They couldn't just say "you will now work at the wrench factory on the other side of town"? I'd thought they replaced markets ("the wrench factory will pay me twice as much") with centralized command, but it sounds like they just got rid of markets without replacing them with anything?
That was a hypothetical example. More realistic examples would be something like wrenches and computers. It's a bit harder to shift people between radically different jobs without having a pool of qualified unemployed people as, basically, a suspension to absorb the shocks.
Don't forget that organizations, especially large ones, can be amazingly clueless about possibilities for reorganizing work (and a bureaucracy that controls a whole economy is as large as it gets). In the current example, it is quite plausible that the management might need workers in the wrench factory but fail to realize that it has qualified people in the hammer factory.
Markets have the advantage that another organization with smarter management can take advantage of such failures. In this example, start a competing wrench factory and hire the workers from the hammer factory.
Slightly OT: I think that this advantage in overall, economy-wide efficiency is the main reason the Soviets lost the cold war. At some point, their clumsy state-directed economy could not keep up with the expenses of the arms race anymore.
Saving energy in IT means two things. #1. Reducing usage. #2. Buying more efficient components.
If the energy usage reaches a point where it really hurts, #3. Invest in more efficient software so you can make do with slower but less power hungry components.
But for that Management needs to be desperate about energy costs. Because optimizig software is time consuming and expensive.
It seems that "single" counts of perjury are rarely prosecuted at all. But 4000 might actually get a total sentence that is more than a slap on the wrist;-)
Not really. Germany has a long tradition of censoring entertainment media, especially those that are new and not yet established with the generation that provides the current bunch of politicians. The main differences are -The emphasis is on censoring violence rather than sex like in the USA. Try selling a brothel management game with graphic sex scenes in the USA, and you'll get an idea of how some German politicians view violent games. -The censorship is ostensibly about protecting juveniles from material that would warp their characters. Here you could speak of putting on a front, because some of the measures against sellig those games to kids also are an impediment in marketing to adults. Like indexing which leads to a ban on advertisement and displaying the games outside 18-only shops.
Some people keep working after their first billion. Like Bill Gates who kept running Microsoft for several years after he was a billionaire. But guys like Bill certainly don't need to keep working, so I guess they enjoy steering a big company.
Deus Ex was an outstanding game because it had good storytelling combined with interesting gameplay. The different ways the player could build his character and achieve his goals were definitely above the norm for a shooter.
Also, the graphics had reached a level I consider sufficient to support a good game: -full 3D engine -Characters and items were clearly recognizable, not reduced to a crude bunch of pixels like in DOOM due to limited computing resources -the supported resolutions allowed to check out things at a distance, where earlier games (DOOM again) would make things unrecognizable because they shrinked to a few pixels.
Together with Half Life 1, I think Deus Ex introduced graphics that were "good enough". Anything that came later is nice as eyecandy but does not make better games.
It seems all those guys in your links who have reported success have a Samsung TV set. Unfortunately they did not give any model numbers, but it is plausible that a TV set would support HDMI. Which means it works as intended for them, encrypted signals with decryption in the screen is part of HDMI.
In my case, the Samsung SyncMaster 204B is a PC screen that does not support HDMI. That means no digital input from a PS3 on that screen. So -Check if your TV supports HDMI before buying the PS3 -if you want to buy a new TV anyway, make sure to get one that can handle HDMI.
Hmm, seems I have to partially retract that: http://forums.gametrailers.com/showthread.php?t=534717 Obviously there are VGA cables from third parties in the market. But everything I find on short notice says digital is encrypted.
I think the "closed" nature of a console actually has a few advantages, but to me those are not enough to pay something like 300 Euros for an additional gaming platform. Because I have a PC anyway for lots of things that the typical console won't allow me to do. And in terms of capability, I think it is comparable to the current generation of consoles.
Considering the graphics quality, I guess I'd be happy with any modern console that can do resolutions typical for a HDTV set. Because I think HalfLife 1 on the higher resolutions is good enough, anything beyond that is nice to have but not really necessary in a game. Of course, unless the console plays nice with my existing monitor (a 1600x1200 pixel Samsung with DVI port) this would mean shelling out more money for a matching screen. A quick Google search shows that the PS3, for instance, won't work with the Samsung at all (encrypted HDMI output).
Finally, I play a lot of FPS where mouse + WASD really rules. Call that arrogant if you like, but that's how I see it. If a console allows me to use mouse and keyboard, fine. But as I understand it, console games are usually not designed to support these.
Would the situation be the same? That is, if this (non-existing), magic type of DRM existed that hindered only pirates and torrent leeches, would people still be against it?
Very likely, yes, unless you add one more component to your magical DRM: There must be no central point of control.
Add two more and it would actually become a net benefit for honest customers: 1) Allow the legitimate owner to make backups or re-download the game, so a scratched original disk does not mean the loss of $60. Valve's Steam does that (but fails on "no central point of control"). 2) Prevent cheating. As in, disallow aimbots, wallhacks and similar means of gaining unfair advantages.
Of course, at this point we're talking about a truly magic piece of technology;-)
Even a server or firewall needs some configuration. With the driver VIA has just released, there is an Open Source driver that can display text and 2D graphics. Which will do nicely for a typical GUI (Ubuntu?), so you are not limited to the console.
TFA says VIA has already released a 2D driver. If that works well, it should do for routers/firewalls/servers. And that is where I can see a small VIA based PC being used.
For gaming, I'd still prefer a full size PC with AMD or Intel dual core CPU and a separate ATI graphics card (NVidia binary drivers are acceptable, but now ATI is more attractive thanks to its Open Source program).
The renderer, "Creekstone" wants to use the cheapest and fastest-working BSE testing kit on each of the cows they kill in the full knowledge that the test isn't effective. --That is, the test can only read large concentrations of BSE prions in brain tissue, and is thus more effective the older the cow is, 5 years being the mean average. Creekstone kills its cows at 24 months, and the test isn't even rated for use on cows under 30 months.
Thus the test won't actually find infected cows and Creekstone will be able to sell them with impunity.
But it's worse than that. . .
See, now if a BSE infected cow is found, all the cattle it had contact with are destroyed, resulting in an insurance premium and profit-loss nightmare. But if a cow happens to be found using this test, (which there is a slight chance happening in the most extreme cases of infection), then the company can argue that the rest of the herd should be spared because, "See, we caught the sick one! Our system worked. We don't need to cull the herd because, after all, each animal is individually tested!"
Had this action been allowed by the courts, it would have constituted a scam which would have saved the cattle industry potentially billions of dollars, and they know it.
I still think there are better ways to handle this.
1) If they start advertising with "100% tested", knowing the tests are useless, they could be sued by the competition for false advertising. Plus they should be hit with the full liability if their meat infects someone.
2) On the same grounds, the culling of the whole herd would still be appropriate when an infected cow is found. The FDA should have no problems convincing a court that the test is NOT sufficient.
is one of those European countries where direct debit is used a lot. I find it a quite convenient process, and it is reasonably safe too: The undo timeframe BorgDrone mentioned is 6 weeks according to the banks, and according to all accounts it works without problems in that timeframe. But if the 6 weeks are binding for you is legally unclear, court decisions are mixed. So you might have a chance to undo the debit even after 6 weeks, albeit with more hassle (going to court).
It is definitely an advantage to know the map, because it dictates the opponents' moves to some extent. Especially on the start of a round when both sides rush to get a head start on the objectives.
Example: In Avalanche (Day Of Defeat) there is a standard exchange of grenades across the marketplace on the start of a new round. Because the opponents will be roughly in the place where the grenades detonate if they rush. If they don't rush, they fall behind in getting to the center flag.
The Internet isn't supposed to have a "hub". It's supposed to be completely distributed and decentralized.
I guess there is a good deal of cost-cutting and laziness involved in not having more independent connections. Most German providers, for instance, route their traffic through the DE-CIX node in Frankfurt instead of maintaining a dozen peer links.
This said, at some point it must be cheaper to have direct connections than buying capacity on a detour over the US. Especially where overseas cable are involved. A Google search brought up the following maps for the IPV6 net, and it seems that the countries outside the US do indeed build their own connections: ahref=http://ipv6.nlsde.buaa.edu.cn/rel=url2html-19746http://ipv6.nlsde.buaa.edu.cn/>
I find it amazing how much time and energy goes into blocking "inappropriate" content at work. Because while it is admittedly a waste of paid worktime, blocking it will still leave tons of semi-legitimate sites to goof off on. Like Slashdot, been guilty of that myself at times;-)
I'm playing a lot Day Of Defeat: Source these days, on a DSL connection with 2Mbit/s, and lag is not a problem as long as I stick to European servers (I'm living in Germany).
It is different for US servers, when the data have to travel to the US and back the lag becomes a noticable disadvantage. But that is unavoidable due to the distance, even ideal routers cannot get around the limited speed of light.
Conclusions: -Broadband, even with modest specs (2Mbit/s is the entry offer in Germany these days, unless you have a bad connection), will do nicely. -A games company that does not put up separate servers for each continent will have lag problems and deserves them for incompetence
...Ubuntu has a real price advantage of roughly 110 Euros over a XP 32 bit "system builder" edition (in Germany). Except for games, it does most stuff quite nicely.
Exactly. Bought a 8600 GT a year ago, because ATI's open source initative was merely announced but nothing delivered yet, and I don't put much trust in promises.
But by now ATI looks like the better bet, as they are keeping their word. Also, the price/performance of their newer stuff seems pretty good.
Depends on how fast WINE will evolve. If it runs the Windows version of MS office well, that reason would disappear.
For me personally, the main reason not to ditch my Windows partition yet are Windows games. Day Of Defeat:Source is currently broken under WINE, and Direct3D performance in WINE is still rather weak. So it is "something mostly compatible" at the moment. But that could improve.
Aside from storage, the thing that has always amazed me is that solar never seems to become really affordable. No matter how many ways they make it, or what tech they use, somehow, I can't buy inexpensive panels that will cope with hot summers, cold winters, and rain. New printing process? Ultra cheap cells? Mass production? Sure, I hear about those. But for SOME reason, all their output is bought up, and I can't buy the stuff. Not to get out the tinfoil, but if nothing else, it is very annoying.
As far as I know demand still exceeds supply, and the market price is determined by the subsidies you can get in countries like Germany or Spain. Those countries soak up the production.
According to recent news, these companies are close to making the panel at a cost where they don't need subsidies anymore. Now it is up to politics to manage a smooth transition from subsidized production to a free market where photovoltaics (PV) pays for itself. In the case of Germany, the subsidies for new PV plants are lowered by a few percent each year.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget that organizations, especially large ones, can be amazingly clueless about possibilities for reorganizing work (and a bureaucracy that controls a whole economy is as large as it gets). In the current example, it is quite plausible that the management might need workers in the wrench factory but fail to realize that it has qualified people in the hammer factory.
Markets have the advantage that another organization with smarter management can take advantage of such failures. In this example, start a competing wrench factory and hire the workers from the hammer factory.
Slightly OT:
I think that this advantage in overall, economy-wide efficiency is the main reason the Soviets lost the cold war. At some point, their clumsy state-directed economy could not keep up with the expenses of the arms race anymore.
If the energy usage reaches a point where it really hurts,
#3. Invest in more efficient software so you can make do with slower but less power hungry components.
But for that Management needs to be desperate about energy costs. Because optimizig software is time consuming and expensive.
It seems that "single" counts of perjury are rarely prosecuted at all. But 4000 might actually get a total sentence that is more than a slap on the wrist ;-)
Not really.
Germany has a long tradition of censoring entertainment media, especially those that are new and not yet established with the generation that provides the current bunch of politicians. The main differences are
-The emphasis is on censoring violence rather than sex like in the USA. Try selling a brothel management game with graphic sex scenes in the USA, and you'll get an idea of how some German politicians view violent games.
-The censorship is ostensibly about protecting juveniles from material that would warp their characters. Here you could speak of putting on a front, because some of the measures against sellig those games to kids also are an impediment in marketing to adults. Like indexing which leads to a ban on advertisement and displaying the games outside 18-only shops.
Some people keep working after their first billion. Like Bill Gates who kept running Microsoft for several years after he was a billionaire.
But guys like Bill certainly don't need to keep working, so I guess they enjoy steering a big company.
Deus Ex was an outstanding game because it had good storytelling combined with interesting gameplay. The different ways the player could build his character and achieve his goals were definitely above the norm for a shooter.
Also, the graphics had reached a level I consider sufficient to support a good game:
-full 3D engine
-Characters and items were clearly recognizable, not reduced to a crude bunch of pixels like in DOOM due to limited computing resources
-the supported resolutions allowed to check out things at a distance, where earlier games (DOOM again) would make things unrecognizable because they shrinked to a few pixels.
Together with Half Life 1, I think Deus Ex introduced graphics that were "good enough". Anything that came later is nice as eyecandy but does not make better games.
It seems all those guys in your links who have reported success have a Samsung TV set. Unfortunately they did not give any model numbers, but it is plausible that a TV set would support HDMI. Which means it works as intended for them, encrypted signals with decryption in the screen is part of HDMI.
In my case, the Samsung SyncMaster 204B is a PC screen that does not support HDMI. That means no digital input from a PS3 on that screen. So
-Check if your TV supports HDMI before buying the PS3
-if you want to buy a new TV anyway, make sure to get one that can handle HDMI.
Good luck with your buy and have fun!
Hmm, seems I have to partially retract that:
http://forums.gametrailers.com/showthread.php?t=534717
Obviously there are VGA cables from third parties in the market. But everything I find on short notice says digital is encrypted.
I think the "closed" nature of a console actually has a few advantages, but to me those are not enough to pay something like 300 Euros for an additional gaming platform. Because I have a PC anyway for lots of things that the typical console won't allow me to do. And in terms of capability, I think it is comparable to the current generation of consoles.
Considering the graphics quality, I guess I'd be happy with any modern console that can do resolutions typical for a HDTV set. Because I think HalfLife 1 on the higher resolutions is good enough, anything beyond that is nice to have but not really necessary in a game.
Of course, unless the console plays nice with my existing monitor (a 1600x1200 pixel Samsung with DVI port) this would mean shelling out more money for a matching screen. A quick Google search shows that the PS3, for instance, won't work with the Samsung at all (encrypted HDMI output).
Finally, I play a lot of FPS where mouse + WASD really rules. Call that arrogant if you like, but that's how I see it.
If a console allows me to use mouse and keyboard, fine. But as I understand it, console games are usually not designed to support these.
Add two more and it would actually become a net benefit for honest customers:
1) Allow the legitimate owner to make backups or re-download the game, so a scratched original disk does not mean the loss of $60. Valve's Steam does that (but fails on "no central point of control").
2) Prevent cheating. As in, disallow aimbots, wallhacks and similar means of gaining unfair advantages.
Of course, at this point we're talking about a truly magic piece of technology ;-)
On top of that, they fell behind badly in terms of performance, and the great signal quality from their cards is mostly meaningless in the age of DVI.
Looks almost like a case of corporate suicide, as in "nobody can be THAT stupid, so it must be intentional" ;-).
Even a server or firewall needs some configuration. With the driver VIA has just released, there is an Open Source driver that can display text and 2D graphics. Which will do nicely for a typical GUI (Ubuntu?), so you are not limited to the console.
TFA says VIA has already released a 2D driver. If that works well, it should do for routers/firewalls/servers. And that is where I can see a small VIA based PC being used.
For gaming, I'd still prefer a full size PC with AMD or Intel dual core CPU and a separate ATI graphics card (NVidia binary drivers are acceptable, but now ATI is more attractive thanks to its Open Source program).
I still think there are better ways to handle this.
1) If they start advertising with "100% tested", knowing the tests are useless, they could be sued by the competition for false advertising. Plus they should be hit with the full liability if their meat infects someone.
2) On the same grounds, the culling of the whole herd would still be appropriate when an infected cow is found. The FDA should have no problems convincing a court that the test is NOT sufficient.
The GOP had time enough to do something about the USDA. The USDA is a branch of the government and takes its orders ultimately from the president.
is one of those European countries where direct debit is used a lot. I find it a quite convenient process, and it is reasonably safe too:
The undo timeframe BorgDrone mentioned is 6 weeks according to the banks, and according to all accounts it works without problems in that timeframe. But if the 6 weeks are binding for you is legally unclear, court decisions are mixed. So you might have a chance to undo the debit even after 6 weeks, albeit with more hassle (going to court).
It is definitely an advantage to know the map, because it dictates the opponents' moves to some extent. Especially on the start of a round when both sides rush to get a head start on the objectives.
Example:
In Avalanche (Day Of Defeat) there is a standard exchange of grenades across the marketplace on the start of a new round. Because the opponents will be roughly in the place where the grenades detonate if they rush. If they don't rush, they fall behind in getting to the center flag.
I guess there is a good deal of cost-cutting and laziness involved in not having more independent connections. Most German providers, for instance, route their traffic through the DE-CIX node in Frankfurt instead of maintaining a dozen peer links.
This said, at some point it must be cheaper to have direct connections than buying capacity on a detour over the US. Especially where overseas cable are involved. A Google search brought up the following maps for the IPV6 net, and it seems that the countries outside the US do indeed build their own connections:
ahref=http://ipv6.nlsde.buaa.edu.cn/rel=url2html-19746http://ipv6.nlsde.buaa.edu.cn/>
I find it amazing how much time and energy goes into blocking "inappropriate" content at work. Because while it is admittedly a waste of paid worktime, blocking it will still leave tons of semi-legitimate sites to goof off on. Like Slashdot, been guilty of that myself at times ;-)
So I think a lot of energy goes to waste there.
I'm playing a lot Day Of Defeat: Source these days, on a DSL connection with 2Mbit/s, and lag is not a problem as long as I stick to European servers (I'm living in Germany).
It is different for US servers, when the data have to travel to the US and back the lag becomes a noticable disadvantage. But that is unavoidable due to the distance, even ideal routers cannot get around the limited speed of light.
Conclusions:
-Broadband, even with modest specs (2Mbit/s is the entry offer in Germany these days, unless you have a bad connection), will do nicely.
-A games company that does not put up separate servers for each continent will have lag problems and deserves them for incompetence
...Ubuntu has a real price advantage of roughly 110 Euros over a XP 32 bit "system builder" edition (in Germany). Except for games, it does most stuff quite nicely.
That's still a decent midrange card. No reason to rush out and get another...
Exactly. Bought a 8600 GT a year ago, because ATI's open source initative was merely announced but nothing delivered yet, and I don't put much trust in promises.
But by now ATI looks like the better bet, as they are keeping their word. Also, the price/performance of their newer stuff seems pretty good.
Depends on how fast WINE will evolve. If it runs the Windows version of MS office well, that reason would disappear.
For me personally, the main reason not to ditch my Windows partition yet are Windows games. Day Of Defeat:Source is currently broken under WINE, and Direct3D performance in WINE is still rather weak. So it is "something mostly compatible" at the moment. But that could improve.
As far as I know demand still exceeds supply, and the market price is determined by the subsidies you can get in countries like Germany or Spain. Those countries soak up the production.
In the past these subsidies were important to get investment going, without them we might not have the companies who can make ultra cheap cells. For instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Solar or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanosolar.
According to recent news, these companies are close to making the panel at a cost where they don't need subsidies anymore. Now it is up to politics to manage a smooth transition from subsidized production to a free market where photovoltaics (PV) pays for itself. In the case of Germany, the subsidies for new PV plants are lowered by a few percent each year.