Eggebrecht's team is one of the few out there that actually try to tax the GameCube to its limits
Clearly the article submitter is not a game developer. Aside from possibly porters, there isn't a developer out that that doesn't "tax a console to its limits".
You write the game. It runs too slow. You optimize it until it runs quickly enough. It needs just about all the juice.
I used (and poked at and coded on) Macs for years. There are still a few good ideas coming out of Apple (though not as good as back in the day -- software HCI has taken a back seat to industrial design and the hardware folks).
The Porsche phenomenon doesn't require that there be no reason to own a Porsche -- just that the actual benefit be relatively small versus the cost, and that the benefit then be vastly blown out of proportion by customers.
It's the Porche phenomenon. Once people have purchased an expensive luxury good, they will defend the value of that good to the death. Not doing so would make it look like that have made a less-than-good purchase. It certainly isn't limited to computers -- cars, sound systems, watches, even *pens*.
There's no way this can result in a more stable system with all else being equal.
This is true. All else is not equal -- Mac OS X is far more complex, and is still quite young. Rough spots are still being smoothed out. Classic Mac OS was quite mature.
Mac OS 9 gives you next to zero information about where the problem lies when an app crashes. About the best you can get is MacsBug spitting out raw memory contents.
Perhaps it was just because I used MacsBug, but I really didn't have any problem. A backtrace and the current app name is pretty solid.
If you downgrade from a 3.2 GHz P4 to a 2.8 P4 the price IS neck and neck.
Why are you choosing a 2.8 P4 in the first place? A 1.6 Ghz P5 is nowhere near as fast as a 2.8 P4! Around a 2.2 P4 is more reasonable.
I sat down and did this myself (well, in USD).
I used the 1.6 Ghz P5 and the Dimension 4600 as base systems. I gave the Dell a 2.4 Ghz P4 processor (using the 30% ratio from the NASA vector-processing benchmarks still works out to the 1.6 G5 being slower than even a 2.2Ghz Pentium, but I decided to be generous in favor of Apple). Since the only video card that both Apple and Dell offer on the systems is the 9800 (not the 9600), I used the 9800 on both. Presumably you were giving the Dell a more powerful video card.
The Dell came out to $1,586, the Mac to $3,393.00. All prices in USD.
Either you Canucks get royally screwed by Dell or you made a mistake in building the system and tacked a *lot* of extra hardware on the PC.
If you like the Mac and you don't mind blowing money, that's fine -- but Apple hardware is simply not price competitive with x86 stuff. It isn't intended to be, either -- it's sold as a luxury good, with a heavy premium.
I'm dubious with your claims of no software costs on OS X by just using OSS on Mac OS X. If you're going to do that, it seems much more sensible to just use Linux, since you aren't going to be getting your candy-looking interface on everything *anyway*.
Again, this is a popular misconception. If you are talking the local grey box manufacturer, yeah, you can probably get a $499 PC, but it will not have many of the features that the brand name boxes will have or the software.
What are you *talking* about? What "hardware features"? A hardware interrupt switch? I can't think of *any* hardware feature set that Macs have that x86 boxes lack that are particularly significant in a buying decision, and as for applications...if you're trying to compare the Mac application library to the Windows one, you may find that the Mac one is quite acceptable, but it certainly isn't going to be outdoing Windows.
Generally you get what you pay for and with Apple products, you get a quality product with features that really do make a difference.
Ridiculous. You get a decently sturdy case and a reasonable (if inconsistent) easy-open mechanism for a sizeable premium. That's as far as things go WRT hardware. Reliability claims are ridiculous. Apple bundles the same OEM components that x86 system builders do.
Also at the high end, Macs often are cheaper to purchase. For instance, the OS X workstation I am typing this on right now was a full $900 cheaper than an equivalently configured Dell box and OS X provides a much more productive environment.
Bullshit. Post a followup your configuration details, if you really have a $900 price difference for "equivalent" systems. I did a Dell/Apple price comparison on Slashdot within the last month, and Apple is *consistently* more expensive, if not to the degree that they used to be.
But I really don't have time for much else, and since I don't think my bank nor any of those other sites I visit have an interest in doing malicious things to me... I just don't care, plain and simple.
You really ought to run a proxy for a week and monitor where all your requests are going. I think you'd be surprised how many machines you're trusting.
For those of you who don't know: the MT-32 is a synthesizer module. So it's normal use is to generate sounds that people are going to use on commercial records.
My understanding is that this is some sort of MIDI synth device. I've always wondered what exactly what these things did that was special. Surely any old soundcard also can do MIDI synth, as well as software like timidity?
Or is it one of those "other" synths, where you slide sliders around and produce new waveforms? Isn't there software that can do the same thing now?
Either way, it seems strange to want to use old synth equipment -- either case seems to be outclassed by modern software. Yet I know that people pay crazy amounts of money for it.
The only real possibility I can think of is if you spent years with a synth and don't want to throw away all that experience...
You asked earlier why you were on my foes list. It's because frequently your arguments change from debates and simply devolve into insults. When you're losing an argument, in particular.
For the hell of it, I'll respond.
You ignored the important point of my post regarding customer perception of Nintendo's success and the fact that increased sales will be greater than a short term gain
Your "important point" had absolutely nothing to do with arguing against what I said. I said "until the next generation of consoles" -- feel free to go back and read it. You're now claiming that you said that Nintendo might pull ahead post-GC. This is agreeing with what I said. Yes, and? If I say that water is blue, and then you say "no, it's definitely *BLUE*", you haven't made any useful point.
Well yes, if you are talking about absolute sales and if GC has 5% of the market in hardware, then it is likely that the total GC software sales will account for 5% of total software sales.
He decided to include a bit of an editorial, but I've seen far, far more misleading material in stories on Slashdot than this.
Also, Bush is one of the few points where I have a really difficult time shooting down criticism. Bush *has* done some very frusterating things over the past two years.
No, I see what you're saying, but I think he's still right.
Final Fantasy is pretty widely acknowledged to have some of the best music out there, even if you don't consider it the absolute best. While it's not bad, it's certainly not on par with the Star Wars music, some particularly good movie music.
I like video game music a bit, but it really isn't on par with film music. It has some nostalgia value to fans of the game, but currently there isn't as much money going into a big-name video game than a big-name movie (though EA is definitely working on that...).
I'm not sure that your analogy is legitimate. You're comparing writing what seems at first glance to be an internal web-based app with designing a somewhat complex device that can, as you pointed out, kill someone. There are software projects like this as well (airplane controlling code, missile guidance code), but the story submitter is not considering writing these. He's taking on a fairly simple task.
Will he have to learn? Sure. Does it compare with potentially lethal projects? No.
You get a project. It gets broken down into a set of features. Each feature takes about two months to develop with a team of two or three developers.
When a project is in initial development, there's a *lot* of work to do. Lots of projects. Lots of teams. After a feature has been implemented, the two-man team doesn't hang around -- the people go back into the pool to become another team on another feature...and after development on a program is eased off, most people aren't on the program any more. Then some move into other areas, some leave the company, some get promoted, a few forget what's going on...
It's not *just* Microsoft that does this. It's just that Microsoft can afford to let things stagnate for a while, which lets situations like this develop.
In fact, since not as many games are released on the Gamecube, titles tend to sell better. If you release a PS2 game, it's just a drop in a crowded barrel. If you release a GC game, it's got a prominent place on the display shelf.
That's not true. I was arguing about the absolute number of sales -- the sum total sales of all games. The breakdown of those sales -- whether Donkey Kong Country 5 sells 98% of GC title sales or whether it only makes up 5% of GC title sales -- doesn't change the ranking of total GC title sales.
By the same logic, you could argue that you can't ever sell a dvd player because everyone has vcrs.
No. Aside from the fact that media formats have very little to do with the console market, I was talking about the total number of installed users. The closest analogy would be that if 1% of people have DVD players, and DVD players sell like hotcakes for three months, after which time 2% of people have DVD players, there are probably going to be fewer DVD titles sold at the end of the three months than VHS titles (for the 98% of people that have VHS).
And, no, the GC is not going to gain the majority of the market. The lifetime of the current generation of consoles is past the halfway mark, and the GC would have to sell several times the number of GCs already sold over again *plus* the PS2 not sell any systems, which just isn't going to happen.
Thirdly, how many of the people now buying Gamecubes already have PS2s and a stack of games for them?
Exactly.
Three months of hardware sales is not particularly significant. The PS2 has an installed base that dwarfs that of GC and X-box, and titles will sell accordingly.
It's like Linux -- Linux is gaining desktop marketshare, but Windows has a freaking large installed base.
The positions are going to remain fixed Sony well ahead, then Microsoft slightly ahead of Nintendo) until the next generation of consoles.
As more and more people have Internet connections, software vendors are beginning to realize that they can rely on almost all users to have an Internet connection, and can exploit this fact.
Eventually, they will become ASPs (especially with one-off software like annual tax software) where important chunks of functionality run server-side. No more piracy.
Slashdot Mirror
A big green wang from 1979
The world is an ugly place.
Eggebrecht's team is one of the few out there that actually try to tax the GameCube to its limits
Clearly the article submitter is not a game developer. Aside from possibly porters, there isn't a developer out that that doesn't "tax a console to its limits".
You write the game. It runs too slow. You optimize it until it runs quickly enough. It needs just about all the juice.
Is anyone else reading this article running into a massive flood of 500 Server errors?
I started seeing these about 48 hours ago, and they've gotten to the point where it's just about impossible to read Slashdot.
Is this just me (i.e. ISP set up flaky transparent proxy) or is it affecting others as well?
Use AFS, then come back and say that the proprietary Netware system is the one to beat. :-)
It's "have".
I used (and poked at and coded on) Macs for years. There are still a few good ideas coming out of Apple (though not as good as back in the day -- software HCI has taken a back seat to industrial design and the hardware folks).
The Porsche phenomenon doesn't require that there be no reason to own a Porsche -- just that the actual benefit be relatively small versus the cost, and that the benefit then be vastly blown out of proportion by customers.
It's "dementia".
It's the Porche phenomenon. Once people have purchased an expensive luxury good, they will defend the value of that good to the death. Not doing so would make it look like that have made a less-than-good purchase. It certainly isn't limited to computers -- cars, sound systems, watches, even *pens*.
There's no way this can result in a more stable system with all else being equal.
This is true. All else is not equal -- Mac OS X is far more complex, and is still quite young. Rough spots are still being smoothed out. Classic Mac OS was quite mature.
Mac OS 9 gives you next to zero information about where the problem lies when an app crashes. About the best you can get is MacsBug spitting out raw memory contents.
Perhaps it was just because I used MacsBug, but I really didn't have any problem. A backtrace and the current app name is pretty solid.
If you downgrade from a 3.2 GHz P4 to a 2.8 P4 the price IS neck and neck.
Why are you choosing a 2.8 P4 in the first place? A 1.6 Ghz P5 is nowhere near as fast as a 2.8 P4! Around a 2.2 P4 is more reasonable.
I sat down and did this myself (well, in USD).
I used the 1.6 Ghz P5 and the Dimension 4600 as base systems. I gave the Dell a 2.4 Ghz P4 processor (using the 30% ratio from the NASA vector-processing benchmarks still works out to the 1.6 G5 being slower than even a 2.2Ghz Pentium, but I decided to be generous in favor of Apple). Since the only video card that both Apple and Dell offer on the systems is the 9800 (not the 9600), I used the 9800 on both. Presumably you were giving the Dell a more powerful video card.
The Dell came out to $1,586, the Mac to $3,393.00. All prices in USD.
Either you Canucks get royally screwed by Dell or you made a mistake in building the system and tacked a *lot* of extra hardware on the PC.
If you like the Mac and you don't mind blowing money, that's fine -- but Apple hardware is simply not price competitive with x86 stuff. It isn't intended to be, either -- it's sold as a luxury good, with a heavy premium.
I'm dubious with your claims of no software costs on OS X by just using OSS on Mac OS X. If you're going to do that, it seems much more sensible to just use Linux, since you aren't going to be getting your candy-looking interface on everything *anyway*.
Again, this is a popular misconception. If you are talking the local grey box manufacturer, yeah, you can probably get a $499 PC, but it will not have many of the features that the brand name boxes will have or the software.
What are you *talking* about? What "hardware features"? A hardware interrupt switch? I can't think of *any* hardware feature set that Macs have that x86 boxes lack that are particularly significant in a buying decision, and as for applications...if you're trying to compare the Mac application library to the Windows one, you may find that the Mac one is quite acceptable, but it certainly isn't going to be outdoing Windows.
Generally you get what you pay for and with Apple products, you get a quality product with features that really do make a difference.
Ridiculous. You get a decently sturdy case and a reasonable (if inconsistent) easy-open mechanism for a sizeable premium. That's as far as things go WRT hardware. Reliability claims are ridiculous. Apple bundles the same OEM components that x86 system builders do.
Also at the high end, Macs often are cheaper to purchase. For instance, the OS X workstation I am typing this on right now was a full $900 cheaper than an equivalently configured Dell box and OS X provides a much more productive environment.
Bullshit. Post a followup your configuration details, if you really have a $900 price difference for "equivalent" systems. I did a Dell/Apple price comparison on Slashdot within the last month, and Apple is *consistently* more expensive, if not to the degree that they used to be.
But I really don't have time for much else, and since I don't think my bank nor any of those other sites I visit have an interest in doing malicious things to me... I just don't care, plain and simple.
You really ought to run a proxy for a week and monitor where all your requests are going. I think you'd be surprised how many machines you're trusting.
For those of you who don't know: the MT-32 is a synthesizer module. So it's normal use is to generate sounds that people are going to use on commercial records.
My understanding is that this is some sort of MIDI synth device. I've always wondered what exactly what these things did that was special. Surely any old soundcard also can do MIDI synth, as well as software like timidity?
Or is it one of those "other" synths, where you slide sliders around and produce new waveforms? Isn't there software that can do the same thing now?
Either way, it seems strange to want to use old synth equipment -- either case seems to be outclassed by modern software. Yet I know that people pay crazy amounts of money for it.
The only real possibility I can think of is if you spent years with a synth and don't want to throw away all that experience...
You asked earlier why you were on my foes list. It's because frequently your arguments change from debates and simply devolve into insults. When you're losing an argument, in particular.
For the hell of it, I'll respond.
You ignored the important point of my post regarding customer perception of Nintendo's success and the fact that increased sales will be greater than a short term gain
Your "important point" had absolutely nothing to do with arguing against what I said. I said "until the next generation of consoles" -- feel free to go back and read it. You're now claiming that you said that Nintendo might pull ahead post-GC. This is agreeing with what I said. Yes, and? If I say that water is blue, and then you say "no, it's definitely *BLUE*", you haven't made any useful point.
Well yes, if you are talking about absolute sales and if GC has 5% of the market in hardware, then it is likely that the total GC software sales will account for 5% of total software sales.
Thank you. I'm glad that you agree with me.
I'll give you a special exemption for when video games just reuse movie music without arguing.
Sadly, AIDS kills heteros as well. Even more insidious, it uses fags to spread.
Apparently, smoking does kill.
He decided to include a bit of an editorial, but I've seen far, far more misleading material in stories on Slashdot than this.
Also, Bush is one of the few points where I have a really difficult time shooting down criticism. Bush *has* done some very frusterating things over the past two years.
Purchase good headphones. They're much less expensive than good speakers, and you can definitely appreciate music.
:-)
If you're spending upwards of $70 on a pair of headphones, you're probably going to get an enjoyable experience, from what I've seen (well, heard).
No, I see what you're saying, but I think he's still right.
Final Fantasy is pretty widely acknowledged to have some of the best music out there, even if you don't consider it the absolute best. While it's not bad, it's certainly not on par with the Star Wars music, some particularly good movie music.
I like video game music a bit, but it really isn't on par with film music. It has some nostalgia value to fans of the game, but currently there isn't as much money going into a big-name video game than a big-name movie (though EA is definitely working on that...).
Hmm. I think I'll lob explosives into Missouri from Kansas. Surely Missouri will be powerless.
Nothing open source ever works on my machine.
My washing machine isn't OSS-capable either. Dirty scumbags.
I'm not sure that your analogy is legitimate. You're comparing writing what seems at first glance to be an internal web-based app with designing a somewhat complex device that can, as you pointed out, kill someone. There are software projects like this as well (airplane controlling code, missile guidance code), but the story submitter is not considering writing these. He's taking on a fairly simple task.
Will he have to learn? Sure. Does it compare with potentially lethal projects? No.
You get a project. It gets broken down into a set of features. Each feature takes about two months to develop with a team of two or three developers.
When a project is in initial development, there's a *lot* of work to do. Lots of projects. Lots of teams. After a feature has been implemented, the two-man team doesn't hang around -- the people go back into the pool to become another team on another feature...and after development on a program is eased off, most people aren't on the program any more. Then some move into other areas, some leave the company, some get promoted, a few forget what's going on...
It's not *just* Microsoft that does this. It's just that Microsoft can afford to let things stagnate for a while, which lets situations like this develop.
In fact, since not as many games are released on the Gamecube, titles tend to sell better. If you release a PS2 game, it's just a drop in a crowded barrel. If you release a GC game, it's got a prominent place on the display shelf.
That's not true. I was arguing about the absolute number of sales -- the sum total sales of all games. The breakdown of those sales -- whether Donkey Kong Country 5 sells 98% of GC title sales or whether it only makes up 5% of GC title sales -- doesn't change the ranking of total GC title sales.
By the same logic, you could argue that you can't ever sell a dvd player because everyone has vcrs.
No. Aside from the fact that media formats have very little to do with the console market, I was talking about the total number of installed users. The closest analogy would be that if 1% of people have DVD players, and DVD players sell like hotcakes for three months, after which time 2% of people have DVD players, there are probably going to be fewer DVD titles sold at the end of the three months than VHS titles (for the 98% of people that have VHS).
And, no, the GC is not going to gain the majority of the market. The lifetime of the current generation of consoles is past the halfway mark, and the GC would have to sell several times the number of GCs already sold over again *plus* the PS2 not sell any systems, which just isn't going to happen.
Thirdly, how many of the people now buying Gamecubes already have PS2s and a stack of games for them?
Exactly.
Three months of hardware sales is not particularly significant. The PS2 has an installed base that dwarfs that of GC and X-box, and titles will sell accordingly.
It's like Linux -- Linux is gaining desktop marketshare, but Windows has a freaking large installed base.
The positions are going to remain fixed Sony well ahead, then Microsoft slightly ahead of Nintendo) until the next generation of consoles.
As more and more people have Internet connections, software vendors are beginning to realize that they can rely on almost all users to have an Internet connection, and can exploit this fact.
Eventually, they will become ASPs (especially with one-off software like annual tax software) where important chunks of functionality run server-side. No more piracy.