As a small test, I ran up Quake 3 on it's highest settings, and had it play back a reasonably heavy demo. Now, Quake3 isn't the most modern of games, but it can still peg a CPU at 100%. Then, I found the latency to my router.
Pinging 192.168.0.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=255 Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=255 Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=255
Assuming this product entirely eliminates all latency on the first hop (impossible), that's a net gain of 1ms.
The entire concept of these FNApps also strikes me as a route to evil; I heard a subtext of "Now, even the most clueless Windows gamer with too much money can run packet scanning cheating tools with no chance of detection!".
I'm placing this one firmly in the "Snake oil" bin, based on this interview.
Why's this pathetic? Is being a PGA instructor pathetic? After all, knowing the optimum golf club for a shot, or how to correctly use a 3-wood is useless away from golf.
Some people enjoy their leisure activities more if they're good at them (especially when the activity is competitive). Stands to reason the market would provide facilities to help people improve. I wouldn't spend my money on something like this, but I'm not going to disparage the people that do.
I had my staff send me several spare Internets in case the big telcos broke this one. I've plenty of them stored in the basement now so if anyone needs one, I'll Fedex it over for a reasonable price.
This was obvious from day one. In any deployment of software there will be bugs, and I've read plenty of incidents of WGA not recognising valid installations (or people using invalid keys for valid purchases). Even if the failure rate was 0.001%, that's still thousands of machines "killed" incorrectly. If just one of these happened to be a prominent journalist, IT decision maker or similar, the fallout for MS would be far worse than anything they'd gain by the action.
So, another hyped story killed with a modicum of common sense (and I'm certainly not the first to point this out). I thought IT communities were meant to be filled with rational people?
Well, this sort of "test" has already happened, albeit not on the scale of SWG. Turbines "Asheron's Call" was one of the first handleful of MMORPGs on the market (and is still my favorite). It didn't do as well as EQ, but at it's peak had plenty of subscribers (over 20,000 playing concurrently).
It was pretty complex, with deep monthly storylines, a difficult research based spell system, non class based (you could choose your skills and XP spend from a list of dozens of "skills" to make your own class) and a *huge* world (bigger than anything I've seen since). Some people loved it, some people didn't.
So, when it came time to make the sequel, what did they do? Entirely dropped the complexity and "difficulty", and made an EQ clone, but not as well as EQ. Replaced the "build your own class" with fixed classes, XP spend replaced by skill points - hell, you couldn't even go inside the buildings, and there were no real NPCs!
Result? It tanked. Virtually noone who liked AC liked AC2, and so they didn't get many players (and indeed, insulted the customers they already had in the franchise). Noone who didn't like AC would look at AC2 because, well, it was AC! The last time I checked, the game was scheduled to be shut down this Christmas, whilst the original is still going (if not really going "strong", due to age).
The moral of the story seems to be - once you have a customer base, you have to listen to them. If you don't like what they're telling you, rather than ignore them and carry on anyway, create *an entirely new franchise and game* and so build a new customer base. Anything else leads to distrust and failure.
How will we ever do without the US's vaunted, impeccable integrity running the Internet? You know, the vaunted US integrity displayed by their invasion of a sovereign country under false pretences? Or the great work they've done in helping combating racial poverty in their communities? Or the work of their high ranking politicians? Or their work in preventing the spread of fatal disease in Africa?
How can we possibly be safe without the US controlling the Internet?
"We moved the Halo 2 date out to November, and people said 'oh, I expected it in April, this is a travesty, it's disastrous!' No, it's the best game that's ever been created, and we were glad that we waited and didn't rush it out"
"It's the best game that's ever been created"? I'm sorry, but your credibility just dropped to 0. I've played it, and it's a good game, but I can name 10 games I certainly enjoyed more off the top of my head (Hmm, Zelda : OOT, Goldeneye, WoW, Ico, SM 64, KOTOR just to pick some at random). I doubt you'll find any actual game critics who would name it in their top 5, let alone their favorite ever game (we are *not* counting single platform "unbiased" magazines/fansites that only cover Xbox). Hell, the rather unreliable Gamerankings doesn't even have it in their top 10.
The best PR requires at least a modicum of truth. Total out and out bullshit makes you look like an idiot Mr Allard, and I stopped reading your interview right there.
Ah, but the term "blog" has become corrupted via the vast tracts of 14 year olds talking about their teen angst (at least to me, and many I speak to). They're welcome to the term - I've never much liked the fad that something's not popular until someone gives it a stupid sounding name (AJAX anyone?).
The terminological tainting is, sadly, very common and is something I've come to accept. I can't call myself a "hacker" anymore without getting into a semantic argument. I've not got the energy to keep correcting people, so I mostly now just steer clear of the whole thing and use more formal terms.
(Also, your comment was interesting, yet hid below my threshold because you posted AC. Login and participate properly!:)
I maintain a site run via WordPress, that publishes an RSS feed. However, I don't use it to write about my (uninteresting to most of the universe) day to day life. Rather, I write semi-technical articles about subjects people might be interested in.
No doubt this is lumped in with the "blogs". However, it's just an extension of what I've done for years, but now I don't have to write static HTML pages and FTP them around. I using weblog software as a content management system and RSS to let people know when I've "published" something. Comments on the system allow me to get feedback and questions that everyone can see, rather than have me privately answer the same thing 10 times from my Inbox.
I would state that this categorically isn't a "blog", just a more useful incarnation of what people have been putting on the web for years. I'm pretty sure many other "blogs" are like mine (heck, looking at my RSS list, 99% will be better).
The internet has always been full of garbage (or, more PC'ly, "stuff I'm not interested in"). Just ignore it if you don't like it, and focus on the stuff you do like.
Now I can watch movie clips, read news AND listen to music using my mobile phone. However, every second voice conversation will still run to the lines of "Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Is this better? Yes? OK...wait, I've lost you. Can you hear me? CAN YOU? I'll call you back. I'LL CALL YOU BACK".
Fix your damned voice communications before you introduce more junk into handsets. I have a perfectly good MP3 player, but I still lack a useful phone!
DisplayPort is expected to accelerate adoption of protected digital outputs on PCs to support viewing high definition and other types of protected content
Because as we know, every consumer loves paying for new technology, the main purpose of which is to remove features they already have! Though saying that, 99% of media purchasers will no doubt think that giving away rights is a fair compromise for not having to use an audio *and* video cable.
Slightly off topic, but nonetheless important. I too wanted a new Powerbook, but decided not to wait for Tiger. I wish I had now. On Tuesday, my 3rd attempt at getting a suitable one is going back, and I'm getting a refund.
Powerbook 1) Dead pixels, screen not flush with case when closed, causing problems with the latch. Replaced by...
Powerbook 2) Trackpad vertical motion about 10 times slower than horizontal motion. Sometimes took 7 or 8 full sweeps to get from the top of the screen to the bottom. Replaced by...
Powerbook 3) Literally bent. Wobbles when placed on a flat desk. Returning to Apple for a refund.
I'm not alone in these problems - many sites have documented the trackpad issues, and the Apple Discussion forums have lots of posts about the fit/finish problems. I too had a post there, until it was deleted by a moderator for being "off topic". Strange how a quality issue can be off topic in a technical forum, when posts about Apples latest "Computers for Schools" programs are not.
So, be warned - The new Powerbooks are not perfect, by a long way. Apple hardware quality has just dropped a massive amount in my eyes, and I though I'm currently waiting a month to see if they fix these issues, I'm very tempted not to bother with them again.
One widely rumoured defence against Microsoft has been a Google web browser potentially countering the software giant's ability to embed its own search engine into its operating system. "We are not building a browser," Mr Schmidt said.
Actually, even though ID open sources the engines (yay!), they do NOT open or release the assets for free. So the levels, textures, etc remain copyright ID software, and you have to buy a copy of the original game to use them.
This seems fair, as they continue to make money off the actual games (Think Gameboy Doom ports, PSX Quake ports), whilst the engines are now commercially unviable.
But here, in the UK, its actually doing pretty well. Hell, I get all my heavy goods (beer, cans, pet food) from the web. Save the shopping list, once every 2 months, just wack a button, enter credit card details, pay the 5 delivery (less than the fuel/parking costs) and it turns up the following evening.
Whilst funny, Mario Monti is the Competition Commissioner for the EU (European Union), whilst Annan is from the UN (United Nations). They are not, even remotely, the same thing.
Far more likely that one of the developers bought/was given an iPod. Nothing like experiencing the problem first hand to motive a programmer to provide a (decent) solution:)
All I want is the iTunes music store in the UK. My new 40G iPod is reading, meerly 2gig full. My credit card is ready, my bank account is ready. I've got enough of a buy list to spend 100 in 30 seconds.
iTunes 4.2 allows you to sign in and buy music from the iTunes Music Store using either your AOL or Apple Account, view the iTunes Music Store in a separate window, and includes a number of performance improvements.
(And yes, that really was the extent of the changes listed in the help and readme after I downloaded it).
Slashdot Mirror
As a small test, I ran up Quake 3 on it's highest settings, and had it play back a reasonably heavy demo. Now, Quake3 isn't the most modern of games, but it can still peg a CPU at 100%. Then, I found the latency to my router.
Pinging 192.168.0.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=255
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=255
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=255
Assuming this product entirely eliminates all latency on the first hop (impossible), that's a net gain of 1ms.
The entire concept of these FNApps also strikes me as a route to evil; I heard a subtext of "Now, even the most clueless Windows gamer with too much money can run packet scanning cheating tools with no chance of detection!".
I'm placing this one firmly in the "Snake oil" bin, based on this interview.
A more complete set of the promotional images is available at http://guides.macrumors.com/Leopard
Why's this pathetic? Is being a PGA instructor pathetic? After all, knowing the optimum golf club for a shot, or how to correctly use a 3-wood is useless away from golf.
Some people enjoy their leisure activities more if they're good at them (especially when the activity is competitive). Stands to reason the market would provide facilities to help people improve. I wouldn't spend my money on something like this, but I'm not going to disparage the people that do.
I had my staff send me several spare Internets in case the big telcos broke this one. I've plenty of them stored in the basement now so if anyone needs one, I'll Fedex it over for a reasonable price.
See, there's no reason to worry!
This was obvious from day one. In any deployment of software there will be bugs, and I've read plenty of incidents of WGA not recognising valid installations (or people using invalid keys for valid purchases). Even if the failure rate was 0.001%, that's still thousands of machines "killed" incorrectly. If just one of these happened to be a prominent journalist, IT decision maker or similar, the fallout for MS would be far worse than anything they'd gain by the action.
So, another hyped story killed with a modicum of common sense (and I'm certainly not the first to point this out). I thought IT communities were meant to be filled with rational people?
"Buy Windows Vista - It's not so bad!"
;)
I wonder when Slashdot get's their creative fee?
Given the generally awful text input systems on mobile devices, why create a TLD that is four characters long? It's still easier to type .com!
FYI, Blake's 7 is in there, under "Blake's Seven". See http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/infax/series/BLAKE 'S+SEVEN.
I guess their search engine need some more work.
Well, this sort of "test" has already happened, albeit not on the scale of SWG. Turbines "Asheron's Call" was one of the first handleful of MMORPGs on the market (and is still my favorite). It didn't do as well as EQ, but at it's peak had plenty of subscribers (over 20,000 playing concurrently).
It was pretty complex, with deep monthly storylines, a difficult research based spell system, non class based (you could choose your skills and XP spend from a list of dozens of "skills" to make your own class) and a *huge* world (bigger than anything I've seen since). Some people loved it, some people didn't.
So, when it came time to make the sequel, what did they do? Entirely dropped the complexity and "difficulty", and made an EQ clone, but not as well as EQ. Replaced the "build your own class" with fixed classes, XP spend replaced by skill points - hell, you couldn't even go inside the buildings, and there were no real NPCs!
Result? It tanked. Virtually noone who liked AC liked AC2, and so they didn't get many players (and indeed, insulted the customers they already had in the franchise). Noone who didn't like AC would look at AC2 because, well, it was AC! The last time I checked, the game was scheduled to be shut down this Christmas, whilst the original is still going (if not really going "strong", due to age).
The moral of the story seems to be - once you have a customer base, you have to listen to them. If you don't like what they're telling you, rather than ignore them and carry on anyway, create *an entirely new franchise and game* and so build a new customer base. Anything else leads to distrust and failure.
How will we ever do without the US's vaunted, impeccable integrity running the Internet? You know, the vaunted US integrity displayed by their invasion of a sovereign country under false pretences? Or the great work they've done in helping combating racial poverty in their communities? Or the work of their high ranking politicians? Or their work in preventing the spread of fatal disease in Africa?
How can we possibly be safe without the US controlling the Internet?
"It's the best game that's ever been created"? I'm sorry, but your credibility just dropped to 0. I've played it, and it's a good game, but I can name 10 games I certainly enjoyed more off the top of my head (Hmm, Zelda : OOT, Goldeneye, WoW, Ico, SM 64, KOTOR just to pick some at random). I doubt you'll find any actual game critics who would name it in their top 5, let alone their favorite ever game (we are *not* counting single platform "unbiased" magazines/fansites that only cover Xbox). Hell, the rather unreliable Gamerankings doesn't even have it in their top 10.
The best PR requires at least a modicum of truth. Total out and out bullshit makes you look like an idiot Mr Allard, and I stopped reading your interview right there.
Remember, this is an EA published game. All those people who posted that they've never give EA another cent in the "EA are Evil" stories (eg http://games.slashdot.org/games/04/11/11/0031259.s html?tid=98&tid=10) can look, but they can't touch!
Ah, but the term "blog" has become corrupted via the vast tracts of 14 year olds talking about their teen angst (at least to me, and many I speak to). They're welcome to the term - I've never much liked the fad that something's not popular until someone gives it a stupid sounding name (AJAX anyone?).
:)
The terminological tainting is, sadly, very common and is something I've come to accept. I can't call myself a "hacker" anymore without getting into a semantic argument. I've not got the energy to keep correcting people, so I mostly now just steer clear of the whole thing and use more formal terms.
(Also, your comment was interesting, yet hid below my threshold because you posted AC. Login and participate properly!
I maintain a site run via WordPress, that publishes an RSS feed. However, I don't use it to write about my (uninteresting to most of the universe) day to day life. Rather, I write semi-technical articles about subjects people might be interested in.
No doubt this is lumped in with the "blogs". However, it's just an extension of what I've done for years, but now I don't have to write static HTML pages and FTP them around. I using weblog software as a content management system and RSS to let people know when I've "published" something. Comments on the system allow me to get feedback and questions that everyone can see, rather than have me privately answer the same thing 10 times from my Inbox.
I would state that this categorically isn't a "blog", just a more useful incarnation of what people have been putting on the web for years. I'm pretty sure many other "blogs" are like mine (heck, looking at my RSS list, 99% will be better).
The internet has always been full of garbage (or, more PC'ly, "stuff I'm not interested in"). Just ignore it if you don't like it, and focus on the stuff you do like.
Now I can watch movie clips, read news AND listen to music using my mobile phone. However, every second voice conversation will still run to the lines of "Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Is this better? Yes? OK...wait, I've lost you. Can you hear me? CAN YOU? I'll call you back. I'LL CALL YOU BACK".
Fix your damned voice communications before you introduce more junk into handsets. I have a perfectly good MP3 player, but I still lack a useful phone!
Because as we know, every consumer loves paying for new technology, the main purpose of which is to remove features they already have! Though saying that, 99% of media purchasers will no doubt think that giving away rights is a fair compromise for not having to use an audio *and* video cable.
Slightly off topic, but nonetheless important. I too wanted a new Powerbook, but decided not to wait for Tiger. I wish I had now. On Tuesday, my 3rd attempt at getting a suitable one is going back, and I'm getting a refund.
Powerbook 1) Dead pixels, screen not flush with case when closed, causing problems with the latch. Replaced by...
Powerbook 2) Trackpad vertical motion about 10 times slower than horizontal motion. Sometimes took 7 or 8 full sweeps to get from the top of the screen to the bottom. Replaced by...
Powerbook 3) Literally bent. Wobbles when placed on a flat desk. Returning to Apple for a refund.
I'm not alone in these problems - many sites have documented the trackpad issues, and the Apple Discussion forums have lots of posts about the fit/finish problems. I too had a post there, until it was deleted by a moderator for being "off topic". Strange how a quality issue can be off topic in a technical forum, when posts about Apples latest "Computers for Schools" programs are not.
So, be warned - The new Powerbooks are not perfect, by a long way. Apple hardware quality has just dropped a massive amount in my eyes, and I though I'm currently waiting a month to see if they fix these issues, I'm very tempted not to bother with them again.
adamw
Specifically
Actually, even though ID open sources the engines (yay!), they do NOT open or release the assets for free. So the levels, textures, etc remain copyright ID software, and you have to buy a copy of the original game to use them.
This seems fair, as they continue to make money off the actual games (Think Gameboy Doom ports, PSX Quake ports), whilst the engines are now commercially unviable.
Except that if they used a DRM free format, they'd have 100% of the market. But then, the evil pirates might steal their songs!!!
Oh wait, they do already, from the vastly more popular CD format.
But here, in the UK, its actually doing pretty well. Hell, I get all my heavy goods (beer, cans, pet food) from the web. Save the shopping list, once every 2 months, just wack a button, enter credit card details, pay the 5 delivery (less than the fuel/parking costs) and it turns up the following evening.
Whilst funny, Mario Monti is the Competition Commissioner for the EU (European Union), whilst Annan is from the UN (United Nations). They are not, even remotely, the same thing.
Far more likely that one of the developers bought/was given an iPod. Nothing like experiencing the problem first hand to motive a programmer to provide a (decent) solution :)
All I want is the iTunes music store in the UK. My new 40G iPod is reading, meerly 2gig full. My credit card is ready, my bank account is ready. I've got enough of a buy list to spend 100 in 30 seconds.
So where the hell's the store!?
What's new in iTunes 4.2
iTunes 4.2 allows you to sign in and buy music from the iTunes Music Store using either your AOL or Apple Account, view the iTunes Music Store in a separate window, and includes a number of performance improvements.
(And yes, that really was the extent of the changes listed in the help and readme after I downloaded it).