While I don't agree with subversive data collection, I actually do feel that data mining is integral to the development of tomorrow's products and services. It lets researchers figure out various informations without dragging in focus groups (okay, so you dragged in who you/think/ will buy your product... how'd you get them in? with pizza? did the 12-year-old eat all the pizza?) and in any case, focus groups tend to be horribly inaccurate since human beings have a penchant for saying what they think you want them to. Data mining allows researchers to follow and understand shifts in demographics, marketers to identify specific trends, and designers to fulfill or even create needs... all in a way that is completely anonymous, hands-off, and far more reliably accurate than a number of other methods that could be employed.
Uh, anyhow. I don't feel that data mining in itself is a problem; people already use grocery cards in stores with full knowledge that the store will track their purchases. Rather, I feel the problem is more with the fact that companies sometimes (often? i don't know) collect personally identifiable information without explicit permission, information that people can't track down or easily have removed from company databases. I've found far too many companies require people to send snailmail before any requests are fulfilled, or don't even suggest any method in which to have information removed.
Not particularly. How're you going to police global internet traffic? There was already a big kerfuffle a while back regarding the enforcement of national law regarding the sorts of material that could be transmitted over the internet. Personally, I would like to see the internet remain a bureaucratic "hands-off" area for the most part, but that would unfortunately mean continuing lawlessness. Even still, business will just find loopholes through which they can get around laws - already, the transmission of personal information is optional at many sites, but only so long as you're not interested in signing up for free services.
I do understand your concern though... I don't even know who knows what about me already.
Definately. It's sometimes difficult finding a comparison of old to new so upgrading becomes a bit of a guessing game at times. My other complaint is that review sites tend to concentrate on high-performance cards while most of the world will buy up mid-range accelerators. Large charts like this also help differentiate between Radeon Pro platinum turbo edition, and Radeon XT super kumquat edition... I swear, it's starting to sound like Street Fighter: Video Card Wars.
The overrated tag, imop, points quite simply to a cowardly moderator trying to shut down a point of view he disagreed with.
It's kind of funny the things people will say when other people don't reply. Now, I don't use Steam, and I don't play any of the games offered through the service, but I will say that there were many other posts at that time which explained why people would not use the service, or why they didn't agree with it - posts like the one directly preceding our Mister Anonymous, or the ones which followed (contrary to your belief, there were already 30-40 posts by the time I modded that one). I don't really care what you believe about Steam, but can you honestly say that his comment actually added anything to the discussion? The reason why your following post is still rated higher than the original is because it has actual substance to it.
You'll notice that at the same time I posted this, the original post probably went up while yours went down. I'm sure you recognize that feature.
The DRAM may not be able to fetch that fast, but an increased bus rate will still provide some mediocum of bonus performance. Still, I notice now that the FSB clock was not increased at all.
So long as some effective pre-fetching is in place, there's going to be some asymmetric performance gains. It won't be 1:1 since the memory isn't actually getting any faster, but it doesn't matter so long as the data is where it needs to be when it's needed. In any case, the fact is having the CPU far outstrip the performance of the rest of the system isn't a particularly unusual occurrence.
I have a Radeon 8500LE and a 1.2GHz Thunderbird. The Radeon doesn't seem any slower at 1024x as compared to 640x... I'm pretty sure my system is CPU-bound. I get around 20+FPS most of the time, unless I'm in a particularly busy area (at which time it can drop to single numbers).
Turn off the dynamic lighting and turn on the bump-mapping.:)
How are you sure that Blizzard's getting paid for this? I suspect that Fileplanet's hosting it for free, or somewhere close to that non-number in order to hype their own service and boost subscriptions. Blizzard gets to distribute the software without straining their own lines. Of course, that's just a suspicion.
What's wrong with paying to get into a beta? Is it any worse than paying to test drive a pre-production Ferrari? What's wrong with paying to play a game? Do you buy a television and then get every channel for free afterward?
You're not paying for a product here so much as you're paying for a service. Besides, there's nothing wrong with paying to get into the beta - considering the amount of time you're allotted, and the popularity of online games, you may even be getting more of your money's worth out of it than if you went to a movie.
Well, a being that's constantly spending energy would have to constantly restore its reserves of energy. That is, it would have to be scrounging around for food all the time, which could be dangerous to its health due to predators and other hazards. Also, you need to think about the environment in which the being would need to live - perhaps it is an environment that doesn't offer an abundance of food. At that time, staying still and conserving energy until it really does need replenish its energy stores (fat, etc) does make better sense.
Keep in mind I'm not a biologist or anything fancy like that.
I didn't read the article and I'm not exactly paying attention to their financial status, but "6-figure revenue" isn't a lot of money. Real licensing contracts get into the millions of dollars.
Yeah, the insinuation is there for those who don't see it.
I'm not sure how this post was moddded insightful because it really isn't. The game/was/ meant to be a high-quality single-player experience while much of the genre does focus on a multiplayer scenario.
I thought it was an Audigy LS if you were one of the first ten... that might just be local to my area....anyway, I'm downloading (oh my gosh, I'm pirating!) Doom 3 to find out if it's worth camping out at the store to buy it (really, I just want the sound card!). If it isn't, I never would've purchased it anyway.;) I really wish id had a demo ready.
Don't forget the designers. Both companies have very strong design departments. Design is where all the nice features (ie. the advanced UIs, streamlining, sizing and weight considerations, useability, etc) come in, and it's also why their products don't look like everybody else's. Apparently, a lot of other companies copy Sony's look and feel, while I can't think of many products that follow those of Apple's distinctive nature.
Actually, historically, the big winners in the Sony space (walkman, Playstation, etc) were heavily (re)developed by Sony designers... not just "hardware guys". Sony has a famous design studio that is somewhat exclusive. So does Apple. This makes it kind of interesting to see the two groups compete.
Did you know that one of the major Playstation designers was heavily influenced by the Macintosh Classic?;)
Well, their formats aren't terrible in and of themselves; the reason they try to push these formats is because Sony spends a lot of money in design and development, and they don't want to share the fruits of their labours with anyone else. Copyright infringement and electronic media is just another apple in the basket they need to worry about now.
Slashdot Mirror
While I don't agree with subversive data collection, I actually do feel that data mining is integral to the development of tomorrow's products and services. It lets researchers figure out various informations without dragging in focus groups (okay, so you dragged in who you /think/ will buy your product... how'd you get them in? with pizza? did the 12-year-old eat all the pizza?) and in any case, focus groups tend to be horribly inaccurate since human beings have a penchant for saying what they think you want them to. Data mining allows researchers to follow and understand shifts in demographics, marketers to identify specific trends, and designers to fulfill or even create needs... all in a way that is completely anonymous, hands-off, and far more reliably accurate than a number of other methods that could be employed.
Uh, anyhow. I don't feel that data mining in itself is a problem; people already use grocery cards in stores with full knowledge that the store will track their purchases. Rather, I feel the problem is more with the fact that companies sometimes (often? i don't know) collect personally identifiable information without explicit permission, information that people can't track down or easily have removed from company databases. I've found far too many companies require people to send snailmail before any requests are fulfilled, or don't even suggest any method in which to have information removed.
Not particularly. How're you going to police global internet traffic? There was already a big kerfuffle a while back regarding the enforcement of national law regarding the sorts of material that could be transmitted over the internet. Personally, I would like to see the internet remain a bureaucratic "hands-off" area for the most part, but that would unfortunately mean continuing lawlessness. Even still, business will just find loopholes through which they can get around laws - already, the transmission of personal information is optional at many sites, but only so long as you're not interested in signing up for free services.
I do understand your concern though... I don't even know who knows what about me already.
Definately. It's sometimes difficult finding a comparison of old to new so upgrading becomes a bit of a guessing game at times. My other complaint is that review sites tend to concentrate on high-performance cards while most of the world will buy up mid-range accelerators. Large charts like this also help differentiate between Radeon Pro platinum turbo edition, and Radeon XT super kumquat edition... I swear, it's starting to sound like Street Fighter: Video Card Wars.
The overrated tag, imop, points quite simply to a cowardly moderator trying to shut down a point of view he disagreed with.
It's kind of funny the things people will say when other people don't reply. Now, I don't use Steam, and I don't play any of the games offered through the service, but I will say that there were many other posts at that time which explained why people would not use the service, or why they didn't agree with it - posts like the one directly preceding our Mister Anonymous, or the ones which followed (contrary to your belief, there were already 30-40 posts by the time I modded that one). I don't really care what you believe about Steam, but can you honestly say that his comment actually added anything to the discussion? The reason why your following post is still rated higher than the original is because it has actual substance to it.
You'll notice that at the same time I posted this, the original post probably went up while yours went down. I'm sure you recognize that feature.
Yes, thank you. :) ...learn something new everyday.
The DRAM may not be able to fetch that fast, but an increased bus rate will still provide some mediocum of bonus performance. Still, I notice now that the FSB clock was not increased at all.
So long as some effective pre-fetching is in place, there's going to be some asymmetric performance gains. It won't be 1:1 since the memory isn't actually getting any faster, but it doesn't matter so long as the data is where it needs to be when it's needed. In any case, the fact is having the CPU far outstrip the performance of the rest of the system isn't a particularly unusual occurrence.
It does seem that they overclocked their bus as well, though, not just the CPU.
Reading through their thread, it seems they had it even faster than 6GHz at one point but the system crashed trying to take a screenshot. >_
Now if only The Phantom Menace got delayed...
I have a Radeon 8500LE and a 1.2GHz Thunderbird. The Radeon doesn't seem any slower at 1024x as compared to 640x... I'm pretty sure my system is CPU-bound. I get around 20+FPS most of the time, unless I'm in a particularly busy area (at which time it can drop to single numbers).
:)
Turn off the dynamic lighting and turn on the bump-mapping.
Meh, it'll always be new to someone - and that's okay by me.
How are you sure that Blizzard's getting paid for this? I suspect that Fileplanet's hosting it for free, or somewhere close to that non-number in order to hype their own service and boost subscriptions. Blizzard gets to distribute the software without straining their own lines. Of course, that's just a suspicion.
What's wrong with paying to get into a beta? Is it any worse than paying to test drive a pre-production Ferrari? What's wrong with paying to play a game? Do you buy a television and then get every channel for free afterward?
You're not paying for a product here so much as you're paying for a service. Besides, there's nothing wrong with paying to get into the beta - considering the amount of time you're allotted, and the popularity of online games, you may even be getting more of your money's worth out of it than if you went to a movie.
That's a neat idea. Flying computers. You could them all up together and cut down on your transit costs too!
Well, a being that's constantly spending energy would have to constantly restore its reserves of energy. That is, it would have to be scrounging around for food all the time, which could be dangerous to its health due to predators and other hazards. Also, you need to think about the environment in which the being would need to live - perhaps it is an environment that doesn't offer an abundance of food. At that time, staying still and conserving energy until it really does need replenish its energy stores (fat, etc) does make better sense.
Keep in mind I'm not a biologist or anything fancy like that.
No. What would be the point of that?
Hmm. Too bad I don't use electronic address books. Would I be excluded from e-mailing someone who uses LOAF then?
$123,456.00... so just hundreds of thousands.
I didn't read the article and I'm not exactly paying attention to their financial status, but "6-figure revenue" isn't a lot of money. Real licensing contracts get into the millions of dollars.
Yeah, the insinuation is there for those who don't see it.
Huh, I couldn't even explain to one user how she could be working with a database that wasn't on her computer.
I'm not sure how this post was moddded insightful because it really isn't. The game /was/ meant to be a high-quality single-player experience while much of the genre does focus on a multiplayer scenario.
*shrug*
I thought it was an Audigy LS if you were one of the first ten... that might just be local to my area. ...anyway, I'm downloading (oh my gosh, I'm pirating!) Doom 3 to find out if it's worth camping out at the store to buy it (really, I just want the sound card!). If it isn't, I never would've purchased it anyway. ;) I really wish id had a demo ready.
Don't forget the designers. Both companies have very strong design departments. Design is where all the nice features (ie. the advanced UIs, streamlining, sizing and weight considerations, useability, etc) come in, and it's also why their products don't look like everybody else's. Apparently, a lot of other companies copy Sony's look and feel, while I can't think of many products that follow those of Apple's distinctive nature.
Actually, historically, the big winners in the Sony space (walkman, Playstation, etc) were heavily (re)developed by Sony designers... not just "hardware guys". Sony has a famous design studio that is somewhat exclusive. So does Apple. This makes it kind of interesting to see the two groups compete.
;)
Did you know that one of the major Playstation designers was heavily influenced by the Macintosh Classic?
Well, their formats aren't terrible in and of themselves; the reason they try to push these formats is because Sony spends a lot of money in design and development, and they don't want to share the fruits of their labours with anyone else. Copyright infringement and electronic media is just another apple in the basket they need to worry about now.