It's a reasonably modern ATI GPU, and it can be used as a "compute shader".
Though of course GPU compute functions are pretty complex to do, and they directly take away from graphics functions. I'm guessing Ubisoft's claim that the platforms are CPU bound does not really mean they are not using as much of the GPU as they can - otherwise seems a little disingenuous that they are also limiting the rendering resolution to 900p.
Windows would run just fine on a Pentium computer with a decent amount of RAM. Try running a java applet on it, though, and you may as well go for a long coffee break...
Hah. No.
Windows 7+ does a shit-ton of graphic eye candy and multi-threaded background tasks, etc. Without a couple of reasonable (not Pentium) cores and a decent GPU it's unusable. The extra RAM just keeps it from crashing entirely.
Many Nintendo games run in 1080p and 60 frames/second on the Wii U which is much less powerful...because Nintendo makes that their target when deciding how much AI and graphics detail to put on the screen at once.
Ugh, give me a break. If everyone targeted their games to "Nintendo standards" instead of games actually trying to push the envelope with performance and features, Mario, Pokemon, and their ilk would have taken over the world by now.
And I have developed for the Wii U. Compared to the XB360/XB1/PS3/PS4 It's a HORRIBLE platform with a worse OS. It still requires cooperative multitasking (hello Yield()!) which if custom-designed for the platform form the start would be fine, but it makes porting later from a *real* platform that actually sells games a PITA. If you wondered why the Wii U is not getting the quality ports of the other platforms - it's because Nintendo's development tools and OS are stuck in 1995.
Yeah, it is helpful to call it a PPC because that was the basic architecture that the OS and main app ran on.
And in terms of the PS3 Cell/SPUs, it was an even bigger architecture change, of course.
But the point is: the fact that the PS3 PPU/SPU and the XB360 CPU ran at twice the clock speed of the PS4/XB1 X86 cores is totally irrelevant, since they are completely different architectures. The point of RISC is it runs simpler instructions in fewer cycles at a higher clock rate. Which of course means any clock rate comparison with a CISC architecture is mostly irrelevant.
True - that and actually having a personality capable of working with others. Interviews are 1/2 proving your competence and 1/2 proving you can work with your interviewers. Based on said/. commenters' posts, no way in hell I'd hire them;)
Except the point of this article is most of the time it's fairly useless and doesn't result in them getting a *career* in said research. So they did research, but they were a STUDENT, not a RESEARCHER.
Easily. Before bonuses and options. I keep seeing all of this whining on/. this week about how SW engineers are under appreciated and underpaid, but in the Bay Area right now, there is a huge shortage and salaries and bonuses are getting almost ridiculous (especially how many horrible programmers I see getting paid as much as they are as well).
Sweden subsidizes their Internet access with high taxes: it's cheaper in Sweden than the US.
US subsidizes gas prices and/or has unusually low gas taxes: gasoline in US is $3.50/gallon vs $8.00 in Sweden. Not to mention the cars themselves are 25%-100% more depending on tariffs/luxury taxes.
Also, the average 6-pack is $12+ in Sweden! Oh, the humanity...
You are correct that it's an "at will employment" issue, but the OP is also correct that with at will employment you are better off terminating someone for no cause than a cause that is not provably accurate. If you give a reason but can't prove it - or even worse, your reason can be proved wrong - you have opened up yourself to a wrongful termination lawsuit regardless of "protected class" (though that would make it even stronger).
As the (attorney) lecturer for the class on employment law that I took said: "this is an at will employment state: the employee or employer can terminate employment at will with or without reason. And the exceptions make up 98% of the law."
In this case, firing someone for an undisclosed email sent by Comcast that "summarizes" an interaction that the employee believes is incorrect completely opens them up to a lawsuit. And a lawsuit would definitely force disclosure of the email, so if his side of the story is accurate it could be interesting...
PhD != researcher. PhD is just a degree. *Good* PhDs could still become high paid engineers (or industry researchers) or mediocre-paid college faculty. *Bad* PhDs might not become either.
Actually, that's exactly what HAS happened. Software engineering starting salaries have jumped dramatically in recent years. Shit, in the SF Bay Area smart grads can make $80-100k or more right out of college. It's one of the highest paid fields for a *qualified* new college grad (that said, just like PhDs, apparently, there are a lot of really unqualified CS NCGs who really need to find another field).
Having been a postdoc and also having been lucky enough to land a faculty position I don't see that this is a new problem at all.
Their point is it that it's gotten WORSE. A constant surplus is one thing (and could be manageable) but an increasing surplus can in fact make it a whole new problem. Something is messing with traditional supply and demand. Rate of change increasing, you know, dx/dy and all that? Or maybe economics and math wasn't your PhD focus;)
The real question isn't about whether it's easier to *get* a PhD, it's why it's easier to get a PhD *paid for*. It's 5 extra years of education, usually paid for with a grant from *somewhere*. I guess you could consider of the last couple years a fairly low-paid lab tech and/or TA with a lot of education - but maybe the university systems should stop spending so much money on subsidizing PhDs that will never go anywhere and start figuring out how to make top-rate undergraduate education cost less than $50k a year...
Hmmm... As to women, you're talking about the religious evangelicals. That faction is their own distinct kettle of fish.
No, unfortunately for moderate Republicans they are not only in the same kettle, they are running the kettle. Apparently a large majority of Congressional Republicans and apparently about half of the Supreme Court conservatives is of that "faction".
Cite something they did. I dare you.
I'm not going to bother citing since it's so trivial to search, but you can look up a whole bunch of voting regulations intended to suppress minority voting while pretending to address a completely non-existent "voter fraud issue". And there have been leaked political memos, etc talking about how it will reduce minority turn out in some districts, so it's pointless to try to argue otherwise.
Also, opposing affirmative action in education. Clearly there is a debate on the topic, but there is no question the intent was to give a boost to a population which had been denied the same opportunities white males have had in college education. I think everyone hopes that will become unnecessary in the future but a couple of centuries of social and financial discrimination can't just be fixed in a couple decades.
Also, he LGBT community is clearly in the same position African Americans were in the 50s-60s, and being treated just as badly by conservatives. It's pretty clear once the old ones die off the more tolerant next generation will be more accepting, though. It's already happening, luckily, and my guess is gay rights will be a non-issue in 10-20 years. Doesn't mean Republicans haven't been fighting it as much as they can...
And as for both minorities and immigrants - 221 members of the House Republicans voted to defund the DREAM Act and work to deport aliens who were babies when brought into to the US illegally, and often didn't even know they were not citizens. Crack down on illegal immigration when it happens, I agree, but don't kick people out who didn't even know they were illegal and have been here since before they could speak any language, let alone their *native* English...
Actually, in the '60s and '70s all of that was Saturday morning fare. It was bundled up into an hour long show with a small bit of newly done 'glue' to hold it together. It was re-runs, but all new for the audience they targeted. The various cartoons came and went, but the Warner toons were a constant.
The Flintstones and Jetsons were both originally prime time animated sit-coms in the early 60's. Later they were either moved to morning or syndicated in re-runs and re-made as basically totally different kid-centric shows.
And all of the early Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc (Hannah Barbara) cartoons were created for and first shown in the theater as shorts. Not only that, the first appearance of Bugs Bunny, etc on TV (which was the old cartoon with some new "glue", as you said) was an ABC *prime time* show called "The Bugs Bunny Show".
Sure, they were eventually syndicated, then even later remade for kids, and moved to Saturday mornings. But the point is these "great Saturday morning cartoons" everyone is talking about were NOT at all created as such. Which is probably why they were so good. Generally entertainment created specifically for kids is awful, since the adult writers don't write "for" them, they write "down to" them. And kids are much more perceptive than they think, so they notice it.
I guess another way to think of it is the "Era of Saturday Morning Cartoons" is not just recently dead as the article states, it's just recently *buried*. It limped into the 90's and died at some point in that decade after they cancelled the last few smart generation-spanning shows like The Tick, X-Men, Animatiacs, Pinky and the Brain, etc.
As far as their original content, seems like Netflix has had the perfect combination of risk-taking, intelligent choices, and a bit of luck.
I read an interview with Kevin Spacey where he said after pitching House of Cards to all of the network and cable channels with lukewarm reception, Netflix jumped all over it. Not only that, when they said, "ok, we'll go film a pilot", Netflix said, "pilot? Forget that, here's $100M, go film a full season. Oh, and we won't mess with your creative vision, we trust you."
Just like more and more traditional "movie" actors are doing TV because HBO, Showtime, AMC, etc have allowed TV to be smart and edgy (and the filing schedules and promotions are mud mrs relaxed, etc), if you give producers and actors support and creative freedom they are going to start experimenting a lot more with streaming original content.
Then again, Netflix has basically stated they want to be the next HBO (and HBO is becoming a significant streaming service). Wouldn't be surprised if 5 years from now you couldn't tell the difference between the two - $10-15/mo subscriptions with a mix of original and licensed content...
Well, there are a *lot* of problems with this model, not saying it's great, just the way it currently works;)
Though there are still a lot of titles out there which aren't available just because they have not yet been remastered for digital streaming, or they have not sorted out all of the various licensing and copyright agreements. Amazingly, streaming often requires getting completely different licensing/royalty agreements from all involved parties like the musical score, poster artwork, screenwriters, actors, etc. It's pretty insane. And even more insane is that often has to be done separately for EACH country it's released in.
So if I were to point to the #1 cause of content not being available, it's studio shortsightedness (they don't realize they can make more money in volume by making things cheaper) and massive licensing/copyright bureaucracy.
Yep. Just goes to show you the best and most enduring children's/young adult entertainment is usually when adults don't specifically try to "write for" children (which usually means "write down to" them). Just as true now (Harry Potter novels, Pixar movies) as it was back then...
No it wasn't. *From* the Wikipedia page: "The show premiered on September 30, 1960, at 8:30pm, and was an instant hit.".
Sept. 30, 1960 was a Friday. And 8:30pm isn't what most people would call "morning".
What you were watching was reruns or remakes, not the original Flintstones. So I think my point still stands. The original was targeted to adults in the early 60's (they even had the cartoon characters advertising cigarettes!) which may be why kids didn't really understand it that well. And the remakes/etc, were mostly crap spewed out for kids (with none of the more mature references or Honeymooner parodies), but that shouldn't detract from the original.
Tom & Jerry's violence would never be shown today, too much violence in them.
Eh, maybe not on Saturday morning, but have you ever watched the Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, etc? It's still there...
But I agree and am saddened by the loss of the true Saturday morning cartoon today. Hell, even after I was beyond-college-age I still liked to drag my ass out of bed on Saturday in the 90's to watch The Tick, X-Men, Pinky and the Brain, and the few other cartoons that kept the faith.
Why does everyone keep using the Flintstones as an example of (good or bad) Saturday morning cartoons!?
Flintstones was a prime time ABC show in the early 1960's. If you think of it in *that* context is was a trend-setting and brilliant forerunner to the current (and mostly over the hill) prime time family-unit cartoons like The Simpsons and Family Guy...
I would *still* be willing to sit down for a morning of road runner, bugs bunny and crew, daffy duck, foghorn leghorn, jetsons, flintstones, pepe le pew, and so on.
Most of that was never actually Saturday morning cartoon fare (except occasionally in reruns). So I'm not sure how qualified you are to comment on it;)
But I agree that the Internet did not kill Saturday morning cartoons. It was a coincidental two-pronged attack of 24-hour kids/cartoon cable channels and the horribly sad but true fact that Saturday morning informercials just paid better.
The issue is with studio contracts and provider risks. The studios want $4-6 per rental of their new releases and aren't willing to negotiate a (reasonable) flat rate to subscription providers. Netflix wants to keep their costs down and isn't willing to take the risk of offering a more expensive service and hoping customers don't abuse it.
People who are expecting this situation to eventually get sorted out are going to wait a LOOONG time. The fact is the studios have a model that is designed to pay for their $200M+ production expenses: theatrical release, premium VOD and Blu-Ray release, HBO/premium cable release, and finally (possibly 2+ years later) library release to subscription services. Negotiating flat-rate for the movie just isn't going to happen until it's at the end of that pipeline...
Slashdot Mirror
It's a reasonably modern ATI GPU, and it can be used as a "compute shader".
Though of course GPU compute functions are pretty complex to do, and they directly take away from graphics functions. I'm guessing Ubisoft's claim that the platforms are CPU bound does not really mean they are not using as much of the GPU as they can - otherwise seems a little disingenuous that they are also limiting the rendering resolution to 900p.
Windows would run just fine on a Pentium computer with a decent amount of RAM. Try running a java applet on it, though, and you may as well go for a long coffee break...
Hah. No.
Windows 7+ does a shit-ton of graphic eye candy and multi-threaded background tasks, etc. Without a couple of reasonable (not Pentium) cores and a decent GPU it's unusable. The extra RAM just keeps it from crashing entirely.
Maybe you didn't target your game properly.
Many Nintendo games run in 1080p and 60 frames/second on the Wii U which is much less powerful...because Nintendo makes that their target when deciding how much AI and graphics detail to put on the screen at once.
Ugh, give me a break. If everyone targeted their games to "Nintendo standards" instead of games actually trying to push the envelope with performance and features, Mario, Pokemon, and their ilk would have taken over the world by now.
And I have developed for the Wii U. Compared to the XB360/XB1/PS3/PS4 It's a HORRIBLE platform with a worse OS. It still requires cooperative multitasking (hello Yield()!) which if custom-designed for the platform form the start would be fine, but it makes porting later from a *real* platform that actually sells games a PITA. If you wondered why the Wii U is not getting the quality ports of the other platforms - it's because Nintendo's development tools and OS are stuck in 1995.
Yeah, it is helpful to call it a PPC because that was the basic architecture that the OS and main app ran on.
And in terms of the PS3 Cell/SPUs, it was an even bigger architecture change, of course.
But the point is: the fact that the PS3 PPU/SPU and the XB360 CPU ran at twice the clock speed of the PS4/XB1 X86 cores is totally irrelevant, since they are completely different architectures. The point of RISC is it runs simpler instructions in fewer cycles at a higher clock rate. Which of course means any clock rate comparison with a CISC architecture is mostly irrelevant.
True - that and actually having a personality capable of working with others. Interviews are 1/2 proving your competence and 1/2 proving you can work with your interviewers. Based on said /. commenters' posts, no way in hell I'd hire them ;)
Except the point of this article is most of the time it's fairly useless and doesn't result in them getting a *career* in said research. So they did research, but they were a STUDENT, not a RESEARCHER.
Easily. Before bonuses and options. I keep seeing all of this whining on /. this week about how SW engineers are under appreciated and underpaid, but in the Bay Area right now, there is a huge shortage and salaries and bonuses are getting almost ridiculous (especially how many horrible programmers I see getting paid as much as they are as well).
So you are saying the problem isn't subsidizing grad students, it's overpaying the faculty ;)
Sweden subsidizes their Internet access with high taxes: it's cheaper in Sweden than the US.
US subsidizes gas prices and/or has unusually low gas taxes: gasoline in US is $3.50/gallon vs $8.00 in Sweden. Not to mention the cars themselves are 25%-100% more depending on tariffs/luxury taxes.
Also, the average 6-pack is $12+ in Sweden! Oh, the humanity...
You are correct that it's an "at will employment" issue, but the OP is also correct that with at will employment you are better off terminating someone for no cause than a cause that is not provably accurate. If you give a reason but can't prove it - or even worse, your reason can be proved wrong - you have opened up yourself to a wrongful termination lawsuit regardless of "protected class" (though that would make it even stronger).
As the (attorney) lecturer for the class on employment law that I took said: "this is an at will employment state: the employee or employer can terminate employment at will with or without reason. And the exceptions make up 98% of the law."
In this case, firing someone for an undisclosed email sent by Comcast that "summarizes" an interaction that the employee believes is incorrect completely opens them up to a lawsuit. And a lawsuit would definitely force disclosure of the email, so if his side of the story is accurate it could be interesting...
PhD != researcher. PhD is just a degree. *Good* PhDs could still become high paid engineers (or industry researchers) or mediocre-paid college faculty. *Bad* PhDs might not become either.
Actually, that's exactly what HAS happened. Software engineering starting salaries have jumped dramatically in recent years. Shit, in the SF Bay Area smart grads can make $80-100k or more right out of college. It's one of the highest paid fields for a *qualified* new college grad (that said, just like PhDs, apparently, there are a lot of really unqualified CS NCGs who really need to find another field).
Having been a postdoc and also having been lucky enough to land a faculty position I don't see that this is a new problem at all.
Their point is it that it's gotten WORSE. A constant surplus is one thing (and could be manageable) but an increasing surplus can in fact make it a whole new problem. Something is messing with traditional supply and demand. Rate of change increasing, you know, dx/dy and all that? Or maybe economics and math wasn't your PhD focus ;)
It's simply much easier to get a PhD these days
The real question isn't about whether it's easier to *get* a PhD, it's why it's easier to get a PhD *paid for*. It's 5 extra years of education, usually paid for with a grant from *somewhere*. I guess you could consider of the last couple years a fairly low-paid lab tech and/or TA with a lot of education - but maybe the university systems should stop spending so much money on subsidizing PhDs that will never go anywhere and start figuring out how to make top-rate undergraduate education cost less than $50k a year...
Hmmm... As to women, you're talking about the religious evangelicals. That faction is their own distinct kettle of fish.
No, unfortunately for moderate Republicans they are not only in the same kettle, they are running the kettle. Apparently a large majority of Congressional Republicans and apparently about half of the Supreme Court conservatives is of that "faction".
Cite something they did. I dare you.
I'm not going to bother citing since it's so trivial to search, but you can look up a whole bunch of voting regulations intended to suppress minority voting while pretending to address a completely non-existent "voter fraud issue". And there have been leaked political memos, etc talking about how it will reduce minority turn out in some districts, so it's pointless to try to argue otherwise.
Also, opposing affirmative action in education. Clearly there is a debate on the topic, but there is no question the intent was to give a boost to a population which had been denied the same opportunities white males have had in college education. I think everyone hopes that will become unnecessary in the future but a couple of centuries of social and financial discrimination can't just be fixed in a couple decades.
Also, he LGBT community is clearly in the same position African Americans were in the 50s-60s, and being treated just as badly by conservatives. It's pretty clear once the old ones die off the more tolerant next generation will be more accepting, though. It's already happening, luckily, and my guess is gay rights will be a non-issue in 10-20 years. Doesn't mean Republicans haven't been fighting it as much as they can...
And as for both minorities and immigrants - 221 members of the House Republicans voted to defund the DREAM Act and work to deport aliens who were babies when brought into to the US illegally, and often didn't even know they were not citizens. Crack down on illegal immigration when it happens, I agree, but don't kick people out who didn't even know they were illegal and have been here since before they could speak any language, let alone their *native* English...
... what was actually going on here. The republicans are against lots of government regulation. They just don't like it in general.
Definitely true in corporate and financial interests. Not as true for women, minorities, and immigrants.
Actually, in the '60s and '70s all of that was Saturday morning fare. It was bundled up into an hour long show with a small bit of newly done 'glue' to hold it together. It was re-runs, but all new for the audience they targeted. The various cartoons came and went, but the Warner toons were a constant.
The Flintstones and Jetsons were both originally prime time animated sit-coms in the early 60's. Later they were either moved to morning or syndicated in re-runs and re-made as basically totally different kid-centric shows.
And all of the early Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc (Hannah Barbara) cartoons were created for and first shown in the theater as shorts. Not only that, the first appearance of Bugs Bunny, etc on TV (which was the old cartoon with some new "glue", as you said) was an ABC *prime time* show called "The Bugs Bunny Show".
Sure, they were eventually syndicated, then even later remade for kids, and moved to Saturday mornings. But the point is these "great Saturday morning cartoons" everyone is talking about were NOT at all created as such. Which is probably why they were so good. Generally entertainment created specifically for kids is awful, since the adult writers don't write "for" them, they write "down to" them. And kids are much more perceptive than they think, so they notice it.
I guess another way to think of it is the "Era of Saturday Morning Cartoons" is not just recently dead as the article states, it's just recently *buried*. It limped into the 90's and died at some point in that decade after they cancelled the last few smart generation-spanning shows like The Tick, X-Men, Animatiacs, Pinky and the Brain, etc.
As far as their original content, seems like Netflix has had the perfect combination of risk-taking, intelligent choices, and a bit of luck.
I read an interview with Kevin Spacey where he said after pitching House of Cards to all of the network and cable channels with lukewarm reception, Netflix jumped all over it. Not only that, when they said, "ok, we'll go film a pilot", Netflix said, "pilot? Forget that, here's $100M, go film a full season. Oh, and we won't mess with your creative vision, we trust you."
Just like more and more traditional "movie" actors are doing TV because HBO, Showtime, AMC, etc have allowed TV to be smart and edgy (and the filing schedules and promotions are mud mrs relaxed, etc), if you give producers and actors support and creative freedom they are going to start experimenting a lot more with streaming original content.
Then again, Netflix has basically stated they want to be the next HBO (and HBO is becoming a significant streaming service). Wouldn't be surprised if 5 years from now you couldn't tell the difference between the two - $10-15/mo subscriptions with a mix of original and licensed content...
Well, there are a *lot* of problems with this model, not saying it's great, just the way it currently works ;)
Though there are still a lot of titles out there which aren't available just because they have not yet been remastered for digital streaming, or they have not sorted out all of the various licensing and copyright agreements. Amazingly, streaming often requires getting completely different licensing/royalty agreements from all involved parties like the musical score, poster artwork, screenwriters, actors, etc. It's pretty insane. And even more insane is that often has to be done separately for EACH country it's released in.
So if I were to point to the #1 cause of content not being available, it's studio shortsightedness (they don't realize they can make more money in volume by making things cheaper) and massive licensing/copyright bureaucracy.
Yep. Just goes to show you the best and most enduring children's/young adult entertainment is usually when adults don't specifically try to "write for" children (which usually means "write down to" them). Just as true now (Harry Potter novels, Pixar movies) as it was back then...
created for Saturday Morning Cartoons
No it wasn't. *From* the Wikipedia page: "The show premiered on September 30, 1960, at 8:30pm, and was an instant hit.".
Sept. 30, 1960 was a Friday. And 8:30pm isn't what most people would call "morning".
What you were watching was reruns or remakes, not the original Flintstones. So I think my point still stands. The original was targeted to adults in the early 60's (they even had the cartoon characters advertising cigarettes!) which may be why kids didn't really understand it that well. And the remakes/etc, were mostly crap spewed out for kids (with none of the more mature references or Honeymooner parodies), but that shouldn't detract from the original.
Tom & Jerry's violence would never be shown today, too much violence in them.
Eh, maybe not on Saturday morning, but have you ever watched the Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, etc? It's still there...
But I agree and am saddened by the loss of the true Saturday morning cartoon today. Hell, even after I was beyond-college-age I still liked to drag my ass out of bed on Saturday in the 90's to watch The Tick, X-Men, Pinky and the Brain, and the few other cartoons that kept the faith.
Why does everyone keep using the Flintstones as an example of (good or bad) Saturday morning cartoons!?
Flintstones was a prime time ABC show in the early 1960's. If you think of it in *that* context is was a trend-setting and brilliant forerunner to the current (and mostly over the hill) prime time family-unit cartoons like The Simpsons and Family Guy...
I would *still* be willing to sit down for a morning of road runner, bugs bunny and crew, daffy duck, foghorn leghorn, jetsons, flintstones, pepe le pew, and so on.
Most of that was never actually Saturday morning cartoon fare (except occasionally in reruns). So I'm not sure how qualified you are to comment on it ;)
But I agree that the Internet did not kill Saturday morning cartoons. It was a coincidental two-pronged attack of 24-hour kids/cartoon cable channels and the horribly sad but true fact that Saturday morning informercials just paid better.
The issue is with studio contracts and provider risks. The studios want $4-6 per rental of their new releases and aren't willing to negotiate a (reasonable) flat rate to subscription providers. Netflix wants to keep their costs down and isn't willing to take the risk of offering a more expensive service and hoping customers don't abuse it.
People who are expecting this situation to eventually get sorted out are going to wait a LOOONG time. The fact is the studios have a model that is designed to pay for their $200M+ production expenses: theatrical release, premium VOD and Blu-Ray release, HBO/premium cable release, and finally (possibly 2+ years later) library release to subscription services. Negotiating flat-rate for the movie just isn't going to happen until it's at the end of that pipeline...