Wells Fargo's online banking won't work unless you make Mozilla report itself as IE. It's irritating that I have to do it, but they're determined to stick to "known safe browsers". Frankly, if that were strictly true, they'd have banned IE altogether!
I'm pretty sure they bought a plant to produce at the very least their mice and keyboards. At the very LEAST their mice, since there are rumors and allegations that they stole Logitech designs while looking into possibly buying them out way back when. If this is true or not.. I cannot say, but it sounds pretty normal for business.
Imagine the state of the world had usability been as important a design theory fifteen or twenty years ago? A particularly evil bit of history, that of the Wordstar/Wordperfect keyboard layouts, may not have had to happen..
An interesting 'what-if' to ponder, no matter what one believes the outcome would have been.
Not going to happen. There's a huge difference in the market that you can thank Nintendo for.
Atari didn't charge for licensing, nor did they require licensing. As a result, they had no control over what was being released. Nintendo changed this fundamental flaw in the whole plan with the NES.
Like the Sony game selection or not, you can't deny the crap level is NOWHERE near what the 2600 had at the crash point, and I don't see anyone grumbling about the sheer "amount of bad games" at the local EBWorld, so...
Sorry to break your dreams, but I really don't see it happening.
Interesting. This also paints Nvidia in a very poor light over their whining in response to the 3DMark03 benchmark scores.
I'm betting on this leading to a decisive split in the game development community, over the PS1.2/PS2.0 and optimization questions. While I'd normally expect PS2.0 and non-optimization to be the winners of the debate, this time I can't be so sure.. the FX does show a modest speed increase when software is optimized to it, and Nvidia is still considered the #1 card manufacturer by the general public, so game devs might just end up siding with Nvidia on this.
Sure, I think we all root for the big guy for at least a time-- we've pretty much all rooted for Nvidia at some point-- but there comes a time when they screw up to the point that you can't afford to support them.
In Nvidia's case, the GeForce FX. The card fails utterly on the price/performance curve and has sick heat and power issues.
I'm rooting for ATi now-- I want them to pressure Nvidia to actually put out hardware that DOESN'T suck! Where the two companies stand in relationship to each other doesn't matter to me; it's the PRODUCT that matters. When a business puts out a product that doesn't meet expectations, whether they're the big dog on the block or not, they don't deserve blind support from consumers.
Well, I'm currently the owner of an Nvidia card (though I plan to purchase an ATi one before too long. Likely an AIW9700Pro)
Frankly, I agree with your assessment. Nvidia has slipped of late, especially in matters of drivers-- which is a topic I will avoid getting into too much detail in, because I'm still fuming over the 4x.xx series-- and it's really about time that someone rock the boat enough to force Nvidia to actually compete.
Competition IS good-- it'll inspire both companies to put out better products-- but I'm not so sure about the 6-month videocard cycle. Spending $400 every 6-12 months is more than a bit overkill.
I respectfully must disagree. After reading Tom's Hardware's review of the GeForce FX, I was puzzled as to how they could come up with pretty much the same numbers as everyone else, but still call the FX the winner of the performance race. (Which is pretty much what you stated in regards to the whole "Intel retakes performance crown" statements) Anandtech has been a more reliable (and less biased) site, in my opinion, but I still use a basic formula for gauging reviews.
I check a minimum of three sites with previews/reviews on the product and average them out for a good view of the situation. One site may be biased, but the odds of two or three sites being biased are rather slim. Especially since extreme overt bias tends to ruin the review site's relationship with suppliers (e.g. going overboard on the side of Nvidia is going to make ATi think twice about sending you gear, and vice versa.)
Still, everyone expects to lose in the review wars now and again..
Yeah, much of Future Crew went over to Remedy Entertainment, and it seems like they've got some ties with 3DMark; their names are definitely amongst the programmers.
If anything, it's a sign these guys know what they're doing-- they've been doing this sort of thing in 2D and 3D since 1991 at the very least.
Well, at the same time, you've gotta question Nvidia's reasons and timing for dropping out of the program.
I've heard they were less than a month from 3DMark 2003 release when Nvidia protested and dropped from the program. Sounds like a bad case of sour apples to me...
All the more interesting, since by everything I'VE heard, the FX was designed by engineers formerly from 3DFX. It sure shows in the design-- it has all the hallmarks of 3DFX bad design. High heat, high power consumption, brute force design, and a huge card.
At this rate, unless Nvidia gets up off their collective asses and designs a card that can actually show superiority, they're going to lose. Okay, fine, the FX is a bit faster than the 9700 Pro.. but I see that the 9700 Pro hasn't been pushed to ITS limits yet. I expect a newer revision of the Pro with a higher clockrate, and I really expect to see it blow away the FX.
How can I be so sure of this? Because there are already pre-overclocked 9700 Pro cards on the market (at about the same price as the FX) that blow away the FX.
I'm no ATi fanboy, but this doesn't look good for Nvidia.
I've been seeing this more and more with cablemodem service. Mediacom just implemented that precise method out here about three months ago. It can be a bit irritating when it comes time to update five machines (but only have two IPs) but you live with it to save $30/month.
Went to Worst Place Imaginable, huh? You have my sympathies.
That's what I've been saying for years. The shuttle design is definitely flawed and expensive-- the amount of refurbishing after a mission, plus the costs of the tile replacements. We're talking about a lot of cash, time, and room for error. We've had potential replacements on the books for years, but budget cuts have all but killed that possibility.
Amptron.. I ended up picking up a Celeron-based board/cpu combo a few years back and I made the mistake of getting an amptron motherboard. It gave me more headaches than I ever care to remember.
Should I take your comments to mean that they've always been somewhat "cheap" with their designs? I'm curious to see if this is a regular issue, or if I just happened to buy the board from hell.
On a side note, the issues I was having included the board hardsetting some IRQs. No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to stop sharing IRQs between a WinTV PCI and the onboard audio. Under Win98, the driver would then proceed to choke on the shared IRQ and lock the machine cold. The two would coexist fine under Win2K, but the fact the board wouldn't let me hand-set IRQs made for a very frustrating situation.
You want an example of a government on a shoestring? Take a good look at Arizona. We managed to lose millions because of an alternative fuels fiasco. Sure, the bums responsible got thrown out on their asses, but there's no restitution for the money that got squandered.
Then, on top of this, they've cut money from the areas they feel they don't need to fund very well, such as education. Of course, we're already near the bottom of the education charts. Don't ask about mental health or other services-- they're practically nonexistant in this state.
Here you have it, third-rate government at its best.. and only two things to blame on it. One is the political climate-- overwhemlingly conservative. More so than most anywhere in the country. If you want to spend any money and get any services, you're a "flaming liberal" in this territory. The second is where the money DOES get spent, and that's on frivolous bonuses for the leglislators and governor.
Thank god I'm leaving in a few months. Watching this sort of thing for nearly 20 years is depressing.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I seem to recall IBM deliberately crippling the PC platform at the beginning in order to prevent it from eating at their mainframe sales.
Wouldn't it really be the clonemakers who opened the 8088 architecture with cloned BIOSes and IBM-compatible hardware?
I was only a kid at the time, but I distinctly remember there being two factions in the PC world at the beginning. The evil IBM empire with sidekick Compaq, who were selling their machines at extremely high prices, and the rest of the clone world. IBM did try to regain control of the architecture with the PS/2, but the higher price of the hardware for the platform (general rule, add $100 for any PS/2 component as compared to an ISA or EISA version of the time) killed the interest.
You see, Apple has two lines-- the ibook and the powerbook.
One is designed as a lowest-common-denominator system for students and average folk, the other is designed as a power-user system.
Granted, it's nice that they've released a good new upgrade for the common user, but they REALLY should have released it under the ibook name with all of the missing features it SHOULD have had-- this is being marketed as a professional user's tool. That's what everyone's complaining about.
I don't know about that-- I used to feel the same way, until I finally did upgrade. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I've discovered that the more power you give me, the more I'm using. Same applies with HD space.
So, every-two-year upgrades don't sound too unreasonable. Especially with the way Windows itself seems to be gobbling more CPU each release.
Now THAT is another sore spot-- do we all really need to upgrade every time there's an upgrade? Not really, except for one very frustrating detail.. that being how quickly Microsoft dumps support for an OS once the next is out.
So, in essence, the upgrade treadmill is probably something that isn't going to change a whole lot.
Check out the new Alienware laptops. They get desktop-level performance for the most part, and because the CPU can adjust its speed as needed, you're not wasting battery life when it isn't needed.
Though, I think the biggest reason Apple is still not taking the marketshare they deserve is that applications are the key-- I've still got too many Windows-specific applications I can't replace, otherwise I'd consider Linux or a Mac. I'm sure this is a common affliction amongst most other computer owners as well...
In the FPS vein, a respectable framerate is the difference between winning and losing. Try playing UT2003 on a GeForce 2 at 800x600, and see how frame droppage kills your ability to play.
Still.. you ARE half right-- anything over about 100FPS is kinda overkill. 60 is decent, and I can see a visible difference all the way up to 120 or so, but past 60 it's not life or death anymore.
Besides, new games are always coming out, and each more hungry for processor and video than the last. My old GeForce 2 isn't cutting it anymore-- I'm already drooling over a 9700 Pro. Is that overkill or wasted? Not really.
(incidentally, framerate also has a huge effect on mouselag in FPS games. The higher the framerate, the more responsive the mouse since the lagtime between mouse movement and the next frame has shortened. This is almost always overlooked by people looking for reasons to upgrade, though.)
Does Linus have a trademark on the term "Linux" itself? If so, derivitive trademarks like "UnitedLinux" may be violating his own trademark. Something to ponder.
For that matter, what does Linus make of this whole mess anyway? It'd be interesting to hear his view on the subject as well.
This is incorrect. As an ex-AT&T employee in the long distance segment, I'll tell you how to do it.
When a long distance carrier is chosen, the order goes to your local company, who then changes switches on their end to change which carrier you get when you dial 1. The long distance carriers CANNOT touch these switches, so they can't turn you off.
What you need to do is to call your local company and tell them you want NO long distance carrier. Additionally, you have to request a long distance block on the account. If you don't have a block, ANY LD carrier can pick you up whenever they want, at their own discretion.
The system is totally screwed, but now you know how to work around it.
I will never again ship by UPS after my last experience with them.
Last year I ordered several computer components for my upgrade through online sources. Most of the components arrived via Fed-Ex. Those parts arrived in perfect condition. The two components that arrived from UPS (video card and software CD) were literally thrown against my door hard enough that I could hear it from the kitchen.
Minimal packing damage, but to this day I still say it was lucky the UPS driver drove off before I could get my hands on him.
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And here I thought they were only referring to the costs of going there, considering the two tuition increases in the past six months.
Wells Fargo's online banking won't work unless you make Mozilla report itself as IE. It's irritating that I have to do it, but they're determined to stick to "known safe browsers". Frankly, if that were strictly true, they'd have banned IE altogether!
I'm pretty sure they bought a plant to produce at the very least their mice and keyboards. At the very LEAST their mice, since there are rumors and allegations that they stole Logitech designs while looking into possibly buying them out way back when. If this is true or not.. I cannot say, but it sounds pretty normal for business.
Imagine the state of the world had usability been as important a design theory fifteen or twenty years ago? A particularly evil bit of history, that of the Wordstar/Wordperfect keyboard layouts, may not have had to happen..
An interesting 'what-if' to ponder, no matter what one believes the outcome would have been.
Not going to happen. There's a huge difference in the market that you can thank Nintendo for.
Atari didn't charge for licensing, nor did they require licensing. As a result, they had no control over what was being released. Nintendo changed this fundamental flaw in the whole plan with the NES.
Like the Sony game selection or not, you can't deny the crap level is NOWHERE near what the 2600 had at the crash point, and I don't see anyone grumbling about the sheer "amount of bad games" at the local EBWorld, so...
Sorry to break your dreams, but I really don't see it happening.
Interesting. This also paints Nvidia in a very poor light over their whining in response to the 3DMark03 benchmark scores.
I'm betting on this leading to a decisive split in the game development community, over the PS1.2/PS2.0 and optimization questions. While I'd normally expect PS2.0 and non-optimization to be the winners of the debate, this time I can't be so sure.. the FX does show a modest speed increase when software is optimized to it, and Nvidia is still considered the #1 card manufacturer by the general public, so game devs might just end up siding with Nvidia on this.
Sure, I think we all root for the big guy for at least a time-- we've pretty much all rooted for Nvidia at some point-- but there comes a time when they screw up to the point that you can't afford to support them.
In Nvidia's case, the GeForce FX. The card fails utterly on the price/performance curve and has sick heat and power issues.
I'm rooting for ATi now-- I want them to pressure Nvidia to actually put out hardware that DOESN'T suck! Where the two companies stand in relationship to each other doesn't matter to me; it's the PRODUCT that matters. When a business puts out a product that doesn't meet expectations, whether they're the big dog on the block or not, they don't deserve blind support from consumers.
Well, I'm currently the owner of an Nvidia card (though I plan to purchase an ATi one before too long. Likely an AIW9700Pro)
Frankly, I agree with your assessment. Nvidia has slipped of late, especially in matters of drivers-- which is a topic I will avoid getting into too much detail in, because I'm still fuming over the 4x.xx series-- and it's really about time that someone rock the boat enough to force Nvidia to actually compete.
Competition IS good-- it'll inspire both companies to put out better products-- but I'm not so sure about the 6-month videocard cycle. Spending $400 every 6-12 months is more than a bit overkill.
I respectfully must disagree. After reading Tom's Hardware's review of the GeForce FX, I was puzzled as to how they could come up with pretty much the same numbers as everyone else, but still call the FX the winner of the performance race. (Which is pretty much what you stated in regards to the whole "Intel retakes performance crown" statements) Anandtech has been a more reliable (and less biased) site, in my opinion, but I still use a basic formula for gauging reviews.
I check a minimum of three sites with previews/reviews on the product and average them out for a good view of the situation. One site may be biased, but the odds of two or three sites being biased are rather slim. Especially since extreme overt bias tends to ruin the review site's relationship with suppliers (e.g. going overboard on the side of Nvidia is going to make ATi think twice about sending you gear, and vice versa.)
Still, everyone expects to lose in the review wars now and again..
Yeah, much of Future Crew went over to Remedy Entertainment, and it seems like they've got some ties with 3DMark; their names are definitely amongst the programmers.
If anything, it's a sign these guys know what they're doing-- they've been doing this sort of thing in 2D and 3D since 1991 at the very least.
Well, at the same time, you've gotta question Nvidia's reasons and timing for dropping out of the program.
I've heard they were less than a month from 3DMark 2003 release when Nvidia protested and dropped from the program. Sounds like a bad case of sour apples to me...
Ah, man, now THERE's a name I haven't heard in years.
Heh, gotta wonder how many of those guys (who haven't been put away already, anyway) are still in that line of work about 15-20 years later..
All the more interesting, since by everything I'VE heard, the FX was designed by engineers formerly from 3DFX. It sure shows in the design-- it has all the hallmarks of 3DFX bad design. High heat, high power consumption, brute force design, and a huge card.
At this rate, unless Nvidia gets up off their collective asses and designs a card that can actually show superiority, they're going to lose. Okay, fine, the FX is a bit faster than the 9700 Pro.. but I see that the 9700 Pro hasn't been pushed to ITS limits yet. I expect a newer revision of the Pro with a higher clockrate, and I really expect to see it blow away the FX.
How can I be so sure of this? Because there are already pre-overclocked 9700 Pro cards on the market (at about the same price as the FX) that blow away the FX.
I'm no ATi fanboy, but this doesn't look good for Nvidia.
I've been seeing this more and more with cablemodem service. Mediacom just implemented that precise method out here about three months ago. It can be a bit irritating when it comes time to update five machines (but only have two IPs) but you live with it to save $30/month.
Went to Worst Place Imaginable, huh? You have my sympathies.
That's what I've been saying for years. The shuttle design is definitely flawed and expensive-- the amount of refurbishing after a mission, plus the costs of the tile replacements. We're talking about a lot of cash, time, and room for error. We've had potential replacements on the books for years, but budget cuts have all but killed that possibility.
Amptron.. I ended up picking up a Celeron-based board/cpu combo a few years back and I made the mistake of getting an amptron motherboard. It gave me more headaches than I ever care to remember.
Should I take your comments to mean that they've always been somewhat "cheap" with their designs? I'm curious to see if this is a regular issue, or if I just happened to buy the board from hell.
On a side note, the issues I was having included the board hardsetting some IRQs. No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to stop sharing IRQs between a WinTV PCI and the onboard audio. Under Win98, the driver would then proceed to choke on the shared IRQ and lock the machine cold. The two would coexist fine under Win2K, but the fact the board wouldn't let me hand-set IRQs made for a very frustrating situation.
You want an example of a government on a shoestring? Take a good look at Arizona. We managed to lose millions because of an alternative fuels fiasco. Sure, the bums responsible got thrown out on their asses, but there's no restitution for the money that got squandered.
Then, on top of this, they've cut money from the areas they feel they don't need to fund very well, such as education. Of course, we're already near the bottom of the education charts. Don't ask about mental health or other services-- they're practically nonexistant in this state.
Here you have it, third-rate government at its best.. and only two things to blame on it. One is the political climate-- overwhemlingly conservative. More so than most anywhere in the country. If you want to spend any money and get any services, you're a "flaming liberal" in this territory. The second is where the money DOES get spent, and that's on frivolous bonuses for the leglislators and governor.
Thank god I'm leaving in a few months. Watching this sort of thing for nearly 20 years is depressing.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I seem to recall IBM deliberately crippling the PC platform at the beginning in order to prevent it from eating at their mainframe sales.
Wouldn't it really be the clonemakers who opened the 8088 architecture with cloned BIOSes and IBM-compatible hardware?
I was only a kid at the time, but I distinctly remember there being two factions in the PC world at the beginning. The evil IBM empire with sidekick Compaq, who were selling their machines at extremely high prices, and the rest of the clone world. IBM did try to regain control of the architecture with the PS/2, but the higher price of the hardware for the platform (general rule, add $100 for any PS/2 component as compared to an ISA or EISA version of the time) killed the interest.
Yeah, it's a very big problem.
You see, Apple has two lines-- the ibook and the powerbook.
One is designed as a lowest-common-denominator system for students and average folk, the other is designed as a power-user system.
Granted, it's nice that they've released a good new upgrade for the common user, but they REALLY should have released it under the ibook name with all of the missing features it SHOULD have had-- this is being marketed as a professional user's tool. That's what everyone's complaining about.
I don't know about that-- I used to feel the same way, until I finally did upgrade. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I've discovered that the more power you give me, the more I'm using. Same applies with HD space.
So, every-two-year upgrades don't sound too unreasonable. Especially with the way Windows itself seems to be gobbling more CPU each release.
Now THAT is another sore spot-- do we all really need to upgrade every time there's an upgrade? Not really, except for one very frustrating detail.. that being how quickly Microsoft dumps support for an OS once the next is out.
So, in essence, the upgrade treadmill is probably something that isn't going to change a whole lot.
Check out the new Alienware laptops. They get desktop-level performance for the most part, and because the CPU can adjust its speed as needed, you're not wasting battery life when it isn't needed.
Though, I think the biggest reason Apple is still not taking the marketshare they deserve is that applications are the key-- I've still got too many Windows-specific applications I can't replace, otherwise I'd consider Linux or a Mac. I'm sure this is a common affliction amongst most other computer owners as well...
In the FPS vein, a respectable framerate is the difference between winning and losing. Try playing UT2003 on a GeForce 2 at 800x600, and see how frame droppage kills your ability to play.
Still.. you ARE half right-- anything over about 100FPS is kinda overkill. 60 is decent, and I can see a visible difference all the way up to 120 or so, but past 60 it's not life or death anymore.
Besides, new games are always coming out, and each more hungry for processor and video than the last. My old GeForce 2 isn't cutting it anymore-- I'm already drooling over a 9700 Pro. Is that overkill or wasted? Not really.
(incidentally, framerate also has a huge effect on mouselag in FPS games. The higher the framerate, the more responsive the mouse since the lagtime between mouse movement and the next frame has shortened. This is almost always overlooked by people looking for reasons to upgrade, though.)
Here's my question...
Does Linus have a trademark on the term "Linux" itself? If so, derivitive trademarks like "UnitedLinux" may be violating his own trademark. Something to ponder.
For that matter, what does Linus make of this whole mess anyway? It'd be interesting to hear his view on the subject as well.
This is incorrect. As an ex-AT&T employee in the long distance segment, I'll tell you how to do it.
When a long distance carrier is chosen, the order goes to your local company, who then changes switches on their end to change which carrier you get when you dial 1. The long distance carriers CANNOT touch these switches, so they can't turn you off.
What you need to do is to call your local company and tell them you want NO long distance carrier. Additionally, you have to request a long distance block on the account. If you don't have a block, ANY LD carrier can pick you up whenever they want, at their own discretion.
The system is totally screwed, but now you know how to work around it.
I will never again ship by UPS after my last experience with them.
Last year I ordered several computer components for my upgrade through online sources. Most of the components arrived via Fed-Ex. Those parts arrived in perfect condition. The two components that arrived from UPS (video card and software CD) were literally thrown against my door hard enough that I could hear it from the kitchen.
Minimal packing damage, but to this day I still say it was lucky the UPS driver drove off before I could get my hands on him.