I KNEW I was forgetting some stuff... thanks for the reminders.
I haven't bothered with FEAR... with 10-12 hours of gameplay, I'll wait for the bargain bin on that one. Psychonauts was good, but I found the art style kind of repulsive. I really wanted to love that game, because I so loved Grim Fandango, but I never really got past the very unappealing characters. It was obviously done with great skill, I just didn't like it. Some parts of it, though, were incredibly good. I think the Milkman Conspiracy has to be one of the best levels ever done in any game, period. And Velvetopia and Lungfishopolis were fantastic too. But, as a whole, I was so put off by the art that I ended up not enjoying the game as much as I felt I should. I must be shallow.:)
Shadow of the Colossus was a lovely, lovely game. The control and lag issues were a little annoying, but workable, up until the final battle. I finished it, but I was about ready to throw my controller through the window.... I must have fallen down twenty times. SO frustrating. Overall, not quite as good as Ico, but one of the very few games you can truly call art. If it's not selling well, that's really a shame.
Darwinia is on Steam now, hopefully it will get some wider exposure. My only real complaint about that one was that it felt like it should be longer.... but I suppose leaving us wanting more is better than us not finishing.:)
At any rate, overall, I think 2005 was one of the best years yet for gaming. Maybe the sales figures weren't as high, but the number of genuinely memorable, well-designed games was probably higher than any other year so far. I'm looking forward to 2006.
Guitar Hero Darwinia Civ 4 Space Rangers 2 (starforced, sadly) We Love Katamari
Very good games:
The Movies Warhammer 40k: Winter Assault (this is a sequel, so maybe it doesn't count, but I really like this game) T2X (amateur mod for Thief 2, surprisingly good, although a bit uneven) Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney (DS title)
I'm sure there are more, but my memory fails me right now. I was just thinking yesterday that there have been an awful lot of great games this year, but usually from unexpected directions... all of the big publisher games have been pretty mediocre. The EA method (Let's Ship Yet Another Sequel To Something That Sold Big Last Year) is failing... nobody is generating new game ideas.... new property, as it were. They're all focused on exploiting what they have instead of making things that are genuinely different or fun.
Because they haven't been investing in new gameplay ideas, they're running low, and people aren't buying as many games. This isn't really rocket science.
EA would have been far better off, instead of coughing up huge money for that exclusive NFL license, in investing that money in about fifty small game developers. 45 of them would have failed spectacularly, 4 would have done well, and 1 would have been a megahit for the next generation of sequel exploitation. Instead, they paid way too much for a license that will ensure that their football team sits around collecting paychecks without actually having to work very hard, since they have no competition.
It's interesting that of all the big players, only Nintendo seems genuinely committed to doing new stuff. I just recently picked up a DS and Phoenix Wright, and I've been very pleased with it... I didn't realize a touch screen would be fun, but in fact it's very natural and a great gaming idea. That's why, I suspect, they're professionals, and I'm not.:-)
I have hard records that Dish called me over SEVEN HUNDRED TIMES over about six weeks, despite my begging and pleading and yelling at them to stop. The 'supervisor' I talked to in their telemarketing division so didn't care that he was rendering my phone useless. About every twenty minutes, during their business hours (roughly 10 to 7 or so, tuesday through saturday), for weeks on end, Dish called me. Again. And again. And again.
I had to wait the thirty days for the Do Not Call list to take effect, and gave it another few days... still the same volume of calls. I then filed a complaint with the donotcall.gov site... and the calls stopped THE NEXT DAY. And I know it wasn't just their slow response coinciding with the donotcall list, because they had just started calling my CELL PHONE... not with the same volume, but 3 or 4 times a day for a few days. So I filed complaints on both numbers and BOTH numbers stopped the following day.
In other words, they could have stopped calling me any time they wanted, but just didn't give a flying fuck whether they pissed me off or not. So I repeat this story whenever I get a chance, and hope fervently that you won't use Dish for your satellite TV services.
(this WAS Dish themselves doing it, too, not just an outside telemarketing firm or subcontrators... this was all in-house and they knew perfectly well they were being scumbags and DID NOT CARE.)
I haven't been paying attention for a couple of months, but as far as I know, Sony doesn't even have a finalized hardware spec... and they're supposed to launch in 90 days.
I don't see it. My guess is, a Japan launch for Christmas and a US launch in March of 2007. And the console will not make bread, do the dishes, and fold your laundry. It'll probably be quite good, but this is, after all, Sony. You know, DRM Sony? They're both braindead and known for overpromising and underdelivering(see: PS2 and 'real time Toy Story', hah).
I'm sure I'll buy one, just like I have all the other consoles. But I very strongly suspect it won't be that much better than the 360, if it's better at all, and I REALLY doubt we're going to see it in the US before 2007.
I wonder if the Cell processor will go down with Itanium in the 'hideously expensive boondoggles' category. That thing looks monstrously tough to program. They're gonna have to sell an awful lot of difficult-to-develop-for chips to pay for all those billions they spent on design.
You might want to try more recent versions of the software, it's been steadily improving. I've never seen it lag, even when rescanning my library. But my server is reasonably fast, 1.6Ghz.
The default audio mode is FLAC in current-generation hardware.... that means if you try to run an alien format, it will decode it to WAV, losslessly encode it to FLAC, and transmit the compressed stream to the player. You can also have it just convert to WAV and send that, if you have more bandwidth than you have CPU. You shouldn't need to transcode to MP3, which would mangle your sound pretty badly.
Not sure if you've played with this lately, but you might want to give it another whirl. It comes with its own perl modules, as well.... you should be able to build local copies of anything it needs, so that your Gentoo perl won't mess it up. In the "Bin" subdirectory is a 'build-perl-modules.pl' file. Execute that, and it *should* build your dependencies.
Compared to the kinds of things it's really competing with -- audiophile-grade CD players -- it's very cheap. You're used to thinking about sound in PC terms, but most computer sound is basically crap. That's part of why it's cheap.
The Squeezebox2 and 3 don't come fully into their own until you're running lossless audio. At that point, their extremely high-quality components really sit up and sing. It has Burr-Brown DACs(not sure which model, there are a number), and an extremely low-jitter digital out. Personally, I'm not convinced that jitter is really that much of a problem, but if you're a real audio geek and into this stuff, the Squeezeboxes have about 65ps jitter... a high-quality CD player will usually have around 250. You can get better jitter performance, but you have to generally spend A LOT of money on your playback device... many thousands of dollars.
So given that this little guy will stand toe-to-toe with $2k+ CD players in terms of sound quality, and will give you all the other benefits of having a networked player, it's cheap. The other electronic audio players aren't aimed at this market at all... they're aimed at the PC crowd that has been perfectly happy with the Creative 48khz hardware resample.
When you finally have gear that will show you just how bad that resample sounds, the Squeezeboxes will not let you down. They'll scale to practically any quality of stereo... from the cheapo 128KMP3 right up to losslessly driving Watt Puppies through a $20k stack of electronics. The onboard DACs are excellent, but as you transition to better gear, you can switch to the digital outs and just use it as a transport.
Squeezeboxes are REALLY well designed. Not at all your typical consumer-grade bargain crap. As long as CD audio remains the standard, they will stand tall as one of the better methods of reproducing it.
At $300, compared with the real competition, they're a screaming deal.
Well, I have direct experience with Pacific Bell and Bellsouth... and let me tell you, Pacific Bell is head and shoulders better than, er, BS.:) Bellsouth doesn't seem THAT terrible, actually, except that they charge way too damn much for lines. I've heard nothing but nightmare stories about SBC... from what I've heard, they're probably the worst of the Baby Bells.
Apparently Cingular is a joint venture between SBC and BS. I know Cingular and BS are joined at the hip; you can get both bills together if you like, and they offer you a discount on cell phone service if you have a BS landline.
(as an corollary to your observation about perceptions of phone companies, I have lived in several places in the US, and in each and every one of them, it was asserted to me most solemnly that this place was THE WORST for allergies in the whole country.)
My mother has your problem... no cable at all, and the phone lines are horrible, even worse than BellSouth. (she's got some other weird local phone provider, Alltel perhaps, and it's like $65/mo for a BASIC PHONE LINE.) She was on Starband, but that company is an absolute trainwreck.... DO NOT buy their service, it's HORRIBLE. They are the single worst company I have ever tried to deal with.
Fortunately, she's able to get net access via Cingular (which is just Bellsouth in disguise, go figure), and so she has a couple of Cingular phones and a PCMCIA modem. It'd be useless for gaming, but for web browsing and file downloading, it's way better than dialup. You might want to double-check that you have no wireless coverage... it's improving fast, and she's in a fairly remote area.
I stand behind my statement that Bellsouth is killing themselves through overpricing.... think of just how motivated you are to find another solution. As soon as something shows up -- and it will, eventually -- I bet you'll switch instantly.
Wow, you know Intel is hurting right now if they're using that argument. This is exactly equivalent to,
AMD: "Your car sucks! Ours is faster, more comfortable, safer, and gets better mileage." Intel: "Oh yeah? Well our factories are better! Your factories suck!"
If Intel has pulled its head out of its butt and put the engineers in charge again, instead of the marketroids, it could easily come back and eat AMD's lunch once again. They execute better than anybody in the tech business. They are a fearsome competitor. They've marketed themselves into a significant bind, but if anyone can dig themselves out of that jam, it's Intel. 80% market share gives you some leeway for mistakes, even big ones.
However, that said, I don't think 2006 is looking too good for them. If AMD can simplify their lines a little and keep executing as well as they have, they could take a good chunk of marketshare next year. By 2007, I figure Intel is going to be back in the game, and I'm looking forward to whatever they come up with.
This competition is GREAT for us. When Intel isn't challenged, prices stagnate and chips go nowhere. And with the competition this intense, it will be harder for either company to push involuntary DRM hardware.
In the South, it's often cheaper to just switch to 100% cellphone. Bellsouth's 'cheap' plans are on the order of $40/mo with all the taxes and surcharges and crap you have no choice but to take. (Coming from California, I was absolutely astonished at the cost of a phone here.. it was more like $12/mo for the cheapest options there.)
You can often get a cellphone plan for $30/mo, and $50/mo will give you a pile of minutes and free long distance.... and the phone works practically anywhere.
Essentially, they're pricing themselves right out of business, as far as I can see.
After thinking about it some, I realized I've had this monitor longer than I thought. I got probably the very first run... it arrived in early March. I think the last time I changed the brightness was probably early August. Currently, at brightness 80, it's Very Bright instead of Crazy Retina-Scorching Bright like it was out of the box.
I'm SURE it'll last longer than a year or two, at least if it's working properly. Without checking, I think the warranty is three years, so to protect themselves against premature bulb failures from heavy users, they'd want to spec them for at least twice that long. So 5 years should be a reasonably safe bet. And the bulb(s) can most likely be replaced, although in five years I'm sure there will be better monitors, and it may not be worth fixing. (double-check on that warranty before buying, I could be wrong.)
You shouldn't have to pay that much, if you watch for sales. Watch the Ars Technica Audio/Visual club, and the deals sites. If you're willing to be patient, you should be able to get it under $800. It may take two or three months, but that extra $150 is three games or a half an iPod... or just money you can, you know, save and not spend. *grin*.
Also, keep in mind that you'll probably be happiest with a 6800GT class (or better) video card to drive it. It takes a beastly GPU to drive 1920x1200 at 60fps. That's partly my perfectionist streak talking... you can use lower resolutions, and have the monitor scale it up. It looks surprisingly good, not at all like the blocky pixel-doubling of earlier generations. The new interpolation algorithms/hardware are much better. You can still tell it's an LCD, but you have to LOOK... it's nearly as good as a CRT. So you could use it comfortably with lesser cards if you wanted. That said, it's always nicest running in native resolution, and 1920x1200 needs a VERY fast card.
If you wait for a sale, the money you save could be a good chunk of a 7800.....:)
I'm confident you'll like it... but remember that if you're disappointed, Dell has a good return policy. I think you'll be out the shipping, but it's not that heavy and shouldn't be that expensive to send back if you decide to.
I was having trouble with the update from 1.07 to 1.5... having gone through all the RCs, and having plugins from 1.07, some stuff got kinda borked up. I uninstalled, saved my bookmarks, and wiped the Mozilla directory in Application data. The subsequent installation has been flawless. (although I haven't put back my plugins yet.... likely the source of the original problem.)
Well, I ended up with both the 2405FPW and the 3100CN laser. The 3100CN is just okay.... decent, nothing too great.
The 2405FPW, on the other hand, is really quite remarkable. It's HUGE, vivid, and lovely to look at all day. Excellent color. Good for gaming. If you're a really topflight FPSer, you may not like it, but for normal humans, it's just superb.
Out of the box, the brightness is INSANE, burn-out-your-retinas bright. After you've had it a month or two, it fades to more reasonable levels. When I first had it, I had the Brightness set at 40 (out of 100), and even that was a bit uncomfortable. Over time, the monitor dimmed quite a bit. I now have it at 80 brightness, and it's perfect. I haven't had to change anything for quite awhile. I still prefer having the overhead light on, even now... there's still so much lightt that it's more comfortable with lights on. (I used to sit in the computer cave, all lights out, like many geeks I've known... not anymore.)
Probably the biggest downside to the 2405 is that the colors change as you move your head around; the perfect viewing cone is very narrow. It's much worse when you first get it.. whatever method is used to cut the brightness down also worsens the color response a great deal, off axis. Once you've had it awhile and can turn the brightness back up, the off-axis response is better, but it'll never be as good as a CRT.
On the whole, it is just dynamite, and you can often get it at around $750-$775, if you wait for the coupons and sales. (in other words, DO NOT buy it now, you'll pay the full $1200 list price.) I got mine for just under $1k and still think I got a heck of a deal. $775 would have been sweet, indeed.
I haven't heard anything bad about their QC, either... I have one dead pixel in mine. Out of 2.3 million pixels, I can handle one dead one.:) They have a fairly good return policy, so if you get one you don't like/can't stand, you can always ship it back and try again.
I don't like Dell very much for computers, but this is a GREAT monitor.
Oh, I didn't bother because it's been mentioned like fifty times in other threads....DD-WRT is probably the best freeware alternative. If you use their firmware, remember to send them some money through PayPal. You don't HAVE to (one of the benefits of free software, after all), but it's a good idea to support projects you use and care about. Sveasoft has made a killing at $20/year/user. If you give DD-WRT the same amount, it'll be used in much better ways... like not trying to put shackles on your wrists to FORCE you to pay the $20.:)
Sveasoft is a very bad outfit. They have pulled some incredibly egregious stunts to try to prevent 'their' firmware from being distributed. It is, of course, 95% GPLed code that they have glued together, and assert that they 'own' the result... others have done all the heavy lifting, yet somehow their last 5% is the most important. And their 5% isn't even very good, as you have noticed.
They have issued DMCA takedown notices and gone to completely unscrupulous lengths to get critics and distributors of 'their' firmware shut down and taken off the net, including accusations of hacking to get individual cablemodem accounts shut down.
The simple fact that they're using MAC-address locking on GPLed software should tell you most of what you need to know about their ethics.
Early on in this whole mess, I posted something that was gently critical of their GPL policy, and instantly had my account revoked. Fortunately, they gave me my $20 back, but then I kept digging and found out what sleazebags they really are.
That's literally true, but Tomb Raider supported 3D acceleration well before Q2 did. You had to download a patch, which does make your statement true, but I think most gamers from the time will point at Tomb Raider as the inflection point, not Quake.
In general, whenever you're doing a task with a GUI, and you're within the intended solution space of those tools, they will be faster. And easier. And probably less buggy... because at least in theory, the GUI tool will configure things correctly every time. (actual practice, of course, differs somewhat.:) )
An initial implementation of virtually ANYTHING in Linux/Unix has always taken longer than Windows. Getting off the ground in Unix is slow, because you're often writing your own tools to do what you need.
However, because those tools are written in, usually, fairly simple code, using simple and extremely robust utilities in novel combinations, they don't break much. And if your admins are good, your tools will be far more extensible than anything you could buy off the shelf, because they'll match your solution space almost precisely. Microsoft has to write stuff that's good for everyone, so their tools will rarely be a perfect match to your specific problem.
It's interesting that we're even having the discussion... it used to be completely taken for granted that Linux was way, WAY harder. The upfront cost was tremendous in comparison, but then your maintenance cost was very low.
Now Microsoft has to go out of its way to point this out. That is an ENORMOUS shift, a sea change. Microsoft wouldn't bother pointing this out if everyone already knew it. This implies that many administrators are finding the tools (GUI and otherwise) in Linux to be perfectly functional for what they need, and they're able to get things built fast enough that their bosses aren't pissed off.
It's probably a mix of free software getting better and administrators getting more skilled. Both are very good news.
<rant>Now if we could just get a stable kernel to put all of this cool infrastructure on..... </rant>
Measuring UN performance by number of people fed is almost exactly like measuring an IT team's performance by number of trouble tickets closed.
A truly great IT team will have very few tickets to close in the first place.
If the UN were really working, we wouldn't have that many starving people to feed.
All you have to do, to decide not to support the UN, is to read its Bill of Rights. The UN Bill of Rights is straight out of Animal House. (Every clause reads, "you have the right to XXX, except when we decide you don't.").
If the US, with its very clearly written Constitutional protections, can be corrupted as badly as it has been, expecting the UN to last more than about 20 years with real power is optimistic to the point of foolishness.
There have got to be better ways to use that money.
I think you're kind of saying this already, but I felt confused by your wording and thought I'd chime in. I'm a little blurry on a few of these details, and too lazy to go look things up, so pay attention to replies... don't treat this as gospel.
As far as I know, all multi-cpu AMD packages use exactly the same method to talk amongst themselves, HyperTransport. They absolutely use a private, dedicated HT bus between cores. I *think* that when you run two single core Opterons, each has a link to main memory, and they also share a direct link. In the case of a 4-die system, I think the third and fourth CPUs 'piggyback' on the 1st and 2nd... they talk to processors 1 and 2, and each other. Processors 1 and 2 do main-memory fetches on their behalf. Each CPU has its own dedicated cache, and I think the cache ends up being semi-unified... so that if something is in processor 2's cache, when processor 4 requests the data, it comes from processor 2 instead of main memory. That's not quite as fast as direct cache, but it's a LOT faster than the DRAM.
The X2 architecture is like half of a 4-way system. There's one link to main memory, and one internal link between the two CPUs... the second one is piggybacking, just like processors 3 and 4 do in a the 4-way system. It's not quite as good as a dedicated bus per processor, but the AMD architecture isn't that bandwidth-starved, and a 1gb HT link is usually fine for keeping two processors fed. You do lose a little performance, but not that much.
Intel dual cores share a single 800mhz bus, with no special link between the chips. And the Netburst architecture is extremely memory bandwidth hungry. Because of its enormous pipeline, a branch mispredict/pipeline stall hurts terribly. The RAM needs to be very very fast to refill the pipeline and get the processor moving again.
So running two Netburst processors down a single, already-starved memory bus is just Not a Good Idea. It's a crummy, slapped-together answer to the much, much better design of the AMD chips. It's a desperate solution to avoid the worst of all possible fates... not being in a high-end market segment at all.
Next year this could all be different again, but at the moment, AMD chips, particularly dual core, are a lot better from nearly every standpoint.
A Microsoft breakup wouldn't be like AT&T. It was split into seven regional phone monopolies... it was so enormous, so vast, that breaking it up just made smaller monopolies. And the barriers to entry for competitors were very high, so the newly-freed subsidiaries were able to learn how to compete again without facing that much local pressure. Millions of miles of wire, built up over a hundred years or so, is a pretty powerful competitive advantage.
Microsoft would become two monopolies if it was broken up; Windows, and Office. (it would likely spin off a third company, call it "Microsoft Other", but that one wouldn't have any monopolies.)
My initial thought was that the individual monopolies would be more subject to attack, but I'm no longer sure that's the case. I'm sure both sides of the business have been restrained to benefit the other; Windows probably can't add anything that would compete with Office, and Office ships only on Windows and OSX. If it split up, Office would be instantly ported to Linux (they probably have a working port running already... they'd be dumb not to) and probably Solaris. Windows would start adding more Office-like features. Each product would become better than it is now.
A monolithic Microsoft is about money and power, and it's a less effective competitor because of it. A broken-up Microsoft would suddenly have itself as an indirect competitor, and that kind of an organizational shakeup would have a very good chance of refocusing them into the lean, mean, NASTY competitor of yesteryear.
Obviously this is all guesstimation, just from observing Microsoft and other large companies over the years. But if my guess is at all accurate, the open source crowd most emphatically wants Microsoft huge and evil. It's the most fertile possible ground for free software.
But if it IS broken up, the outcome isn't likely to be the same as AT&T. Microsoft would become only two monopolies, and the barriers to competition in those fields just aren't that high...nothing at all like building all that physical wire. The BEST possible outcome to leave them big, dumb, and nasty. But if they do break up, AT&T's history is probably not a good example from which to extrapolate.
You're using a single data point to try to extrapolate a whole world view. Yes, computers have advanced enormously, more than practically any other technology ever has. But in most other areas, that's not really true. Yes, cars are safer and better now than they were in the 1970s, but you could get a basic car for, what, $2500 back then? When I was in high school in the early 80s, you could get a very nice car for about $8000. I haven't been shopping at the cheap end for awhile, but I think you'd have real trouble buying much under $20K these days. Yes, the cars are better and last longer... but they are also A LOT more expensive. And most people take out loans to buy them. Cars were often just paid for in the 1970s, and those that were bought on credit were very rarely on more than a 3-year loan. I've heard of seven-year loans on some modern cars.
Look at food.... think about how much a good steak costs these days. Look at energy. Look at housing costs. The basic necessities of life consume a much larger fraction of our income than they once did. The technological luxuries are enormously cheaper, but many of the necessities have gotten much more expensive, and wages really haven't gone up that much.
I'm guessing here, but I think it's more of a music purchase, in that you're likely to keep it a long time. Music reproduction hasn't fundamentally changed much since the advent of the CD, more than twenty years ago. It's not like they're going to go away anytime soon... SACD and DVD-A appear to be going precisely nowhere. You're not tracking a moving target in quite the same way that you are with most technology. It'll play music very well now, but in ten years, it'll probably STILL play music very well by the standards then.
There'll be networked video boxes eventually, and those will be a serious moving target as new/better/faster codecs come out, and hardware gets upgraded... that'll be a ratrace very much like computers have been, and your buy cheap strategy will probably work very well there. And if you don't like the idea of separate boxes for music and video, you could hold off.
But for music, I think the simple elegance of the SB is likely to really last. The video boxes probably won't play as well, and it's virtually certain they won't play better, because the SB is already so close to perfect. At BEST you'll equal the music performance and add video.... so why not get superb music playback now, and add video later?
I'd tend to agree, btw, that you probably won't hear the difference with the cheaper gear. It wasn't until I bought very good speakers that I was able to hear the Creative 48khz resample. It's very obvious on the big stereo, but even now, I really can't hear it on my computer speakers. On your better stuff... you might hear it, you might not. The Roku may be adequate.
Since this is likely to be a long-term keeper, I'd personally try to get something good. But make sure you play with the server software enough to be comfortable with it. Make sure it does what you need. It's good, but it doesn't have the simple elegance of iTunes for things like playlist management.
The SB2 hardware is eminently hackable, but it hasn't been hacked yet to talk to any other software that I know of....so be sure the software that's there works for you. And if it's close, but not quite there... remember you can contribute to the project. It's open source.
I don't have strong knowledge, but after reading the Slim forums for awhile, I get the feeling that the people who know what they're doing are Not Impressed.
I do know that their new M1001 will no longer do lossless.... they were so cheap on the design that they bought a part that resamples everything to 48khz. This messes up the sound... for some people, pretty badly. And it will definitely break DTS-encoded 44.1Khz WAV files. When asked about that, they just sort of vaguely said something about how DTS couldn't be 44.1... meaning they A) don't really understand DTS, and B) while they claim DTS support on the box, they obviously didn't actually test it very well.
The Squeezebox hardware is really, really good... the equivalent of $1k+ CD players. If you don't have a good stereo, it may not be that much of a difference for you. But it's something you'll keep a long time. With no moving parts, it should last as long as the electronics hold out. And it supports the 11g standard, which will, presumably, be around and supported a lot longer than B, which is all the Soundbridges can handle. It wouldn't shock me at all if you were still using that exact same box 15 years from now.
I tend to believe that if you buy cheap, you buy twice.
I'd suggest downloading the Slimserver software and playing with it. It has a Java emulator of the Squeezebox, called SoftSqueeze. That'll let you essentially take the software and interface for a test run, and it won't cost you a penny. (It's all open source.) If you like it, great... if not, all you invested was a little time.
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I KNEW I was forgetting some stuff... thanks for the reminders.
:)
:)
I haven't bothered with FEAR... with 10-12 hours of gameplay, I'll wait for the bargain bin on that one. Psychonauts was good, but I found the art style kind of repulsive. I really wanted to love that game, because I so loved Grim Fandango, but I never really got past the very unappealing characters. It was obviously done with great skill, I just didn't like it. Some parts of it, though, were incredibly good. I think the Milkman Conspiracy has to be one of the best levels ever done in any game, period. And Velvetopia and Lungfishopolis were fantastic too. But, as a whole, I was so put off by the art that I ended up not enjoying the game as much as I felt I should. I must be shallow.
Shadow of the Colossus was a lovely, lovely game. The control and lag issues were a little annoying, but workable, up until the final battle. I finished it, but I was about ready to throw my controller through the window.... I must have fallen down twenty times. SO frustrating. Overall, not quite as good as Ico, but one of the very few games you can truly call art. If it's not selling well, that's really a shame.
Darwinia is on Steam now, hopefully it will get some wider exposure. My only real complaint about that one was that it felt like it should be longer.... but I suppose leaving us wanting more is better than us not finishing.
At any rate, overall, I think 2005 was one of the best years yet for gaming. Maybe the sales figures weren't as high, but the number of genuinely memorable, well-designed games was probably higher than any other year so far. I'm looking forward to 2006.
Just not for BLOCKBUSTERS.
:-)
Great games I can think of offhand:
Guitar Hero
Darwinia
Civ 4
Space Rangers 2 (starforced, sadly)
We Love Katamari
Very good games:
The Movies
Warhammer 40k: Winter Assault (this is a sequel, so maybe it doesn't count, but I really like this game)
T2X (amateur mod for Thief 2, surprisingly good, although a bit uneven)
Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney (DS title)
I'm sure there are more, but my memory fails me right now. I was just thinking yesterday that there have been an awful lot of great games this year, but usually from unexpected directions... all of the big publisher games have been pretty mediocre. The EA method (Let's Ship Yet Another Sequel To Something That Sold Big Last Year) is failing... nobody is generating new game ideas.... new property, as it were. They're all focused on exploiting what they have instead of making things that are genuinely different or fun.
Because they haven't been investing in new gameplay ideas, they're running low, and people aren't buying as many games. This isn't really rocket science.
EA would have been far better off, instead of coughing up huge money for that exclusive NFL license, in investing that money in about fifty small game developers. 45 of them would have failed spectacularly, 4 would have done well, and 1 would have been a megahit for the next generation of sequel exploitation. Instead, they paid way too much for a license that will ensure that their football team sits around collecting paychecks without actually having to work very hard, since they have no competition.
It's interesting that of all the big players, only Nintendo seems genuinely committed to doing new stuff. I just recently picked up a DS and Phoenix Wright, and I've been very pleased with it... I didn't realize a touch screen would be fun, but in fact it's very natural and a great gaming idea. That's why, I suspect, they're professionals, and I'm not.
I have hard records that Dish called me over SEVEN HUNDRED TIMES over about six weeks, despite my begging and pleading and yelling at them to stop. The 'supervisor' I talked to in their telemarketing division so didn't care that he was rendering my phone useless. About every twenty minutes, during their business hours (roughly 10 to 7 or so, tuesday through saturday), for weeks on end, Dish called me. Again. And again. And again.
... still the same volume of calls. I then filed a complaint with the donotcall.gov site... and the calls stopped THE NEXT DAY. And I know it wasn't just their slow response coinciding with the donotcall list, because they had just started calling my CELL PHONE ... not with the same volume, but 3 or 4 times a day for a few days. So I filed complaints on both numbers and BOTH numbers stopped the following day.
I had to wait the thirty days for the Do Not Call list to take effect, and gave it another few days
In other words, they could have stopped calling me any time they wanted, but just didn't give a flying fuck whether they pissed me off or not. So I repeat this story whenever I get a chance, and hope fervently that you won't use Dish for your satellite TV services.
(this WAS Dish themselves doing it, too, not just an outside telemarketing firm or subcontrators... this was all in-house and they knew perfectly well they were being scumbags and DID NOT CARE.)
I haven't been paying attention for a couple of months, but as far as I know, Sony doesn't even have a finalized hardware spec... and they're supposed to launch in 90 days.
I don't see it. My guess is, a Japan launch for Christmas and a US launch in March of 2007. And the console will not make bread, do the dishes, and fold your laundry. It'll probably be quite good, but this is, after all, Sony. You know, DRM Sony? They're both braindead and known for overpromising and underdelivering(see: PS2 and 'real time Toy Story', hah).
I'm sure I'll buy one, just like I have all the other consoles. But I very strongly suspect it won't be that much better than the 360, if it's better at all, and I REALLY doubt we're going to see it in the US before 2007.
I wonder if the Cell processor will go down with Itanium in the 'hideously expensive boondoggles' category. That thing looks monstrously tough to program. They're gonna have to sell an awful lot of difficult-to-develop-for chips to pay for all those billions they spent on design.
You might want to try more recent versions of the software, it's been steadily improving. I've never seen it lag, even when rescanning my library. But my server is reasonably fast, 1.6Ghz.
The default audio mode is FLAC in current-generation hardware.... that means if you try to run an alien format, it will decode it to WAV, losslessly encode it to FLAC, and transmit the compressed stream to the player. You can also have it just convert to WAV and send that, if you have more bandwidth than you have CPU. You shouldn't need to transcode to MP3, which would mangle your sound pretty badly.
Not sure if you've played with this lately, but you might want to give it another whirl. It comes with its own perl modules, as well.... you should be able to build local copies of anything it needs, so that your Gentoo perl won't mess it up. In the "Bin" subdirectory is a 'build-perl-modules.pl' file. Execute that, and it *should* build your dependencies.
Compared to the kinds of things it's really competing with -- audiophile-grade CD players -- it's very cheap. You're used to thinking about sound in PC terms, but most computer sound is basically crap. That's part of why it's cheap.
The Squeezebox2 and 3 don't come fully into their own until you're running lossless audio. At that point, their extremely high-quality components really sit up and sing. It has Burr-Brown DACs(not sure which model, there are a number), and an extremely low-jitter digital out. Personally, I'm not convinced that jitter is really that much of a problem, but if you're a real audio geek and into this stuff, the Squeezeboxes have about 65ps jitter... a high-quality CD player will usually have around 250. You can get better jitter performance, but you have to generally spend A LOT of money on your playback device... many thousands of dollars.
So given that this little guy will stand toe-to-toe with $2k+ CD players in terms of sound quality, and will give you all the other benefits of having a networked player, it's cheap. The other electronic audio players aren't aimed at this market at all... they're aimed at the PC crowd that has been perfectly happy with the Creative 48khz hardware resample.
When you finally have gear that will show you just how bad that resample sounds, the Squeezeboxes will not let you down. They'll scale to practically any quality of stereo... from the cheapo 128KMP3 right up to losslessly driving Watt Puppies through a $20k stack of electronics. The onboard DACs are excellent, but as you transition to better gear, you can switch to the digital outs and just use it as a transport.
Squeezeboxes are REALLY well designed. Not at all your typical consumer-grade bargain crap. As long as CD audio remains the standard, they will stand tall as one of the better methods of reproducing it.
At $300, compared with the real competition, they're a screaming deal.
Well, I have direct experience with Pacific Bell and Bellsouth... and let me tell you, Pacific Bell is head and shoulders better than, er, BS. :) Bellsouth doesn't seem THAT terrible, actually, except that they charge way too damn much for lines. I've heard nothing but nightmare stories about SBC... from what I've heard, they're probably the worst of the Baby Bells.
Apparently Cingular is a joint venture between SBC and BS. I know Cingular and BS are joined at the hip; you can get both bills together if you like, and they offer you a discount on cell phone service if you have a BS landline.
(as an corollary to your observation about perceptions of phone companies, I have lived in several places in the US, and in each and every one of them, it was asserted to me most solemnly that this place was THE WORST for allergies in the whole country.)
My mother has your problem... no cable at all, and the phone lines are horrible, even worse than BellSouth. (she's got some other weird local phone provider, Alltel perhaps, and it's like $65/mo for a BASIC PHONE LINE.) She was on Starband, but that company is an absolute trainwreck.... DO NOT buy their service, it's HORRIBLE. They are the single worst company I have ever tried to deal with.
Fortunately, she's able to get net access via Cingular (which is just Bellsouth in disguise, go figure), and so she has a couple of Cingular phones and a PCMCIA modem. It'd be useless for gaming, but for web browsing and file downloading, it's way better than dialup. You might want to double-check that you have no wireless coverage... it's improving fast, and she's in a fairly remote area.
I stand behind my statement that Bellsouth is killing themselves through overpricing.... think of just how motivated you are to find another solution. As soon as something shows up -- and it will, eventually -- I bet you'll switch instantly.
Wow, you know Intel is hurting right now if they're using that argument. This is exactly equivalent to,
AMD: "Your car sucks! Ours is faster, more comfortable, safer, and gets better mileage."
Intel: "Oh yeah? Well our factories are better! Your factories suck!"
If Intel has pulled its head out of its butt and put the engineers in charge again, instead of the marketroids, it could easily come back and eat AMD's lunch once again. They execute better than anybody in the tech business. They are a fearsome competitor. They've marketed themselves into a significant bind, but if anyone can dig themselves out of that jam, it's Intel. 80% market share gives you some leeway for mistakes, even big ones.
However, that said, I don't think 2006 is looking too good for them. If AMD can simplify their lines a little and keep executing as well as they have, they could take a good chunk of marketshare next year. By 2007, I figure Intel is going to be back in the game, and I'm looking forward to whatever they come up with.
This competition is GREAT for us. When Intel isn't challenged, prices stagnate and chips go nowhere. And with the competition this intense, it will be harder for either company to push involuntary DRM hardware.
In the South, it's often cheaper to just switch to 100% cellphone. Bellsouth's 'cheap' plans are on the order of $40/mo with all the taxes and surcharges and crap you have no choice but to take. (Coming from California, I was absolutely astonished at the cost of a phone here.. it was more like $12/mo for the cheapest options there.)
You can often get a cellphone plan for $30/mo, and $50/mo will give you a pile of minutes and free long distance.... and the phone works practically anywhere.
Essentially, they're pricing themselves right out of business, as far as I can see.
After thinking about it some, I realized I've had this monitor longer than I thought. I got probably the very first run... it arrived in early March. I think the last time I changed the brightness was probably early August. Currently, at brightness 80, it's Very Bright instead of Crazy Retina-Scorching Bright like it was out of the box.
:)
I'm SURE it'll last longer than a year or two, at least if it's working properly. Without checking, I think the warranty is three years, so to protect themselves against premature bulb failures from heavy users, they'd want to spec them for at least twice that long. So 5 years should be a reasonably safe bet. And the bulb(s) can most likely be replaced, although in five years I'm sure there will be better monitors, and it may not be worth fixing. (double-check on that warranty before buying, I could be wrong.)
You shouldn't have to pay that much, if you watch for sales. Watch the Ars Technica Audio/Visual club, and the deals sites. If you're willing to be patient, you should be able to get it under $800. It may take two or three months, but that extra $150 is three games or a half an iPod... or just money you can, you know, save and not spend. *grin*.
Also, keep in mind that you'll probably be happiest with a 6800GT class (or better) video card to drive it. It takes a beastly GPU to drive 1920x1200 at 60fps. That's partly my perfectionist streak talking... you can use lower resolutions, and have the monitor scale it up. It looks surprisingly good, not at all like the blocky pixel-doubling of earlier generations. The new interpolation algorithms/hardware are much better. You can still tell it's an LCD, but you have to LOOK... it's nearly as good as a CRT. So you could use it comfortably with lesser cards if you wanted. That said, it's always nicest running in native resolution, and 1920x1200 needs a VERY fast card.
If you wait for a sale, the money you save could be a good chunk of a 7800.....
I'm confident you'll like it... but remember that if you're disappointed, Dell has a good return policy. I think you'll be out the shipping, but it's not that heavy and shouldn't be that expensive to send back if you decide to.
I was having trouble with the update from 1.07 to 1.5... having gone through all the RCs, and having plugins from 1.07, some stuff got kinda borked up. I uninstalled, saved my bookmarks, and wiped the Mozilla directory in Application data. The subsequent installation has been flawless. (although I haven't put back my plugins yet.... likely the source of the original problem.)
Well, I ended up with both the 2405FPW and the 3100CN laser. The 3100CN is just okay.... decent, nothing too great.
:) They have a fairly good return policy, so if you get one you don't like/can't stand, you can always ship it back and try again.
The 2405FPW, on the other hand, is really quite remarkable. It's HUGE, vivid, and lovely to look at all day. Excellent color. Good for gaming. If you're a really topflight FPSer, you may not like it, but for normal humans, it's just superb.
Out of the box, the brightness is INSANE, burn-out-your-retinas bright. After you've had it a month or two, it fades to more reasonable levels. When I first had it, I had the Brightness set at 40 (out of 100), and even that was a bit uncomfortable. Over time, the monitor dimmed quite a bit. I now have it at 80 brightness, and it's perfect. I haven't had to change anything for quite awhile. I still prefer having the overhead light on, even now... there's still so much lightt that it's more comfortable with lights on. (I used to sit in the computer cave, all lights out, like many geeks I've known... not anymore.)
Probably the biggest downside to the 2405 is that the colors change as you move your head around; the perfect viewing cone is very narrow. It's much worse when you first get it.. whatever method is used to cut the brightness down also worsens the color response a great deal, off axis. Once you've had it awhile and can turn the brightness back up, the off-axis response is better, but it'll never be as good as a CRT.
On the whole, it is just dynamite, and you can often get it at around $750-$775, if you wait for the coupons and sales. (in other words, DO NOT buy it now, you'll pay the full $1200 list price.) I got mine for just under $1k and still think I got a heck of a deal. $775 would have been sweet, indeed.
I haven't heard anything bad about their QC, either... I have one dead pixel in mine. Out of 2.3 million pixels, I can handle one dead one.
I don't like Dell very much for computers, but this is a GREAT monitor.
Oh, I didn't bother because it's been mentioned like fifty times in other threads....DD-WRT is probably the best freeware alternative. If you use their firmware, remember to send them some money through PayPal. You don't HAVE to (one of the benefits of free software, after all), but it's a good idea to support projects you use and care about. Sveasoft has made a killing at $20/year/user. If you give DD-WRT the same amount, it'll be used in much better ways... like not trying to put shackles on your wrists to FORCE you to pay the $20. :)
They have issued DMCA takedown notices and gone to completely unscrupulous lengths to get critics and distributors of 'their' firmware shut down and taken off the net, including accusations of hacking to get individual cablemodem accounts shut down.
The simple fact that they're using MAC-address locking on GPLed software should tell you most of what you need to know about their ethics.
Early on in this whole mess, I posted something that was gently critical of their GPL policy, and instantly had my account revoked. Fortunately, they gave me my $20 back, but then I kept digging and found out what sleazebags they really are.
NOT good people. DON'T give them money.
For more info, check the journal of TheIndividual.
That's literally true, but Tomb Raider supported 3D acceleration well before Q2 did. You had to download a patch, which does make your statement true, but I think most gamers from the time will point at Tomb Raider as the inflection point, not Quake.
In general, whenever you're doing a task with a GUI, and you're within the intended solution space of those tools, they will be faster. And easier. And probably less buggy... because at least in theory, the GUI tool will configure things correctly every time. (actual practice, of course, differs somewhat. :) )
An initial implementation of virtually ANYTHING in Linux/Unix has always taken longer than Windows. Getting off the ground in Unix is slow, because you're often writing your own tools to do what you need.
However, because those tools are written in, usually, fairly simple code, using simple and extremely robust utilities in novel combinations, they don't break much. And if your admins are good, your tools will be far more extensible than anything you could buy off the shelf, because they'll match your solution space almost precisely. Microsoft has to write stuff that's good for everyone, so their tools will rarely be a perfect match to your specific problem.
It's interesting that we're even having the discussion... it used to be completely taken for granted that Linux was way, WAY harder. The upfront cost was tremendous in comparison, but then your maintenance cost was very low.
Now Microsoft has to go out of its way to point this out. That is an ENORMOUS shift, a sea change. Microsoft wouldn't bother pointing this out if everyone already knew it. This implies that many administrators are finding the tools (GUI and otherwise) in Linux to be perfectly functional for what they need, and they're able to get things built fast enough that their bosses aren't pissed off.
It's probably a mix of free software getting better and administrators getting more skilled. Both are very good news.
<rant>Now if we could just get a stable kernel to put all of this cool infrastructure on..... </rant>
Measuring UN performance by number of people fed is almost exactly like measuring an IT team's performance by number of trouble tickets closed.
A truly great IT team will have very few tickets to close in the first place.
If the UN were really working, we wouldn't have that many starving people to feed.
All you have to do, to decide not to support the UN, is to read its Bill of Rights. The UN Bill of Rights is straight out of Animal House. (Every clause reads, "you have the right to XXX, except when we decide you don't.").
If the US, with its very clearly written Constitutional protections, can be corrupted as badly as it has been, expecting the UN to last more than about 20 years with real power is optimistic to the point of foolishness.
There have got to be better ways to use that money.
That's multi-core Opterons, though, not the X2? The X2, and the multi-die single-core Opterons do work how I thought?
I think you're kind of saying this already, but I felt confused by your wording and thought I'd chime in. I'm a little blurry on a few of these details, and too lazy to go look things up, so pay attention to replies... don't treat this as gospel.
As far as I know, all multi-cpu AMD packages use exactly the same method to talk amongst themselves, HyperTransport. They absolutely use a private, dedicated HT bus between cores. I *think* that when you run two single core Opterons, each has a link to main memory, and they also share a direct link. In the case of a 4-die system, I think the third and fourth CPUs 'piggyback' on the 1st and 2nd... they talk to processors 1 and 2, and each other. Processors 1 and 2 do main-memory fetches on their behalf. Each CPU has its own dedicated cache, and I think the cache ends up being semi-unified... so that if something is in processor 2's cache, when processor 4 requests the data, it comes from processor 2 instead of main memory. That's not quite as fast as direct cache, but it's a LOT faster than the DRAM.
The X2 architecture is like half of a 4-way system. There's one link to main memory, and one internal link between the two CPUs... the second one is piggybacking, just like processors 3 and 4 do in a the 4-way system. It's not quite as good as a dedicated bus per processor, but the AMD architecture isn't that bandwidth-starved, and a 1gb HT link is usually fine for keeping two processors fed. You do lose a little performance, but not that much.
Intel dual cores share a single 800mhz bus, with no special link between the chips. And the Netburst architecture is extremely memory bandwidth hungry. Because of its enormous pipeline, a branch mispredict/pipeline stall hurts terribly. The RAM needs to be very very fast to refill the pipeline and get the processor moving again.
So running two Netburst processors down a single, already-starved memory bus is just Not a Good Idea. It's a crummy, slapped-together answer to the much, much better design of the AMD chips. It's a desperate solution to avoid the worst of all possible fates... not being in a high-end market segment at all.
Next year this could all be different again, but at the moment, AMD chips, particularly dual core, are a lot better from nearly every standpoint.
Well, this IS pretty important. Maybe they'll post it once per affected phone.
A Microsoft breakup wouldn't be like AT&T. It was split into seven regional phone monopolies... it was so enormous, so vast, that breaking it up just made smaller monopolies. And the barriers to entry for competitors were very high, so the newly-freed subsidiaries were able to learn how to compete again without facing that much local pressure. Millions of miles of wire, built up over a hundred years or so, is a pretty powerful competitive advantage.
Microsoft would become two monopolies if it was broken up; Windows, and Office. (it would likely spin off a third company, call it "Microsoft Other", but that one wouldn't have any monopolies.)
My initial thought was that the individual monopolies would be more subject to attack, but I'm no longer sure that's the case. I'm sure both sides of the business have been restrained to benefit the other; Windows probably can't add anything that would compete with Office, and Office ships only on Windows and OSX. If it split up, Office would be instantly ported to Linux (they probably have a working port running already... they'd be dumb not to) and probably Solaris. Windows would start adding more Office-like features. Each product would become better than it is now.
A monolithic Microsoft is about money and power, and it's a less effective competitor because of it. A broken-up Microsoft would suddenly have itself as an indirect competitor, and that kind of an organizational shakeup would have a very good chance of refocusing them into the lean, mean, NASTY competitor of yesteryear.
Obviously this is all guesstimation, just from observing Microsoft and other large companies over the years. But if my guess is at all accurate, the open source crowd most emphatically wants Microsoft huge and evil. It's the most fertile possible ground for free software.
But if it IS broken up, the outcome isn't likely to be the same as AT&T. Microsoft would become only two monopolies, and the barriers to competition in those fields just aren't that high...nothing at all like building all that physical wire. The BEST possible outcome to leave them big, dumb, and nasty. But if they do break up, AT&T's history is probably not a good example from which to extrapolate.
You're using a single data point to try to extrapolate a whole world view. Yes, computers have advanced enormously, more than practically any other technology ever has. But in most other areas, that's not really true. Yes, cars are safer and better now than they were in the 1970s, but you could get a basic car for, what, $2500 back then? When I was in high school in the early 80s, you could get a very nice car for about $8000. I haven't been shopping at the cheap end for awhile, but I think you'd have real trouble buying much under $20K these days. Yes, the cars are better and last longer... but they are also A LOT more expensive. And most people take out loans to buy them. Cars were often just paid for in the 1970s, and those that were bought on credit were very rarely on more than a 3-year loan. I've heard of seven-year loans on some modern cars.
Look at food.... think about how much a good steak costs these days. Look at energy. Look at housing costs. The basic necessities of life consume a much larger fraction of our income than they once did. The technological luxuries are enormously cheaper, but many of the necessities have gotten much more expensive, and wages really haven't gone up that much.
I'm guessing here, but I think it's more of a music purchase, in that you're likely to keep it a long time. Music reproduction hasn't fundamentally changed much since the advent of the CD, more than twenty years ago. It's not like they're going to go away anytime soon... SACD and DVD-A appear to be going precisely nowhere. You're not tracking a moving target in quite the same way that you are with most technology. It'll play music very well now, but in ten years, it'll probably STILL play music very well by the standards then.
There'll be networked video boxes eventually, and those will be a serious moving target as new/better/faster codecs come out, and hardware gets upgraded... that'll be a ratrace very much like computers have been, and your buy cheap strategy will probably work very well there. And if you don't like the idea of separate boxes for music and video, you could hold off.
But for music, I think the simple elegance of the SB is likely to really last. The video boxes probably won't play as well, and it's virtually certain they won't play better, because the SB is already so close to perfect. At BEST you'll equal the music performance and add video.... so why not get superb music playback now, and add video later?
I'd tend to agree, btw, that you probably won't hear the difference with the cheaper gear. It wasn't until I bought very good speakers that I was able to hear the Creative 48khz resample. It's very obvious on the big stereo, but even now, I really can't hear it on my computer speakers. On your better stuff... you might hear it, you might not. The Roku may be adequate.
Since this is likely to be a long-term keeper, I'd personally try to get something good. But make sure you play with the server software enough to be comfortable with it. Make sure it does what you need. It's good, but it doesn't have the simple elegance of iTunes for things like playlist management.
The SB2 hardware is eminently hackable, but it hasn't been hacked yet to talk to any other software that I know of....so be sure the software that's there works for you. And if it's close, but not quite there... remember you can contribute to the project. It's open source.
I don't have strong knowledge, but after reading the Slim forums for awhile, I get the feeling that the people who know what they're doing are Not Impressed.
I do know that their new M1001 will no longer do lossless.... they were so cheap on the design that they bought a part that resamples everything to 48khz. This messes up the sound... for some people, pretty badly. And it will definitely break DTS-encoded 44.1Khz WAV files. When asked about that, they just sort of vaguely said something about how DTS couldn't be 44.1... meaning they A) don't really understand DTS, and B) while they claim DTS support on the box, they obviously didn't actually test it very well.
The Squeezebox hardware is really, really good... the equivalent of $1k+ CD players. If you don't have a good stereo, it may not be that much of a difference for you. But it's something you'll keep a long time. With no moving parts, it should last as long as the electronics hold out. And it supports the 11g standard, which will, presumably, be around and supported a lot longer than B, which is all the Soundbridges can handle. It wouldn't shock me at all if you were still using that exact same box 15 years from now.
I tend to believe that if you buy cheap, you buy twice.
I'd suggest downloading the Slimserver software and playing with it. It has a Java emulator of the Squeezebox, called SoftSqueeze. That'll let you essentially take the software and interface for a test run, and it won't cost you a penny. (It's all open source.) If you like it, great... if not, all you invested was a little time.