I don't buy this. Furthermore I think it's just a symptom of gross waste. We had symlinks and advanced networking in Linux 5 years ago [and more but let's be fair]. Back when the average box was a 386 running at 25Mhz with 4MB of ram.
It takes Microsoft until 2006 to come out with an OS that fundamentally isn't better than Win3.11 [just shinier, more doodahs] and finally some proper shell, etc. And a computer running 3Ghz with a GB of ram, etc...
As another poster pointed out, if you can run your wordprocessor today, it'll work 5 years from now. I'm sure qbasic Nibbles will still run on an 8086 if you could find one.
That's also a good sign that people don't have a fucking clue WHAT they need and they only buy the higher number because of small penis syndrome.
I mean honestly try to explain to someone that a $50 Sempron running at 1.4Ghz would do them just fine for writing Word documents, playing solitaire and doing email. Then keep a straight face when they ask "why don't I buy this 3.2Ghz Dell computer?" Sure there are a lot of gamers/developers out there that need the juice but there are still a huge amount of people who have already overpowered boxes for what they are doing.
Personally I think the number system is ok. It's quick to learn and easy to differentiate product lines. I think Intel actually did a good thing with it.
Would be neat to see a new core from either camp though just for the sake of science [e.g. what new designs are out there? I'd like to think the Athlon isn't the "best" design ever for a CPU].
Am I the only one noting the "improved" presler cores take about as much as the AMDX2 processors do TODAY?...
Did it say anywhere in the user agreement that the game content wouldn't change?
This is what you get for paying for yuppy entertainment.
I never got MMOs though. You have to buy this gaming rig, pay for the power and net access. Then you have to use space on YOUR hard drive to have the game and then they provide a server and say "$30/mo please". Fuck, for $10/mo I can get digital cable terminals which provide a bit more entertainment than a game I might play once and a while.
Well, that and, I just can't see the games being fun. I mean I like RPGs but the thought of playing a mindless "level-up" game with a million of my closest friends just baffles me. You can't say you haven't thought of strangling some leet speak idiot for speaking stupidly once and a while.
For the record, the best RPG is FF2 for the gameboy. Everything after that is just bullshit posteuring.:-)
Here's a tip for ya, the more you optimize the more you can bring out of the platform.
You can make *even better* games by optimizing your resources. Sure you could double the texture resolution [4x the ram] but that only "improves" the game so far. Then you are left over with no memory for say, good AI or physics or whatever.
Having 1600x1200 with 8xAA and 16xAF is not the be-all of gaming. It isn't "advanced" either. Look at SIGGRAPH if you're into "state of the art".
"people like me" are why you have things like the Gameboy to begin with in the first place. [well not literally though, but figuratively]. And judging by sales I'd say people seem to like the Gameboy. It doesn't have 256MB of ram or a 3Ghz processor yet it still was able to captivate the gamers. Of course back then the CONTENT was more important than the cover. And if you think the waste of power is trivial... you're way off in space.
On my desk is a PPC 405 that takes about 80mW of juice to run at 384Mhz [the entire kit with 512M of flash, 64M of SDRAM, an FPGA runs off USB power]. It has the same computing power of roughly a pentium pro core [but with a higher clock rate] while taking vastly less power to run.
That's what we call "an improvement". Even the PPC 440 [which has as the documentation says two ALU pipes] only takes 710mW to run at 667Mhz. The VIA C3 at a similar clock rate is actually slower [in terms of MIPS] and takes 10 times the power. Don't even get me into the AMD and Intel camps.
Would this get you 1600x1200 @ 300fps? no. Not even close. Would it be fast enough to replace your 50W desktop processor? yes.
If you think "it must take a lot of power to be good and that's all there is about that" you're sadly mistaken.
Further look at things like the PS2. It doesn't even have a graphics processor like a typical PC. It's just a cell processor design. The entire kit runs off 70W of power. You can't even run a P4 processor on 70W!!!
But doesn't sound like a lot?
How many PCs and laptops are out there? say 100 million? Say the average CPU [over the entire set] takes 60W to run. Replace that with a 700mW PPC 440 and save 59.3W of juice PER BOX. multiply that by 100 million.
Where does it come from? Magic pixie fairies?
Let's talk about cost. The PPC 440 using IBMs 90um process is 6mm^2. The P4 is roughly 100mm^2. That means in volume the PPC is several ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE cheaper to produce. Want a laptop? Drop 200 dollars off the price. Oh wait, now your battery doesn't need to be as big [as a side bonus you don't need a cpu fan]. Drop another $50 off the price.
I guess you're one of those "coal is endless and I like burning money" types. I'm sorry to burst your bubble kid but if you look to nvidia or ATI as the "advancement of computing graphics technology" you're sadly mistaken. Either they realize they can't keep burning power or another startup will eat them up by providing more efficient cores.
There was a time when a game/program required an excessive amount of computing power that was a BAD thing.
I don't look at a game that requires 350W of computing to run as a "good thing". Sorry, I just don't. Any VB.NET hacker can make an inefficient bloaty game. It takes real talen to do the same with minimal requirements.
If this "F.E.A.R." game really requires a $500 graphic card to play then they can keep it. It's just a game, you'll play it and be bored within a week. Meanwhile you're still out the $500 and your computer is taking "yet more power" to run.
These peeps really ought to develop games for things like a gameboy or PSP first. Then they'd get an idea of what "optimization" means.
GCC can unroll all loops if you want including those with variable itteration counts. In those cases it uses a variant of duff's device. [well on x86 anyways].
As for the other posters, the real reason you want to unroll loops is basically to avoid the cost of managing the loop, e.g.
That said, how do the riots help? Are they protesting for more education? Better roads? More hospitals? More welfare? what? I'd rather see mass sit-ins protesting for more education funding then this.
There are two ways to solve a problem, one is to actually solve it and the other is to wait for something[one] else to solve it.
They apparently tried the latter and now should try the former.
In short: they should make their own opportunities.
First off, I'm sorry for stereotyping America there. Of course you're not all like that. Quite a few of my friends are American [on both sides of the camp].
What I was trying to point out though is you can get the same violent reaction to speech anywhere. Let's keep in mind there are 62 MILLION people in France. These handful of people are a VOCAL MINORITY.
Just like the people in the middle east and palestine/israel.
Mostly I was trying to point out that anyone who writes blindly about how superior France is compared to the USA is an asshat and shouldn't be taken seriously [all while let's not blindly support whatever the USA does too].
America has endured for 200 years? That's why you murder your presidents and admend your constitution?
The "america" of 1700's is not the america of today.
And anyone who puts France on some higher moral standing than America has clearly never been to France. That being said France is not a bad place and certainly more inviting at times then some places in the US.
You guys jump on this "censorship" crap but try saying this in the middle of a crowed mall "the war is wrong, Bush is an idiot and Americans are just too violent and apathetic to stop it." You'll get your own form of censorship known as a beating. I've formed crowds in Burger Kings in upper state New York simply for suggesting that "the xenophobic pschopaths need to watch some foreign media for a minute".
Point is vague stereotypes and generalizations do nobody any good.
If you read bullshit like that and think "this guy is telling the truth" or whatever... you need help. Just dismiss it as a the trash it is.
The French law clearly states you have to publish the material [or cause to be published] in France. If someone from France fetches your publication made in another country you didn't publish it there. As far as I know usenet aggregators in France don't count as "publishing" in a foreign nation.
The French law also prohibits selling Nazi memorabilia inside France. That's what the Ebay case was about.
Point is, you shouldn't be a Nazi. In France or otherwise. That said, being a Nazi outside France doesn't mean you're a criminal when you go to France so long as you keep your mouth shut about it.
Clearly that's a violation of their first admendment... what you mean France isn't the 54th state [53rd == Canada]?
Vive la France libre!:-)
I've been to Paris, Dijon and Vannes. France from what I saw is an open and inviting country. The locals were always helpful and pleasant [with a few exceptions in Paris near the Orsay..... stupid brasseries...] and I never felt shunned even though my French isn't 100%.
Frankly if these immigrants can't adjust to living in France it's because they're not willing to meet half-way on things. You have to learn the Language. Collectively I've been there for 6 weeks and even *I* had to speak French at some moments [because the other dude I was talking with didn't speak English].
Of course these immigrants should just come to Canada. Where nobody speaks the same language twice and welfare is like winning the lotto [j/k but seriously fuck off you pogey consuming fucks].
Tom [... sometimes wishing I was back in Dijon...]
You can say "hail satan and his nazi worshippers too" all you want. You just can't say that in England, France and Germany [among others]. If you sit on your blog in the USA you can say "I'm a jew hating nazi dawg from the lower eastside". THEN you can go to France and enjoy their fine cuisine without a thing to worry about [perhaps your poor choice in association].
So long as you don't promote the nazi party while you're in France you're ok.
Maybe the law you were thinking of was... nothing?
Tom
[N.B. In France they find "freedom fries" to be a cute american joke. It's not an insult.]
there was a lack of media coverage explaining why ethnically segregated inhabitants of some of France's poorest cities have been driven to riot.
Because we don't care?
You know what, if you live in country where your government is more interested in pushing you into servitude for their own gains then instantiate public works [e.g. schools, roads, hospitals, etc] then not much I can or want to do about it. It's bad enough that piece by piece we're selling off our own nations ["would you like fries with that?"] that now I also have to worry that some shit from north africa doesn't have enough education in him?
I'm sorry what? This is the day and age of the internet. If you live in France, have access to net [which I bet most of these shits do] and you can't learn yourself a thing or two then too bad. It shows you can't overcome problems which you're going to face in a professional career anyways.
I'm not saying these people aren't getting the royal screw job, I'm saying they have to deal with it and overcome. These riots will do zero to get them help or achieve a higher quality of life. Maybe if they protested peacfully for productive things [e.g. more access to education] they wouldn't have these problems?
[preface: I live in the city, have my entire life] I personally wouldn't try to tip a cow for one reason only. They're fucking heavy and could trample me if pissed off.
That's like trying to tickle a lion or something.
Anyone stupid enough to try and tip something that ways 8 times their weight needs some help.
#4 - have enough disposable income to verbally threaten the others by saying you'll fly out there to beat the shit out of them if they don't stop spawn camping.:-)
Most of the time in online games people aren't playing to test other peoples skill and have a challenge. They simply want "more points". If they were in it for the sport they wouldn't stalk players [e.g. repeatedly kill the same guy, go after them when it's illogical [e.g. you're in danger] etc], spawn camp [e.g. hide at their spawn point with a sniper rifle or something of high splash damage], and the dozens of other ways [griefing, TK, etc].
Basically it's just not that interesting to play online once you realize that the guy on the other end who is pissing you off so much is 12 yrs old, lives in their parents house and bought the game with an allowance. All while you're 23, living on your own and had to work 3 hours to EARN the money for the game..../rant:-) Tom
And similarly you do the same for encoding. First detect the length the data will be, then check, then encode. When testing make sure your "get_length" and "encode" functions return the same length. [if at all possible use the same code].
But that would be asking MSFT engineers to use "if" statements... that would be ill-advised as it means THEY WOULD HAVE TO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING FIRST.
It furthers the fundamental problem that you should have access to the working specs. What happens when you buy a 100$ card or something and the company folds [or stops the product line]. You get no support.
You're either forgetful or too young to remember the day when things were a bit more open. The IBM PC was a standard for computers for a reason. It gave everyone an "in" to work on software, hardware, etc.
e.g. if your UART was 8250 compliant it meant you could replace some other vendor when a customer looks for a serial port or modem add-on.
Now it's just "we do our own thing, here is a buggy binary driver that may work". Remember the drivers work in the kernel space. And these are the same half-breeds that think ".net is an improvement in the software development world". It's bad enough having them in userspace let alone kernel. [* to be fair I don't consider myself a kernel developer either, there are a lot of things to keep in mind there like entry conditions, RACE conditions, latency, etc].
I'd rather see vendors embrace standards ALL WHILE countries embrace fair wage laws. If a modem really does cost 100$ when you pay the employees proper instead of 5$ then it costs 100$.
Upgrade to the lastest compiler? What for free? Oh you mean I should pay money for the latest copy? I take it they made improvements like... installing an optimizer?
I'm not trying to do an anti-msft rant [though they do suck ass] but to the guy who said GCC is anti the values of freedom... ok, install windows and tell me how "free" you are to do software development. If having GNU extensions that make optimization and kernel development possible all the while not affecting the standards compliance side of things and supporting dozen of platforms is the "cost" of using GCC... then oh well so be it.
For the record, VC6 had __int64 [or similar] as I use it in my libraries to define a "ulong64" type.
Um, I can go out and buy a 754-pin mobo+cpu TODAY in essentially ANY computer store.
How is it "obsolete"? Obsolete implies replaced. I'd say they have what you'd call "two product lines".
Sure they're not rolling out new designs with it, but I'd say a 2.2Ghz 3400+ is way more than enough for a desktop box. It's hardly "outdated" given the fact the top of the line 4800+ is only 200Mhz faster [but with another core].
As for your idiotic idea of stacking cpus... they make this thing called "heat". Until you can substantially lower the power required you can't stack them, hell placing them adjacent to each other is enough of a challenge. And frankly, 32 processors is not something the bulk of their customers wants which is why they don't do it.
I say screw your bullshit SMP, I want an LCD on the top of the die so I can see the contents of the registers at all times!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Hahahahahahaa that's the best hollywood-inspired bullshit I've ever heard.
.ahahahahahahaha.
You actually think the NSA doesn't get their computers from Dell.
#1 reason for the NSA wanting you to think they're all big and powerful: Budget.
If you think they can do spooky crazy crypto work then you'll hand them fistfuls of money no questions asked.
Tom
I don't buy this. Furthermore I think it's just a symptom of gross waste. We had symlinks and advanced networking in Linux 5 years ago [and more but let's be fair]. Back when the average box was a 386 running at 25Mhz with 4MB of ram.
It takes Microsoft until 2006 to come out with an OS that fundamentally isn't better than Win3.11 [just shinier, more doodahs] and finally some proper shell, etc. And a computer running 3Ghz with a GB of ram, etc...
As another poster pointed out, if you can run your wordprocessor today, it'll work 5 years from now. I'm sure qbasic Nibbles will still run on an 8086 if you could find one.
Tom
That's also a good sign that people don't have a fucking clue WHAT they need and they only buy the higher number because of small penis syndrome.
I mean honestly try to explain to someone that a $50 Sempron running at 1.4Ghz would do them just fine for writing Word documents, playing solitaire and doing email. Then keep a straight face when they ask "why don't I buy this 3.2Ghz Dell computer?" Sure there are a lot of gamers/developers out there that need the juice but there are still a huge amount of people who have already overpowered boxes for what they are doing.
Personally I think the number system is ok. It's quick to learn and easy to differentiate product lines. I think Intel actually did a good thing with it.
Tom
hahahaha, pwned.
...
Totally agree.
Would be neat to see a new core from either camp though just for the sake of science [e.g. what new designs are out there? I'd like to think the Athlon isn't the "best" design ever for a CPU].
Am I the only one noting the "improved" presler cores take about as much as the AMDX2 processors do TODAY?
Tom
Did it say anywhere in the user agreement that the game content wouldn't change?
:-)
This is what you get for paying for yuppy entertainment.
I never got MMOs though. You have to buy this gaming rig, pay for the power and net access. Then you have to use space on YOUR hard drive to have the game and then they provide a server and say "$30/mo please". Fuck, for $10/mo I can get digital cable terminals which provide a bit more entertainment than a game I might play once and a while.
Well, that and, I just can't see the games being fun. I mean I like RPGs but the thought of playing a mindless "level-up" game with a million of my closest friends just baffles me. You can't say you haven't thought of strangling some leet speak idiot for speaking stupidly once and a while.
For the record, the best RPG is FF2 for the gameboy. Everything after that is just bullshit posteuring.
Tom
Here's a tip for ya, the more you optimize the more you can bring out of the platform.
... you're way off in space.
You can make *even better* games by optimizing your resources. Sure you could double the texture resolution [4x the ram] but that only "improves" the game so far. Then you are left over with no memory for say, good AI or physics or whatever.
Having 1600x1200 with 8xAA and 16xAF is not the be-all of gaming. It isn't "advanced" either. Look at SIGGRAPH if you're into "state of the art".
"people like me" are why you have things like the Gameboy to begin with in the first place. [well not literally though, but figuratively]. And judging by sales I'd say people seem to like the Gameboy. It doesn't have 256MB of ram or a 3Ghz processor yet it still was able to captivate the gamers. Of course back then the CONTENT was more important than the cover. And if you think the waste of power is trivial
On my desk is a PPC 405 that takes about 80mW of juice to run at 384Mhz [the entire kit with 512M of flash, 64M of SDRAM, an FPGA runs off USB power]. It has the same computing power of roughly a pentium pro core [but with a higher clock rate] while taking vastly less power to run.
That's what we call "an improvement". Even the PPC 440 [which has as the documentation says two ALU pipes] only takes 710mW to run at 667Mhz. The VIA C3 at a similar clock rate is actually slower [in terms of MIPS] and takes 10 times the power. Don't even get me into the AMD and Intel camps.
Would this get you 1600x1200 @ 300fps? no. Not even close. Would it be fast enough to replace your 50W desktop processor? yes.
If you think "it must take a lot of power to be good and that's all there is about that" you're sadly mistaken.
Further look at things like the PS2. It doesn't even have a graphics processor like a typical PC. It's just a cell processor design. The entire kit runs off 70W of power. You can't even run a P4 processor on 70W!!!
But doesn't sound like a lot?
How many PCs and laptops are out there? say 100 million? Say the average CPU [over the entire set] takes 60W to run. Replace that with a 700mW PPC 440 and save 59.3W of juice PER BOX. multiply that by 100 million.
Where does it come from? Magic pixie fairies?
Let's talk about cost. The PPC 440 using IBMs 90um process is 6mm^2. The P4 is roughly 100mm^2. That means in volume the PPC is several ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE cheaper to produce. Want a laptop? Drop 200 dollars off the price. Oh wait, now your battery doesn't need to be as big [as a side bonus you don't need a cpu fan]. Drop another $50 off the price.
I guess you're one of those "coal is endless and I like burning money" types. I'm sorry to burst your bubble kid but if you look to nvidia or ATI as the "advancement of computing graphics technology" you're sadly mistaken. Either they realize they can't keep burning power or another startup will eat them up by providing more efficient cores.
Tom
There was a time when a game/program required an excessive amount of computing power that was a BAD thing.
I don't look at a game that requires 350W of computing to run as a "good thing". Sorry, I just don't. Any VB.NET hacker can make an inefficient bloaty game. It takes real talen to do the same with minimal requirements.
If this "F.E.A.R." game really requires a $500 graphic card to play then they can keep it. It's just a game, you'll play it and be bored within a week. Meanwhile you're still out the $500 and your computer is taking "yet more power" to run.
These peeps really ought to develop games for things like a gameboy or PSP first. Then they'd get an idea of what "optimization" means.
Tom
It ... is ... a .... game ... folks.
Like OMG and ROFL and such, like no way they're changing the game!!!
You're all acting like he's invented a new diet cola or something of importance.
Tom
Ok so I was wrong about the UK. I thought y'all followed the same laws in this respect.
:-)
Whatever, I do what I want.
Tom
Yes, and unrolling would speed that up in the same fashion.
iirc the instruction is "paddd", and you'd do four parallel adds then shuffle and add twice to get the single sum.
Tom
GCC can unroll all loops if you want including those with variable itteration counts. In those cases it uses a variant of duff's device. [well on x86 anyways].
As for the other posters, the real reason you want to unroll loops is basically to avoid the cost of managing the loop, e.g.
a simple loop like
for (a = i = 0; i b; i++) a += data[i];
In x86 would amount to
mov ecx,b
loop:
add eax,[ebx]
add ebx,4
dec ecx
jnz loop
So you have a 50% efficiency at best. Now if you unroll it to
mov ecx,b
shr ecx,1
loop:
add eax,[ebx]
add eax,[ebx+4]
add ebx,8
dec ecx
jnz loop
You now have 5 instructions for two itterations. That's down from 8 you would have before, and so on, e.g.
mov ecx,b
shr ecx,2
loop:
add eax,[ebx]
add eax,[ebx+4]
add eax,[ebx+8]
add eax,[ebx+12]
add ebx,16
dec ecx
jnz loop
Does 7 opcodes for 4 itterations [down from the 16 required previously, e.g. 100% more efficient].
Tom
You can't say it in England because it would come out as
:-)
"ail saytin n' is nayzee worshipers oo".
Tom
Ok, granted the government is screwing them over.
That said, how do the riots help? Are they protesting for more education? Better roads? More hospitals? More welfare? what? I'd rather see mass sit-ins protesting for more education funding then this.
There are two ways to solve a problem, one is to actually solve it and the other is to wait for something[one] else to solve it.
They apparently tried the latter and now should try the former.
In short: they should make their own opportunities.
Tom
First off, I'm sorry for stereotyping America there. Of course you're not all like that. Quite a few of my friends are American [on both sides of the camp].
What I was trying to point out though is you can get the same violent reaction to speech anywhere. Let's keep in mind there are 62 MILLION people in France. These handful of people are a VOCAL MINORITY.
Just like the people in the middle east and palestine/israel.
Mostly I was trying to point out that anyone who writes blindly about how superior France is compared to the USA is an asshat and shouldn't be taken seriously [all while let's not blindly support whatever the USA does too].
Tom
America has endured for 200 years? That's why you murder your presidents and admend your constitution?
The "america" of 1700's is not the america of today.
And anyone who puts France on some higher moral standing than America has clearly never been to France. That being said France is not a bad place and certainly more inviting at times then some places in the US.
You guys jump on this "censorship" crap but try saying this in the middle of a crowed mall "the war is wrong, Bush is an idiot and Americans are just too violent and apathetic to stop it." You'll get your own form of censorship known as a beating. I've formed crowds in Burger Kings in upper state New York simply for suggesting that "the xenophobic pschopaths need to watch some foreign media for a minute".
Point is vague stereotypes and generalizations do nobody any good.
If you read bullshit like that and think "this guy is telling the truth" or whatever... you need help. Just dismiss it as a the trash it is.
Tom
The French law clearly states you have to publish the material [or cause to be published] in France. If someone from France fetches your publication made in another country you didn't publish it there. As far as I know usenet aggregators in France don't count as "publishing" in a foreign nation.
The French law also prohibits selling Nazi memorabilia inside France. That's what the Ebay case was about.
Point is, you shouldn't be a Nazi. In France or otherwise. That said, being a Nazi outside France doesn't mean you're a criminal when you go to France so long as you keep your mouth shut about it.
Tom
Clearly that's a violation of their first admendment... what you mean France isn't the 54th state [53rd == Canada]?
:-)
... stupid brasseries...] and I never felt shunned even though my French isn't 100%.
Vive la France libre!
I've been to Paris, Dijon and Vannes. France from what I saw is an open and inviting country. The locals were always helpful and pleasant [with a few exceptions in Paris near the Orsay..
Frankly if these immigrants can't adjust to living in France it's because they're not willing to meet half-way on things. You have to learn the Language. Collectively I've been there for 6 weeks and even *I* had to speak French at some moments [because the other dude I was talking with didn't speak English].
Of course these immigrants should just come to Canada. Where nobody speaks the same language twice and welfare is like winning the lotto [j/k but seriously fuck off you pogey consuming fucks].
Tom [... sometimes wishing I was back in Dijon...]
That's bullshit.
... nothing?
You can say "hail satan and his nazi worshippers too" all you want. You just can't say that in England, France and Germany [among others]. If you sit on your blog in the USA you can say "I'm a jew hating nazi dawg from the lower eastside". THEN you can go to France and enjoy their fine cuisine without a thing to worry about [perhaps your poor choice in association].
So long as you don't promote the nazi party while you're in France you're ok.
Maybe the law you were thinking of was
Tom
[N.B. In France they find "freedom fries" to be a cute american joke. It's not an insult.]
there was a lack of media coverage explaining why ethnically segregated inhabitants of some of France's poorest cities have been driven to riot.
Because we don't care?
You know what, if you live in country where your government is more interested in pushing you into servitude for their own gains then instantiate public works [e.g. schools, roads, hospitals, etc] then not much I can or want to do about it. It's bad enough that piece by piece we're selling off our own nations ["would you like fries with that?"] that now I also have to worry that some shit from north africa doesn't have enough education in him?
I'm sorry what? This is the day and age of the internet. If you live in France, have access to net [which I bet most of these shits do] and you can't learn yourself a thing or two then too bad. It shows you can't overcome problems which you're going to face in a professional career anyways.
I'm not saying these people aren't getting the royal screw job, I'm saying they have to deal with it and overcome. These riots will do zero to get them help or achieve a higher quality of life. Maybe if they protested peacfully for productive things [e.g. more access to education] they wouldn't have these problems?
Tom
and you didn't end the post with "yeee-haw!"
[preface: I live in the city, have my entire life] I personally wouldn't try to tip a cow for one reason only. They're fucking heavy and could trample me if pissed off.
That's like trying to tickle a lion or something.
Anyone stupid enough to try and tip something that ways 8 times their weight needs some help.
Tom
#4 - have enough disposable income to verbally threaten the others by saying you'll fly out there to beat the shit out of them if they don't stop spawn camping. :-)
/rant :-)
Most of the time in online games people aren't playing to test other peoples skill and have a challenge. They simply want "more points". If they were in it for the sport they wouldn't stalk players [e.g. repeatedly kill the same guy, go after them when it's illogical [e.g. you're in danger] etc], spawn camp [e.g. hide at their spawn point with a sniper rifle or something of high splash damage], and the dozens of other ways [griefing, TK, etc].
Basically it's just not that interesting to play online once you realize that the guy on the other end who is pissing you off so much is 12 yrs old, lives in their parents house and bought the game with an allowance. All while you're 23, living on your own and had to work 3 hours to EARN the money for the game....
Tom
And similarly you do the same for encoding. First detect the length the data will be, then check, then encode. When testing make sure your "get_length" and "encode" functions return the same length. [if at all possible use the same code].
But that would be asking MSFT engineers to use "if" statements... that would be ill-advised as it means THEY WOULD HAVE TO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING FIRST.
Tom
It furthers the fundamental problem that you should have access to the working specs. What happens when you buy a 100$ card or something and the company folds [or stops the product line]. You get no support.
You're either forgetful or too young to remember the day when things were a bit more open. The IBM PC was a standard for computers for a reason. It gave everyone an "in" to work on software, hardware, etc.
e.g. if your UART was 8250 compliant it meant you could replace some other vendor when a customer looks for a serial port or modem add-on.
Now it's just "we do our own thing, here is a buggy binary driver that may work". Remember the drivers work in the kernel space. And these are the same half-breeds that think ".net is an improvement in the software development world". It's bad enough having them in userspace let alone kernel. [* to be fair I don't consider myself a kernel developer either, there are a lot of things to keep in mind there like entry conditions, RACE conditions, latency, etc].
I'd rather see vendors embrace standards ALL WHILE countries embrace fair wage laws. If a modem really does cost 100$ when you pay the employees proper instead of 5$ then it costs 100$.
Tom
Upgrade to the lastest compiler? What for free? Oh you mean I should pay money for the latest copy? I take it they made improvements like ... installing an optimizer?
... then oh well so be it.
I'm not trying to do an anti-msft rant [though they do suck ass] but to the guy who said GCC is anti the values of freedom... ok, install windows and tell me how "free" you are to do software development. If having GNU extensions that make optimization and kernel development possible all the while not affecting the standards compliance side of things and supporting dozen of platforms is the "cost" of using GCC
For the record, VC6 had __int64 [or similar] as I use it in my libraries to define a "ulong64" type.
Tom
Um, I can go out and buy a 754-pin mobo+cpu TODAY in essentially ANY computer store.
... they make this thing called "heat". Until you can substantially lower the power required you can't stack them, hell placing them adjacent to each other is enough of a challenge. And frankly, 32 processors is not something the bulk of their customers wants which is why they don't do it.
How is it "obsolete"? Obsolete implies replaced. I'd say they have what you'd call "two product lines".
Sure they're not rolling out new designs with it, but I'd say a 2.2Ghz 3400+ is way more than enough for a desktop box. It's hardly "outdated" given the fact the top of the line 4800+ is only 200Mhz faster [but with another core].
As for your idiotic idea of stacking cpus
I say screw your bullshit SMP, I want an LCD on the top of the die so I can see the contents of the registers at all times!!!
Tom