And yet, you have a GameCube, even though it wasn't backwards compatible with N64, which wasn't compatible with SNES, which wasn't compatible with NES..
Backwards compatibility is nice, but not if it compromises the new features of the machine.
I'd rather have a cutting edge console than something that'd been watered down so it can still run old stuff.
There were a lot of disgruntled PS2 early adopters who found its low-res graphics (an artifact from PSX days) to be less-than-impressive. In fact, the first run of games didn't exactly blow away the PSX versions. There was also much ado about the handful of PSX games that were incompatible. It gave them an early black eye.
I'll buy an Xbox 2 for the same reason I've bought any other console: It has some kick-ass games that i want to play. If all it had going for it was compatibility (ie; PS2 for the first year), it'll sit on the shelves.
Compatibility is nice, but not a selling point by itself.
Costs can be other than financial. For instance, some technical hurdle that would cripple your machine if you wanted backwards compatibility.
This is a move from x86 to PPC architecture. Perhaps backwards compatibility would have meant including the old GPUs, etc.
SNES wasn't backwards compatible with NES for similar reasons. They would have wasted too much silicon doing old stuff. Same with N64, Gamecube, and no doubt Gamecube 2.
People with adult sized hands, like myself, preferred the XBox original controller, or the Dreamcast controller, and find PS2 and Gamecube's controllers awkward.
Perhaps the market MSFT is after is; grown-up folks with money.
Tomorrow $SOME_OTHER_GAME_SITE will report that it will include backwards compatibility, and compatibility with Sega Saturn and Apple Pippin!
It was actually widely speculated that Xbox would play Dreamcast games. Some asshat at $TOP_GAMER_NEWZ_SITE noticed that MSFT and Sega were working together, and jumped to a huge conclusion. Of course, they were working to hammer out marketing deals for Sega games on the Xbox platform.
Blah. Wait for official word, I hate speculation.
It'll probably be compatible. Or else it won't be called Xbox at all, they'd abandon and start a whole new "brand". But with Xbox just starting to pick up a good head of steam, they'd be foolish to kill compatibility on any "Xbox 2" at this point.
So it could be a PS2-PSX thing, or a SNES-N64 thing. Who knows.
It's not a network you dispatch through, it'd be a network in which a cop can file reports from his car and save a little paperwork back at the station.
Plenty of agencies use drive in hot spots to access the RMS systems, run queries, etc.
What kind of chipset is running it though? I don't see a fancy 3D display being much use if it's some piece of crap via chipset or an older radeon mobility.
Actually, I don't see it being of much use period.. A standalone display or something, perhaps, but what's the market for a 3D laptop? And why do I only hear of laptops and not a regular monitor I can hook up to my PC, you know, the one with the badass 3D card in it that could do something cool with such a display.
Actually it couldnt, there's no real stereoscopic support in ATi's cards, unless they snuck it in in the last month or so.. Owners of the lcd glasses have been fussing about this for quite some time on rage3d.com..
Which answers my first question, it must be an nVidia, or Matrox Parhelia or something in the laptop... Or some kludged ATi driver set..
GD: Adopt a business model that is in harmony with Open Source Software; do not try to do proprietary with Open Source Software. And if you don't believe in OSS, don't do OSS!
There, you've been told by a frenchman!
I thought the principle of Open Source was anyone can use it however the hell they please.
It does it all - plays dvds, pvr's, plays PS2 games - all with one box sitting under your $10,000 plasma display.
Believe it or not, this is not a lot of money to some people. Those same people bought Pioneer's LaserActive system back in the day.
It's a niche product, hence the price tag (no loss leaders here). I don't see soccer mom going into wal-mart and buying one of these for her kids instead of a regular PS2. But I see Richie Rich buying one because it's better than a PS2.
If not I don't want one. What's the point of a DVD-R if I can't play the PS2 games I use it to copy, that is legitimately backup for educational purposes!
The cast of Friends and Star Trek certainly DO exist, excluding whichever ones died.
The characters they portrayed, however, do not.
Maybe it is just a pet peeve of mine, but it drives me nuts when people get all uppity over someone elses use of language, and attack with even poorer use of the language.
I sure hope they fixed the bugs. Every once in awhile it'll stop resolving pages.
Like if I did a "back" to return to the/. homepage, I'll get a message like "the page / cannot be found" or some shit. Donno if it's the cache barfing or what. It's sporatic, but annoying as hell.
Better, not yet. Unless you just assume free and open means better. Myself, the term "better" implies there's some technical aspect that could be demonstrably improved over competition.
Yeah, not free, but still. The only people who'd need to fear would be big corporations offering some giant mpeg-4 movie database and paying no royalties, or some such.
This test proves that Sun's optimized Java compiler and VM are faster on Red Hat than gcc.
Gcc is designed for compatibility with a wide range of architectures, and is not optimized for a single one. He also (apparantly) used stock glibc from Red Hat. And only one "test", the method call test, showed java to be a real winner. And even then, it's server-side Java, which is meaning less when you talk about it as a day-to-day dev language (ie; creating standalone client-side apps).
Intel's (heavily optimized) C++ compiler should be a damn sight faster, and so should VC++.
This "comparison" is so limited in scope and meaning, that this writeup should be considered a troll.
Hell, read his lead-in:
"I was sick of hearing people say Java was slow, when I know it's pretty fast, so I took the benchmark code for C++ and Java from the now outdated Great Computer Language Shootout and ran the tests myself."
Ie; I set out to prove Java is teh awesome and c++ is teh suck!
If anything it proves something I've known intuitively for a long time. gcc does not produce x86 code that's as fast as it could be. That's a trade-off for it being able to compile for every friggin cpu under the sun.
I can't wait till RMS takes personal offense and goes on the attack.
Explain the difference to a non-technical end-user.
Mozilla takes a minute or so to load, IE pops right up. Rendering speeds really mean shit, since the bottleneck is a dial-up modem that's lucky to get 33.6 on a good day. Now, explain to my grandmother that Mozilla is "faster".
Anyways, since I dont feel like replying twice, I sincerely doubt he'll reproduce his results against VC++ or Intel's compiler. gcc is all about being compatible against a wide range of architectures - it's not optimized for any single architecture in the least.
Ah, anyways it's just food for zealots and fanboys. It varies from compiler to compiler, VM to VM, and doesn't seem to take into account memory overhead (needing to swap to disk makes your uber-routine SLOW no matter what you do).
It also doesn't take into account that Java's UI widgets, Swing and whats-its-face, make your application look like something from the Apple IIe's in my gradeschool library.
Java fans rejoice, C++ fans seethe, in the end it's pretty much irrelevant out in the real world.
Problem is, Sony, Dell, Toshiba, etc, want to sell EQUIPMENT, not movies. The amount of revenue they generate absolutely dwarfs the MPAA, of whom most members are hemmoraging cash.
It's ironic that I can use a sony DVD-R to copy a Sony Playstation 2 game, or a Sony Entertainment movie, or Sony Entertainment CDs. But it's not unexpected. Sony makes more money selling me the DVD-R than selling me the CDs.
If people want BluRay or HDDVD recorders, they will exist. IF the MPAA wants to move to a format that's incompatible with any type of recording equipment, the incentive is doomed to failure (DIVX anyone?).
Not necessarily true. DVD players play CDs. My pioneer drive burns and reads everything that's around, save DVD-RAM. You can jam more than one laser in there.
HDDVD is no more compatible at the laser level than BluRay, it'll be more about the physical size of the media and if it fits in the drive.
Yeah, BUT, P4 may prove hackable with stock components (ie; not ordering some device that specifically exists only to hack DTV).
Imagine one day you go to radio shack to buy a couple voltage regulators and some resistors, and wind up being sued for $$$$$ because those components can be used to pirate satellite (a purposefully dumb example).
I think the important point is they're agreeing to go after people purchasing stuff that's specifically designed for hacking satellite.
Frankly, I think all the various local free-to-air channels on satellite should be available for anyone who wants to buy a dish (ABC, CBS, etc). Think about it, everyone buys a dish to watch the free stuff, and 75% of them one day "upgrade" to get HBO or Spice channel. They'd absolutely *cream* cable. And I really don't see what's so wrong with me in MD wanting to watch the local news from CA. But that's all offtopic.
But bootloaders and unloopers exist solely for the purpose of unscrambling satellite signals.
Arguments about "if the signal reaches my house I should be able to use it" aside, this is how the law stands, and that's who they should be after.
It's like the diffence between an xbox mod with a hardcoded version of a hacked MS bios vs doing it yourself with a blank EEPROM. The first is an infringement if it ships out with MS's IP (which is why all current mods ship out blank, or with cromwell), the second is just a stock part you can get at any decent electronics shop.
A decent filter practically eliminates dust, even a half assed one makes a huge difference. The vent filters that you shove into heat registers fit perfectly in the front bezel of the standard antec tower, and makes a HUGE difference. I just changed the filter today, as a matter of fact, and it was completely filthy with dust, but the guts of the computer are practically spotless.
Watercooling will be stock inside of a year or two. No matter how hard and elite the modders try to make it sound, you really have to do something stupid to fuck it up.
And all those cables are power/usb/drive/etc cables inside any computer.
You could still dismantle it if you had to do some work, it's not really that much more crowded than any other case.
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And yet, you have a GameCube, even though it wasn't backwards compatible with N64, which wasn't compatible with SNES, which wasn't compatible with NES..
Backwards compatibility is nice, but not if it compromises the new features of the machine.
I'd rather have a cutting edge console than something that'd been watered down so it can still run old stuff.
There were a lot of disgruntled PS2 early adopters who found its low-res graphics (an artifact from PSX days) to be less-than-impressive. In fact, the first run of games didn't exactly blow away the PSX versions. There was also much ado about the handful of PSX games that were incompatible. It gave them an early black eye.
I'll buy an Xbox 2 for the same reason I've bought any other console: It has some kick-ass games that i want to play. If all it had going for it was compatibility (ie; PS2 for the first year), it'll sit on the shelves.
Compatibility is nice, but not a selling point by itself.
The costs outweigh the benefits.
Costs can be other than financial. For instance, some technical hurdle that would cripple your machine if you wanted backwards compatibility.
This is a move from x86 to PPC architecture. Perhaps backwards compatibility would have meant including the old GPUs, etc.
SNES wasn't backwards compatible with NES for similar reasons. They would have wasted too much silicon doing old stuff. Same with N64, Gamecube, and no doubt Gamecube 2.
Blah blah controller blah blah
People with adult sized hands, like myself, preferred the XBox original controller, or the Dreamcast controller, and find PS2 and Gamecube's controllers awkward.
Perhaps the market MSFT is after is; grown-up folks with money.
Tomorrow $SOME_OTHER_GAME_SITE will report that it will include backwards compatibility, and compatibility with Sega Saturn and Apple Pippin!
It was actually widely speculated that Xbox would play Dreamcast games. Some asshat at $TOP_GAMER_NEWZ_SITE noticed that MSFT and Sega were working together, and jumped to a huge conclusion. Of course, they were working to hammer out marketing deals for Sega games on the Xbox platform.
Blah. Wait for official word, I hate speculation.
It'll probably be compatible. Or else it won't be called Xbox at all, they'd abandon and start a whole new "brand". But with Xbox just starting to pick up a good head of steam, they'd be foolish to kill compatibility on any "Xbox 2" at this point.
So it could be a PS2-PSX thing, or a SNES-N64 thing. Who knows.
It's not a network you dispatch through, it'd be a network in which a cop can file reports from his car and save a little paperwork back at the station.
Plenty of agencies use drive in hot spots to access the RMS systems, run queries, etc.
JOHNSON space center.
RED ROCKET
Yeah, really cute. When I post stuff like that I get modded troll.
Almost all the hardware features can be utilised under Linux
I bet the zealots have no problem overlooking the word "almost", but I'd expect to utilize all of the hardware features of a $3600 laptop.
What doesn't work in linux?
What kind of chipset is running it though? I don't see a fancy 3D display being much use if it's some piece of crap via chipset or an older radeon mobility.
Actually, I don't see it being of much use period.. A standalone display or something, perhaps, but what's the market for a 3D laptop? And why do I only hear of laptops and not a regular monitor I can hook up to my PC, you know, the one with the badass 3D card in it that could do something cool with such a display.
Actually it couldnt, there's no real stereoscopic support in ATi's cards, unless they snuck it in in the last month or so.. Owners of the lcd glasses have been fussing about this for quite some time on rage3d.com..
Which answers my first question, it must be an nVidia, or Matrox Parhelia or something in the laptop... Or some kludged ATi driver set..
And by pulling themselves out of bankruptcy you mean by begging for donations from their "fanbase", or zealots, or followers, disciples, etc..
Yeah, I'm sure the whine and beg business model will be all the rage on Wall St this time next year, those Europeans are always ahead on the fashions!
GD: Adopt a business model that is in harmony with Open Source Software; do not try to do proprietary with Open Source Software. And if you don't believe in OSS, don't do OSS!
There, you've been told by a frenchman!
I thought the principle of Open Source was anyone can use it however the hell they please.
It does it all - plays dvds, pvr's, plays PS2 games - all with one box sitting under your $10,000 plasma display.
Believe it or not, this is not a lot of money to some people. Those same people bought Pioneer's LaserActive system back in the day.
It's a niche product, hence the price tag (no loss leaders here). I don't see soccer mom going into wal-mart and buying one of these for her kids instead of a regular PS2. But I see Richie Rich buying one because it's better than a PS2.
Huh? Can you?
If not I don't want one. What's the point of a DVD-R if I can't play the PS2 games I use it to copy, that is legitimately backup for educational purposes!
The cast of Friends and Star Trek certainly DO exist, excluding whichever ones died.
The characters they portrayed, however, do not.
Maybe it is just a pet peeve of mine, but it drives me nuts when people get all uppity over someone elses use of language, and attack with even poorer use of the language.
know what I mean, vern?
The new theme is butt ugly.
/. homepage, I'll get a message like "the page / cannot be found" or some shit. Donno if it's the cache barfing or what. It's sporatic, but annoying as hell.
I sure hope they fixed the bugs. Every once in awhile it'll stop resolving pages.
Like if I did a "back" to return to the
Free, open, yes.
Better, not yet. Unless you just assume free and open means better. Myself, the term "better" implies there's some technical aspect that could be demonstrably improved over competition.
2 cents an hour to encode, free to decode.
Yeah, not free, but still. The only people who'd need to fear would be big corporations offering some giant mpeg-4 movie database and paying no royalties, or some such.
Gcc is designed for compatibility with a wide range of architectures, and is not optimized for a single one. He also (apparantly) used stock glibc from Red Hat. And only one "test", the method call test, showed java to be a real winner. And even then, it's server-side Java, which is meaning less when you talk about it as a day-to-day dev language (ie; creating standalone client-side apps).
Intel's (heavily optimized) C++ compiler should be a damn sight faster, and so should VC++.
This "comparison" is so limited in scope and meaning, that this writeup should be considered a troll.
Hell, read his lead-in:
Ie; I set out to prove Java is teh awesome and c++ is teh suck!
If anything it proves something I've known intuitively for a long time. gcc does not produce x86 code that's as fast as it could be. That's a trade-off for it being able to compile for every friggin cpu under the sun.
I can't wait till RMS takes personal offense and goes on the attack.
Explain the difference to a non-technical end-user.
Mozilla takes a minute or so to load, IE pops right up. Rendering speeds really mean shit, since the bottleneck is a dial-up modem that's lucky to get 33.6 on a good day. Now, explain to my grandmother that Mozilla is "faster".
Anyways, since I dont feel like replying twice, I sincerely doubt he'll reproduce his results against VC++ or Intel's compiler. gcc is all about being compatible against a wide range of architectures - it's not optimized for any single architecture in the least.
Ah, anyways it's just food for zealots and fanboys. It varies from compiler to compiler, VM to VM, and doesn't seem to take into account memory overhead (needing to swap to disk makes your uber-routine SLOW no matter what you do).
It also doesn't take into account that Java's UI widgets, Swing and whats-its-face, make your application look like something from the Apple IIe's in my gradeschool library.
Java fans rejoice, C++ fans seethe, in the end it's pretty much irrelevant out in the real world.
Problem is, Sony, Dell, Toshiba, etc, want to sell EQUIPMENT, not movies. The amount of revenue they generate absolutely dwarfs the MPAA, of whom most members are hemmoraging cash.
It's ironic that I can use a sony DVD-R to copy a Sony Playstation 2 game, or a Sony Entertainment movie, or Sony Entertainment CDs. But it's not unexpected. Sony makes more money selling me the DVD-R than selling me the CDs.
If people want BluRay or HDDVD recorders, they will exist. IF the MPAA wants to move to a format that's incompatible with any type of recording equipment, the incentive is doomed to failure (DIVX anyone?).
Not necessarily true. DVD players play CDs. My pioneer drive burns and reads everything that's around, save DVD-RAM. You can jam more than one laser in there.
HDDVD is no more compatible at the laser level than BluRay, it'll be more about the physical size of the media and if it fits in the drive.
Yeah, BUT, P4 may prove hackable with stock components (ie; not ordering some device that specifically exists only to hack DTV).
Imagine one day you go to radio shack to buy a couple voltage regulators and some resistors, and wind up being sued for $$$$$ because those components can be used to pirate satellite (a purposefully dumb example).
I think the important point is they're agreeing to go after people purchasing stuff that's specifically designed for hacking satellite.
Frankly, I think all the various local free-to-air channels on satellite should be available for anyone who wants to buy a dish (ABC, CBS, etc). Think about it, everyone buys a dish to watch the free stuff, and 75% of them one day "upgrade" to get HBO or Spice channel. They'd absolutely *cream* cable. And I really don't see what's so wrong with me in MD wanting to watch the local news from CA. But that's all offtopic.
But bootloaders and unloopers exist solely for the purpose of unscrambling satellite signals.
Arguments about "if the signal reaches my house I should be able to use it" aside, this is how the law stands, and that's who they should be after.
It's like the diffence between an xbox mod with a hardcoded version of a hacked MS bios vs doing it yourself with a blank EEPROM. The first is an infringement if it ships out with MS's IP (which is why all current mods ship out blank, or with cromwell), the second is just a stock part you can get at any decent electronics shop.
A decent filter practically eliminates dust, even a half assed one makes a huge difference. The vent filters that you shove into heat registers fit perfectly in the front bezel of the standard antec tower, and makes a HUGE difference. I just changed the filter today, as a matter of fact, and it was completely filthy with dust, but the guts of the computer are practically spotless.
Watercooling will be stock inside of a year or two. No matter how hard and elite the modders try to make it sound, you really have to do something stupid to fuck it up.
And all those cables are power/usb/drive/etc cables inside any computer.
You could still dismantle it if you had to do some work, it's not really that much more crowded than any other case.