and at 10 frames per second.
No I'm not missing the point, I suspect you also don't really understand the technology.
The ability to output at only 480p is all but certainly a hardware limitation in the case of the Wii, a limitation that was deemed acceptable for reasons of cost no doubt. While I don't know what video encoder chip the Wii uses, I'd easily bet the cost of a Wii that it's not able to do 720p or Nintendo would obviously have supported it in software in the first place (it would be insane for them not to - at least for things like the "dashboard" and Opera).
Just because a console has a video card with a few megabytes of VRAM and is capable of some fancy shaders and also supports Component or VGA interfaces does not mean a mere 'software upgrade' can enable the console to be able to output at higher resolutions - if a system is only able to output at 480p it's almost certainly a hardware limitation (and I would guess down to the video encoder). The original X-Box, Dreamcast and GameCube support VGA output too, and all had enough VRAM to support resolutions like 720p (so in theory you could render at that sort of resolution internally), but the hardware was simply unable to output higher resolutions like 720p (though with the the X-Box you could at least get to 1024x768).
The only reason the 360 was recently able to be patched to support 1080p (in addition to HD resolutions 1080i and 720p) was because the hardware already supported the higher resolution (it's just that no one was really shipping 1080p displays and the 360 - like the PS3 - is going to struggle to render any native content at that sort of resolution, so it's was mostly pointless and only a worthwhile exercise in so far as it gave the PS3 one less unique selling point to tout).
The PS2 also supported high resolution outputs, though I only know of it being used in Gran Turismo.
"You talk but you haven't looked at the specs."
Nope, your just confused I think.
"Adding the component cables can give you 1080i resolution on a monitor that can handle it"
Not so - the Wii does not support 720p, never mind 1080i or 1080p - so adding a component cable won't automagically result in it outputing anything higher than 480p (it will just give you a less blury picture than you'd get from using the bundled composite cable).
"even at 480p you would have decent enough resolution to write an email, type a letter or document, browse the Web"
480p (in square pixels) gives you a screen resolution of 640x480. Most people are going to disagree with you about that being a decent resolution. Even Windows XP knows that 640x480 isn't a workable desktop resolution, and alerts the user that their display resolution is too low if it's not set to at least 800x600.
The Wii has better specs than my G3, and my G3 is great for email, typing documents, Web, chat.....
I really hope your G3 can do more than 640x480! I keep my old G3 around for kicks (along with my Mac Plus), but the G3 desktop range is 10 years old now. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, 'great' for browsing the web IME.
The Wii is the only of the latest generations of console that isn't HD capable, it's not feasible to use a display at Standard Definition resolutions for things like email or web browsing or modern GUI based productivity software. It's just a horrible experience (as demonstrated by Web TV).
This makes the PS3 the only viable option, unless it's just a distribution intended to allow viewing of specificly tailored made-for-tv-viewing content (e.g. news stories in large print and videos - with a custom interface to Google Videos/YouTube). I don't think mainstream PS3 users are going to have any interest in using it as a computer though, that will be restricted to the same sort of people who were into modding X-Boxes to do the same thing.
For anyone who does want a PC, it's a LOT cheaper just to buy a computer at your local Wall Mart / ASDA, complete with TFT display and Windows than it is to buy a PS3. The only thing about the PS3 running Linux to me, is that it means it ought to be very easy to turn it into a flexible media center, but I'm waiting to find out more about Apple's "iTV" system in January.
FWIW, I can see how my post reads, I would actually say I'm generally center-left politically. I'm just getting a bit pissed off with things in London I think.
I come from the North East of Scotland, which I don't really rate - the people are by and large very friendly, but somewhat quite small minded and can be bit like characters out of The League of Gentlemen. They are forever always saying things like "I hear you can get on a train in London and not see another white face." and "Sure, your a bit racial yourself there as well?" (I assume they mean 'racist' rather than 'ethnic' as I'm about as pale as you get).
In particular I am from Aberdeen, which is really going down the pan by virtually unanimous consensus (I lived in Dundee, for a while, which has a much worse reputation but is a much nicer place to live). You know it's bad when pubs in town start serving pints only in plastic cups, because of all the glassing incidents.
The best options within the UK seem to be somewhere like moving back up to Edinburgh or Glasgow (which, like Dundee has a bad former reptuation, but is actually pretty nice now) though that would be more difficult for work (given there is much less demand for what I'm really good at outside of London - though at least I'd be familer with the area), or commuting into London from the suburbs. I've been here for 7 years or so and I still don't really know where would be both nice, easily commutable and affordable. I guess I just need to do some research.
Those are very interesting statistics, and they fly in the face of what I've read previously about crime in New Zealand (I found this related link (on the same site) even more disturbing). It's curious how things appear to so bad in supposedly 'civillised' countries. I wonder how much of that is down to better reporting (and people being willing to report crime) and how much of it is down to genuinely higher instances of violent crime, I suppose unfortunatley it's practically impossible to tell.
I think that the fact we have one of the highest prison populations per capita (along with the US), along with some of the highest rates of assault, says something about the 'lock them up' policy so beloved of right-wingers and the Daily Mail (i.e. it doesn't work).
Currently we arn't locking up lots of people who should be in a secure facility and who are not fit to be out in society. We do need to fix what's broken in our society and address the root causes of crime, but we also need to protect the majority from the criminal minority.
Not everyone is of a mind to assault random strangers or break into someone elses house or car, if you restrict the freedoms of the criminal minority crime statistics will go down drastically - that's really quite indisputable. Personally, I'm very willing to pay more taxes as required to facilitate that (without ignoring the importance and better value of preventative measures and attempts at rehabilitation).
Cinematic gaming never suceeded and it will never succeed because it's based on communications, not empowering the user to create their own world and play in it.
That's not very concinving argument when it's a model that has already succeeded. Games like GRAW, the Call of Duty series and Max Payne were cinematic games and that was integral to their success. Gears of War falls certainly short of the gameplay in those titles, but that's got nothing to do with the fact it's a cinematic experience and is down to flaws in the execution, like having bad AI and (although they went to the trouble to create a significant amount of back story and do scene setting) little to no narrative.
Talk of "empowering users to create their own world" is shorthand for "don't bother to create any content or narrative". Case in point: Star Wars Galaxies empowered users to create their own world and play in it like no other, but without any bascially gameplay underneath, it died horribly (despite having the mother of all licenses - the only reason it was even vaguely popular in the first place). WoW, in contrast, allows the player to do very little (very shallow crafting system, very little diversity between players, nothing like player housing), but has much better basic mechanics (in contrast to SWG's rather clunky engine).
It would seem that overwhelmingly, both strong narratives and solid baisc gameplay are more popular with than titles that focus on player content creation. That's not to say many gamers wouldn't like to see an MMO like SWG that also had much more solid basic gameplay and strong narratives (or alternatively, WoW, but with meaningful player content).
I can certainly see the argument for that, I dropped out of school by 16 (that was over a decade ago). I got a job for terrible pay pretty much right away, and I bought my first place, a one bedroomed apartment, at 18. by the time I was 21 I was earning 40k UKP (75k USD) a year [ about double what my high school teachers were being paid ] and I've never looked back. I quite liked that I didn't have any debt to work as a result of this approach.
The time I spent at school after the age of about 10 was indeed a complete waste of my time and a whole lot of money. I would have been happier and learned more by being allow to roam around the local public library, museum and art gallery educating myself (something I was aware of at the time, which made it all the more frustrating).
However, it seems to me that lowering the leaving age would leave a lot of 12-16 year old kids roaming around the streets in gangs as a result of comparatively few companies willing to take them on, even at next-to-nothing wages (not least because many of them would probably be, by definition, 'less desirable' candidates and companies would essentially just be babysitting, which is the position most teachers are in today).
Demand is high for this sort of title because playing a game where you get to kill things with a chainsaw that's mounted on your gun is more fun than say, playing game where you save the rainforest (and that's even though the melee option in GoW isn't very well executed). That's true no matter how much fun you make saving the rainforest. Unless maybe, where you get to kill loggers with an axe. That has a chainsaw on it. And I'm so much of a tree hugging hippy, I don't even eat meat.
I much prefer the co-operative aspects of FPS games though - from Doom (and mods like Aliens:TC) to BF2/BF2142. I love a game I can get lost and wonder round in (i.e. Morrowind, and to some extent Oblivion, but I am not a huge fan of the non sensical leveling system in Oblivion so I gave up early on - I'll have to try again with some of the mods to 'correct' that installed).
Morrowind and Oblivion are the only games that have come particularly close to being 'holodeck' style experiences - worlds you can almost immediately explore a huge world at your will and get completely immersed in. Though RPG's like KoToR are well done, they are much more 'on the rails' affairs, and MMO's are all basically treadmills rather than sandboxes (by virtue of the subscription model).
I would much rather pay more per game to be able to play and explore in a larger world (maybe co-operatively with one or two friends at the same time, at most - but without having to compromise the immersiveness and overall experience by having to interact with random stangers as in an MMO). I can quite happily spend hours exploring areas, reading books and solving problems without any skeleton bashing (as fun as that is).
As a UK citizen, as much as I really like Americans (who by and large are individually great people, some of the nicest anywhere) I actually feel the same way about the US, given how things are in the states now. That is based on my own experiences over the years of American officialdom and what I see in the media (students, even children being tazer'd, seemingly regularly reported incidences of police brutality, farcical conditions at airports, overbearing traffic laws).
Personally, given the street crime rate here I'm more than happy to see cameras up. Unlike the US, we have deliberate development policies that try to prevent having areas where some citizens are segregated from others because of wealth - though we do sort of have US style suburbs to some extent, in the UK you are never usually far away (i.e. a short walk) from a council housing estate. Partly this is down to geography (we have quite a sizable population living on a small island, smaller than a large US state).
Personally I prefer the US in this respect, much of the UK is frankly a cesspit (it's would be unfair to say the government have done nothing to change this - but in focusing on trying to improve things for the poorest in society it seems they've left the rest of us - i.e. MOST of us - out to dry). I'd much rather live in a nice quiet suburb (but my 2 bedroom flat in a reasonable middle of the road area in London cost me 340,000 USD - and I'm single, so it will be another 5 years or so, assuming the housing market doesn't crash and I get stuck in negative equity, before I can really afford a house in a quiet, safe suburb).
This is not to say I'm in favour of things like ID cards for example, I'm very much against them (not least because you could essentially achive the same thing by simply linking existing databases together, and using existing social security numbers (it's a National Insurance Number here) in the same way they are used in the US, and because it's would mean another government IT project, which is bound to be an expensive disaster).
I've don't know why you think public surveillance in the form of street cameras is "100% wrong", "regardless of benefit" though - if it means that I'm less likely to be mugged or randomly assaulted again, I'm all for it (I've been involved in maybe 4 or 5 incidents in the last 3 years, usually in broad daylight in a 'safe' area - including once incident I've intervened to protect a random stanger (and not including another just a couple of weeks ago on the Tube, when some volient nutter tried to pick a fight with a tourist) - it seems like everyone I know has a story).
If London were more like New York is today (and less like New York was ~20 years ago) then I wouldn't see the point in so many cameras, but street crime in the UK is unpleasantly high that it has the potential to be a real asset (particularly in urban areas - it's not a problem unique to London or even England though, it's just as bad in towns across the UK).
Sadly, even with the ability to view crimes on cameras, the UK police can seldom be bothered to go and look up the footage (something I have heard numerous tails about, and know of first hand two seperate occations when serious random assaults took place but the issue was not chased up and footage not retrieved).
The biggest single problem is our criminal justice system is clogged. Our sentances are nothing like US sentencing. Life usually means out in 18 years in the UK, for example, and we don't have 'three strikes' rules (sadly), even for serious offences. There are thousands of criminals with tens of convictions out walking free, having never been imprisioned (at least not for more than a handful of weeks), this is primarily because we don't have anywhere to put them, as our jails our full (the home office have just in the last month introduced emergency measures to cope with over crowding, it's worth Googling for more info if you want to see what a mess we are in).
We actually have one of the higest jail populations in Eu
Oracle typically costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to run on an enterprise DB server like an E20K or E25K. The commercial version retails for around, if I'm not mistaken, tens of thousands of dollars per CPU (and these things can have up to 75 processors in them, though anywhere between say 8-24 is closer to what most have in them) and most companies with an Oracle DB on them are going have at least two systems.
/data-storage-
Microsoft SQL Server is indeed cheaper than Oracle for commercial use, but it requires you run Windows (which you also have to pay for - not forgetting relevant per-client license fees), which is a dubious enough prospect on it's own if you have a commercial service relying on it - the real kicker is Windows only retails for x86 systems (i.e. only suitable for low to mid range use). Even the X4600 systems (which support up to 8 dual core AMD64 CPU's, and indeed are insanely fast) are not going to be suitable big iron DB server replacements any time soon.
An experienced DBA can set up a new installation in a couple of minutes.
Well given the cost of the system compared to what's freely available anyway, I should hope it would be quick.
Installing it and getting a DB up and running still takes longer than this does though:
#apt-get install mysql-server
#mysqladmin create my_database
#mysql
mysql> GRANT ALL on my_database.* TO user_account@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'p4ssw0rd';
mysql> exit;
You can install MySQL on a Mac with only basic motor skills in your right hand in about two minutes (just double click the icon, click "Next"->(etc)->"Next"->"Done"), and it has a GUI control panel to start and stop it too, so you literally don't need to open a terminal window.
The real cost is in the time spent compensating for whatever your database platform's tool support shortcomings are. I love Microsoft SQL Server for this reason: I rarely have to reinvent anything.
I completely agree with the sentiment that having tools is a worth consideration. Apart from the pretty good CLI interface on MySQL (one of the reasons I think it has wider adoption than PostgreSQL, which is less user friendly), I use CocoaMySQL, though phpMyAdmin is more popular of course. There are also Windows utilities, and a range commercial tools from MySQL AB. There are similar offerings for other databases like PostgreSQL.
Personally I only tend to prefer something liek Oracle over a free, open source database when I know I need good performance and a reasonable level of reliability and I have to store a metric truckload of data (I work in the telcoms/large network provider industry so it's not uncommon), and coming up with a way of doing the same thing with something like MySQL or PostgreSQL just isn't worth the overhead.
I actually try to avoid using something like Oracle if I can, not because I have a problem with the product (and not because of cost) but more because the more Oracle databases you have, the greater chance some muppet (9 times out of 10, a consultant, who knows bupkis) will break it performing routine maintenance.
I think something that's worth bearing in mind is you don't always need to use a database, even when using one seems like the obvious thing to do. This might sound odd to some people, but it's becoming increasingly common to consider other approaches, now people are being asked to build systems that need to store ever more data. Basically, you can store you data in much the way as large service providers have been storing mail and web content for years.
For example, say you have to store a record of a list of transactions going through a system. Could be authentication logs, could be B2B data, something generic (it's not an approach suitable for everything, but it is a very flexible method of storage).
You might be better off using a disk base format like this:
It is a change that Peter Jackson thought would be better than the original story, or make for more exciting film, or whatever. And no offense PJ if you're reading this - but I seriously doubt you're a better story teller than the Old Professor.
I think he has proven that when it comes to movies, he is. I don't think for a minute Tolkien would have been able to pull off a result nearly as sucessful as Peter Jackson and the crew managed on screen. Can you really imagine what the movies would have been like if Tolkien had been in Jackson's position? Frankly, I for one suspect they would have been much more drawn out, more ponderous and less emotionally engaging affairs.
This reminds me of the LP of Arthur C. Clarke reading "2001: A Space Odyssey". I thought it would be really interesting to hear him tell the story but it was absolutely terrible, really awful, he was so ineloquent I couldn't listen to it. I got the impression this was perhaps partly due to his age at the time of the recording, but also that he simply wasn't a very good dramatic speaker.
Douglas Adams famously re-wrote the HHGTTG, producing quite different versions for radio, book and television, as appropriate to the medium. Incidentally, his reading of HHGTTG (the book) is superb.
It's not as if there is even is a 'definative' Tolkien vision for Middle Earth, he is renowned for constantly revising the series and for the contradictions between the books. For example, there are several inconsistencies between The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings - and indeed between books in The Lord Of The Rings (let alone between them and The Silmarillion or any of the other unfinished works). If Tolkien had made a movie, given his past form he would have changed the story much more drastically in transition.
Yeah, profanity is nothing but a crutch for inarticulate motherfuckers!
I had a character in WoW that lost tens of thousands of XP points (and was de-levelled) due to a bug (logged off okay, next time I logged in that evening it was screwed). I lost all the 'gold' I'd spent on skill points for the character, but the quests I'd done were all marked as 'completed' still, meaning grinding would have been required to re-level the character.
Even though the AUP explicitly states they will do "everything possible to restore lost items" due to bugs (as long as it wasn't as a result of a forced server wide rollback). Nothing but BS generic responses from GM's who were not willing to do anything (and who didn't even read try to read the tickets properly), customer care didn't either and didn't even bother respond when I contacted them via the only method provided web site.
I was clear and polite throughout but Blizzard support is just very poor quality. The support staff are not only lazy but apparently not very bright either (based on ponderous exchanges where I ended up saying things like "No there was not a server wide roll back yesterday, that's simply not true.", "No I'm not imagining it, the character I had last week was higher level than my current character - something should be verifiable from the weekly backups.", etc.).
The high level of attention to detail in game sharply contrasts with the lack of care or even basic competance when it comes to management of the actual service (which also manifests itself in the form of frequent problems, including high latency and packetloss, between their only upstream in Europe (Telia) and other carriers and providers and internal network and system performance issues on the servers, even on 'Low' populated systems). Many problems have been persistant and gone on for months too.
Seems to be a company with some great games developers (with plenty of decent programmers designers and artists) but no expertise in how to professionally manage an online service like an MMO. I can't help thinking they should have expanded the team by bringing on board some people with the right experience (particularly competent people with experience in online service provision and in customer care). Instead, they seem to be winging it with management apparently not hiring the right people.
Agreed, the interface is terrible and the performance engine is very poor (and that's on an AMD FX with SLI GTX cards and 2 GB of RAM). It does not look good to the extent the graphics are barely serviceable (it's just about possible to work out what's going on on screen).
The quality of the character animation and movement isn't smooth and the bad collision detection makes it a pain to use too. User Interface Design doesn't seem to be something that gets much of a focus at Linden, I guess they figure that usability is completely secondary next to the product marketing.
It's been said before, but SL really does seem to only be only full of people trying to make money from it, rather than primarily people just hanging out having fun. Even though people have made some cool items you can buy that look like they could be fun to use in the right setting, I don't see the point if the software is so low quality it's not fun to be in the environment in the first place.
Too many factors, nasa is right at the moment.
I am concerned that you think this issue is really a big problem. I am very worried if NASA thinks this is a big problem too - especially after all these years. While you don't want to underestimate potential problems like this, handling something as trivial as a date change is hardly 'rocket science' by NASA standards. Banks, financial institutions, air traffic control and military and emergency services systems handle this sort of thing just fine.
The reality is that decent testing procedures make issues like this routine to handle, and of course you set out a documented roll back procedure if something goes wrong (and list post-change checks to perform to see if something did go wrong or not). NASA have the ability to easily replicate the conditions for a test like this on the ground. If you didn't test a scenario like this on the ground and it was really a problem, there is no reason why it couldn't just as easily seem to work fine, but then only cause problems once the systems were up in the air.
I really can't believe the justification for not doing missions over Christmas and New Year is fear of a potential technical problem, even if it is a quote from Joan Higginbotham (who is evidently very experienced and ought to know a lot more about than this than I do). I can't see any reason why they couldn't easily have tested this on the ground (and would be surprised if they hadn't tested this sort of thing as part of Y2K compliance evaluations).
I am inclined to think the real reason they don't like doing missions over the Christmas period has a lot more to with culture and staffing issues (what with everyone bound to want time off), rather than them being worried their code is that much shonkier than the software that powers our electricity grids, phone lines, air traffic control and avionics systems that all run happily over the New Year period.
I suppose another possibility is that NASA is tangled up in bureaucracy and is so risk averse now that they feel they can't do something like this without a great deal of highly formalized testing - which they don't have the budget to do.
I once had the honour of speaking briefly to an astronaut from space on Skylab 4 (he is one of NASA's ASF speakers I think, I have is details somewhere - I think it was either Gerald Carr or Edward Gibson but I couldn't be 100% certain) and I ask him a question relating to when, in his opinion, we might realistically expect to see a manned mission to Mars and where, back in the 70's, he had expected us to be now in 2001 (this was in the November after 9/11).
As I recall, he said he had expected us be on Mars already and he seemed almost annoyed and was just barely perceptibly emotional that this wasn't the case (I got the impression he response made the NASA PR representative near by unconformable because they started fidgeting). While trying to avoid being insensitive I asked him why he thought we weren't there yet, and - after pausing briefly - he said the primary reason was a lack of investment and a lack of political will, he was quite emphatic on insisting that he thought we absolutely had the ability to undertake a manned mission, if their was enough political will and sufficient investment was made.
I'd never really thought about it before, but the state of the current current space programme must be a big disappointment for those who did so much pioneering work in the 60's and 70's. We have greatly superior technology and there is plenty of money flowing around elsewhere but NASA only seem to be able to scrape by, keeping things ticking over (not that they arn't trying - stuff like the SRB separation video, the NASA TV podcast and the website are all good things IMO).
Thanks, I've just re-read it now and it seems a bit rough around the edges. I'm putting that down to re-typing the thing after Vista[1] BSOD'd on me, the first version was better I think.
... for now.
[1] I'm willing to say it's not Vitsa fault and put it down to a loose SATA cable
For the record, I don't actually dislike Sony, and buy individual products on their own merits (with a few exceptions - I'm more likely to by a product from a vendor I like - such as Apple - in part on trust, based on positive past experience, and I'm a little less likely to by from a vendor I've been recently burned by - but I can't think of any one that fits into that category at the moment).
Sony just seem to have stopped making so many products I used to like from them, including decent radios, great alarm clocks, decent home stereo's and Clie PDA's (and I don't think much of their current portable music player range). They really seem to be lost, I wonder what the problem is - it definately seems to be in senior management.
I wonder if the media (music/movies) wing has too much influence over strategic decisions - such as in the decision to include a wallet busting Blu Ray drive on every model. With MS and Nintendo not including an HD format in their consoles it's not as if they were forced to. I'm sure MS are only bringing out an HD-DVD accessory for the 360 in response to Sony including a Blu Ray drive.
The PS2 origionally had a region free DVD drive (deliberately), it was only a week or two after the launch (according to an interview with a Sony exec from around that time - the head of SCE Japan possibly - in something like Wired) that senior executives insisted on an immediate recall of all units (including ones that had sold at retail - though not many people handed them back I would guess!) so they could be made region locked.
I can understand why the did that, given Sony's position as a publisher (even if I think I think region encoding is a lousy idea), but interventions like that which are bound to hurt product sales for the Sony Computer Entertainment division must smart for those at SCE - something that was effectively claimed in that interview. I imagine interferance (in the form of the Blu Ray drive) is surely even more resented now SCE are, if I'm not mistaken, propping up the whole company - at least according to the offical balance sheets.
what's more likely is that the naysayers will say that they were right all along, except Sony deceived everyone and their superior marketing and name brand influenced the ignorant masses.
The PlayStation 2 sucked quite badly given what was claimed, what was delivered and when it was delivered (with reference to the now infamous E3 demos, how much better it would be than than the Dreamcast, that it would have 'Toy Story' quality graphics). When the PS2 Dead or Alive port had 2D spites in the scenery, in places where the DC one had fully 3D backgrounds, it was clear they'd misrepresented the systems ability.
Sony didn't really use 'superior marketing', they just flat out lied. People still bought the PS2, and the name brand got people to buy it. They have flat out lied again with the PS3 hype, claiming several instances of CGI footage are 'real in game footage' (which only people who know very little about video games let alone rendering technology could possibly be fooled by). For example, they said Lair was going to look like this unfortunately, it really looks like this.
Edge recently did a splash on it where it comes out looking pretty good - I've seen this title in motion on 50" plasma though, and it looks for all the world like an title for the original X-Box (and not one of the good ones). Even for a launch title, that's pretty bad.
The hardware is grossly over-hyped, again, but most people don't know much about it, or take the time to find out.
Sure the PS3 has '8 cores'. What they are not making much point of is it has a single general purpose core, with the other 7 being being limited co-processors (with the system supporting 9 threads in total). You may think that sounds better than the X-Box 360, which has 3 general purpose cores (with multiple FPU and SIMD units in each core), and in some ways it is. However, try writing real world software (games included) that runs faster on the cell processor than on the 360 and I'm quite sure you'd be in for a real mission.
I don't have any experience writing console software (unfortunately, it doesn't usually pay as well as more mundane enterprise work) but do have experiencing running my own software on different hardware platforms. I've taken software I've written and run it on a Sun Fire X4200 (2 x dual core AMD CPU's) and on a T2000 (8 core Ultra Sparc, with an insane 32 threads) and I know the straight forward really-fast-generic-core approach blows rings around a fancy, unique CPU design for all practical purposes. Everyone said this about the much touted 'emotion engine' on the PS2 though - few developers ever really managed to fully utilise the hardware because of it's uncommon nature.
You'd have to spend a huge amount of time just optimising your software to work with an esoteric architecture, in way that doesn't help when you come to port the title to other platforms (and most will be looking to do a multi format release) - and that sort of investment just isn't warrented except on first party titles. In the same way that Gran Turismo (one of the best looking, if not the best looking PS2 title) was published by Sony and the best looking 360 title, Gears of War, was for made exclusively for Microsoft Game Studio, only first party / flagship titles are going to have enough time and money spent on them to make the most out of the system. Everything else will come out being as good as can be done relatively easily - and Microsoft having an SDK that allows you to build Windows and 360 versions of your game side by side doesn't help Sony's case on that front.
I would say that the PS3's multi-threaded cell design does genuinely mean it's better suited to developing games with better AI. However, and I'm genuinely glum about this, developers do not have a good track record of implementing good AI even when they do have the ability to do so (od
I think Microsoft manage to to fall foul of "preventing or hindering access to a program or data held on a computer, or impairing the operation of any program or data held on a computer" even when Windows is behaving normaly.
I'm certainly going to get a Wii - it's cheap and the controler has high novelty value - but I would want to play a game like Gears of War on it (at any price point). Given it's not able to do high definition (and the graphics appear to be better than but not all that far off GC quality), a game with a much detail as GoW is going to look nasty on my 50" HDTV Plasma, in just the same way that quite a few old origional X-Box games do. They would have to really take the polygon count down right down too, to the point it would be hard to tell if your hiding behind a rock or something that's supposed to be a burnt out car. The game would be a mess (unless they changed it almost beyond recognition).
When you have graphics with lots of bright colours and cartoonish graphics (e.g. Super Mario Sunshine) it's a lot easier to get away with a lower resoltion, lower polygon count and less video memory than if your trying to depict something that looks gritty and realistic (though RE4 did very well on the GC of course, but it did have the rare advantage of a fixed camera angle).
It's not just about graphics though - as much as I'm looking forward to the Wii's controller, I don't belive for minute it's going to be as comfortable as the Dreamcast-inspired X-Box controller for extended play or games like this (and GRAW, Rainbow 6 and certain racing titles). I've loved that controller style on the DC, origional X-Box and 360 - quite liked the not disimilar GC one (a evolution of the N64 controller) but found it too small for extended play. The vaguely NES inspired controller for Wii looks alright - and perfect for retro SNES titles - but SNES style controllers arn't as comfortable as more recent designs, and having to plug it into the remote is just going to be alkward (I don't see why it's not wireless in it's own right).
With regard to both the controller issue (which they can at least do something about - and I'm sure 3rd parties will if they don't) and the graphical limitations, as much as there are some games that will really only be suited to the Wii, there are some game types that just won't be - and 'gritty' FPS/over-the-shoulder-shooter titles like GoW, GRAW and Rainbox 6 are games that just won't work well on a limited platform.
Even though there are bound to be fanboys that will claim otherwise Nindendo and developers know some game styles will work on the Wii and some won't and it's not a market they are going after, which I think is a good move for them and for consumers, as it gives us more choice. I'm sure someone will try to do a more realistic FPS title on the Wii (probably another "Golden Eye", and someone is bound to do a WWII shooter god help us) and while it's bound to please some, it's going to look pretty nasty to anyone who's been exposed to similar titles on PC's or other current consoles. Ubisoft's Red Steel looks like it's going that way, though I am keen to slice and dice with the controller so I might be able to see past that if reviews are good enough.
(By way of pre-empting some replies, I don't subscribe to the cult of "worse graphics makes for games that are more enjoyable" that's quite popular or even the more widely accepted belief "gameplay > graphics" because I think they are both vital to a good game. In modern 3D games in particular, if you know the target platform can't handle rending something then you simply can't put that into your game, even if you think it would be really fun to have it in. If you're on a more limited hardware platform, it doesn't mean the games on it are going to be more fun, it just means designers have to work harder so that any platform limitations are not noticeable or distracting - I fully expect the Wii's controller will help in that regard and I should think that's a good part of the reason they've come up with it, because Nindendo's executives knew they needed an edge.)
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