This story is about Steam, and thus Valve's entire online game library. Or did you just think you bought Half-Life 2 with Steam's Silver and Gold packages?
This survey covers all of Valve's online gamers. It is no longer possible to play Half-Life and it's respective mods through WON.
The movie was in-tune with an authoritarian-style government. They just didn't go into detail nearly as much as Heinlien did.
They kept the public flogging, and the propoganda / news conduit was an excellent touch.
The whole thing comes off as a cheesy propoganda / cowboy film, including the opening football game turned battle, a cheesy love triangle, and even the gratuitous shower scene.
I think after they decided they didn't have the budget to do armored suit battles, they decided not to take themselves seriously. It worked:D
The sanity meter was an excellent concept to build the game around.
I had lots of fun walking into rooms and seeing the obvious hallucinations - walking on celings, walls bleeding, one-time effects such as seeing myself in the bathtub dead with my wrists slit.
But that pales in comparison to the really good tricks they pulled. Once I KNEW I had cleared all the enemies in an area, then I went into a room, and freaked out when this maid approached from behind with a weapon...then my character woke up. There was also the fun time I was reloading a flintlock pistol, and blew my own head off in the process. I actually thought I would have to restart from a save after I saw that one.
Oh yeah, my favorite: one time I was playing late at night, lights out, when suddenly my TV muted. I looked around thinking I had sat on the remote, then freaked out when I saw it was on the table. Then my character in the game suddenly screamed "WHAT IS GOING ON, AHHHHHH!". Really well executed, that scare. Of course, they rendered a MUTE graphic on the TV, cut the sound, and I was so absorbed in the game I couldn't tell the difference.
The fun part is that they warmed you up with the obvious hallucinations that you laughed at...just so they could solidly freak you out with the good ones:D
In all my years of using Real Media, I've never seen it do the one thing I would expect streaming media would want to acheive:
Graceful degredation with reduction in average bandwidth.
Real Player, with it's buffer, accounts for the temporary peaks and troughs (short downloads...say, a page load) in your available bandwidth. But when you have long-term changes in your available bandwidth, Real Player can't cope because it requires a fixed minimum bandwidth for the stream. What typically happens is audio is retained and frames are garbled for LONG periods while it "resyncs".
It's as if Real didn't even stop to think about the very system they were creating. If multiple people are streaming or downloading large files on the same connection and overload each other's bandwidth needs, you're going to have annoying buffering pauses. Similarly, if a streaming server serves more requests than available bandwidth, it won't be able to serve out the stream fast enough, but it will still stupidly attempt to.
Most sites already have 2 or 3 versions of a particular stream (56k, ISDN, broadband). For a live stream, there is no excuse why a 300k stream couldn't be dropped down to 100k (or 100k down to 56k) temporarily until connection improves, since all three streams are simultaneously available and could easily be synchronized. And for non-live streams, why not give media providers the ability to create two or three levels of streaming quality that can easily be linked and used in a similar manner for on-demand streaming?
That would be the end of the "Buffering..." stigma. But I have never seen ANYONE implement such a concept.
No. The TDP for the.09 micron dual cores is the same as the TDP for the.13 micron single cores.
The TDP for the Winchester cores (.09 micron single core) is 63w.
So, take into effect that is is two Winchester cores with half the memory controllers (less power usage), plus the efficiency gains of a mature.09 micron process, and you've got around 90w TDP rating for the higest-speed chip they plan to introduce.
I seriously doubt 2.2GHz will suck 90w. My 2.0GHz Winchester uses less than 40w max. I fully expect them to hit as high as 2.6GHz in later releases of this core revision.
It's high compared to hard drives, but compared to other optical disc drives, it's in the same range. The fastest CD / DVD drives have ~100ms access times.
And, keep in mind that access times on early CD / DVD drives were WORSE than the time advertised by this new media. As rotational speeds, caches and access algorithms improved, so did access times. Expect the same from this stuff.
But I see one roadblock: there's no severe need for a new large-capacity optical media. CD-ROM adoption was a given, as there was nothing quite like it for software distribution: cheaper than a floppy to make in quantity, and had plenty of growth room in a day when games were forced to ship on 5-10 floppies, not to mention dozens of floppies for office suite or OS installs.
Plus, you had game designers just itching to add space-hungry features like vocal tracks, video and higher-resolution, higher-variety artwork. Microsoft helped the whole thing gain momentum by pushing through the MMPC standard, which pretty much standardized sound and CD-ROM support.
Now, look to today. We have games like UT2004 and HL2 still shipping mostly on six CDs, with only limited or more expensive runs available on DVD. This, despite the fact that the DVD-ROM drive is seven years old, and that DVD+/-R gave DVD-ROM a killer app starting three years ago.
The fact is, there is not much perceived need for greater capacity on a single disc. DVD will never completely replace CD-ROM on the PC, simply because they're more expensive to make, the capacity is not always needed, and every DVD drive made from now until the end of time will support the old CD-ROM standard.
Thus, you see a slowdown in the push for larger removable optical media, because there's already a standard that's 99.9% compatible and good enough for 95% of uses. It may take another five years for DVD to become the dominant removable media, and another 5 years for us to push the limits of it. Holographic media is going to have to bide it's time, or be prepared for initial disappointment.
I'll agree with you about XP, but 2k was designed to work with 64MB ram.
For example, a default system load of 2k on my old P133 (VX chipset, 64MB ram) allocated 43MB of memory on load (this includes drivers for everything), and this included IE resident. It was perfectly usable as an email / browsing machine, provided you didn't browse image-heavy sites or need flash / java. After turning off the transparency transition and mouse effects (two options unchecked), the interface even felt peppy.
Currently, the machine is doing duty as a network router / firewall with Debian...headless. I wouldn't try to run Gnome on it, under any circumstances. I run Gnome on a Celeron 800 with 256MB ram and it feels sluggish.
Windows 2000 has had Win95 / 98 / NT SP4 compatibility layers since service pack 2. They're just not turned on by default, because Win2k is still sold as a "professional" OS.
In addition, Win2k's DOS emulation layer is fairly complete, but it lacks XPs attempt at sound emulation. That's no problem, thanks to VDMSound. You get an additional benefit with VDMSound because it initializes most of the important aspects of the DOS environment for you
Does he not realize that OS X is simply a packaged up pretty version of BSD, which is almost identical besides licensing to Linux.
False analogy.
Let me make it clearer to you by making the following two statements:
1. Linux revolves around the kernel. Every time you muck with the kernel to bring about yet another set of "gee whiz bang" features, dozens of things are broken.
2. Mac OS X and Windows revolve around the interface. On the library level, new interfaces are added, but older ones are still supported for a surprisingly long time (see Carbon / Classic Runtime Environment for Mac OS X, or Win9x Compatibility Mode / Application Compatibility Toolkit for Windows 2000 / XP). Certainly, support is eventually dropped, but the pace is normally quite slow for popular APIs.
On a visual interface level, both Apple and MS try to keep consistency in the interface. Sure, you'll see major changes in interface every 5-10 years (Windows 95, Windows XP, Mac OS X), but that's a pace most people can cope with, and they try not to change EVERYTHING in the process. Linux, on the other hand: for any random distro, you can't be assurred GUI consistency.
Tell me, how many people really know if there were major kernel revisions between all the Mac OX X releases? I imagine not many, because programmers don't have to care. That's the beauty of revolving around interfaces.
Until Linux stops revolving around the kernel, it will never break out of the server niche.
Low-level copy protection like Safedisc and SecureROM require admin access to function. That means that, no matter what MS does to encourage application developers to change their ways, most games will most likely remain Admin-only.
A chipset barely on the market for three months, sporting two brand-new technologies, is hounded for non-showstopper bugs that have already been fixed, or are scheduled to be fixed shortly.
And yet, Intel doesn't get hounded because THEIR latest chipset saw a recall in the first two months of release?
Sure, Intel is more stable, if you don't live on planet Earth. NOBODY is perfect.
Oh, and I'd like to dispell another long-standing rumor, that 3rd-party chipset makers cause the A64 platform to be "unstable". This may have been somewhat true in the distant past, but is no longer the case. Both Nvidia and Via make excellent chipsets and solid drivers.
The reason such rumors get perpetuated is a lot of people are cheapskates...they go with AMD looking to spend as little as possible, and skimp on components. Anyone who has EVER bought an ECS, Elitegroup, PCCHIPS et-al mainboard, or spent 50 bucks or less on the most important component in their system, and then had the audacity to complain about stability...I'm looking at YOU.
It makes absolutely no sense to introduce inefficiancies into the marketplace.
This is precisely why speed-binning exists. When AMD takes 2.6GHz-rated chips and marks them as 2.0 GHz, they are AVOIDING market inefficiencies.
The market only has so much demand at a particular pricepoint at a particular time. Chips cannot sell themselves just because they are "faster," the market only buys the chips when there is a perceived "need" for them.
This is why, as time goes on, speed grades increase quite frequently, but the overall pricing structure changes VERY slowly. Not that the market forces are set in stone...there are more high-end enthusiasts than there were say, a decade ago, but the number is still relatively small, and it has take a lot of time and effort for manufacturers to create and nurture that growing market.
So, here's how speed-binning relates to this market. Let's say AMD's new Venice core can hit 2.6 GHz 40% of the time. That means 60% of your processors have to be downgraded in rating, but that's no big deal because the demand for your "BEST" processor (the 2.6 GHz) is only a few percent of your total processors sold. That is to say, only 5% of people in this competitive market will pay $600 for a processor that is that good.
Now, what if 75% of your total processor sales market wants a "GOOD ENOUGH" processor? You look at your yields: 40% of your processors can hit 2.6 GHz, but let's say 80% hit 2.0 GHz. If you sell a 2.0GHz as your "GOOD ENOUGH," this means you can throw out a lot less processors by serving multiple market segments. It's better than selling the entire 40% of all processors as 2.6GHz, as that would produce market inefficiencies as 95% of buyers would be unwilling to spend $600 in this competitive market.
Yes, you could just sell processors at their maximum tested speed, but market trends are not typically well reflected by yields, so you have to tailor your outputs to fit the market demand via speed-binning. Some of your 2.6, 2.4 and 2.2 GHz chips end up marked as 2.0 GHz to meet demand.
Thus, your 2.0GHz processors end up as a mix...some of them really can't do much better than 2.0 GHz, while others have been speed-binned to meet demand. Thus, you are not guaranteed a marvelous overclocker if you buy the 2.0 GHz processor...and that has always been the fun of overclocking, the mystery and risk involved. Did you buy a dud, or will this one be a bargain screamer?
Myself, I don't overclock much anymore...but it used to be a lot of fun seeing how far I could push chips, before I wanted a system that just worked.
You can do this under windows using explorer. Drag the files over the File Tree view off to the left side. Hover over a drive or a folder, and it will open.
The same also happens when dragging files over the start menu. You can navigate the entire menu as spring-loaded folders simply by hovering over the start button.
Benchmarking playability in games is a tough prospect. Back in the day, the only measure most benchmarks gave was a simple average framerate over the course of a demo. Cards that could average 60fps or more typically wouldn't drop below 30fps much in the heaviest-loaded portions of the test, and that was a good target for continuous smooth playability.
Typically, these days, I don't pay attention to reviews if they just post average framerates, because lots of games (not to mention the tool FRAPS) track max and min framerate of the test. You can even get a continuous set of all framerate samples throught the test, giving you a better idea of just how often your super gaming card is going to drop to a pitiful 10fps for a fraction of a second.
With all this information, you don't really care about the average framerate, and the market is starting to reflect this. Even Doom 3 maxes out at 60fps, but thanks to these detailed testing tools, you can easily see how often your card dips into unplayable territory.
And, all this information is useful for seeing just how far your system can go, and that's important when you consider how expensive these new dual cores are. Sure, the game is video-card bound at high quality, high resolution, and it may get more fps than you need at the lower resolution with lower settings...but here's where the magic comes in:
Certain other maps in the same game may eat up a LOT more CPU power, leaving you EXTREMELY CPU-bound at ALL resolutions. This is the case with HL2, where the difference in CPU-bound performance between demos on two different maps can vary by as much as 100%. In addition, other games may perform significantly slower on the same system. You have to take ALL THESE factors into account when buying a system if you play lots of games, or you may only be marginally satisfied with the system.
And when you're paying a hundred, all the way up to a thousand bucks for the processor, you better DAMN WELL make sure the purchase will be satisfying.
I got glasses in 7th grade. A couple years later I got a SLIGHTLY stronger prescription, but the trend was my vision had pretty much stopped changing.
Then I started using computers in my teens, and for the last decade I have used them for many hours a day. My prescription has not changed.
My only recommendation? Don't sit at the computer for hours on-end, get up and stretch, this gives your eyes a stretch as well.
Don't overdo it on the brightness, especially if you have to look at black-on-white things all day.
Finally, don't be Mr. "I'm too cool for my glasses" and take your glasses off most of the time because you "dont need em". If you spend a lot of time without them on, it stresses out your eyes.
And, to stay on topic, NO, CRTs are probably not dangerous. No more dangerous than standing in front of your microwave while cooking your dinner...provided you sit in FRONT of them.
CRTs are heavily shielded in the front and sides. The phosphor in the screen converts the vast majority of x-rays into photons. The net radiation you receive is minimal. Now, in the rear the shielding is llimited, so you might want to be concerned if you're in such a situation.
I'm assuming the PSPs have small, high-definition screens which could stretch the current manufacturing processes to their limits.
That would be a bad assumption. While the pixel density on the PSP is impressive (~110 DPI), it's nothing new. All those 17" (1280x1024) and 20" (1600x1200) displays with such low pixel defect rates are already pushing fairly high DPIs (96DPI and 100DPI, respectively), and they have an order of magnitude more pixels.
Also, the market has seen mobile phones with full VGA resolution for two years now, and in a smaller footprint no less.
If this is the best the democrats can do in 2008, looks like I'm going to abstain from voting again.
It's not as if I'm going to vote for some neo-conservative trash.
This is pretty pathetic. As strange as Hilary is on many fronts, I considered voting for her after it became obvious she had hopes for 2008. All it took to reinstate my voter apathy was a pathetic political stunt like this.
The past has shown no indication that a PS2-exclusive fighter has any inherent momentum over say, SC2's cross-platform sales.
Tekken 4: ~700k sales, PS2 exclusive. Virtua Fighter 4: less than 600k sales, PS2 exclusive.
You see where this is leading? As a PS2 exclusive, SC3 would be one fighter among many, in an already tired franchise. I guess they figure they can save a lot of money in going single-platform, as that's the only thing that could justify such a sales drop.
Of course, I would only be upset if I had high hopes for SC3. Given that SC2 was basically SC1 with minor improvements, I expect the same from SC3. I'll just continue to enjoy my SC2 on Gamecube:D
What's wrong with these numbers? I bet a LOT of game makers would like a game that moves 2 million copies, and costs peanuts to develop (compared to say, games with intense storylines, dozens of characters, huge environments, lots of voice acting, etc.). It can't cost them that much to develop 20 character models and a look-and-feel mostly borrowed from SC1.
Furthermore, I bet a lot of fighting game developers would love to sell 2 million copies. For example, Virtua Fighter 4 is a PS2 platform exclusive, and it didn't even sell as well as the SC2 PS2 release. Hell, even Tekken 4 didn't sell as well as the PS2 SC2 release. The fighter genre is tired and saturated, so 2 million units is nothing to scoff at.
So, where does somebody explain to me why making this a platform exclusive will suddenly boost sales?
Sure, there are more PS2 consoles out there than the Xbox and GCN combined, but there are also a TON more PS2 exclusive games to compete with. If your game isn't the absolute most sought-after title the world has been waiting on for years, you're probably going to get looked over by most of those PS2 owners, who are faced with a sea of hype flowing from every direction.
GCN and the Xbox, on the other hand, offer a clearer landscape. Most of the crappier developers stay on the PS2 for the market share, since they know they won't sell enough copies on the Xbox or GCN to justify the cost of a cross-platform game. That makes the games a little higher-quality, but also creates a little scarcity in variety. Thus, any good 3rd-party release for these platforms tends to get hyped up by the community for free, and sales are usually as good as on the PS2.
So, when a company thinks they can improve the success of their game by shutting out these markets, I have to call bullshit, especially when their last release on three platforms was quite successful.
If SC3 is a PS2 exclusive, it will be just one PS2- exclusive fighting game among many.
I told you my opinion, but I also made the facts quite clear: users can customize the layout of the desktop as easily as any other folder on their machine. In fact, it's even easier than an arbitrary folder because it has a direct top-level link in the file explorer.
If you're asking for anything more than that, then you're asking MS to create an inconsistent design. If people are bright enough to realize that their desktop can have file and folders on it, not just OS widgets and shortcuts, then they're smart enough to know how to use the file explorer just like they do for every other file and folder they own.
My opinion is that if users feel this consistent interface is TOO SLOW or TOO TEDIOUS, then it's on them to find a way to do better. This is the whole reason for the existence of shortcut keys and context menus.
A good example, put a new folder on your desktop in windows without using the context menu and without using the keyboard shortcuts.
Sure thing.
Double click "My Computer". Click on Desktop (it is the top-most entry, VERY obvious and accesible). Click on the menu item File->New->Folder.
While you might argue that this is inconvenient, I would argue the opposite. The desktop was intended for program shortcuts, and fast access to useful OS features...like My Computer, for instance.
For non-power users, a cluttered desktop is less efficient. This is why programs usually ask you before creating an shortcut on the desktop, and remove them on uninstall, so users can easily manage the clutter without having to know how to edit it manually.
And what if you want to clean the desktop up without a keyboard shortcut or context menu? Just drag the shortcut or folder to the recycle bin, it's provided there for your convenience.
So, in summary, the tools to unclutter the desktop are painfully obvious, and the tools to clutter the desktop beyond program-installed shortcuts is only slightly less obvious. All this does is encourage people to use the user data folders already set aside for such purposes.
Ask yourself literally, why would non-power users need to put a folder on the desktop? These are the same people who are satisfied with the global accessibility of a few key user data directories (My Documents, My Music, etc.), and simplified installers.
I argue that if you find you need the capability and flexibility offered by a context menu, you can spare the brain cells to learn how to right-click, and experiment a little with the interface.
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The Russian army would have collapsed at Stalingrad, were it not for significant American aid by sea.
Without such help they would have lost Stalingrad before they could move men into position to cut off the German 6th army.
No, it's not.
This story is about Steam, and thus Valve's entire online game library. Or did you just think you bought Half-Life 2 with Steam's Silver and Gold packages?
This survey covers all of Valve's online gamers. It is no longer possible to play Half-Life and it's respective mods through WON.
People still play three times as much original CS as all Source engine games combined...and they do it all through Steam, unless it's local.
Care to retract your statement?
Yes, I agree.
:D
The movie was in-tune with an authoritarian-style government. They just didn't go into detail nearly as much as Heinlien did.
They kept the public flogging, and the propoganda / news conduit was an excellent touch.
The whole thing comes off as a cheesy propoganda / cowboy film, including the opening football game turned battle, a cheesy love triangle, and even the gratuitous shower scene.
I think after they decided they didn't have the budget to do armored suit battles, they decided not to take themselves seriously. It worked
If I recall my Kim Stanley Robinson correctly, after the giant reflector used to warm Mars was removed, it was shipped off to Venus.
:D
They used it as a reflector to shield Venus from the sun, and freeze the atmosphere. Then they paved over the surface.
Kinda involved, if you ask me
There's nothing wrong with running HL on a Rage 128. The card was released after the game, and was quite competitve at the time.
:D
You can even get accelerated Win2k / XP drivers for it
This is ignoring the huge debacle that was the Rage Pro MAXX.
Now, trying to play Half-Life with a Trident Blade 3D, now THAT would be a challenge.
The sanity meter was an excellent concept to build the game around.
:D
I had lots of fun walking into rooms and seeing the obvious hallucinations - walking on celings, walls bleeding, one-time effects such as seeing myself in the bathtub dead with my wrists slit.
But that pales in comparison to the really good tricks they pulled. Once I KNEW I had cleared all the enemies in an area, then I went into a room, and freaked out when this maid approached from behind with a weapon...then my character woke up. There was also the fun time I was reloading a flintlock pistol, and blew my own head off in the process. I actually thought I would have to restart from a save after I saw that one.
Oh yeah, my favorite: one time I was playing late at night, lights out, when suddenly my TV muted. I looked around thinking I had sat on the remote, then freaked out when I saw it was on the table. Then my character in the game suddenly screamed "WHAT IS GOING ON, AHHHHHH!". Really well executed, that scare. Of course, they rendered a MUTE graphic on the TV, cut the sound, and I was so absorbed in the game I couldn't tell the difference.
The fun part is that they warmed you up with the obvious hallucinations that you laughed at...just so they could solidly freak you out with the good ones
In all my years of using Real Media, I've never seen it do the one thing I would expect streaming media would want to acheive:
Graceful degredation with reduction in average bandwidth.
Real Player, with it's buffer, accounts for the temporary peaks and troughs (short downloads...say, a page load) in your available bandwidth. But when you have long-term changes in your available bandwidth, Real Player can't cope because it requires a fixed minimum bandwidth for the stream. What typically happens is audio is retained and frames are garbled for LONG periods while it "resyncs".
It's as if Real didn't even stop to think about the very system they were creating. If multiple people are streaming or downloading large files on the same connection and overload each other's bandwidth needs, you're going to have annoying buffering pauses. Similarly, if a streaming server serves more requests than available bandwidth, it won't be able to serve out the stream fast enough, but it will still stupidly attempt to.
Most sites already have 2 or 3 versions of a particular stream (56k, ISDN, broadband). For a live stream, there is no excuse why a 300k stream couldn't be dropped down to 100k (or 100k down to 56k) temporarily until connection improves, since all three streams are simultaneously available and could easily be synchronized. And for non-live streams, why not give media providers the ability to create two or three levels of streaming quality that can easily be linked and used in a similar manner for on-demand streaming?
That would be the end of the "Buffering..." stigma. But I have never seen ANYONE implement such a concept.
No. The TDP for the .09 micron dual cores is the same as the TDP for the .13 micron single cores.
.09 micron process, and you've got around 90w TDP rating for the higest-speed chip they plan to introduce.
The TDP for the Winchester cores (.09 micron single core) is 63w.
So, take into effect that is is two Winchester cores with half the memory controllers (less power usage), plus the efficiency gains of a mature
I seriously doubt 2.2GHz will suck 90w. My 2.0GHz Winchester uses less than 40w max. I fully expect them to hit as high as 2.6GHz in later releases of this core revision.
It's high compared to hard drives, but compared to other optical disc drives, it's in the same range. The fastest CD / DVD drives have ~100ms access times.
And, keep in mind that access times on early CD / DVD drives were WORSE than the time advertised by this new media. As rotational speeds, caches and access algorithms improved, so did access times. Expect the same from this stuff.
But I see one roadblock: there's no severe need for a new large-capacity optical media. CD-ROM adoption was a given, as there was nothing quite like it for software distribution: cheaper than a floppy to make in quantity, and had plenty of growth room in a day when games were forced to ship on 5-10 floppies, not to mention dozens of floppies for office suite or OS installs.
Plus, you had game designers just itching to add space-hungry features like vocal tracks, video and higher-resolution, higher-variety artwork. Microsoft helped the whole thing gain momentum by pushing through the MMPC standard, which pretty much standardized sound and CD-ROM support.
Now, look to today. We have games like UT2004 and HL2 still shipping mostly on six CDs, with only limited or more expensive runs available on DVD. This, despite the fact that the DVD-ROM drive is seven years old, and that DVD+/-R gave DVD-ROM a killer app starting three years ago.
The fact is, there is not much perceived need for greater capacity on a single disc. DVD will never completely replace CD-ROM on the PC, simply because they're more expensive to make, the capacity is not always needed, and every DVD drive made from now until the end of time will support the old CD-ROM standard.
Thus, you see a slowdown in the push for larger removable optical media, because there's already a standard that's 99.9% compatible and good enough for 95% of uses. It may take another five years for DVD to become the dominant removable media, and another 5 years for us to push the limits of it. Holographic media is going to have to bide it's time, or be prepared for initial disappointment.
I'll agree with you about XP, but 2k was designed to work with 64MB ram.
For example, a default system load of 2k on my old P133 (VX chipset, 64MB ram) allocated 43MB of memory on load (this includes drivers for everything), and this included IE resident. It was perfectly usable as an email / browsing machine, provided you didn't browse image-heavy sites or need flash / java. After turning off the transparency transition and mouse effects (two options unchecked), the interface even felt peppy.
Currently, the machine is doing duty as a network router / firewall with Debian...headless. I wouldn't try to run Gnome on it, under any circumstances. I run Gnome on a Celeron 800 with 256MB ram and it feels sluggish.
I think you missed the boat on this one.
Windows 2000 has had Win95 / 98 / NT SP4 compatibility layers since service pack 2. They're just not turned on by default, because Win2k is still sold as a "professional" OS.
In addition, Win2k's DOS emulation layer is fairly complete, but it lacks XPs attempt at sound emulation. That's no problem, thanks to VDMSound. You get an additional benefit with VDMSound because it initializes most of the important aspects of the DOS environment for you
Hell, when all else fails, there's always DOSBox.
I use 2000 at home all the time to game.
I'd mod you up if I had points. Bravo!
Does he not realize that OS X is simply a packaged up pretty version of BSD, which is almost identical besides licensing to Linux.
False analogy.
Let me make it clearer to you by making the following two statements:
1. Linux revolves around the kernel. Every time you muck with the kernel to bring about yet another set of "gee whiz bang" features, dozens of things are broken.
2. Mac OS X and Windows revolve around the interface. On the library level, new interfaces are added, but older ones are still supported for a surprisingly long time (see Carbon / Classic Runtime Environment for Mac OS X, or Win9x Compatibility Mode / Application Compatibility Toolkit for Windows 2000 / XP). Certainly, support is eventually dropped, but the pace is normally quite slow for popular APIs.
On a visual interface level, both Apple and MS try to keep consistency in the interface. Sure, you'll see major changes in interface every 5-10 years (Windows 95, Windows XP, Mac OS X), but that's a pace most people can cope with, and they try not to change EVERYTHING in the process. Linux, on the other hand: for any random distro, you can't be assurred GUI consistency.
Tell me, how many people really know if there were major kernel revisions between all the Mac OX X releases? I imagine not many, because programmers don't have to care. That's the beauty of revolving around interfaces.
Until Linux stops revolving around the kernel, it will never break out of the server niche.
Low-level copy protection like Safedisc and SecureROM require admin access to function. That means that, no matter what MS does to encourage application developers to change their ways, most games will most likely remain Admin-only.
A chipset barely on the market for three months, sporting two brand-new technologies, is hounded for non-showstopper bugs that have already been fixed, or are scheduled to be fixed shortly.
And yet, Intel doesn't get hounded because THEIR latest chipset saw a recall in the first two months of release?
Sure, Intel is more stable, if you don't live on planet Earth. NOBODY is perfect.
Oh, and I'd like to dispell another long-standing rumor, that 3rd-party chipset makers cause the A64 platform to be "unstable". This may have been somewhat true in the distant past, but is no longer the case. Both Nvidia and Via make excellent chipsets and solid drivers.
The reason such rumors get perpetuated is a lot of people are cheapskates...they go with AMD looking to spend as little as possible, and skimp on components. Anyone who has EVER bought an ECS, Elitegroup, PCCHIPS et-al mainboard, or spent 50 bucks or less on the most important component in their system, and then had the audacity to complain about stability...I'm looking at YOU.
It makes absolutely no sense to introduce inefficiancies into the marketplace.
This is precisely why speed-binning exists. When AMD takes 2.6GHz-rated chips and marks them as 2.0 GHz, they are AVOIDING market inefficiencies.
The market only has so much demand at a particular pricepoint at a particular time. Chips cannot sell themselves just because they are "faster," the market only buys the chips when there is a perceived "need" for them.
This is why, as time goes on, speed grades increase quite frequently, but the overall pricing structure changes VERY slowly. Not that the market forces are set in stone...there are more high-end enthusiasts than there were say, a decade ago, but the number is still relatively small, and it has take a lot of time and effort for manufacturers to create and nurture that growing market.
So, here's how speed-binning relates to this market. Let's say AMD's new Venice core can hit 2.6 GHz 40% of the time. That means 60% of your processors have to be downgraded in rating, but that's no big deal because the demand for your "BEST" processor (the 2.6 GHz) is only a few percent of your total processors sold. That is to say, only 5% of people in this competitive market will pay $600 for a processor that is that good.
Now, what if 75% of your total processor sales market wants a "GOOD ENOUGH" processor? You look at your yields: 40% of your processors can hit 2.6 GHz, but let's say 80% hit 2.0 GHz. If you sell a 2.0GHz as your "GOOD ENOUGH," this means you can throw out a lot less processors by serving multiple market segments. It's better than selling the entire 40% of all processors as 2.6GHz, as that would produce market inefficiencies as 95% of buyers would be unwilling to spend $600 in this competitive market.
Yes, you could just sell processors at their maximum tested speed, but market trends are not typically well reflected by yields, so you have to tailor your outputs to fit the market demand via speed-binning. Some of your 2.6, 2.4 and 2.2 GHz chips end up marked as 2.0 GHz to meet demand.
Thus, your 2.0GHz processors end up as a mix...some of them really can't do much better than 2.0 GHz, while others have been speed-binned to meet demand. Thus, you are not guaranteed a marvelous overclocker if you buy the 2.0 GHz processor...and that has always been the fun of overclocking, the mystery and risk involved. Did you buy a dud, or will this one be a bargain screamer?
Myself, I don't overclock much anymore...but it used to be a lot of fun seeing how far I could push chips, before I wanted a system that just worked.
You can do this under windows using explorer. Drag the files over the File Tree view off to the left side. Hover over a drive or a folder, and it will open.
The same also happens when dragging files over the start menu. You can navigate the entire menu as spring-loaded folders simply by hovering over the start button.
Benchmarking playability in games is a tough prospect. Back in the day, the only measure most benchmarks gave was a simple average framerate over the course of a demo. Cards that could average 60fps or more typically wouldn't drop below 30fps much in the heaviest-loaded portions of the test, and that was a good target for continuous smooth playability.
Typically, these days, I don't pay attention to reviews if they just post average framerates, because lots of games (not to mention the tool FRAPS) track max and min framerate of the test. You can even get a continuous set of all framerate samples throught the test, giving you a better idea of just how often your super gaming card is going to drop to a pitiful 10fps for a fraction of a second.
With all this information, you don't really care about the average framerate, and the market is starting to reflect this. Even Doom 3 maxes out at 60fps, but thanks to these detailed testing tools, you can easily see how often your card dips into unplayable territory.
And, all this information is useful for seeing just how far your system can go, and that's important when you consider how expensive these new dual cores are. Sure, the game is video-card bound at high quality, high resolution, and it may get more fps than you need at the lower resolution with lower settings...but here's where the magic comes in:
Certain other maps in the same game may eat up a LOT more CPU power, leaving you EXTREMELY CPU-bound at ALL resolutions. This is the case with HL2, where the difference in CPU-bound performance between demos on two different maps can vary by as much as 100%. In addition, other games may perform significantly slower on the same system. You have to take ALL THESE factors into account when buying a system if you play lots of games, or you may only be marginally satisfied with the system.
And when you're paying a hundred, all the way up to a thousand bucks for the processor, you better DAMN WELL make sure the purchase will be satisfying.
Yup, how about my own generalization:
I got glasses in 7th grade. A couple years later I got a SLIGHTLY stronger prescription, but the trend was my vision had pretty much stopped changing.
Then I started using computers in my teens, and for the last decade I have used them for many hours a day. My prescription has not changed.
My only recommendation? Don't sit at the computer for hours on-end, get up and stretch, this gives your eyes a stretch as well.
Don't overdo it on the brightness, especially if you have to look at black-on-white things all day.
Finally, don't be Mr. "I'm too cool for my glasses" and take your glasses off most of the time because you "dont need em". If you spend a lot of time without them on, it stresses out your eyes.
And, to stay on topic, NO, CRTs are probably not dangerous. No more dangerous than standing in front of your microwave while cooking your dinner...provided you sit in FRONT of them.
CRTs are heavily shielded in the front and sides. The phosphor in the screen converts the vast majority of x-rays into photons. The net radiation you receive is minimal. Now, in the rear the shielding is llimited, so you might want to be concerned if you're in such a situation.
I'm assuming the PSPs have small, high-definition screens which could stretch the current manufacturing processes to their limits.
That would be a bad assumption. While the pixel density on the PSP is impressive (~110 DPI), it's nothing new. All those 17" (1280x1024) and 20" (1600x1200) displays with such low pixel defect rates are already pushing fairly high DPIs (96DPI and 100DPI, respectively), and they have an order of magnitude more pixels.
Also, the market has seen mobile phones with full VGA resolution for two years now, and in a smaller footprint no less.
If this is the best the democrats can do in 2008, looks like I'm going to abstain from voting again.
It's not as if I'm going to vote for some neo-conservative trash.
This is pretty pathetic. As strange as Hilary is on many fronts, I considered voting for her after it became obvious she had hopes for 2008. All it took to reinstate my voter apathy was a pathetic political stunt like this.
The past has shown no indication that a PS2-exclusive fighter has any inherent momentum over say, SC2's cross-platform sales.
:D
Tekken 4: ~700k sales, PS2 exclusive.
Virtua Fighter 4: less than 600k sales, PS2 exclusive.
You see where this is leading? As a PS2 exclusive, SC3 would be one fighter among many, in an already tired franchise. I guess they figure they can save a lot of money in going single-platform, as that's the only thing that could justify such a sales drop.
Of course, I would only be upset if I had high hopes for SC3. Given that SC2 was basically SC1 with minor improvements, I expect the same from SC3. I'll just continue to enjoy my SC2 on Gamecube
What's wrong with these numbers? I bet a LOT of game makers would like a game that moves 2 million copies, and costs peanuts to develop (compared to say, games with intense storylines, dozens of characters, huge environments, lots of voice acting, etc.). It can't cost them that much to develop 20 character models and a look-and-feel mostly borrowed from SC1.
Furthermore, I bet a lot of fighting game developers would love to sell 2 million copies. For example, Virtua Fighter 4 is a PS2 platform exclusive, and it didn't even sell as well as the SC2 PS2 release. Hell, even Tekken 4 didn't sell as well as the PS2 SC2 release. The fighter genre is tired and saturated, so 2 million units is nothing to scoff at.
So, where does somebody explain to me why making this a platform exclusive will suddenly boost sales?
Sure, there are more PS2 consoles out there than the Xbox and GCN combined, but there are also a TON more PS2 exclusive games to compete with. If your game isn't the absolute most sought-after title the world has been waiting on for years, you're probably going to get looked over by most of those PS2 owners, who are faced with a sea of hype flowing from every direction.
GCN and the Xbox, on the other hand, offer a clearer landscape. Most of the crappier developers stay on the PS2 for the market share, since they know they won't sell enough copies on the Xbox or GCN to justify the cost of a cross-platform game. That makes the games a little higher-quality, but also creates a little scarcity in variety. Thus, any good 3rd-party release for these platforms tends to get hyped up by the community for free, and sales are usually as good as on the PS2.
So, when a company thinks they can improve the success of their game by shutting out these markets, I have to call bullshit, especially when their last release on three platforms was quite successful.
If SC3 is a PS2 exclusive, it will be just one PS2- exclusive fighting game among many.
I told you my opinion, but I also made the facts quite clear: users can customize the layout of the desktop as easily as any other folder on their machine. In fact, it's even easier than an arbitrary folder because it has a direct top-level link in the file explorer.
If you're asking for anything more than that, then you're asking MS to create an inconsistent design. If people are bright enough to realize that their desktop can have file and folders on it, not just OS widgets and shortcuts, then they're smart enough to know how to use the file explorer just like they do for every other file and folder they own.
My opinion is that if users feel this consistent interface is TOO SLOW or TOO TEDIOUS, then it's on them to find a way to do better. This is the whole reason for the existence of shortcut keys and context menus.
A good example, put a new folder on your desktop in windows without using the context menu and without using the keyboard shortcuts.
Sure thing.
Double click "My Computer". Click on Desktop (it is the top-most entry, VERY obvious and accesible). Click on the menu item File->New->Folder.
While you might argue that this is inconvenient, I would argue the opposite. The desktop was intended for program shortcuts, and fast access to useful OS features...like My Computer, for instance.
For non-power users, a cluttered desktop is less efficient. This is why programs usually ask you before creating an shortcut on the desktop, and remove them on uninstall, so users can easily manage the clutter without having to know how to edit it manually.
And what if you want to clean the desktop up without a keyboard shortcut or context menu? Just drag the shortcut or folder to the recycle bin, it's provided there for your convenience.
So, in summary, the tools to unclutter the desktop are painfully obvious, and the tools to clutter the desktop beyond program-installed shortcuts is only slightly less obvious. All this does is encourage people to use the user data folders already set aside for such purposes.
Ask yourself literally, why would non-power users need to put a folder on the desktop? These are the same people who are satisfied with the global accessibility of a few key user data directories (My Documents, My Music, etc.), and simplified installers.
I argue that if you find you need the capability and flexibility offered by a context menu, you can spare the brain cells to learn how to right-click, and experiment a little with the interface.