" So, I repeat, to demo this is nothing worthy of the label "advanced"."
Really? So if you ran X on a monitor capable of 4,000 by 3,000 pixels, would the text be really really small, or would it scale up and simply be 'clearer'? If the latter isn't true, then you are absolutely wrong.
"Just because they keep releasing new versions doesn't mean it's not 'finished'."
What I really find funny about the 'not-finished' discussion is the blissful ignorance surrounding computer advances. Lots of jokes about Longhorn flying around, but nobody seemed to catch the demo of the OS's UI running on the video card. Etc.
"How, preytell, is an ethernet card designed to "(reduce) the load on the servers CPUs and improve the communications between the servers" when you can just buy another server for the price of a few of these bad boys?"
Depends on what you're doing and why. A company I used to work for did some cool stuff with GigE and real-time image processing. If they can spend $600 to offload some of the CPU cycles to the card, they'd probably have been ecstatic. Anything to squeak out a few more FPS. Adding more boxes to the network wouldn't have done them any good, in this case.
The question is: Are there enough customers like that to generate a decent profit. If so, then they'll do just fine.
In this particular case, it'd be handy if the DS had SSH running on it. Maybe even a mail client. Since it has a touch screen, an OSK would work fairly well on it. It'd be a great little $150 doohickey for Linux admins.
Other than that, I agree with you. The DS is a good match for this sort of thing, but the PSP isn't. What a difference a touch screen makes.
"You're assumption that bnet was used only for pirate copies is wrong. There are countries around the world where we are not as connected to the internet as the rest of the first world. Connecting to battlenet is not an option."
I appreciate that, but I agree with the GPP that it's still hard to get worked up into boycott mode over this. The BNetd guys should have known that they were playing with fire here when they made something bypassing their protection scheme. It's really silly to assume that Blizzard was going to sit back and not use the tools they have at their disposal to fight it. The real problem here is the DMCA.
"What the hell good is a story if it does not give you a new perspective on your own existence/nature?"
Bingo. Why was 1984 so compelling? We fear living in a world like that. Star Wars? Most of us have been in the underdog position. We all love the idea of a farm boy saving the galaxy. I, Robot? (the movie, not the collection of short stories.) Even laws meant for the best of intentions can backfire if brought to a ridiculous extreme.
Sci-fi is interesting because it opens new doors for exploration of the human condition. An old episode of Star Trek comes to mind. An alien species was involved in a war between two halves. One side was black on the right side, white on the left. The other side was just the opposite. The disction to us was pretty silly, but to them it was a big deal. What would be compelling about that story if racism wasn't a strong factor in those days? How would one tell that story in modern or past times? It might be possible, but sci-fi opens up new ideas to bring these stories to light.
"It's statements like these that make all geeks look bad."
That was poor phrasing on TFS's part. He was referring to the "Everybody gets along" and the "People work for the greater good of humanity instead of money" philosophies that Star Trek relied on.
I don't think anybody has a problem with that. What makes us look bad is when an army of geeks march in full Storm Trooper gear in front of the Episode III premiere.
"There will be a lot more people leaving Windows for the stability and look of OSX."
Maybe for security, but Windows XP/2000 has made serious serious strides in stability. It's easy to go a couple of weeks with Windows without restarting. Some of you may scoff with your multi-month up-times, but consider the serious lack of inconvenience a two-week up-time for most people (i.e. mass market) is. Then factor in things like game availability and just how nichey OSX is.
I think spyware and related bullshit will move people towards OSX, or even a nice fancy desktop or laptop, but not stability. I don't have a problem with the rest of your point, I just wanted to nitpick this little bit. Given all the giggling and snorting around here every time a stale BSOD joke is made, it seems pretty clear that a lot of people aren't aware of what using a modern version of Windows is like. I apologize if I incorrectly labeled you as such.
" It's been a while since I've looked it up, but rendering on another machine could mean spending another $1,000 for the license to render on it. So we'd have to factor that in, too."
I apologize for responding to my own post here, but I said something that doesn't make any sense and I'd like to clear it up.
I meant if we rendered on another renderer such as Mental Ray, not another computer. Since I've got a little time to look it up now, Mental Ray is $995. Hopefully that clears up the error in my last post a bit.
"I realize the price will go down over time, but seriously, who is going to buy this chip?"
I'm in a small small minority here, but my company is a candidate. I work at a studio making an animated 3D movie. We need more speed for both the UI and in rendering.
We're using Lightwave, so rendering isn't as strong of case. Lightwave provides unlimited licenses for network rendering. In that case, it's more beneficial to buy more slower machines and add them to the network. But if we were using another renderer, we might have to buy more rendering licenses. It's been a while since I've looked it up, but rendering on another machine could mean spending another $1,000 for the license to render on it. So we'd have to factor that in, too.
For the UI side of it, the case is a lot stronger. We have to test our animations by making a preview. The longer it takes to do the preview, the longer we're sitting there twiddling our thumbs. As it is, we're dumbing the models etc down quite a bit to make it acceptable. The more we dumb it down, the more work we have to do in the end to tidy everything up. If a $1,000 processor saved us time on this, we'd eventually get that money back within a few months.
I think that pretty much sums it up. For us, processor time is money. I don't know if we're actually going to go buy processors that expensive, but I can tell you it's definitely a consideration. It's worth noting, though, that if we do upgrade, we're going to stick with it for a while. We're not keen on down-time.
"This could make the best t shirt ever. Of course you could probably never wash it, but who cares if you smell. You'd be too pimpin for people to complain."
"Every additional Star Wars remake, rerelease, addition, TV series, book, comic, condom, game WITHIN the movies time frame will make the MYTH only WEAKER. Damnit."
Kind of reminds me when Enterprise 'explained' the smooth headed Klingons. I was one of the few that enjoyed that show, but I really despised the sterilization of that detail. I had a lot of fun imagining what would cause that. "We do not discuss it with outsiders."
They were trying to get power, not momentum. It'd be stupid for them to waste their time trying to make their ship go sublight when their life support is failing.
It was called a 'sail' to imply they going to build a big sheet of material to capture solar energy.
Slashdot Mirror
" So, I repeat, to demo this is nothing worthy of the label "advanced"."
Really? So if you ran X on a monitor capable of 4,000 by 3,000 pixels, would the text be really really small, or would it scale up and simply be 'clearer'? If the latter isn't true, then you are absolutely wrong.
"Just because they keep releasing new versions doesn't mean it's not 'finished'."
What I really find funny about the 'not-finished' discussion is the blissful ignorance surrounding computer advances. Lots of jokes about Longhorn flying around, but nobody seemed to catch the demo of the OS's UI running on the video card. Etc.
"I don't know about Yahoo!, but Google pulled in $3.2 billion from their ad service last year."
Funny how on-line advertising is supposed to be dead, but when you make simple text ads that don't make you fear opening your browser...
"Now I'm even *less* motivated to exercise than before, which I thought was impossible.... I'd just run to work at 60+ MPH!!!"
So.. how are you going to do that and avoid the exercise part?
"How, preytell, is an ethernet card designed to "(reduce) the load on the servers CPUs and improve the communications between the servers" when you can just buy another server for the price of a few of these bad boys?"
Depends on what you're doing and why. A company I used to work for did some cool stuff with GigE and real-time image processing. If they can spend $600 to offload some of the CPU cycles to the card, they'd probably have been ecstatic. Anything to squeak out a few more FPS. Adding more boxes to the network wouldn't have done them any good, in this case.
The question is: Are there enough customers like that to generate a decent profit. If so, then they'll do just fine.
"WTF to people bother with this."
In this particular case, it'd be handy if the DS had SSH running on it. Maybe even a mail client. Since it has a touch screen, an OSK would work fairly well on it. It'd be a great little $150 doohickey for Linux admins.
Other than that, I agree with you. The DS is a good match for this sort of thing, but the PSP isn't. What a difference a touch screen makes.
Were US voters allowed to vote on whether to drop A-bombs on Japan during WWII?
"I will never buy blizzrd products again. If this is how they treat their clients. I'd rather not support them."
Your call, man. But I have to ask: What exactly did you expect them to do?
"As long as you're paying taxes, you're paying the soldier to burn that child."
Erm. So what do you do when you want your local police and fire services to be active, but don't want soldiers to burn children?
"You're assumption that bnet was used only for pirate copies is wrong. There are countries around the world where we are not as connected to the internet as the rest of the first world. Connecting to battlenet is not an option."
I appreciate that, but I agree with the GPP that it's still hard to get worked up into boycott mode over this. The BNetd guys should have known that they were playing with fire here when they made something bypassing their protection scheme. It's really silly to assume that Blizzard was going to sit back and not use the tools they have at their disposal to fight it. The real problem here is the DMCA.
Supply & Demand.
"What the hell good is a story if it does not give you a new perspective on your own existence/nature?"
Bingo. Why was 1984 so compelling? We fear living in a world like that. Star Wars? Most of us have been in the underdog position. We all love the idea of a farm boy saving the galaxy. I, Robot? (the movie, not the collection of short stories.) Even laws meant for the best of intentions can backfire if brought to a ridiculous extreme.
Sci-fi is interesting because it opens new doors for exploration of the human condition. An old episode of Star Trek comes to mind. An alien species was involved in a war between two halves. One side was black on the right side, white on the left. The other side was just the opposite. The disction to us was pretty silly, but to them it was a big deal. What would be compelling about that story if racism wasn't a strong factor in those days? How would one tell that story in modern or past times? It might be possible, but sci-fi opens up new ideas to bring these stories to light.
"It's statements like these that make all geeks look bad."
That was poor phrasing on TFS's part. He was referring to the "Everybody gets along" and the "People work for the greater good of humanity instead of money" philosophies that Star Trek relied on.
I don't think anybody has a problem with that. What makes us look bad is when an army of geeks march in full Storm Trooper gear in front of the Episode III premiere.
"There will be a lot more people leaving Windows for the stability and look of OSX."
Maybe for security, but Windows XP/2000 has made serious serious strides in stability. It's easy to go a couple of weeks with Windows without restarting. Some of you may scoff with your multi-month up-times, but consider the serious lack of inconvenience a two-week up-time for most people (i.e. mass market) is. Then factor in things like game availability and just how nichey OSX is.
I think spyware and related bullshit will move people towards OSX, or even a nice fancy desktop or laptop, but not stability. I don't have a problem with the rest of your point, I just wanted to nitpick this little bit. Given all the giggling and snorting around here every time a stale BSOD joke is made, it seems pretty clear that a lot of people aren't aware of what using a modern version of Windows is like. I apologize if I incorrectly labeled you as such.
" It's been a while since I've looked it up, but rendering on another machine could mean spending another $1,000 for the license to render on it. So we'd have to factor that in, too."
I apologize for responding to my own post here, but I said something that doesn't make any sense and I'd like to clear it up.
I meant if we rendered on another renderer such as Mental Ray, not another computer. Since I've got a little time to look it up now, Mental Ray is $995. Hopefully that clears up the error in my last post a bit.
My apologies.
"I realize the price will go down over time, but seriously, who is going to buy this chip?"
I'm in a small small minority here, but my company is a candidate. I work at a studio making an animated 3D movie. We need more speed for both the UI and in rendering.
We're using Lightwave, so rendering isn't as strong of case. Lightwave provides unlimited licenses for network rendering. In that case, it's more beneficial to buy more slower machines and add them to the network. But if we were using another renderer, we might have to buy more rendering licenses. It's been a while since I've looked it up, but rendering on another machine could mean spending another $1,000 for the license to render on it. So we'd have to factor that in, too.
For the UI side of it, the case is a lot stronger. We have to test our animations by making a preview. The longer it takes to do the preview, the longer we're sitting there twiddling our thumbs. As it is, we're dumbing the models etc down quite a bit to make it acceptable. The more we dumb it down, the more work we have to do in the end to tidy everything up. If a $1,000 processor saved us time on this, we'd eventually get that money back within a few months.
I think that pretty much sums it up. For us, processor time is money. I don't know if we're actually going to go buy processors that expensive, but I can tell you it's definitely a consideration. It's worth noting, though, that if we do upgrade, we're going to stick with it for a while. We're not keen on down-time.
"But OTOH this may turn out to be a good thing by actually making Linux distributions concentrate more on making easy to use OSes."
Despite popular belief, competition is good for OSS as well.
"This could make the best t shirt ever. Of course you could probably never wash it, but who cares if you smell. You'd be too pimpin for people to complain."
Sounds like the perfect Think Geek product!
"Every additional Star Wars remake, rerelease, addition, TV series, book, comic, condom, game WITHIN the movies time frame will make the MYTH only WEAKER. Damnit."
Kind of reminds me when Enterprise 'explained' the smooth headed Klingons. I was one of the few that enjoyed that show, but I really despised the sterilization of that detail. I had a lot of fun imagining what would cause that. "We do not discuss it with outsiders."
I see your point, man.
"Solar sails didn't work in Star Trek IV..."
They were trying to get power, not momentum. It'd be stupid for them to waste their time trying to make their ship go sublight when their life support is failing.
It was called a 'sail' to imply they going to build a big sheet of material to capture solar energy.
"my mum tells me i was born with a strangely large head, YEAH!!!"
You probably wouldn't appreciate the nickname we have for her.
Engineers didn't realize there was a problem with the unit until the words "Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?" appeared all over their screens.
"Well I'll be a monkey's uncle!"
Even with standards this low, this generation of Slashdotters still threatens to be the last.
"What does this mean for Fry and his past-nastification?"
Absolutely nothing unless you travel through time and mess with the writers of the show.
"Copyright != freedom of speech."
Err, I meant to say Trademark. Oh well.