Look, with hard drives approaching half a terabyte in size there's still nothing reasonable to back all that up to... Besides another 500+ GB drive. I'm terrified to buy a drive like this - except perhaps to use it for temporary video editing space.
Meanwhile I've got tons of past in-house DVD productions I'd love to shrink down into a few discs (or perhaps a single holo-kube), so doubling DVD+-R's size really doesn't 'do it' for me.
He needs to take this up with the original posters of this information. You can sue someone for libeling you (hopefully if it's not true), but you can't sue Xerox for printing the copy.
Stupid fscking lawsuits. How about this - don't be an asshole and you'll have nothing to worry about to begin with - END OF LINE.
"His remarks sound like he's trying to appeal to our current neo-con regiem's inability to comprehend issues that affect anyone except fellow members of Skull & Bones fraternity."
Oh no, they've already got the next generation war all lined up. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray - same sh*t, different formats. It does make you want to scream doesn't it?
Still, I have a dual format DVD-/+ drive and have found that DVD-R are best for consumer DVD's while +R are better for my data (mainly because of the 8X writing speed). It sucks that they can't get it all together, but it is doable.
...PATENTS are! DVD-R has a *slight* edge in compatibility, DVD+R in writing speed, but other than that, the real difference is in the tech used to write to the disc.
No one wants to pay someone else for the 'standard' so they make their own. Look at China - they're about to come up with their own DVD standard now!
It does cause one to question why these companies bother paying their dues to any forum since they can't follow the fscking rules anyway. My guess is they're there to spy on everyone else.
Yeah, ditto Tron. The 20th anniversary DVD of that was simply amazing in scope. It also serves to remind you that sometimes a movie can be ahead of it's time.
For instance, can you believe that Tron did not win any special effects academy awards because their 'overuse' of computer generated effects disqualified them??!
If you get a copy of this, check out how painstakingly the movie was done and then realize how badly the Tron artists were ripped off!
Considering how many special effects there are in even non-science fiction movies nowadays, I don't think this will be too much of a stretch for people who get the concept of this kind of pulp fiction.
"Name chips based on the SpecIntBase score and be done with it!"
The problem is that AMD and Intel custom design their chips to perform better at different tasks/instructions. Then there is the problem of compilers. Was the SpecIntBase compiled with AMD and/or Intel specific instructions? Which versions? Is SSE2 faster on Intel than AMD? Was 3DNow substituted for a few SSE instructions in the benchmark? Did the newest version of Lightwave 3D take any of this into account? This type of thing can make a HUGE difference in performance.
I don't think there's a simple way through this at all other than common program benchmarking and even then there will be a lot of misleading (and often wrong) results.
No, I don't blame AMD (except for the questionable ratings of a few of their later Athlon XP's), HOWEVER, without a stable GHz metric to build off of, things are bound to get messy.
Marketing of both companies are going to have a field day.
The difference is that as of now, we at least have one platform (Intel) accurately stating clock speed. AMD generally keeps their performance ratings close to Intel's however they have stretched the meaning of their 'XXXX+' definitions where Intel simply could not.
If BOTH of them start these arbitrary rating systems, we won't even have THAT small bit of stability. Intel could easily release a '6000+' processor tomorrow with no regard to clock speed. AMD would have to follow suit, and on it goes.
Far more than the cookie-cutter characters of his earlier work. Come now, you can see where Gladia Delmarre or even the robots themselves developed into something a lot greater than what they were in the original stories.
Don't forget the prequel novels with Hari Seldon either.
When Intel abandons this scheme, what precisely will a 4500+ processor actually mean? It's bad enough trying to quantify it now, but at least we have the actual P4 GHz to compare against.
Something will clearly need to be done - independant benchmark-wise - to prevent abuse. It's going to get bad folks.
The good news: I think we're going to see '5000+' processors before the end of the year now.
You'd need to have a crack team to do a screenplay. Asimov himself admitted that his earlier stories lacked character depth. Note the difference between the original Foundation/Robots series and 'Foundation's Edge' or 'Robots of Dawn'.
Even so, you're not going to have 2 hour in-cabin discussions on the basics of relativity, hyperspace, or robot theory (as Asimov would often do). It made for interesting reading, but not good movie material.
Now, 'Robots of Dawn' would make an INCREDIBLE movie because it has everything a MOVIE would need to make it a hit (sex, violence, dramatic tension, good special fx with a point, etc.) If the original series are ever done as movies - prepare for major rewrites aka, LOTR.
Look man, I'm 37! THIRTY-SEVEN for Chrissakes! I do have a life outside of games, but games are definately still part of it. I'm in line for UT 2004 and if HL2 or Duke Nukem finally show up I'll be their bitch.
But I admit, it is probably more unusual in my age bracket - but for a different reason. Way back when, the 2600 didn't arrive until I was 11 (1977). Perfect timing for someone like me, someone who understood basic electronics and KNEW what a computer game was and adored them. But it took a comparatively long time for it to catch on.
There was also a stigma attached to gaming then - something that Commodore would find out about later with the Amiga. Nowadays we call it 'multimedia', but back then anything with good graphics and sound was a TOY. After all, if adults used a computer it was usually a PC and anyone who remembers knows what THAT looked and sounded like back then!
Most games were designed for the new generation of *children* - regardless of fun factor for adults. SOCIALLY, most adults felt uncomfortable about the things. This has changed over time, but only because there is an older generation of gamers now to help ballast things. For instance, Nintendo still caters to younger kids while MS is catering to older gamers.
Think of it this way; it seems that if a game company nowadays doesn't sell a few million consoles in their first year they are a failure. But the Atari 2600 really didn't hit its stride until 1980! The 2600's peak run lasted until 1982 (the horrible conversions of Pac-Man and E.T. didn't help matters much) but continued to be built in different forms right through the 80's.
The author of this article picked a 7 year time period to compare screenshots, but innovation was only part of the problem. After all, there were surface differences between the Atari 2600, Intellivision, Bally Arcade, and Odyssey II but even the next generation of consoles didn't really improve things all that much, or in all areas.
Example: When Gen 3 arrived (Gen 1 being Pong, Gen 2 being the 2600/Odyssey II), the Colecovision led the way. Graphically, the games looked superior to the 2600, however there were still many things the 2600 could do that even the Coleco could not (mostly having to do with the amount of colors onscreen and true bitmap graphics).
People pushed the 2600 right to the edge - in fact, looking at the initial Pac-Man and comparing it to Ms. Pac-Man you would've thought someone upgraded your console! Good titles helped the machine survive for longer than it should have and perhaps this was part of the problem.
People came to expect innovation with the 2600. I remember buying Activision's 'BattleTank' and thinking, "Damn, this is great! I can't wait to see what they do next!" It wasn't a question of whether the next game would be better - it was assumed that it would be. In short, most people were satisfied with the 2600 as it was. It was considered an *appliance* then, like a T.V. or radio. The other machines of the day, namely the Colecovision and the Atari 5200 (really an Atari 400 without a keyboard) were better, but not enough to justify the expense. Not only that, at some point us teens had to DATE!:)
When the NES hit the scene it was noticably better and had NO competition, great titles (Mario, for instance), and excellent marketing. Old gamers even bought into it (or went into computers) because the 2600 titles eventually stopped coming.
I think the industry will always have its ups and downs, but as long as game companies continue to provide kids of all ages an outlet or escape from real life, they will be around.
SCO painted their stock with quite a few shares starting at 3:55 PM yesterday. Call up a chart on SCO and look very carefully at the last few minutes. The line continues on it's downward pace then all of a sudden *bang* shoots up a few points.
THAT my friends is desparation! To explain their obvious fooling around they came up with some sort of stock buyback scheme today hoping that no one will notice their tinkering.
A lot of SNES stuff had 'assist' chips in the cartridges. Most were basic 'blitter' chips, but there were some that actually had co-processing on board for 3D graphics (SuperFX). Games like Starfox and Stunt Race FX simply would not have been possible on that console otherwise.
I wonder if you're thinking of a special version of Ecco that ran on the 32X Genesis co-processor.
At least with the SNES. Take Gradius 4 for example - one of the first releases for the SNES. The slowdown in that damn game was unbelievable at times and yet you look at something like Pilotwings or Mario and you'd never see it.
Why?
Well, as it turns out, Nintendo underpowered the SNES' processor BIG TIME. In the first releases only Nintendo was permitted to use cartridge-based 'assist' chips that assisted with animation of larger objects. This explains why Nintendo's games always looked so golden on SNES.
Later Nintendo licensed the chips for 3rd parties but really screwed them for it. This was back in the day when Nintendo made all the games themselves, chose which ones would see the light of day (yes, even 3rd party ones!), and charged an arm an a leg for those assist chips.
Go to Staples and ask for the ACADEMIC version. If you're a parent of a student, a student, a teacher, or a school administrator you can get the full Office suite for something like $150.
The thing is, you don't have to prove it! It would be illegal to purchase this without having a tie to academia, but many people buy it this way anyway. You think MS doesn't know this?!
The regular versions costing three times as much are reserved for businesses who must pay this extortion to be legal. Since 'activation' became standard, it became harder for people to pirate Office - MS offers them a way to be semi-legal now whilst still reaping a major profit.
One further note that is important here. There is no retail Academic version of XP Professional. If you attend a school that uses an NT/2000-based domain, you will need XP Pro to connect to it. So... Do the math. XP Pro is an extra $150 over home (upgrade version). Is MS really losing much in offering Office Academic? Nope.
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8X Writing speed.
End Of Line.
Look, with hard drives approaching half a terabyte in size there's still nothing reasonable to back all that up to... Besides another 500+ GB drive. I'm terrified to buy a drive like this - except perhaps to use it for temporary video editing space.
Meanwhile I've got tons of past in-house DVD productions I'd love to shrink down into a few discs (or perhaps a single holo-kube), so doubling DVD+-R's size really doesn't 'do it' for me.
DVD Shrink is Da Bomb! Transcoding, remastering, and ease of use. DVD X Copy has nothing on this freeware product!
...'all your base' - only not as funny. :)
...it appears that Intel is a gnat's eyebrow away from having to use liquid cooling on that motha! 150 watts! OMG!
He needs to take this up with the original posters of this information. You can sue someone for libeling you (hopefully if it's not true), but you can't sue Xerox for printing the copy.
Stupid fscking lawsuits. How about this - don't be an asshole and you'll have nothing to worry about to begin with - END OF LINE.
"His remarks sound like he's trying to appeal to our current neo-con regiem's inability to comprehend issues that affect anyone except fellow members of Skull & Bones fraternity."
Oh... You mean like John Kerry?
Oh no, they've already got the next generation war all lined up. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray - same sh*t, different formats. It does make you want to scream doesn't it?
Still, I have a dual format DVD-/+ drive and have found that DVD-R are best for consumer DVD's while +R are better for my data (mainly because of the 8X writing speed). It sucks that they can't get it all together, but it is doable.
...PATENTS are! DVD-R has a *slight* edge in compatibility, DVD+R in writing speed, but other than that, the real difference is in the tech used to write to the disc.
No one wants to pay someone else for the 'standard' so they make their own. Look at China - they're about to come up with their own DVD standard now!
It does cause one to question why these companies bother paying their dues to any forum since they can't follow the fscking rules anyway. My guess is they're there to spy on everyone else.
So... 'R-Kelley' prefered DVD-R?
Remember PATCO? No? Well, not too many people do. They were the striking air traffic controller guys back in the 80's. Fired. Boom. Done.
Why? In the interest of public safety. If this situation isn't in the interest of public safety I don't know what is.
I suggest they go the 'binding arbitration' route. If this is refused by the union, then it's time to start writing pink slips. This is too important.
Yeah, ditto Tron. The 20th anniversary DVD of that was simply amazing in scope. It also serves to remind you that sometimes a movie can be ahead of it's time.
For instance, can you believe that Tron did not win any special effects academy awards because their 'overuse' of computer generated effects disqualified them??!
If you get a copy of this, check out how painstakingly the movie was done and then realize how badly the Tron artists were ripped off!
Considering how many special effects there are in even non-science fiction movies nowadays, I don't think this will be too much of a stretch for people who get the concept of this kind of pulp fiction.
"Name chips based on the SpecIntBase score and be done with it!"
The problem is that AMD and Intel custom design their chips to perform better at different tasks/instructions. Then there is the problem of compilers. Was the SpecIntBase compiled with AMD and/or Intel specific instructions? Which versions? Is SSE2 faster on Intel than AMD? Was 3DNow substituted for a few SSE instructions in the benchmark? Did the newest version of Lightwave 3D take any of this into account? This type of thing can make a HUGE difference in performance.
I don't think there's a simple way through this at all other than common program benchmarking and even then there will be a lot of misleading (and often wrong) results.
No, I don't blame AMD (except for the questionable ratings of a few of their later Athlon XP's), HOWEVER, without a stable GHz metric to build off of, things are bound to get messy.
Marketing of both companies are going to have a field day.
The difference is that as of now, we at least have one platform (Intel) accurately stating clock speed. AMD generally keeps their performance ratings close to Intel's however they have stretched the meaning of their 'XXXX+' definitions where Intel simply could not.
If BOTH of them start these arbitrary rating systems, we won't even have THAT small bit of stability. Intel could easily release a '6000+' processor tomorrow with no regard to clock speed. AMD would have to follow suit, and on it goes.
Far more than the cookie-cutter characters of his earlier work. Come now, you can see where Gladia Delmarre or even the robots themselves developed into something a lot greater than what they were in the original stories.
Don't forget the prequel novels with Hari Seldon either.
When Intel abandons this scheme, what precisely will a 4500+ processor actually mean? It's bad enough trying to quantify it now, but at least we have the actual P4 GHz to compare against.
Something will clearly need to be done - independant benchmark-wise - to prevent abuse. It's going to get bad folks.
The good news: I think we're going to see '5000+' processors before the end of the year now.
The bad news: They will run like 4 GHz models.
You'd need to have a crack team to do a screenplay. Asimov himself admitted that his earlier stories lacked character depth. Note the difference between the original Foundation/Robots series and 'Foundation's Edge' or 'Robots of Dawn'.
Even so, you're not going to have 2 hour in-cabin discussions on the basics of relativity, hyperspace, or robot theory (as Asimov would often do). It made for interesting reading, but not good movie material.
Now, 'Robots of Dawn' would make an INCREDIBLE movie because it has everything a MOVIE would need to make it a hit (sex, violence, dramatic tension, good special fx with a point, etc.) If the original series are ever done as movies - prepare for major rewrites aka, LOTR.
Look man, I'm 37! THIRTY-SEVEN for Chrissakes! I do have a life outside of games, but games are definately still part of it. I'm in line for UT 2004 and if HL2 or Duke Nukem finally show up I'll be their bitch.
:)
But I admit, it is probably more unusual in my age bracket - but for a different reason. Way back when, the 2600 didn't arrive until I was 11 (1977). Perfect timing for someone like me, someone who understood basic electronics and KNEW what a computer game was and adored them. But it took a comparatively long time for it to catch on.
There was also a stigma attached to gaming then - something that Commodore would find out about later with the Amiga. Nowadays we call it 'multimedia', but back then anything with good graphics and sound was a TOY. After all, if adults used a computer it was usually a PC and anyone who remembers knows what THAT looked and sounded like back then!
Most games were designed for the new generation of *children* - regardless of fun factor for adults. SOCIALLY, most adults felt uncomfortable about the things. This has changed over time, but only because there is an older generation of gamers now to help ballast things. For instance, Nintendo still caters to younger kids while MS is catering to older gamers.
Think of it this way; it seems that if a game company nowadays doesn't sell a few million consoles in their first year they are a failure. But the Atari 2600 really didn't hit its stride until 1980! The 2600's peak run lasted until 1982 (the horrible conversions of Pac-Man and E.T. didn't help matters much) but continued to be built in different forms right through the 80's.
The author of this article picked a 7 year time period to compare screenshots, but innovation was only part of the problem. After all, there were surface differences between the Atari 2600, Intellivision, Bally Arcade, and Odyssey II but even the next generation of consoles didn't really improve things all that much, or in all areas.
Example: When Gen 3 arrived (Gen 1 being Pong, Gen 2 being the 2600/Odyssey II), the Colecovision led the way. Graphically, the games looked superior to the 2600, however there were still many things the 2600 could do that even the Coleco could not (mostly having to do with the amount of colors onscreen and true bitmap graphics).
People pushed the 2600 right to the edge - in fact, looking at the initial Pac-Man and comparing it to Ms. Pac-Man you would've thought someone upgraded your console! Good titles helped the machine survive for longer than it should have and perhaps this was part of the problem.
People came to expect innovation with the 2600. I remember buying Activision's 'BattleTank' and thinking, "Damn, this is great! I can't wait to see what they do next!" It wasn't a question of whether the next game would be better - it was assumed that it would be. In short, most people were satisfied with the 2600 as it was. It was considered an *appliance* then, like a T.V. or radio. The other machines of the day, namely the Colecovision and the Atari 5200 (really an Atari 400 without a keyboard) were better, but not enough to justify the expense. Not only that, at some point us teens had to DATE!
When the NES hit the scene it was noticably better and had NO competition, great titles (Mario, for instance), and excellent marketing. Old gamers even bought into it (or went into computers) because the 2600 titles eventually stopped coming.
I think the industry will always have its ups and downs, but as long as game companies continue to provide kids of all ages an outlet or escape from real life, they will be around.
"So, SCO's claims against IBM (and the rest of the world) have turned out to be legit?"
:)
"No... I just saved a sh!tload of money by switching to Geico!"
SCO painted their stock with quite a few shares starting at 3:55 PM yesterday. Call up a chart on SCO and look very carefully at the last few minutes. The line continues on it's downward pace then all of a sudden *bang* shoots up a few points.
THAT my friends is desparation! To explain their obvious fooling around they came up with some sort of stock buyback scheme today hoping that no one will notice their tinkering.
I guess value is relative. I was speaking to the fact that regular office is close to $499 whilst the academic version is far less than that.
Of course it pales next to StarOffice at $79 (or even OOo which is free), but I was speaking of MS to MS comparisons.
A lot of SNES stuff had 'assist' chips in the cartridges. Most were basic 'blitter' chips, but there were some that actually had co-processing on board for 3D graphics (SuperFX). Games like Starfox and Stunt Race FX simply would not have been possible on that console otherwise.
I wonder if you're thinking of a special version of Ecco that ran on the 32X Genesis co-processor.
At least with the SNES. Take Gradius 4 for example - one of the first releases for the SNES. The slowdown in that damn game was unbelievable at times and yet you look at something like Pilotwings or Mario and you'd never see it.
Why?
Well, as it turns out, Nintendo underpowered the SNES' processor BIG TIME. In the first releases only Nintendo was permitted to use cartridge-based 'assist' chips that assisted with animation of larger objects. This explains why Nintendo's games always looked so golden on SNES.
Later Nintendo licensed the chips for 3rd parties but really screwed them for it. This was back in the day when Nintendo made all the games themselves, chose which ones would see the light of day (yes, even 3rd party ones!), and charged an arm an a leg for those assist chips.
Go to Staples and ask for the ACADEMIC version. If you're a parent of a student, a student, a teacher, or a school administrator you can get the full Office suite for something like $150.
The thing is, you don't have to prove it! It would be illegal to purchase this without having a tie to academia, but many people buy it this way anyway. You think MS doesn't know this?!
The regular versions costing three times as much are reserved for businesses who must pay this extortion to be legal. Since 'activation' became standard, it became harder for people to pirate Office - MS offers them a way to be semi-legal now whilst still reaping a major profit.
One further note that is important here. There is no retail Academic version of XP Professional. If you attend a school that uses an NT/2000-based domain, you will need XP Pro to connect to it. So... Do the math. XP Pro is an extra $150 over home (upgrade version). Is MS really losing much in offering Office Academic? Nope.