I think you are a little confused. While GPUs do massive work in parallel, they work on the graphics. That is something you can divide down a whole lot. You could do it per pixel, so about 2 million parallel ops for a modern display.
However that has nothing to do with what you do on the CPU. That's where the AI, game logic, often the physics, and so on happen. Some of it can be threaded out nicely, some can't. Some of it is efficient on its own thread, some doesn't use much.
It varies by game, and game engine. Frostbite 2 (BF3's engine) is one of the best I've seen, but even it only scales so far core-wise on the CPU.
In terms of what limits your games, well that depends on the resolution you play it, the frame rate, and what components you have. You can easily get CPU limited with a weak CPU and a modern GPU.
My phone has a 4 core CPU, so does my desktop. However just one core of my desktop destroys my phone performance wise. A quad core processor doesn't mean performance, it means that to get the max performance it is capable of, you have to have a minimum of 4 threads that all work concurrently to their full capacity.
I can build you a slow quad core CPU.
Also you misunderstand how hyperthreading works. It doesn't only give X% of the CPU to a given process. It simply allows for more threads in hardware, and thus less context switching (which is expensive). My desktop CPU is hyperthreaded, however a single thread can use 100% of one core no problem. If I load two threads, both demanding as much time as they can get, on one core each gets 50% of the core.
That aside, MOAR THREADS!!111 isn't always the way to go. With games, there is only so much you can divide tasks down and still have the threads working efficiently. Not all problems are infinitely divisible.
Always look at who is making an argument, and what they offer. nVidia has slow, wide, stream processors. They are great for graphics, and some other things. However clock speed is not their thing. A modern GTX 680 barely breaks 1GHz. Also each sub unit does very little. The GPU is powerful only because it has tons of them, over a thousand.
Their GPUs are also only good at certain tasks. You find that depending on the kind of problem their speed varies drastically.
Intel is the other way around. Clock speed isn't a big problem for them. 4GHz is fairly easy to attain on a 4 core chip, and they can do over 3GHz on their 8 core chips in most cases (depends on the type of load). Also their cores are heavy hitting, they do things fast, and they are fast at basically everything. They handle all problems pretty equally well.
Oh and they do it all while dealing with slower memory. GPUs need very high speed memory, which gets pretty expensive, Intel CPUs can deal with far slower memory and still perform well.
I'm not saying either of these is the One True Way(tm). My system has a fast Intel CPU in it for some things, a fast GTX 680 in it for others, and for what I like most (games) they both work together.
You just have to be careful with who's pushing what. OF course nVidia wants slow, parallel, processors to be the way things are, that's what they sell. Same shit an Intel pushing raytracing: They like it because CPUs do it better. Doesn't mean either of them are right or aren't pushing their agenda.
What is the reason for an anti-outsourcing rant in this thread? To me, it sounds like the guy has his own website and that's what he's talking about. Do you host your own website? By that I mean do you have your own server, on your own property? If not, then you are outsourcing it. Even if you do, you are still probably outsourcing your Internet access and power generation.
If you don't like outsourcing that's fine and there's plenty of arguments against it, but save it for when it is relevant. Don't just go off on it.
Most individuals outsource their webhosting, and for good reason.
I tried Reaper but did not care for it. It's ok, but not as good as Sonar I found, and also lacks in the addons Sonar has.
In terms of something like that though I'm not interested in running software under Wine. Not only because I found Wine extremely problematic when I tested it at work but because it seems silly to me to not just run Windows programs on Windows.
I'm not looking for a reason to switch to Linux, Windows works well, I find it less frustrating and problematic than Linux personally. I'd switch if someone could show me that I could do everything I want to do as well or better, and that there was other benefits of some kind.
So you'll point me then to the Linux distribution that "works already" with all my hardware? I'll need one that has drivers for the GTX 680 that support OpenGL 4.2, so the binary nVidia drivers, drivers for an Auzentech HomeTheater HD card (CA20K2 chip), MCU Pro drivers, i1Display Pro drivers (and software that can allow it to talk to an NEC 2690), and soon drivers for a MOTU HDX-SDI.
What's that? You don't have one of those? Ok then.
Crowing about Linux systems "already working" is silly because that's only the case with quite standard/low intensity hardware which is the same for Windows. Install Windows on a system with integrated graphics, a UAA spec soundcard, and an Intel NIC and it works out of box. Same with Linux (usually). However when you start getting some higher end hardware, which gamers are wont to do, you need to go fetch drivers. Then things become problematic in Linux often.
Windows has updated its sound model several times. The current MS recommended way of doing audio for games would be XAudio 2, same as the Xbox 360.
However, it still supports old school sound APIs, all the way back to MME, which a surprising number of newer programs still use. So you can load up something quite old, and sound works no problem. Same deal with graphics. When a new DirectX comes out, it includes all the old DirectX APIs, bugs and all, inside of it. So if a program makes DX 3 calls, it can make those calls on a system with DX 11.1.
There's something to be said for that. It is nice to be able to run most programs without fuss. There are limits to how far back you can go, and at a certain point an emulator makes more sense, but MS does a pretty good job of keeping old APIs working, while still adding new ones when they want to.
A number of libraries I have are in NKS format, NI's container format and are encrypted so that only Kontakt can open them. EastWest's stuff all works only with their own Play software, it is a proprietary format. Neither are Windows only, they are Windows and Mac, but they are not Linux.
This is the reality of high end samples. Many companies do not distribute them in open formats because of piracy concerns (legit or not). You find that most of the really good stuff is locked down like this.
Also, you can argue if it was a good decision or not, but the money is already spent. I have thousands of dollars of samples. I'm not interested in rebuying them, even if I could find something of similar quality in an open format (so far, no luck there, I do sniff around for samples all the time).
Way to pull the zealot thing: Focus on one single aspect, claim is sucks, and then try to frame the argument as being about that.
No, Civ 5 is not the only thing that keeps me on Windows. I was simply listing the games I currently play. Also I don't think it is a POS. Not as good as Civ 4 but I like it. I could have gone on with that list, to include games I've purchased, but have yet to play, and games that I wish to purchase but have not done so yet. Then, of course, there's the not so minor issue of the music production software I listed.
It isn't a matter of a game, or two games, it is a matter of many. I want to play new games as I am interested in them, not find one game and play just that. I also want to do music production, and I'm not interested in repurchasing my samples, even were there samples for Linux of similar quality (there aren't). I want to keep using my current libraries as they were quite expensive.
Xcom 2012, Civ 5, Elemental Fallen Enchantress, Fallout New Vegas, Battlefield 3, and Medieval 2 Total War. Those are the games I've installed and play as the mood strikes me. However they aren't the only ones, I have a list of other games I own but haven't the time to play yet. More or less I want all of the games. I love games, and I own a ton.
Games aren't the only things though, I'd also need Cakewalk Sonar (and affiliated plugins), or something very much like it, Native Instruments Kontakt and EastWest Play.
I'd also need support for my hardware, some of which is a bit esoteric (like a MCU Pro).
If I had a good DAW, good VIs, and all the games, I suppose I could consider switching. Of course I'd still need to be sold on a reason as to why, since personally I find Linux more frustrating to use.
However it isn't as simple as one or two games. I want all of the games I have, and all the new ones that spark my fancy.
It's a reporter. They don't know which end of the gun is the business end. Remember the press reported that the Aurora shooter used an "AK-47" when in fact it was an AR-15 variant.
Birds are not shot with rifles, they are shot with shotguns, also sometimes called scatter guns. These are smooth bore weapons, no rifling, that can fire out "shot" which is a collection of small pellets. How small varies depending on the shot load. For bird hunting "birdshot" is used. The largest would be about 4mm though that is rarely used, more commonly it is around 2.5mm. The purpose of this is threefold:
1) To increase the area of effect. Point shooting a small, moving, target is very hard. Shot spreads out and thus provides a wider hitbox. It makes it far easier.
2) To decrease damage to the target. A high powered rifle round could annihilate much of a bird, rendering any meat one might get useless (remember this was all developed back when it was hunting for sustenance). Light shot causes shallower wounds.
3) Safety. So long as the gun is fired above the horizon, it is of no danger. The shot is metal spheres, and thus cannot maintain a ballistic trajectory. Due to their small size, they are very subject to friction and lose their kinetic energy quickly. When they fall to the ground, they are not dangerous.
So no, there will be no problems with someone missing and hitting a neighbour. For a bullet to be dangerous over long distances it needs to be fired from a rifled weapon. The spin stabilizes it and allows it to maintain a ballistic trajectory and thus its energy even over very long distance. Thus when fired at an upward angle it could indeed fly for a long time and hit with lethal force.
For all those reasons, you'll see something like this done with 12ga shotguns loaded with #6-8 birdshot, not a 7.62x51mm rifle loaded with BTHP rounds.
They should never be able to comment on when other do it?
That is a rather silly line of thinking. That is the same kind of BS as when people say "US citizens shouldn't be able to criticize China for human rights because the US doesn't have a perfect human rights record!"
MS has been getting pretty good with regards to standards and the like. As such I don't think there is anything wrong with them pointing out when others are not. Even if they weren't it wouldn't make their criticism less valid, it would just mean they should turn it inward as well.
Developers and publisher like Steam because it is easy to sell on, there's a lot of people that buy from it, and it gives you a larger cut of the final sale price than retail.
They are all in to Steam because it is some amazing special platform, just because it lets them get more sales and money on a platform, Windows PC, that they already sell on. For that matter, most of them will go and sell on other online distribution platforms as well, like Impulse, GameFly, and so on.
In terms of the DRM, some publishers like it and use it explicitly, releasing Steamworks games that will require Steam, regardless of where you bought them (including retail). Others could take or leave it, using it only when it is on Steam and then only because it is mandatory (some even have a loader that is the Steamworks encrypted executable, letting you run the game without Steam). Still others don't trust it, and include their own DRM on top of Steamworks. Yet others, EA in particular (the biggest publisher out there) will use Steam, but are more interested in having people use their own DD service (Origin in EA's case).
The game industry sure doesn't hate Steam, it was what ushered in DD revolution, but they are sold on it as a platform. All they care about is it lets them sell games on a platform people buy them on, that being MS Windows.
Valve can put Steam on whatever they want, that doesn't mean developers will flock to it. To see that, just look at Steam on the Mac. Here you have a fairly large platform, yet the amount of games for it is far, FAR smaller than for Windows. Steam coming over to the Mac didn't suddenly make publishers want to spend the money to port their games. Some see the Mac as being worth the cost to port to. More of them don't.
Of your examples, only one has stuck around for any length of time and that is d-pad. The motion control has remained firmly a niche thing. While other companies have played with it, by and large it is something that is used only as a gimmick, and in very few titles (outside of the Wii where it is mandatory more or less). Revolutionary it is not.
As for touch screens, you seriously think the DS has driven that? Not even. That would be smartphones all the way. For the most part the touch screen stuff on the DS is again gimmicky, with primary game control being done with the controllers. The heavy touchscreen platform is smartphones.
This also seems to conveniently forget the N64, which was a rather poor showing next to the Playstation. Sony, a brand new company to the console market, managed to rocket to the #1 spot largely because the Saturn was expensive and problematic and the N64 couldn't produce the same visuals and used expensive carts.
Nintendo has not continued to "revolutionize the gaming world" they have just made games and gaming systems, some which have done better than others. Nothing wrong with that but stop trying to pretend like they are some amazing force of nature that drives things forward. No, not really.
The motion control thing is the best example. It fascinated many people, sold a lot of Wiis, encouraged copying, and ultimately changed nothing. A success commercially, not revolutionary.
The idea in the US is that you really try to only bring people you are fairly sure are guilty to trial. A trial costs a lot of money and majorly disrupts a person's life. You don't say "Just take them to trial, it'll get all sorted out there."
In the case of an affirmative defense, like self defense, what should happen is the police investigate the situation and determine if the affirmative defense holds water. If it doesn't, they then had it off to the DA for charges.
So "Wait for the facts," is indeed appropriate. You would probably like the same courtesy extended to you if you were suspected of a crime. You'd like them to see if there is a reason to actually charge you, not just toss you in a trial and let that sort it all out.
Also there's the issue that you don't want to go to trial if you aren't ready, or you can well lose. If the state goes off half-cocked and charges someone with little to no evidence, their lawyer will likely file a speedy trial motion to push for a fast date, because they know the state will be screwed.
It -is- a joke, Blizzard's joke in fact. Back in the early days of WoW they did an April Fools joke, saying that you'd be able to order food from Panderan Express (a play on the real company Panda Express) in game with the/panda command. More info: http://www.wowwiki.com/Pandaren_Xpress.
It was a joke at the expense of Sony, who really had implemented a/pizza command in Everquest 2 that would call up Pizza Hut's web page so you could order pizza.
However apparently Blizzard is completely fucking out of ideas, and forgot it was a joke, and so now kung-fu pandas are part of WoW.
In a single player game, you usually save your game quite often, or it does it for you (or both). So if you fuck up, you are back at the checkpoint, not back at the beginning. This is how most popular MMOs work. If you fail to kill a boss and wipe out, the boss resets. You cannot move on through repeated failures, but nor do you move back.
Or I could use my actual nSpire. If the best suggestion is "emulate a TI" then that is rather an argument to the usefulness of TI calculators. The argument from some seems to be "Oh a phone can do it so much better!" Ok, well then let's see better.
Seriously, it is real, real hard for me to find programs that don't run on 64-bit Windows these days. Windows has a flawless 32-bit user mode compatibility layer, so all 32-bit apps run no problem. The only cases that you have problems are:
1) Kernel mode stuff. There is no 32-bit kernel mode shit on 64-bit.
2) 16-bit programs. 64-bit Windows does have the 16-bit compatibility layer since there's no 16-bit mode you can access form long mode on the CPU.
3) Stupid programs that check the version and fail out, even though they'd actually run.
There just aren't many of those anymore. We use some amazingly fussy engineering programs at work, and they all run on 64-bit Windows these days.
So if your software really won't work, look and see if there's an update, or something else that'll do the job. If you just haven't tried it, then try it. Get a copy of 7 64-bit and see. I bet you have no problems. If you really have old 16-bit programs you need to run, do it in a VM, they can't benefit from modern system resources anyhow.
That was largely because DX10 support was gimmicky and done incorrectly. DX10 was a major new model for how things worked (hence the break) and so it required doing things differently. Early attempts didn't, it was just a "Oooo look at what we have!" kind of thing.
You did see the occasional game that did it right, but only later. Now most games use DX11 (since it is backward compatible with DX10, just with less features on 10 hardware).
People seem to forget that Steam is just a platform to sell games, an online store. It doesn't port your games. So Valve putting Steam on Linux means very little, unless companies start porting their games to Linux.
For that to happen, there will have to be a worthwhile amount of sales for existing Linux titles. Publishers will need to see that the cost of the port will be worth it. Remember it isn't as simple as "Just use OpenGL and you can port it!" Each platform takes work and QA and that means money. They have to see an ROI to want to fund it.
Valve can like Linux all they like, if people don't buy games on Linux, and publishers don't port games to Linux, it won't matter. Valve is worried because they think people might start buying form MS instead of Valve. They make a lot of money doing very little. Steam lets the be highly effective middlemen and make a killing at it. They are worried the Windows Store will threaten that.
Game publishers are much less likely to care. They just want people to but their games in large numbers, they don't care how the people choose to do that.
Because AMD's OpenGL drivers are crap. I remember when Brink came out, one of the only games to use OpenGL recently. Ran great on nVidia cards, no surprise since graphics weren't all that high end, but poor even on high end AMD cards.
Any gamer with an AMD card would rather see a DX title: It'll run better.
GPUs are powerful because they are more limited than CPUs. They are very good at what they do, but not as good at general operations. So, you can find things they are exceedingly good at, and thus way faster than CPUs, but also things they are bad at, and thus way slower.
1 TFlop on a video card isn't the same as a TFlop on a CPU in terms of the things you can do. A simple example of the limits are memory, the GPU relies on very fast local memory to do its work, but it is small, relatively speaking, under 10GB. So if your problem set is large, that is a problem as the data then has to go over the PCIe bus which is slow, from the GPU's perspective.
Don't get me wrong, they are dynamite for many kinds of problems, hence why they are popular, but you can't just compare them to a CPU.
Thing is, more powerful calculators actually do make it easier to advance in math quicker. The reason is you discover advanced math has a lot of repetitive bullshit. While it is important to learn how to do that stuff, once you know it, there is little point to repeating it over and over and over.
Also in the real world, you discover that you do not try to solve problems in an artificial vacuum where you have minimal access to tools, you have an enriched toolset.
The best math class I ever had allowed for any calculator you wished, was open note, open book, and open teacher. You could go up and ask the teacher for info on a test. He wouldn't give you the answer, but he'd help set you on the right path. My pre-calc knowledge was solid after that class, I positively rocked the intro test in calc (it was a precalc test to make sure our skills were sufficient for the class) to the point the teacher asked me where I'd learned precalc.
It is harder on the teacher to design a good course without artificial restrictions, but it'll lead to better education for the students. When someone says "Oh that calculator is too powerful, " what they are really saying is "I can't think of a way to accurately teach and test your knowledge."
I find it even more funny because the only fields where you really do need advanced math, engineering mostly, the first thing you do is get introduced to things like Matlab because you haven't the time to fuck around with easier things. You really don't find cases where it is important to be able to do algebra or trig using nothing but a 4 function calculator.
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I think you are a little confused. While GPUs do massive work in parallel, they work on the graphics. That is something you can divide down a whole lot. You could do it per pixel, so about 2 million parallel ops for a modern display.
However that has nothing to do with what you do on the CPU. That's where the AI, game logic, often the physics, and so on happen. Some of it can be threaded out nicely, some can't. Some of it is efficient on its own thread, some doesn't use much.
It varies by game, and game engine. Frostbite 2 (BF3's engine) is one of the best I've seen, but even it only scales so far core-wise on the CPU.
In terms of what limits your games, well that depends on the resolution you play it, the frame rate, and what components you have. You can easily get CPU limited with a weak CPU and a modern GPU.
My phone has a 4 core CPU, so does my desktop. However just one core of my desktop destroys my phone performance wise. A quad core processor doesn't mean performance, it means that to get the max performance it is capable of, you have to have a minimum of 4 threads that all work concurrently to their full capacity.
I can build you a slow quad core CPU.
Also you misunderstand how hyperthreading works. It doesn't only give X% of the CPU to a given process. It simply allows for more threads in hardware, and thus less context switching (which is expensive). My desktop CPU is hyperthreaded, however a single thread can use 100% of one core no problem. If I load two threads, both demanding as much time as they can get, on one core each gets 50% of the core.
That aside, MOAR THREADS!!111 isn't always the way to go. With games, there is only so much you can divide tasks down and still have the threads working efficiently. Not all problems are infinitely divisible.
Always look at who is making an argument, and what they offer. nVidia has slow, wide, stream processors. They are great for graphics, and some other things. However clock speed is not their thing. A modern GTX 680 barely breaks 1GHz. Also each sub unit does very little. The GPU is powerful only because it has tons of them, over a thousand.
Their GPUs are also only good at certain tasks. You find that depending on the kind of problem their speed varies drastically.
Intel is the other way around. Clock speed isn't a big problem for them. 4GHz is fairly easy to attain on a 4 core chip, and they can do over 3GHz on their 8 core chips in most cases (depends on the type of load). Also their cores are heavy hitting, they do things fast, and they are fast at basically everything. They handle all problems pretty equally well.
Oh and they do it all while dealing with slower memory. GPUs need very high speed memory, which gets pretty expensive, Intel CPUs can deal with far slower memory and still perform well.
I'm not saying either of these is the One True Way(tm). My system has a fast Intel CPU in it for some things, a fast GTX 680 in it for others, and for what I like most (games) they both work together.
You just have to be careful with who's pushing what. OF course nVidia wants slow, parallel, processors to be the way things are, that's what they sell. Same shit an Intel pushing raytracing: They like it because CPUs do it better. Doesn't mean either of them are right or aren't pushing their agenda.
When you fall off that high horse.
What is the reason for an anti-outsourcing rant in this thread? To me, it sounds like the guy has his own website and that's what he's talking about. Do you host your own website? By that I mean do you have your own server, on your own property? If not, then you are outsourcing it. Even if you do, you are still probably outsourcing your Internet access and power generation.
If you don't like outsourcing that's fine and there's plenty of arguments against it, but save it for when it is relevant. Don't just go off on it.
Most individuals outsource their webhosting, and for good reason.
I tried Reaper but did not care for it. It's ok, but not as good as Sonar I found, and also lacks in the addons Sonar has.
In terms of something like that though I'm not interested in running software under Wine. Not only because I found Wine extremely problematic when I tested it at work but because it seems silly to me to not just run Windows programs on Windows.
I'm not looking for a reason to switch to Linux, Windows works well, I find it less frustrating and problematic than Linux personally. I'd switch if someone could show me that I could do everything I want to do as well or better, and that there was other benefits of some kind.
So you'll point me then to the Linux distribution that "works already" with all my hardware? I'll need one that has drivers for the GTX 680 that support OpenGL 4.2, so the binary nVidia drivers, drivers for an Auzentech HomeTheater HD card (CA20K2 chip), MCU Pro drivers, i1Display Pro drivers (and software that can allow it to talk to an NEC 2690), and soon drivers for a MOTU HDX-SDI.
What's that? You don't have one of those? Ok then.
Crowing about Linux systems "already working" is silly because that's only the case with quite standard/low intensity hardware which is the same for Windows. Install Windows on a system with integrated graphics, a UAA spec soundcard, and an Intel NIC and it works out of box. Same with Linux (usually). However when you start getting some higher end hardware, which gamers are wont to do, you need to go fetch drivers. Then things become problematic in Linux often.
Windows has updated its sound model several times. The current MS recommended way of doing audio for games would be XAudio 2, same as the Xbox 360.
However, it still supports old school sound APIs, all the way back to MME, which a surprising number of newer programs still use. So you can load up something quite old, and sound works no problem. Same deal with graphics. When a new DirectX comes out, it includes all the old DirectX APIs, bugs and all, inside of it. So if a program makes DX 3 calls, it can make those calls on a system with DX 11.1.
There's something to be said for that. It is nice to be able to run most programs without fuss. There are limits to how far back you can go, and at a certain point an emulator makes more sense, but MS does a pretty good job of keeping old APIs working, while still adding new ones when they want to.
A number of libraries I have are in NKS format, NI's container format and are encrypted so that only Kontakt can open them. EastWest's stuff all works only with their own Play software, it is a proprietary format. Neither are Windows only, they are Windows and Mac, but they are not Linux.
This is the reality of high end samples. Many companies do not distribute them in open formats because of piracy concerns (legit or not). You find that most of the really good stuff is locked down like this.
Also, you can argue if it was a good decision or not, but the money is already spent. I have thousands of dollars of samples. I'm not interested in rebuying them, even if I could find something of similar quality in an open format (so far, no luck there, I do sniff around for samples all the time).
Way to pull the zealot thing: Focus on one single aspect, claim is sucks, and then try to frame the argument as being about that.
No, Civ 5 is not the only thing that keeps me on Windows. I was simply listing the games I currently play. Also I don't think it is a POS. Not as good as Civ 4 but I like it. I could have gone on with that list, to include games I've purchased, but have yet to play, and games that I wish to purchase but have not done so yet. Then, of course, there's the not so minor issue of the music production software I listed.
It isn't a matter of a game, or two games, it is a matter of many. I want to play new games as I am interested in them, not find one game and play just that. I also want to do music production, and I'm not interested in repurchasing my samples, even were there samples for Linux of similar quality (there aren't). I want to keep using my current libraries as they were quite expensive.
Xcom 2012, Civ 5, Elemental Fallen Enchantress, Fallout New Vegas, Battlefield 3, and Medieval 2 Total War. Those are the games I've installed and play as the mood strikes me. However they aren't the only ones, I have a list of other games I own but haven't the time to play yet. More or less I want all of the games. I love games, and I own a ton.
Games aren't the only things though, I'd also need Cakewalk Sonar (and affiliated plugins), or something very much like it, Native Instruments Kontakt and EastWest Play.
I'd also need support for my hardware, some of which is a bit esoteric (like a MCU Pro).
If I had a good DAW, good VIs, and all the games, I suppose I could consider switching. Of course I'd still need to be sold on a reason as to why, since personally I find Linux more frustrating to use.
However it isn't as simple as one or two games. I want all of the games I have, and all the new ones that spark my fancy.
It's a reporter. They don't know which end of the gun is the business end. Remember the press reported that the Aurora shooter used an "AK-47" when in fact it was an AR-15 variant.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/journalists_firearms_identification_guide/
That chart is not too far off.
Birds are not shot with rifles, they are shot with shotguns, also sometimes called scatter guns. These are smooth bore weapons, no rifling, that can fire out "shot" which is a collection of small pellets. How small varies depending on the shot load. For bird hunting "birdshot" is used. The largest would be about 4mm though that is rarely used, more commonly it is around 2.5mm. The purpose of this is threefold:
1) To increase the area of effect. Point shooting a small, moving, target is very hard. Shot spreads out and thus provides a wider hitbox. It makes it far easier.
2) To decrease damage to the target. A high powered rifle round could annihilate much of a bird, rendering any meat one might get useless (remember this was all developed back when it was hunting for sustenance). Light shot causes shallower wounds.
3) Safety. So long as the gun is fired above the horizon, it is of no danger. The shot is metal spheres, and thus cannot maintain a ballistic trajectory. Due to their small size, they are very subject to friction and lose their kinetic energy quickly. When they fall to the ground, they are not dangerous.
So no, there will be no problems with someone missing and hitting a neighbour. For a bullet to be dangerous over long distances it needs to be fired from a rifled weapon. The spin stabilizes it and allows it to maintain a ballistic trajectory and thus its energy even over very long distance. Thus when fired at an upward angle it could indeed fly for a long time and hit with lethal force.
For all those reasons, you'll see something like this done with 12ga shotguns loaded with #6-8 birdshot, not a 7.62x51mm rifle loaded with BTHP rounds.
They should never be able to comment on when other do it?
That is a rather silly line of thinking. That is the same kind of BS as when people say "US citizens shouldn't be able to criticize China for human rights because the US doesn't have a perfect human rights record!"
MS has been getting pretty good with regards to standards and the like. As such I don't think there is anything wrong with them pointing out when others are not. Even if they weren't it wouldn't make their criticism less valid, it would just mean they should turn it inward as well.
Developers and publisher like Steam because it is easy to sell on, there's a lot of people that buy from it, and it gives you a larger cut of the final sale price than retail.
They are all in to Steam because it is some amazing special platform, just because it lets them get more sales and money on a platform, Windows PC, that they already sell on. For that matter, most of them will go and sell on other online distribution platforms as well, like Impulse, GameFly, and so on.
In terms of the DRM, some publishers like it and use it explicitly, releasing Steamworks games that will require Steam, regardless of where you bought them (including retail). Others could take or leave it, using it only when it is on Steam and then only because it is mandatory (some even have a loader that is the Steamworks encrypted executable, letting you run the game without Steam). Still others don't trust it, and include their own DRM on top of Steamworks. Yet others, EA in particular (the biggest publisher out there) will use Steam, but are more interested in having people use their own DD service (Origin in EA's case).
The game industry sure doesn't hate Steam, it was what ushered in DD revolution, but they are sold on it as a platform. All they care about is it lets them sell games on a platform people buy them on, that being MS Windows.
Valve can put Steam on whatever they want, that doesn't mean developers will flock to it. To see that, just look at Steam on the Mac. Here you have a fairly large platform, yet the amount of games for it is far, FAR smaller than for Windows. Steam coming over to the Mac didn't suddenly make publishers want to spend the money to port their games. Some see the Mac as being worth the cost to port to. More of them don't.
Of your examples, only one has stuck around for any length of time and that is d-pad. The motion control has remained firmly a niche thing. While other companies have played with it, by and large it is something that is used only as a gimmick, and in very few titles (outside of the Wii where it is mandatory more or less). Revolutionary it is not.
As for touch screens, you seriously think the DS has driven that? Not even. That would be smartphones all the way. For the most part the touch screen stuff on the DS is again gimmicky, with primary game control being done with the controllers. The heavy touchscreen platform is smartphones.
This also seems to conveniently forget the N64, which was a rather poor showing next to the Playstation. Sony, a brand new company to the console market, managed to rocket to the #1 spot largely because the Saturn was expensive and problematic and the N64 couldn't produce the same visuals and used expensive carts.
Nintendo has not continued to "revolutionize the gaming world" they have just made games and gaming systems, some which have done better than others. Nothing wrong with that but stop trying to pretend like they are some amazing force of nature that drives things forward. No, not really.
The motion control thing is the best example. It fascinated many people, sold a lot of Wiis, encouraged copying, and ultimately changed nothing. A success commercially, not revolutionary.
The idea in the US is that you really try to only bring people you are fairly sure are guilty to trial. A trial costs a lot of money and majorly disrupts a person's life. You don't say "Just take them to trial, it'll get all sorted out there."
In the case of an affirmative defense, like self defense, what should happen is the police investigate the situation and determine if the affirmative defense holds water. If it doesn't, they then had it off to the DA for charges.
So "Wait for the facts," is indeed appropriate. You would probably like the same courtesy extended to you if you were suspected of a crime. You'd like them to see if there is a reason to actually charge you, not just toss you in a trial and let that sort it all out.
Also there's the issue that you don't want to go to trial if you aren't ready, or you can well lose. If the state goes off half-cocked and charges someone with little to no evidence, their lawyer will likely file a speedy trial motion to push for a fast date, because they know the state will be screwed.
It -is- a joke, Blizzard's joke in fact. Back in the early days of WoW they did an April Fools joke, saying that you'd be able to order food from Panderan Express (a play on the real company Panda Express) in game with the /panda command. More info: http://www.wowwiki.com/Pandaren_Xpress.
It was a joke at the expense of Sony, who really had implemented a /pizza command in Everquest 2 that would call up Pizza Hut's web page so you could order pizza.
However apparently Blizzard is completely fucking out of ideas, and forgot it was a joke, and so now kung-fu pandas are part of WoW.
In a single player game, you usually save your game quite often, or it does it for you (or both). So if you fuck up, you are back at the checkpoint, not back at the beginning. This is how most popular MMOs work. If you fail to kill a boss and wipe out, the boss resets. You cannot move on through repeated failures, but nor do you move back.
Or I could use my actual nSpire. If the best suggestion is "emulate a TI" then that is rather an argument to the usefulness of TI calculators. The argument from some seems to be "Oh a phone can do it so much better!" Ok, well then let's see better.
Seriously, it is real, real hard for me to find programs that don't run on 64-bit Windows these days. Windows has a flawless 32-bit user mode compatibility layer, so all 32-bit apps run no problem. The only cases that you have problems are:
1) Kernel mode stuff. There is no 32-bit kernel mode shit on 64-bit.
2) 16-bit programs. 64-bit Windows does have the 16-bit compatibility layer since there's no 16-bit mode you can access form long mode on the CPU.
3) Stupid programs that check the version and fail out, even though they'd actually run.
There just aren't many of those anymore. We use some amazingly fussy engineering programs at work, and they all run on 64-bit Windows these days.
So if your software really won't work, look and see if there's an update, or something else that'll do the job. If you just haven't tried it, then try it. Get a copy of 7 64-bit and see. I bet you have no problems. If you really have old 16-bit programs you need to run, do it in a VM, they can't benefit from modern system resources anyhow.
That was largely because DX10 support was gimmicky and done incorrectly. DX10 was a major new model for how things worked (hence the break) and so it required doing things differently. Early attempts didn't, it was just a "Oooo look at what we have!" kind of thing.
You did see the occasional game that did it right, but only later. Now most games use DX11 (since it is backward compatible with DX10, just with less features on 10 hardware).
People seem to forget that Steam is just a platform to sell games, an online store. It doesn't port your games. So Valve putting Steam on Linux means very little, unless companies start porting their games to Linux.
For that to happen, there will have to be a worthwhile amount of sales for existing Linux titles. Publishers will need to see that the cost of the port will be worth it. Remember it isn't as simple as "Just use OpenGL and you can port it!" Each platform takes work and QA and that means money. They have to see an ROI to want to fund it.
Valve can like Linux all they like, if people don't buy games on Linux, and publishers don't port games to Linux, it won't matter. Valve is worried because they think people might start buying form MS instead of Valve. They make a lot of money doing very little. Steam lets the be highly effective middlemen and make a killing at it. They are worried the Windows Store will threaten that.
Game publishers are much less likely to care. They just want people to but their games in large numbers, they don't care how the people choose to do that.
Because AMD's OpenGL drivers are crap. I remember when Brink came out, one of the only games to use OpenGL recently. Ran great on nVidia cards, no surprise since graphics weren't all that high end, but poor even on high end AMD cards.
Any gamer with an AMD card would rather see a DX title: It'll run better.
GPUs are powerful because they are more limited than CPUs. They are very good at what they do, but not as good at general operations. So, you can find things they are exceedingly good at, and thus way faster than CPUs, but also things they are bad at, and thus way slower.
1 TFlop on a video card isn't the same as a TFlop on a CPU in terms of the things you can do. A simple example of the limits are memory, the GPU relies on very fast local memory to do its work, but it is small, relatively speaking, under 10GB. So if your problem set is large, that is a problem as the data then has to go over the PCIe bus which is slow, from the GPU's perspective.
Don't get me wrong, they are dynamite for many kinds of problems, hence why they are popular, but you can't just compare them to a CPU.
Thing is, more powerful calculators actually do make it easier to advance in math quicker. The reason is you discover advanced math has a lot of repetitive bullshit. While it is important to learn how to do that stuff, once you know it, there is little point to repeating it over and over and over.
Also in the real world, you discover that you do not try to solve problems in an artificial vacuum where you have minimal access to tools, you have an enriched toolset.
The best math class I ever had allowed for any calculator you wished, was open note, open book, and open teacher. You could go up and ask the teacher for info on a test. He wouldn't give you the answer, but he'd help set you on the right path. My pre-calc knowledge was solid after that class, I positively rocked the intro test in calc (it was a precalc test to make sure our skills were sufficient for the class) to the point the teacher asked me where I'd learned precalc.
It is harder on the teacher to design a good course without artificial restrictions, but it'll lead to better education for the students. When someone says "Oh that calculator is too powerful, " what they are really saying is "I can't think of a way to accurately teach and test your knowledge."
I find it even more funny because the only fields where you really do need advanced math, engineering mostly, the first thing you do is get introduced to things like Matlab because you haven't the time to fuck around with easier things. You really don't find cases where it is important to be able to do algebra or trig using nothing but a 4 function calculator.