And storage devices are moving over to Serial-ATA...
I know very well that in *reality* you most likely will have to buy a new mobo next time you upgrade anyway. Doesn't take the sting out of buying a motherboard you _already know_ will never ever take faster than 3700+ Athlon64, as it's designed to become obsolete in less than 6 months.
Also the upgrade cycles differ. You might upgrade once in 2-3 years, in which case you get to buy new motherboard anyways. I personally upgarde once a year or so, and right now I'm looking at Athlon 64 with a simple problem;
If I buy right now (3200+ or 3400+ if I feel rich), I know full well that in one year I cannot upgrade without swapping the mobo once again.
If I buy in 6 months, getting the very first 939pin mobo + whatever CPU is 'fastest' at that point (3600+? something like that), I might be able to stick 4500-5000+ CPU in an year later without swapping the motherboard. Yeah, most likely I swap the motherboard anyway, but it's still not *certain*:)
And yeah, PCI-E throws it's own wrench in. I know full well my next videocard is PCI-E one (I currently have Radeon 9800 Pro), and that dictates my next motherboard/CPU upgrade - whoever puts the first stable and fast PCI-E-compatible platform after the first juicy super-fast PCI-E vidcard is released:)
I might consider getting a motherboard with both AGP and PCI Express-16 slots, and upgrade the videocard later, but in any case since I'm waiting due to PCI-E anyway, Athlon 64 with 754pins is even *worse* deal when considering the future:)
And no, I don't need to upgrade my 465W Enermax PSU just yet... tho I know I'll be pushing the limits when I add my 7th HDD... Of course when I run out, I have the option of just finally retiring the smallest (40GB) drive to get the power consumption back down:) (joys of four IDE connectors + SCSI for the speed-critical OS files...)
Re:AMD have been better than Intel for some time..
on
AMD Back in the Black
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· Score: 1
Okay. Tell me which nForce2 boards take in Kingston HyperX memory in dualchannel config without manual 'downtweaking' of memory settings?
I know A7N8X Deluxe/Gold does not.
How bout why the heck does A7N8X Deluxe bork out with CL3 DDR400 Kingston modules? CL2.5 works just fine.
Then tell me why Asus A7600 fails to boot/crashes with numerous memory brands as soon as you stick in 2nd RAM module? Yes, there are brands and types that work, but you have to select the used RAM carefully.
Crappy chipsets with way too finicky memory handling. Pure and simple.
Then lets talk about the gooood old A7V333 and the great design decision of putting surface mounted components right under the plastic 'hooks' of the heatsink. Guess how many (homebuilt) mobos came back with components missing due to user not noticing that you can trash your mobo while installing a heatsink?
And lets not forget the great decision of having ceramic cores without heat spreaders protecting the core. Sure sells more CPUs to stupid end users building the computers. And for the record - I've broken zero AMD cores installing the heatsink (with several thousands installed), but I also get to tell the happy news at least once a week to a stupid user who has broken his CPU core by skipping the Fine Manual (and lacking common sense).
And you just can't deny it - motherboards and chipsets for AMD CPUs are just generally way less robust than ones made for Intel CPUs. Sure, once that AMD system is purring and working fine, there is no difference, but sometimes getting there takes considerable amount of extra work, and there seems to be a lot more faulty motherboards being pushed down the channel with VIA/nVidia/SiS chipsets. Granted - SiS on the intel side also has it's share of Quality Control issues.
AMD should offer it's own chipsets (at a premium) to those who are willing to pay extra for *stability*. With P4, you can pay extra for stability (Intel chipset) or go cheapo and get SiS or VIA. With AMD you either go cheapo with SiS or VIA, or pay extra for few bells and whistles with nVidia. The 'rock stable' option is not there.
Now I admit - most of the problems are not due to AMD *CPU*s. AMD makes fine CPUs. It's just that the whole *platform* of AthlonXP is less robust than comparable Intel setup. Thankfully Athlon64 looks way better so far, but my experiences are too limited to form a solid opinion either way yet. I keep my fingers crossed and hope that the 'massmarket' mobos for Athlon64s will keep the quality up. Of course the fact that the northbridge is on the CPU helps out...
Re:AMD have been better than Intel for some time..
on
AMD Back in the Black
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· Score: 1
Well, I'd say we sell roughly 70% AMD and 30% Intel (whitebox builder, small company, 80%+ to consumers, built out of OEM components at the back room).
Out of the computers that return for a repair under warranty due to failures in the mobo-cpu-memory, 95%+ is AMD. Last time I had to swap out a motherboard for an Intel setup is *weeks* ago. Last time I saw 'dead out of the box' Intel CPU is *months* ago. Heck, if you get a dead Intel box, you can be almost certain that the videocard or the PSU is bust (or it's just a stupid user error and there is no hardware failure)
Now I do admit that it's a rare case when AMD *cpu* is faulty. Almost as rare as with Intel, if we count out the selfbuilt setups with broken AMD CPU cores due to stupid builder error. However, AMD *motherboards* (VIA, nVidia, SIS)... I get to RMA dozens every month.
Re:AMD have been better than Intel for some time..
on
AMD Back in the Black
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· Score: 1
Sadly Nvidia came *very* late to the AthlonXP party, and the first nForce was overpriced piece of shit. nForce2 is quite ok, but even it is very picky with the memory modules - especially in dual channel configurations.
Which results in lots of unneccessary fiddling and tweaking to hunt down the culprit in a misbehaving AthlonXP setup. With Intel, It Just Works. When you people get bit older, you are willing to pay couple of hundred extra for a system that Just Works, while still retaining the benefits of a homebuilt system (expandability, knowledge that none of the components suck... the things that make overpriced brand name setups blow chunks)
Re:AMD have been better than Intel for some time..
on
AMD Back in the Black
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· Score: 1
... and I obiviously meant that AMD is rapidly moving to the new *939* pin setup... 939.. 940... bah humbug..:)
Re:AMD have been better than Intel for some time..
on
AMD Back in the Black
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Overall system/platform stability also matters a lot.
In my experience (repairing computers at a 'white box' shop), AMD has still way more 'oddball' problems with it's chipsets and motherboards.
If you build an Intel box, generally it Just Works. If you build an AMD AthlonXP box, it generally probably works, if you are lucky and you are using just the right brand of memory.
Part of the problem is the HAREBRAINED idea of AMD; 'we are not a chipset company'. They gave keys to their kingdom to VIA, and VIA promptly keeps churning out crap. Only the latest chipsets (KT400A etc) are in my opinion any good, and even there you can find big differences with the quality of the implementation between mobo makers.
Granted - motherboard and chipset maturity seems MUCH better with Athlon64 and Opteron, but I've seen too few systems so far to be sure if the status quo is maintaned when Athlon64 goes mainstream and motherboards get cheaper.
But in any case - if I'd have to build a new high-end gaming rig today, I'd still choose Intel, even with the penalty of higher price. I agree that _right now_ is a stupid time to do so, as AMD is rapidly moving to 940pin, while Intel is going to the new 775(?) pin thingy. So basically everything out there today will be obsolete within 6 months. Of course this doesn't really differ from the norm in reality, but at least you can *hope* that if you go for the first 940pin Athlon64 board, it might be upgradeable with just a CPU swap down the road. No such luck for 745 pin mobos.
I really hope Athlon64 motherboard stability and quality is better in the long run than with AthlonXP.
If you have a dev team who *does not have direct, immediate control over what is pushed to the servers/client updates*, and instead you have publisher deciding/lagging with 'implementations' of fixes, you are DEAD IN THE WATER. DOA. RIP.
While URU Live prolly had no such issues due to mechanics, think what would happen when the latest L33t Xpl0it is found? Live game CSRs find out. They report to their masters (publisher side). Someone finally decides to call in the devs. Devs have no direct contact to the game servers/CSRs and spend extra time figuring out what is going on. Fix is done. Publisher has to 'approve' and 'QA' it. End result is that whole gameworld/economy could be torn to shreds by the time the fix is published on the server.
Old crappy publisher-developer relationship does not work with MMOs. Either you have devs with direct hands-on access to the live game, making sure it works, or you have a disaster. Yes, you should still have inhouse QA/testing procedures and some formal policies on how to push stuff to live game, but if there is no way to put in critical bug fixes without outside interference, the game is toast. No players will idle and watch while some no-clue publisher tries to figure out this stuff. People have cancelled outta subscription games in *hours* over major bugs/foulups/balancing mistakes, and even if the devs go into panic mode and fix the obivious crap within a day or two, the end result is still lost subscribers. You CANNOT possibly have a situation where 'fix is ready, but publisher is not yet ready to implement it on the servers'. Players will take off faster than you can say 'oops we fucked up'.
WoW beta signups are even more remarkable when you consider that they showed the middle finger towards europeans by not allowing them to participate at this point. Yes, they claim euro beta signups come later. Too bad. They already pissed off bunch of fanbois...
Of course WoW has so nutcase expectations built up by now that either Blizzard guys are Gods and pull it off, or it'll be the most spectacular trainwreck launch of our time. I'm currently betting on the second option, based on their track record with Battle.net problems and rampant cheating issues with Diablo. Not to mention total lack of depth beyond 'find the next uber-rare shiny thingy' on their previous titles. I'd love to be proven wrong tho, but I fear they cater the 'massmarket diablo clickfest dudes' over MMO fanatics, and get burned by tons of bad word-of-mouth due to it. We'll see...
Actually, I'd bet that AO has a sustainable userbase.
They just announced second full-fledged expansion on the game. Shadowlands supposedly sold pretty well, and their subscriber numbers are slowly creeping upwards. I don't think they'd keep on investing towards new expansions and continued development of the game if they didn't get profit out of the game. Yes, AO is not a runaway hit, but I'd wager a bet that it's profitable. Now it's questionable will it survive the upcoming onslaugh of New Shiny Thingys (EQ2, World of Warcraft, other upcoming games), but if the new titles launch as horribly as SWG did, they just might...
Yes, it took them three years to fix the game, recover from a total disaster of a launch and add the fun bits, but right now I'd say AO along with DAOC (and the obivious EQ) is one of the best MMOs in the market. Yeah, it's hurt a bit by a *very* steep early learning curve, but once ya get past the first hill, it's quite fun.
""2) When it did work, all it did was move the storm out of range of the device. Once out of range, the cloud would dump twice as much on the unprotected area. This gets really political when farmer John is flooding farmer Bill's field two miles down the road.""
That's enough for Nissan and their precious cars, I assume...
I was talking only about the link from your home to the nearest DSLAM. The portion of the pipe that actually uses the ADSL Technology.
SDSL/IDSL/ADSL bandwidth guarantees are completely up to each provider. Point is that with ADSL all kinds of limitations can be set up very easily, and they cannot be 'hacked' without breaking into telco systems and/or premises. SOMEWHAT harder than hacking up your cable modem - since using cable modem technology, commonly it's the end user's modem that is limiting the speed to the level that is sold to you (opening up the potential for clever hacks to circumvent this)
Crappy DSL providers may have oversold their trunk capacity. At least my ISP has *so* much pipe within the country (Finland), that what they sell you (512k? 1M? 2M? 4M?) is what you get. It's not *guaranteed* in the contract, but in reality assuming the server you are accessing has fat enough pipe, you are constantly limited by the service level of the DSL you are paying for, and not some crappy backbone connection that is oversold thru the wazoo.
Of course we pay thru the nose for this service compared to some providers in the states, but hey, I prefer to pay fairly for some good service.
There is a big difference in technology when comparing ADSL and Cable modems. Yes, one could argue that the early cable modem standard sucks and is exploitable, but that's what is in use by millions of customers right now.
ADSL is single line from you to your local DSLAM. Zero issues with capping at the DSLAM end.
Cable modem has tons of users sharing the same cable, and the easiest point where you squeeze down what a single user can send/receive to the cable is your cable modem. Yes, there are ways of doing it at the ISP:s end, but they are either expensive or require nasty kludges.
The same reason why your hard drive is cluttered with old unused files.
Why delete, when you still have room on the flash and you *just* might need that file later...
Of course they then found out that their filesystem handler borks out way before the flash is actually filled up, and that almost bought the whole show to an end... Software QA testing failure in my books, but they seem to be recovering from the fumble pretty well...
Their redundancy plan is simple - they *DID* send out two rovers. Even if one craps out, they still get tons of science data from the surviving one.
This is actually the smart way to be redundant - why build huge redundancies into single device when you can just manufacture two and toss 'em both at the job. If you luck out and nothing fails, you get double the scientific data too!
> The ribbon would end up fluttering down and wouldn't be dangerous at all
You sure bout that? I seem to recall some really bad things happening in one of the Mars books. Of course Mars has almost no atmosphere to slow it down, so that might account for the difference. Also in that scenario it was deliberate sabotage (by letting go of the counterweight bit), so the *whole* thing came down.
I've not heard of this 2 year warranty thing in the UK. In the UK the requirement is that a product should last for either the time specified by the warranty issued by the manufacturer or retailer a reasonable period for that product, whichever is longer, up to a maximum period of time
Same thing, worded differently. At least in Finland I recall law states pretty much same thing, and then there are some examples, which basically translate to '2 years, unless the item is something that is expected to last more or less than that'. So for cars, for example, consumers can easily argue for longer coverage on latent defects that turn up. Then again for that 20 euro kids RC toy car off the '50% off' bargain bin, you may have hard time arguing much past 6 months. It goes on case by case basis, if the manufacturer or retailer says to the consumer 'no go, not covered'. However, there have been already so many cases earlier that the '2 years' is pretty much the standard that retailers follow on DVD players and other such things - if they don't meet this, they get swamped in complaints, as consumers know their rights pretty well. Some crooked retailers might try to get away with less coverage, but the 'black list' put out by Finnish consumer rights watchdog seems to work vs. any larger chains who try to get away with non-existing warranties and crap products.
At the same time, in the US, the situation is apparently that everyone is pushing same junk, so even if you complain that you are being sold cheap crap with no warranties to speak of, you have no options - everyone else is running their business exactly same way. Or you have to subject to being ripped off with 'extended warranties' for extra money (which are the ultimate ripoff). By the way - charging extra for extended warranty is banned in Finland. You cannot charge for something that is included in the deal by law anyway. Only things you might be able to charge extra for is stuff like '3 year onsite repairs' (as by law you dont have to have onsite repairs for any faults under warranty).
[i]This certainly has the impact of preventing hundreds if not thousands of people from ending up with DVD players that eventually break in a year. Of course part of the way it accomplishes this is by preventing a large number of these people from getting the DVD player at all.[/i]
Your general customer cannot be expected to spend time going over (mostly biased) reviews of the products to find out who puts out cheap crap, and who puts out expensive crap. Right now the EU law makes sure that if a manufacturer puts out substandard crap, that is going to be very expensive long-term.
Yes, in theory when you buy the 40$ DVD player, you know you are buying crap which wont last long. However, if you pay 200$ for one, and that breaks in 4 months (with 3 month warranty), you are hosed. You could expect a 200$ player to last, but with substandard warranty, nobody is there when it breaks.
All durable goods (well, at least electronics, computers etc - I'm pretty sure it covers lots of other products as well) have 2 year 'warranty' pretty much required by law. Basically the law states that regardless of actual warranties given by the manufacturer/importer, the retailer is responsible for the product to last the expected life of such product. If it fails earlier, it's assumed that the product had a manufacturing and/or desing defect, and the consumer is entitled for a repair, replacement or (as the last resort), refund. For consumer electronics and computers this period has been translated to 'two years' - obiviously excluding such consummables as batteries, ink cartridges etc.
Unsurprisingly not many retailers carry POS chinese 'no brand' crap, because if the manufacturer does not offer a solid 2-year warranty, the retailer will end up paying the replacements out of his own pocket. That, or they get blasted to bits by the consumer watchdog organization. So for manufacturers to do business in the EU area, they have to give 2-year warranty, or retailers won't stock their stuff.
Which is good for the consumer, as you can realistically expect certain durability from the stuff you buy.
Of course in the USA, your legislators could never pass such pro-consumer laws. The manufacturers would pay off any such attempts so they can keep churning out the cheap crap that is designed to last three months and then blow up.
Odd. The floppy-bootable Memtest86 3.0 certifiably instantly reboots the computer that uses MSI KT8 DELTA motherboard and Athlon64 3200+. It flashes the testing screen for about half a second and reboots the computer. Tested on three separate computers using same motherboard+CPU combination.
Which is kinda teh suck when you try to figure out if you have a bad motherboard or just a bad stick of ram...
So, could someone point me towards a version (CD/floppy-bootable pre-built one, if possible) that does work?
Laugh when you get your net access cut and/or you get sued due to something that originated from your IP(s). You are responsible what connects to the network via your pipe to the outside. If you prefer to sit on the net with your ass bare for unauthorized Rear Entry, do not whine when someone abuses it and causes you trouble.
New spam tech; 1. Roam around for open wireless networks, run spam off your laptop connected to that wireless lan until cut off. 2. Drive to next WLAN, rinse, repeat 3. Profit!!!
The x86 assembly language skillz of your average skript kiddie/virus 'coder' is nowdays almost non-existing. When your virus is developed using visual basic, it kinda limits your ability to cause havoc...
Slashdot Mirror
And storage devices are moving over to Serial-ATA...
:)
:)
:)
:) (joys of four IDE connectors + SCSI for the speed-critical OS files...)
I know very well that in *reality* you most likely will have to buy a new mobo next time you upgrade anyway. Doesn't take the sting out of buying a motherboard you _already know_ will never ever take faster than 3700+ Athlon64, as it's designed to become obsolete in less than 6 months.
Also the upgrade cycles differ. You might upgrade once in 2-3 years, in which case you get to buy new motherboard anyways. I personally upgarde once a year or so, and right now I'm looking at Athlon 64 with a simple problem;
If I buy right now (3200+ or 3400+ if I feel rich), I know full well that in one year I cannot upgrade without swapping the mobo once again.
If I buy in 6 months, getting the very first 939pin mobo + whatever CPU is 'fastest' at that point (3600+? something like that), I might be able to stick 4500-5000+ CPU in an year later without swapping the motherboard. Yeah, most likely I swap the motherboard anyway, but it's still not *certain*
And yeah, PCI-E throws it's own wrench in. I know full well my next videocard is PCI-E one (I currently have Radeon 9800 Pro), and that dictates my next motherboard/CPU upgrade - whoever puts the first stable and fast PCI-E-compatible platform after the first juicy super-fast PCI-E vidcard is released
I might consider getting a motherboard with both AGP and PCI Express-16 slots, and upgrade the videocard later, but in any case since I'm waiting due to PCI-E anyway, Athlon 64 with 754pins is even *worse* deal when considering the future
And no, I don't need to upgrade my 465W Enermax PSU just yet... tho I know I'll be pushing the limits when I add my 7th HDD... Of course when I run out, I have the option of just finally retiring the smallest (40GB) drive to get the power consumption back down
Okay. Tell me which nForce2 boards take in Kingston HyperX memory in dualchannel config without manual 'downtweaking' of memory settings?
I know A7N8X Deluxe/Gold does not.
How bout why the heck does A7N8X Deluxe bork out with CL3 DDR400 Kingston modules? CL2.5 works just fine.
Then tell me why Asus A7600 fails to boot/crashes with numerous memory brands as soon as you stick in 2nd RAM module? Yes, there are brands and types that work, but you have to select the used RAM carefully.
Crappy chipsets with way too finicky memory handling. Pure and simple.
Then lets talk about the gooood old A7V333 and the great design decision of putting surface mounted components right under the plastic 'hooks' of the heatsink. Guess how many (homebuilt) mobos came back with components missing due to user not noticing that you can trash your mobo while installing a heatsink?
And lets not forget the great decision of having ceramic cores without heat spreaders protecting the core. Sure sells more CPUs to stupid end users building the computers. And for the record - I've broken zero AMD cores installing the heatsink (with several thousands installed), but I also get to tell the happy news at least once a week to a stupid user who has broken his CPU core by skipping the Fine Manual (and lacking common sense).
And you just can't deny it - motherboards and chipsets for AMD CPUs are just generally way less robust than ones made for Intel CPUs. Sure, once that AMD system is purring and working fine, there is no difference, but sometimes getting there takes considerable amount of extra work, and there seems to be a lot more faulty motherboards being pushed down the channel with VIA/nVidia/SiS chipsets. Granted - SiS on the intel side also has it's share of Quality Control issues.
AMD should offer it's own chipsets (at a premium) to those who are willing to pay extra for *stability*. With P4, you can pay extra for stability (Intel chipset) or go cheapo and get SiS or VIA. With AMD you either go cheapo with SiS or VIA, or pay extra for few bells and whistles with nVidia. The 'rock stable' option is not there.
Now I admit - most of the problems are not due to AMD *CPU*s. AMD makes fine CPUs. It's just that the whole *platform* of AthlonXP is less robust than comparable Intel setup. Thankfully Athlon64 looks way better so far, but my experiences are too limited to form a solid opinion either way yet. I keep my fingers crossed and hope that the 'massmarket' mobos for Athlon64s will keep the quality up. Of course the fact that the northbridge is on the CPU helps out...
Well, I'd say we sell roughly 70% AMD and 30% Intel (whitebox builder, small company, 80%+ to consumers, built out of OEM components at the back room).
... I get to RMA dozens every month.
Out of the computers that return for a repair under warranty due to failures in the mobo-cpu-memory, 95%+ is AMD. Last time I had to swap out a motherboard for an Intel setup is *weeks* ago. Last time I saw 'dead out of the box' Intel CPU is *months* ago. Heck, if you get a dead Intel box, you can be almost certain that the videocard or the PSU is bust (or it's just a stupid user error and there is no hardware failure)
Now I do admit that it's a rare case when AMD *cpu* is faulty. Almost as rare as with Intel, if we count out the selfbuilt setups with broken AMD CPU cores due to stupid builder error. However, AMD *motherboards* (VIA, nVidia, SIS)
Sadly Nvidia came *very* late to the AthlonXP party, and the first nForce was overpriced piece of shit. nForce2 is quite ok, but even it is very picky with the memory modules - especially in dual channel configurations.
Which results in lots of unneccessary fiddling and tweaking to hunt down the culprit in a misbehaving AthlonXP setup. With Intel, It Just Works. When you people get bit older, you are willing to pay couple of hundred extra for a system that Just Works, while still retaining the benefits of a homebuilt system (expandability, knowledge that none of the components suck... the things that make overpriced brand name setups blow chunks)
... and I obiviously meant that AMD is rapidly moving to the new *939* pin setup... 939.. 940... bah humbug.. :)
Overall system/platform stability also matters a lot.
In my experience (repairing computers at a 'white box' shop), AMD has still way more 'oddball' problems with it's chipsets and motherboards.
If you build an Intel box, generally it Just Works. If you build an AMD AthlonXP box, it generally probably works, if you are lucky and you are using just the right brand of memory.
Part of the problem is the HAREBRAINED idea of AMD; 'we are not a chipset company'. They gave keys to their kingdom to VIA, and VIA promptly keeps churning out crap. Only the latest chipsets (KT400A etc) are in my opinion any good, and even there you can find big differences with the quality of the implementation between mobo makers.
Granted - motherboard and chipset maturity seems MUCH better with Athlon64 and Opteron, but I've seen too few systems so far to be sure if the status quo is maintaned when Athlon64 goes mainstream and motherboards get cheaper.
But in any case - if I'd have to build a new high-end gaming rig today, I'd still choose Intel, even with the penalty of higher price. I agree that _right now_ is a stupid time to do so, as AMD is rapidly moving to 940pin, while Intel is going to the new 775(?) pin thingy. So basically everything out there today will be obsolete within 6 months. Of course this doesn't really differ from the norm in reality, but at least you can *hope* that if you go for the first 940pin Athlon64 board, it might be upgradeable with just a CPU swap down the road. No such luck for 745 pin mobos.
I really hope Athlon64 motherboard stability and quality is better in the long run than with AthlonXP.
Okay, that game was dead as a doorknob.
If you have a dev team who *does not have direct, immediate control over what is pushed to the servers/client updates*, and instead you have publisher deciding/lagging with 'implementations' of fixes, you are DEAD IN THE WATER. DOA. RIP.
While URU Live prolly had no such issues due to mechanics, think what would happen when the latest L33t Xpl0it is found? Live game CSRs find out. They report to their masters (publisher side). Someone finally decides to call in the devs. Devs have no direct contact to the game servers/CSRs and spend extra time figuring out what is going on. Fix is done. Publisher has to 'approve' and 'QA' it. End result is that whole gameworld/economy could be torn to shreds by the time the fix is published on the server.
Old crappy publisher-developer relationship does not work with MMOs. Either you have devs with direct hands-on access to the live game, making sure it works, or you have a disaster. Yes, you should still have inhouse QA/testing procedures and some formal policies on how to push stuff to live game, but if there is no way to put in critical bug fixes without outside interference, the game is toast. No players will idle and watch while some no-clue publisher tries to figure out this stuff. People have cancelled outta subscription games in *hours* over major bugs/foulups/balancing mistakes, and even if the devs go into panic mode and fix the obivious crap within a day or two, the end result is still lost subscribers. You CANNOT possibly have a situation where 'fix is ready, but publisher is not yet ready to implement it on the servers'. Players will take off faster than you can say 'oops we fucked up'.
WoW beta signups are even more remarkable when you consider that they showed the middle finger towards europeans by not allowing them to participate at this point. Yes, they claim euro beta signups come later. Too bad. They already pissed off bunch of fanbois...
Of course WoW has so nutcase expectations built up by now that either Blizzard guys are Gods and pull it off, or it'll be the most spectacular trainwreck launch of our time. I'm currently betting on the second option, based on their track record with Battle.net problems and rampant cheating issues with Diablo. Not to mention total lack of depth beyond 'find the next uber-rare shiny thingy' on their previous titles. I'd love to be proven wrong tho, but I fear they cater the 'massmarket diablo clickfest dudes' over MMO fanatics, and get burned by tons of bad word-of-mouth due to it. We'll see...
They just announced second full-fledged expansion on the game. Shadowlands supposedly sold pretty well, and their subscriber numbers are slowly creeping upwards. I don't think they'd keep on investing towards new expansions and continued development of the game if they didn't get profit out of the game. Yes, AO is not a runaway hit, but I'd wager a bet that it's profitable. Now it's questionable will it survive the upcoming onslaugh of New Shiny Thingys (EQ2, World of Warcraft, other upcoming games), but if the new titles launch as horribly as SWG did, they just might...
Yes, it took them three years to fix the game, recover from a total disaster of a launch and add the fun bits, but right now I'd say AO along with DAOC (and the obivious EQ) is one of the best MMOs in the market. Yeah, it's hurt a bit by a *very* steep early learning curve, but once ya get past the first hill, it's quite fun.
""2) When it did work, all it did was move the storm out of range of the device. Once out of range, the cloud would dump twice as much on the unprotected area. This gets really political when farmer John is flooding farmer Bill's field two miles down the road.""
That's enough for Nissan and their precious cars, I assume...
I was talking only about the link from your home to the nearest DSLAM. The portion of the pipe that actually uses the ADSL Technology.
SDSL/IDSL/ADSL bandwidth guarantees are completely up to each provider. Point is that with ADSL all kinds of limitations can be set up very easily, and they cannot be 'hacked' without breaking into telco systems and/or premises. SOMEWHAT harder than hacking up your cable modem - since using cable modem technology, commonly it's the end user's modem that is limiting the speed to the level that is sold to you (opening up the potential for clever hacks to circumvent this)
Crappy DSL providers may have oversold their trunk capacity. At least my ISP has *so* much pipe within the country (Finland), that what they sell you (512k? 1M? 2M? 4M?) is what you get. It's not *guaranteed* in the contract, but in reality assuming the server you are accessing has fat enough pipe, you are constantly limited by the service level of the DSL you are paying for, and not some crappy backbone connection that is oversold thru the wazoo.
Of course we pay thru the nose for this service compared to some providers in the states, but hey, I prefer to pay fairly for some good service.
There is a big difference in technology when comparing ADSL and Cable modems. Yes, one could argue that the early cable modem standard sucks and is exploitable, but that's what is in use by millions of customers right now.
ADSL is single line from you to your local DSLAM. Zero issues with capping at the DSLAM end.
Cable modem has tons of users sharing the same cable, and the easiest point where you squeeze down what a single user can send/receive to the cable is your cable modem. Yes, there are ways of doing it at the ISP:s end, but they are either expensive or require nasty kludges.
The same reason why your hard drive is cluttered with old unused files.
Why delete, when you still have room on the flash and you *just* might need that file later...
Of course they then found out that their filesystem handler borks out way before the flash is actually filled up, and that almost bought the whole show to an end... Software QA testing failure in my books, but they seem to be recovering from the fumble pretty well...
Their redundancy plan is simple - they *DID* send out two rovers. Even if one craps out, they still get tons of science data from the surviving one.
This is actually the smart way to be redundant - why build huge redundancies into single device when you can just manufacture two and toss 'em both at the job. If you luck out and nothing fails, you get double the scientific data too!
Of course this is currently non-trivial to setup, which translates to 'impossible' for the point-and-drool people.
> The ribbon would end up fluttering down and wouldn't be dangerous at all
You sure bout that? I seem to recall some really bad things happening in one of the Mars books. Of course Mars has almost no atmosphere to slow it down, so that might account for the difference. Also in that scenario it was deliberate sabotage (by letting go of the counterweight bit), so the *whole* thing came down.
And next week the govt labels GIMP as a tool for counterfeiting - evil open source terrorist tool etc... :)
Same thing, worded differently. At least in Finland I recall law states pretty much same thing, and then there are some examples, which basically translate to '2 years, unless the item is something that is expected to last more or less than that'. So for cars, for example, consumers can easily argue for longer coverage on latent defects that turn up. Then again for that 20 euro kids RC toy car off the '50% off' bargain bin, you may have hard time arguing much past 6 months. It goes on case by case basis, if the manufacturer or retailer says to the consumer 'no go, not covered'. However, there have been already so many cases earlier that the '2 years' is pretty much the standard that retailers follow on DVD players and other such things - if they don't meet this, they get swamped in complaints, as consumers know their rights pretty well. Some crooked retailers might try to get away with less coverage, but the 'black list' put out by Finnish consumer rights watchdog seems to work vs. any larger chains who try to get away with non-existing warranties and crap products.
At the same time, in the US, the situation is apparently that everyone is pushing same junk, so even if you complain that you are being sold cheap crap with no warranties to speak of, you have no options - everyone else is running their business exactly same way. Or you have to subject to being ripped off with 'extended warranties' for extra money (which are the ultimate ripoff). By the way - charging extra for extended warranty is banned in Finland. You cannot charge for something that is included in the deal by law anyway. Only things you might be able to charge extra for is stuff like '3 year onsite repairs' (as by law you dont have to have onsite repairs for any faults under warranty).
[i]This certainly has the impact of preventing hundreds if not thousands of people from ending up with DVD players that eventually break in a year. Of course part of the way it accomplishes this is by preventing a large number of these people from getting the DVD player at all.[/i]
Your general customer cannot be expected to spend time going over (mostly biased) reviews of the products to find out who puts out cheap crap, and who puts out expensive crap. Right now the EU law makes sure that if a manufacturer puts out substandard crap, that is going to be very expensive long-term.
Yes, in theory when you buy the 40$ DVD player, you know you are buying crap which wont last long. However, if you pay 200$ for one, and that breaks in 4 months (with 3 month warranty), you are hosed. You could expect a 200$ player to last, but with substandard warranty, nobody is there when it breaks.
EU system is better. Thank you very much.
EU is on the right track here;
All durable goods (well, at least electronics, computers etc - I'm pretty sure it covers lots of other products as well) have 2 year 'warranty' pretty much required by law. Basically the law states that regardless of actual warranties given by the manufacturer/importer, the retailer is responsible for the product to last the expected life of such product. If it fails earlier, it's assumed that the product had a manufacturing and/or desing defect, and the consumer is entitled for a repair, replacement or (as the last resort), refund. For consumer electronics and computers this period has been translated to 'two years' - obiviously excluding such consummables as batteries, ink cartridges etc.
Unsurprisingly not many retailers carry POS chinese 'no brand' crap, because if the manufacturer does not offer a solid 2-year warranty, the retailer will end up paying the replacements out of his own pocket. That, or they get blasted to bits by the consumer watchdog organization. So for manufacturers to do business in the EU area, they have to give 2-year warranty, or retailers won't stock their stuff.
Which is good for the consumer, as you can realistically expect certain durability from the stuff you buy.
Of course in the USA, your legislators could never pass such pro-consumer laws. The manufacturers would pay off any such attempts so they can keep churning out the cheap crap that is designed to last three months and then blow up.
Odd. The floppy-bootable Memtest86 3.0 certifiably instantly reboots the computer that uses MSI KT8 DELTA motherboard and Athlon64 3200+. It flashes the testing screen for about half a second and reboots the computer. Tested on three separate computers using same motherboard+CPU combination.
Which is kinda teh suck when you try to figure out if you have a bad motherboard or just a bad stick of ram...
So, could someone point me towards a version (CD/floppy-bootable pre-built one, if possible) that does work?
Shame it crashes and burns on Athlon64 - anyone know a version that would run on the latest hardware?
Laugh when you get your net access cut and/or you get sued due to something that originated from your IP(s). You are responsible what connects to the network via your pipe to the outside. If you prefer to sit on the net with your ass bare for unauthorized Rear Entry, do not whine when someone abuses it and causes you trouble.
New spam tech;
1. Roam around for open wireless networks, run spam off your laptop connected to that wireless lan until cut off.
2. Drive to next WLAN, rinse, repeat
3. Profit!!!
Sure you are. You are competing with other forms of entertainment. Television, internet, sports events...
The x86 assembly language skillz of your average skript kiddie/virus 'coder' is nowdays almost non-existing. When your virus is developed using visual basic, it kinda limits your ability to cause havoc...