$500 in the 50s and $3000 now, that is actually a deprecation in value.
Adjusted for inflation, what cost $500 in the 50s costs $3875 today. If it is worth $3000 today, then it has lost about 22% of it's value.
In other words, there is no gain, there is actually a significant loss. Of course, I don't know how the tax system works in the US, perhaps they tax inflation gains too.
The article claims 57MB/s read, 32MB/s write. That is significantly faster than a 7200RPM notebook drive in both read and write. And the flash memory fits into 1.8" formfactor, not the 2.5" 7200RPM notebook drive I'm referring to. Impressive.
Your 100ma figure is from 14 years ago, I hardly think it is valid today. Besides, 100ma is still better than current HDDs.
I have only two concerns about these news drives. First, cost, since even 4GB is prohibitively expensive today (Only affordable way to get some is to buy an MP3 player and crack it open). 16GB would cost more than the laptop you put it in, unless Samsung drops the price to something reasonable.
My second concern is reliability. Traditionally, as you mentioned, flash memory dies after a certain number of operations. Hopefully Samsung is using a newer type of flash memory that has a high enough limit that it doesn't matter.
That said, if it's not too expensive and the reliability is there, I don't see why I wouldn't switch to it. Faster than my notebook's 60GB 7200RPM drive, probably way lower seek times, lower power, and zero noise. Can't go wrong.
So in, say, 5 or so years when these things come in reasonable capacity, I would consider it.
The problem wasn't the torrents, the problem was the server was so swamped they couldn't publish the torrent files (and the URLs to them), or send out the newsletter with the torrent file URLs.
As for the content, nobody is forcing you to watch it, but your obvious lack of understanding of how BitTorrent works shows me that Systm would have been way over your head anyhow.
Gee, thanks for posting about this on the front page of Slashdot. Whereas before, those of us who cared enough to be on the mailing list were going to download the first episode tonight. Now that it's slashdotted, nobody is going to get the first episode tonight.
Slashdot didn't even have the courtesy to run their links through the Coral CDN. Nice.
There have been services like this around for years. When I got a new cell phone a few months ago it came with advertising for just such a service, and I had heard about such services ages before that.
It was what was stated in the news post, which considering that the site was slashdotted at the time, was the only source of info.
It would appear Slashdot made a factual error. Take it out on them, not me.
Re:No such thing as "geostationary orbit over the
on
No Billboards in Space
·
· Score: 1
Do you honestly think that a 100GW satellite, which would have to have a surface area of about a hundred billion meters, would only cost $100B? You're on crack. Sending stuff into space isn't cheap, and sending a hundred billion meters of solar panel into space and assembling it would cost trillions and trillions of dollars.
Re:No such thing as "geostationary orbit over the
on
No Billboards in Space
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Likewise, a lot of satellites never pass directly over US soil, but could still appear as large as the Moon to Americans. That's virtually impossible. If my math is right, an advertisement in geosynchronous orbit would have to be about 325km accross in order to be the same size as the moon. Since it'd have to be at least semi-ridged (and assuming it was square), the cost of building a sign with a surface area of 105625 square kilometers would be enormous.
If parents can't afford broadband because they're spending it all feeding themselves, the entire discussion is moot as they are unlikely to be able to afford an expensive game console and games, and even then, if they bought it used, they would probably see additional controllers or a TV large enough to play multiplayer mode as a luxury.
If parents are avoiding broadband because they are afraid of porn, they have much more serious problems in their parenting that should take precedence over a discussion over gaming in their household.
All your arguments seem to revolve around the fact that, because a minority of game purchasers fit a certain profile, the rest of the purchasing public must also be the same, and therefore any product that can't be purchased by that minority will fail.
Yes, a game similar to Mario Party could easily have been made on a PC platform. First of all, there is the internet for multiplayer gaming. Second of all, Nintendo ported Mario Party to handhelds just fine by turning it into a single player game (Nobody said every game had to be multiplayer). And of course, fighting games DO have single player modes.
Are there types of games that don't work on PC? Very likely. But there are, of course, some games that wouldn't have made the transition very well. However there are plenty of games that do work well on PC, and many of them are rated E. In fact, "Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates", which was just mentioned on Slashdot is very likely an E rated game (I can't find it's rating anywhere, but I think it's a safe bet), and has received great reviews. Here is this little company who started out with a low-budget online game, and is now taking it commercial due to it's phenomenal success. Not bad for an E rated multiplayer PC game.
No, most families have PC, singular, that children can stand in line to play games on. The PC isn't well suited to multiplayer on the same screen.
What is this, a grammar lesson? If I say "Nearly all elephants have trunks.", does that mean that elephants have more than one trunk?
Apparently you've never heard of a little thing called "taking turns". Let me explain how it works. Say you have a group of people who want to do the same thing, but only one can do it at a time. Well, what you do is have ONE person do it for a while, and then, and here is the tricky part, they let ANOTHER person do it for a while! I know, I know, it's hard for you to believe, but trust me, it works.
I suggest you visit the local videogame store and take a closs look at all the E rated games. They should prove to you that games targeted to those under 18 can be popular despite what you seem to think are the PC's showstopping flaws.
Does this mean that if the games that investors like make me vomit, then I should not work in the video game industry?
No, it means that you are free to vomit as much as you please while most of the rest of the industry ignores you as a deviant. Just make sure that you vomit all over your own office, I'm sure most of the rest of the industry doesn't like stepping in your vomit in their offices.
That's not what I'm implying. What I'm saying is that if making an E rated game is not possible, you may have to make an M rated game. But you haven't presented any reason why you couldn't make a low-budget E-rated game other than PCs being expensive.
You're wrong of course, since not only are there PCs out there that cost less than the $400 that new consoles can cost, but most families already have PCs that children can play games on. It is a poor assumption that every parant buying a game for their child must also purchase a computer.
This is how it goes in the videogame industry. As a company starting out, you have one or more games that you'd really like to make, but you have to make the game that investors want, or that you have the money to make. And then, with a successful game under your belt, and cash in your pocket, you can make the game you want.
I would also point out that what does and doesn't offend YOU is totally irrelevant to the way the videogame market works.
There are plenty of blockbuster M-rated PC games. Who said anything about children?
If you really want to make a console game, but don't have the budget, but know you can make a good game, there is an option. Make a good PC game, use the money that game produces to make a console game.
Sometimes you don't get to make the game you wanted, sometimes you have to make a game that will make money to finance the game you want to make.
Easy. Do a PC game, and if it's successful, you will have ample opportunity to not only port that game to consoles, but to develop new games for consoles.
One could argue that this Agetec is doing the exact same thing: treating women as objects, and drawing attention away from games. If they want to protest boothbabes, this is not the way to do it.
Let's not forget that this is very likely a marketing ploy. Just think, a company that normally might not get much if any coverage or press, suddenly is the centre of attention due to their, and let's call this what it is, their marketing campaign.
Oh, let's not forget that they're being particularly demeaning to women by hiring them on the sole basis of how ugly they are. What a wonderful boost of self-confidence for these women.
"Congradulations! You are one of the ten ugliest people out of the thousands that applied!"
The quality bar is going to be raised. Someone is going to spend $20 million or $30 million or $40 million, and the rest of us who don't have deep pockets like that are going to have to find some way to compete.
Half-Life 2 cost $40 million to make, and is arguably one of the best single player games ever made. It looks to me like the bar is already set, and at $40 million to boot. The person quoted in the article better FIND some deep pockets.
That said, a game doesn't have to cost that much to become popular. There are a few mods out there that are more popular than a lot of "blockbuster" games, and yet cost almost nothing to make. The trick seems to be making your first game low-budget as a startup company, and then using the proceeds from that to fund a big-budget followup.
Not only did the "pro" chips not add any functionality in most cases (This is starting to change, see the Sempron), but this release snubs people who chose a lower-cost "pro" CPU over a higher-cost "budget" CPU.
What I mean is, what if somebody buys the slowest P4 they can find and it ends up being cheaper than the fastest Celeron? Obviously the P4 purchased is a budget CPU in this case!
I do play other game modes, but I had found that UT2K4 assault just didn't have the same feel to it as UT99's assault did. It was amusing, but I felt it just didn't compare.
I've also played a lot of invasion-RPG, which is quite fun (I actually host a server for it, managed by someone else).
However I haven't really tried very many third party assault maps. I'll have to give the S7 series a try.
It seems like they plan to regulate the pricing by setting a minimum price that the companies must charge. But how will this affect small companies that can legitimately offer a lower rate through better technology, such as, perhaps, Skype?
Unless you only mean faster in pure Hz, which is a meaningless comparison.
The chips in the 360 are weaker but clocked higher. It will be at or just below desktop performance if only dual core systems are out by the end of the year. But why? To me it looks like each core is essentially a PPC970, but with the ability to execute two threads at the same time (a la HyperThreading). So if anything it would be faster, no?
The GPU is a bit more up in the air. I hear NVidia is working hard to release a desktop chip around the time the new xbox is released that will make the ATI gpu look like nothing special - there is some lingering bitterness at NVidia over the dust up over the xbox pricing dispute... I would suspect nVidia is aiming to compete with ATI's desktop version of the R520 (which will be in the 360), since it should be out in ballpark the same timeframe as the 360.
I don't much care who has the faster graphics card. If nVidia can put out a faster card, power to them! Competition breeds innovation, which can only be good for us. However I'm wary of such claims from nVidia after the NV30. They claimed it would be twice as fast as the Radeon 9700, and would be available right after the 9700's release. Instead, it ended up being slower than the 9700, and came out more than 6 months later.
Since I was saving up and waiting for the NV30, when it's benchmarks came out I was a bit ticked off and just bought a 9700. Since then I've been wary about such claims from both companies.
So while I do hope nVidia has a chip out that is faster than the X800, I'll believe it when I see the benchmarks.
It was, but it was never amazing hardware (The CPU wasn't anyway, the GPU was nice at the time). It was just a good deal for what you are getting.
The XB360 looks like it will be FASTER than any desktop, but at a console-like pricepoint. And while this wouldn't matter to anybody who wanted the XB360 for Linux, but as a console it's GPU is loads faster than ATI/nVidia's fastest. I suspect that the XB360 might launch at about the same time or after ATI's new desktop part based on the same core, however.
Slashdot Mirror
$500 in the 50s and $3000 now, that is actually a deprecation in value.
Adjusted for inflation, what cost $500 in the 50s costs $3875 today. If it is worth $3000 today, then it has lost about 22% of it's value.
In other words, there is no gain, there is actually a significant loss. Of course, I don't know how the tax system works in the US, perhaps they tax inflation gains too.
The article claims 57MB/s read, 32MB/s write. That is significantly faster than a 7200RPM notebook drive in both read and write. And the flash memory fits into 1.8" formfactor, not the 2.5" 7200RPM notebook drive I'm referring to. Impressive.
Your 100ma figure is from 14 years ago, I hardly think it is valid today. Besides, 100ma is still better than current HDDs.
I have only two concerns about these news drives. First, cost, since even 4GB is prohibitively expensive today (Only affordable way to get some is to buy an MP3 player and crack it open). 16GB would cost more than the laptop you put it in, unless Samsung drops the price to something reasonable.
My second concern is reliability. Traditionally, as you mentioned, flash memory dies after a certain number of operations. Hopefully Samsung is using a newer type of flash memory that has a high enough limit that it doesn't matter.
That said, if it's not too expensive and the reliability is there, I don't see why I wouldn't switch to it. Faster than my notebook's 60GB 7200RPM drive, probably way lower seek times, lower power, and zero noise. Can't go wrong.
So in, say, 5 or so years when these things come in reasonable capacity, I would consider it.
The problem wasn't the torrents, the problem was the server was so swamped they couldn't publish the torrent files (and the URLs to them), or send out the newsletter with the torrent file URLs.
As for the content, nobody is forcing you to watch it, but your obvious lack of understanding of how BitTorrent works shows me that Systm would have been way over your head anyhow.
Indeed, the slashdotting only delayed them until they could get up a static HTML frontpage to take the load.
Still, Slashdot could have behaved better. Coralizing the links would have prevented the initial slashdotting in the first place.
Gee, thanks for posting about this on the front page of Slashdot. Whereas before, those of us who cared enough to be on the mailing list were going to download the first episode tonight. Now that it's slashdotted, nobody is going to get the first episode tonight.
Slashdot didn't even have the courtesy to run their links through the Coral CDN. Nice.
There have been services like this around for years. When I got a new cell phone a few months ago it came with advertising for just such a service, and I had heard about such services ages before that.
It was what was stated in the news post, which considering that the site was slashdotted at the time, was the only source of info.
It would appear Slashdot made a factual error. Take it out on them, not me.
Do you honestly think that a 100GW satellite, which would have to have a surface area of about a hundred billion meters, would only cost $100B? You're on crack. Sending stuff into space isn't cheap, and sending a hundred billion meters of solar panel into space and assembling it would cost trillions and trillions of dollars.
Likewise, a lot of satellites never pass directly over US soil, but could still appear as large as the Moon to Americans.
That's virtually impossible. If my math is right, an advertisement in geosynchronous orbit would have to be about 325km accross in order to be the same size as the moon. Since it'd have to be at least semi-ridged (and assuming it was square), the cost of building a sign with a surface area of 105625 square kilometers would be enormous.
If parents can't afford broadband because they're spending it all feeding themselves, the entire discussion is moot as they are unlikely to be able to afford an expensive game console and games, and even then, if they bought it used, they would probably see additional controllers or a TV large enough to play multiplayer mode as a luxury.
If parents are avoiding broadband because they are afraid of porn, they have much more serious problems in their parenting that should take precedence over a discussion over gaming in their household.
All your arguments seem to revolve around the fact that, because a minority of game purchasers fit a certain profile, the rest of the purchasing public must also be the same, and therefore any product that can't be purchased by that minority will fail.
Yes, a game similar to Mario Party could easily have been made on a PC platform. First of all, there is the internet for multiplayer gaming. Second of all, Nintendo ported Mario Party to handhelds just fine by turning it into a single player game (Nobody said every game had to be multiplayer). And of course, fighting games DO have single player modes.
Are there types of games that don't work on PC? Very likely. But there are, of course, some games that wouldn't have made the transition very well. However there are plenty of games that do work well on PC, and many of them are rated E. In fact, "Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates", which was just mentioned on Slashdot is very likely an E rated game (I can't find it's rating anywhere, but I think it's a safe bet), and has received great reviews. Here is this little company who started out with a low-budget online game, and is now taking it commercial due to it's phenomenal success. Not bad for an E rated multiplayer PC game.
No, most families have PC, singular, that children can stand in line to play games on. The PC isn't well suited to multiplayer on the same screen.
What is this, a grammar lesson? If I say "Nearly all elephants have trunks.", does that mean that elephants have more than one trunk?
Apparently you've never heard of a little thing called "taking turns". Let me explain how it works. Say you have a group of people who want to do the same thing, but only one can do it at a time. Well, what you do is have ONE person do it for a while, and then, and here is the tricky part, they let ANOTHER person do it for a while! I know, I know, it's hard for you to believe, but trust me, it works.
I suggest you visit the local videogame store and take a closs look at all the E rated games. They should prove to you that games targeted to those under 18 can be popular despite what you seem to think are the PC's showstopping flaws.
Does this mean that if the games that investors like make me vomit, then I should not work in the video game industry?
No, it means that you are free to vomit as much as you please while most of the rest of the industry ignores you as a deviant. Just make sure that you vomit all over your own office, I'm sure most of the rest of the industry doesn't like stepping in your vomit in their offices.
That's not what I'm implying. What I'm saying is that if making an E rated game is not possible, you may have to make an M rated game. But you haven't presented any reason why you couldn't make a low-budget E-rated game other than PCs being expensive.
You're wrong of course, since not only are there PCs out there that cost less than the $400 that new consoles can cost, but most families already have PCs that children can play games on. It is a poor assumption that every parant buying a game for their child must also purchase a computer.
This is how it goes in the videogame industry. As a company starting out, you have one or more games that you'd really like to make, but you have to make the game that investors want, or that you have the money to make. And then, with a successful game under your belt, and cash in your pocket, you can make the game you want.
I would also point out that what does and doesn't offend YOU is totally irrelevant to the way the videogame market works.
There are plenty of blockbuster M-rated PC games. Who said anything about children?
If you really want to make a console game, but don't have the budget, but know you can make a good game, there is an option. Make a good PC game, use the money that game produces to make a console game.
Sometimes you don't get to make the game you wanted, sometimes you have to make a game that will make money to finance the game you want to make.
I understand that the XBox 360 will not ship with a standalone browser, so no WebTV functionality.
Google bumped GMail up to 2GB when other companies started offering 1GB. What do you want to bet that Google will now bump it up to 3GB?
Easy. Do a PC game, and if it's successful, you will have ample opportunity to not only port that game to consoles, but to develop new games for consoles.
One could argue that this Agetec is doing the exact same thing: treating women as objects, and drawing attention away from games. If they want to protest boothbabes, this is not the way to do it.
Let's not forget that this is very likely a marketing ploy. Just think, a company that normally might not get much if any coverage or press, suddenly is the centre of attention due to their, and let's call this what it is, their marketing campaign.
Oh, let's not forget that they're being particularly demeaning to women by hiring them on the sole basis of how ugly they are. What a wonderful boost of self-confidence for these women.
"Congradulations! You are one of the ten ugliest people out of the thousands that applied!"
The quality bar is going to be raised. Someone is going to spend $20 million or $30 million or $40 million, and the rest of us who don't have deep pockets like that are going to have to find some way to compete.
Half-Life 2 cost $40 million to make, and is arguably one of the best single player games ever made. It looks to me like the bar is already set, and at $40 million to boot. The person quoted in the article better FIND some deep pockets.
That said, a game doesn't have to cost that much to become popular. There are a few mods out there that are more popular than a lot of "blockbuster" games, and yet cost almost nothing to make. The trick seems to be making your first game low-budget as a startup company, and then using the proceeds from that to fund a big-budget followup.
Not only did the "pro" chips not add any functionality in most cases (This is starting to change, see the Sempron), but this release snubs people who chose a lower-cost "pro" CPU over a higher-cost "budget" CPU.
What I mean is, what if somebody buys the slowest P4 they can find and it ends up being cheaper than the fastest Celeron? Obviously the P4 purchased is a budget CPU in this case!
Working fine for me, but then again, maybe it's just Google Web Accelerator doing it's thing.
I do play other game modes, but I had found that UT2K4 assault just didn't have the same feel to it as UT99's assault did. It was amusing, but I felt it just didn't compare.
I've also played a lot of invasion-RPG, which is quite fun (I actually host a server for it, managed by someone else).
However I haven't really tried very many third party assault maps. I'll have to give the S7 series a try.
It seems like they plan to regulate the pricing by setting a minimum price that the companies must charge. But how will this affect small companies that can legitimately offer a lower rate through better technology, such as, perhaps, Skype?
Nope.
Unless you only mean faster in pure Hz, which is a meaningless comparison.
The chips in the 360 are weaker but clocked higher. It will be at or just below desktop performance if only dual core systems are out by the end of the year.
But why? To me it looks like each core is essentially a PPC970, but with the ability to execute two threads at the same time (a la HyperThreading). So if anything it would be faster, no?
The GPU is a bit more up in the air. I hear NVidia is working hard to release a desktop chip around the time the new xbox is released that will make the ATI gpu look like nothing special - there is some lingering bitterness at NVidia over the dust up over the xbox pricing dispute...
I would suspect nVidia is aiming to compete with ATI's desktop version of the R520 (which will be in the 360), since it should be out in ballpark the same timeframe as the 360.
I don't much care who has the faster graphics card. If nVidia can put out a faster card, power to them! Competition breeds innovation, which can only be good for us. However I'm wary of such claims from nVidia after the NV30. They claimed it would be twice as fast as the Radeon 9700, and would be available right after the 9700's release. Instead, it ended up being slower than the 9700, and came out more than 6 months later.
Since I was saving up and waiting for the NV30, when it's benchmarks came out I was a bit ticked off and just bought a 9700. Since then I've been wary about such claims from both companies.
So while I do hope nVidia has a chip out that is faster than the X800, I'll believe it when I see the benchmarks.
It was, but it was never amazing hardware (The CPU wasn't anyway, the GPU was nice at the time). It was just a good deal for what you are getting.
The XB360 looks like it will be FASTER than any desktop, but at a console-like pricepoint. And while this wouldn't matter to anybody who wanted the XB360 for Linux, but as a console it's GPU is loads faster than ATI/nVidia's fastest. I suspect that the XB360 might launch at about the same time or after ATI's new desktop part based on the same core, however.