Common misconception? It's more a question of personnal taste than a misconception.
I own an Athlon 64 3000, 1 GB of Ram, and an ATI 9600 XT, my games are stored on a Raptor 10000 RPM Hard disk. Not the latest hardware, but my system hardly qualifies as "totally obsolete" wouldn't you say? And as far as i'm concerned the following games are *unplayable*, even at the lowest resolution and the lowest level of detail :
-Doom 3 (everything works perfect, until i meet a monster - then framerates drop so bad that it's unplayable) -X3 : The Reunion (cute, but so sloooooooow) -Prey -Oblivion (plays well on interior levels, but outside fights turns the whole thing into a nice slideshow)
Mind you, i'm very picky when frame rates are concerned; Anything below 20 FPS makes the game simply not worth playing for me.
So NO, as far as i'm concerned, 2 year-old hardware just doesn't cut it for new games.
(And yes, you might get better graphics with a PC than with a console, but hey, that's an advantage consoles have - your typical TV screen is much more forgiving than a pc monitor, and you don't need to pump pixels at 1600x1200 to get a nice picture. Then again, I ain't rich enough to own a huge LCD or Plasma tv...)
I agree with most of your statement, I'm not a console gamer either, but as far as prices go you've got it all wrong:
Sure, current-gen consoles cost more than 300$-450$. But take your PC as it is right now, and fast-forward two years from now; Most new games won't run, they'll be slow like molasses, or you'll need yet another 300$ video card and another 300$ for more RAM and a faster CPU; Heck, probably a new mobo for that nifty "Core 8 Quatuor" Intel just released!
Sure, a PC can do more than a console, but we're talking gaming here. Almost any old machine can run Windows XP if gaming not for gaming. (I gave a Pentium II-266 with 256 Mb to a friend with XP on it. It runs a tad slow, but still it runs just fine!)
Whereas your PS3 or XBox360 will run this year's games just fine, and games in 3 years just fine as well. (Actuallly, the games will probably run even better, as developpers get acquainted with hardware that doesn't change every 10 minutes...)
So on the price issue, provided it doesn't die fast (Dreamcast anyone?), consoles win hands-down. And all games work fine all the time...
One thing that could make consoles more appealing is if the makers weren't so cheap as far as functionnality goes. My modded XBox does more stuff than those brand new stations, all of it being legal : Play DivX and XVid Movies I own, emulate old NES games I own, play MP3s.....
If the ad blocker downloads and then hides the ad, it's impossible to know for sure. Maybe some fancy Javascript might do the trick, but hey, since Javascript is client-based, there's always going to be a way to bypass it.
On the other side, if the ad blocker does not download the ad, then it's a piece of cake for the website to know that something fishy is going on.....
Most people i know use the "remove ad" option in Adblock, not the "hide ad". So they save bandwidth, the page loads faster, but by doing so they hurt the websites by not giving their ads any hits.
I for one use the "hide ad" - so my browser still downloads the ad, the website still makes a little money for "showing" me the ad, and everybody's happy.
Hmmmm..... So if I follow that line of thought, Google, with it's huge index, is assuredly indexing the contents of some websites that host copyrighted contents. No doubt about it.
Should we take Google down? After all, their indexing does *facilitate piracy*, just like Razorback2 - to a lesser degree, of course.
And before you mention it, (just like in Google's index) not all the content that was on RazorBack2 was illegal, mind you. And last time i checked, connecting users to other users was not illegal anywhere in the world.
Where do we draw the line? When do you decide that Google is legal wereas Razorback2 is not??? This has to be decided by the law, not by associations like the RIAA.
The initial reason he moved to Australia is because here in Canada he was asked to concentrate more on his olympic career and less on his sideline. He refused.
(Being on Slashdot) this could be interpreted as if we asked him to stop sending spam and because he refused he's now in Australia.
(Still being on Slashdot) I could go even further and imply that Australia actively supports spamming!;-)
I still play some Atari 2600 games here and then on my Xbox (mind you, I actually own the original cartridges and the system)...
Heck, I still play Master of Orion 2 on the PC, even if it's almost 10 years old now. I still play Dungeon Master, the all-time best pseudo-3d dungeon crawler ever made. (The Amiga 500 version of course)
My point is, there is a place for legacy gaming - maybe not for you, but for me and lots of other people. So yes, backward compatibily is an issue and a selling point...
The guys are a couple of friends of mine with too much spare time on their hands! They build an arcade machine using a PC and a TV, and they later used that knowledge to build a DDR machine. The site has some good techie background that might prove useful for you.
Enjoy! (And i'll get a good laugh if the site crashes because of/. hehehe)
Slashdot Mirror
Common misconception? It's more a question of personnal taste than a misconception.
I own an Athlon 64 3000, 1 GB of Ram, and an ATI 9600 XT, my games are stored on a Raptor 10000 RPM Hard disk. Not the latest hardware, but my system hardly qualifies as "totally obsolete" wouldn't you say? And as far as i'm concerned the following games are *unplayable*, even at the lowest resolution and the lowest level of detail :
-Doom 3 (everything works perfect, until i meet a monster - then framerates drop so bad that it's unplayable)
-X3 : The Reunion (cute, but so sloooooooow)
-Prey
-Oblivion (plays well on interior levels, but outside fights turns the whole thing into a nice slideshow)
Mind you, i'm very picky when frame rates are concerned; Anything below 20 FPS makes the game simply not worth playing for me.
So NO, as far as i'm concerned, 2 year-old hardware just doesn't cut it for new games.
(And yes, you might get better graphics with a PC than with a console, but hey, that's an advantage consoles have - your typical TV screen is much more forgiving than a pc monitor, and you don't need to pump pixels at 1600x1200 to get a nice picture. Then again, I ain't rich enough to own a huge LCD or Plasma tv...)
I agree with most of your statement, I'm not a console gamer either, but as far as prices go you've got it all wrong:
Sure, current-gen consoles cost more than 300$-450$. But take your PC as it is right now, and fast-forward two years from now; Most new games won't run, they'll be slow like molasses, or you'll need yet another 300$ video card and another 300$ for more RAM and a faster CPU; Heck, probably a new mobo for that nifty "Core 8 Quatuor" Intel just released!
Sure, a PC can do more than a console, but we're talking gaming here. Almost any old machine can run Windows XP if gaming not for gaming. (I gave a Pentium II-266 with 256 Mb to a friend with XP on it. It runs a tad slow, but still it runs just fine!)
Whereas your PS3 or XBox360 will run this year's games just fine, and games in 3 years just fine as well. (Actuallly, the games will probably run even better, as developpers get acquainted with hardware that doesn't change every 10 minutes...)
So on the price issue, provided it doesn't die fast (Dreamcast anyone?), consoles win hands-down. And all games work fine all the time...
One thing that could make consoles more appealing is if the makers weren't so cheap as far as functionnality goes. My modded XBox does more stuff than those brand new stations, all of it being legal : Play DivX and XVid Movies I own, emulate old NES games I own, play MP3s.....
If the ad blocker downloads and then hides the ad, it's impossible to know for sure. Maybe some fancy Javascript might do the trick, but hey, since Javascript is client-based, there's always going to be a way to bypass it.
On the other side, if the ad blocker does not download the ad, then it's a piece of cake for the website to know that something fishy is going on.....
Most people i know use the "remove ad" option in Adblock, not the "hide ad". So they save bandwidth, the page loads faster, but by doing so they hurt the websites by not giving their ads any hits.
I for one use the "hide ad" - so my browser still downloads the ad, the website still makes a little money for "showing" me the ad, and everybody's happy.
Hmmmm..... So if I follow that line of thought, Google, with it's huge index, is assuredly indexing the contents of some websites that host copyrighted contents. No doubt about it.
Should we take Google down? After all, their indexing does *facilitate piracy*, just like Razorback2 - to a lesser degree, of course.
And before you mention it, (just like in Google's index) not all the content that was on RazorBack2 was illegal, mind you. And last time i checked, connecting users to other users was not illegal anywhere in the world.
Where do we draw the line? When do you decide that Google is legal wereas Razorback2 is not??? This has to be decided by the law, not by associations like the RIAA.
The initial reason he moved to Australia is because here in Canada he was asked to concentrate more on his olympic career and less on his sideline. He refused.
;-)
(Being on Slashdot) this could be interpreted as if we asked him to stop sending spam and because he refused he's now in Australia.
(Still being on Slashdot) I could go even further and imply that Australia actively supports spamming!
I disagree with you.
I still play some Atari 2600 games here and then on my Xbox (mind you, I actually own the original cartridges and the system)...
Heck, I still play Master of Orion 2 on the PC, even if it's almost 10 years old now.
I still play Dungeon Master, the all-time best pseudo-3d dungeon crawler ever made. (The Amiga 500 version of course)
My point is, there is a place for legacy gaming - maybe not for you, but for me and lots of other people. So yes, backward compatibily is an issue and a selling point...
http://www.x-b-r.com/
/. hehehe)
The guys are a couple of friends of mine with too much spare time on their hands! They build an arcade machine using a PC and a TV, and they later used that knowledge to build a DDR machine. The site has some good techie background that might prove useful for you.
Enjoy! (And i'll get a good laugh if the site crashes because of