I remember not that long ago when socket 939 came out that AMD said that this was going to be the socket they were going to stay on for a looong time and that the sacrifices of obsoleting the 754 and 940 were totally worth it: when AM2 came out so soon after it really made me wonder, why is there a need for a new socket right now? It's not like X2AM2 chips are that much different from X2939 ones...
And btw, I can't believe they put only 8gigs on the highest-end box, I would think 16 would be the bare minimum, heck, I'm thinking of going to 4 gigs on my pedestrian x2-4800, you'd think that something of that calibre would be a bit better equipped.
the only way to get rid of it is to remove unfun time sinks. I swear, people would play WoW just as much if there were no
= pots to farm for just retune the encounters to make pot-mandatory encounters not pot-mandatory or, even better, just have vendors sell the pots for free: you're ridding Azeroth of dangerous monsters (theoretically), the populace should be happy to support you!
= time-based PvP grind go for skill instead (it seems this will happen in BC)
= repairs/durability it's just a gold sink, again, the citizens should be grateful to repair your stuff
= super expensive enchants it's another gold sink, just make crystals BoP, boom, problem solved
= easier/less boring rep grinds/collect x of 0.1% drop rate items I mean, cmon, if I kill a faction's evil nemesis that faction should become automagically exalted, why would somebody collecting 20 million scarab shells (say) be more revered?
with all the raiding instances available, the PvP, and so on, there is already a TON of (fun) things to do even if you play 8 hours a day without having to spend time getting bogged down with these obvious time sinks. 0-60 is great, 60 could also be great if only you could play the game and have fun instead of 'working' to 'earn' enough in-game currency to enable you to game.
The new management could take the axe to Microsoft's $6.6bn of wasteful research and development expenditure. The bloated workforce of more than 60,000 could be slashed, to the point where the huge resulting increase in cash flow would
why not just fire everybody (including the R&D department) and, why stop there, why not also sell all the buildings, liquidate all the infrastructure, think of the additional savings! think of just how much cash flow you could get with 0 expenses in your P&L statement!
you can just play the 'original' portal game instead, not as nice graphics but I think it's about the same gameplay (or so I've heard, I haven't installed it yet)
XIX XthiXnk the serXverX has suXccXumbed, XdoeXs anyXbodyX havXe a mirrXoXrXX?
if I could I probably would make a law prohibiting the use of the letter X and words containing it from product names/descriptions unless they've existed for at least 10 years... I mean, cmon, can we be a bit more creative?
The amount of pressure between tire and road is exactly equal to the inflation pressure of the tire, which is often around 30-35 PSI (Pounds Per Square Inch.) So the thumb drive never had more than 60-70lb put on it...
so why not use a road bike instead? In that case, according to your 'basic grade school' math/physics, since the amount of pressure between the tire and the road would be the inflation pressure of the tire (120psi) a 14lb road bike would exert about 240 pounds of pressure on the thumb drive! If we generalize this enough, with nearly solid rubber tires inflated at 5psi we could make cars nearly float off the road, think of the fuel savings!
There are plenty of employers these days who are willing to let you work a 40 hour week
there are? It seems the minimum nowadays is 45+ unless you want to be seen as a slacker. Not to mention the commute. Not to mention only 2 weeks of vacation and 5 sick days a year. Not to mention the 'I know you are tired/burned out but I really need this to be done so can you come in on the w/end' etc. etc. etc.
I would gladly take a 25% pay cut tomorrow if I could work 30 hours a week with 50% remote (to save on the commute), I'd probably work 7 hour Mon-Thu with 8 hour Tue/Wed from home and have Fri-Sun off. I bet that due to the extra spare time I would have available for working out and in general improving myself I'd probably be just as productive as I am now full time (and a lot less stressed/burned out).
I definitely am not, often when I use various cell phones, remotes, appliances etc. I think of ways things would be more user friendly, it would definitely be a lot of fun being able to come up with ways to make things work better in all sorts of human-machine interaction whether it's a GUI or a switch.
Still it seems unlikely to find a job in the field without some sort of accreditation from somewhere, that unless you are in the right place at the right time.
who says I would have to, I would do it because it'd be a lot of fun: as many people around here can attest to, coding and learning are a great when you can pick the projects and the topics vs doing your phb/shareholders' bidding.
... and I could stop working and go back to university to get another degree full time and end up into research, where would the state of the art of the UI/human-computer-interaction field be? which degree would one want to pursue? where?
I've always been fascinated by HCI but have yet to be able to pursue this in a work-related setting (where I tend to write backend code, basically as far away from users as you could possibly get).
GFX thread (self explanatory) Game logic thread (might not benefit hugely) Physics thread (would be amazing to be able to offline this in terms of the effects you could create) Sound thread (imagine the soundscapes you could create with a dedicated CPU) Networking thread (the more processing power -> the better curve fitting you can use when doing predictions)
I do think with 4 cores and a game designed to take advantage of them you'll see vast improvements in the user experience, without having to bother with silliness like specialized "physics coprocessors" etc. etc.
It's great to see the industry moving towards multiple CPUs, hopefully this will not be just a fad and 4-way dual-socket systems will become standard within a year or two, relegating single-sockets to today's celerons, and having quad-socket 8-way systems for the high end market.
remember that AMD is slashing the prices of several X2 processors by about 50%, hence the price differential is mostly only the mobo differential, which I don't think will be that much...
actually I think you are allowed to take the knife and make money from it, as long as you don't use too much of the source material and/or you change things enough (I think that's how it works when music artists sample other songs and include them in their own). IANAL, so if anybody knows exactly how this legally works in the music arena I am all ears...
Something tells me that the director's "artistic vision" for example didn't include Bruce Willis saying ""Yippee-ki-yay Mister Falcon." in Die Hard, or "This is what happens whey you find a stranger in the Alps!" in the Big Lebowski: how is that different from what these companies were/are doing? Or is it simply a case of "censoring is ok, as long as the studio does it? The "These films carry our name and reflect our reputations. So we have great passion about protecting our work... against unauthorized editing," line sounds a bit hypocritical, especially if the companies in question did put some sort of disclaimer (cleaned by cleanflix, whatever) at the movie beginning.
you're kidding right? Guilds spend hours and hours and hours and hours perfecting strategies to beat the latest and greatest encounters in MMPORG (currently naxxramas in wow, say), I wouldn't be surprised if groups of dedicated people spent hours and hours and hours practicing football plays in order to be on top of the ladder leaderboard...
Top 10 ------ Tempest (arcade) Gyruss (arcade) Bomb Jack (arcade) Dungeon Master (atari st) Doom (PC) Quake/Quakeworld (PC) System Shock 1 CD (PC, version with the voices etc.) Grand Prix Legends (PC) Planescape: Torment (PC) Dance Dance Revolution (arcade, ps2, PC)
Runners up: ----------- Space Invaders (arcade) Dig Dug (arcade) Vampire Killer (MSX, aka Castlevania) Archon (c64) Guild of Thieves (atari st/amiga) Carrier Command (atari st) Midwinter (atari st) Xenon 2: Megablast (atari st/amiga) Turrican 1-2 (atari st/amiga) Stunts (PC) Ultima Underworld 1-2 (PC) SSX (PS2) Knights of the Old Republic (xbox)
hello? this is a targeted attack, what makes you think that "users are willing to click on an attachment from someone they don't know"? If it's targeted I bet the email was spoofed to appear as if it was sent by somebody working at the company...
If a game gave you everything at the start once you got bored with the game that would be it.
as opposed to a game with unlockables where I have to subject myself to doing things I don't like (and being bored) to access more of the content I already paid for? Hello? This is a game, it's supposed to be entertainment, I already have a day job, and the last thing I want is having to be made to "work" when all I want is sit on the couch and relax for a bit with some mindless entertainment: the developer already got my money out when I bought the game, if they make it hard for me to enjoy it, I for sure won't be buying any more games from them...
I beat my controller against the wall for a few weeks in f-zero GX trying to unlock the "extra" AX cup (the one you have to beat every other cup on master for) and trying to pass the 3rd mission in story mode (the one after the boulders, which took me ages to pass as well) and ended just giving up and shelving the game, I mean, cmon, I want to have some fun and be able to see all of the content I paid for (esp. the AX cup).
If you're going to make the game that impossible at least put in some cheats to unlock things when the user gets stuck. As things stand now I for sure won't be buy any other game made by that developer... I even passed on buying the last super monkey ball because I heard you have to beat quite a bit of the single player to unlock the multiplayer party mini-games (main reason why I'd buy it).
has an extremely aggressive set of targets in trying to push up the efficiency of HP's IT. Maybe he's going about it the wrong way - if so, he'll pay with his job.
and use the golden parachute in his contract to get another ferrari, while all the people that have been forced to move and/or put in much worse working conditions will continue to suffer because, of course, their parachutes are made of used kleenex...
It seems that in our industry as soon as you reach the senior management/vp level you are basically given carte blanche to do anything you like for the rest of your life without consequences: tons of money/options to start, huge salaries, tons of money/options when you leave (whether or not you've done anything good) and pretty much a guarantee of another gig exactly like the former as soon as you're done since, after all, you can always say that you "created value for the shareholders by slashing expenses by x%", even if the way you did that was to make your employees work in 2'x2' cubicles standing up to get more mileage of your office space.
You also probably had 1 car, 1 phone, and an electric bill. That's it. No other choices. No credit cards.
actually we had 2 cars eventually (mine and his, mine was a cheap 3rd hander, but it was still a car) and no credit cards (we saved first, bought later) but let me know how now you'd be able to have 2 cars (with insurance), 1 phone, electric, gas, tv, food (for 3), an apartment, 2 weeks of vacation a year (cheap places, but we did go every year), schooling and so on with the salary a current average blue collar worker gets.
I don't need statistics when I look back to how I (and several of my classmates from similar background) lived way back when, what the housing costs were, insurance costs, rent, etc. etc. etc. and compare them to today, there is just no way I can believe that the "misery index" is not at its highest point right now for the lower middle class (assuming the middle class even exists right now).
How many of us benefit from quality goods at very low prices? Judging from the lines at Walmart, lots.
maybe the lines are long because people's salaries are so depressed that walmart is the only thing they can afford
Now, how many of those people have moved on and have a better job? That would be almost all judging by the unemployment numbers.
the employment numbers don't include people who stopped looking for jobs, and they for sure don't include people that are under-employed just because they need to eat
But I would take the high growth, high opportunity economy
high growth and high opportunity for the upper crust of society, the middle class and lower class don't have either.
The savings rate now is -0.5% and it was 10% in the 70s, this means that people are getting poorer (not only not saving, but spending their savings) just to keep the same standard of living. I'm sure that if you counted bankruptcies in this the numbers would be even worse. My dad used to be able to provide enough money (in a unionized blue collar factory job) to enable my mother to be a stay-at-home mum, me to go to university and saving a little bit, nowadays this would require probably 3 full time jobs at the salary rates we have now.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember not that long ago when socket 939 came out that AMD said that this was going to be the socket they were going to stay on for a looong time and that the sacrifices of obsoleting the 754 and 940 were totally worth it: when AM2 came out so soon after it really made me wonder, why is there a need for a new socket right now? It's not like X2AM2 chips are that much different from X2939 ones...
And btw, I can't believe they put only 8gigs on the highest-end box, I would think 16 would be the bare minimum, heck, I'm thinking of going to 4 gigs on my pedestrian x2-4800, you'd think that something of that calibre would be a bit better equipped.
the only way to get rid of it is to remove unfun time sinks. I swear, people would play WoW just as much if there were no
= pots to farm for
just retune the encounters to make pot-mandatory encounters not pot-mandatory or, even better, just have vendors sell the pots for free: you're ridding Azeroth of dangerous monsters (theoretically), the populace should be happy to support you!
= time-based PvP grind
go for skill instead (it seems this will happen in BC)
= repairs/durability
it's just a gold sink, again, the citizens should be grateful to repair your stuff
= super expensive enchants
it's another gold sink, just make crystals BoP, boom, problem solved
= easier/less boring rep grinds/collect x of 0.1% drop rate items
I mean, cmon, if I kill a faction's evil nemesis that faction should become automagically exalted, why would somebody collecting 20 million scarab shells (say) be more revered?
with all the raiding instances available, the PvP, and so on, there is already a TON of (fun) things to do even if you play 8 hours a day without having to spend time getting bogged down with these obvious time sinks. 0-60 is great, 60 could also be great if only you could play the game and have fun instead of 'working' to 'earn' enough in-game currency to enable you to game.
why not just fire everybody (including the R&D department) and, why stop there, why not also sell all the buildings, liquidate all the infrastructure, think of the additional savings! think of just how much cash flow you could get with 0 expenses in your P&L statement!
you can just play the 'original' portal game instead, not as nice graphics but I think it's about the same gameplay (or so I've heard, I haven't installed it yet)
o p.html
http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/narbaculardr
XIX XthiXnk the serXverX has suXccXumbed, XdoeXs anyXbodyX havXe a mirrXoXrXX?
if I could I probably would make a law prohibiting the use of the letter X and words containing it from product names/descriptions unless they've existed for at least 10 years... I mean, cmon, can we be a bit more creative?
so why not use a road bike instead? In that case, according to your 'basic grade school' math/physics, since the amount of pressure between the tire and the road would be the inflation pressure of the tire (120psi) a 14lb road bike would exert about 240 pounds of pressure on the thumb drive! If we generalize this enough, with nearly solid rubber tires inflated at 5psi we could make cars nearly float off the road, think of the fuel savings!
there are? It seems the minimum nowadays is 45+ unless you want to be seen as a slacker. Not to mention the commute. Not to mention only 2 weeks of vacation and 5 sick days a year. Not to mention the 'I know you are tired/burned out but I really need this to be done so can you come in on the w/end' etc. etc. etc.
I would gladly take a 25% pay cut tomorrow if I could work 30 hours a week with 50% remote (to save on the commute), I'd probably work 7 hour Mon-Thu with 8 hour Tue/Wed from home and have Fri-Sun off. I bet that due to the extra spare time I would have available for working out and in general improving myself I'd probably be just as productive as I am now full time (and a lot less stressed/burned out).
I definitely am not, often when I use various cell phones, remotes, appliances etc. I think of ways things would be more user friendly, it would definitely be a lot of fun being able to come up with ways to make things work better in all sorts of human-machine interaction whether it's a GUI or a switch.
Still it seems unlikely to find a job in the field without some sort of accreditation from somewhere, that unless you are in the right place at the right time.
who says I would have to, I would do it because it'd be a lot of fun: as many people around here can attest to, coding and learning are a great when you can pick the projects and the topics vs doing your phb/shareholders' bidding.
... and I could stop working and go back to university to get another degree full time and end up into research, where would the state of the art of the UI/human-computer-interaction field be? which degree would one want to pursue? where?
I've always been fascinated by HCI but have yet to be able to pursue this in a work-related setting (where I tend to write backend code, basically as far away from users as you could possibly get).
did you install all the dual core related fixes/patches?
p ?t=81429
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.ph
definitely, you'd think that at least they'd have
GFX thread (self explanatory)
Game logic thread (might not benefit hugely)
Physics thread (would be amazing to be able to offline this in terms of the effects you could create)
Sound thread (imagine the soundscapes you could create with a dedicated CPU)
Networking thread (the more processing power -> the better curve fitting you can use when doing predictions)
I do think with 4 cores and a game designed to take advantage of them you'll see vast improvements in the user experience, without having to bother with silliness like specialized "physics coprocessors" etc. etc.
It's great to see the industry moving towards multiple CPUs, hopefully this will not be just a fad and 4-way dual-socket systems will become standard within a year or two, relegating single-sockets to today's celerons, and having quad-socket 8-way systems for the high end market.
remember that AMD is slashing the prices of several X2 processors by about 50%, hence the price differential is mostly only the mobo differential, which I don't think will be that much...
I think you want PCIe, not PCI-X (at least if you're talking video cards)...
actually I think you are allowed to take the knife and make money from it, as long as you don't use too much of the source material and/or you change things enough (I think that's how it works when music artists sample other songs and include them in their own). IANAL, so if anybody knows exactly how this legally works in the music arena I am all ears...
Something tells me that the director's "artistic vision" for example didn't include Bruce Willis saying ""Yippee-ki-yay Mister Falcon." in Die Hard, or "This is what happens whey you find a stranger in the Alps!" in the Big Lebowski: how is that different from what these companies were/are doing? Or is it simply a case of "censoring is ok, as long as the studio does it? The "These films carry our name and reflect our reputations. So we have great passion about protecting our work ... against unauthorized editing," line sounds a bit hypocritical, especially if the companies in question did put some sort of disclaimer (cleaned by cleanflix, whatever) at the movie beginning.
you're kidding right? Guilds spend hours and hours and hours and hours perfecting strategies to beat the latest and greatest encounters in MMPORG (currently naxxramas in wow, say), I wouldn't be surprised if groups of dedicated people spent hours and hours and hours practicing football plays in order to be on top of the ladder leaderboard...
Top 10
------
Tempest (arcade)
Gyruss (arcade)
Bomb Jack (arcade)
Dungeon Master (atari st)
Doom (PC)
Quake/Quakeworld (PC)
System Shock 1 CD (PC, version with the voices etc.)
Grand Prix Legends (PC)
Planescape: Torment (PC)
Dance Dance Revolution (arcade, ps2, PC)
Runners up:
-----------
Space Invaders (arcade)
Dig Dug (arcade)
Vampire Killer (MSX, aka Castlevania)
Archon (c64)
Guild of Thieves (atari st/amiga)
Carrier Command (atari st)
Midwinter (atari st)
Xenon 2: Megablast (atari st/amiga)
Turrican 1-2 (atari st/amiga)
Stunts (PC)
Ultima Underworld 1-2 (PC)
SSX (PS2)
Knights of the Old Republic (xbox)
hello? this is a targeted attack, what makes you think that "users are willing to click on an attachment from someone they don't know"? If it's targeted I bet the email was spoofed to appear as if it was sent by somebody working at the company...
Google "cheat codes for [insert game name here]", and you will get all that you seek, Grasshopper.
:(
not always, try to find cheats for example to open up the AX cup races on f-zero gx for the gamecube
you are contradicting yourself
If a game gave you everything at the start once you got bored with the game that would be it.
as opposed to a game with unlockables where I have to subject myself to doing things I don't like (and being bored) to access more of the content I already paid for? Hello? This is a game, it's supposed to be entertainment, I already have a day job, and the last thing I want is having to be made to "work" when all I want is sit on the couch and relax for a bit with some mindless entertainment: the developer already got my money out when I bought the game, if they make it hard for me to enjoy it, I for sure won't be buying any more games from them...
I beat my controller against the wall for a few weeks in f-zero GX trying to unlock the "extra" AX cup (the one you have to beat every other cup on master for) and trying to pass the 3rd mission in story mode (the one after the boulders, which took me ages to pass as well) and ended just giving up and shelving the game, I mean, cmon, I want to have some fun and be able to see all of the content I paid for (esp. the AX cup).
If you're going to make the game that impossible at least put in some cheats to unlock things when the user gets stuck. As things stand now I for sure won't be buy any other game made by that developer... I even passed on buying the last super monkey ball because I heard you have to beat quite a bit of the single player to unlock the multiplayer party mini-games (main reason why I'd buy it).
has an extremely aggressive set of targets in trying to push up the efficiency of HP's IT. Maybe he's going about it the wrong way - if so, he'll pay with his job.
and use the golden parachute in his contract to get another ferrari, while all the people that have been forced to move and/or put in much worse working conditions will continue to suffer because, of course, their parachutes are made of used kleenex...
It seems that in our industry as soon as you reach the senior management/vp level you are basically given carte blanche to do anything you like for the rest of your life without consequences: tons of money/options to start, huge salaries, tons of money/options when you leave (whether or not you've done anything good) and pretty much a guarantee of another gig exactly like the former as soon as you're done since, after all, you can always say that you "created value for the shareholders by slashing expenses by x%", even if the way you did that was to make your employees work in 2'x2' cubicles standing up to get more mileage of your office space.
You also probably had 1 car, 1 phone, and an electric bill. That's it. No other choices. No credit cards.
actually we had 2 cars eventually (mine and his, mine was a cheap 3rd hander, but it was still a car) and no credit cards (we saved first, bought later) but let me know how now you'd be able to have 2 cars (with insurance), 1 phone, electric, gas, tv, food (for 3), an apartment, 2 weeks of vacation a year (cheap places, but we did go every year), schooling and so on with the salary a current average blue collar worker gets.
I don't need statistics when I look back to how I (and several of my classmates from similar background) lived way back when, what the housing costs were, insurance costs, rent, etc. etc. etc. and compare them to today, there is just no way I can believe that the "misery index" is not at its highest point right now for the lower middle class (assuming the middle class even exists right now).
How many of us benefit from quality goods at very low prices? Judging from the lines at Walmart, lots.
maybe the lines are long because people's salaries are so depressed that walmart is the only thing they can afford
Now, how many of those people have moved on and have a better job? That would be almost all judging by the unemployment numbers.
the employment numbers don't include people who stopped looking for jobs, and they for sure don't include people that are under-employed just because they need to eat
But I would take the high growth, high opportunity economy
high growth and high opportunity for the upper crust of society, the middle class and lower class don't have either.
The savings rate now is -0.5% and it was 10% in the 70s, this means that people are getting poorer (not only not saving, but spending their savings) just to keep the same standard of living. I'm sure that if you counted bankruptcies in this the numbers would be even worse. My dad used to be able to provide enough money (in a unionized blue collar factory job) to enable my mother to be a stay-at-home mum, me to go to university and saving a little bit, nowadays this would require probably 3 full time jobs at the salary rates we have now.