I'm going to attempt not to use all caps, or otherwise excessively rant. First: It's obvious what the main problem is; the system is running Vista. XP Home 32 would be better. slightly. If you just have to have Aero, dual-boot to Linux and run Compiz Fusion. Second: the Memory thing. Dude. come on. I know Microsoft started preaching that "unused memory is wasted thing" when Vista came out, but seriously. If the only applications you are running are Integrated Vista apps, or Microsoft apps designed specifically to take advantage of Vista's memory management scheme, then you would have something resembling a point. But...if not... like you run an application from a 3rd party? free memory. the more free memory, the better. Even better, maybe you can have an operating system that doesn't grow and expand and glut to take up every bit available, maybe even one that takes up a small tiny footprint, both in CPU use and RAM, leaving the majority of system resources for applications! What a concept! If you have to have Vista because there are no XP or win2k drivers for the hardware you are running, I can see it. I would definitely get better hardware personally, but I can see it. But if your hardware will run on Win2k or XP, it'll run BETTER on Win2k or XP; faster, more stable, better in all ways. Without a doubt. And, like I said, if you just have to have eye candy, Compiz fusion blows everything else away.
That will just disallow the Army Techs. The majority of Navy, and a good chunk of Marine techs HAVE to be enlisted; I can see the facility and depot level stuff going to civilians, but when you are on a Carrier or a Marine LHA you can't really call in Geek Squad. Or, I guess if you did have an appropriate Geek Squad that could work in combat environments then that would be the best group to recruit new employees from? Combat Geek Squad?
Maybe slightly; I went into things with a pretty good resume, and never tried to get a job I wasn't certain I could do. The one major plus IMO was that there just weren't that many people with experience circa 1995-1998. BUT, while there are a lot of people who are credentialed out there, a lot less of them actually have what it takes to be good at their job; ever since 1999 or so the market has been flooded with college grads/MCSE/CCNA types who went into CS only because it pays well. There are still lots of people who do the hiring that don't just look at what degree or cert you have. The tough part is getting past HR, which is another reason to go with a temp agency like Tek systems or Dansource; you can often bypass HR completely. Note: I no longer have any affiliation with any temp agency, and haven't been asked to vet a job candidate in over 4 months.
100% agree. If you have ability, you will get a job and can advance to a job in a good position. The big thing is that "ability" thing. It's part having the brains, part having the right "knack", and part experience. No matter how freaking smart you are you probably aren't going to be able to restore a RAID 5 from backup on a Netware 5 server, for instance, without some experience working with older netware, raids, and backups. My abbreviated career: 87-90 Navy Electronics. some work with Military computers. started playing with Amiga and PC systems privately. 90-94 Started a (paper & pencil) game store. did some electronics on the side, helped customers with software issues, took some classes. 94-95 Started a computer store. Did pretty much everything you could do with computers, ability to do so based on past experience and ability to read manuals fairly well. took some more classes. 96-97 Worked at Nortel fixing busted routers & switches, did some on-site customer repairs, took some classes, Nortel certs. Web stuff on the side. $$ 97-98 Worked at Bellsouth. Unix sysadmin, but mainly did repairs to ancient VERY varied equipment, some more certs. More web stuff on the side. $$$ 99-00 Network Engineer at a major Bank. Used my scattered experience with damn near everything to make myself indispensable; Bank used Unix, Netware, OS/2, AS/400, NT, I had experience with everything pretty much by that point. Got a MCSE and some other certs. took some more classes. more web stuff on the side. $$$$ 00-02 WAN Admin for a Government Entity, 7000 plus worldwide computers.$$$$$ 03-present. retired. not rich, make money doing consulting because I know at least a little bit about nearly every chunk of hardware still being used, and have seen most problems before. No Degree, wallfull of Certs, and somewhere between 97 and 140 Credit Hours depending who you talk to.
My suggestion? Sign up with Tek Systems, get a A+, and start accumulating experience. In 4 years if you have the ability you will be out-earning new college grads without ability.
I've been playing with Windows 7 a bit. I think the very simplest way I could put things is thus: "Windows 7 is to Vista as WinXP was to Win2k" While there are, actually, a couple of neat features... it's not actually an upgrade. And the neat features could have been bolted on to the previous version via patch. BTW, I've also been playing with Windows Server 2008. It doesn't suck, except for the Vista core thing. I've told a couple of my consultee's that are still running NT 4 that they might want to consider it since they missed out on WIn2k Server.
I just don't have a snappy comeback for that one. There were quite a few games that came out in the early 90's designed to be played by two players on one computer, but it is a smaller screen usually, and the developers just don't do it anymore anyway. and while most computers these days have a TV screen output, I doubt that my before mentioned 95% do; maybe more like 65%. So, you are right on that possibly; people who participate regularly in social gaming, with more than 1 or 2 players sitting in the same house, are probably better off with a console. Alternately, however, I would like to point one thing out: There is absolutely no reason that Rock Band, for instance, wouldn't work on a typical post-year-1999 PC. Most PC's in that range have a TV out of some sort, have USB, and can handle Rock Band level graphics as well as a PS2 can. As far as Xbox games: they are developed on PCs. There are no Xbox titles that would not be easy to release on PC. they just don't. Admittedly, I'm a computer geek. I have 3 computers running in my house at most times, in addition to the consoles. But my HP DV8230 Media Center laptop stays hooked up to my 55" TV, and is a rock solid PVR, as well as being much better to play GTA:SA on than any console could think of being. My 2 kids and one of their friends were playing Solstice this afternoon on the PC's cooperatively, with my daughter Alt-Tab-ing between the game and her IM client pretty steadily. Sometime today I'll probably play a little Sim City 4, my 5 year old will play some "clifford the big red dog" and possibly some "just grandma and me" from the 90's. My GF will do one of her online classes, and lots of e-mails will fly around. The ONLY reason that my kids will switch inputs from the HP media center to the Playstation would be to play Rock Band, and there is no REAL reason that they have to do this, the only reason is that the game developers haven't released it for PC.
"As was pointed out to myself here on/. : consoles have a much larger market and earn way more money than releasing on PC or Mac."
You realize that is a odd thing to say, right? Sure, there are a lot of consoles out there. But Everyone has a PC or a Mac. the problem is that there is such a gigantic range of variations in the type of systems that people have. If you design a game to play on a PC with a 16mb graphics card, and OpenGL w/out extensions, it would play on I would guess 95% of the PC's in use; If you compare this to the number of PS3 or Xbox 360 or Wii or whatever out there... I dunno, it just seems logical to me. When you have developers doing install lock-outs when anything but XP or Vista is detected (like AOE3. would not install on Win2k, but if you copied it over from a installed XP along with the appropriate registry information it played better, of course, on win2k), or designing for DirectX10, how the fuck can they expect to move any numbers? I agree that the PS3 is great, and it just makes sense to design games that are going to work best on a console, for a console. Having a fixed graphics ability makes it possible to maximize the graphics required for first person shooters and GTA3-like titles. But a game doesn't automatically require that level of graphics to be a good game. And all the things you listed out that you do besides play games with your PS3? they can be done more easily with a PC, cheaper.
Take a look at IGN's "top 100 video games of all time" list, or even read some of the endless posts on the subject here on/. The Very best games usually have very little to do with a developer pouring buckets of money into a concept; the best games involve a good idea, and the developer managing to find a way to make the game playable. Some games, I admit, do have to have big budgets, simply because the gameplay is tied into an expensive feature. a good example is GTA3; without decent graphics, the game would be nowhere near as fun. Then, on the other end of the scale, you have Tetris. In our modern era there are lots of examples of great games that simply don't require elaborate graphics to be fun or popular; none of Paradox Games cash cows required more than a integrated video card to be enjoyable until they released Europa Universalis III, and they didn't really need the fancy graphics for it. Gal Civ I & II don't have many fancy graphics, and those that they do have aren't actually needed. If the industry wants to put out some great selling games without spending a mint on their graphics department, all they have to do is actually get away from 1st person shooters or trying to come up with the next WOW. Develop for OpenGL graphics on computers, not consoles. Make the games easily moddable, and use stardock as an example to keep piracy down, no DRM. Or just do the obvious thing, dig out the CLASSIC games like Masters of Magic, Day of the Tentacle, Setllers I & II, The various Wing Commanders -Heck even Kings Quest!- etc and leave the game mechanics completely alone, just hire a couple of guys to update the graphics to 1024x768 or better, release 'em, and rake in the cash.
That was so out of keeping with everything I had read about the way they do things, I started digging. and came up with nothing. it does SOUND like something that could be the case, but I can't find anything that is less than 2 years old that supports what I said; what you are saying would probably be a relatively recent development. If you come across anything new or more recent on the subject, would you mind posting it?
While I really like the concept of the Neural Interface, execution is going to be most likely screwed up. For instance, if there is ANY possibility of bi-directional travel on the Neural Bus, If its closed source, I'm not interested. at all. If it is open source... well maybe. But I can't see plugging anything that has any connection to Apple or Microsoft into my brain.
I'm pretty certain the Vatican could take out the Italian government. Armed Forces: The Swiss Guard. 1 reinforced company of Swiss Heavy Infantry. One could assume they could expand this force relatively quickly under emergency conditions, and the swiss military man-for-man scores extremely high on QJM. Hitler was polite to the Swiss, and it wasn't just because they laundered money for him. There are also several Military Orders of the church; Knights of Malta, Sepulcher, Saint George. Purely ceremonial, but there is a framework there. Lets say that...ok, going to have to reach, but: we continue our current slide into world anarchy; The Major Nations go Bankrupt, meaning the U.S, Russia, Germany, U.K., france, italy. If things go depression era nuts in Italy, I could see, easily, a socialist strongman taking power. If a socialist strongman took power in Italy, and NATO was bankrupt, and the EU equally so, I could see an Italian Socialist Strongman using the old "rich, depraved, capitalists have taken over the church" routine. The Vatican would pretty much have to do something. the Swiss would be relatively unaffected by any turmoil the rest of the world would have; not only do they have assets, but thanks to their every-citizen-has-a-battle-rifle-in-his-closet policy, they are essentially immune from everything but intense air attack. They would almost certainly send a Battalion to the Vatican's aide. The Church has resources, and would continue to have them after most everything else went to shit. Using the Military Orders as a framework, they could start recruiting good (and not so good) catholics from places they are STRONG, like central & south America. and they could afford to feed them, something The Italian Socialist Strongman would have problems with; The Pope could buy wheat from Kansas, Mussolini, jr. would have problems doing so. Mussolini, jr. is probably going to have a inflated beyond reality idea of how strong the forces he controls are (it's a tradition); He would probably try to take control of the Vatican. The Swiss Guards Battalion would whip them like little puppies, and then the Knight commander of Malta would order their mainly South American forces to take control of the disorganized territories, to "lend aide and succor to those left without hope from the current crisis". Viola! the Papal states return! A closing note: I think I'm in a weird mood today. I'm not sure what makes me think that, but something is telling me....
Sealand has defended itself, by force, from invasion. It was taken over then liberated by the "prince", this is what prompted the visit from the German ambassador. It is a sovereign nation, as defined by the UK's own laws; saying it isn't is sort of like Usenet doesn't enjoy common carrier protection. In other words: a heck of a lot of people are saying it, and unless interested parties do something, what the people are saying will become reality regardless of precedent and law.
In 1997 I did a VRML copy of a shopping mall for a company based in Cincinnati; I went to the physical mall site, took a boatload of pictures, and set up the site as a test project on a 128k ISDN connection. in order to keep server loads down, I split the mall up into 4 sections; each section was able to handle between 20-30 stock avatars (on 128k, remember) without crashing. very often. each mall shop front was a door to the retailer; I put together a textures and objects package for them so they could continue the "theme", giving hopefully a seamless transition from the Mall environment to the store environment, including some CGI scripts to handle a VRML shopping cart. Each mall quarter had a information kiosk intended to house a staffer to answer questions, and the food court area was set up for social interaction between avatars (it was buggy, would have got better). It worked perfectly. not quite up to 2nd life graphics, but closer than you might think; I had a plan to have the mall give CD handouts that would contain hi-res textures, the more complex objects, and the VRML client, since most people were on dial-up then. They went ape shit. loved it. showed it to several major retailers, who also loved it. Wanted me to come to Cincinnati to run it. I said no frakking way, or a variation thereof; I don't need to live there to run it, anyway. turned into a sticking point. they bought it from me, I bought a Jeep. They hired a pretty high level geek to run it. He never could get it working right, probably because I'm a sort of intuitive designer (read: I don't comment), eventually they scrapped it. about 2 years later I started seeing some of the objects & textures for it in some commercial applications. They never even made an effort to contact me for a fix; I talked to the high level geek sometime in 2003 (slashdotter, you know who you are). He said they were so pissed at me for refusing to move to Cincinnati that the veep in charge refused to even mention my name, had the guy go through it line by line to make sure I wasn't mentioned anywhere in the comments. SO, it was a workable VRML e-commerce environment. shot down in its prime. Could have been a contender.
My thoughts on this subject: We don't really need a MOO2 sequel; the game plays just fine on modern systems, the graphics are adequate, the only things I could really see as improvements would be making the graphics a little higher res, maybe some more variation in ship design, and it would be GREAT if the number of stars could be increased, maybe by a factor of 4? But thats really it; the game still works, and works well. MOM is just more of a extreme case. While Age of Wonders: shadow magic is probably as close as we've got to a MOM2, it obviously just doesn't cut it. I still play MOM on occasion, and for about 15 minutes it's really annoying trying to interpret what the 320x240 graphics mean. And then you get caught up in the fantastic gameplay and forget about it. We don't need a sequel to MOM, we just need the license holder to improve the graphics and re-mix the fantastic audio to modern standards, and LEAVE EVERYTHING ELSE ALONE. The same goes for XCOM/UFO; The only thing wrong with the game is that it's old. update the graphics, update the audio, and release it. 3 ancient titles that the license holders could put minimal work into and get 3 best-selling games.
nope. don't work. won't initialize. I haven't, like I said, devoted any time to figuring out why but I did bother to install it and try to kick it off, even poked around in compizconfig some. at at a guess it's a problem with the nvidia driver; I've tried it on a 6600 and a 7300 system, with both the NV & the latest -glx, no dice. What I'm really curious about, though, is why you got down-modded; you tried to answer the question and weren't TOO snarky about it.
it has a couple of advantages over my idea; I could see the rolled up plastic, for instance, losing it's static charge so that when you reached the end of the roll, you could just reverse directions; as the previously rolled up plastic came up, the dust should pretty much fall off. But I can't imagine a way you could get it to mars and have a reasonable expectation of it working; more moving parts, the scaffolding for the rolls, etc. One BIG advantage it would have, if you could get it there, would be that it could probably be easily jettisoned if it didn't work or was damaged; with the design I sent in the only real option if the primary motor fails is to have a backup motor, and if THAT fails the panels would degrade quickly with nothing to be done.
The electrical one... I dunno. I think you would need more power than would be available if the solar panel was obstructed, but I haven't enough of a clue about the fine details to make a educated guess.
I came up with two, and submitted them. several layers of very fine film on the panels, when the panels get to 20% efficiency it would automatically fire up the tiny electric motor that would s-l-o-w-l-y peel off the top layer, halting the peeling process whenever efficiency reached whatever is considered adequate. The other was a little weirder, and I'm not sure i could explain it without several diagrams.
I'm using Debian know. But I would switch to whatever Distro that allowed me to run Compiz Fusion (or even Beryl) on a Nvidia card without sacrificing a large portion of my life to researching "how?". I'm NOT a linux geek. or a windows geek, for that matter. But I have been running slackware since 95, maybe 94, was a solaris & hp-unix sysadmin before I turned to the dark side and went primarily into Wintel-related jobs. If it was simple, easy, or even moderately difficult to do, I could do it. But I just don't have the time or spare brain cycles right now to research in-depth something that is just to make Vista users shut their yap about glass.
VLB SCSI? wow. Yeah, I had a boatload of VLB IDE cards left over from my retail biz when it closed; I had to try 6 or 7 before I found one that worked, just 3 years later. Sort of puzzled me because they didn't appear shoddy or look like they had cheap components.
I keep a Gigabyte GA7IXE for this purpose; it's got a Slot-A 700 Mghz T-bird & 512mb of ram, a Adaptec 2940 SCSI card, a ISA Soundblaster AWE64 gold (the best frakking sound card ever made, BTW, and has hook ups for the old proprietary CD formats), and I keep a box of ISA cards sat next to it that I've collected over the last 18 years, like MFM & RLL controllers, ARCnet cards, TCNS cards.. it's a big box. I used to keep a 486DX4-160 with VLB (and EISA) up and running, but it's been probably 5 years since I had a VLB problem come up; I gave it to a friend of mine for a DOS gaming platform. I used to keep a microchannel machine around, I think I actually misplaced it, I don't remember what happened to it.
From what I understand from dabbling in ISP-ism back in the mid-90's, the only common carrier protection a ISP enjoys is for a USENET server; a court ruling established that USENET had common carrier protection, therefore a ISP could not be prosecuted for what was on a NNTP server, unless they attempted to censor it; if they attempted to censor it, that would imply that anything illegal that got transmitted was purposefully allowed to remain on the server. The only protection is to just ignore it unless it is brought to your attention. What a GREAT time for Freenet 0.5 (which WORKS) to be on its last legs, fighting for it's life against Freenet 0.7 (which doesn't actually WORK). At least Tor and I2P are still going strong.
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I'm going to attempt not to use all caps, or otherwise excessively rant.
First: It's obvious what the main problem is; the system is running Vista. XP Home 32 would be better. slightly. If you just have to have Aero, dual-boot to Linux and run Compiz Fusion.
Second: the Memory thing. Dude. come on. I know Microsoft started preaching that "unused memory is wasted thing" when Vista came out, but seriously.
If the only applications you are running are Integrated Vista apps, or Microsoft apps designed specifically to take advantage of Vista's memory management scheme, then you would have something resembling a point. But...if not... like you run an application from a 3rd party? free memory. the more free memory, the better. Even better, maybe you can have an operating system that doesn't grow and expand and glut to take up every bit available, maybe even one that takes up a small tiny footprint, both in CPU use and RAM, leaving the majority of system resources for applications! What a concept!
If you have to have Vista because there are no XP or win2k drivers for the hardware you are running, I can see it. I would definitely get better hardware personally, but I can see it. But if your hardware will run on Win2k or XP, it'll run BETTER on Win2k or XP; faster, more stable, better in all ways. Without a doubt.
And, like I said, if you just have to have eye candy, Compiz fusion blows everything else away.
That will just disallow the Army Techs. The majority of Navy, and a good chunk of Marine techs HAVE to be enlisted; I can see the facility and depot level stuff going to civilians, but when you are on a Carrier or a Marine LHA you can't really call in Geek Squad.
Or, I guess if you did have an appropriate Geek Squad that could work in combat environments then that would be the best group to recruit new employees from?
Combat Geek Squad?
Maybe slightly; I went into things with a pretty good resume, and never tried to get a job I wasn't certain I could do. The one major plus IMO was that there just weren't that many people with experience circa 1995-1998.
BUT, while there are a lot of people who are credentialed out there, a lot less of them actually have what it takes to be good at their job; ever since 1999 or so the market has been flooded with college grads/MCSE/CCNA types who went into CS only because it pays well. There are still lots of people who do the hiring that don't just look at what degree or cert you have.
The tough part is getting past HR, which is another reason to go with a temp agency like Tek systems or Dansource; you can often bypass HR completely.
Note: I no longer have any affiliation with any temp agency, and haven't been asked to vet a job candidate in over 4 months.
Very true. I've been involved in quite a bit of hiring and it is hard to go wrong with an Army, Navy or Marine Techy-type.
100% agree. If you have ability, you will get a job and can advance to a job in a good position.
The big thing is that "ability" thing. It's part having the brains, part having the right "knack", and part experience. No matter how freaking smart you are you probably aren't going to be able to restore a RAID 5 from backup on a Netware 5 server, for instance, without some experience working with older netware, raids, and backups.
My abbreviated career:
87-90 Navy Electronics. some work with Military computers. started playing with Amiga and PC systems privately.
90-94 Started a (paper & pencil) game store. did some electronics on the side, helped customers with software issues, took some classes.
94-95 Started a computer store. Did pretty much everything you could do with computers, ability to do so based on past experience and ability to read manuals fairly well. took some more classes.
96-97 Worked at Nortel fixing busted routers & switches, did some on-site customer repairs, took some classes, Nortel certs. Web stuff on the side. $$
97-98 Worked at Bellsouth. Unix sysadmin, but mainly did repairs to ancient VERY varied equipment, some more certs. More web stuff on the side. $$$
99-00 Network Engineer at a major Bank. Used my scattered experience with damn near everything to make myself indispensable; Bank used Unix, Netware, OS/2, AS/400, NT, I had experience with everything pretty much by that point. Got a MCSE and some other certs. took some more classes. more web stuff on the side. $$$$
00-02 WAN Admin for a Government Entity, 7000 plus worldwide computers.$$$$$
03-present. retired. not rich, make money doing consulting because I know at least a little bit about nearly every chunk of hardware still being used, and have seen most problems before.
No Degree, wallfull of Certs, and somewhere between 97 and 140 Credit Hours depending who you talk to.
My suggestion? Sign up with Tek Systems, get a A+, and start accumulating experience. In 4 years if you have the ability you will be out-earning new college grads without ability.
I've been playing with Windows 7 a bit. I think the very simplest way I could put things is thus:
"Windows 7 is to Vista as WinXP was to Win2k"
While there are, actually, a couple of neat features... it's not actually an upgrade. And the neat features could have been bolted on to the previous version via patch.
BTW, I've also been playing with Windows Server 2008. It doesn't suck, except for the Vista core thing. I've told a couple of my consultee's that are still running NT 4 that they might want to consider it since they missed out on WIn2k Server.
I just don't have a snappy comeback for that one.
There were quite a few games that came out in the early 90's designed to be played by two players on one computer, but it is a smaller screen usually, and the developers just don't do it anymore anyway.
and while most computers these days have a TV screen output, I doubt that my before mentioned 95% do; maybe more like 65%.
So, you are right on that possibly; people who participate regularly in social gaming, with more than 1 or 2 players sitting in the same house, are probably better off with a console.
Alternately, however, I would like to point one thing out: There is absolutely no reason that Rock Band, for instance, wouldn't work on a typical post-year-1999 PC.
Most PC's in that range have a TV out of some sort, have USB, and can handle Rock Band level graphics as well as a PS2 can.
As far as Xbox games: they are developed on PCs. There are no Xbox titles that would not be easy to release on PC. they just don't.
Admittedly, I'm a computer geek. I have 3 computers running in my house at most times, in addition to the consoles. But my HP DV8230 Media Center laptop stays hooked up to my 55" TV, and is a rock solid PVR, as well as being much better to play GTA:SA on than any console could think of being. My 2 kids and one of their friends were playing Solstice this afternoon on the PC's cooperatively, with my daughter Alt-Tab-ing between the game and her IM client pretty steadily. Sometime today I'll probably play a little Sim City 4, my 5 year old will play some "clifford the big red dog" and possibly some "just grandma and me" from the 90's. My GF will do one of her online classes, and lots of e-mails will fly around.
The ONLY reason that my kids will switch inputs from the HP media center to the Playstation would be to play Rock Band, and there is no REAL reason that they have to do this, the only reason is that the game developers haven't released it for PC.
"As was pointed out to myself here on /. : consoles have a much larger market and earn way more money than releasing on PC or Mac."
You realize that is a odd thing to say, right?
Sure, there are a lot of consoles out there. But Everyone has a PC or a Mac. the problem is that there is such a gigantic range of variations in the type of systems that people have.
If you design a game to play on a PC with a 16mb graphics card, and OpenGL w/out extensions, it would play on I would guess 95% of the PC's in use; If you compare this to the number of PS3 or Xbox 360 or Wii or whatever out there...
I dunno, it just seems logical to me. When you have developers doing install lock-outs when anything but XP or Vista is detected (like AOE3. would not install on Win2k, but if you copied it over from a installed XP along with the appropriate registry information it played better, of course, on win2k), or designing for DirectX10, how the fuck can they expect to move any numbers?
I agree that the PS3 is great, and it just makes sense to design games that are going to work best on a console, for a console. Having a fixed graphics ability makes it possible to maximize the graphics required for first person shooters and GTA3-like titles. But a game doesn't automatically require that level of graphics to be a good game.
And all the things you listed out that you do besides play games with your PS3? they can be done more easily with a PC, cheaper.
Take a look at IGN's "top 100 video games of all time" list, or even read some of the endless posts on the subject here on /.
The Very best games usually have very little to do with a developer pouring buckets of money into a concept; the best games involve a good idea, and the developer managing to find a way to make the game playable.
Some games, I admit, do have to have big budgets, simply because the gameplay is tied into an expensive feature. a good example is GTA3; without decent graphics, the game would be nowhere near as fun.
Then, on the other end of the scale, you have Tetris.
In our modern era there are lots of examples of great games that simply don't require elaborate graphics to be fun or popular; none of Paradox Games cash cows required more than a integrated video card to be enjoyable until they released Europa Universalis III, and they didn't really need the fancy graphics for it.
Gal Civ I & II don't have many fancy graphics, and those that they do have aren't actually needed.
If the industry wants to put out some great selling games without spending a mint on their graphics department, all they have to do is actually get away from 1st person shooters or trying to come up with the next WOW. Develop for OpenGL graphics on computers, not consoles. Make the games easily moddable, and use stardock as an example to keep piracy down, no DRM.
Or just do the obvious thing, dig out the CLASSIC games like Masters of Magic, Day of the Tentacle, Setllers I & II, The various Wing Commanders -Heck even Kings Quest!- etc and leave the game mechanics completely alone, just hire a couple of guys to update the graphics to 1024x768 or better, release 'em, and rake in the cash.
Sorry, it's a graphic novel; are you still interested?
That was so out of keeping with everything I had read about the way they do things, I started digging.
and came up with nothing. it does SOUND like something that could be the case, but I can't find anything that is less than 2 years old that supports what I said; what you are saying would probably be a relatively recent development.
If you come across anything new or more recent on the subject, would you mind posting it?
While I really like the concept of the Neural Interface, execution is going to be most likely screwed up.
For instance, if there is ANY possibility of bi-directional travel on the Neural Bus, If its closed source, I'm not interested. at all. If it is open source... well maybe.
But I can't see plugging anything that has any connection to Apple or Microsoft into my brain.
I'm pretty certain the Vatican could take out the Italian government.
Armed Forces: The Swiss Guard. 1 reinforced company of Swiss Heavy Infantry. One could assume they could expand this force relatively quickly under emergency conditions, and the swiss military man-for-man scores extremely high on QJM. Hitler was polite to the Swiss, and it wasn't just because they laundered money for him.
There are also several Military Orders of the church; Knights of Malta, Sepulcher, Saint George. Purely ceremonial, but there is a framework there.
Lets say that...ok, going to have to reach, but: we continue our current slide into world anarchy; The Major Nations go Bankrupt, meaning the U.S, Russia, Germany, U.K., france, italy.
If things go depression era nuts in Italy, I could see, easily, a socialist strongman taking power.
If a socialist strongman took power in Italy, and NATO was bankrupt, and the EU equally so, I could see an Italian Socialist Strongman using the old "rich, depraved, capitalists have taken over the church" routine.
The Vatican would pretty much have to do something. the Swiss would be relatively unaffected by any turmoil the rest of the world would have; not only do they have assets, but thanks to their every-citizen-has-a-battle-rifle-in-his-closet policy, they are essentially immune from everything but intense air attack. They would almost certainly send a Battalion to the Vatican's aide.
The Church has resources, and would continue to have them after most everything else went to shit. Using the Military Orders as a framework, they could start recruiting good (and not so good) catholics from places they are STRONG, like central & south America. and they could afford to feed them, something The Italian Socialist Strongman would have problems with; The Pope could buy wheat from Kansas, Mussolini, jr. would have problems doing so.
Mussolini, jr. is probably going to have a inflated beyond reality idea of how strong the forces he controls are (it's a tradition); He would probably try to take control of the Vatican. The Swiss Guards Battalion would whip them like little puppies, and then the Knight commander of Malta would order their mainly South American forces to take control of the disorganized territories, to "lend aide and succor to those left without hope from the current crisis".
Viola! the Papal states return!
A closing note: I think I'm in a weird mood today. I'm not sure what makes me think that, but something is telling me....
Sealand has defended itself, by force, from invasion. It was taken over then liberated by the "prince", this is what prompted the visit from the German ambassador.
It is a sovereign nation, as defined by the UK's own laws; saying it isn't is sort of like Usenet doesn't enjoy common carrier protection.
In other words: a heck of a lot of people are saying it, and unless interested parties do something, what the people are saying will become reality regardless of precedent and law.
In 1997 I did a VRML copy of a shopping mall for a company based in Cincinnati; I went to the physical mall site, took a boatload of pictures, and set up the site as a test project on a 128k ISDN connection.
in order to keep server loads down, I split the mall up into 4 sections; each section was able to handle between 20-30 stock avatars (on 128k, remember) without crashing. very often.
each mall shop front was a door to the retailer; I put together a textures and objects package for them so they could continue the "theme", giving hopefully a seamless transition from the Mall environment to the store environment, including some CGI scripts to handle a VRML shopping cart. Each mall quarter had a information kiosk intended to house a staffer to answer questions, and the food court area was set up for social interaction between avatars (it was buggy, would have got better).
It worked perfectly. not quite up to 2nd life graphics, but closer than you might think; I had a plan to have the mall give CD handouts that would contain hi-res textures, the more complex objects, and the VRML client, since most people were on dial-up then.
They went ape shit. loved it. showed it to several major retailers, who also loved it.
Wanted me to come to Cincinnati to run it. I said no frakking way, or a variation thereof; I don't need to live there to run it, anyway. turned into a sticking point. they bought it from me, I bought a Jeep.
They hired a pretty high level geek to run it. He never could get it working right, probably because I'm a sort of intuitive designer (read: I don't comment), eventually they scrapped it. about 2 years later I started seeing some of the objects & textures for it in some commercial applications.
They never even made an effort to contact me for a fix; I talked to the high level geek sometime in 2003 (slashdotter, you know who you are). He said they were so pissed at me for refusing to move to Cincinnati that the veep in charge refused to even mention my name, had the guy go through it line by line to make sure I wasn't mentioned anywhere in the comments.
SO, it was a workable VRML e-commerce environment. shot down in its prime. Could have been a contender.
Have to agree. If it won't run on Win2k, but will run on XP, the developers are smoking crack.
My thoughts on this subject:
We don't really need a MOO2 sequel; the game plays just fine on modern systems, the graphics are adequate, the only things I could really see as improvements would be making the graphics a little higher res, maybe some more variation in ship design, and it would be GREAT if the number of stars could be increased, maybe by a factor of 4? But thats really it; the game still works, and works well.
MOM is just more of a extreme case. While Age of Wonders: shadow magic is probably as close as we've got to a MOM2, it obviously just doesn't cut it. I still play MOM on occasion, and for about 15 minutes it's really annoying trying to interpret what the 320x240 graphics mean. And then you get caught up in the fantastic gameplay and forget about it. We don't need a sequel to MOM, we just need the license holder to improve the graphics and re-mix the fantastic audio to modern standards, and LEAVE EVERYTHING ELSE ALONE.
The same goes for XCOM/UFO; The only thing wrong with the game is that it's old. update the graphics, update the audio, and release it.
3 ancient titles that the license holders could put minimal work into and get 3 best-selling games.
nope. don't work. won't initialize. I haven't, like I said, devoted any time to figuring out why but I did bother to install it and try to kick it off, even poked around in compizconfig some. at at a guess it's a problem with the nvidia driver; I've tried it on a 6600 and a 7300 system, with both the NV & the latest -glx, no dice.
What I'm really curious about, though, is why you got down-modded; you tried to answer the question and weren't TOO snarky about it.
it has a couple of advantages over my idea; I could see the rolled up plastic, for instance, losing it's static charge so that when you reached the end of the roll, you could just reverse directions; as the previously rolled up plastic came up, the dust should pretty much fall off.
But I can't imagine a way you could get it to mars and have a reasonable expectation of it working; more moving parts, the scaffolding for the rolls, etc.
One BIG advantage it would have, if you could get it there, would be that it could probably be easily jettisoned if it didn't work or was damaged; with the design I sent in the only real option if the primary motor fails is to have a backup motor, and if THAT fails the panels would degrade quickly with nothing to be done.
The electrical one... I dunno. I think you would need more power than would be available if the solar panel was obstructed, but I haven't enough of a clue about the fine details to make a educated guess.
I came up with two, and submitted them. several layers of very fine film on the panels, when the panels get to 20% efficiency it would automatically fire up the tiny electric motor that would s-l-o-w-l-y peel off the top layer, halting the peeling process whenever efficiency reached whatever is considered adequate.
The other was a little weirder, and I'm not sure i could explain it without several diagrams.
I'm using Debian know. But I would switch to whatever Distro that allowed me to run Compiz Fusion (or even Beryl) on a Nvidia card without sacrificing a large portion of my life to researching "how?".
I'm NOT a linux geek. or a windows geek, for that matter. But I have been running slackware since 95, maybe 94, was a solaris & hp-unix sysadmin before I turned to the dark side and went primarily into Wintel-related jobs. If it was simple, easy, or even moderately difficult to do, I could do it.
But I just don't have the time or spare brain cycles right now to research in-depth something that is just to make Vista users shut their yap about glass.
VLB SCSI? wow.
Yeah, I had a boatload of VLB IDE cards left over from my retail biz when it closed; I had to try 6 or 7 before I found one that worked, just 3 years later.
Sort of puzzled me because they didn't appear shoddy or look like they had cheap components.
I keep a Gigabyte GA7IXE for this purpose; it's got a Slot-A 700 Mghz T-bird & 512mb of ram, a Adaptec 2940 SCSI card, a ISA Soundblaster AWE64 gold (the best frakking sound card ever made, BTW, and has hook ups for the old proprietary CD formats), and I keep a box of ISA cards sat next to it that I've collected over the last 18 years, like MFM & RLL controllers, ARCnet cards, TCNS cards.. it's a big box. I used to keep a 486DX4-160 with VLB (and EISA) up and running, but it's been probably 5 years since I had a VLB problem come up; I gave it to a friend of mine for a DOS gaming platform.
I used to keep a microchannel machine around, I think I actually misplaced it, I don't remember what happened to it.
I just wish they would aim more resources at OpenGL optimization.
From what I understand from dabbling in ISP-ism back in the mid-90's, the only common carrier protection a ISP enjoys is for a USENET server; a court ruling established that USENET had common carrier protection, therefore a ISP could not be prosecuted for what was on a NNTP server, unless they attempted to censor it; if they attempted to censor it, that would imply that anything illegal that got transmitted was purposefully allowed to remain on the server. The only protection is to just ignore it unless it is brought to your attention.
What a GREAT time for Freenet 0.5 (which WORKS) to be on its last legs, fighting for it's life against Freenet 0.7 (which doesn't actually WORK).
At least Tor and I2P are still going strong.