The solutions people have mentioned so far are very possible (user space audio drivers, PCI bus conflicts, scheduling).
Another possibility is the media timers in the microsoft API. I don't know about Vista, but under XP, the system timers by default are not very accurate, because higher accuracy timers taking more processing time to update. However, this isn't really acceptable for audio/video and gaming, so they have a special Multimedia mode you can set that will make them update at a higher frequency.
Unfortunately... this is a system wide setting. Which means if their network application is doing a lot of system time lookups for timestamps or something, it is incurring the extra penalty as well.
We noticed this at some point when a particular simulation application ran correctly - only when windows media player was also running. WMP enables this multimedia mode, affecting every other application using timers on the system.
The biggest thing I've done is to make sure I'm evaluating their procedures and people when I'm interviewing for the job. Something as simple as how they deal with new people and how directly I'll be working with my boss can make a big difference, as can your own personal gut feeling about the boss and the people you meet.
I'm working at a small company where all of this works pretty nicely:) But I know my wife turned down a position at a small consulting firm just because she didn't get a good vibe from the guy she would be working under. You can normally spot if someone is a tool pretty easily in an hour or so of talking to them.
Wouldn't it be lovely if society were willing to let guys make fathering a full time job, too.
If women have been sacrificing opportunities to grow professionally, what have been sacrificing for years to to put bread on the table of children they barely get to see.
The desire to be around for the children isn't any different, the only difference is the choice society wants you to make about it.
I'm pretty sure there have been a few studies that show girls are more likely to try to hide their intelligence or high scores.
In my experience? Guys are more likely to fully split out into predefined clique definitions of nerd or jock. But they have a social support system within that clique. I mean, if there are six nerdy guys who get together to hang out and play video games, the only thing that makes them less social than the six friends who play football is that girls will occasionally go out with the football players.
Nerds or jocks, guys seem to go out far enough to stick together and encourage each other in their interests. I've seen much less of that among girls who are nerdy - they are either trying to hide it at least somewhat or are almost complete outcasts with maybe one friend.
Of this is all a blatant generalization based on my personal experience.
Newegg's policy is actually pretty darn good. They assume that you know what you're talking about when you say it's broken. So you fill out a web form, they ship you a new product and you need to ship them the broken one within a few days. You get refunded once they test that you were right about it being broken. No waiting in phone queues, no standing in line, no driving to the store. It's really pretty nice for someone who knows enough to be able to make that "is it broken" judgement call themselves.
The cell phone tower thing is mostly just a general frustration - I need to find out who actually does use it.
But the point was they told him that his house was covered, told him that he could just return everything if it didn't work. He didn't make a single call on it (because he couldn't get service) and then they charged him and told him to like it when he returned it. I'm sure some of the others are pretty nasty, too, but I haven't seen them acting as the "nice" company at all.
We didn't get T-Mobile service at our house (despite there being a cell phone tower belonging to someone in view) and despite their advertised 90-day return policy they still made my dad pay over $70 in early termination fees that a plan that didn't work.
I agree. But that's not a long term solution to the problem. As long as the risk versus reward for jumping the border works out, they're going to keep coming no matter what kind of fence they put up. You have to treat the root of the problem (you can get a better job working here illegally than you can back in mexico). Either make it harder to get that job here, or help mexico out a bit. Don't know how they're planning on doing that when everyone with initiative is on a bus for the border, though:P
Whoa, whoa. I'm all for open borders. But the reason they can hire illegal immigrants more cheaply is because they are directly avoiding all of the laws and protections that they have to give to Americans that they can hire legally. Illegal immigrants aren't getting a retirement plan, healthcare, reasonable working hours - all those wonderful things that we worked so hard to pry from corporations for the American working man. Hiring illegal workers isn't based on merit - it's based on ignoring all of those lovely laws that were put in place to protect worker's health and ability to make a living at a job. The laws are their for their own protection, as much as mine.
I have no problem with Latinos coming to United State of America to become Latino-Americans. I have every problem with corporations exploiting the Mexican poor to save a couple dollars an hour on labor. The immigration laws suck - bring the people in, make them American citizens - heck, bring their whole families over. And then in two generations we can have a bunch of latino-americans who grew up on their parent's dime being lazy and not wanting to make minimum wage - in other words, happy Americans.
And as for the white-trash protectionism accusation bullshit - I'm a software engineer who graduated with honors from a good school and got a job right out of college. I speak fluent spanish and would gladly hire and work with anyone who came over the border legally who is competing for a legal position against whatever other random guy applied. I work 12 hours a day at my job, and worked 70 hours weeks through college when I used to work construction. So fuck you for making assumptions.
Hiring a legal employee you pay: Either minimum wage or the going rate for that position. Health benefits. Social Security. Unemployment (this is a huge deal when I used to work construction college).
Hiring an illegal you pay: Minimum wage.
In this, no matter what merits you do or do not have as an illegal worker, you are going to get hired and those benefits are going to disappear.
I don't care what race you are, where you come from, whatever - a glut of cheap labor drives wages down for EVERYONE attempting to do that labor. And considering that this is the US, and not Mexico (who should be doing a better job improving its economy to provide opportunities for its own people) I consider that we should look after ourselves first, as no one else in this world is going to be looking out for us.
They're just looking for work to support their families and buy some booze and video games on weekends.
ARREST THE BASTARDS THAT HIRE THEM.
Some random latino looking for work isn't a threat to America. The American 'citizen' who is breaking the law and hiring him is directly betraying our laws and our people to save himself some cash. By definition, if Americans refuse to work in your job, you aren't offering enough money for it. That is how capitalism works, and it is the cheapskates hiring illegals who are driving down the living wage and options for advancement for the American poor.
I'm fine with bringing anyone who wants over here to work - legally and for the same wage that I would get at that position, so they can compete on merit, and the price of labor doesn't get driven down. I used to work in construction, and every time just rich jackass complains about how the guys he hired to build his addition don't speak English and messed up his house, but he's hiring them back because "they're so darn cheap" I just want to spit.
Of course, none of this will ever happen because half of Congress will get arrested or lose their gardeners.
Yes, automatic tesselation is a big part of it:) But does random slashdot user know what tesselation even means, or about the problems of bus bandwidth on modern hardware?
You can do instancing already, but (you are using exactly the same tree model and passing in a list of transforms to it. You could use a geometry shader to take a basic archetype of a tree and add flair to each to make it unique using some sort of pseudo randomness. Which is how you already make a forest, but you don't do it on the hardware.
I saw one of the most amusing examples of this one time - the playoff game I was watching had finished early, and another, bigger game that the station did not have rights to was in in double overtime. So the post-game coverage was for the next fifteen minutes the anchors sitting and watching the game while one of them told you what was going on. Since they DID have replay rights, after every play, they should show it to you again so you could watch.
Was the most amusing "best effort" to provide for the fans that I've seen on television, especially since all of the anchors were as obviously into seeing the results as the fans were.
There's nothing wrong with being able to speak one way when you're with your friends and another when you're applying for a job. I'd say it's actually a benefit, as you can network with people who would otherwise shun you as either uppity in the first situation or uncouth in the second.
English dialect, the way you dress, the way you hold yourself, even what sports you know the rules to... it's all about communicating something about your social status and where you belong. I view it not much differently from being able to speak Spanish when you visit Mexico.
Don't see why kids can't be taught to avoid foul language when they're in front of someone who cares. I managed it eventually... probably would have a lot sooner if my mom hadn't just told me that it was a bad thing to say.
And yet what teachers hate most about parents it that they don't spend any time HELPING their children with their homework.
Half of the difference between the kid getting straight A's in reading and the kid failing spelling is whether their parents read to them and help them with their spelling homework.
My parents house is 2 miles out of town, and it's rural enough that no one ever intends to run cable out there. It is technically close enough that they could get DSL at a reduced speed, but the phone company won't sell it to them because they can't give them the minimum speeds they advertise.
That's why intelligent charity always gives what you have an abundance of.
A poor person should donate his time, a rich person his money.
I do wonder that every time I see all of the band fund raisers around here. I wonder how much they could make if they just set up a small lawn mowing business or a part time job instead of trying to sell random crap and giving half the profits to a cheese-making company.
He's just saying that MS is fooling themselves if they think they can sell an operating system at a cost that in that country is 2-3 months salary. Heck, it is a month's salary even for the Indian programmers that all of our jobs are being outsourced to!
And for the average non-techie, there is a difference between knowing windows and knowing linux. At a job interview for a desk position, they are going to ask you if you know Word, not if you know a word processor, and if you know Windows, not if you know how to use a computer. And that's how it's going to be at 90% of the non-technical but computer using positions because average HR person has never heard of linux.
I'm not saying it's excusable - these markets should, as a whole, switch over to using linux, and companies should know that one word processor is basically the same as another. But that's not the way the world works currently, and pretending differently isn't going to change anything.
If foreign governments start cracking down on piracy in general (why would they care anyway - it's an american company) then normal people might start to realize that there are free alternatives, which will eventually filter up to Ms. HR person, since she can't afford to buy windows herself at home. Until then... if there's no real incentive for either to follow some foreign copyright law, why would they?
Yes, compare the graphics of a game designed for the newest PC hardware available (albeit in a very scalable engine) with something running on a three year old console. Right.
Level Design: And comparing the worst level design in Halo to the best in Half life is fair how? I love half life 1, but you have to admit the game sucked once you made it to the alien world. Even hardcore fans loathe the library. Some of the outdoor fights, however, the ones that people remember, are epic in a way I hadn't played in an FPS before.
Story: Let's call it a tie. The Arbiter in Halo 2 was definitely a unique story twist.
Weapons I can't think of a single FPS that used halo's style of shields versus health, where it is advantageous to switch your type of weapon mid fight, before.
I'm not really a halo fanboy - I played it through once, thought some of the levels rocked and some sucked - but it seems like people just love to hate on it because it is popular.
Most of the innovations were not large scales, but small tweaks to gameplay that just worked really, really well.
Some games had melee... but not in a way that was actually useful, and constantly available. Some games had grenades... but not so that they were core to the gameplay. Even half life made you run around to stations filling up your suit's health. Rechargeable shields (especially since the enemies have them to) changes the rhythm of gameplay to a sort of burst and wait flow that is significantly different previous fps. Vehicles were integrated (with extremely enjoyable physics) in ways that were not common at the time. And the AI was for the most part impressively good. Half life 1 was more of an amazing jump over its predecessors here, but Halo's Ai is still darn good compared to most competition.
Any game can add some weird crazy weapons... but that doesn't innovate in gameplay. The gravity gun is a big gameplay innovation. A crossbow or crowbar isn't so much.
Just saying that while Halo probably isn't the best shooter of all time... it isn't just marketing hype that made it as big as it is.
So... how can you read the bungie response and not take it as a joke? They said they were working on a Mario clone! They are picking on Miyamoto, yeah, but I don't see how you can take it as a serious response.
Part of the problem is that law and society have combined two entirely different types of sexual attraction. Attraction to those 14-year-old teenie boppers is Ephebophilia, not pedophilia, and IMO the two should be entirely different levels of crime.
An adolescent has fully developed physically, but is not considered emotionally ready for sex despite the fact that historically they would have been married off already. Youth as attractiveness is still ingrained in our culture - how many songs are there about "sweet sixteen." Yet legally an interest in a 14-year-old who is actively attempting to be seductive is as disgusting of a crime as actual pedophilia - the attraction to children younger than adolescence.
I'm not saying that it's a good thing for young girls to be slutting it up. I'm just saying that the definition of illegal pedophilia extends far beyond what most people would consider a completely unhealthy fetish - tell me, from looking, what is so amazing different between a picture of a 15 year old girl and an 18 year old one? Especially since in many states the age of legal consent IS only 15 or 16.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it most interesting reading about the beginnings of Christianity or Islam just how similar to a cult they were.
The solutions people have mentioned so far are very possible (user space audio drivers, PCI bus conflicts, scheduling).
Another possibility is the media timers in the microsoft API. I don't know about Vista, but under XP, the system timers by default are not very accurate, because higher accuracy timers taking more processing time to update. However, this isn't really acceptable for audio/video and gaming, so they have a special Multimedia mode you can set that will make them update at a higher frequency.
Unfortunately... this is a system wide setting. Which means if their network application is doing a lot of system time lookups for timestamps or something, it is incurring the extra penalty as well.
We noticed this at some point when a particular simulation application ran correctly - only when windows media player was also running. WMP enables this multimedia mode, affecting every other application using timers on the system.
Buying a mac instead of a pc just for games is a silly idea.
:)
However, as long as buying a mac if you *also* like to game isn't a silly idea, I'll be content
The biggest thing I've done is to make sure I'm evaluating their procedures and people when I'm interviewing for the job. Something as simple as how they deal with new people and how directly I'll be working with my boss can make a big difference, as can your own personal gut feeling about the boss and the people you meet.
:) But I know my wife turned down a position at a small consulting firm just because she didn't get a good vibe from the guy she would be working under. You can normally spot if someone is a tool pretty easily in an hour or so of talking to them.
I'm working at a small company where all of this works pretty nicely
Wouldn't it be lovely if society were willing to let guys make fathering a full time job, too.
If women have been sacrificing opportunities to grow professionally, what have been sacrificing for years to to put bread on the table of children they barely get to see.
The desire to be around for the children isn't any different, the only difference is the choice society wants you to make about it.
I'm pretty sure there have been a few studies that show girls are more likely to try to hide their intelligence or high scores.
In my experience? Guys are more likely to fully split out into predefined clique definitions of nerd or jock. But they have a social support system within that clique. I mean, if there are six nerdy guys who get together to hang out and play video games, the only thing that makes them less social than the six friends who play football is that girls will occasionally go out with the football players.
Nerds or jocks, guys seem to go out far enough to stick together and encourage each other in their interests. I've seen much less of that among girls who are nerdy - they are either trying to hide it at least somewhat or are almost complete outcasts with maybe one friend.
Of this is all a blatant generalization based on my personal experience.
Have a link to that study? Sounds interesting.
Newegg's policy is actually pretty darn good. They assume that you know what you're talking about when you say it's broken. So you fill out a web form, they ship you a new product and you need to ship them the broken one within a few days. You get refunded once they test that you were right about it being broken. No waiting in phone queues, no standing in line, no driving to the store. It's really pretty nice for someone who knows enough to be able to make that "is it broken" judgement call themselves.
The cell phone tower thing is mostly just a general frustration - I need to find out who actually does use it.
But the point was they told him that his house was covered, told him that he could just return everything if it didn't work. He didn't make a single call on it (because he couldn't get service) and then they charged him and told him to like it when he returned it. I'm sure some of the others are pretty nasty, too, but I haven't seen them acting as the "nice" company at all.
We didn't get T-Mobile service at our house (despite there being a cell phone tower belonging to someone in view) and despite their advertised 90-day return policy they still made my dad pay over $70 in early termination fees that a plan that didn't work.
Yeah, lovely service there.
I agree. But that's not a long term solution to the problem. As long as the risk versus reward for jumping the border works out, they're going to keep coming no matter what kind of fence they put up. You have to treat the root of the problem (you can get a better job working here illegally than you can back in mexico). Either make it harder to get that job here, or help mexico out a bit. Don't know how they're planning on doing that when everyone with initiative is on a bus for the border, though :P
Whoa, whoa. I'm all for open borders. But the reason they can hire illegal immigrants more cheaply is because they are directly avoiding all of the laws and protections that they have to give to Americans that they can hire legally. Illegal immigrants aren't getting a retirement plan, healthcare, reasonable working hours - all those wonderful things that we worked so hard to pry from corporations for the American working man. Hiring illegal workers isn't based on merit - it's based on ignoring all of those lovely laws that were put in place to protect worker's health and ability to make a living at a job. The laws are their for their own protection, as much as mine.
I have no problem with Latinos coming to United State of America to become Latino-Americans. I have every problem with corporations exploiting the Mexican poor to save a couple dollars an hour on labor. The immigration laws suck - bring the people in, make them American citizens - heck, bring their whole families over. And then in two generations we can have a bunch of latino-americans who grew up on their parent's dime being lazy and not wanting to make minimum wage - in other words, happy Americans.
And as for the white-trash protectionism accusation bullshit - I'm a software engineer who graduated with honors from a good school and got a job right out of college. I speak fluent spanish and would gladly hire and work with anyone who came over the border legally who is competing for a legal position against whatever other random guy applied. I work 12 hours a day at my job, and worked 70 hours weeks through college when I used to work construction. So fuck you for making assumptions.
Hiring a legal employee you pay:
Either minimum wage or the going rate for that position.
Health benefits.
Social Security.
Unemployment (this is a huge deal when I used to work construction college).
Hiring an illegal you pay:
Minimum wage.
In this, no matter what merits you do or do not have as an illegal worker, you are going to get hired and those benefits are going to disappear.
I don't care what race you are, where you come from, whatever - a glut of cheap labor drives wages down for EVERYONE attempting to do that labor. And considering that this is the US, and not Mexico (who should be doing a better job improving its economy to provide opportunities for its own people) I consider that we should look after ourselves first, as no one else in this world is going to be looking out for us.
They're just looking for work to support their families and buy some booze and video games on weekends.
ARREST THE BASTARDS THAT HIRE THEM.
Some random latino looking for work isn't a threat to America. The American 'citizen' who is breaking the law and hiring him is directly betraying our laws and our people to save himself some cash. By definition, if Americans refuse to work in your job, you aren't offering enough money for it. That is how capitalism works, and it is the cheapskates hiring illegals who are driving down the living wage and options for advancement for the American poor.
I'm fine with bringing anyone who wants over here to work - legally and for the same wage that I would get at that position, so they can compete on merit, and the price of labor doesn't get driven down. I used to work in construction, and every time just rich jackass complains about how the guys he hired to build his addition don't speak English and messed up his house, but he's hiring them back because "they're so darn cheap" I just want to spit.
Of course, none of this will ever happen because half of Congress will get arrested or lose their gardeners.
Yes, automatic tesselation is a big part of it :) But does random slashdot user know what tesselation even means, or about the problems of bus bandwidth on modern hardware?
You can do instancing already, but (you are using exactly the same tree model and passing in a list of transforms to it. You could use a geometry shader to take a basic archetype of a tree and add flair to each to make it unique using some sort of pseudo randomness. Which is how you already make a forest, but you don't do it on the hardware.
Vertex shaders can't create new vertices.
With a geometry shader you can pass the video card one copy of a tree, and have the geometry shader turn it into a forest.
I saw one of the most amusing examples of this one time - the playoff game I was watching had finished early, and another, bigger game that the station did not have rights to was in in double overtime. So the post-game coverage was for the next fifteen minutes the anchors sitting and watching the game while one of them told you what was going on. Since they DID have replay rights, after every play, they should show it to you again so you could watch.
Was the most amusing "best effort" to provide for the fans that I've seen on television, especially since all of the anchors were as obviously into seeing the results as the fans were.
I always look at it as speaking another language.
There's nothing wrong with being able to speak one way when you're with your friends and another when you're applying for a job. I'd say it's actually a benefit, as you can network with people who would otherwise shun you as either uppity in the first situation or uncouth in the second.
English dialect, the way you dress, the way you hold yourself, even what sports you know the rules to... it's all about communicating something about your social status and where you belong. I view it not much differently from being able to speak Spanish when you visit Mexico.
Don't see why kids can't be taught to avoid foul language when they're in front of someone who cares. I managed it eventually... probably would have a lot sooner if my mom hadn't just told me that it was a bad thing to say.
And yet what teachers hate most about parents it that they don't spend any time HELPING their children with their homework.
Half of the difference between the kid getting straight A's in reading and the kid failing spelling is whether their parents read to them and help them with their spelling homework.
Or not having one at all :P
My parents house is 2 miles out of town, and it's rural enough that no one ever intends to run cable out there. It is technically close enough that they could get DSL at a reduced speed, but the phone company won't sell it to them because they can't give them the minimum speeds they advertise.
That's why intelligent charity always gives what you have an abundance of.
A poor person should donate his time, a rich person his money.
I do wonder that every time I see all of the band fund raisers around here. I wonder how much they could make if they just set up a small lawn mowing business or a part time job instead of trying to sell random crap and giving half the profits to a cheese-making company.
So how long until a homeless guy who is allergic to peanuts sues CBS?
He's just saying that MS is fooling themselves if they think they can sell an operating system at a cost that in that country is 2-3 months salary. Heck, it is a month's salary even for the Indian programmers that all of our jobs are being outsourced to!
And for the average non-techie, there is a difference between knowing windows and knowing linux. At a job interview for a desk position, they are going to ask you if you know Word, not if you know a word processor, and if you know Windows, not if you know how to use a computer. And that's how it's going to be at 90% of the non-technical but computer using positions because average HR person has never heard of linux.
I'm not saying it's excusable - these markets should, as a whole, switch over to using linux, and companies should know that one word processor is basically the same as another. But that's not the way the world works currently, and pretending differently isn't going to change anything.
If foreign governments start cracking down on piracy in general (why would they care anyway - it's an american company) then normal people might start to realize that there are free alternatives, which will eventually filter up to Ms. HR person, since she can't afford to buy windows herself at home. Until then... if there's no real incentive for either to follow some foreign copyright law, why would they?
Graphics
Yes, compare the graphics of a game designed for the newest PC hardware available (albeit in a very scalable engine) with something running on a three year old console. Right.
Level Design:
And comparing the worst level design in Halo to the best in Half life is fair how? I love half life 1, but you have to admit the game sucked once you made it to the alien world. Even hardcore fans loathe the library. Some of the outdoor fights, however, the ones that people remember, are epic in a way I hadn't played in an FPS before.
Story:
Let's call it a tie. The Arbiter in Halo 2 was definitely a unique story twist.
Weapons
I can't think of a single FPS that used halo's style of shields versus health, where it is advantageous to switch your type of weapon mid fight, before.
I'm not really a halo fanboy - I played it through once, thought some of the levels rocked and some sucked - but it seems like people just love to hate on it because it is popular.
Most of the innovations were not large scales, but small tweaks to gameplay that just worked really, really well.
Some games had melee... but not in a way that was actually useful, and constantly available.
Some games had grenades... but not so that they were core to the gameplay.
Even half life made you run around to stations filling up your suit's health. Rechargeable shields (especially since the enemies have them to) changes the rhythm of gameplay to a sort of burst and wait flow that is significantly different previous fps.
Vehicles were integrated (with extremely enjoyable physics) in ways that were not common at the time.
And the AI was for the most part impressively good. Half life 1 was more of an amazing jump over its predecessors here, but Halo's Ai is still darn good compared to most competition.
Any game can add some weird crazy weapons... but that doesn't innovate in gameplay. The gravity gun is a big gameplay innovation. A crossbow or crowbar isn't so much.
Just saying that while Halo probably isn't the best shooter of all time... it isn't just marketing hype that made it as big as it is.
So... how can you read the bungie response and not take it as a joke? They said they were working on a Mario clone! They are picking on Miyamoto, yeah, but I don't see how you can take it as a serious response.
Part of the problem is that law and society have combined two entirely different types of sexual attraction. Attraction to those 14-year-old teenie boppers is Ephebophilia, not pedophilia, and IMO the two should be entirely different levels of crime.
An adolescent has fully developed physically, but is not considered emotionally ready for sex despite the fact that historically they would have been married off already. Youth as attractiveness is still ingrained in our culture - how many songs are there about "sweet sixteen." Yet legally an interest in a 14-year-old who is actively attempting to be seductive is as disgusting of a crime as actual pedophilia - the attraction to children younger than adolescence.
I'm not saying that it's a good thing for young girls to be slutting it up. I'm just saying that the definition of illegal pedophilia extends far beyond what most people would consider a completely unhealthy fetish - tell me, from looking, what is so amazing different between a picture of a 15 year old girl and an 18 year old one? Especially since in many states the age of legal consent IS only 15 or 16.