While I don't blame companies for not wanting to support hardware nearing a decade old, the fact that I'm having to buy a replacement because it's just been obsoleted will factor into what replacement I buy.
And Creative doesn't care. Here's why:
Once you've paid for your soundcard, Creative has your money. Once they have your money, they provide services for you as long as financially prudent. Creative may make an exception for a particularlly popular model (like the SB 16), but eventually they have burned through the money you paid, and cannot justify spending any more time on support.
Look at it from Creative's shoes: if they drop support, you MAY buy another Creative card, depending on how good a value you think you got out of your last one, and the features of the current cards on the market. If they continue to support you with patches, you will NEVER buy a new card. I know which one I'd pick as my business model.
If you don't think you're getting a good value in terms of support from Creative, then by all-means go buy from a competitor. I think if you took a critical look at the rest of the soundcard market, you'd find that the support is even crappier in most other companies, or the features aren't really there.
You don't have to upgrade anything. Your current Windows license will continue working, and will be valid so long as your computer continues to operate. Applications and games will continue to be made with support for XP for the next 3-5 years, which means your current conputer is still quite useful.
If you buy a new computer today, unless you build it yourself, there will be a Vista-supported soundcard inside. Such is the way of the world.
You want an incredibly long support cycle? I hope you're willing to pay for it - Creative's line of soundcards already cost way too much, and a huge chunk of that cost is estimated support. Patches, new features like Open-AL, and of course - new OS support are all paid-for by your original purchase price. Do you really find it hard to pay an extra $50-100 every 8 years to keep this support cycle running?
Re:this was expected
on
Is Vista a Trap?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Oh noes, I can't get Vista drivers for my SoundBlaster Live! card, even though the series is almost nine years old!
It must be a conspiracy!
Will you people stop acting so surprised that they don't make drivers for excesively old hardware? There's NO MONEY in that, so there's consequently NO DRIVERS. Does the article poster want to pay Creative to develop new drivers?
Creative can't support everything, and they're always going to piss off someone. Just be happy they've delivered support for the Live! over SO MANY operating systems: Windows 95 / 98 / ME, NT / 2000 / XP. That's a good run, considering 2000 and XP weren't even out when the Live! was released.
Are any of you whining because your brand-new X-Fi doesn't work on Windows 95? I don't think so. If you don't expect new cards to have drivers for all old OSes, you shouldn't expect old cards to have drivers for all new OSes. IF you want that kind of support, you need to go with Linux - and put-up with the usual support inconsistencies it brings.
I'm actually impressed that the support for the Live! 24-bit and Audigy series is so forth-coming, as this card series is almost SIX YEARS old.
Back in the 90s, CompUSA just sold computers - they had THE BEST selection of computers and software you could find, before the market They even made a big deal about being THE LAST US chain store to sell Macs. But once the net caught on, they got gutted - online retailers were so hot, they opened their own stores just to bypass the middleman.
Today, they've managed to move into other markets, now that online / mail-order has taken the bottom out of the retail PC business, and software margins have fallen flat. But they've done a half-assed job, and that's why they're suffering.
Go to any CompUSA - they STILL have a software selection that is just way too large for the size of the store, often 1/4 of the floorspace. And unlike Best Buy's CD pit, a software pit is less likely to attract customers for the high-margin items.
Another problem I have with CompUSA is the inconsistency of products offered. There's overlap with the big-box stores, but they don't offer enough selection to really stand-out, so people don't even bother. Also, a lack of advertising these new product lines on-offer doesn't help things.
For example, in the last few years CompUSA has begun offering cameras, then televisions...but I have never seen an advertisement letting people know about it. Also, the selection is really tiny, even compared to smaller stores like Circuit City.
In addition, I've been astounded as-of late because CompUSA has begun carrying *A* game console. No, not ALL game consoles, just one: the 360. You want a PS2? A PS3? A Wii? Tough...you have to go to a Superstore location to get more than the 360, and even then the selection is limited. Who the hell is going to come to CompUSA for a console or game with such crappy selection?
Part of the fun of going to a store with consoles is you get a visual feel for what's available on what platforms - useful if, like most of the populace, you have NO IDEA what's going on in the gaming industry.
Today CompUSA is a wannabe - they don't have the breadth of different items carried by the big-box stores, and for the products they DO carry they don't offer more selection than a specialty or big-box store.
You'd have to have an independently-evolved AI robot bombard the computer with alpha particles.
Or, you'd just have to be crazy enough to send your computer up into space. What, did you think they used mice to run those satellites and space probes?
Solar / cosmic radiation is a real problem for computer systems that can't take advantage of the earth's magnetic field.
Oh, I absolutely agree, except I took issue with this part of the original post:
They constantly upgrade their hardware (as soon as warrenty expires on the hardeware, they start selling it, auction style, for the book value of $1.00). Yet they still run windows 3.11.
Warrantied *NEW* hardware sold today doesn't have Windows 3.1 drivers. Thus, you are limited to the generic VGA mode of 640x480 at 60 Hz, 16 colors, unless there's something I'm mising here?
And while they could possibly re-use old video cards that have Win 3.1 drivers, they would have to toss the ISA cards, and it would be difficult to keep a working pool of PCI video cards compatible with Win 3.1.
I have to agree with your comments, and raise another:
How can you be productive still working in spreadsheets today at 640x480 resolution? Now, sure, I'll bet a lot of people use terminal emulators or data entry apps that don't use a mouse, but for everything else (especially spreadsheets), low resolution limits performance.
And why would you be limited to 640x480? Well, there';s not a single video card manufactured in the last 8 years that supports Windows 3.1. I'm sure the company already "auctioned off" all their hardware from that era. If I had to work at an annoying 640x480 screen @ 60 Hz EVERY FUCKING DAY, I'd grab a machinegun and go postal.
Maybe it was an unintended side effect, but the last PS3 update made my PS2 games look much better. I was hesitant to play them before the update because they looked terrible.
The community believes that the problem was caused by a lousy deinterlacing algorithm (converting the native PS2 output 480i -> 480p). They believe it was discarding vertical resolution, cutting the resolution in-half and causing those ugly stair-step artifacts.
Excuse me, that was not the point I was trying to make.
The point I was trying to make was, for those interested in HD televisions, the market has moved on to progressive-scan displays. CRTs, the only displays capable of native 1080i, have fallen out of favor. I am pissed that we in the US are locked into this archaic 1080i broadcast standard.
I absolutely agree that most of the world has not yet embraced HDTV (including myself,and most of the US), nor will they in the near-future.
What am I waiting for? A reasonsbly-priced ($1500) 37"-or-more 1080p display (same 4:3 size as my 27" CRT) with deinterlacing as good as high-end sets have today. Anything less just isn't worth my time or money.
That just sucks, you'll need to upscale 720 to 1080 (1:1.5), that means interpolating 1 line every 2 from the original image. What's the point of HDTV? I thought it was to have "crisp clear" image, but that just won't work if you need to interpolate.
The industry doomed itself to this mess the minute they decided to support 1080i and 720p. Experts warned that supporting multiple standards would only confuse consumers, and it most certainly has. I know people who bought an HDTV, but have no idea what the difference between signals means...and I know several more people who are just too confused to be bothered.
720p is actually the worst resolution to work with, because with 1080i signals you have varying methods of deinterlacing and scaling which tend to give you less resolution than a 720p signal.
The good thing about 1080p is you get rid of that annoying deinterlacing + scalingcombination you have to do to show 1080i on a 720p set. The bad thing is that you still have to deinterlace the 1080i signal, and reconstruct the proper 60fps framerate, and this part is difficult. But the potential is there for almost lossless video conversion from 1080i to 1080p, and although it is certainly not "affordable" today (neither are 1080p sets), both probably will be in another 5 years.
Hey, it's a better solution than wishing broadcasters would pull their heads out of their asses and stop broadcasting in 1080i. Most of the world has moved-on to progressive-scan displays, but they continue to pipe that crappy interlaced video instead of moving to 720p. Hey, 1080i is a bigger number, it must be better!
The article is aimed at consumers. And this is unfortunate for consumers, as competition drives prices down.
What is "unfortunate" about this? This is a great time to buy a processor!
The X2 3800+ that I paid $300 a year ago can be had now for an amazing $100!
This is the very same 3800+ X2 that people used to drool over, while complaining vocally that the price was too high. AMD, knowing their day in the sun would be limited, waited until the last possible moment to cut prices. That's competition.
Competition is also the reason you can pick up a Core2 Duo for under $200, because AMD is willing to play the pricing game, and Intel is willing to follow-suit.
Now, I'm just looking forward to Barcelona, because only then will we open the next chapter in the CPU war. Right now, AMd is just trading water, and Intel is just raking in whatever cash they can.
My old LG TouchPoint 1100 finally broke a hinge last week, so I had to give in and buy a replacement. Unfortunately, I need a phone without a camera, and I wanted something cheap and basic.
I was impressed to find the LG LX150 available. This is as close to "just a phone" as you're going to get - no camera, no mp3, no wifi, no memory card slot - just a phone with bluetooth, the usual polyphonic sound, and minimal game and internet support. So far, I'm really impressed with the usability, and the reception (it's as good as my old phone with an external antenna).
I thought it was really funny because the saleswoman said she had never sold one of these, because everyone wants a camera. THAT'S the reason why you don't have a huge selection of "just phones" anymore.
Another thing to consider too- Sony seems to expect a much longer life from their consoles. The PS2 is over six years old, and there's still games being developed for it.
That's not a characteristic you build into a console design - it just happens. If one console is a runaway success, it tends to last more than the 4-5 years of the stragglers.
Atari VCS (2600): runaway success, so successful that it continued selling well after the more powerful Intellivision and Colecovision were released. Atari released the VCS in 1977, the 2600 Jr in 1986, and "oficially" discontinued the console in 1992.
NES: took the post-crash market by storm, and had %90 of the US market by the end of the 80s. Games were still developed well into the early 90s, spurred by the release of the NES2. The console was released in 1983, and was "discontinued" in 1996.
PSX, PS2: both runaway successes. The PSOne was only recently retired, and the PS2 has at least a couple years left in it.
You don't build-in long lifetimes into a console, you can only make them happen through a combination of reasonable pricing, creative design, aggressive marketing and game libraries. This is why everyone is so keen to see which console will be the "first to X million sold," because critical mass attracts developers. Once you reach critical mass, you not only get more developers, you also have the potential for another runaway success.
Of course, this console generation could end-up like the shootout between the SNES and the Genesis/Megadrive - no clear winner. If that's how things play out, don't expect ANY of these consoles to have a life of more than 5-6 years.
Hm, who just brought out a new product with a metric fuckton of cache on it... Oh, yes.
Intel's Core 2 Duo.
You may be surprised to know this, but the ratio of on-chip cache to typical system ram has not changed much in the last 12 years.
In 1995 I bought a mid-range 486 DX-2 50 computer. The chip had 4K cache on-die, and the system had 4MB ram (1/1024 ratio).
Today, you can buy a mid-range machine with 2-4MB on-die cache and 1024MB ram (either a 1/512 or 1/256 ratio). That's a tiny improvement, and that's to be expected because the basic SRAM cell has not changed much in the last decade. If anything, the gain is mostly due to Intel's aggresive cache deaigns and process revisions, because DRAM chips benefit from the same process technology improvements that allow higher cache sizes.
What would you say if, tomorrow, you could instantly improve that ratio by 6x with a move from SRAM (6 transistors per-cell) to eDRAM (1 transistor per-cell)? I'd say that's a winner! You're basically leap-frogging 5 years of process revisions, and permanantly dropping the cache / ram ratio, which means much better performance overall.
DX9 is backward compatible to DX1, so you should technically be able to run any DirectX game on it.
Just a bit of clarification on your point: DirectX 9 is only backward-compatible to DirectX 3. Yes, there is a reason for this.
Prior to DirectX 8, DirectX was fully backward-compatible, but the structure of DirectX was a mess for programmers. MS decided to re-write DirectX from scratch for the 8 release, and in doing-so they broke compatibility with DirectX versions prior to 3. As an avid player of Master of Orion 2 (DX2), I was not happy...but most people never noticed the change.
Today, the only way to get stable play out of MOO2 is to play the DOS version (slow-as-balls on an emulator), or configure an old machine with Win9x (Or Windows 2000 with the default DX7 install). On the bright side, MS didn't screw-up their DX3 support: every DX3 game I've tried under DX9 works fine.
Sadly, this is the only possible future for CPUs. Massively parallel single cores with support for symmetric multi-threading will replace complex cores with out-of-order execution, it's just a matter of time.
Three resons why we're reversing a 15-year trend toward more complex CPUs:
1. Single-thread performance using current processes and clock speeds is "good enough" for most desktop applications, even when you take away all the out-of-order execution goodies.
2. Programmers are beginning to understand SMT, and this is essential because it basically replaces out-of-order execution: if a thread blocks on I/O or dependencies, the processor just switches to another thread.
3. Out-of-order processor design is an area of decreasing returns - it took the major CPU manufacturers TEN YEARS to move from a 3-issue to 4-issue design, just because of the complexity. As you add more issue pipes, the complexity gets unmanageable, and the chips take too long to develop and verify.
Unfortunately, the move to simplistic cores with SMT puts the burden on the compiler and the programmer, but that's the cheapest solution for continued performance increases. If you can cut-and-paste a design a few dozen times, you save time verifying it and shipping it.
The good thing is, as I mentioned before, single-threaded performance (of simple cores) is "good enough" for most desktop applications, so the OS can handle multi-tasking for the user. Really, only performance-hungry apps (like compilers, renderers, AI/scientific and codecs) need that extra power. Most apps can remain single-threaded and simple, and still perform quite well.
So the 12x speed for the DVD-ROM is only the outer 15% of the disc, and this rate degrades as you move towards the center down to 6-7X. The Blu-Ray is 2X (BD-ROM speed) throughout the entire surface of the disc, as the drive actually spins the disc at different velocities.
This is absolutely correct, however there is a downside to CLV devices: they have significantly higher access times as you move to the outer part of the disc (which contains most of the data). Unless you're installing a game to a hard drive, or perhaps streaming media, access times are just as important as maximum transfer rates. Access times are ESPECIALLY important for games that stream data in real-time.
An additional access time problem: even on the inside edge of the disc (where it spins at max speed), the 2x BD CLV drive still spins much slower than a 12x DVD drive. BD will not see the equivilant spin speeds (and thus equivilant access times) of a 12x DVD drive until they introduce 8x BD CAV drives.
CAV devices tend to turn at the same rate through the entire disc, which makes access times relatively constant. They also tend to have very high rotational speeds, improving access times across the board.
In addition, your post is intended to make a 12x DVD drive sound WORSE than a 2x BD drive, but it isn't. Even at the lowest speed (6-7x), the peak transfer rate is just slightly slower than 2x BD, and for the majority of the disc area the 12x DVD drive is faster.
Best weapons for bosses (obviously get at least double-shot for best effect):
Giant Bat - holy water. Hide under the block on the right side of the screen, then throw the holy water on the block when the bat flies at you. Once he is caught, you can burn him to death.
Medusa - holy water. Even kills the annoying snakes on the floor.
Mummy Men - cross. Slip into the far left as the men appear and fire your crosses. Not only do they take out all the stuff the men throw at you, they do quadruple damage because each cross hits both men twice.
Frankenstein - holy water. Throw it directly on Frankenstein, and ignore Igor. You can kill him quickly with that. Try not to die, because you can't get the holy water where you restart.
Grim Reaper - cross. I've discussed this above.
Dracula - I know a lot of people like the holy water route, but I like the cross (triple-shot, of course). You can use it to ward off fireballs in his first form (got to get the timing right so you throw the cross right before you jump up and whip him in the head).
For the second form, just smother the screen at dracula's head level with crosses. Keep jumping up and firing a cross towards the other side of the screen. Every time he comes down from a jump he will get whacked multiple times. You have to hope and pray that he will high jump when he gets to you, but it usually happens enough times for you to win.
This is the hardest mission in the whole game. You have to fly in and destroy cargo containers near Harkov's Star Destroyer, tangle with some Tie Advanced (T/A) fighters, then move your ass to intercept a dozen waves of Z-95s spouting heavy rockets at your VERY VULNERABLE Interdictor. You have to keep the Interdictor intact, or you lose and the Star Destroyer escapes.
If you don't take out at least half the T/A force, they will overwhelm your pathetic wingmen and hunt you down and kill you later, right when you need to focus all your attention on those heavy rocket waves. Unfortunately, you only have about 5 minutes from mission start before the cruiser with the Z-95s appears, so you have to close and kill the T/As quickly. When you consider that you want to save a few missiles if you REALLY need to stop a heavy rocket beyond your range, it becomes even harder to tango with those T/As because you have to do most of the damage with lasers.
Man, that is incredibly tough**. I remember spending weeks flying it over and over.
** For those of you who bought the "Collector's CD" of Tie Fighter, you may think I'm crazy, because that mission is easy...and you would be right. For the CD release, the difficulty for that particular mission is toned down considerably (I think the number of Z-95 waves iscut to a quarter that of the original, so that you only haveto take out a couple and the Interdictor will survive). This challenge can only be found on the original floppy disk version of the game.
I actually beat Jackal. ONCE. I had to do it two-player, there were just some spots in the game you couldn't avoid dying, and that means you need TWO people who are good at the game.
That flame tank is a bitch.
The ending sucked, so I guess you didn't miss anything. Still, it was one of the best party games ever: if we weren't trying to beat the game, people just handed off the controller to someone else after they died.
Grim Reaper? That's nothing. Here's how you do it:
1. You need the cross (boomerang). Lucky for you, it is available on the way to the reaper, even if you die and restart.
2. You need to build up hearts, at least 40-50 of them. On the top of the staircase that leads to the hall full of axe knights, there is a large heart in the candle directly above the stairs. Grab the (5) hearts, go down the stairs and come back up and repeat.
3. You need triple-shot crosses. You can get this by killing the axe knights with crosses, then afterwards hitting candles with the cross. The candle should drop double, and later triple shots. IF you fail to get the triple shots, go back down the stairs and come back up to face the axe knights again.
Strategy for killing the reaper:
1. Saturate the space. Fire crosses even if they're going to miss the reaper. The primary purpose of the crosses is to kill the reaper, but the secondary purpose is to kill the flying sickles. Try to fire crosses at multiple levels of the screen so you get more coverage. This works well with the next technique, which is:
2. Always keep moving. You can't see the sickles appear under you if you stand still - you have a chance of dodging them if you see them fade in. Jumping from level-to-level makes this strategy easier to pull off, and also allows you to saturate the whole screen with crosses (see above).
I did spend quite a bit of time learning how to beat the reaper hen I was a kid, but compared to the count he's cake. Still, until I came up with this strategy he usually kicked my ass, so I'm not surprised you're stuck on him.
Honey, if you intended to curse, then curse. It's not like the world will end if you throw around a few fucks and shits.
Anyways, it's not as if you removed the intent from the text, so in-effect you're still cursing.
EDITING REMOVED:
The goddamned APIs are certainly neither fucking stable nor fucking documented. Every time Microsoft came out with a new release, it would be fun, fun, fun times while we tried to figure out what had fucking changed, and why the programming documentation didn't fucking mention it. Many of the APIs that we want to use don't fucking work the way any self respecting programmer would fucking expect.
Yes, I have heard of Rockbox and Linux for iPod (Q: can you do a simple drag/drop with those?), but have been too busy using the gadget to have time to mess with its operating system.
Yes, unfortunately little seems to be known about the full capabilities of Rockbox, mainly because few people use it. I found the feature-list enticing, but ultimately the lack of first-hand feedback turned me off.
Instead, I picked up a Sansa e280, which has drag-and-drop auto-databasing built into the player, and I couldn't be happier. It's certainly slower than building the database on the PC (takes a few minutes), but since I typically update the tracks once a month, that's not a problem. Once the database is updated, it boots in 10 seconds.
It's nice not to have to muck around with proprietary music managers - the player does it all. I woulld hope Rockbox delivers a comparable experience.
Slashdot Mirror
While I don't blame companies for not wanting to support hardware nearing a decade old, the fact that I'm having to buy a replacement because it's just been obsoleted will factor into what replacement I buy.
And Creative doesn't care. Here's why:
Once you've paid for your soundcard, Creative has your money. Once they have your money, they provide services for you as long as financially prudent. Creative may make an exception for a particularlly popular model (like the SB 16), but eventually they have burned through the money you paid, and cannot justify spending any more time on support.
Look at it from Creative's shoes: if they drop support, you MAY buy another Creative card, depending on how good a value you think you got out of your last one, and the features of the current cards on the market. If they continue to support you with patches, you will NEVER buy a new card. I know which one I'd pick as my business model.
If you don't think you're getting a good value in terms of support from Creative, then by all-means go buy from a competitor. I think if you took a critical look at the rest of the soundcard market, you'd find that the support is even crappier in most other companies, or the features aren't really there.
The lie is strictly in your head.
You don't have to upgrade anything. Your current Windows license will continue working, and will be valid so long as your computer continues to operate. Applications and games will continue to be made with support for XP for the next 3-5 years, which means your current conputer is still quite useful.
If you buy a new computer today, unless you build it yourself, there will be a Vista-supported soundcard inside. Such is the way of the world.
You want an incredibly long support cycle? I hope you're willing to pay for it - Creative's line of soundcards already cost way too much, and a huge chunk of that cost is estimated support. Patches, new features like Open-AL, and of course - new OS support are all paid-for by your original purchase price. Do you really find it hard to pay an extra $50-100 every 8 years to keep this support cycle running?
Oh noes, I can't get Vista drivers for my SoundBlaster Live! card, even though the series is almost nine years old!
It must be a conspiracy!
Will you people stop acting so surprised that they don't make drivers for excesively old hardware? There's NO MONEY in that, so there's consequently NO DRIVERS. Does the article poster want to pay Creative to develop new drivers?
Creative can't support everything, and they're always going to piss off someone. Just be happy they've delivered support for the Live! over SO MANY operating systems: Windows 95 / 98 / ME, NT / 2000 / XP. That's a good run, considering 2000 and XP weren't even out when the Live! was released.
Are any of you whining because your brand-new X-Fi doesn't work on Windows 95? I don't think so. If you don't expect new cards to have drivers for all old OSes, you shouldn't expect old cards to have drivers for all new OSes. IF you want that kind of support, you need to go with Linux - and put-up with the usual support inconsistencies it brings.
I'm actually impressed that the support for the Live! 24-bit and Audigy series is so forth-coming, as this card series is almost SIX YEARS old.
Back in the 90s, CompUSA just sold computers - they had THE BEST selection of computers and software you could find, before the market They even made a big deal about being THE LAST US chain store to sell Macs. But once the net caught on, they got gutted - online retailers were so hot, they opened their own stores just to bypass the middleman.
Today, they've managed to move into other markets, now that online / mail-order has taken the bottom out of the retail PC business, and software margins have fallen flat. But they've done a half-assed job, and that's why they're suffering.
Go to any CompUSA - they STILL have a software selection that is just way too large for the size of the store, often 1/4 of the floorspace. And unlike Best Buy's CD pit, a software pit is less likely to attract customers for the high-margin items.
Another problem I have with CompUSA is the inconsistency of products offered. There's overlap with the big-box stores, but they don't offer enough selection to really stand-out, so people don't even bother. Also, a lack of advertising these new product lines on-offer doesn't help things.
For example, in the last few years CompUSA has begun offering cameras, then televisions...but I have never seen an advertisement letting people know about it. Also, the selection is really tiny, even compared to smaller stores like Circuit City.
In addition, I've been astounded as-of late because CompUSA has begun carrying *A* game console. No, not ALL game consoles, just one: the 360. You want a PS2? A PS3? A Wii? Tough...you have to go to a Superstore location to get more than the 360, and even then the selection is limited. Who the hell is going to come to CompUSA for a console or game with such crappy selection?
Part of the fun of going to a store with consoles is you get a visual feel for what's available on what platforms - useful if, like most of the populace, you have NO IDEA what's going on in the gaming industry.
Today CompUSA is a wannabe - they don't have the breadth of different items carried by the big-box stores, and for the products they DO carry they don't offer more selection than a specialty or big-box store.
You'd have to have an independently-evolved AI robot bombard the computer with alpha particles.
Or, you'd just have to be crazy enough to send your computer up into space. What, did you think they used mice to run those satellites and space probes?
Solar / cosmic radiation is a real problem for computer systems that can't take advantage of the earth's magnetic field.
Oh, I absolutely agree, except I took issue with this part of the original post:
They constantly upgrade their hardware (as soon as warrenty expires on the hardeware, they start selling it, auction style, for the book value of $1.00). Yet they still run windows 3.11.
Warrantied *NEW* hardware sold today doesn't have Windows 3.1 drivers. Thus, you are limited to the generic VGA mode of 640x480 at 60 Hz, 16 colors, unless there's something I'm mising here?
And while they could possibly re-use old video cards that have Win 3.1 drivers, they would have to toss the ISA cards, and it would be difficult to keep a working pool of PCI video cards compatible with Win 3.1.
A rather difficult undertaking, if you ask me.
I have to agree with your comments, and raise another:
How can you be productive still working in spreadsheets today at 640x480 resolution? Now, sure, I'll bet a lot of people use terminal emulators or data entry apps that don't use a mouse, but for everything else (especially spreadsheets), low resolution limits performance.
And why would you be limited to 640x480? Well, there';s not a single video card manufactured in the last 8 years that supports Windows 3.1. I'm sure the company already "auctioned off" all their hardware from that era. If I had to work at an annoying 640x480 screen @ 60 Hz EVERY FUCKING DAY, I'd grab a machinegun and go postal.
1. Define WSW
West-southwest: WSW 247.50
Don't want to step into your arguement, just wanted to clear up the question.
Maybe it was an unintended side effect, but the last PS3 update made my PS2 games look much better. I was hesitant to play them before the update because they looked terrible.
The community believes that the problem was caused by a lousy deinterlacing algorithm (converting the native PS2 output 480i -> 480p). They believe it was discarding vertical resolution, cutting the resolution in-half and causing those ugly stair-step artifacts.
The update fixes this issue.
Excuse me, that was not the point I was trying to make.
The point I was trying to make was, for those interested in HD televisions, the market has moved on to progressive-scan displays. CRTs, the only displays capable of native 1080i, have fallen out of favor. I am pissed that we in the US are locked into this archaic 1080i broadcast standard.
I absolutely agree that most of the world has not yet embraced HDTV (including myself,and most of the US), nor will they in the near-future.
What am I waiting for? A reasonsbly-priced ($1500) 37"-or-more 1080p display (same 4:3 size as my 27" CRT) with deinterlacing as good as high-end sets have today. Anything less just isn't worth my time or money.
That just sucks, you'll need to upscale 720 to 1080 (1:1.5), that means interpolating 1 line every 2 from the original image. What's the point of HDTV? I thought it was to have "crisp clear" image, but that just won't work if you need to interpolate.
The industry doomed itself to this mess the minute they decided to support 1080i and 720p. Experts warned that supporting multiple standards would only confuse consumers, and it most certainly has. I know people who bought an HDTV, but have no idea what the difference between signals means...and I know several more people who are just too confused to be bothered.
720p is actually the worst resolution to work with, because with 1080i signals you have varying methods of deinterlacing and scaling which tend to give you less resolution than a 720p signal.
The good thing about 1080p is you get rid of that annoying deinterlacing + scalingcombination you have to do to show 1080i on a 720p set. The bad thing is that you still have to deinterlace the 1080i signal, and reconstruct the proper 60fps framerate, and this part is difficult. But the potential is there for almost lossless video conversion from 1080i to 1080p, and although it is certainly not "affordable" today (neither are 1080p sets), both probably will be in another 5 years.
Hey, it's a better solution than wishing broadcasters would pull their heads out of their asses and stop broadcasting in 1080i. Most of the world has moved-on to progressive-scan displays, but they continue to pipe that crappy interlaced video instead of moving to 720p. Hey, 1080i is a bigger number, it must be better!
The article is aimed at consumers. And this is unfortunate for consumers, as competition drives prices down.
What is "unfortunate" about this? This is a great time to buy a processor!
The X2 3800+ that I paid $300 a year ago can be had now for an amazing $100!
This is the very same 3800+ X2 that people used to drool over, while complaining vocally that the price was too high. AMD, knowing their day in the sun would be limited, waited until the last possible moment to cut prices. That's competition.
Competition is also the reason you can pick up a Core2 Duo for under $200, because AMD is willing to play the pricing game, and Intel is willing to follow-suit.
Now, I'm just looking forward to Barcelona, because only then will we open the next chapter in the CPU war. Right now, AMd is just trading water, and Intel is just raking in whatever cash they can.
Or, if you didn't pick up a feather prior to getting swallowed by the whale, you can't escape. That's just one of many 'gotchas' in KQ4.
I hate Sierra-type adventure games. So do most people, that's why practically no developers make them today.
But you can already get "just a phone."
My old LG TouchPoint 1100 finally broke a hinge last week, so I had to give in and buy a replacement. Unfortunately, I need a phone without a camera, and I wanted something cheap and basic.
I was impressed to find the LG LX150 available. This is as close to "just a phone" as you're going to get - no camera, no mp3, no wifi, no memory card slot - just a phone with bluetooth, the usual polyphonic sound, and minimal game and internet support. So far, I'm really impressed with the usability, and the reception (it's as good as my old phone with an external antenna).
I thought it was really funny because the saleswoman said she had never sold one of these, because everyone wants a camera. THAT'S the reason why you don't have a huge selection of "just phones" anymore.
Another thing to consider too- Sony seems to expect a much longer life from their consoles. The PS2 is over six years old, and there's still games being developed for it.
That's not a characteristic you build into a console design - it just happens. If one console is a runaway success, it tends to last more than the 4-5 years of the stragglers.
Atari VCS (2600): runaway success, so successful that it continued selling well after the more powerful Intellivision and Colecovision were released. Atari released the VCS in 1977, the 2600 Jr in 1986, and "oficially" discontinued the console in 1992.
NES: took the post-crash market by storm, and had %90 of the US market by the end of the 80s. Games were still developed well into the early 90s, spurred by the release of the NES2. The console was released in 1983, and was "discontinued" in 1996.
PSX, PS2: both runaway successes. The PSOne was only recently retired, and the PS2 has at least a couple years left in it.
You don't build-in long lifetimes into a console, you can only make them happen through a combination of reasonable pricing, creative design, aggressive marketing and game libraries. This is why everyone is so keen to see which console will be the "first to X million sold," because critical mass attracts developers. Once you reach critical mass, you not only get more developers, you also have the potential for another runaway success.
Of course, this console generation could end-up like the shootout between the SNES and the Genesis/Megadrive - no clear winner. If that's how things play out, don't expect ANY of these consoles to have a life of more than 5-6 years.
Hm, who just brought out a new product with a metric fuckton of cache on it... Oh, yes.
Intel's Core 2 Duo.
You may be surprised to know this, but the ratio of on-chip cache to typical system ram has not changed much in the last 12 years.
In 1995 I bought a mid-range 486 DX-2 50 computer. The chip had 4K cache on-die, and the system had 4MB ram (1/1024 ratio).
Today, you can buy a mid-range machine with 2-4MB on-die cache and 1024MB ram (either a 1/512 or 1/256 ratio). That's a tiny improvement, and that's to be expected because the basic SRAM cell has not changed much in the last decade. If anything, the gain is mostly due to Intel's aggresive cache deaigns and process revisions, because DRAM chips benefit from the same process technology improvements that allow higher cache sizes.
What would you say if, tomorrow, you could instantly improve that ratio by 6x with a move from SRAM (6 transistors per-cell) to eDRAM (1 transistor per-cell)? I'd say that's a winner! You're basically leap-frogging 5 years of process revisions, and permanantly dropping the cache / ram ratio, which means much better performance overall.
DX9 is backward compatible to DX1, so you should technically be able to run any DirectX game on it.
Just a bit of clarification on your point: DirectX 9 is only backward-compatible to DirectX 3. Yes, there is a reason for this.
Prior to DirectX 8, DirectX was fully backward-compatible, but the structure of DirectX was a mess for programmers. MS decided to re-write DirectX from scratch for the 8 release, and in doing-so they broke compatibility with DirectX versions prior to 3. As an avid player of Master of Orion 2 (DX2), I was not happy...but most people never noticed the change.
Today, the only way to get stable play out of MOO2 is to play the DOS version (slow-as-balls on an emulator), or configure an old machine with Win9x (Or Windows 2000 with the default DX7 install). On the bright side, MS didn't screw-up their DX3 support: every DX3 game I've tried under DX9 works fine.
Sadly, this is the only possible future for CPUs. Massively parallel single cores with support for symmetric multi-threading will replace complex cores with out-of-order execution, it's just a matter of time.
Three resons why we're reversing a 15-year trend toward more complex CPUs:
1. Single-thread performance using current processes and clock speeds is "good enough" for most desktop applications, even when you take away all the out-of-order execution goodies.
2. Programmers are beginning to understand SMT, and this is essential because it basically replaces out-of-order execution: if a thread blocks on I/O or dependencies, the processor just switches to another thread.
3. Out-of-order processor design is an area of decreasing returns - it took the major CPU manufacturers TEN YEARS to move from a 3-issue to 4-issue design, just because of the complexity. As you add more issue pipes, the complexity gets unmanageable, and the chips take too long to develop and verify.
Unfortunately, the move to simplistic cores with SMT puts the burden on the compiler and the programmer, but that's the cheapest solution for continued performance increases. If you can cut-and-paste a design a few dozen times, you save time verifying it and shipping it.
The good thing is, as I mentioned before, single-threaded performance (of simple cores) is "good enough" for most desktop applications, so the OS can handle multi-tasking for the user. Really, only performance-hungry apps (like compilers, renderers, AI/scientific and codecs) need that extra power. Most apps can remain single-threaded and simple, and still perform quite well.
So the 12x speed for the DVD-ROM is only the outer 15% of the disc, and this rate degrades as you move towards the center down to 6-7X. The Blu-Ray is 2X (BD-ROM speed) throughout the entire surface of the disc, as the drive actually spins the disc at different velocities.
This is absolutely correct, however there is a downside to CLV devices: they have significantly higher access times as you move to the outer part of the disc (which contains most of the data). Unless you're installing a game to a hard drive, or perhaps streaming media, access times are just as important as maximum transfer rates. Access times are ESPECIALLY important for games that stream data in real-time.
An additional access time problem: even on the inside edge of the disc (where it spins at max speed), the 2x BD CLV drive still spins much slower than a 12x DVD drive. BD will not see the equivilant spin speeds (and thus equivilant access times) of a 12x DVD drive until they introduce 8x BD CAV drives.
CAV devices tend to turn at the same rate through the entire disc, which makes access times relatively constant. They also tend to have very high rotational speeds, improving access times across the board.
In addition, your post is intended to make a 12x DVD drive sound WORSE than a 2x BD drive, but it isn't. Even at the lowest speed (6-7x), the peak transfer rate is just slightly slower than 2x BD, and for the majority of the disc area the 12x DVD drive is faster.
Best weapons for bosses (obviously get at least double-shot for best effect):
Giant Bat - holy water. Hide under the block on the right side of the screen, then throw the holy water on the block when the bat flies at you. Once he is caught, you can burn him to death.
Medusa - holy water. Even kills the annoying snakes on the floor.
Mummy Men - cross. Slip into the far left as the men appear and fire your crosses. Not only do they take out all the stuff the men throw at you, they do quadruple damage because each cross hits both men twice.
Frankenstein - holy water. Throw it directly on Frankenstein, and ignore Igor. You can kill him quickly with that. Try not to die, because you can't get the holy water where you restart.
Grim Reaper - cross. I've discussed this above.
Dracula - I know a lot of people like the holy water route, but I like the cross (triple-shot, of course). You can use it to ward off fireballs in his first form (got to get the timing right so you throw the cross right before you jump up and whip him in the head).
For the second form, just smother the screen at dracula's head level with crosses. Keep jumping up and firing a cross towards the other side of the screen. Every time he comes down from a jump he will get whacked multiple times. You have to hope and pray that he will high jump when he gets to you, but it usually happens enough times for you to win.
This is the hardest mission in the whole game. You have to fly in and destroy cargo containers near Harkov's Star Destroyer, tangle with some Tie Advanced (T/A) fighters, then move your ass to intercept a dozen waves of Z-95s spouting heavy rockets at your VERY VULNERABLE Interdictor. You have to keep the Interdictor intact, or you lose and the Star Destroyer escapes.
If you don't take out at least half the T/A force, they will overwhelm your pathetic wingmen and hunt you down and kill you later, right when you need to focus all your attention on those heavy rocket waves. Unfortunately, you only have about 5 minutes from mission start before the cruiser with the Z-95s appears, so you have to close and kill the T/As quickly. When you consider that you want to save a few missiles if you REALLY need to stop a heavy rocket beyond your range, it becomes even harder to tango with those T/As because you have to do most of the damage with lasers.
Man, that is incredibly tough**. I remember spending weeks flying it over and over.
** For those of you who bought the "Collector's CD" of Tie Fighter, you may think I'm crazy, because that mission is easy...and you would be right. For the CD release, the difficulty for that particular mission is toned down considerably (I think the number of Z-95 waves iscut to a quarter that of the original, so that you only haveto take out a couple and the Interdictor will survive). This challenge can only be found on the original floppy disk version of the game.
I actually beat Jackal. ONCE. I had to do it two-player, there were just some spots in the game you couldn't avoid dying, and that means you need TWO people who are good at the game.
That flame tank is a bitch.
The ending sucked, so I guess you didn't miss anything. Still, it was one of the best party games ever: if we weren't trying to beat the game, people just handed off the controller to someone else after they died.
Grim Reaper? That's nothing. Here's how you do it:
1. You need the cross (boomerang). Lucky for you, it is available on the way to the reaper, even if you die and restart.
2. You need to build up hearts, at least 40-50 of them. On the top of the staircase that leads to the hall full of axe knights, there is a large heart in the candle directly above the stairs. Grab the (5) hearts, go down the stairs and come back up and repeat.
3. You need triple-shot crosses. You can get this by killing the axe knights with crosses, then afterwards hitting candles with the cross. The candle should drop double, and later triple shots. IF you fail to get the triple shots, go back down the stairs and come back up to face the axe knights again.
Strategy for killing the reaper:
1. Saturate the space. Fire crosses even if they're going to miss the reaper. The primary purpose of the crosses is to kill the reaper, but the secondary purpose is to kill the flying sickles. Try to fire crosses at multiple levels of the screen so you get more coverage. This works well with the next technique, which is:
2. Always keep moving. You can't see the sickles appear under you if you stand still - you have a chance of dodging them if you see them fade in. Jumping from level-to-level makes this strategy easier to pull off, and also allows you to saturate the whole screen with crosses (see above).
I did spend quite a bit of time learning how to beat the reaper hen I was a kid, but compared to the count he's cake. Still, until I came up with this strategy he usually kicked my ass, so I'm not surprised you're stuck on him.
Honey, if you intended to curse, then curse. It's not like the world will end if you throw around a few fucks and shits.
Anyways, it's not as if you removed the intent from the text, so in-effect you're still cursing.
EDITING REMOVED:
The goddamned APIs are certainly neither fucking stable nor fucking documented. Every time Microsoft came out with a new release, it would be fun, fun, fun times while we tried to figure out what had fucking changed, and why the programming documentation didn't fucking mention it. Many of the APIs that we want to use don't fucking work the way any self respecting programmer would fucking expect.
I'm guessing that's pretty close to the original.
Yes, I have heard of Rockbox and Linux for iPod (Q: can you do a simple drag/drop with those?), but have been too busy using the gadget to have time to mess with its operating system.
Yes, unfortunately little seems to be known about the full capabilities of Rockbox, mainly because few people use it. I found the feature-list enticing, but ultimately the lack of first-hand feedback turned me off.
Instead, I picked up a Sansa e280, which has drag-and-drop auto-databasing built into the player, and I couldn't be happier. It's certainly slower than building the database on the PC (takes a few minutes), but since I typically update the tracks once a month, that's not a problem. Once the database is updated, it boots in 10 seconds.
It's nice not to have to muck around with proprietary music managers - the player does it all. I woulld hope Rockbox delivers a comparable experience.