XBox runs on x86. XBox 360 runs on PowerPC. XBox uses an nvidia video chipset with NVidia-specific extensions. XBox 360 uses an ATI chipset with ATI-specific extensions.
Bullshit. This is extremely newsworthy. 80gb/month is MASSIVE for Australia, particularly at that speed. Do you actually live in Australia, or do you just have some half-arsed idea of what Australia's actually like?
It only performs like 20 opterons in highly parallelisable tasks. Which excludes almost every task performed on the average PC, with the exception of some gaming graphics tasks (which, incidentally, are performed on specialised GPU's which vastly outperform x86 cores for their tasks anyway). Most of the time, a single cell core will perform pretty much identical to the single Power chip that controls it.
Firefly's good, but best sci-fi ever? Joss Whedon humour's quite entertaining, but it's not necessarilly what I want from sci-fi all the time.
In my opinion, comparing or rating shows and movies with some arbitrary ranking or rating system is simply pointless. Each show has its good points and its bad. That doesn't necessarily make one better than the other.
Perhaps. With Microsoft moving towards platform independant code, via the.NET platform, it's far more likely that non-x86 architectures will be viable in both enterprise and home usage. As it is, NT is for the most part an architecture-independant design, only the HAL and various graphics-related subsystems need to be ported to a new architecture for it to be supported.
It's likely that this requirement will be removed in a patch sometime down the track. Most major FPS's relax thr CD-while-playing requirement after a few patches, there's no reason HL2 shouldn't be any different.
No, they're not rewriting the kernel in C#. That's absurd. The underlying core of Windows in longhorn will remain C++, with the UI and core API written in C#. This has been stated over and over again.
Which is why Bioware's next big PC game is Dragon Age, a party-based Baldur's Gate-styled RPG. Though you won't get you're 2D goodness, the whole thing's 3D, just with the option to view it from the sort of perspective you could in Baldur's Gate.
On a side note, Baldur's Gate III will never happen. The story ended and Bioware are moving away from third-party properties for their games. Plus, the project that was going to be Baldur's Gate III (previously in development at Interplay by Black Isle, before its disbandment), is now gone.
Who cares if the area becomes uninhabitable after an accident? Just put the power plants on useless land, ie, deserts. We've got plenty here (Australia), the US has got plenty (Nevada), a lot of other nations have useless land too.
Kernel space is only dangerous in the case of badly written graphics drivers. Windows NT has had kernel-level graphics hardware since its inception, and its only been a cause of problems with extremely buggy graphics drivers. And guess what - buggy graphics drivers are gonna cause problems whether they're in the kernel or not. Might as well put them there for the speed advantages.
Network transparency's of only marginal value, particularly considering the cost (non-kernel graphics). Anyway, there's plenty of other methods of doing network logins without needing it built into the core graphics API.
Did you even read the sentence after it? Like I said, the whole TCP/IP problem is easily rectified by clicking "yes, let this application access the network" when Windows prompts you, or to go into the Security Manager app and give that application access. Its a simple fix for a simple problem. Its far better to give this sort of warning and prompt to enable than to allow any app at all access to TCP/IP.
Wbat a load of crap. The only reason this service pack breaks certain apps is if the app is badly written, buggy, or makes use of buggy windows system calls, or if the app makes use of TCP/IP to connect to some other system. Its quite simple to allow the latter apps to pierce the built-in firewall, which negates that problem. As for buggy apps, they should simply be fixed. It's good to see Microsoft taking a pro-active approach to fixing their system's bugs and security flaws. Personally, I'd rather break a few apps than not have the flaws fixed.
It's 266MB for a complete network install package, to handle all 32bit releases of Windows XP. The actual percentage of that total needed to install on a single XP Pro system will be considerably less.
On a side note, the service pack is actually released, and totals 266MB (272,391KB).
The problem with midiclorians is that the whole concept goes against everything that has already been established in the movies and books about the force. Plus, the force was far cooler when it was just a mystical energy field that could be tapped into by Jedi and Sith. By partially defining how it functions limits its usage in future Star Wars novels. Personally, I take the whole mediclorians thing as being "Qui-Gon was on crack at the time". Incidentally, I think of the whole prequel trilogy in a similar way - "this is someone's drugged out memory of what actually happened in the Star Wars world (with most of the gaps made up to get a semi-coherant story)".
Here in Australia, the average fiction novel costs $15-20AUD, which is roughly $11-12USD. The average hardcover novel will set one back anywhere from $30-50AUD (but generally around the $40-45 mark). If anywhere needs a drop in novel prices, its here.
How is the "built quality" of an Apple machine any better than the average white box PC? As long as the PCs not built with an utter crap motherboard, chances are the PCs going to last every bit as long as any Apple machine. Here's a breakdown of the components, and the difference they'd make....
Case: Apple's cases are generally "stylish", but that doesn't mean they're any more durable or well built than your average PC case. If the case doesn't fall apart or crack, it's good enough. Anything else (looks, etc) just don't matter as far as "quality" goes.
Motherboard: PC and Mac motherboards all come out of the same factories - the quality of them is the same. As for the components on the motherboards, any Intel chipset every bit as stable and reliable as an Apple chipset. There have in the past been issues with VIA/SiS/NVidia chipsets, however they've matured a lot lately, and they're starting to reach the quality of the Intels. Either way, the quality of Apple and PC boards are the same.
CPU: There haven't been any build problems with PC or Mac CPU's for a long time. The failure rates are all pretty similar. There are arguments as far as performance goes, but most real-world non-apple-biased/cheating benchmarks from the release of Apple's last series of chips put the PCs slightly ahead of comparable Apple CPUs.
Memory: It's exactly the same stuff used on PCs and Macs. No point to be made.
HDD: Once again, they're exactly the same.
CD/DVD: And again, exactly the same hardware.
Mouse/Keyboard: The mouse/keyboards sold with Macs are of arguably better quality than your average PC white-box gear, but compared to equivalent MS Mice and Keyboards, the MS stuff is every bit as good (though the mice are quite arguably better on PCs, having an extra button and a scroll wheel).
Monitor: PCs at least give the option of a cheap CRT - I've got plenty of desk space, there is zero advantage to me for an LCD. And as far as LCDs go, the garden-variety PC LCDs are generally cheaper. As far as quality goes, the LCDs are all made in the same factories for both PCs and Macs.
Graphics Cards: Again, they're all made in the same factories, using the same graphics chipsets.
Basically, the argument that Apple gear is of higher quality than PC gear is a load of crap. The case itself is generally more "stylish" and better built than the average PC case, however to many this doesn't matter (as their cheap ugly cases do the job every bit as well). I for one am perfectly happy with my ultra-cheap full tower steel case. It may not be light, but its survived many moves and LAN parties over the years without breaking, and it'll survive plenty more. As far as the rest of the hardware goes, its exactly the same gear, made in the same factories. Putting a "stylish" non-beige exterior on computer gear does not make the gear better, it makes the gear LOOK "better".
Dual CPU systems have been around for much longer than Apple's G5s. If anything, the Athlon MP pioneered consumer market multi-processor machines, not Apple.
The long pipeline approach was sustainable for a while, but with their newer processes (like the 90nm process used for the Prescotts) the heat costs of having the longer pipelines have proven too high. Their long pipeline design worked quite well for the Pentium 4's - give them enough cache, and they perform spectacularly, but the even longer pipelines required to keep cranking the clock speeds up, as with Prescott, are starting to be quite detrimental to the design. The Prescott architecture may be able to run at much higher clock speeds than the previous Northwood P4's, but they do so at the cost of requiring an even larger cache, and a much improved branch predictor. Had the improved branch predictor and increased cache simply been implemented on an existing Northwood core, and if Intel manufactured the chip on their 90nm process, it's quite likely that they'd have an even better performing chip than what Prescotts are capable of at higher clock speeds. That's all conjecture though - Intel didn't go that way, they let their marketing people decide on what the Prescott was going to be, and are now paying for it.
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The Aqueduct?
DOS runs on x86. Windows XP runs on x86.
XBox runs on x86. XBox 360 runs on PowerPC.
XBox uses an nvidia video chipset with NVidia-specific extensions.
XBox 360 uses an ATI chipset with ATI-specific extensions.
Take a guess why they've run into problems.
Frogbert's Sarcasm crits Westyx for 5000.
Westyx dies.
Bullshit. This is extremely newsworthy. 80gb/month is MASSIVE for Australia, particularly at that speed. Do you actually live in Australia, or do you just have some half-arsed idea of what Australia's actually like?
It only performs like 20 opterons in highly parallelisable tasks. Which excludes almost every task performed on the average PC, with the exception of some gaming graphics tasks (which, incidentally, are performed on specialised GPU's which vastly outperform x86 cores for their tasks anyway). Most of the time, a single cell core will perform pretty much identical to the single Power chip that controls it.
Firefly's good, but best sci-fi ever? Joss Whedon humour's quite entertaining, but it's not necessarilly what I want from sci-fi all the time.
In my opinion, comparing or rating shows and movies with some arbitrary ranking or rating system is simply pointless. Each show has its good points and its bad. That doesn't necessarily make one better than the other.
Perhaps. With Microsoft moving towards platform independant code, via the .NET platform, it's far more likely that non-x86 architectures will be viable in both enterprise and home usage. As it is, NT is for the most part an architecture-independant design, only the HAL and various graphics-related subsystems need to be ported to a new architecture for it to be supported.
No, they'd simply need to recode any x86 specifics (such as inline assembly), and then recompile the application.
Not legally in the US. In the considerably large rest of the world, we can do whatever the hell we want with a game we've legitimately purchased.
It's likely that this requirement will be removed in a patch sometime down the track. Most major FPS's relax thr CD-while-playing requirement after a few patches, there's no reason HL2 shouldn't be any different.
That's actually spot-on. Though Nemesis was a bit lacking, not really in the league of the other even-numbered movies. Still, a good movie.
No, they're not rewriting the kernel in C#. That's absurd. The underlying core of Windows in longhorn will remain C++, with the UI and core API written in C#. This has been stated over and over again.
Which is why Bioware's next big PC game is Dragon Age, a party-based Baldur's Gate-styled RPG. Though you won't get you're 2D goodness, the whole thing's 3D, just with the option to view it from the sort of perspective you could in Baldur's Gate.
On a side note, Baldur's Gate III will never happen. The story ended and Bioware are moving away from third-party properties for their games. Plus, the project that was going to be Baldur's Gate III (previously in development at Interplay by Black Isle, before its disbandment), is now gone.
No, it's worse than that. It's called "Java 2 Standard Edition 5.0". And the SDK is called "Java 2 Standard Edition 5.0 SDK 1.5"
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/index.jsp
Who cares if the area becomes uninhabitable after an accident? Just put the power plants on useless land, ie, deserts. We've got plenty here (Australia), the US has got plenty (Nevada), a lot of other nations have useless land too.
You're wrong, at least in your second point.
Kernel space is only dangerous in the case of badly written graphics drivers. Windows NT has had kernel-level graphics hardware since its inception, and its only been a cause of problems with extremely buggy graphics drivers. And guess what - buggy graphics drivers are gonna cause problems whether they're in the kernel or not. Might as well put them there for the speed advantages.
Network transparency's of only marginal value, particularly considering the cost (non-kernel graphics). Anyway, there's plenty of other methods of doing network logins without needing it built into the core graphics API.
Did you even read the sentence after it? Like I said, the whole TCP/IP problem is easily rectified by clicking "yes, let this application access the network" when Windows prompts you, or to go into the Security Manager app and give that application access. Its a simple fix for a simple problem. Its far better to give this sort of warning and prompt to enable than to allow any app at all access to TCP/IP.
Wbat a load of crap. The only reason this service pack breaks certain apps is if the app is badly written, buggy, or makes use of buggy windows system calls, or if the app makes use of TCP/IP to connect to some other system. Its quite simple to allow the latter apps to pierce the built-in firewall, which negates that problem. As for buggy apps, they should simply be fixed. It's good to see Microsoft taking a pro-active approach to fixing their system's bugs and security flaws. Personally, I'd rather break a few apps than not have the flaws fixed.
It's 266MB for a complete network install package, to handle all 32bit releases of Windows XP. The actual percentage of that total needed to install on a single XP Pro system will be considerably less.
On a side note, the service pack is actually released, and totals 266MB (272,391KB).
The problem with midiclorians is that the whole concept goes against everything that has already been established in the movies and books about the force. Plus, the force was far cooler when it was just a mystical energy field that could be tapped into by Jedi and Sith. By partially defining how it functions limits its usage in future Star Wars novels. Personally, I take the whole mediclorians thing as being "Qui-Gon was on crack at the time". Incidentally, I think of the whole prequel trilogy in a similar way - "this is someone's drugged out memory of what actually happened in the Star Wars world (with most of the gaps made up to get a semi-coherant story)".
Actually, it wasn't. That was later added into the beginning text with subsequent re-releases. The original cinema version was just called "Star Wars"
Here in Australia, the average fiction novel costs $15-20AUD, which is roughly $11-12USD. The average hardcover novel will set one back anywhere from $30-50AUD (but generally around the $40-45 mark). If anywhere needs a drop in novel prices, its here.
How is the "built quality" of an Apple machine any better than the average white box PC? As long as the PCs not built with an utter crap motherboard, chances are the PCs going to last every bit as long as any Apple machine. Here's a breakdown of the components, and the difference they'd make....
Case: Apple's cases are generally "stylish", but that doesn't mean they're any more durable or well built than your average PC case. If the case doesn't fall apart or crack, it's good enough. Anything else (looks, etc) just don't matter as far as "quality" goes.
Motherboard: PC and Mac motherboards all come out of the same factories - the quality of them is the same. As for the components on the motherboards, any Intel chipset every bit as stable and reliable as an Apple chipset. There have in the past been issues with VIA/SiS/NVidia chipsets, however they've matured a lot lately, and they're starting to reach the quality of the Intels. Either way, the quality of Apple and PC boards are the same.
CPU: There haven't been any build problems with PC or Mac CPU's for a long time. The failure rates are all pretty similar. There are arguments as far as performance goes, but most real-world non-apple-biased/cheating benchmarks from the release of Apple's last series of chips put the PCs slightly ahead of comparable Apple CPUs.
Memory: It's exactly the same stuff used on PCs and Macs. No point to be made.
HDD: Once again, they're exactly the same.
CD/DVD: And again, exactly the same hardware.
Mouse/Keyboard: The mouse/keyboards sold with Macs are of arguably better quality than your average PC white-box gear, but compared to equivalent MS Mice and Keyboards, the MS stuff is every bit as good (though the mice are quite arguably better on PCs, having an extra button and a scroll wheel).
Monitor: PCs at least give the option of a cheap CRT - I've got plenty of desk space, there is zero advantage to me for an LCD. And as far as LCDs go, the garden-variety PC LCDs are generally cheaper. As far as quality goes, the LCDs are all made in the same factories for both PCs and Macs.
Graphics Cards: Again, they're all made in the same factories, using the same graphics chipsets.
Basically, the argument that Apple gear is of higher quality than PC gear is a load of crap. The case itself is generally more "stylish" and better built than the average PC case, however to many this doesn't matter (as their cheap ugly cases do the job every bit as well). I for one am perfectly happy with my ultra-cheap full tower steel case. It may not be light, but its survived many moves and LAN parties over the years without breaking, and it'll survive plenty more. As far as the rest of the hardware goes, its exactly the same gear, made in the same factories. Putting a "stylish" non-beige exterior on computer gear does not make the gear better, it makes the gear LOOK "better".
Dual CPU systems have been around for much longer than Apple's G5s. If anything, the Athlon MP pioneered consumer market multi-processor machines, not Apple.
The long pipeline approach was sustainable for a while, but with their newer processes (like the 90nm process used for the Prescotts) the heat costs of having the longer pipelines have proven too high. Their long pipeline design worked quite well for the Pentium 4's - give them enough cache, and they perform spectacularly, but the even longer pipelines required to keep cranking the clock speeds up, as with Prescott, are starting to be quite detrimental to the design. The Prescott architecture may be able to run at much higher clock speeds than the previous Northwood P4's, but they do so at the cost of requiring an even larger cache, and a much improved branch predictor. Had the improved branch predictor and increased cache simply been implemented on an existing Northwood core, and if Intel manufactured the chip on their 90nm process, it's quite likely that they'd have an even better performing chip than what Prescotts are capable of at higher clock speeds. That's all conjecture though - Intel didn't go that way, they let their marketing people decide on what the Prescott was going to be, and are now paying for it.