I think the submitter got confused. I believe he just wanted to comment on how common naked, ultra-bright LEDs have become in the last few years, just because it's the style.
Think about all your LED indicators on devices in the 90s. In not one instance can I think of an indicator that was unfiltered, let alone overstated. Each LED had a plastic guide / filter that kept the light to background levels.
Fast-forward to today, products try to catch your eye with flashy, bright LEDs everywhere. And it's not just "techie" things, hell, even the PS2 has an overstated blue LED you can see for half a mile.
As I type this, I have an obvious example right here in front of me. I got a Mitsubishi DP 920 a few years ago, and it has a subdued, filtered green power LED. The 930SB (successor to the 920) that I got recently for my other machine has a glaring, naked green LED that bugs the hell out of me. So I ended up adding filtering equivilant to that which came with the 920...it just doesn't look as tasteful as the 920.
Why do they do shit like this? It can't be to sell products...I'd say the majority of products sold in tech stores are NOT POWERED-UP when on display, so how the hell can flashy lights sell the suckers?
Yes, I must agree that you should use a method along these lines for best effect when you are studying.
Myself, a number of my engineering exams allowed a sheet or two for formulas. I would typically cram as much as possible on to the sheets, and in the process I would really get a good feel for the entire subjet matter. Then, once I was done with the sheet, I had myself a nice comprehensive drill for the rest of the time I had to study.
I found myself doing this even for exams that didn't allow formula sheets, as it allowed me to focus my studying.
And no, you don't have to get all fancy like some of these folks and have electronic notes and compile cheat sheets with grep. Just take fairly coherent notes, and it should only take an hour or two to compile a whole semester into a couple sheets. I did all of mine by hand.
Hardly. I have a 1st-generation model of this mouse that I got for $30 (US) back in 2000, and it still works fine. I also have a second generation version that I picked up for $15 a year later. Both get daily use, for hours, and work great in games.
I've also recommended this mouse to several friends as a cheap optical workhorse, and not a one has had an issue or been dissatisfied.
I get the impression that you're just brainwashed into believeing that nobody will respect you on the internet unless you have a big, expensive, heavy mouse with ten thousand buttons. Perhaps you're not telling us why it sucked/broke because you'd have to make up some BS on the fly.
Yes, but really, how many people come to pieces these days if they lose their data?
If you're smart, you keep hardcopies of the really-really-really serious stuff in a file cabinet.
Back up your bookmarks, your taxes, your email and your pet projects. The rest is just porn / music / video / games anyway, probably replaceable.
Just take the mindset of all these P2P whore kids. You know the best part about losing 200 GB of media that they spent the last 6 months leeching off of P2P? They now have something to do for the next 6 months:D
Glasses (or contacts) that automatically fog up when looking at a beautiful foreign woman that you're destined to seduce and abandon
Huh
I believe I can answer this one. The original poster is referring to the cinematic style of the original series.
The feature women of an episode would get that "soft" and "fuzzy" treatment. When the camera zoomed in for a closeup, you got an extremely bright-lit face with fuzziness around the edges of the screen.
That's not to say the bright lights were resevered entirely for women...I can recall many floodlights highlighting Kirk's face at "command" moments, but never a bit of fuzziness. It was all part of the dramatic lighting style back then, probably inherited from theatre lighting.
The best solution to our "single-party" system in the US would be "preferential" voting.
Let's say you have five parties. When you vote, you rank all five parties in your order of preference.
You do a complete tally, and determine the last-place party. That party is removed from the race, and all votes indicating that party as their "first choice" are funneled off to their second choices.
You would continue dropping one candidate each time the votes are re-tallied, and redirecting that candidate's current votes based on the next preference.
In reality, we believe in some things from most parties involved, but we're afraid to show our true support because we are simultaneously afraid of wasting our vote. Unfortunately, those in power would never let such a system exist, as it would erode the very power base of the single-party system here in America.
THIS is why people don't vote. Most of them don't care anymore because they know that, no matter who gets elected, nothing will change at the core.
The Voodoo 2 was a massive success, but it's success fed on itself.
3DFX wowed the market so completely with the Voodoo 2 that the following events happened:
* Their value segments (Voodoo Graphics, Rush) were instantly devalued. 3dfx couldn't bring down the price of these to compete with $100 entry-level cards, so sales slowed.
* Everyone and their dog wanted a Voodoo 2, however, most people could not justify the purchase of a second card at $250-300 a pop. Thus, there were very strong initial sales, and most people did not purchase an SLI setup initially.
In response, card production went through the roof during the second half of the year, and *poof*, there was suddenly no one there to buy the Voodoo 2. Heavy competition from Nvidia with the TNT meant less new buyers of the Voodoo 2. All those folks looking for an SLI upgrade to go with their existing Voodoo 2 were holding off for a good price, PLUS they were waiting for a game that could actually stress a single Voodoo 2 (can you say Half-Life?). Build-up of inventory meant the prices came crashing down.
Then, once prices came down and current Voodoo 2 owners could justify the upgrade, 3DFX (now "3dfx") released the Voodoo 3, and expected perople to be "wowed" once again. They were not impressed, and bought cheap Voodoo 2s.
How could 3DFX have avoided such a foolish blunder? Perhaps they could have released multiple speed grades of the Voodoo 2, much like Nvidia and ATI like to release "XT" or "PE" updates of their cards. Perhaps if they had released a lower-performing Voodoo 2, then the Banshee, then the full-speed Voodoo 2, they would have avoided flooding the market and overestimating demand for a $300 video card. Perhaps also they could have made SLI available only through special limited-production "upgrade" cards, instead of flooding the market with potential cheap upgrades.
One thing is for certain: the Voodoo 2 as-released was a long-term failure for 3DFX, and when you combine it's purchase of STB, the downfall is rooted firmly in 1998.
As for your comment about a multi-slot high-speed bus being available...well, sure it is......except that I can count the dual PCIe 16x motherboards on this planet with one finger. You'll probably be waiting for Nforce4 to make dual PCIe 16x slots mainstream, and that's a long wait. PCIe SLI won't have a chance until then.
Okay, here's a guide for all you folks who are getting so unbelievably excited over something as mundane as pairing two video cards together.
FIRST OF ALL: THIS IS NOT "SLI". Nvidia is simply leveraging the term to sell their version of the concept.
SECOND OF ALL: THIS IS NOT NEW. In fact, every single consumer card that has attempted this in the past has been a failure.
** 3DFX Voodoo 2 The performance of a single Voodoo 2 was so good that people waited for prices to fall before buying a second Voodoo 2. Sales of the Voodoo3 also suffered heavily because, under many conditions, the Voodoo 2 SLI performed similarly. Thus, the long-term failure.
** Metabyte "SLI" Shortly after 3DFX made "SLI" a household name, Metabyte developed a PCI-bridge technology that would split the framebuffer between ANY two cards and have them render in parallel.
Sound familiar? It should. There was one major drawback: both cards would have to operate in PCI mode, negating some of the advantages the newer AGP cards enjoyed. Metabyte tried to license the technology to TNT2 manufacturers, but none were interested...mainly because the upcoming GeForce 256 would make ir obsolete overnight.
** ATI Rage MAXX This card featured two chips rendering a piece of the framebuffer, much like MEtabyte's technology. This was simply an attempt by ATI to get some experience designing a parallel-processor architecture, and to take some wind out of Nvidia's GeForce 256 sails. Because the parallelization was on-card, it could function as a normal AGP card. Bad drivers and lack of Win2k / XP support killed this card.
** 3dfx VSA 100 (Voodoo 5 5500) The VSA 100 was designed to be used in parallel in a fashion similar to the Rage MAXX. Although this card boasted many fancy features, it could not keep up in the performance race. 3dfx also found out how hard it is to make money when the chipsets on your cards cost roughly twice that of your competitors.
** Alienware "SLI" Yes, this is basically Metabyte's concept, but the appearance of PCIe has made it a reality for high-performance cards. PCIe also makes it possible for this to be developed entirely in software (Metabyte's vision required an on-card bridge), so why the hell wouldn't they market it?
** Nvidia Geforce 6 with SLI Two things are readily apparent about this latest attempt:
1. The card is not a flagship, high-margin card. It is simply designed to lock-in users to a cheap Nvidia card now, and an upgrade in the future.
2. Even in SLI mode, this combo won't exceed the performance of their top-end card, meaning Nvidia won't cannibalize upgrades for their next card like the Voodoo 2 SLI did.
So sure, Alienware and Nvidia look like they've got a winner on their hands...except that there aren't many PCIe motherboards with dual 16x slots. Oh well, yet another niche-market-product-turned-failure waiting to happen.
Actually, benchmark writers DO optimize for Intel, but it's hardly a nefarious activity
If a benchmark is written to take advantage of SSE2, and that benchmark benefits significantly from the vectorization, it is GUARANTEED to perform significantly better on a Pentium 4.
Why?
Although the Athlon64 has an excellent x87 FPU, it's SSE2 unit is roughly on-par with the Pentium 4 in terms of clock cycles per operation.
What this means is the Pentium 4's raw clock speed advantage really is an advantage in this one case...if the Pentium 4 is clocked 40% faster, expect it to perform 40% better. I have heard some rumors about AMD coming out with a faster SSE2 unit, but I don't think that's likely anytime soon.
I have to agree, most of the site design updates made in the last couple years have been terrible. I've gotten used to the games forum, but the IT design is so sickening I'm about to permanantly block all stories.
Why is it that everything on Slashdot has to have that *ohhh, shiney!* look of the Apple section? Let the Mac nuts have their lickable interface, I'm just here to read.
Oh, and here'a an INGENIOUS CONCEPT for you Slashdot admins who have even bothered to read this far:
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE MORE MONEY FOR SLASHDOT / YOURSELVES?
$DOUGH! $CASHOLA! $CHA-CHING!
Yes, why don't you folks make USE of user profiles, and allow us to select a custom theme for each subsection? And get this: you can make it a subscription-only feature, and watch the subscription sales take off like a rocket.
I'm only sugesting the $DOUGH path because I know that Slashdot admins are too busy posting dupes to do anything constructive for all us freeloaders.
I'm willing to bet it took you longer to consider that post, AND longer to think of how to put it so succinctly, than it ever took you to type it.
That is my point. Unless you are transcribing or taking dictation, typing is only a small part of composition time. It is not so important a skill that you must master 100wpm simply to survive.
And as for my "measured" speed, I imagine it's higher than that, but the last time I could be bothered to test myself (years ago), it was around 40-50 wpm.
If you want some measure of my speed, this entire post took me about a minute to type. Zero errors.
I think this is actually part of the problem. Most of these kids CAN'T afford a powerful system to play Doom 3. This isn't Farcry, a playground for the small subset of PC gamers with powerful systems...this is Doom 3. EVERYONE wants to play this.
The only revolutionary thing about Doom 3 is that the rendering features span a plethora of platforms. Unfortunately, Activision has decided not to release a demo yet (OBVIOUSLY to increase sales), and gamers are left with the opinions of a few online reviewers to decide if they should pre-order/buy on release.
There are ALWAYS going to be people pirating, but I have a feeling that a lot of the increased pirate activity is gamers who are cautious about spening $55 on a game that may overtax their system, because they DON'T have the money around for $200-500 of upgrades...and don't want to be out $55 if that is the case.
NORMALLY, this problem would be solved by a demo, but Activision is obviously trying to squeeze the market as much as they can, since a certain percentage of gamers would not enjoy the demo enough to shell out for the game.
Activision thinks that by not releasing a demo, they can somehow squeeze more money out of these fairly dry markets...and it's blowing up in their face. The community has provided a demo, and I don't feel particularly sorry for Activision...they'll make TONS of dough, even though this is just a tired Doom game with fancy graphics.
In the days of yore, not only did you have to tromp through phantom links to find the free version of the player.
Once you actually downloaded the software and went to install it, you would be presented with a page full of "opt-in" crap. I say "opt-in" because Real cleverly had all the options you could see on the screen deselected by default.
The evil part: they made it hard to see that the screen could actually scroll, and there was additional crap hidden below that was CHECKED BY DEFAULT.
Now, you can say what you want about trying to sell people the super-platinum-mega player, but hiding "opt-out" options below options that are clearly "opt-in"...that's sneaky and unforgivable.
My favorite video game box is also one of the earliest I recall purchasing. I had seen the commercials Nintendo bombarded us with (also classics in their own right), but the box was a nice clincher for making me part with my money.
It was a simple, dignified silver coat-of-arms on a gold background, with a tastefully-rendered title. No other box cover has ever communitcated so little, and so much at the same time.
Yes, along the lines of what Craig was mentioning:
Before the early 90s, Intel's processors had always had a bus speed matched with the processor speed. The problem was, Intel was hitting the wall as far as bus speeds with current technology, with the 486DX 40, 50 and the Pentium 60, 66 rounding out the high-end. Thus, there was a push in the early 90s for internal speed multipliers.
Intel got a lot of flack for this move, but they were able to price the DX2/SX2 and P75 parts quite attractively. Also, the built-in L1 cache on the 486 and Pentium helped to reduce the risk of data starvation despite the slower bus speeds.
Over the years we've seen the bus speed gap widen, but improved cache hiearchies have continuously kept this issue in check.
Also, FYI: the Pentium 60 and 66 were workstation chips when they were released, displacing high-end 486 processors. Then Intel made the P5 mainstream with the release of the P75, P90 and P100. All three processors used a 1.5x multiplier, and the P75 was seen as "the" value P5. It was also the only P5 to use a 50MHz bus.
Yeah, somehow the Nvidia-specific optimizations doesn't surprise me, given when the bulk of this game was thrown together.
What does surprise me is no special support for the R100 (Radeon 7xxx) series, which supported PS 1.0, and could do 3 textures per pass. I'm sure you could wrangle some interesting effects, considering the age of the hardware.
Myself, I'm just going to see how good it looks on my Radeon 8500. If it's good enough, I'll wait for these ridiculous video card prices to come down. I paid $200 for my 8500 when it was almost top-of-the-line three and a half years ago, and I am just astounded by prices today. To get an almost top-of-the-line card today, you have to sink $400.
Unfortunately, that will never happen. Ever since the Kennedy tax cuts of the 1960s, the federal income tax has forever become a tool of politics.
It would take a very gutsy candidate to make taxes flow directly with economic conditions, but you bet your ass I'd vote for him. Think about it: when it comes down to it, all the Federal Reserve is is a bunch of members who try to do exactly that, except they deal with interest rates.
Hell, I wouldn't be all that opposed to taxation by committee...THEN we might just see taxes that approach optimum levels. I believe that the tax system in this country will remain skewed so long as it continues to function as slowly as it currently does. The Fed works because it responds quickly to signs in the economy, and usually doesn't over or under-shoot too severely like a politically-driven tax cut. But as I said above, taxes have become too powerful a political tool to be given up for the greater good. Too bad.
So, there you have it...as I said, I don't know the answer, but I do know a real-world example of a system that has come closer to optimum fiscal performance than Congress and the President ever have...we'll just never see anything like it for taxes.
No, you shouldn't have brought up Reagan if all you wanted to say was taxes have an "optimal" level based on current economic conditions. This goes without saying.
Thus, it shouldn't surprise you when I say I don't know what our tax structure should look like. Nobody does.
You can bring all the curves and theories you want to the party, but you'll still end up performing a cheap party-trick while trying to convince the partygoers that it was something more significant. Economics is still touch-and-go percisely because we can never adjust a single variable at a time in the big-picture, so the best historical evidence and experience we have to go on is automatically flawed.
No, I don't have the answer. I just get extremely upset when people claim ANYONE has "the" answer when it comes to fiscal policy...and more often than not it's some foolish Reaganomics zombie. The way you made your statement, I got the impression you were combinining the two.
I am sick and tired of people touting Reaganomics as having single-handedly raised tax revenues.
You all readily admit that Reagan increased government spending like a rocket, and you always ignore the effects of doing that!
What, do you think that government money just goes into some hole in the ground? That money goes to government and contract AMERICAN workers, and when the government has more money to spend, that means MORE new employees taking home paychecks, as well as a hefty boost in existing pay.
What happens when you pump money you don't have into a system (deficit government spending)? Your tax revenue is VERY LIKELY to increase.
This is not to say lowering taxes doesn't produce some percentage return of your "lost" tax revenue, but to believe that just lowering taxes can produce the returns Reagan saw is an ignorant and inexcusable belief. There are a lot of things besides taxes that limit the rate at which we create wealth in this country.
Finally, I'd like to add that Reagan came along at the right place, at the right time, and this is the SOLE reason we ever saw such a "miraculous" recovery as Reagan gave us. The economy was so incredibly responsive to an influx of cash because previous administrations (Ford & Carter) had managed to deflate the economy to below typical levels. You don't see us having anywhere near the same economic recovery with Bush's simultaneous tax cuts and increased spending (even though his percent spending increase is actually HIGHER), but that's because we havn't been stupid enough to heavily depress the economy since Carter's term. This is not a "Republican" thing, it is a fiscal lesson we learned from having to endure the 1970s.
One of the earliest Word macro viruses were the Wazoo variants. It would randomly replace words in documents with "Wazoo", and infect other documents opened after the infected one.
It's not hard to imagine something less obvious and more nefarious already in circulation...we had enough trouble noticing something as obvious as Wazoo...
Right, storage space is cheap, it's the bandwidth that is scarce, even on a well-tuned fiber network.
Of course, in the end the bandwidth is easy to provide because:
1. The majority of your customers subscribe to internet, so you already have to provide a 3 Mbit pipe to them.
2. The vast majority of your internet customers won't be using their internet connection while watching VoD...so even if the stream is 2 Mbit, you're not pushing your internal network bandwidth needs even when you take into account the odd man out.
It's a smart move by the cable companies, it's simple to implement, leverages all the upgrades they've made to their networks in the past decade, and it even challenges the DVR market - some people might not buy a DVR if they can watch all the Sopranos episodes on-demand.
Probably not. If it's like most VGA-derrivative monitors with proprietary connectors, the signal is RGB with sync-on-green.
"Component" video as consumers know it is in "YPbPr" format. One channel contains luminance, and the other two describe colors. You'd need some sort of converter that outputs RGB with sync-on-green.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the submitter got confused. I believe he just wanted to comment on how common naked, ultra-bright LEDs have become in the last few years, just because it's the style.
Think about all your LED indicators on devices in the 90s. In not one instance can I think of an indicator that was unfiltered, let alone overstated. Each LED had a plastic guide / filter that kept the light to background levels.
Fast-forward to today, products try to catch your eye with flashy, bright LEDs everywhere. And it's not just "techie" things, hell, even the PS2 has an overstated blue LED you can see for half a mile.
As I type this, I have an obvious example right here in front of me. I got a Mitsubishi DP 920 a few years ago, and it has a subdued, filtered green power LED. The 930SB (successor to the 920) that I got recently for my other machine has a glaring, naked green LED that bugs the hell out of me. So I ended up adding filtering equivilant to that which came with the 920...it just doesn't look as tasteful as the 920.
Why do they do shit like this? It can't be to sell products...I'd say the majority of products sold in tech stores are NOT POWERED-UP when on display, so how the hell can flashy lights sell the suckers?
Yes, I must agree that you should use a method along these lines for best effect when you are studying.
Myself, a number of my engineering exams allowed a sheet or two for formulas. I would typically cram as much as possible on to the sheets, and in the process I would really get a good feel for the entire subjet matter. Then, once I was done with the sheet, I had myself a nice comprehensive drill for the rest of the time I had to study.
I found myself doing this even for exams that didn't allow formula sheets, as it allowed me to focus my studying.
And no, you don't have to get all fancy like some of these folks and have electronic notes and compile cheat sheets with grep. Just take fairly coherent notes, and it should only take an hour or two to compile a whole semester into a couple sheets. I did all of mine by hand.
That mouse is crap.
Hardly. I have a 1st-generation model of this mouse that I got for $30 (US) back in 2000, and it still works fine. I also have a second generation version that I picked up for $15 a year later. Both get daily use, for hours, and work great in games.
I've also recommended this mouse to several friends as a cheap optical workhorse, and not a one has had an issue or been dissatisfied.
I get the impression that you're just brainwashed into believeing that nobody will respect you on the internet unless you have a big, expensive, heavy mouse with ten thousand buttons. Perhaps you're not telling us why it sucked/broke because you'd have to make up some BS on the fly.
Yeah, I have been using the same skin since 2000...MetAmpMorphosis by Zombie. Even works with XMMS, hurray for standards!
Anyway, a hack like this wouldn't work with older v2 skins because they're just image maps.
Yes, but really, how many people come to pieces these days if they lose their data?
:D
If you're smart, you keep hardcopies of the really-really-really serious stuff in a file cabinet.
Back up your bookmarks, your taxes, your email and your pet projects. The rest is just porn / music / video / games anyway, probably replaceable.
Just take the mindset of all these P2P whore kids. You know the best part about losing 200 GB of media that they spent the last 6 months leeching off of P2P? They now have something to do for the next 6 months
Glasses (or contacts) that automatically fog up when looking at a beautiful foreign woman that you're destined to seduce and abandon
Huh
I believe I can answer this one. The original poster is referring to the cinematic style of the original series.
The feature women of an episode would get that "soft" and "fuzzy" treatment. When the camera zoomed in for a closeup, you got an extremely bright-lit face with fuzziness around the edges of the screen.
That's not to say the bright lights were resevered entirely for women...I can recall many floodlights highlighting Kirk's face at "command" moments, but never a bit of fuzziness. It was all part of the dramatic lighting style back then, probably inherited from theatre lighting.
The best solution to our "single-party" system in the US would be "preferential" voting.
Let's say you have five parties. When you vote, you rank all five parties in your order of preference.
You do a complete tally, and determine the last-place party. That party is removed from the race, and all votes indicating that party as their "first choice" are funneled off to their second choices.
You would continue dropping one candidate each time the votes are re-tallied, and redirecting that candidate's current votes based on the next preference.
In reality, we believe in some things from most parties involved, but we're afraid to show our true support because we are simultaneously afraid of wasting our vote. Unfortunately, those in power would never let such a system exist, as it would erode the very power base of the single-party system here in America.
THIS is why people don't vote. Most of them don't care anymore because they know that, no matter who gets elected, nothing will change at the core.
The Voodoo 2 was a massive success, but it's success fed on itself.
...except that I can count the dual PCIe 16x motherboards on this planet with one finger. You'll probably be waiting for Nforce4 to make dual PCIe 16x slots mainstream, and that's a long wait. PCIe SLI won't have a chance until then.
3DFX wowed the market so completely with the Voodoo 2 that the following events happened:
* Their value segments (Voodoo Graphics, Rush) were instantly devalued. 3dfx couldn't bring down the price of these to compete with $100 entry-level cards, so sales slowed.
* Everyone and their dog wanted a Voodoo 2, however, most people could not justify the purchase of a second card at $250-300 a pop. Thus, there were very strong initial sales, and most people did not purchase an SLI setup initially.
In response, card production went through the roof during the second half of the year, and *poof*, there was suddenly no one there to buy the Voodoo 2. Heavy competition from Nvidia with the TNT meant less new buyers of the Voodoo 2. All those folks looking for an SLI upgrade to go with their existing Voodoo 2 were holding off for a good price, PLUS they were waiting for a game that could actually stress a single Voodoo 2 (can you say Half-Life?). Build-up of inventory meant the prices came crashing down.
Then, once prices came down and current Voodoo 2 owners could justify the upgrade, 3DFX (now "3dfx") released the Voodoo 3, and expected perople to be "wowed" once again. They were not impressed, and bought cheap Voodoo 2s.
How could 3DFX have avoided such a foolish blunder? Perhaps they could have released multiple speed grades of the Voodoo 2, much like Nvidia and ATI like to release "XT" or "PE" updates of their cards. Perhaps if they had released a lower-performing Voodoo 2, then the Banshee, then the full-speed Voodoo 2, they would have avoided flooding the market and overestimating demand for a $300 video card. Perhaps also they could have made SLI available only through special limited-production "upgrade" cards, instead of flooding the market with potential cheap upgrades.
One thing is for certain: the Voodoo 2 as-released was a long-term failure for 3DFX, and when you combine it's purchase of STB, the downfall is rooted firmly in 1998.
As for your comment about a multi-slot high-speed bus being available...well, sure it is...
Okay, here's a guide for all you folks who are getting so unbelievably excited over something as mundane as pairing two video cards together.
FIRST OF ALL: THIS IS NOT "SLI".
Nvidia is simply leveraging the term to sell their version of the concept.
SECOND OF ALL: THIS IS NOT NEW.
In fact, every single consumer card that has attempted this in the past has been a failure.
** 3DFX Voodoo 2
The performance of a single Voodoo 2 was so good that people waited for prices to fall before buying a second Voodoo 2. Sales of the Voodoo3 also suffered heavily because, under many conditions, the Voodoo 2 SLI performed similarly. Thus, the long-term failure.
** Metabyte "SLI"
Shortly after 3DFX made "SLI" a household name, Metabyte developed a PCI-bridge technology that would split the framebuffer between ANY two cards and have them render in parallel.
Sound familiar? It should. There was one major drawback: both cards would have to operate in PCI mode, negating some of the advantages the newer AGP cards enjoyed. Metabyte tried to license the technology to TNT2 manufacturers, but none were interested...mainly because the upcoming GeForce 256 would make ir obsolete overnight.
** ATI Rage MAXX
This card featured two chips rendering a piece of the framebuffer, much like MEtabyte's technology. This was simply an attempt by ATI to get some experience designing a parallel-processor architecture, and to take some wind out of Nvidia's GeForce 256 sails. Because the parallelization was on-card, it could function as a normal AGP card. Bad drivers and lack of Win2k / XP support killed this card.
** 3dfx VSA 100 (Voodoo 5 5500)
The VSA 100 was designed to be used in parallel in a fashion similar to the Rage MAXX. Although this card boasted many fancy features, it could not keep up in the performance race. 3dfx also found out how hard it is to make money when the chipsets on your cards cost roughly twice that of your competitors.
** Alienware "SLI"
Yes, this is basically Metabyte's concept, but the appearance of PCIe has made it a reality for high-performance cards. PCIe also makes it possible for this to be developed entirely in software (Metabyte's vision required an on-card bridge), so why the hell wouldn't they market it?
** Nvidia Geforce 6 with SLI
Two things are readily apparent about this latest attempt:
1. The card is not a flagship, high-margin card. It is simply designed to lock-in users to a cheap Nvidia card now, and an upgrade in the future.
2. Even in SLI mode, this combo won't exceed the performance of their top-end card, meaning Nvidia won't cannibalize upgrades for their next card like the Voodoo 2 SLI did.
So sure, Alienware and Nvidia look like they've got a winner on their hands...except that there aren't many PCIe motherboards with dual 16x slots. Oh well, yet another niche-market-product-turned-failure waiting to happen.
Actually, benchmark writers DO optimize for Intel, but it's hardly a nefarious activity
If a benchmark is written to take advantage of SSE2, and that benchmark benefits significantly from the vectorization, it is GUARANTEED to perform significantly better on a Pentium 4.
Why?
Although the Athlon64 has an excellent x87 FPU, it's SSE2 unit is roughly on-par with the Pentium 4 in terms of clock cycles per operation.
What this means is the Pentium 4's raw clock speed advantage really is an advantage in this one case...if the Pentium 4 is clocked 40% faster, expect it to perform 40% better. I have heard some rumors about AMD coming out with a faster SSE2 unit, but I don't think that's likely anytime soon.
I have to agree, most of the site design updates made in the last couple years have been terrible. I've gotten used to the games forum, but the IT design is so sickening I'm about to permanantly block all stories.
Why is it that everything on Slashdot has to have that *ohhh, shiney!* look of the Apple section? Let the Mac nuts have their lickable interface, I'm just here to read.
Oh, and here'a an INGENIOUS CONCEPT for you Slashdot admins who have even bothered to read this far:
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE MORE MONEY FOR SLASHDOT / YOURSELVES?
$DOUGH!
$CASHOLA!
$CHA-CHING!
Yes, why don't you folks make USE of user profiles, and allow us to select a custom theme for each subsection? And get this: you can make it a subscription-only feature, and watch the subscription sales take off like a rocket.
I'm only sugesting the $DOUGH path because I know that Slashdot admins are too busy posting dupes to do anything constructive for all us freeloaders.
I'm willing to bet it took you longer to consider that post, AND longer to think of how to put it so succinctly, than it ever took you to type it.
That is my point. Unless you are transcribing or taking dictation, typing is only a small part of composition time. It is not so important a skill that you must master 100wpm simply to survive.
And as for my "measured" speed, I imagine it's higher than that, but the last time I could be bothered to test myself (years ago), it was around 40-50 wpm.
If you want some measure of my speed, this entire post took me about a minute to type. Zero errors.
I've got to call BS on this. I'm a 2 to 4 fingered typist, and I can easily type faster than I can think...that is all that matters.
:P
The only people who have to type quickly are the ones who aren't thinking. I get paid to think, not dictate.
Anyway, I've clocked myself at somewhere between 40-50wpm, and the only complaint I've ever heard is I'm a little loud when I'm typing at high speed
I think this is actually part of the problem. Most of these kids CAN'T afford a powerful system to play Doom 3. This isn't Farcry, a playground for the small subset of PC gamers with powerful systems...this is Doom 3. EVERYONE wants to play this.
The only revolutionary thing about Doom 3 is that the rendering features span a plethora of platforms. Unfortunately, Activision has decided not to release a demo yet (OBVIOUSLY to increase sales), and gamers are left with the opinions of a few online reviewers to decide if they should pre-order/buy on release.
There are ALWAYS going to be people pirating, but I have a feeling that a lot of the increased pirate activity is gamers who are cautious about spening $55 on a game that may overtax their system, because they DON'T have the money around for $200-500 of upgrades...and don't want to be out $55 if that is the case.
NORMALLY, this problem would be solved by a demo, but Activision is obviously trying to squeeze the market as much as they can, since a certain percentage of gamers would not enjoy the demo enough to shell out for the game.
Activision thinks that by not releasing a demo, they can somehow squeeze more money out of these fairly dry markets...and it's blowing up in their face. The community has provided a demo, and I don't feel particularly sorry for Activision...they'll make TONS of dough, even though this is just a tired Doom game with fancy graphics.
The "hidden link" comment has a double-meaning.
In the days of yore, not only did you have to tromp through phantom links to find the free version of the player.
Once you actually downloaded the software and went to install it, you would be presented with a page full of "opt-in" crap. I say "opt-in" because Real cleverly had all the options you could see on the screen deselected by default.
The evil part: they made it hard to see that the screen could actually scroll, and there was additional crap hidden below that was CHECKED BY DEFAULT.
Now, you can say what you want about trying to sell people the super-platinum-mega player, but hiding "opt-out" options below options that are clearly "opt-in"...that's sneaky and unforgivable.
Actually, this has more to do with the fact that the government wouldn't be caught dead buying an ugly fighter :D
The Lockheed YF-22 Raptor was well matched by the Northrop YF-23 Black Widow...except in the looks department.
The Boeing X-32 was quite possibly the ugliest fighter I have ever seen. It's no surprise to me that the X-35 beat it for the JSF spot.
My favorite video game box is also one of the earliest I recall purchasing. I had seen the commercials Nintendo bombarded us with (also classics in their own right), but the box was a nice clincher for making me part with my money.
It was a simple, dignified silver coat-of-arms on a gold background, with a tastefully-rendered title. No other box cover has ever communitcated so little, and so much at the same time.
Yes, along the lines of what Craig was mentioning:
Before the early 90s, Intel's processors had always had a bus speed matched with the processor speed. The problem was, Intel was hitting the wall as far as bus speeds with current technology, with the 486DX 40, 50 and the Pentium 60, 66 rounding out the high-end. Thus, there was a push in the early 90s for internal speed multipliers.
Intel got a lot of flack for this move, but they were able to price the DX2/SX2 and P75 parts quite attractively. Also, the built-in L1 cache on the 486 and Pentium helped to reduce the risk of data starvation despite the slower bus speeds.
Over the years we've seen the bus speed gap widen, but improved cache hiearchies have continuously kept this issue in check.
Also, FYI: the Pentium 60 and 66 were workstation chips when they were released, displacing high-end 486 processors. Then Intel made the P5 mainstream with the release of the P75, P90 and P100. All three processors used a 1.5x multiplier, and the P75 was seen as "the" value P5. It was also the only P5 to use a 50MHz bus.
Yeah, somehow the Nvidia-specific optimizations doesn't surprise me, given when the bulk of this game was thrown together.
What does surprise me is no special support for the R100 (Radeon 7xxx) series, which supported PS 1.0, and could do 3 textures per pass. I'm sure you could wrangle some interesting effects, considering the age of the hardware.
Myself, I'm just going to see how good it looks on my Radeon 8500. If it's good enough, I'll wait for these ridiculous video card prices to come down. I paid $200 for my 8500 when it was almost top-of-the-line three and a half years ago, and I am just astounded by prices today. To get an almost top-of-the-line card today, you have to sink $400.
Unfortunately, that will never happen. Ever since the Kennedy tax cuts of the 1960s, the federal income tax has forever become a tool of politics.
It would take a very gutsy candidate to make taxes flow directly with economic conditions, but you bet your ass I'd vote for him. Think about it: when it comes down to it, all the Federal Reserve is is a bunch of members who try to do exactly that, except they deal with interest rates.
Hell, I wouldn't be all that opposed to taxation by committee...THEN we might just see taxes that approach optimum levels. I believe that the tax system in this country will remain skewed so long as it continues to function as slowly as it currently does. The Fed works because it responds quickly to signs in the economy, and usually doesn't over or under-shoot too severely like a politically-driven tax cut. But as I said above, taxes have become too powerful a political tool to be given up for the greater good. Too bad.
So, there you have it...as I said, I don't know the answer, but I do know a real-world example of a system that has come closer to optimum fiscal performance than Congress and the President ever have...we'll just never see anything like it for taxes.
No, you shouldn't have brought up Reagan if all you wanted to say was taxes have an "optimal" level based on current economic conditions. This goes without saying.
Thus, it shouldn't surprise you when I say I don't know what our tax structure should look like. Nobody does.
You can bring all the curves and theories you want to the party, but you'll still end up performing a cheap party-trick while trying to convince the partygoers that it was something more significant. Economics is still touch-and-go percisely because we can never adjust a single variable at a time in the big-picture, so the best historical evidence and experience we have to go on is automatically flawed.
No, I don't have the answer. I just get extremely upset when people claim ANYONE has "the" answer when it comes to fiscal policy...and more often than not it's some foolish Reaganomics zombie. The way you made your statement, I got the impression you were combinining the two.
I am sick and tired of people touting Reaganomics as having single-handedly raised tax revenues.
You all readily admit that Reagan increased government spending like a rocket, and you always ignore the effects of doing that!
What, do you think that government money just goes into some hole in the ground? That money goes to government and contract AMERICAN workers, and when the government has more money to spend, that means MORE new employees taking home paychecks, as well as a hefty boost in existing pay.
What happens when you pump money you don't have into a system (deficit government spending)? Your tax revenue is VERY LIKELY to increase.
This is not to say lowering taxes doesn't produce some percentage return of your "lost" tax revenue, but to believe that just lowering taxes can produce the returns Reagan saw is an ignorant and inexcusable belief. There are a lot of things besides taxes that limit the rate at which we create wealth in this country.
Finally, I'd like to add that Reagan came along at the right place, at the right time, and this is the SOLE reason we ever saw such a "miraculous" recovery as Reagan gave us. The economy was so incredibly responsive to an influx of cash because previous administrations (Ford & Carter) had managed to deflate the economy to below typical levels. You don't see us having anywhere near the same economic recovery with Bush's simultaneous tax cuts and increased spending (even though his percent spending increase is actually HIGHER), but that's because we havn't been stupid enough to heavily depress the economy since Carter's term. This is not a "Republican" thing, it is a fiscal lesson we learned from having to endure the 1970s.
This has already been done.
One of the earliest Word macro viruses were the Wazoo variants. It would randomly replace words in documents with "Wazoo", and infect other documents opened after the infected one.
It's not hard to imagine something less obvious and more nefarious already in circulation...we had enough trouble noticing something as obvious as Wazoo...
Right, storage space is cheap, it's the bandwidth that is scarce, even on a well-tuned fiber network.
Of course, in the end the bandwidth is easy to provide because:
1. The majority of your customers subscribe to internet, so you already have to provide a 3 Mbit pipe to them.
2. The vast majority of your internet customers won't be using their internet connection while watching VoD...so even if the stream is 2 Mbit, you're not pushing your internal network bandwidth needs even when you take into account the odd man out.
It's a smart move by the cable companies, it's simple to implement, leverages all the upgrades they've made to their networks in the past decade, and it even challenges the DVR market - some people might not buy a DVR if they can watch all the Sopranos episodes on-demand.
Probably not. If it's like most VGA-derrivative monitors with proprietary connectors, the signal is RGB with sync-on-green.
"Component" video as consumers know it is in "YPbPr" format. One channel contains luminance, and the other two describe colors. You'd need some sort of converter that outputs RGB with sync-on-green.