Personally, I've gotten used to the GC controller and like the fact that I'm going to be able to use it with my Revolution.
The GameCube controller only works for GameCube games. You have to use the new controller for Revolution games. Some of the new games will use a WaveBird-like shell over the new controller, but for the most part you must use the remote control controller.
It seems obvious to me that the open source project would quickly have its bugs fixed, because of two reasons. The coders on the project would have ego on the line, and would therefore be much more careful with publicly available code. Due to the immense availability of peer review, issues are discovered and reported much more quickly and thoroughly.
It also seems obvious that the closed source project would have many more bugs, for many different reasons. Programmers are more likely to ignore issues, because "nobody can see it". The pressure of getting a release out means that things are quickly cobbled together without much thought for security. If there is a review of code, it is not likely to be as thorough as what is available to open source.
From my personal experiences, I felt the opposite. When I worked on commercial, closed code, it was something I took pride in. Not many people can say something they worked on made it to store shelves. I wanted it to be as good as could be, as it reflected on me.
When I've contributed to open source projects, I've felt less concern about the quality. I've pretty much had it in the back of my mind that if I make a mistake, someone else will see it and correct it. Realisticly though, whenever I submit a patch to a project I get very little feedback on it. Generally any feedback I do get is on the functionality of the patch rather than the implementation. If I submit a large patch, people are probably only going to catch the fairly obvious flaws unless they have a good reason to mess with the code I just submitted. When you're talking about something really important like the Linux Kernel, I'm sure patches will get stricter reviews. But when you start talking stuff like small utilities and random KDE/Gnome apps, people aren't going to care that much.
The Magic Book was definitely useful. You could still shoot while the fire was burning, but I think you had to wait a little longer between shots. The fire was great in Level 9. It killed the catepillar enemies very quickly, and was also great in the rooms with lots of Like Likes (the shield eaters).
Opterons peak at 8 way using basic HyperTransport. To go higher than that you need more advanced logic to connect groups of processors. At the time I talked to SGI (2.5 years ago), no one had yet built an Opteron motherboard that could handle more than 4 processors, although a few vendors had 8 way boards in development. Higher than that was still a while off.
SGI offered Itanium early, but they were still pushing MIPS in all the sales pushes. Around 2001 they were still pushing MIPS systems to their customers. It wasn't until 2002-2003 that they made Itaniums the focus of their sales pitches. At that point MIPS hadn't seen serious upgrades in a couple of years, and Itanium2 was well established in it's FP niche.
Where have you been? SGI launched their PC line in 99 and discontinued it 2 years later. Since then they have increasingly focused on selling extremely high end computers. Their entry level Altix systems cost $100,000. The problem is there just aren't enough buyers to support SGI. As PCs eat into their market, they just keep focusing on higher end systems. They aren't realizing that the number of people buying machines with 6 digit price tags is shrinking.
I asked an SGI salesman if they were considering Operton servers. Their response was that Opterons (at the time) topped out at 8 CPUs per machine, which wasn't enough for them to even consider using them. Yes, people who consider an 8 CPU machine to be crap are willing to pay top dollar for their machines. But there aren't many of those people.
SGI didn't switch to Itanium until they no longer had the money to keep MIPS competitve. For years SGI machines have been used almost exclusively for scientific work, which Itanium is great for. They probably would've been better off dropping MIPS sooner.
SGI's problem is they only want to sell really high end systems. They want the high margin, low volume products. The problem is as PCs eat their marketshare, they compensate by focusing on even higher end products. I've talked with their salesmen about the issue, and they're actually rather proud of their business model. They absolutely refuse to consider lower margin, higher volume products. Looks like they're determined to stick with the business model until it the end.
The only people who really use CodeWarrior anymore are console game programmers and embedded system developers. You can charge a lot more per copy in those markets, and I'm sure the customers are a lot more likely to buy support contracts. The Mac and especially PC versions of CodeWarrior were probably costing them more than it was worth to maintain them.
Unfortunately for AMD, even as they transition to use 65 nm processes, Intel is about a generation ahead of them, with the first batch 45nm chips due next year.
That could turn out to be a completely bullshit number on Intel's part... or not. Until they're really being sold, it's just vapor.
Intel and AMD both pull off a process shrink on average once every 2 years. Intel's schedule is usually about a year ahead of AMD's. It's certainly possible that Intel will run into huge problems and fall behind AMD, but based on past history, it's quite unlikely. Remember, both of these companies have been making chips for a long time. They have a pretty good idea of how it will take to transition to the next transistor size.
"Bush cited Article XV of the ABM Treaty, which states that the Treaty could be abrogated by one of the parties "if extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests.""
So, a fall of the Soviet Government and the formation of a Russian govt. that doesn't consider the US an enemy (maybe not best freind either but...) isn't an extradinary event in your mind? I don't think Russia care whether or not we build a missile defense system at this time since they don't see us in the same light as before.
I would certainly consider that an extraordinary event, but certainly not one that jeopardizes the US's supreme interests.
9/11 seems to be the catch all justification for Bush's actions, so that will probably be the excuse here too.
MFC has a huge learning curve, and its not exactly easy to use. It's about as far away from RAD as you can get.
Unless you have a really strong objection to VB, it'll suit you far far better than MFC. Also keep in mind you have the option of compiling C code into a DLL and calling it from VB.
If you really want to use C++, try Qt if the GPL is an option. Qt is leaps and bounds easier to work with than MFC. Another option is to get a copy of Borland C++ Builder. It's very similar to VB in functionality.
The system is also shipping with an attachment you hold in your left hand which contains an analog stick and 2 buttons. One of the big examples is when playing an FPS, you'd use the stick to walk and the remote to aim. Granted, I still don't think that's enough buttons for Metroid Prime, so I'm rather curious to see what they come up with.
There's also a WaveBird style shell that goes around the base controller allowing standard control styles while still retaining motion sensitivity.
The last 3 months of 2004 included the release of Halo 2, which sold millions within the quarter. It was the only quarter where the Xbox division has ever made a profit. You can't really judge other quarters based on that one. This quarter is just standard fare for the games division.
The Zelda Oracle games launched for the GameBoy Color on the same day the GameBoy Advance was released. Those games had extra features if you used them on a GBA. I wouldn't be too surprised if Twilight Princess did have some bonuses for the Revolution, but I really wouldn't expect it to work with the new controller. It's just too different. I can't see them taking the time to support two completely different interfaces, particuarlly this late in development.
Now if this was Capcom... hey, maybe we'll get another Resident Evil remake with support for the new controller. they had the PS1 original, PS1 remake with dual shock support, GameCube remake, and they are remaking for the DS with touch screen support. On the bright side, maybe we'd finally get a version of the original Resident Evil with decent controls.
So you put ATI hardware into a box that CAN'T be upgraded, can't easily be patched by the user?
That's exactly why it works well. The game disc includes the specific version of the graphics driver it was developed with. Each console is 100% identical hardware. You've now removed the factors that make ATI's PC drivers suck.
We already know that it is not going to do High Def. Sure sure, you don't have a High Def set right now so why do you need it? Becomes in a few years DIGITAL tv WILL replace ANALOG tv and you will have to ditch your current setup anyway so why not go high def at the same time? Tech moves faster then you think. Just try to remember back when was the last time you saw a movie in TV screen format vs widescreen? Do you have a widescreen tv?
The transition to digital television only affects people watching broadcast television. It doesn't change anything for people who get their signal via cable or satellite. If you do watch TV using rabbit ears, all you have to do is buy a $40 convertor box to keep using your current TV. I really don't see the rabbit ear crowd as the type to buy an HDTV when they could just buy a $40 box instead.
There are some people who claim it is only a marginal imrpovement over DVD but they are idiots or have only seen extremely poor examples.
Did you ever stop to think that not everyone's eyesight is as good as yours, or is sensitive to the same things? LCD TV's with a high pixel response time drive me crazy to watch, but I've been with people that don't see anything wrong. As to myself, I will certainly notice if you bump up the resolution in a game, but tend not to notice framerate issues unless it gets really low. I'll notice if the game drops to 10fps, but if the game was fluctuating drastically between say 30fps and 90fps, I wouldn't notice a thing even though others will complain.
Will Nintendo deliver? Who knows, they succeeded with the DS in deliviring fun games on inferior hardware BUT not with the gamecube.
The GameCube was a relatively powerful, a decent step above the PS2 and only slightly behind the Xbox, and had a lot of good games. The DS has a lot of potential, but there hasn't been too much impressive on it.
As for people not looking at specs. Right. Nice try. Specs matter. Specs determine a lot of gameplay. The simplest thing of level size and level load is determined by the specs.
People don't care about graphics specs. They just want them to be good enough. If graphics specs were what sold, the N64 would've trounced the PlayStation, and the Xbox and GameCube would've trounced the PS2.
Developers are who cares about system specs, not consumers. They care even more though about market share.
If the analog stick sucked, then your friends should've gotten new controllers. The stick design is a plastic stick rubbing against metal gears. They wear out over time. The controllers should last for about a couple years on average before the responsiveness gets noticably bad.
I've never tried it, but supposedly you can improve the responsiveness by opening up the controller and cleaning out the plastic dust from the gears. Of course there is a limit to the effectiveness of that approach, but it should prolong the life of the controllers.
It sounds like what I'd expect from a Revolution version of Super Monkey Ball.
Re:but wait did the MS apologist not say
on
Two New WMF Bugs Found
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· Score: 5, Insightful
8 days should have been enough time for MS to completly check the code involved and use every attack possible. The fact that MS obviously hasn't bothered shows they still don't understand security. OF course hackers are going to try to find new exploits in WMF code since they know MS and that if there is one bug there must be others.
Most of the 8 days wasn't spent checking that the exploit was fixed. I'm sure that part went fairly quickly. The real issue is that although WMF files are fairly rare, the WMF format is used extensively inside Windows. The feature in question is only a security issue when found in arbitrary WMF files, but serves a legit purposes when used inside of applications. The 3rd party fix floating around broke some printer drivers and probably other software, whereas Microsoft's fix resulted in less (if any) broken software. The bulk of the time was spent testing the fix for unexpected consequences.
Not only have the early deaths of CD-Rs been greatly exaggerated before, but even the lifespan of pressed CDs were (are?) hotly disputed. In the early 80's I heard all about how CDs would last forever because each play didn't degrade the quality ever so slightly like it did with cassette tapes and vinyl records. Then in the late 80's a group of researchers determined that CDs would probably only last ten years, for whatever reason.
I remember hearing about large runs of CDs being made in the 80s or so where the layers of the disc weren't sealed properly. The end result was air got in between the layers and eventually corroded the data layer.
My oldest music cds are 10 years old and they still work. I have some CDROMs around (somewhere) that are another couple years older. Maybe I should try them out if I can find them.
I found my current job by submitting a resume through Dice. I think it was the only response I got from the dozens of resumes I submitted. I had much better luck submitting resumes through the company's web site or fax.
I've had my resume searchable on a few sites for a while, and I do get calls every now and then because of it. One big thing I've noticed - the vast majority of the calls you get will come within the first week or two of when you post your resume. The odds of a recruiter responding to your resume drastically go down after that. The solution is go to the job site, click Edit Resume, then click Save. Even if you don't change anything, it bumps you up in the search results and the calls start coming again.
Bullshit. Punchcards were first made in the early 1800's and then used more commonly by big computer companies like IBM in the late 1800's. They were not used after the late 70's because they sucked. I work with people that used punch cards to program computers. They never talk about "chads" they talk about things like getting cards out of order, dropping them on the ground and not being able to edit them once made. They don't talk about "chads", those are invented words for the 2000 election well after nobody used punchcards for over 20 years.
I'm not trying to say punchcards are good, but, those complaints are irrelevant when it comes to counting ballots. If you drop a pile of cards and pick they up in a different order, who cares. The vote total doesn't change if you run the votes through in a different order. Punch cards being hard to edit is a good thing in an election.
As for chads, I wouldn't expect those people to complain about them. If your job depends on using punchcards every day, you're going to learn how to punch them correctly very quickly. If you only use them once a year (or every 4 years), the odds of you making a mistake are much higher.
I've taken a number of standardized tests for over 20 years that have never, ever used punchcards or had hanging chads. They were all done with standard #2 pencils and a piece of paper that could scan them at remarkable speeds and accuracy. I'm sure somebody could counter with a time that one kid had his SAT score off by a point or two out of 1600 or the 2400 or whatever it is now, but AFAK they are beyond human accuracy, and never, ever have "chad" issues.
How do you know how accurate they are? Have you ever received your graded test back along with an answer key to compare? I've never seen that happen. I assume they're accurate since the final scores I receive tend to be in the same ballpark as my assumptions are, but I have no way of knowing for sure. People I talk to usually seem to find the results believable as well, which certainly increases my trust of the system, but it still doesn't give any idea of the margin of error.
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12-18 months sounds right for your average sequal that doesn't change things up too much. Things like Splinter Cell games.
For a Zelda or Metal Gear Solid level game, 2-3 years sounds more normal.
Personally, I've gotten used to the GC controller and like the fact that I'm going to be able to use it with my Revolution.
The GameCube controller only works for GameCube games. You have to use the new controller for Revolution games. Some of the new games will use a WaveBird-like shell over the new controller, but for the most part you must use the remote control controller.
The problem with the NES Advantage is it only lasted a couple months before it stopped working, even if you barely used it.
It seems obvious to me that the open source project would quickly have its bugs fixed, because of two reasons. The coders on the project would have ego on the line, and would therefore be much more careful with publicly available code. Due to the immense availability of peer review, issues are discovered and reported much more quickly and thoroughly.
It also seems obvious that the closed source project would have many more bugs, for many different reasons. Programmers are more likely to ignore issues, because "nobody can see it". The pressure of getting a release out means that things are quickly cobbled together without much thought for security. If there is a review of code, it is not likely to be as thorough as what is available to open source.
From my personal experiences, I felt the opposite. When I worked on commercial, closed code, it was something I took pride in. Not many people can say something they worked on made it to store shelves. I wanted it to be as good as could be, as it reflected on me.
When I've contributed to open source projects, I've felt less concern about the quality. I've pretty much had it in the back of my mind that if I make a mistake, someone else will see it and correct it. Realisticly though, whenever I submit a patch to a project I get very little feedback on it. Generally any feedback I do get is on the functionality of the patch rather than the implementation. If I submit a large patch, people are probably only going to catch the fairly obvious flaws unless they have a good reason to mess with the code I just submitted. When you're talking about something really important like the Linux Kernel, I'm sure patches will get stricter reviews. But when you start talking stuff like small utilities and random KDE/Gnome apps, people aren't going to care that much.
The Magic Book was definitely useful. You could still shoot while the fire was burning, but I think you had to wait a little longer between shots. The fire was great in Level 9. It killed the catepillar enemies very quickly, and was also great in the rooms with lots of Like Likes (the shield eaters).
Opterons peak at 8 way using basic HyperTransport. To go higher than that you need more advanced logic to connect groups of processors. At the time I talked to SGI (2.5 years ago), no one had yet built an Opteron motherboard that could handle more than 4 processors, although a few vendors had 8 way boards in development. Higher than that was still a while off.
SGI offered Itanium early, but they were still pushing MIPS in all the sales pushes. Around 2001 they were still pushing MIPS systems to their customers. It wasn't until 2002-2003 that they made Itaniums the focus of their sales pitches. At that point MIPS hadn't seen serious upgrades in a couple of years, and Itanium2 was well established in it's FP niche.
Where have you been? SGI launched their PC line in 99 and discontinued it 2 years later. Since then they have increasingly focused on selling extremely high end computers. Their entry level Altix systems cost $100,000. The problem is there just aren't enough buyers to support SGI. As PCs eat into their market, they just keep focusing on higher end systems. They aren't realizing that the number of people buying machines with 6 digit price tags is shrinking.
I asked an SGI salesman if they were considering Operton servers. Their response was that Opterons (at the time) topped out at 8 CPUs per machine, which wasn't enough for them to even consider using them. Yes, people who consider an 8 CPU machine to be crap are willing to pay top dollar for their machines. But there aren't many of those people.
SGI didn't switch to Itanium until they no longer had the money to keep MIPS competitve. For years SGI machines have been used almost exclusively for scientific work, which Itanium is great for. They probably would've been better off dropping MIPS sooner.
SGI's problem is they only want to sell really high end systems. They want the high margin, low volume products. The problem is as PCs eat their marketshare, they compensate by focusing on even higher end products. I've talked with their salesmen about the issue, and they're actually rather proud of their business model. They absolutely refuse to consider lower margin, higher volume products. Looks like they're determined to stick with the business model until it the end.
The only people who really use CodeWarrior anymore are console game programmers and embedded system developers. You can charge a lot more per copy in those markets, and I'm sure the customers are a lot more likely to buy support contracts. The Mac and especially PC versions of CodeWarrior were probably costing them more than it was worth to maintain them.
Unfortunately for AMD, even as they transition to use 65 nm processes, Intel is about a generation ahead of them, with the first batch 45nm chips due next year.
That could turn out to be a completely bullshit number on Intel's part... or not. Until they're really being sold, it's just vapor.
Intel and AMD both pull off a process shrink on average once every 2 years. Intel's schedule is usually about a year ahead of AMD's. It's certainly possible that Intel will run into huge problems and fall behind AMD, but based on past history, it's quite unlikely. Remember, both of these companies have been making chips for a long time. They have a pretty good idea of how it will take to transition to the next transistor size.
"Bush cited Article XV of the ABM Treaty, which states that the Treaty could be abrogated by one of the parties "if extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests.""
So, a fall of the Soviet Government and the formation of a Russian govt. that doesn't consider the US an enemy (maybe not best freind either but...) isn't an extradinary event in your mind? I don't think Russia care whether or not we build a missile defense system at this time since they don't see us in the same light as before.
I would certainly consider that an extraordinary event, but certainly not one that jeopardizes the US's supreme interests.
9/11 seems to be the catch all justification for Bush's actions, so that will probably be the excuse here too.
MFC has a huge learning curve, and its not exactly easy to use. It's about as far away from RAD as you can get.
Unless you have a really strong objection to VB, it'll suit you far far better than MFC. Also keep in mind you have the option of compiling C code into a DLL and calling it from VB.
If you really want to use C++, try Qt if the GPL is an option. Qt is leaps and bounds easier to work with than MFC. Another option is to get a copy of Borland C++ Builder. It's very similar to VB in functionality.
The system is also shipping with an attachment you hold in your left hand which contains an analog stick and 2 buttons. One of the big examples is when playing an FPS, you'd use the stick to walk and the remote to aim. Granted, I still don't think that's enough buttons for Metroid Prime, so I'm rather curious to see what they come up with.
There's also a WaveBird style shell that goes around the base controller allowing standard control styles while still retaining motion sensitivity.
The last 3 months of 2004 included the release of Halo 2, which sold millions within the quarter. It was the only quarter where the Xbox division has ever made a profit. You can't really judge other quarters based on that one. This quarter is just standard fare for the games division.
The Zelda Oracle games launched for the GameBoy Color on the same day the GameBoy Advance was released. Those games had extra features if you used them on a GBA. I wouldn't be too surprised if Twilight Princess did have some bonuses for the Revolution, but I really wouldn't expect it to work with the new controller. It's just too different. I can't see them taking the time to support two completely different interfaces, particuarlly this late in development.
Now if this was Capcom... hey, maybe we'll get another Resident Evil remake with support for the new controller. they had the PS1 original, PS1 remake with dual shock support, GameCube remake, and they are remaking for the DS with touch screen support. On the bright side, maybe we'd finally get a version of the original Resident Evil with decent controls.
Considering Intel is dropping the "Intel Inside" logo as part of their rebranding, those PHB's better figure it out soon...
So you put ATI hardware into a box that CAN'T be upgraded, can't easily be patched by the user?
That's exactly why it works well. The game disc includes the specific version of the graphics driver it was developed with. Each console is 100% identical hardware. You've now removed the factors that make ATI's PC drivers suck.
We already know that it is not going to do High Def. Sure sure, you don't have a High Def set right now so why do you need it? Becomes in a few years DIGITAL tv WILL replace ANALOG tv and you will have to ditch your current setup anyway so why not go high def at the same time? Tech moves faster then you think. Just try to remember back when was the last time you saw a movie in TV screen format vs widescreen? Do you have a widescreen tv?
The transition to digital television only affects people watching broadcast television. It doesn't change anything for people who get their signal via cable or satellite. If you do watch TV using rabbit ears, all you have to do is buy a $40 convertor box to keep using your current TV. I really don't see the rabbit ear crowd as the type to buy an HDTV when they could just buy a $40 box instead.
There are some people who claim it is only a marginal imrpovement over DVD but they are idiots or have only seen extremely poor examples.
Did you ever stop to think that not everyone's eyesight is as good as yours, or is sensitive to the same things? LCD TV's with a high pixel response time drive me crazy to watch, but I've been with people that don't see anything wrong. As to myself, I will certainly notice if you bump up the resolution in a game, but tend not to notice framerate issues unless it gets really low. I'll notice if the game drops to 10fps, but if the game was fluctuating drastically between say 30fps and 90fps, I wouldn't notice a thing even though others will complain.
Will Nintendo deliver? Who knows, they succeeded with the DS in deliviring fun games on inferior hardware BUT not with the gamecube.
The GameCube was a relatively powerful, a decent step above the PS2 and only slightly behind the Xbox, and had a lot of good games. The DS has a lot of potential, but there hasn't been too much impressive on it.
As for people not looking at specs. Right. Nice try. Specs matter. Specs determine a lot of gameplay. The simplest thing of level size and level load is determined by the specs.
People don't care about graphics specs. They just want them to be good enough. If graphics specs were what sold, the N64 would've trounced the PlayStation, and the Xbox and GameCube would've trounced the PS2.
Developers are who cares about system specs, not consumers. They care even more though about market share.
If the analog stick sucked, then your friends should've gotten new controllers. The stick design is a plastic stick rubbing against metal gears. They wear out over time. The controllers should last for about a couple years on average before the responsiveness gets noticably bad.
I've never tried it, but supposedly you can improve the responsiveness by opening up the controller and cleaning out the plastic dust from the gears. Of course there is a limit to the effectiveness of that approach, but it should prolong the life of the controllers.
It sounds like what I'd expect from a Revolution version of Super Monkey Ball.
8 days should have been enough time for MS to completly check the code involved and use every attack possible. The fact that MS obviously hasn't bothered shows they still don't understand security. OF course hackers are going to try to find new exploits in WMF code since they know MS and that if there is one bug there must be others.
Most of the 8 days wasn't spent checking that the exploit was fixed. I'm sure that part went fairly quickly. The real issue is that although WMF files are fairly rare, the WMF format is used extensively inside Windows. The feature in question is only a security issue when found in arbitrary WMF files, but serves a legit purposes when used inside of applications. The 3rd party fix floating around broke some printer drivers and probably other software, whereas Microsoft's fix resulted in less (if any) broken software. The bulk of the time was spent testing the fix for unexpected consequences.
Not only have the early deaths of CD-Rs been greatly exaggerated before, but even the lifespan of pressed CDs were (are?) hotly disputed. In the early 80's I heard all about how CDs would last forever because each play didn't degrade the quality ever so slightly like it did with cassette tapes and vinyl records. Then in the late 80's a group of researchers determined that CDs would probably only last ten years, for whatever reason.
I remember hearing about large runs of CDs being made in the 80s or so where the layers of the disc weren't sealed properly. The end result was air got in between the layers and eventually corroded the data layer.
My oldest music cds are 10 years old and they still work. I have some CDROMs around (somewhere) that are another couple years older. Maybe I should try them out if I can find them.
I found my current job by submitting a resume through Dice. I think it was the only response I got from the dozens of resumes I submitted. I had much better luck submitting resumes through the company's web site or fax.
I've had my resume searchable on a few sites for a while, and I do get calls every now and then because of it. One big thing I've noticed - the vast majority of the calls you get will come within the first week or two of when you post your resume. The odds of a recruiter responding to your resume drastically go down after that. The solution is go to the job site, click Edit Resume, then click Save. Even if you don't change anything, it bumps you up in the search results and the calls start coming again.
Bullshit. Punchcards were first made in the early 1800's and then used more commonly by big computer companies like IBM in the late 1800's. They were not used after the late 70's because they sucked. I work with people that used punch cards to program computers. They never talk about "chads" they talk about things like getting cards out of order, dropping them on the ground and not being able to edit them once made. They don't talk about "chads", those are invented words for the 2000 election well after nobody used punchcards for over 20 years.
I'm not trying to say punchcards are good, but, those complaints are irrelevant when it comes to counting ballots. If you drop a pile of cards and pick they up in a different order, who cares. The vote total doesn't change if you run the votes through in a different order. Punch cards being hard to edit is a good thing in an election.
As for chads, I wouldn't expect those people to complain about them. If your job depends on using punchcards every day, you're going to learn how to punch them correctly very quickly. If you only use them once a year (or every 4 years), the odds of you making a mistake are much higher.
I've taken a number of standardized tests for over 20 years that have never, ever used punchcards or had hanging chads. They were all done with standard #2 pencils and a piece of paper that could scan them at remarkable speeds and accuracy. I'm sure somebody could counter with a time that one kid had his SAT score off by a point or two out of 1600 or the 2400 or whatever it is now, but AFAK they are beyond human accuracy, and never, ever have "chad" issues.
How do you know how accurate they are? Have you ever received your graded test back along with an answer key to compare? I've never seen that happen. I assume they're accurate since the final scores I receive tend to be in the same ballpark as my assumptions are, but I have no way of knowing for sure. People I talk to usually seem to find the results believable as well, which certainly increases my trust of the system, but it still doesn't give any idea of the margin of error.