Modern video games are EXTREMELY parallel friendly.
You clearly are not familar with the workings of vertex or pixel shaders.
The Xbox 360 performs automatic shader workload balancing. Let's say I have 10,000 pixels to shade. Each pixel is shaded completely independantly of the other 9,999 pixels, so I could very easily shade 5,000 on each core of a chip.
Additionally, Direct3D queues draw calls. The "Present()" function typically returns instantly as the game logic is permitted to get a frame or two ahead of the renderer. The drawing can take place while the next frame is being calcuated and the API takes care of ensuring objects aren't rendered half with data from frame N and half with data from N+1.
I'm currently using a beta of WMP11 on Windows Vista RC2. I've got the artist view open, which has lots of album art shown, I'm playing a song, and paging around the library. It is using less than 13 megs of ram. When I minimize WMP 11, the ram usage immediately drops to under 6 megs of ram.
That's a half of a percent of my available ram... and my machine is getting dated.
I'm running some beta of IE7+ on Vista RC1 (I haven't had time to upgrade to RC2 yet). The vulnerability test shows that this browser isn't vulnerable.
Almost all 3rd party vista drivers can and should exist in user mode. Microsoft has to allow 3rd parties to write kernel mode drivers because all legacy drivers would need to be rewritten if they didn't. Now, they just need to be signed.
If you want to write a new driver, write it for user mode. Unfortunately, this means the open source driver writers need to rewrite their drivers for user mode -- but shouldn't they want to anyway (safer, more stable, recommended way of doing things)? And isn't a major point of OSS the agility to adjust to these sorts of things?
It's not just that most people aren't using that much space, it's that there is out right trickering taking place.
You know that "show quoted text" feature? Yea, well the quoted text is counted towards your "used memory" for every occurance of the text but is only stored once.
Sources? Links? Your statement begs clarification.
In any case: the original Xbox was assembled from slightly tweaked off the shelf componenets. The Xbox 360 is a completely custom device. The same will happen with the Zune.
"You cannot technically DRM protect content in a way which will allow legal fair use for the purchaser of the product.....period."
Sure you can. I purchased several Xbox Live Arcade Games. They only work with my Xbox Live account, but I can play them on any console I may access provided that I store my account on a memory card. And I can play them at my friends house on his 360, I can delete them and re-download them free of charge (eliminating the need for backups). If I do not have my account on a memory card, but my 360 is lost, I can easily call Microsoft support and they will easily help me through recovering my account on another box.
DRM is great for XBLA games. It enables companies to sell their games -- the modivation for making them in the first place -- and it frees me from manually backing up my games. Hurray DRM!
Ok so it can't sync by Wifi and it can't browse the web. Bummer. Both things can be fixed with software upgrades -- which can be delivered wirelessly!
Let's not forget that the Zune was built in 9 months. This is from the same people at Microsoft who built Xbox. The original Xbox was mostly on par with the PlayStation, like the Zune will be with the iPod. The 360 had more time to be thought out and appears to be capable of blowing the PlayStation 3 out of the water. I'll be waiting to buy a Zune 360:-)
I don't want to browse the "web" on a Zune, but I might like to browse a custom set of web applications designed for the Zune. Here's one crazy idea that I would love to see: wifi communications from my digital cable tuner (or a Media center PC?). The tuner could broadcast an ID number of the show I'm currently watching and the current time into that show. I often say "aw man -- what is this song they are playing?" Whip out my Zune, click "Current Show" and then "Recently played songs", preview them right there, buy immediately.
Slashdot Mirror
Again, I'd be curious to know specifics.
Which libraries were you having problems with?
FUD.
.net's memory consumption is very reasonable and we all have anicdotal evidence that Java is a memory hog.
My anicdotal evidence suggests that
Let's see some benchmarks to support your claims.
If you had the cat press accept for you, would the cat be your agent? That would be conduct that implies your acceptance of the contract.
That's "artard", not "R-tard".
I believe it's short for "Alpha Retard" as in the retard among retards.
My appologees: 6 "hardware threads"
Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total
Modern video games are EXTREMELY parallel friendly.
You clearly are not familar with the workings of vertex or pixel shaders.
The Xbox 360 performs automatic shader workload balancing. Let's say I have 10,000 pixels to shade. Each pixel is shaded completely independantly of the other 9,999 pixels, so I could very easily shade 5,000 on each core of a chip.
Additionally, Direct3D queues draw calls. The "Present()" function typically returns instantly as the game logic is permitted to get a frame or two ahead of the renderer. The drawing can take place while the next frame is being calcuated and the API takes care of ensuring objects aren't rendered half with data from frame N and half with data from N+1.
The 360 has 3 dual core chips for a total of 6 cores.
Time to work on your math skills:
6 / 1024
I'm currently using a beta of WMP11 on Windows Vista RC2. I've got the artist view open, which has lots of album art shown, I'm playing a song, and paging around the library. It is using less than 13 megs of ram. When I minimize WMP 11, the ram usage immediately drops to under 6 megs of ram.
That's a half of a percent of my available ram... and my machine is getting dated.
Can you really not spare it?
Re: #4
The backwards compatability woes indicate that, much like Windows, Firefox will slow to evolve because it is a victim of it's own success.
yes... that "might"... that means they might NOT be able to stay in business. HURRAY!
I'm running some beta of IE7+ on Vista RC1 (I haven't had time to upgrade to RC2 yet). The vulnerability test shows that this browser isn't vulnerable.
Also see http://www.roboblitz.com/
It's a pretty massive Unreal Engine 3 game heavily utilzing proceedural textures targetting Xbox Live Arcade (games must be under 50 MB).
Why does Windows setup lay down a new boot sector? http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/12/ 20/505887.aspx
Your backpack full of 5TB iPods!?!?
Almost all 3rd party vista drivers can and should exist in user mode. Microsoft has to allow 3rd parties to write kernel mode drivers because all legacy drivers would need to be rewritten if they didn't. Now, they just need to be signed.
. mspx for details.
If you want to write a new driver, write it for user mode. Unfortunately, this means the open source driver writers need to rewrite their drivers for user mode -- but shouldn't they want to anyway (safer, more stable, recommended way of doing things)? And isn't a major point of OSS the agility to adjust to these sorts of things?
See http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/wdf/UMDF_FAQ
It's not just that most people aren't using that much space, it's that there is out right trickering taking place.
You know that "show quoted text" feature? Yea, well the quoted text is counted towards your "used memory" for every occurance of the text but is only stored once.
This is BEGGING for a competition! Google, I have a feature request: group-by project and occurance counts.
There must be one project with a bigger potty mouth than all the rest.
Sources? Links? Your statement begs clarification.
In any case: the original Xbox was assembled from slightly tweaked off the shelf componenets. The Xbox 360 is a completely custom device. The same will happen with the Zune.
"You cannot technically DRM protect content in a way which will allow legal fair use for the purchaser of the product.....period."
Sure you can. I purchased several Xbox Live Arcade Games. They only work with my Xbox Live account, but I can play them on any console I may access provided that I store my account on a memory card. And I can play them at my friends house on his 360, I can delete them and re-download them free of charge (eliminating the need for backups). If I do not have my account on a memory card, but my 360 is lost, I can easily call Microsoft support and they will easily help me through recovering my account on another box.
DRM is great for XBLA games. It enables companies to sell their games -- the modivation for making them in the first place -- and it frees me from manually backing up my games. Hurray DRM!
Ok so it can't sync by Wifi and it can't browse the web. Bummer. Both things can be fixed with software upgrades -- which can be delivered wirelessly!
:-)
Let's not forget that the Zune was built in 9 months. This is from the same people at Microsoft who built Xbox. The original Xbox was mostly on par with the PlayStation, like the Zune will be with the iPod. The 360 had more time to be thought out and appears to be capable of blowing the PlayStation 3 out of the water. I'll be waiting to buy a Zune 360
I don't want to browse the "web" on a Zune, but I might like to browse a custom set of web applications designed for the Zune. Here's one crazy idea that I would love to see: wifi communications from my digital cable tuner (or a Media center PC?). The tuner could broadcast an ID number of the show I'm currently watching and the current time into that show. I often say "aw man -- what is this song they are playing?" Whip out my Zune, click "Current Show" and then "Recently played songs", preview them right there, buy immediately.
Car stereos that offer miniplugs are the best. This is THE WAY to do music player integration without the expense.
merchandising! merchandising!
Spaceballs THE FLAMETHROWER!
"...and making the browser responsible for never allowing an untrusted object out of the sandbox, no matter what."
/ security/IE_protected_note.mspx
What a novel idea. Microsoft should implement this!
Oh, wait...
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/msit
It certainly helps with Xbox live.