Is it just me? Is it the Chicago area and we just refuse to buy into it? Ive read countless articles on which one is better, which will win, and that the Blu-ray has already won. And I still haven't seen one outside a store yet.
I think that doesn't prove anything other than Anecdotal evidence. For a "new product" and in a certain price range, a product can be a big hit... but still be on a small scale.
I drive around a Mercedes Benz Sprinter (or whatever brand you want to associate with it), and they have been in the North America now for 4 years. UPS and FedEx are driving them around town constantly. And people stills say to me at the gas station that they have never seen one before and ask all kinds of questions.
Doesn't mean they aren't selling well in their class/market.
in 3 years, the market for Blue Ray and HD DVD will be such that probably there won't be any non players. Does anyone still purchase CD-ROM drives are CD-RECORDERS? Not when you can get a DVD recorder with SATA for $30 (check ZipZoomFly).
Actually... I think a lot of people value add-ons to the motherboard more than a card. A chip for Ethernet Gigabit cost maybe $3 and to add it to a motherboard costs next to nothing. But to package it as a card, with instructions, box, independent shipping and support - makes it sell for $25.
Right now you can get from Newegg PCI Express SATA controllers with 2 ports for $20, but the ones with 4 ports are all more than double. Just the way it goes, nobody making one with 4 ports with two chips on it;)
What about heavy CPU usage: making the CPU fan run harder (crud up quicker), CPU circuits burn up quicker, etc.
I think the Linux exclusion is foolish, but I think part of the issue is how often novice computer users blame hardware for what is software/driver problems. I'm sure Dell gets blamed all the time for "slow computer" when people have no concept of how RAM, video card, etc. impacts system.
On a positive note, this story further solidified (though it was already pretty iron-clad) my decision that Vista is not for me, for this express reason. I just finally got everything working the way I want - software, peripherals, etc., so why in hell would I "upgrade" just to say I did. Vista just offers no feature compelling enough for me to want to go through that hell of trying to get everything to work all over again. I'm just too old to be reinstalling or upgrading OS's just for the fun of it.
Basically XP is good enough for most application users. I mean prior to XP we had Windows 2000 which had poor laptop support (lack of standard WiFi interface as one simple example). Now laptops outsell desktops, that was not the case when Win 2000 was released. And what is the alternate, Windows 98Se or Windows ME?
Microsoft's problem is that their existing product is too good for the average person to give up. And poorly written drivers for cheap hardware is not something MS can solve.
The biggest problem I see MS left in Vista that they should have solved? Generic chipset drivers still only look for specific device ID's. I got a MSI Bluetooth adapter that I had to edit the bth.inf and trick Vista into loading a driver that was already inside of Vista! Works perfectly fine. After 3 months since RTM was shipped, why can't they have windows update do this for me?!
I suggest you consider that Dell (and others) are getting PAID by the vendors of the crapware! This is part of the reason a Dell computer is cheaper than putting together the parts yourself (even in quantity). Co-op marketing deals, bundle deals, etc.
Having it on a cd-rom or menu that nobody ever loads would make it worthless.
I hope my kids don't have the future I think they will. A small studio, with advertising inside the apartment that can't be turned off. Working 6 days a week, 10 hours a day, and still not having enough to eat good food. And having a police that exists not to protect people, but to keep the poor out of the rich neighborhoods.
I'm from the USA (native balding white guy, mid 30's), and know it pretty well - as I spent 2001-2004 living in a RV traveling the states working internet job via cell phones.
I have spent the last year living in Chile in a decent site city (200,000 people).
You pretty much describe Chile and MUCH of the world "outside the USA" from what I have studied...
Have you considered that maybe this is just the natural rebalance of wealth?
Frankly, the USA as it was from WW2 - 2000 could prove to be unsustainable... at least without some form of rebalance. Even if the average person in the USA were knocked down by 50% income... still better off than MANY places in the world.
And JAPAN in the 1980's and 1990's took a lot of the real wealth... cherry picked Hollywood, etc. Turned Tokyo into a city more expensive than NYC as quick as they could.
BTW, here in Chile the latin american tradition of close family is more responsible for the 'small studio' part... they actually share a house with many generations of the same family living under one roof. More family ties, less stress, more simple pleasures. The point is, there are cultural reasons too - not just financial.
Sleep mode has never really worked on Windows PCs, so most PC users and even recent switchers don't realize just how well sleep mode works on a Mac. *Certainly* Linux users don't generally know.
It is all about how well written the device drivers are. Many crappy ones on windows don't sleep right, etc.
Apple has a big win with such limited hardware support.
Tyan GX28 1u rackmount... plus a couple reasonable Opteron 242 CPU's... and 2GB of RAM... and some pair of modest hard drives (SATA)... and they have a system for $2500 that is well built and 64bit.
You know... I really fear this isn't a joke, is it?
$1500 power cord (The JBS review) the guy actually implies it is justified!
Does he not know what crap is behind the walls you plug into? How can you think that just the last 10 foot of a power cord is going to make any sigificant difference given the other kilometers of wire involved?
Sounds like a case for an in-store vending machine. Insert credit card and/or cash... push button, out comes your tiny little expensive memory card of choice.
I also considered a piecemeal commodity approach, e.g., filling racks with cheap 4 gig RAM 1U's running Linux, but then I'd have to come up with s/w that can coordinate those systems (basically, a head-end to hash the requests to the right 1U). memcached looks intriguing, but I'm still concerned about interconnect latencies.
I personally agree with heavy RAM caching approach you have and find that we still have foolish RAM limits even though we are in the 64 bit world:)
That said, I have been running for 5 months in production the Tyan GX28 1U servers... both Windows 2003 32bit and Gentoo Linux 64-bit servers (several of each).
-- Onboard SATA is on the legacy PCI bus from what I understand and we have seen it max out at speed of two 7200 RPM drives (no raid, just copy drive 1 to 2 and drive 3 to 4 at same time). Good enough for our purpose, but notable. -- As you have read here, to actually use > 4 memory slots you have to populate the 2nd cpu.
But overall a very solid system for the money. Bargain.
ure it's ridiculous that Nike buys Chinese shoes for $12 and sells them for $120, but will we really be better off buying those same shoes rebranded for $30 at WalMart, if $25 of that $30 shoots straight out of the country?
Yes - because we are just stupid to pay for image / marketing like we do. This is the USA's downfall.. we are so good at manipulating people's minds into wanting to have stuff that we can ask almost any price. This is why people HATE us, we never draw the line on marketing... it is an endless frontier.
Example: Paying for movie tickets, and product placement, and advertisements at start, what next? Product placement has a long way to go I think.
0. Realize that Telecommute and Videoconference were not juts buzzwords of the 1990's and have true pratical value. Maybe only go into offices and gather 2 days a week... cutting down 3 days of real commute!
Turns out, Europeans are pretty "me-centric" too. Many of them only know about the immediately specific area around them. I was amazed at how hypocritical this type of attitude is. and.... I also found that after I introduced myself, nobody cared what specific-city (or state) I was from. I was, "the American dude."
Europe has seen too many Americans, and too many insulting movies that portray europe.
I've been living 6 months in South America (Chile) and things are very different here... Especially in the slightly out of the way places.
1. They have very little real experience with the USA... travel is still expensive to the USA. And they know a lot from movies and actually think the USA is a great place... but not based on direct experience. 2. They often are very interested in what city I am from (Seattle)... they are actually happy to see someone from the states here, to pratice their English, etc.
But your main point is right (you said "I learned the truth to a myth. The rest of the world doesn't know anymore about the United States than the United States knows about the rest of the world.")... The USA does not have a monopoly on ignorance.
HOWEVER: People in the USA have the education and the financial resources to go out and make friends... but they choose not to. This is a bad thing, to squander the wealth and freedom. With the advent of Sea and Air travel it was considered an ideal to go visit distance places... most in the USA would rather seem to just stay home and watch it on TV and build fences. This is not a good policy... and how are we supposed to bridge these knowledge/personal relationship gaps?
Ogre is not a full engine, but Yake is one being developed around it.
Personally I think full engine is not so critical... and I selected Ogre becuase the code is very clean (choose any physics/sound/network library you want)... AND the portability is great! It supports directx7/directx9/OpenGL and Is good clean C++ code... so the next thing that comes along after DirectX9 and Ogre can easily support it. Given how much graphics technology drives your development investment... Ogre is a great choice.
We would all love the HL2 engine or latest Doom engine... but the price for a small commerical project is way out there....:)
Ogre does the right thing in terms of playing friendly with others, support what most gamers actually use (latest DirectX) and doing what it does well (clean code).
-----
BTW: I'm running a small indepdent game technology project... we are an established software company and we have a simulation idea we are working on (in house project, not rushed)... looking to hire work at home artists and programmers. Willing to let you learn Ogre as we go. aaafare at ipcoast.com email - put "game job" in the subject. Long-term focus is our goal here... steady paycheck, good people.
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Is it just me? Is it the Chicago area and we just refuse to buy into it? Ive read countless articles on which one is better, which will win, and that the Blu-ray has already won. And I still haven't seen one outside a store yet.
I think that doesn't prove anything other than Anecdotal evidence. For a "new product" and in a certain price range, a product can be a big hit... but still be on a small scale.
I drive around a Mercedes Benz Sprinter (or whatever brand you want to associate with it), and they have been in the North America now for 4 years. UPS and FedEx are driving them around town constantly. And people stills say to me at the gas station that they have never seen one before and ask all kinds of questions.
Doesn't mean they aren't selling well in their class/market.
in 3 years, the market for Blue Ray and HD DVD will be such that probably there won't be any non players. Does anyone still purchase CD-ROM drives are CD-RECORDERS? Not when you can get a DVD recorder with SATA for $30 (check ZipZoomFly).
Actually... I think a lot of people value add-ons to the motherboard more than a card. A chip for Ethernet Gigabit cost maybe $3 and to add it to a motherboard costs next to nothing. But to package it as a card, with instructions, box, independent shipping and support - makes it sell for $25.
;)
Right now you can get from Newegg PCI Express SATA controllers with 2 ports for $20, but the ones with 4 ports are all more than double. Just the way it goes, nobody making one with 4 ports with two chips on it
What about heavy CPU usage: making the CPU fan run harder (crud up quicker), CPU circuits burn up quicker, etc.
I think the Linux exclusion is foolish, but I think part of the issue is how often novice computer users blame hardware for what is software/driver problems. I'm sure Dell gets blamed all the time for "slow computer" when people have no concept of how RAM, video card, etc. impacts system.
If you are producer of the software, 2 extra copies really doesn't cost you much.
If you are just a reseller... then you have to pay for all 3! So it costs Amazon real cash hit.
On a positive note, this story further solidified (though it was already pretty iron-clad) my decision that Vista is not for me, for this express reason. I just finally got everything working the way I want - software, peripherals, etc., so why in hell would I "upgrade" just to say I did. Vista just offers no feature compelling enough for me to want to go through that hell of trying to get everything to work all over again. I'm just too old to be reinstalling or upgrading OS's just for the fun of it.
Basically XP is good enough for most application users. I mean prior to XP we had Windows 2000 which had poor laptop support (lack of standard WiFi interface as one simple example). Now laptops outsell desktops, that was not the case when Win 2000 was released. And what is the alternate, Windows 98Se or Windows ME?
Microsoft's problem is that their existing product is too good for the average person to give up. And poorly written drivers for cheap hardware is not something MS can solve.
The biggest problem I see MS left in Vista that they should have solved? Generic chipset drivers still only look for specific device ID's. I got a MSI Bluetooth adapter that I had to edit the bth.inf and trick Vista into loading a driver that was already inside of Vista! Works perfectly fine. After 3 months since RTM was shipped, why can't they have windows update do this for me?!
I suggest you consider that Dell (and others) are getting PAID by the vendors of the crapware! This is part of the reason a Dell computer is cheaper than putting together the parts yourself (even in quantity). Co-op marketing deals, bundle deals, etc.
Having it on a cd-rom or menu that nobody ever loads would make it worthless.
Next time in vegas
Vista does support this - ReadyBoost - but USB2 isn't nearly as fast as SATA 300.
Who knows how much benefit it really provides, but it sets the direction. Nice for the software to be ahead of the hardware.
You assume no money is going to pay artists, script writers, support staff (customers who can't find their password), etc.
No matter how powerful the server and infrastructure... always the way of the game designer to push it near or past the limit.
These chips support the new intel VT extensions.... so wouldn't be surprised to see it built into a future version of OSX!
You insensitive clod, I'm in South America! It isn't winter here.
I hope my kids don't have the future I think they will. A small studio, with advertising inside the apartment that can't be turned off. Working 6 days a week, 10 hours a day, and still not having enough to eat good food. And having a police that exists not to protect people, but to keep the poor out of the rich neighborhoods.
...
I'm from the USA (native balding white guy, mid 30's), and know it pretty well - as I spent 2001-2004 living in a RV traveling the states working internet job via cell phones.
I have spent the last year living in Chile in a decent site city (200,000 people).
You pretty much describe Chile and MUCH of the world "outside the USA" from what I have studied
Have you considered that maybe this is just the natural rebalance of wealth?
Frankly, the USA as it was from WW2 - 2000 could prove to be unsustainable... at least without some form of rebalance. Even if the average person in the USA were knocked down by 50% income... still better off than MANY places in the world.
And JAPAN in the 1980's and 1990's took a lot of the real wealth... cherry picked Hollywood, etc. Turned Tokyo into a city more expensive than NYC as quick as they could.
BTW, here in Chile the latin american tradition of close family is more responsible for the 'small studio' part... they actually share a house with many generations of the same family living under one roof. More family ties, less stress, more simple pleasures. The point is, there are cultural reasons too - not just financial.
Sleep mode has never really worked on Windows PCs, so most PC users and even recent switchers don't realize just how well sleep mode works on a Mac. *Certainly* Linux users don't generally know.
It is all about how well written the device drivers are. Many crappy ones on windows don't sleep right, etc.
Apple has a big win with such limited hardware support.
They could get a nice Opteron in the first place.
Tyan GX28 1u rackmount... plus a couple reasonable Opteron 242 CPU's... and 2GB of RAM... and some pair of modest hard drives (SATA)... and they have a system for $2500 that is well built and 64bit.
You know... I really fear this isn't a joke, is it?
$1500 power cord (The JBS review) the guy actually implies it is justified!
Does he not know what crap is behind the walls you plug into? How can you think that just the last 10 foot of a power cord is going to make any sigificant difference given the other kilometers of wire involved?
Here in Chile the Spanish is considered very bad... many people even admit it.
I live in a Rural area (Arica, Chile) and it is even worse.
A person from Rural Mexico could likely not understand a person from Rural Chile...
You should check with the RV groups... many carry GPS systems with those 35 foot rigs.
One place to start
Sounds like a case for an in-store vending machine. Insert credit card and/or cash... push button, out comes your tiny little expensive memory card of choice.
No, not another .com bust... it is long term globalization that is causing this. The USA companies are not the only players any more.
Now, the UK/USA housing marketing... watch out for that bubble!!
I also considered a piecemeal commodity approach, e.g., filling racks with cheap 4 gig RAM 1U's running Linux, but then I'd have to come up with s/w that can coordinate those systems (basically, a head-end to hash the requests to the right 1U). memcached looks intriguing, but I'm still concerned about interconnect latencies.
:)
I personally agree with heavy RAM caching approach you have and find that we still have foolish RAM limits even though we are in the 64 bit world
That said, I have been running for 5 months in production the Tyan GX28 1U servers... both Windows 2003 32bit and Gentoo Linux 64-bit servers (several of each).
-- Onboard SATA is on the legacy PCI bus from what I understand and we have seen it max out at speed of two 7200 RPM drives (no raid, just copy drive 1 to 2 and drive 3 to 4 at same time). Good enough for our purpose, but notable.
-- As you have read here, to actually use > 4 memory slots you have to populate the 2nd cpu.
But overall a very solid system for the money. Bargain.
ure it's ridiculous that Nike buys Chinese shoes for $12 and sells them for $120, but will we really be better off buying those same shoes rebranded for $30 at WalMart, if $25 of that $30 shoots straight out of the country?
Yes - because we are just stupid to pay for image / marketing like we do. This is the USA's downfall.. we are so good at manipulating people's minds into wanting to have stuff that we can ask almost any price. This is why people HATE us, we never draw the line on marketing... it is an endless frontier.
Example: Paying for movie tickets, and product placement, and advertisements at start, what next? Product placement has a long way to go I think.
Agreed.
And you for get the most important.
0. Realize that Telecommute and Videoconference were not juts buzzwords of the 1990's and have true pratical value. Maybe only go into offices and gather 2 days a week... cutting down 3 days of real commute!
Freedom is not absolute. It never is. The old saying that "your freedom to swing your fist ends at my face" is as good a way of explaining it as any.
But has long-term freedom ever proven to survive?
In other words... does the frreedom to swing eventually always get eliminated in favor of the few times when someone swings too far.
The founding fathers of the USA debated this... but we have all lost our way on this debate.
Turns out, Europeans are pretty "me-centric" too. Many of them only know about the immediately specific area around them. I was amazed at how hypocritical this type of attitude is. and .... I also found that after I introduced myself, nobody cared what specific-city (or state) I was from. I was, "the American dude."
Europe has seen too many Americans, and too many insulting movies that portray europe.
I've been living 6 months in South America (Chile) and things are very different here... Especially in the slightly out of the way places.
1. They have very little real experience with the USA... travel is still expensive to the USA. And they know a lot from movies and actually think the USA is a great place... but not based on direct experience.
2. They often are very interested in what city I am from (Seattle)... they are actually happy to see someone from the states here, to pratice their English, etc.
But your main point is right (you said "I learned the truth to a myth. The rest of the world doesn't know anymore about the United States than the United States knows about the rest of the world.")... The USA does not have a monopoly on ignorance.
HOWEVER: People in the USA have the education and the financial resources to go out and make friends... but they choose not to. This is a bad thing, to squander the wealth and freedom. With the advent of Sea and Air travel it was considered an ideal to go visit distance places... most in the USA would rather seem to just stay home and watch it on TV and build fences. This is not a good policy... and how are we supposed to bridge these knowledge/personal relationship gaps?
Ogre is not a full engine, but Yake is one being developed around it.
:)
... looking to hire work at home artists and programmers. Willing to let you learn Ogre as we go. aaafare at ipcoast.com email - put "game job" in the subject. Long-term focus is our goal here... steady paycheck, good people.
Personally I think full engine is not so critical... and I selected Ogre becuase the code is very clean (choose any physics/sound/network library you want)... AND the portability is great! It supports directx7/directx9/OpenGL and Is good clean C++ code... so the next thing that comes along after DirectX9 and Ogre can easily support it. Given how much graphics technology drives your development investment... Ogre is a great choice.
We would all love the HL2 engine or latest Doom engine... but the price for a small commerical project is way out there....
Ogre does the right thing in terms of playing friendly with others, support what most gamers actually use (latest DirectX) and doing what it does well (clean code).
-----
BTW: I'm running a small indepdent game technology project... we are an established software company and we have a simulation idea we are working on (in house project, not rushed)