"2. Programming for the multiprocessors would actually be pretty interesting. Just because it hasn't been done doesn't mean it can't."
Small nitpick here. Actually it has been, quite a few times. The Sega Saturn had 2 SH2 processors, and the Sega 32X added extra processors to the standard Genesis, so in a sense, it was multiprocessor. The Playstation 2 has an R10000, an R3000, as well as 3 Vector Units (VUs), 2 of which run their own code running in RAM. I'm sure there are others, but I'm pulling a brain fart right now, so none of the other console specs are coming to mind right now, but thats just off the top of my head.
My comment was a general comment about the government busting pirates, and making a big deal about Razor1911. They didn't mention enough details about the Cisco theft for me to make any sort of reasonably valid evaluation about what he may have done and/or stole. Nonetheless, I still think that putting the guy in jail for 50 months is way too harsh, even if he did steal $600,000 of Cisco equipment, and I also believe that throwing him in jail for 50 months is not going to accomplish anything. He's not going to be rehabilitated when he gets out, nor is anything useful going to come out of him being locked up. Therefore I believe his sentence is way too harsh, whether I am weighing in on the Cisco theft or not. So I stand by original comment, although I do apologize for being unclear in how it was worded.
I actually am a professional game developer, and I think this guy's sentence is WAY too harsh. Speaking as someone who works in the video game industry day in and day out, I have never seen anyone in the business overly concerned with piracy one way or another, its just one of those things considered a given. Anyway, the real point of my message is to say not only is this guy going to cost society for the next 50 months, but he will continue to be a cost after he gets out. Do you really think that once he gets out he will be a fine "rehabilitated" member of society, able to contribute in a positive fashion? Of course not. Personally, I think a more fitting punishment for a pirate would be to make him work in the video game industry for free, doing things like coming up with better copy protection, testing games, hell, even programming. Let him see what goes into writing a video game while gives something back to the industry that lost in the first place. But I don't believe the guy belongs in jail for piracy (if he stole hardware from Cisco, that's another matter that I'm not going to weigh in on.)
I wasn't under the impression that it would cost $5 a month, so much as you would just pay something like $5 for each level, with no $50 cost up front. If you want to buy EVERY level for the game, that would cost you something around $50 at $5 a level.
Nitpicky, I know, but it was one of my favorite lines in Empire. Right after Luke jumps/falls off the platform, Vader turns around and as he passes one of the Empire's goons, he snaps "Prepare my ship.". I always liked that line because he sounds so angry when he says it. And in the Special Editions, they changed the line. I don't know why, but they did. Pisses me off every time I see it. I don't care nearly as much about the other scenes, but I always liked that line.
I lived in California for a long time, and I always thought the drivers were horrible when it rained. Since leaving California, I have lived in Austin, TX, Chicago, IL, New Jersey, and New York, and let me tell you, the people in California (at least in Los Angeles), drive fairly well compared to the way I've seen people drive elsewhere, including in rain and in snow. I was really surprised to find that EVERY place I've lived that had rain and snow, the people seemed to drive consistently worse than those in California when it rained. For example, in New Jersey, while it was still snowing and had just dumped a good 3-4" in a 24 hour period, I saw an SUV barrelling down an unplowed highway going about 90 while the rest of traffic was driving about 30. This is typical, at least in New Jersey, where I actually see maybe 1 wreck a week actually happen, as opposed to just driving by one.
I wouldn't write it off yet. Eugene Jarvis has the a unique skill for making games fun. I've worked with him, and no one can explain his ability to make games fun, but he can do it. Cruisin' USA went on to be one of the highest selling arcade games of all time, but following your philosophy, its really "just another arcade racer". I'm confident in Jarvis' ability to make the game fun, even if it is "just another light gun game".
"There are numerous studies proving the effect of violent videogames on minors. There are, to my knowledge, no ligitimate studies proving the opposite... however, untold millions of kids have games like Grand Theft Auto, BloodRayne, Manhunt and what not. If we know it's bad... if society can be harmed by it (not just the child themselves), and if WE KNOW that many parents are not restricting their kids from these purchases, what else can we do?"
Care to back that up with some statistics? Here's some saying that they *don't* cause violence, as well as why sometimes the studies are flawed:
"Evaluating the Research on Violent Video Game" by Jonathan Freedman
http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers/freedman.html
"6th annual video and computer game report card"
http://www.mediafamily.org/research/report_vgrc_20 01.pdf
This is just in a few minutes of searching. With this huge increase in "violent media" and supposed aggression in children, why is it that violent crimes have gone down over the years, even with more video games and violent media? Of course, I'm the first to admit that it doesn't mean a correlation, but I am tired of studies linking violence talking about the increases in violence. We aren't living in a more violent society, we are safer now than we have ever been. Remember, even with 1 in a million chances, it happens in the 292 times each day in the United States alone. Here are some studies showing violent crimes in California for example. This study was done by the Department of Justice. If you look, at least in CA, violent crimes for the last 3 years (of the statistics, which only show up to 2001) have been really low compared to the last 30 years. Here's the web page if you want to look for yourself:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dtdata.htm
You can pull up whatever state you want and look at it yourself. Back up your arguments with some research if you feel so strongly about them. I know I feel strongly about mine.
He said he has the backup because he has a cable modem. If you have a cable modem, you'll still get analog cable if its offered in your area, regardless of what the cable company may tell you.
One of the problems with making characters behave realistically is that its not always fun. I worked on a couple basketball games, and the first one I did, we briefly tried putting in animations of the player doing things like turning around 180 degrees from a full run, etc. In the end, it looked really good, but it was impossible to play. We ended up just letting the character turn around 180" instantly, because thats the only way to make it playable. The really good looking motions in games tend to be the automatic ones, things like their idle animations or cut scene movements. Once the user interacts with it, you have to cut out a lot of "realism" just to make it playable and fun.
This is primarily because of the increased cost in the game cabinets themselves, the higher maintenance costs, and the increase in footprint, taking up more floor space. What is interesting is that when I was working at Midway, there was a test they did where they put machines out at test locations, and games set to the.25 or.50 pricing consistently earned more on a whole than the same game set at a.75 and up. The difference wasn't that small of an amount either, it was something along the lines of a couple hundred dollars a day difference, and. The biggest difference wasn't that more people were playing the game so much as people would play for longer. They tended to keep dumping money into the game to continue playing, as opposed to when it was set at a higher price, and people would only play 1 game.
I worked at Bally/Midway when they closed their coin-op department, and it wasn't Neo-Geo that killed the arcades. What was happening was that graphics alone no longer made people want to play the machines, because, to be honest, there really isn't that much of a difference between 50 million polygons a second compared to 100 million. It doesn't look different enough from the version they can play at home for people to actually spend money on. So the things that were doing well were machines that could offer something you couldn't get at home, primarily things like cockpits/seats, dancing pads, light guns, etc. Unfortunately, these had the side effect of increasing both the footprint of the cabinet as well as the cost. In addition, many of these machines are really only fun when linked between several players, increasing the cost even more. This meant that it no longer became profitable for most of the operators to run/maintain the machines since they could fit less machines in the same amount of floor space, they were more expensive, and had more parts that break/wear out, increasing the operating cost as well as the downtime on the machine. At that point, operators started increasing the cost of the games from 25 cents to 50 cents to 1 or 2 dollars a game, which makes people less likely to play unless the machine is truly spectacular, etc. It is these factors that played the largest role in the decline of the coin-op industry.
On a more positive note, Eugene has been around in video games for more than 20 years now, and has consistently made games that were fun and were at the very least decent earning games for the operators. I can't think of any games he has done that I was disappointed with. If there's anyone who I would pick from the video game industry to make a truly kick-ass machine, it would definitely be Eugene Jarvis.
Being a game programmer, and more specifically, having worked on the XBox, I have to say you are wrong. Halo 1 did not push the XBox hardware that much, the machine has a LOT more power in it. And as a game developer, sure I can do things on the PC that I can't do on any of the consoles, but I effectively have to write the game twice, once for the low end PCs, and again for the higher end hardware. Either that, or I have to cut out the lowed end PC market, at which point its probably no longer worth it. In addition, although consoles have technically lower specs than a PC, we can often do more with it, primarily because developing a game takes 1 to 2 years, at least. This means that on the PC, I am trying to write code for a system that doesn't even exist yet, I'm trying to hit a moving target. On a console on the other hand, its a static target, and the longer I work on a particular platform, the more performance I can I get out of the machine.
That was done intentionally. Douglas Adams co-wrote the text for the Infocom game, and it was all done under his watch. He himself stated that he liked the different variations, which is why the BBC radio play is different from the book which is different from the game.
I am a video game programmer, and have been in the industry for many years. Here's what I've experienced. The reason why Christmas is a big season is that games won't sit on the shelf for very long. The retailers quickly move games off the shelf to make room for new games. Since titles sell more units around Christmas, it makes sense to release them then. If I have a game that I release in June, chances are it won't sell nearly as well as it would around Christmas. And chances are, even if it is a good game, it won't be stocked by most retailers by the time Christmas rolls around. This is *especially* true of the really big retailers, for example WalMart and Toys 'r Us. On the other hand, certain titles sell well at different times of the year. Sports titles tend to sell well during the first half of whatever the sports season is, and poorly after that (comparitively speaking). Everyone here of course mentions games they would buy games no matter what the time of year is, but all the examples I've seen cited are existing franchises. Most game companies will try and release their unknown titles and/or new franchises during the Christmas holiday, and have their known titles release at other times of the year to fill the void. When I say unknown titles, I mean unknown, and not bad. I know plenty of games that were very good in my opinion, and just didn't sell well, usually because of poor marketing support or releasing at an awkward time.
He said the original Castle Wolfenstein. Castle Wolfenstein 3D by id is NOT the original Castle Wolfenstein. The original was a top down 2D game, and I know I played it on the Apple 2, but I don't know what other platforms it may have been available on.
A limited liability corporation is still being incorporated, its just a different form of corporation. Other than what you need to do to become incorporated, and some rules on shareholders, it is in essence the same as an S-Corp. An S-Corp lets you apply you're corporation's profits and losses onto your personal income taxes, as will an LLC, making your corporation somewhat easier to manage. On the other hand, a C-Corp is a corporation that has to pay quarterly estimated tax, and I believe that is the corporation you are talking about. Where you are mistaken however is that you are double taxed. The only place you are double taxed is dividends, i.e. profits paid out to shareholders (which in the case of 1 person, is just you). If I start a C-Corp, and the corporation earns $300,000, and I get paid $250,000 as an employee, then I am personally taxed on that $250,000, and the corporation is taxed on the $50,000 it has left over after paying me, hence no double tax. If I take that $50,000, and want to pay it out as dividends, then the corporation pays taxes on it (after which, lets say $40,000 is left over), pays out $40,000 to me, and then I pay taxes on that $40,000 of income. What you can do however, is you can do something like pay it out as a bonus, in which case it becomes a write off for the corporation, and you're the only one to pay the tax on the $50,000 (instead of $40k, because the corporation didn't pay taxes on it). The other thing you can do is shift expenses that are business related from yourself to the corporation. Things like your travel expenses, computer equipment, a percentage of the rent, business lunches, etc. The advantage of having a corporation (and this includes S-Corps, C-Corps, as well as LLC's) is that corporations have a greater leniency on certain things that they can write off. For example, if you go on a business lunch, and it is not out of town, you can only write off 50% of the amount. If the corporation has a policy of paying for business lunches, it can write off 100% of the amount, whether it is in town or not.
Just a little disclaimer however, I am not an accountant, just a business owner. If you are seriously looking into incorporating, speak to an accountant first. Although I highly recommend all contractors incorporating, there are numerous things that you have to keep in mind, and there is overhead, so its best to go into it with eyes open, or you are liable to get screwed for not following the rules.
Wish I had mod points to mod this one up. Man, I haven't thought about the game in ages, but it was an incredible game. Something about it was incredibly creepy too, definitely worth checking out if you can find it somewhere.
If I remember correctly, there was an article where they talked about how it works. Basically they send up the commands. Once they have been received, the rover transmits them back and waits for an OK. Once NASA has received the rover's transmission, and it matches what they sent up, then they send the OK command before the rover executes it.
That is basically register size. The pointers are still 32 bit. For example, the playstation 2 is considered a 128 bit machine. All the pointers are 32 bit, as is a regular floating point number, but I can process 4 floating point numbers in a single instruction. This is great for things like 3D games where you need to do a lot of linear algebra on vectors and matrices.
Ahh, but due to to the fact that the spoiler stabilizes the turbulence created by the car pushing through the air at high speed, it also increases gas mileage, sometimes significantly, depending on the car. This is a fairly well documented fact. Mind you, I'm of course not talking about the huge spoilers that people add to the back of their CRX.
Slashdot Mirror
"2. Programming for the multiprocessors would actually be pretty interesting. Just because it hasn't been done doesn't mean it can't." Small nitpick here. Actually it has been, quite a few times. The Sega Saturn had 2 SH2 processors, and the Sega 32X added extra processors to the standard Genesis, so in a sense, it was multiprocessor. The Playstation 2 has an R10000, an R3000, as well as 3 Vector Units (VUs), 2 of which run their own code running in RAM. I'm sure there are others, but I'm pulling a brain fart right now, so none of the other console specs are coming to mind right now, but thats just off the top of my head.
My comment was a general comment about the government busting pirates, and making a big deal about Razor1911. They didn't mention enough details about the Cisco theft for me to make any sort of reasonably valid evaluation about what he may have done and/or stole. Nonetheless, I still think that putting the guy in jail for 50 months is way too harsh, even if he did steal $600,000 of Cisco equipment, and I also believe that throwing him in jail for 50 months is not going to accomplish anything. He's not going to be rehabilitated when he gets out, nor is anything useful going to come out of him being locked up. Therefore I believe his sentence is way too harsh, whether I am weighing in on the Cisco theft or not. So I stand by original comment, although I do apologize for being unclear in how it was worded.
I actually am a professional game developer, and I think this guy's sentence is WAY too harsh. Speaking as someone who works in the video game industry day in and day out, I have never seen anyone in the business overly concerned with piracy one way or another, its just one of those things considered a given. Anyway, the real point of my message is to say not only is this guy going to cost society for the next 50 months, but he will continue to be a cost after he gets out. Do you really think that once he gets out he will be a fine "rehabilitated" member of society, able to contribute in a positive fashion? Of course not. Personally, I think a more fitting punishment for a pirate would be to make him work in the video game industry for free, doing things like coming up with better copy protection, testing games, hell, even programming. Let him see what goes into writing a video game while gives something back to the industry that lost in the first place. But I don't believe the guy belongs in jail for piracy (if he stole hardware from Cisco, that's another matter that I'm not going to weigh in on.)
I wasn't under the impression that it would cost $5 a month, so much as you would just pay something like $5 for each level, with no $50 cost up front. If you want to buy EVERY level for the game, that would cost you something around $50 at $5 a level.
Nitpicky, I know, but it was one of my favorite lines in Empire. Right after Luke jumps/falls off the platform, Vader turns around and as he passes one of the Empire's goons, he snaps "Prepare my ship.". I always liked that line because he sounds so angry when he says it. And in the Special Editions, they changed the line. I don't know why, but they did. Pisses me off every time I see it. I don't care nearly as much about the other scenes, but I always liked that line.
I lived in California for a long time, and I always thought the drivers were horrible when it rained. Since leaving California, I have lived in Austin, TX, Chicago, IL, New Jersey, and New York, and let me tell you, the people in California (at least in Los Angeles), drive fairly well compared to the way I've seen people drive elsewhere, including in rain and in snow. I was really surprised to find that EVERY place I've lived that had rain and snow, the people seemed to drive consistently worse than those in California when it rained. For example, in New Jersey, while it was still snowing and had just dumped a good 3-4" in a 24 hour period, I saw an SUV barrelling down an unplowed highway going about 90 while the rest of traffic was driving about 30. This is typical, at least in New Jersey, where I actually see maybe 1 wreck a week actually happen, as opposed to just driving by one.
I wouldn't write it off yet. Eugene Jarvis has the a unique skill for making games fun. I've worked with him, and no one can explain his ability to make games fun, but he can do it. Cruisin' USA went on to be one of the highest selling arcade games of all time, but following your philosophy, its really "just another arcade racer". I'm confident in Jarvis' ability to make the game fun, even if it is "just another light gun game".
"There are numerous studies proving the effect of violent videogames on minors. There are, to my knowledge, no ligitimate studies proving the opposite... however, untold millions of kids have games like Grand Theft Auto, BloodRayne, Manhunt and what not. If we know it's bad... if society can be harmed by it (not just the child themselves), and if WE KNOW that many parents are not restricting their kids from these purchases, what else can we do?"
s /freedman.html0 01.pdf
Care to back that up with some statistics? Here's some saying that they *don't* cause violence, as well as why sometimes the studies are flawed:
"Evaluating the Research on Violent Video Game" by Jonathan Freedman
http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/paper
"6th annual video and computer game report card"
http://www.mediafamily.org/research/report_vgrc_2
This is just in a few minutes of searching. With this huge increase in "violent media" and supposed aggression in children, why is it that violent crimes have gone down over the years, even with more video games and violent media? Of course, I'm the first to admit that it doesn't mean a correlation, but I am tired of studies linking violence talking about the increases in violence. We aren't living in a more violent society, we are safer now than we have ever been. Remember, even with 1 in a million chances, it happens in the 292 times each day in the United States alone. Here are some studies showing violent crimes in California for example. This study was done by the Department of Justice. If you look, at least in CA, violent crimes for the last 3 years (of the statistics, which only show up to 2001) have been really low compared to the last 30 years. Here's the web page if you want to look for yourself:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dtdata.htm
You can pull up whatever state you want and look at it yourself. Back up your arguments with some research if you feel so strongly about them. I know I feel strongly about mine.
Ummm, 7 year olds CAN buy tickets to NC-17 movies. Movie ratings aren't law, they are self-enforced by the movie theatres and movie companies.
He said he has the backup because he has a cable modem. If you have a cable modem, you'll still get analog cable if its offered in your area, regardless of what the cable company may tell you.
One of the problems with making characters behave realistically is that its not always fun. I worked on a couple basketball games, and the first one I did, we briefly tried putting in animations of the player doing things like turning around 180 degrees from a full run, etc. In the end, it looked really good, but it was impossible to play. We ended up just letting the character turn around 180" instantly, because thats the only way to make it playable. The really good looking motions in games tend to be the automatic ones, things like their idle animations or cut scene movements. Once the user interacts with it, you have to cut out a lot of "realism" just to make it playable and fun.
This is primarily because of the increased cost in the game cabinets themselves, the higher maintenance costs, and the increase in footprint, taking up more floor space. What is interesting is that when I was working at Midway, there was a test they did where they put machines out at test locations, and games set to the .25 or .50 pricing consistently earned more on a whole than the same game set at a .75 and up. The difference wasn't that small of an amount either, it was something along the lines of a couple hundred dollars a day difference, and. The biggest difference wasn't that more people were playing the game so much as people would play for longer. They tended to keep dumping money into the game to continue playing, as opposed to when it was set at a higher price, and people would only play 1 game.
I worked at Bally/Midway when they closed their coin-op department, and it wasn't Neo-Geo that killed the arcades. What was happening was that graphics alone no longer made people want to play the machines, because, to be honest, there really isn't that much of a difference between 50 million polygons a second compared to 100 million. It doesn't look different enough from the version they can play at home for people to actually spend money on. So the things that were doing well were machines that could offer something you couldn't get at home, primarily things like cockpits/seats, dancing pads, light guns, etc. Unfortunately, these had the side effect of increasing both the footprint of the cabinet as well as the cost. In addition, many of these machines are really only fun when linked between several players, increasing the cost even more. This meant that it no longer became profitable for most of the operators to run/maintain the machines since they could fit less machines in the same amount of floor space, they were more expensive, and had more parts that break/wear out, increasing the operating cost as well as the downtime on the machine. At that point, operators started increasing the cost of the games from 25 cents to 50 cents to 1 or 2 dollars a game, which makes people less likely to play unless the machine is truly spectacular, etc. It is these factors that played the largest role in the decline of the coin-op industry.
On a more positive note, Eugene has been around in video games for more than 20 years now, and has consistently made games that were fun and were at the very least decent earning games for the operators. I can't think of any games he has done that I was disappointed with. If there's anyone who I would pick from the video game industry to make a truly kick-ass machine, it would definitely be Eugene Jarvis.
The 3 different HDTV resolutions was probably a marketing decision, not an engineering one :)
Being a game programmer, and more specifically, having worked on the XBox, I have to say you are wrong. Halo 1 did not push the XBox hardware that much, the machine has a LOT more power in it. And as a game developer, sure I can do things on the PC that I can't do on any of the consoles, but I effectively have to write the game twice, once for the low end PCs, and again for the higher end hardware. Either that, or I have to cut out the lowed end PC market, at which point its probably no longer worth it. In addition, although consoles have technically lower specs than a PC, we can often do more with it, primarily because developing a game takes 1 to 2 years, at least. This means that on the PC, I am trying to write code for a system that doesn't even exist yet, I'm trying to hit a moving target. On a console on the other hand, its a static target, and the longer I work on a particular platform, the more performance I can I get out of the machine.
That was done intentionally. Douglas Adams co-wrote the text for the Infocom game, and it was all done under his watch. He himself stated that he liked the different variations, which is why the BBC radio play is different from the book which is different from the game.
I am a video game programmer, and have been in the industry for many years. Here's what I've experienced. The reason why Christmas is a big season is that games won't sit on the shelf for very long. The retailers quickly move games off the shelf to make room for new games. Since titles sell more units around Christmas, it makes sense to release them then. If I have a game that I release in June, chances are it won't sell nearly as well as it would around Christmas. And chances are, even if it is a good game, it won't be stocked by most retailers by the time Christmas rolls around. This is *especially* true of the really big retailers, for example WalMart and Toys 'r Us. On the other hand, certain titles sell well at different times of the year. Sports titles tend to sell well during the first half of whatever the sports season is, and poorly after that (comparitively speaking). Everyone here of course mentions games they would buy games no matter what the time of year is, but all the examples I've seen cited are existing franchises. Most game companies will try and release their unknown titles and/or new franchises during the Christmas holiday, and have their known titles release at other times of the year to fill the void. When I say unknown titles, I mean unknown, and not bad. I know plenty of games that were very good in my opinion, and just didn't sell well, usually because of poor marketing support or releasing at an awkward time.
He said the original Castle Wolfenstein. Castle Wolfenstein 3D by id is NOT the original Castle Wolfenstein. The original was a top down 2D game, and I know I played it on the Apple 2, but I don't know what other platforms it may have been available on.
A limited liability corporation is still being incorporated, its just a different form of corporation. Other than what you need to do to become incorporated, and some rules on shareholders, it is in essence the same as an S-Corp. An S-Corp lets you apply you're corporation's profits and losses onto your personal income taxes, as will an LLC, making your corporation somewhat easier to manage. On the other hand, a C-Corp is a corporation that has to pay quarterly estimated tax, and I believe that is the corporation you are talking about. Where you are mistaken however is that you are double taxed. The only place you are double taxed is dividends, i.e. profits paid out to shareholders (which in the case of 1 person, is just you). If I start a C-Corp, and the corporation earns $300,000, and I get paid $250,000 as an employee, then I am personally taxed on that $250,000, and the corporation is taxed on the $50,000 it has left over after paying me, hence no double tax. If I take that $50,000, and want to pay it out as dividends, then the corporation pays taxes on it (after which, lets say $40,000 is left over), pays out $40,000 to me, and then I pay taxes on that $40,000 of income. What you can do however, is you can do something like pay it out as a bonus, in which case it becomes a write off for the corporation, and you're the only one to pay the tax on the $50,000 (instead of $40k, because the corporation didn't pay taxes on it). The other thing you can do is shift expenses that are business related from yourself to the corporation. Things like your travel expenses, computer equipment, a percentage of the rent, business lunches, etc. The advantage of having a corporation (and this includes S-Corps, C-Corps, as well as LLC's) is that corporations have a greater leniency on certain things that they can write off. For example, if you go on a business lunch, and it is not out of town, you can only write off 50% of the amount. If the corporation has a policy of paying for business lunches, it can write off 100% of the amount, whether it is in town or not.
Just a little disclaimer however, I am not an accountant, just a business owner. If you are seriously looking into incorporating, speak to an accountant first. Although I highly recommend all contractors incorporating, there are numerous things that you have to keep in mind, and there is overhead, so its best to go into it with eyes open, or you are liable to get screwed for not following the rules.
Wish I had mod points to mod this one up. Man, I haven't thought about the game in ages, but it was an incredible game. Something about it was incredibly creepy too, definitely worth checking out if you can find it somewhere.
If I remember correctly, there was an article where they talked about how it works. Basically they send up the commands. Once they have been received, the rover transmits them back and waits for an OK. Once NASA has received the rover's transmission, and it matches what they sent up, then they send the OK command before the rover executes it.
That is basically register size. The pointers are still 32 bit. For example, the playstation 2 is considered a 128 bit machine. All the pointers are 32 bit, as is a regular floating point number, but I can process 4 floating point numbers in a single instruction. This is great for things like 3D games where you need to do a lot of linear algebra on vectors and matrices.
You'll want to do this while NOT carrying your phone, or expect a visit from your friendly neighborhood police department soon after :)
I wonder if renters insurance covers items seized by the SS? :)
Ahh, but due to to the fact that the spoiler stabilizes the turbulence created by the car pushing through the air at high speed, it also increases gas mileage, sometimes significantly, depending on the car. This is a fairly well documented fact. Mind you, I'm of course not talking about the huge spoilers that people add to the back of their CRX.