I have now worked a little bit with Oracle 9i and 10G on SuSe and RedHat linux. Both flat out rocked, and the install sucked. Also I want to point out that Oracle supported 64bit Linux on our AMD Opteron one month after the chip was released. I want to say that I am by no means a "uber" dba.
Now compare that to what I currently work with. SQL Server 2000 on Windows 2003. The performance is "OK". It flat out cannot compare to what I did on similar hardware with Oracle. I will say that the data imports and exports are very nice in SQL Server.
Now I will also compare that from my very small workings with PostGreSQL 8. It has also performed well and was easy to manage.
In short, I have had quite a few million row tables in Oracle, SQL Server 2k and PostGreSQL and all performed well. I will note that I have not scaled PostGreSQL near as far as Oracle or SQL server. Also I want to note that our connections are made via JDBC, and we have discovered that for some reason SQL server will not use a second processor for one connection. Specifically, if you have one connection that does a big dog query, it appears to only use one processor in the system for that query. We did apply the patches Microsoft supplied for the issue, and they helped a ton with overall performance but this issue still remained.
Please be specific on what you did with Oracle that was "dog slow" and I would love to compare it to what a default SQL server install does along side one of our exact same systems running Oracle 10G.
Good points, and my thought is that perhaps Warner doesn't really want HD-DVD to do well. They have done the math and now believe that Blu-Ray will win out. However, they need to at least put forth a "good" effort for all those involved with them and the HD-DVD format. If they can "run in to delays" then they can save face and money when they fully switch to Blu-Ray.
I personally believe that Warner wants no part of Microsoft, and they see HD-DVD as Microsoft, and for that reason alone they won't fully support HD-DVD.
Now this isn't to say that they love Sony, but they will be forced in to supporting Blu-Ray because of the number of companies that will and the number of people that will own a PS3. Heck the PS3 alone may drive down Blu-Ray hardware cost to lower than HD-DVD.
I am willing to bet that you see Lord of the Rings for Blu-Ray within the first month of relase:-)
"How much will it cost?" It will be around $500 with all the options. $400 bare. However, this is subject to change. Companies change their pricing up to the very last minute, and Sony is no exception. Rest assured though, it will be in line with all other next generation consoles. Sony is not stupid.
"Will it be backwards-compatible?" Yes.
"solid plan or a road map for the PS3" The solid road map is to produce the best gaming system they can, and plan on having that system out for 5 to 6 years; anything else is just a bonus.
"Why are they using blu-ray?" Because of the increased storage of Blue-Ray and they love the additional copy protection it provides. Again, this system is set to be out for the next 5 to 6 years. Blue-Ray will be the standard format for HD, and they can leverage the PS3 to assure that. Also, Blue-Ray runs on Java and not Microsoft own language.
"What is the H-D plan for the PS3?" It will support a HD but not require one.
"Why are they using bluetooth?" The controllers can be bluetooth. Bluetooth works better for controllers than the 802.11X setup. The 802.11X was found to sometimes drop signal, and few things piss off gamers than poor controllers.
"What are their online plans?" They will have an online service similar to Xbox live. This is somewhat new to Sony but remember that they do run some very large online games and will leverage that knowlege.
"Sony needs to get the public informed about the PS3" They have, at E3 and other events. Like Apple, Sony gets a lot of press on what they "might" do.
Now the only thing that appears to be changing is the controller. The "bat-erang" as it has been called will probably be changing. Other than that the spec's have been set in stone for a while. We know the processing power, the graphics card, the output of the card (1080P, 1080i, 720p). We know that it will have a blue-ray disc. We have even seen some demos of games. We know that it uses a subset of OpenGL (not DirectX), so porting games to other non Microsoft systems should be far easier. In short we know a lot, just not the release date, nor the titles at launch.
100k for 40 servers. 100k will buy quite a bit of hardware. It would be better if they showed how they have saved companies money, and not just thrown out some stats, like they have seen a consolidation of 5 servers down to 1.
We will see. I think you would agree though, ANYONE planning on buying just one system would be insane not to wait and see what the PS3 and Revolution can do. Also, on paper the PS3 looks more powerful than the 360. So it will be very interesting to see what happens. By the way have you seen the demo's that the vendors say were NOT pre-rendered for the PS3? If they are accurate then it would explain why Microsoft rushed the 360 to market. They would understand that their only hope of winning the next gen console war would be to get it out before the PS3.
Lastly, have you seen first gen PS2 games compared to what is out now? Wow what a difference!
It is a great time to be a consumer of video game systems and I look forward to comparing them all later this year. I "might" buy an 360, but to be honest the lack of a HD-DVD(BlueRay) will probably be a show stopper for me. I like a ton of people have a HDTV that has a digital HD input, and I look forward to seeing Lord of the Rings in HD:-)
If you see the first generation games and they are better than anything on the XBOX 360, then imagine how much better they will be when this type of compiler becomes standard. The difference in games will only get larger, thus it would make more sense to purchase a Playstation 3.
Or to be more specific, imagine 30 cars in GT5, all with different computer AI, against say 10 cars on a similar XBOX 360 game.
Trust me no matter what Sony does, short of making the price over $700, it will not ever EVER EVER put off gamers if the games that come out are good; and they do look very good.
I see a few things happening this year. One is that after the PS3 is released and people see that the games are genually better on the PS3 than any other next gen console, it will become the "have to own" system of Christmas. The only thing I see stopping them is their manufacturing, and to be honest I don't see that slowing them down much at all. Now after this year, if Sony has a 2 or 3 times lead on the second leading console manufacturer, then the battle of blue-ray is over. Sony and company will start releasing their content primarly on blue-ray disk and people like you and I will run out to buy Lord of the Rings HD. We will then play it on our PS3. Will the player probably suck? Yep, the ps2 one did, but that won't matter, because it will drive down the cost of other blue-ray dvd players. Much like it did for DVD players and the PS2. Sony will gladly sell you a better one for say $300....
Next comes content, but that is a few years away. I would be very concerned if I was Apple... Sony and company (Content providers) are not found of Apple and they are want CONTROL of that business. If Sony gets 20-30 million PS3's out there over the next three years then they WILL start to leverage that, while still producing "better" hardware for specific devices (i.e. slingbox stuff).
Understand though, Sony knows that it is a games machine first. They will brag about EVERYTHING it can do but they fully understand what the device is.
I am a little surprised that more people don't talk about OpenGL vs DirectX. Do people here on slashdot care that Microsoft is flat out killing OpenGL in Windows? The performance WILL suck because it is going to be wrapped in directX and if OpenGL dies then so does most Linux game ports. I am very thankfull that Sony chose to use OpenGL (subset).
I talked about the battle of HD-DVD and Blue-Ray. This is the mother of all battles, and to a large extent is has everything to do with Java. Do you think Microsoft likes the idea of a modern JVM becomming ubiquitous? I imagine they are having nightmares thinking about pc makers loading blue-ray dvd players on machines and then those new vista machines getting Suns 1.5 JVM. That and all those new blue-ray dvd players having a full JVM on them, that they don't control.
Operating System? I am not sure what Sony uses, but I am sure it is NOT Windows, and I am sure Microsofts is not Linux.
Does the average consumer give a rats ass about any of this? Probably not, they just want to play games, but if the PS3 was a complete failure, then we would be stuck in a HD-DVD/Microsoft only world for a lot longer.... If/When Sony dominates the console market, JAVA, Blue-RAY, and OpenGL will become more prominate.
There is a huge technology war taking place this year and next and gamers get to benifit because of it.
I live in a regulated environment, and understand your issues with getting stuff done. However, there are generally two sides to every story. I will counter your discussion a bit.
You want RAM in a server. That company currently has over 2,000 server and they have a service level agreement that is currently not being met with the business. They also have people that use to take servers down to just do "one thing" and not document why they were doing it, then when someone else went to update the server later it was not in the state they believed it would be and it created more problems and thus the server was unstable after their upgrade or the downtime was far greater than expected.
So the I.T. department gets judged by the business on uptime and other service level agreements. They do NOT get charged on helping the business out. So they are very cautious on any change to the environment. They are so cautious that it has gotten ridiculous for any change to occur.
So what can be done? Well I would need a ton more information than you provided to make more suggestions. I will NOT believe that everyone in your I.T. department is a bunch of idiots and lazy. I bet that around 80% are average to good, 10% suck and the last 10% rock (Like every large company).
Now a few questions. 1. Do you have a CIO? 2. Where is the majority of your I.T. department located? 3. How does your I.T. department prioritize its' project?
Those are just the first three that come to mind. In short I need to understand the constraints on the department before any real suggestions can be made. It is far too easy to say "fire them all", and in most companies that would be a huge mistake.
Lastly, I can say that I have seen a company that making any changes to ANY router took forever. It flat out sucked, however the reason is that this company was part of a bunch of other sister companies and one parent company, and those same router guys use to make changes on the fly (quick), but then it would take down a sister organization for a day or so, until they realized the mistake they made. So because of the major impact to the other businesses those same router guys were not allowed to make a change without a ton of paperwork under the penalty of being fired.
I can only tell you from my own experience why I believe this has become such a hot issue.
In our state of Indiana we have a college called IUPUI, and it offered a class for a relative of mine that discussed sexuality. The prof has very liberal views and promotes this in class. To be specific he has pushed students to have homosexual relations. I could give many other examples... Now he does not allow any recording equipment in the class and will never allow anyone to debate him on what or why he does. The issue is that he has tenure and the way the school system is setup he is "almost" untouchable.
I say "almost" because people in the area here are starting to realize that a degree from any social program at IUPUI isn't worth much, as my relative who has an outstanding GPA can attest to. So unlike most professions these teachers can't be fired and because of that they start to push the agenda on their students. However, at the end of the day when these kids can't get a job, and parents stop sending their kids to that school, things will change.
What would help fix the problem is to do away with tenure. Allow teachers to compete like everyone else in the workplace.
"Game AI is typically notoriously branch-heavy and often tends to be mostly integer code"
I don't agree with this. I believe it will still be faster because each core has it's own pipeline. So yes it is more costly to flush the pipeline, but you will have 7 cores working on those multiple AI opponents as opposed to one. Each with it's own pipeline, and each flushing it as needed. Now do we know how wide and long that pipeline is? That will also have significant performance gains or losses.
Now do I believe we will see movie quality games? Well I saw the demo of GT5 and MGS4 and they were both impressive, and if those are the real games then I would say that the PS3 is very close. Time will tell.
Cool thanks! I hope that this is correct, and that means they should run fine on AMD Opterons as well. Well this means they should run better on an Opteron:-)
"Intel on the other hand needs to focus on mobile chips, desktop chips and server chips."
What I mean by this is that Intel has to additionally focus on desktop performance against AMD. IBM does not need to worry about this market. This market has razor thin margins that only can be maintained by enormous sales. Quite a few people believe that this market is going away, or at best has leveled off and will not grow significantly.
"you say it like not beleiving in God is a problem for me it is an intelligence sign."
I say that from my dealings with Apple people. If they are so "proud" of their "Deversity" then why don't they show some of those people in their marketing? You say it is an intelligence sign.... You better hope you are correct:-) If not then you better start getting use to the temp of those uber hot Intel CPU's:-)
"Free software such as Linux is a competitor so why wouldn't they bash it if they get a chance? It's not like their principal target is geeks."
Good point! However please remember that those same "geeks" will help develop software for their machine that will have less than.05% marketshare the year it is out. Those same "geeks" will help convince other people that by buying a Macintosh they will actually be able to function in a "Microsoft" world. I just find it very ironic that a company that built their OS on the backs of open source developers would then stick a knife in it.
"having Apple on x86 CPUs can only help vendors deciding to port their software on MacOS X, it lowers the bar not increase it."
I wish that was the case. If you code in something other than Java and you company produces client code then here is your current environment. 1. OS9 - Still have a market using it.
2. OSX PPC - Large but now there are 4 versions and trying to validate your software on each one is a pain. This is why a lot of software vendors still only support 10.2 or 10.3. This currently has around 80% of the Apple market.
3. OSX X86 - Not out yet but at best these system will only hold a 5% share of the APPLE market the first year.
4. Linux - Lots of versions but RedHat and SuSE appear to be the leading candidates.
Now the last ones 5. Windows XP/2k 6. Windows 9X and Mel.
Those last two DOMINATE sales of most software vendors. Even the core Apple ones. Take the Adobe products... What percentage of sales do you believe Adobe gets from their Apple line vs their Windows line of products? From what I have been told is that it is way less than 10% of their sales, and I am being very generous here... So why should Adobe port yet again? I guess the question should be "why would Adobe port any apps in the next 3 years?" They might as well wait and see how the market pans out.... This adds to my point above, in that Apple should be begging any and all developers to port software to their platform.
"About Linux comparison: when I see reviews about MacOS X, I'm always surprised how stringent the reviewers are: they expect high quality from Apple and they're quite disappointed when they don't have it, unfortunately reviewers about Linux are far more tolerant because they don't expect (and don't get) such quality: the cracks between the many layers of a Linux's desktop are always showing. Somehow I doubt that this can be fixed in one or two years, especially since HW makers don't help by hiding their spec (Nvidia, ATI, other..)."
We agree! However, I will say that the desktop Linux has come a LONG way over the last 3 years. It is a race for my $$$$ and I am curious who will win. I wish them all well.
"Well, consider that only 400k or so XBoxes have shipped and 0 PS3s have shipped, and Apple shipped 600k iMacs and PowerMacs in Q4 2005 (both of which use Power based G5s), Apple is STILL IBM's biggest customer.
Now Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo may have potentially larger markets, but right now Apple is still shipping more G5s than Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo combined, that and each G5 is higher margin than a Cell based CPU."
Ok, I don't know where you get 400k. I hope that you are correct, but from what I here there will be around 3 million 360's sold by July of this year if they hold their current pace. Now as far as PS3's go, it would be a fair estimate to say that they will be close to their 90 million PS2's sold in 5 years. So lets just say they average 10 million a year for the next 5 years of PS3's. Now you also didn't mention all the hub manufacturers out there like Cisco. They also use power chips. When you start to add it up, the loss of Apple for the gain of Microsoft and Sony was huge win for IBM.
So in short Apple switching to Intel is a small loss for power, BUT there are some serious advantages now for Power as well. Microsoft and Sony will not require a new fab to be built for ~5 years! Cisco cares about the performance of the Power chip, but they care more about the power consumption. Intel on the other hand needs to focus on mobile chips, desktop chips and server chips. They will need to build their 65nm fabs as fast as possible then spend billions on the next version. Granted Intel spends around 10Billion a year in R&D so they can handle it as long as Wintel desktops keep selling like they do.
Now the real quesiton is why did Apple switch? This is off topic, but it doesn't make sense that they switched to a 32bit chip FROM a 64bit chip. Now if they would have switched to x86-64, that would have made better sense. I do feel for all those poor saps who are going to buy PPC or X86 Mac in the next year or so. I feel for them because I went through the 68k to PPC migraiton and bought all the load of crap that Apple fed back then. It is the same load of crap they are trying to spin today.... fat binaries.... blah blah blah. The truth is that if you go with a new X86 machine a bunch of your old stuff will not work and you will be praying that someone will code a new version that works as well as your old one did. Now after this painfull migration is over in a couple of years and if Apple moves to X86-64, then they will probably be better off. They just better pray (not that many in Apple belive in God), that sales of their Ipod don't faulter.
Apple has some other issues that they need to address. One is their view of open source. They use it a TON in their OS yet their sales guys go around and bash it whenever they get a chance. The next is their view on technologies such as Java. Again their sales guys go around and bash it, yet all their Java apps will not need to be ported to this new architecture. One sales guy just recently said to me that he would NEVER load any JVM on his system because he hates slow Java applications. I then informed him that it was loaded by default. He smiled and told me he knew that and he was "just kidding", but I have to wonder how many poor saps he talks to that don't know that and then repeat the same crap he just said. Lastly, and perhaps the biggest issue is why on earth would our development shop write software for X86 Macintosh? Lets look at the marketshare as it is and as it will be for the next few years. What percentage of all new desktops do you believe will be running X86 OSX?.05%? Heck some vendors just NOW started to fully support OSX! RedHat Linux Desktop and SuSE Linux on the destkop will have more clients that OSX on X86. Perhaps Ubuntu will even have more desktops! I wish Apple well, but it will be far far easier on them to reign in their sales guys and send out a message to ANYONE to help support OSX on X86, be that open source apps and or Java applications.
If you use Java you can use a variety of FREE and open source enterprise level tools. If you use.NET/C# you have no REAL option except visual studio and that will cost you money eventually. A few would argue that it will cost you a lot of money, but that is relative. It appears in the case of Microsoft, that it will cost you money in 365 days AND you will have to buy Windows. You may not think this is an issue, but some do, and they don't want to be tied to the whim of a proprietary vendor and locked in to one solution.
So to give a specific example. He could use Eclipse and run it on just about any platform for free forever OR he could use visual studio and eventually have to pay Microsoft for both Windows and visual studio.
Your make a point to say that it isn't right for this guy to make money on a product and get an IDE for free, but in this marketplace that is exactly what he can and should do. You seem to indicate that he should spend money when he doesn't have to.
Now as far as what language he should pick? Well if he truely does love Linux then he should pick c++, then Java then.Net. C++ will work great on Linux then Java and then supposedly c# will run. It seems simple to me. Any of those languages will give you a good foundation and two of the three will allow him to develop enterprise level applcations for multiple operating systems.
"It's a good thing that there are still judges around that have a clue."
So you agree with this decision, and by that you say this Judge has a clue?
Over 90% of the world believes in a higher power. Science has no explanation for how everthing began, and yet a teacher can't say "A large number of people believe that a higher power had a role in the overall design of everthing, this is not to say that they don't believe in evolution, but that a higher power had a role in the overall design".
Wow! Those teachers now can't decide on their own, or even use their own freedom of speech to teach even though a vast majority of the people in that area believe what would be tought.
Now, I would love to have someone in class start asking things like "Eplain how the universe began and what started it all." Then when a typical answer of "science doesn't have the answer to those types of questions, I would then like a question like "what are most people hypothosis on this subject?"
The answer now will have to be "Well, it is illegal for me to tell you that". Granted we use to have freedom of speech in America, but we loose it whenever a small part number of Americans that are progressive secularist get involved.
COBOL is going away, but it is slowly. It appears to be being replaced by JAVA. IBM seems keen on this and those shops that haven't moved off of the big iron and on to UNIX/Linux or Microsoft are generally moving to JAVA. IBM kind of loves this because it allows them to sell even more hardware:-)
From what I have been seeing, the upper management types are starting to die off that seem to be married to COBOL and as such the business is starting to migrate off of it. As mentioned in other post there is a TON of COBOL out there. I would say BILLIONS of lines of code, but it is a dead language. Nobody is doing any "new" stuff with COBOL. So as those shops want to start exposing their business via web services and such, that development will be done in other languages, and then over time more and more of the core code will be redone in a "modern" language.
Microsoft wants to control the living room and then the content. Sony wants to keep people from stealing their content and thus keep prices unreasonably high. You decide which one is worse.
In the end the PS3 will make blue-ray the defacto standard.
It appears that most people here on slashdot hate Blue-Ray. I understand, but look at the alternative. A Microsoft backed system that will also have the copy protection crap in it.
So for once it looks like a technology that Microsoft hates it going to be the "standard".
It isn't like we have a totally open spec on one side and a DRM closed solution on the other. We the consumers (people that will actually buy a device), have a choice of one evil player or the other. It appears that the better technical solution will win. Also, it appears that a JVM will now become even more widely available, and thus piss off Microsoft even more. Let's be honest now, the ONLY reason Microsoft hates blue-ray is because it contains a JVM. They realize they will not control the living room and thus hate it. They have to be kicking themselves for not waiting a little bit on the new Xbox and shipping a HD-DVD in it.
Again for people that will actually spend money on a new High Definition DVD player, the choices are between one evil empire and the other. One is Microsoft and the other is Sony. Who would you pick?
Handful of obscure legacy features: There are a handful of obscure legacy features where certain pieces of the data are stored in a tag. We did this because of resource constraints when building the original XML file. An example of this would be some of our old legacy fields. We just weren't able to get to them, but we only did this for features where the use of them was very, very low. For Office 12, we've done the extra work so that even these features are now represented in XML. So if this is the binary key, then it will go away, but I highly doubt this would be the "binary key" people talk about as it occurs so rarely.
The comment came from his blog. Resource constraints? We just weren't able to get to them....
XML files are by themselves somewhat open, but the issue comes in to play when you put in binary information in your XML file. This is what Microsoft is doing with their next version of Office. They will NOT make those binary files open to the public and thus they still will have a vendor lock in type of situation.
Dell sells a dual core Opteron server? I would like to look at one, where can I? Oh that is correct, they don't make an Opteron server, and the Xenons can't compete at this time.
Dual core G5? Oh you mean the end of life PPC Macintosh...
So I guess it is between HP, Sun and IBM for major server vendors that sell Opteron servers. Well HP/Compaq is out of the question because they are in Microsoft's back pocket and they will kill any serious threat to that market. Just look at what their view of Blue-Ray is. So that leaves Sun and IBM or a much smaller player in the market.
The problem with buing Sun is that we (customers) can't be sure of their commitment to X86. They seem to have a hate hate relationship with X86 and Linux, and only use it because their own offering with Sparc sucks at that price point. Unlike Apple, Sun has not bet the farm with X86, and the downside of that move makes them appear indecisive. The upside of that move is that it doesn't kill their current sales (Why would ANYONE buy a PPC Macintosh now, unless they absolutely had too?).
However, if you want a major server vendor with an Opteron, to run anything other than Microsoft Windows, then Sun is probably the best choice at this time. Again, the only huge issues is that you can tell Sun hates selling Linux and X86, and that they will do everything in their power to get those customers to "upgrade" to Solaris and Sparc. So again, I say that they and IBM are the only "major" vendors of Opteron servers at this time.
This is not true. Almost the exact opposite is true. Sony originally told everyone that there were no pre-rendered footage shown, but then found out that some of it was. They informed people but they couldn't comment on what was and what wasn't. But understand that Sony went out of their way to state the stuff shown was NOT pre-rendered. They did not do this with the PS2. Yes this is Sony, but it would look very bad on them to lie on this. Time will tell.
Ok, you appear to be a developer who has experience with all the "major" chips. My question is this: For gaming, specifically games with a 3D engine, will the CELL be better than a top of the line P4 or Athlon 64? Let us assume that the entire code has been enginered for every chip. I believe the question that a lot of people have is if the XBOX chip is less powerful than the cell chip in the PS3. Again they want to know if someone wrote Wold of Warcraft or EQII for both platforms, and optimized both to the best they could for the hardware, which would be better and by how much?
I have seen the demos of MGS4 and GT5 for the PS3 and in my opinion it simply blows away anything I have seen or played on the new XBOX. But it makes me wonder how much of this is just pre-rendered stuff. If it isn't pre-renederd then I can't wait for a PS3.
Thanks.
Now personally I just want a JVM for whatever chip is out there.:-) It makes comparing systems much easier for me:-)
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I have now worked a little bit with Oracle 9i and 10G on SuSe and RedHat linux. Both flat out rocked, and the install sucked. Also I want to point out that Oracle supported 64bit Linux on our AMD Opteron one month after the chip was released. I want to say that I am by no means a "uber" dba.
Now compare that to what I currently work with. SQL Server 2000 on Windows 2003. The performance is "OK". It flat out cannot compare to what I did on similar hardware with Oracle. I will say that the data imports and exports are very nice in SQL Server.
Now I will also compare that from my very small workings with PostGreSQL 8. It has also performed well and was easy to manage.
In short, I have had quite a few million row tables in Oracle, SQL Server 2k and PostGreSQL and all performed well. I will note that I have not scaled PostGreSQL near as far as Oracle or SQL server. Also I want to note that our connections are made via JDBC, and we have discovered that for some reason SQL server will not use a second processor for one connection. Specifically, if you have one connection that does a big dog query, it appears to only use one processor in the system for that query. We did apply the patches Microsoft supplied for the issue, and they helped a ton with overall performance but this issue still remained.
Please be specific on what you did with Oracle that was "dog slow" and I would love to compare it to what a default SQL server install does along side one of our exact same systems running Oracle 10G.
Good points, and my thought is that perhaps Warner doesn't really want HD-DVD to do well. They have done the math and now believe that Blu-Ray will win out. However, they need to at least put forth a "good" effort for all those involved with them and the HD-DVD format. If they can "run in to delays" then they can save face and money when they fully switch to Blu-Ray.
:-)
I personally believe that Warner wants no part of Microsoft, and they see HD-DVD as Microsoft, and for that reason alone they won't fully support HD-DVD.
Now this isn't to say that they love Sony, but they will be forced in to supporting Blu-Ray because of the number of companies that will and the number of people that will own a PS3. Heck the PS3 alone may drive down Blu-Ray hardware cost to lower than HD-DVD.
I am willing to bet that you see Lord of the Rings for Blu-Ray within the first month of relase
"How much will it cost?"
It will be around $500 with all the options. $400 bare. However, this is subject to change. Companies change their pricing up to the very last minute, and Sony is no exception. Rest assured though, it will be in line with all other next generation consoles. Sony is not stupid.
"Will it be backwards-compatible?"
Yes.
"solid plan or a road map for the PS3"
The solid road map is to produce the best gaming system they can, and plan on having that system out for 5 to 6 years; anything else is just a bonus.
"Why are they using blu-ray?"
Because of the increased storage of Blue-Ray and they love the additional copy protection it provides. Again, this system is set to be out for the next 5 to 6 years. Blue-Ray will be the standard format for HD, and they can leverage the PS3 to assure that. Also, Blue-Ray runs on Java and not Microsoft own language.
"What is the H-D plan for the PS3?"
It will support a HD but not require one.
"Why are they using bluetooth?"
The controllers can be bluetooth. Bluetooth works better for controllers than the 802.11X setup. The 802.11X was found to sometimes drop signal, and few things piss off gamers than poor controllers.
"What are their online plans?"
They will have an online service similar to Xbox live. This is somewhat new to Sony but remember that they do run some very large online games and will leverage that knowlege.
"Sony needs to get the public informed about the PS3"
They have, at E3 and other events. Like Apple, Sony gets a lot of press on what they "might" do.
Now the only thing that appears to be changing is the controller. The "bat-erang" as it has been called will probably be changing. Other than that the spec's have been set in stone for a while. We know the processing power, the graphics card, the output of the card (1080P, 1080i, 720p). We know that it will have a blue-ray disc. We have even seen some demos of games. We know that it uses a subset of OpenGL (not DirectX), so porting games to other non Microsoft systems should be far easier. In short we know a lot, just not the release date, nor the titles at launch.
A good site for news is:
http://www.ps3land.com/
100k for 40 servers. 100k will buy quite a bit of hardware. It would be better if they showed how they have saved companies money, and not just thrown out some stats, like they have seen a consolidation of 5 servers down to 1.
We will see. I think you would agree though, ANYONE planning on buying just one system would be insane not to wait and see what the PS3 and Revolution can do. Also, on paper the PS3 looks more powerful than the 360. So it will be very interesting to see what happens. By the way have you seen the demo's that the vendors say were NOT pre-rendered for the PS3? If they are accurate then it would explain why Microsoft rushed the 360 to market. They would understand that their only hope of winning the next gen console war would be to get it out before the PS3.
:-)
Lastly, have you seen first gen PS2 games compared to what is out now? Wow what a difference!
It is a great time to be a consumer of video game systems and I look forward to comparing them all later this year. I "might" buy an 360, but to be honest the lack of a HD-DVD(BlueRay) will probably be a show stopper for me. I like a ton of people have a HDTV that has a digital HD input, and I look forward to seeing Lord of the Rings in HD
The other way to look at this is:
If you see the first generation games and they are better than anything on the XBOX 360, then imagine how much better they will be when this type of compiler becomes standard. The difference in games will only get larger, thus it would make more sense to purchase a Playstation 3.
Or to be more specific, imagine 30 cars in GT5, all with different computer AI, against say 10 cars on a similar XBOX 360 game.
Trust me no matter what Sony does, short of making the price over $700, it will not ever EVER EVER put off gamers if the games that come out are good; and they do look very good.
I see a few things happening this year. One is that after the PS3 is released and people see that the games are genually better on the PS3 than any other next gen console, it will become the "have to own" system of Christmas. The only thing I see stopping them is their manufacturing, and to be honest I don't see that slowing them down much at all. Now after this year, if Sony has a 2 or 3 times lead on the second leading console manufacturer, then the battle of blue-ray is over. Sony and company will start releasing their content primarly on blue-ray disk and people like you and I will run out to buy Lord of the Rings HD. We will then play it on our PS3. Will the player probably suck? Yep, the ps2 one did, but that won't matter, because it will drive down the cost of other blue-ray dvd players. Much like it did for DVD players and the PS2. Sony will gladly sell you a better one for say $300....
Next comes content, but that is a few years away. I would be very concerned if I was Apple... Sony and company (Content providers) are not found of Apple and they are want CONTROL of that business. If Sony gets 20-30 million PS3's out there over the next three years then they WILL start to leverage that, while still producing "better" hardware for specific devices (i.e. slingbox stuff).
Understand though, Sony knows that it is a games machine first. They will brag about EVERYTHING it can do but they fully understand what the device is.
I am a little surprised that more people don't talk about OpenGL vs DirectX. Do people here on slashdot care that Microsoft is flat out killing OpenGL in Windows? The performance WILL suck because it is going to be wrapped in directX and if OpenGL dies then so does most Linux game ports. I am very thankfull that Sony chose to use OpenGL (subset).
I talked about the battle of HD-DVD and Blue-Ray. This is the mother of all battles, and to a large extent is has everything to do with Java. Do you think Microsoft likes the idea of a modern JVM becomming ubiquitous? I imagine they are having nightmares thinking about pc makers loading blue-ray dvd players on machines and then those new vista machines getting Suns 1.5 JVM. That and all those new blue-ray dvd players having a full JVM on them, that they don't control.
Operating System? I am not sure what Sony uses, but I am sure it is NOT Windows, and I am sure Microsofts is not Linux.
Does the average consumer give a rats ass about any of this? Probably not, they just want to play games, but if the PS3 was a complete failure, then we would be stuck in a HD-DVD/Microsoft only world for a lot longer.... If/When Sony dominates the console market, JAVA, Blue-RAY, and OpenGL will become more prominate.
There is a huge technology war taking place this year and next and gamers get to benifit because of it.
I live in a regulated environment, and understand your issues with getting stuff done. However, there are generally two sides to every story. I will counter your discussion a bit.
You want RAM in a server. That company currently has over 2,000 server and they have a service level agreement that is currently not being met with the business. They also have people that use to take servers down to just do "one thing" and not document why they were doing it, then when someone else went to update the server later it was not in the state they believed it would be and it created more problems and thus the server was unstable after their upgrade or the downtime was far greater than expected.
So the I.T. department gets judged by the business on uptime and other service level agreements. They do NOT get charged on helping the business out. So they are very cautious on any change to the environment. They are so cautious that it has gotten ridiculous for any change to occur.
So what can be done? Well I would need a ton more information than you provided to make more suggestions. I will NOT believe that everyone in your I.T. department is a bunch of idiots and lazy. I bet that around 80% are average to good, 10% suck and the last 10% rock (Like every large company).
Now a few questions.
1. Do you have a CIO?
2. Where is the majority of your I.T. department located?
3. How does your I.T. department prioritize its' project?
Those are just the first three that come to mind. In short I need to understand the constraints on the department before any real suggestions can be made. It is far too easy to say "fire them all", and in most companies that would be a huge mistake.
Lastly, I can say that I have seen a company that making any changes to ANY router took forever. It flat out sucked, however the reason is that this company was part of a bunch of other sister companies and one parent company, and those same router guys use to make changes on the fly (quick), but then it would take down a sister organization for a day or so, until they realized the mistake they made. So because of the major impact to the other businesses those same router guys were not allowed to make a change without a ton of paperwork under the penalty of being fired.
I can only tell you from my own experience why I believe this has become such a hot issue.
In our state of Indiana we have a college called IUPUI, and it offered a class for a relative of mine that discussed sexuality. The prof has very liberal views and promotes this in class. To be specific he has pushed students to have homosexual relations. I could give many other examples... Now he does not allow any recording equipment in the class and will never allow anyone to debate him on what or why he does. The issue is that he has tenure and the way the school system is setup he is "almost" untouchable.
I say "almost" because people in the area here are starting to realize that a degree from any social program at IUPUI isn't worth much, as my relative who has an outstanding GPA can attest to. So unlike most professions these teachers can't be fired and because of that they start to push the agenda on their students. However, at the end of the day when these kids can't get a job, and parents stop sending their kids to that school, things will change.
What would help fix the problem is to do away with tenure. Allow teachers to compete like everyone else in the workplace.
"Game AI is typically notoriously branch-heavy and often tends to be mostly integer code"
I don't agree with this. I believe it will still be faster because each core has it's own pipeline. So yes it is more costly to flush the pipeline, but you will have 7 cores working on those multiple AI opponents as opposed to one. Each with it's own pipeline, and each flushing it as needed. Now do we know how wide and long that pipeline is? That will also have significant performance gains or losses.
Now do I believe we will see movie quality games? Well I saw the demo of GT5 and MGS4 and they were both impressive, and if those are the real games then I would say that the PS3 is very close. Time will tell.
"Java application servers routinely run non-stop for weeks"
Our J2EE app servers run for months and could run for years without a problem.
Cool thanks! I hope that this is correct, and that means they should run fine on AMD Opterons as well. Well this means they should run better on an Opteron :-)
I believe that only the Xeon chips support X86-64 and the test systems from Apple ran on normal 32 bit only chips.
This doesn't maean that you are incorrect, it just means that they have been working on a 32bit X86 version for YEARS.
"Intel on the other hand needs to focus on mobile chips, desktop chips and server chips."
:-) If not then you better start getting use to the temp of those uber hot Intel CPU's :-)
.05% marketshare the year it is out. Those same "geeks" will help convince other people that by buying a Macintosh they will actually be able to function in a "Microsoft" world. I just find it very ironic that a company that built their OS on the backs of open source developers would then stick a knife in it.
What I mean by this is that Intel has to additionally focus on desktop performance against AMD. IBM does not need to worry about this market. This market has razor thin margins that only can be maintained by enormous sales. Quite a few people believe that this market is going away, or at best has leveled off and will not grow significantly.
"you say it like not beleiving in God is a problem for me it is an intelligence sign."
I say that from my dealings with Apple people. If they are so "proud" of their "Deversity" then why don't they show some of those people in their marketing? You say it is an intelligence sign.... You better hope you are correct
"Free software such as Linux is a competitor so why wouldn't they bash it if they get a chance? It's not like their principal target is geeks."
Good point! However please remember that those same "geeks" will help develop software for their machine that will have less than
"having Apple on x86 CPUs can only help vendors deciding to port their software on MacOS X, it lowers the bar not increase it."
I wish that was the case. If you code in something other than Java and you company produces client code then here is your current environment.
1. OS9 - Still have a market using it.
2. OSX PPC - Large but now there are 4 versions and trying to validate your software on each one is a pain. This is why a lot of software vendors still only support 10.2 or 10.3. This currently has around 80% of the Apple market.
3. OSX X86 - Not out yet but at best these system will only hold a 5% share of the APPLE market the first year.
4. Linux - Lots of versions but RedHat and SuSE appear to be the leading candidates.
Now the last ones
5. Windows XP/2k
6. Windows 9X and Mel.
Those last two DOMINATE sales of most software vendors. Even the core Apple ones. Take the Adobe products... What percentage of sales do you believe Adobe gets from their Apple line vs their Windows line of products? From what I have been told is that it is way less than 10% of their sales, and I am being very generous here... So why should Adobe port yet again? I guess the question should be "why would Adobe port any apps in the next 3 years?" They might as well wait and see how the market pans out.... This adds to my point above, in that Apple should be begging any and all developers to port software to their platform.
"About Linux comparison: when I see reviews about MacOS X, I'm always surprised how stringent the reviewers are: they expect high quality from Apple and they're quite disappointed when they don't have it, unfortunately reviewers about Linux are far more tolerant because they don't expect (and don't get) such quality: the cracks between the many layers of a Linux's desktop are always showing.
Somehow I doubt that this can be fixed in one or two years, especially since HW makers don't help by hiding their spec (Nvidia, ATI, other..)."
We agree! However, I will say that the desktop Linux has come a LONG way over the last 3 years. It is a race for my $$$$ and I am curious who will win. I wish them all well.
"Well, consider that only 400k or so XBoxes have shipped and 0 PS3s have shipped, and Apple shipped 600k iMacs and PowerMacs in Q4 2005 (both of which use Power based G5s), Apple is STILL IBM's biggest customer.
.05%? Heck some vendors just NOW started to fully support OSX! RedHat Linux Desktop and SuSE Linux on the destkop will have more clients that OSX on X86. Perhaps Ubuntu will even have more desktops! I wish Apple well, but it will be far far easier on them to reign in their sales guys and send out a message to ANYONE to help support OSX on X86, be that open source apps and or Java applications.
Now Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo may have potentially larger markets, but right now Apple is still shipping more G5s than Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo combined, that and each G5 is higher margin than a Cell based CPU."
Ok, I don't know where you get 400k. I hope that you are correct, but from what I here there will be around 3 million 360's sold by July of this year if they hold their current pace. Now as far as PS3's go, it would be a fair estimate to say that they will be close to their 90 million PS2's sold in 5 years. So lets just say they average 10 million a year for the next 5 years of PS3's. Now you also didn't mention all the hub manufacturers out there like Cisco. They also use power chips. When you start to add it up, the loss of Apple for the gain of Microsoft and Sony was huge win for IBM.
So in short Apple switching to Intel is a small loss for power, BUT there are some serious advantages now for Power as well. Microsoft and Sony will not require a new fab to be built for ~5 years! Cisco cares about the performance of the Power chip, but they care more about the power consumption. Intel on the other hand needs to focus on mobile chips, desktop chips and server chips. They will need to build their 65nm fabs as fast as possible then spend billions on the next version. Granted Intel spends around 10Billion a year in R&D so they can handle it as long as Wintel desktops keep selling like they do.
Now the real quesiton is why did Apple switch? This is off topic, but it doesn't make sense that they switched to a 32bit chip FROM a 64bit chip. Now if they would have switched to x86-64, that would have made better sense. I do feel for all those poor saps who are going to buy PPC or X86 Mac in the next year or so. I feel for them because I went through the 68k to PPC migraiton and bought all the load of crap that Apple fed back then. It is the same load of crap they are trying to spin today.... fat binaries.... blah blah blah. The truth is that if you go with a new X86 machine a bunch of your old stuff will not work and you will be praying that someone will code a new version that works as well as your old one did. Now after this painfull migration is over in a couple of years and if Apple moves to X86-64, then they will probably be better off. They just better pray (not that many in Apple belive in God), that sales of their Ipod don't faulter.
Apple has some other issues that they need to address. One is their view of open source. They use it a TON in their OS yet their sales guys go around and bash it whenever they get a chance. The next is their view on technologies such as Java. Again their sales guys go around and bash it, yet all their Java apps will not need to be ported to this new architecture. One sales guy just recently said to me that he would NEVER load any JVM on his system because he hates slow Java applications. I then informed him that it was loaded by default. He smiled and told me he knew that and he was "just kidding", but I have to wonder how many poor saps he talks to that don't know that and then repeat the same crap he just said. Lastly, and perhaps the biggest issue is why on earth would our development shop write software for X86 Macintosh? Lets look at the marketshare as it is and as it will be for the next few years. What percentage of all new desktops do you believe will be running X86 OSX?
I
I believe what the point of the poster is this.
.NET/C# you have no REAL option except visual studio and that will cost you money eventually. A few would argue that it will cost you a lot of money, but that is relative. It appears in the case of Microsoft, that it will cost you money in 365 days AND you will have to buy Windows. You may not think this is an issue, but some do, and they don't want to be tied to the whim of a proprietary vendor and locked in to one solution.
.Net. C++ will work great on Linux then Java and then supposedly c# will run. It seems simple to me. Any of those languages will give you a good foundation and two of the three will allow him to develop enterprise level applcations for multiple operating systems.
If you use Java you can use a variety of FREE and open source enterprise level tools. If you use
So to give a specific example. He could use Eclipse and run it on just about any platform for free forever OR he could use visual studio and eventually have to pay Microsoft for both Windows and visual studio.
Your make a point to say that it isn't right for this guy to make money on a product and get an IDE for free, but in this marketplace that is exactly what he can and should do. You seem to indicate that he should spend money when he doesn't have to.
Now as far as what language he should pick? Well if he truely does love Linux then he should pick c++, then Java then
"It's a good thing that there are still judges around that have a clue."
So you agree with this decision, and by that you say this Judge has a clue?
Over 90% of the world believes in a higher power. Science has no explanation for how everthing began, and yet a teacher can't say "A large number of people believe that a higher power had a role in the overall design of everthing, this is not to say that they don't believe in evolution, but that a higher power had a role in the overall design".
Wow! Those teachers now can't decide on their own, or even use their own freedom of speech to teach even though a vast majority of the people in that area believe what would be tought.
Now, I would love to have someone in class start asking things like
"Eplain how the universe began and what started it all." Then when a typical answer of "science doesn't have the answer to those types of questions, I would then like a question like "what are most people hypothosis on this subject?"
The answer now will have to be "Well, it is illegal for me to tell you that". Granted we use to have freedom of speech in America, but we loose it whenever a small part number of Americans that are progressive secularist get involved.
COBOL is going away, but it is slowly. It appears to be being replaced by JAVA. IBM seems keen on this and those shops that haven't moved off of the big iron and on to UNIX/Linux or Microsoft are generally moving to JAVA. IBM kind of loves this because it allows them to sell even more hardware :-)
From what I have been seeing, the upper management types are starting to die off that seem to be married to COBOL and as such the business is starting to migrate off of it. As mentioned in other post there is a TON of COBOL out there. I would say BILLIONS of lines of code, but it is a dead language. Nobody is doing any "new" stuff with COBOL. So as those shops want to start exposing their business via web services and such, that development will be done in other languages, and then over time more and more of the core code will be redone in a "modern" language.
You do know what Sony just did with the root kit?
Microsoft wants to control the living room and then the content. Sony wants to keep people from stealing their content and thus keep prices unreasonably high. You decide which one is worse.
In the end the PS3 will make blue-ray the defacto standard.
You hit the nail right on the head.
It appears that most people here on slashdot hate Blue-Ray. I understand, but look at the alternative. A Microsoft backed system that will also have the copy protection crap in it.
So for once it looks like a technology that Microsoft hates it going to be the "standard".
It isn't like we have a totally open spec on one side and a DRM closed solution on the other. We the consumers (people that will actually buy a device), have a choice of one evil player or the other. It appears that the better technical solution will win. Also, it appears that a JVM will now become even more widely available, and thus piss off Microsoft even more. Let's be honest now, the ONLY reason Microsoft hates blue-ray is because it contains a JVM. They realize they will not control the living room and thus hate it. They have to be kicking themselves for not waiting a little bit on the new Xbox and shipping a HD-DVD in it.
Again for people that will actually spend money on a new High Definition DVD player, the choices are between one evil empire and the other. One is Microsoft and the other is Sony. Who would you pick?
Handful of obscure legacy features: There are a handful of obscure legacy features where certain pieces of the data are stored in a tag. We did this because of resource constraints when building the original XML file. An example of this would be some of our old legacy fields. We just weren't able to get to them, but we only did this for features where the use of them was very, very low. For Office 12, we've done the extra work so that even these features are now represented in XML. So if this is the binary key, then it will go away, but I highly doubt this would be the "binary key" people talk about as it occurs so rarely.
The comment came from his blog. Resource constraints? We just weren't able to get to them....
XML files are by themselves somewhat open, but the issue comes in to play when you put in binary information in your XML file. This is what Microsoft is doing with their next version of Office. They will NOT make those binary files open to the public and thus they still will have a vendor lock in type of situation.
Dell sells a dual core Opteron server? I would like to look at one, where can I? Oh that is correct, they don't make an Opteron server, and the Xenons can't compete at this time.
Dual core G5? Oh you mean the end of life PPC Macintosh...
So I guess it is between HP, Sun and IBM for major server vendors that sell Opteron servers. Well HP/Compaq is out of the question because they are in Microsoft's back pocket and they will kill any serious threat to that market. Just look at what their view of Blue-Ray is. So that leaves Sun and IBM or a much smaller player in the market.
The problem with buing Sun is that we (customers) can't be sure of their commitment to X86. They seem to have a hate hate relationship with X86 and Linux, and only use it because their own offering with Sparc sucks at that price point. Unlike Apple, Sun has not bet the farm with X86, and the downside of that move makes them appear indecisive. The upside of that move is that it doesn't kill their current sales (Why would ANYONE buy a PPC Macintosh now, unless they absolutely had too?).
However, if you want a major server vendor with an Opteron, to run anything other than Microsoft Windows, then Sun is probably the best choice at this time. Again, the only huge issues is that you can tell Sun hates selling Linux and X86, and that they will do everything in their power to get those customers to "upgrade" to Solaris and Sparc. So again, I say that they and IBM are the only "major" vendors of Opteron servers at this time.
This is not true. Almost the exact opposite is true. Sony originally told everyone that there were no pre-rendered footage shown, but then found out that some of it was. They informed people but they couldn't comment on what was and what wasn't. But understand that Sony went out of their way to state the stuff shown was NOT pre-rendered. They did not do this with the PS2. Yes this is Sony, but it would look very bad on them to lie on this. Time will tell.
Ok, you appear to be a developer who has experience with all the "major" chips. My question is this:
:-) It makes comparing systems much easier for me :-)
For gaming, specifically games with a 3D engine, will the CELL be better than a top of the line P4 or Athlon 64? Let us assume that the entire code has been enginered for every chip. I believe the question that a lot of people have is if the XBOX chip is less powerful than the cell chip in the PS3. Again they want to know if someone wrote Wold of Warcraft or EQII for both platforms, and optimized both to the best they could for the hardware, which would be better and by how much?
I have seen the demos of MGS4 and GT5 for the PS3 and in my opinion it simply blows away anything I have seen or played on the new XBOX. But it makes me wonder how much of this is just pre-rendered stuff. If it isn't pre-renederd then I can't wait for a PS3.
Thanks.
Now personally I just want a JVM for whatever chip is out there.