I'm really looking forward to any product ID Software puts out. Why? Because they always raise the bar as far as 3D game engines go. However, I really don't enjoy ID games. Their forte is in graphics engines and not putting it all together. For example, I personally believe that Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is superior to RTCW in every way (graphics, sound, multiplayer). And yes, I own both games.
Put this engine into the hands of a development house such as Raven Software, and you will see works of art!!
Yes, multiplayer N64 is *much* more social if that's what you want. I'll admit that playing a quick game of Madden Football with a friend is pretty cool...oh wait, I'm a slashdotting computer geek which means I don't have friends!!
Hell, I've even played some game where you use morocco's and dance to some crazy music.
However having no friends is not the only reason for going with PC multiplayer games. You are comparing apples to oranges. Last time I checked, you couldn't have a single N64 running multiple screens. And last time I checked, N64 doesn't support 32 players.
The thrill in multiplayer FPS games is the hunt. Its hard to hunt when the huntee can look at your portion of the TV and know exactly where you are.
Its also hard to have team tactics when the team is only 2 people.
Then there is the issue with controllers, hard disk space, saved games, etc. Does N64 offer something like Microsoft Flight Simulator? Or how about a massive RPG like Baldur's Gate? How would you control a precise tactical FPS game with a little N64 controller? What about sending messages to a teammate halfway across the world?
Sorry, nothing beats multiplayer games. Artificial Intelligence is lightyears away from Human Intelligence. Unless Sony or Nintendo offer me the experience that multiplayer Medal of Honor does, I consider consoles inferior.
I don't need simplicity and my ATI Radeon works flawlessly (and I hear nVidia is even better).
Would you mind quickly explaining why a KDE app compiled with gcc-2.95 wouldn't run with a system using 2.96? I'm not disagreeing, I'm just curious for my own knowledge.
Does it have to do with dynamically linked against KDE libs compiled with 2.96? If so, maybe KDE libs could be provided that were compiled with 2.95?? How many C++ ABI's are there anyways?
Why can't distributions just install all previous versions of glibc and libstdc++??? Then there wouldn't be so much of a problem with breaking binary compatibility.... am I missing something?
Reading some of these posts is depressing. I'm currently finishing up my M.S. in Computer Science. I've got an Electrical Engineering degree and 2 years of work experience for a Fortune 50 company. Is it that bad out there? Are there people educated similarly to me who can't find a job? And to think I left a great job to go back to school....I'm starting to regret that decision after reading these posts! Someone tell me it isn't true!!
The Sims is a perfect game for the workplace. Why? Because you can enable your Sims to have some intelligence for themselves and the game proceeds while you answer that phone call or speak with the boss. Granted, this intelligence isn't very high, but you don't need to babysit them and the game doesn't require total concentration. Just queue up some actions for your Sims every 20 minutes or so, and you are good to go.
A friend of mine at my former workplace was very good at this. He had a laptop running the Sims all day while he sat in his cubicle pretending to work. The laptop was hidden by a stack of engineering equipment. It was funny watching the boss stop at his cubicle to discuss things. He had no clue what was going on!
Read a book on parallel computing, and you might realize why shared-memory machines are *far* better than message-passing machines for certain applications.
Check the E10K. I believe its 106 but I may be wrong. However that's a hardware issue. Solaris does such fine-grained locking that they could probably scale beyond 106 given a piece of hardware.
You might be surprised. Pixar Studios, for example, uses Sun Enterprise 10000 machines for rendering their movies (so I was told this 6 months ago by one of their chief animators). Those max out at 106 processors per box, and Pixar has over 3000 CPU's. Do the math to figure out how many boxes that is. And maybe such a conversation did indeed take place:
Mr. Smithers, get the CTO in here right now. Our animators say that Monster, Inc. is going to take another 3 months to render. Get some more of those 106-processor Sun boxes right now!
Finally, to those who wonder why they don't use clusters instead of SMP machines? Pixar's rendering software algorithms are optimized for fine-grained communication patterns and simply would not work on a message-passing cluster.
oh please. Sure, Linux is much better for small x86 boxes especially for desktop use. Solaris scales to 106 processors last time I checked. Linux, with all its design flaws, won't come close to that for awhile.
And before you label me as a troll, know that I am an avid Linux user and have great respect for it. However its got a lot of technical hurdles to clear before you can say "Linux is better than Solaris".
Seems like every graph I look at these days in research papers are the same styles and colors (Microsoft Excel defaults).
Too bad the open-source community doesn't have a better alternative. I've tried Grace...the learning curve was a little steep. Guppi is not ready, not is KChart. The best I've found so far is Octave, a open-source Matlab clone . That's because it provides an interface to GNU plot and Matlab is very familiar to me.
Why is this labeled a "troll"?? It is a valid opinion. I have an original Radeon and am extremely pleased with it. The 3D performance is very good-- maybe not as good as nVidia, but good enough for me. What makes me really like the Radeon better than my old GeForce2 is the 2D visuals. For 2D picture quality, I think ATI is somewhere between Matrox (the very best) and nVidia.
I've purchased ASUS, Kbit, ECS, SuperMicro, and a couple others.... I have heard of Tyan but I know nothing about them. I occasionally read sites like anandtech.com and tomshardware.com, but I don't pay close attention.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm really looking forward to any product ID Software puts out. Why? Because they always raise the bar as far as 3D game engines go. However, I really don't enjoy ID games. Their forte is in graphics engines and not putting it all together. For example, I personally believe that Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is superior to RTCW in every way (graphics, sound, multiplayer). And yes, I own both games.
Put this engine into the hands of a development house such as Raven Software, and you will see works of art!!
Yes, multiplayer N64 is *much* more social if that's what you want. I'll admit that playing a quick game of Madden Football with a friend is pretty cool...oh wait, I'm a slashdotting computer geek which means I don't have friends!!
Hell, I've even played some game where you use morocco's and dance to some crazy music.
However having no friends is not the only reason for going with PC multiplayer games. You are comparing apples to oranges. Last time I checked, you couldn't have a single N64 running multiple screens. And last time I checked, N64 doesn't support 32 players.
The thrill in multiplayer FPS games is the hunt. Its hard to hunt when the huntee can look at your portion of the TV and know exactly where you are.
Its also hard to have team tactics when the team is only 2 people.
Then there is the issue with controllers, hard disk space, saved games, etc. Does N64 offer something like Microsoft Flight Simulator? Or how about a massive RPG like Baldur's Gate? How would you control a precise tactical FPS game with a little N64 controller? What about sending messages to a teammate halfway across the world?
Nothing like Wal-Mart doing whatever they can to put small computer shops, who offer bare computers without Windows, out of business.
Sorry, nothing beats multiplayer games. Artificial Intelligence is lightyears away from Human Intelligence. Unless Sony or Nintendo offer me the experience that multiplayer Medal of Honor does, I consider consoles inferior.
I don't need simplicity and my ATI Radeon works flawlessly (and I hear nVidia is even better).
In other news, 90% of people living in India are illiterate.
On the whole, Americans aren't really that dumb folks...we have our quirks like every other culture/society.
Would you mind quickly explaining why a KDE app compiled with gcc-2.95 wouldn't run with a system using 2.96? I'm not disagreeing, I'm just curious for my own knowledge.
Does it have to do with dynamically linked against KDE libs compiled with 2.96? If so, maybe KDE libs could be provided that were compiled with 2.95?? How many C++ ABI's are there anyways?
Thanks!
Why can't distributions just install all previous versions of glibc and libstdc++??? Then there wouldn't be so much of a problem with breaking binary compatibility.... am I missing something?
Reading some of these posts is depressing. I'm currently finishing up my M.S. in Computer Science. I've got an Electrical Engineering degree and 2 years of work experience for a Fortune 50 company. Is it that bad out there? Are there people educated similarly to me who can't find a job? And to think I left a great job to go back to school....I'm starting to regret that decision after reading these posts! Someone tell me it isn't true!!
The Sims is a perfect game for the workplace. Why? Because you can enable your Sims to have some intelligence for themselves and the game proceeds while you answer that phone call or speak with the boss. Granted, this intelligence isn't very high, but you don't need to babysit them and the game doesn't require total concentration. Just queue up some actions for your Sims every 20 minutes or so, and you are good to go.
A friend of mine at my former workplace was very good at this. He had a laptop running the Sims all day while he sat in his cubicle pretending to work. The laptop was hidden by a stack of engineering equipment. It was funny watching the boss stop at his cubicle to discuss things. He had no clue what was going on!
Read a book on parallel computing, and you might realize why shared-memory machines are *far* better than message-passing machines for certain applications.
Check the E10K. I believe its 106 but I may be wrong. However that's a hardware issue. Solaris does such fine-grained locking that they could probably scale beyond 106 given a piece of hardware.
I believe you. However the man I spoke with seemed to think that RenderMan wasn't effective on clusters. He might be in bed with Sun though...
oh, I'm not sure all 3000 of those CPU's are Ultra10000 machines. sorry.
You might be surprised. Pixar Studios, for example, uses Sun Enterprise 10000 machines for rendering their movies (so I was told this 6 months ago by one of their chief animators). Those max out at 106 processors per box, and Pixar has over 3000 CPU's. Do the math to figure out how many boxes that is. And maybe such a conversation did indeed take place:
Mr. Smithers, get the CTO in here right now. Our animators say that Monster, Inc. is going to take another 3 months to render. Get some more of those 106-processor Sun boxes right now!
Finally, to those who wonder why they don't use clusters instead of SMP machines? Pixar's rendering software algorithms are optimized for fine-grained communication patterns and simply would not work on a message-passing cluster.
oh please. Sure, Linux is much better for small x86 boxes especially for desktop use. Solaris scales to 106 processors last time I checked. Linux, with all its design flaws, won't come close to that for awhile.
And before you label me as a troll, know that I am an avid Linux user and have great respect for it. However its got a lot of technical hurdles to clear before you can say "Linux is better than Solaris".
I love Slashdot! Just imagine what the reaction on Slashdot would be if Intel's CEO made the same statement.
Seems like every graph I look at these days in research papers are the same styles and colors (Microsoft Excel defaults).
Too bad the open-source community doesn't have a better alternative. I've tried Grace...the learning curve was a little steep. Guppi is not ready, not is KChart. The best I've found so far is Octave, a open-source Matlab clone . That's because it provides an interface to GNU plot and Matlab is very familiar to me.
Too bad I get consistent KDE application crashes (Control Panel, etc.). Is KDE3.0 less stable than KDE2.2.2?
That has to be one crappy connection to divebomb solaris.
What are you talking about? I've got Solaris 8 running on my Ultra 5 which is about as fast as a 180MHz Pentium Pro.
Surely because its running Solaris 8, the connection must suck then??? I don't think so.
Last time I installed Woody, about 2 months ago, the kernel was still at 2.2.20. Have they finally gone 2.4.x yet?
(I've sinced moved on to Unstable and use my own kernel)
huh? A donation is required?
Condor is a very good Grid system that is freely available for Linux (binaries only).
Why is this labeled a "troll"?? It is a valid opinion. I have an original Radeon and am extremely pleased with it. The 3D performance is very good-- maybe not as good as nVidia, but good enough for me. What makes me really like the Radeon better than my old GeForce2 is the 2D visuals. For 2D picture quality, I think ATI is somewhere between Matrox (the very best) and nVidia.
How about "I'm not buying AMD because I have to read slashdot in order to find out which chipsets suck"
I've purchased ASUS, Kbit, ECS, SuperMicro, and a couple others.... I have heard of Tyan but I know nothing about them. I occasionally read sites like anandtech.com and tomshardware.com, but I don't pay close attention.