I think the idea that knowledge should be locked up, that you should not be allowed to know something and to then share that knowledge, to be an anti-human attitude. The ability to communicate complex ideas, sharing knowledge, and then expanding on it, is the foundation for human existence.
So is treating information as a public resource first anti-business? Um, maybe, if they can only conceive of information as commodity, but I don't care. More importantly, treating information as a public resource is pro-human, accepting that the natural status of information is that it can be shared freely without it being lost to the sharer. If, after acknowledging this, we wish to add on what are necessarily artifical regulations which prevent information from being shared freely, then so be it. But it should always be seen as what it is: an artificial restriction, given for a specific purpose, on top of the natural unrestricted state.
It is not copyright or other IP law that is the problem. Not inherently, at least. The base problem, the cause that results in the laws becoming a problem, is the mentality that information is something to be owned first, and only if nobody wants to own it should it then be public. The right mentality is to view information as an infinitely shareable resource that we allow, in some select circumstances and for limited times, to be "owned" as long as it benefits society at large.
In terms of 1980s gaming, it actually may have. Remember, this is back when "fight some monsters to kill a bad guy!" was considered a plot line. Zelda 2 had sub-plots, side quests, and NPCs. Limited, yes, but still a new idea.
I'd have to look at it relative to other games such as FF, release dates and such, to really justify it though.
I thought he was trying to kill me when I found our toaster in the diswasher. But that was 7 years ago, and I'm not dead. Yet.
Hmm... Has it seemed like, since then, that your boyfriend hasn't payed much if any attention to you? Your friends seem to just ignore you when you walk by and say hello? Is there a weird little kid who seems to be the only one who talks to you?
It's a heirarchical system that has been abused by the registrars to the point where it's effectively a flat naming system; *.com.
Or *.net or *.org, which nobody uses correctly anyway, so it's basically a completely flat namespace with a couple different optional endings and a couple actually meaningful ones (.edu and.gov).
But your idea has basically two problems, in increasing order of importance:
1) Creating and managing all the sub categories, and making meaningful and enforceable categories. Is a veterinary supply store blah.pets.shopping.com or blah.medical.shopping.com or blah.medicine.pets.com or blah.veterinary.medical.com or... You see? And what happens when somebody thinks they need a new category? They wait for ICANN or whoever you think should be administering these things? Um, no. They'll do what happens today: use whatever is most convenient. Thus you get non-network providers using.net, and commercial ventures like slashdot.org using.org. Would somebody come around to investigate slashdot's not/for-profit status and deny them the name? This confusion would result in your idea's original purpose -- to divide domains by their markets so that brand confusion is less of an issue -- to no longer work, because as a practical matter nobody would expect that the category in the domain name would match the actual market.
2) I could no longer play "enter a random website name into the address bar and see what pops up". This is a very fun game. Go ahead and try it! I just entered "giantbanana.com" into the address bar and got a web page with some crazy stick-figure artwork on it. Next I tried "mastication.com". A web site devoted to chewing, perhaps selling chewing aids and with a bulletin board about chewing different types of food? No! They sell polymers and sealants, apparently. If I had to also guess the random category that 'mastication' was filed under, I'd never get to it.
The PS2 has pretty much an entire PSone on a chip. It's called the IOP.
Heh, right, I forgot about that. Pretty snazy solution if you can hack it.:)
I generally consider consoles to be embedded because they do one thing, namely play games, and one piece of software gets complete access to the hardware, down to the metal, while it's fulfilling that role.
Good enough for me. Though hacking on my 286 was "down to the metal", even if I did lean on DOS sometimes to handle disk access for me.
This distinction is becoming blurred on this coming generation of consoles because of the things they do behind your back (network presence and so on).
Hmm, that's true... Do you think this complicates things with the Wii network connectivity and GC games?
It's a much higher-level issue than individual packet flow at the bottom of the pipeline where the time a cache line prefetch takes or a dependent single-precision FP multiple takes may cause you to write something to memory before the GPU has finished reading it (for example).
Got it.
I fully expect that the rest of the Wii hardware has been clocked up by the same amount to make all this stuff work.
Sure. You know, I just realized that there is still probably enhancements. I know there is at least one, the cache memory locking. Sounds like a software-controllable feature, so no problem if running a GC game. And then it hit me: hardware features controlled by software with config registers. It isn't even abnormal to have microarchitectural features that you can disable with a configurable register; mainstream CPU vendors do it all the time in case a feature doesn't work right ("chicken bits" they're called). So they could add bypass networks, scheduler optimizations, all the kinds of tweaks I was thinking about, without actually impacting the ability of the chip to look like it's the same old Gecko to GC software.
I'm still just thinking it's unlikely IBM would take the time to develop the chip without adding enhancements. If matching the GC CPU is that important, config bits could easily degrade it to the baseline.
Maybe I'll go out and market a new video disc that has players at $10000 so that when I release my game console at $5000 people will think they're getting a deal...
Ugh! I'd have to get a second job to be able to afford that! But it must be worth it compared to that cheap-ass PS3... when can I pre-order?
Then even just the change in clock speed is going to break compatability, unless the rest of the system is still identical and has an identical increase in clock speed -- which strikes me as unlikely. Especially if there's a synchronizer between clock domains anywhere in the system.
I'll admit I'm confused by your usage of 'embedded'. I don't think of 'embedded' as something you stick a CD loaded with software into. And I'm used to games that hit a trouble spot dropping in frame rate rather than choking, making it look at worst like a soft-real-time system.
I guess I'm just surprised to hear that games are still programmed this way. Are these super-timing-dependent codes part of the OS, something that could perhaps be replaced in Wii's GC-compatability mode? How do the PS2/PS3 get away with it -- obviously they have to emulate or translate parts of the code to account for hardware that isn't there, but how do they get the expected timing correct? Cycle accurate emulation is incredibly hard even if you aren't trying to do it in real time.
That's a memory consistancy model issue, so of course it is the same. Besides, weaker conistancy models require stronger memory barrier instructions. I think the IA32 "processor consistancy" model is a good trade off, personally. Hyperthreading was just a bad idea, as was the whole Netburst architecture.
Most of the things you list in your follow on post are just features you wish x86 processors had -- even though some of them do have those features, demonstrating that their presence/absence is not mandatory for 386 compatability.
But of course there are plenty of things which are required for 386 compatability. This doesn't change the fact that, internally, modern x86 processors are completely different from the 386, and share much more in common with Alpha and Power PC.
If the Broadway has as many microarchitectural enhancements over the Gecko as a modern Pentium has from the 386, the title of this article would be: "New Wii chip an incredible revolution in processing power unparalleled in the history of computing".
Since you seem to be more impressed with Alpha's system architecture (no arguments really), would you call the 21464 just a "souped up 21064"?
Sorry to rehash old arguments but your statements are not entirely true. The issue here is how one rates graphics, since we are talking about a very subjective topic.
Yep, and subjectively the PS2 had by far the worst graphics of the three. No cross-platform game I played looked as good on the PS2 as the GC or Xbox, and the showcase graphics games for PS2 didn't look as impressive as the Xbox or GC showcase games. For cross-platform, Xbox seemed to eek out GC, but the showcases were very comparable in quality.
the highest polygon counts for characters (I believe, and could be wrong, Jak 3 had the highest poly counts for a character in the previous generation)
Raw poly count hasn't been the most important aspect of graphics since the invention of the pixel shader. An object that has realistic reflections that give a sense of texture and material do more for enhancing an image than adding more polygons. This is a major reason why PS2 games fell behind graphically imo, and is also why the GC was able to compete with the Xbox despite having less raw poly-pushing power.
and the most artistic vision (ICO, SOC, and Okami come to mind).
Artistic vision -- as in style -- is a completely different thing, and a high-quality vision works with and thus moves beyond the system limitations to make something pleasing.
Interestingly enough, I am saying this to actually support your overall point. So far no game written has every been fully optimized and fully taxed the system it was written for. In the end each generation comes down to the development and not the hardware (or at least the combination of the two and certainly not the hardware alone).
Right. I think your parenthetical there captures the essence of what I'm saying. Hardware matters. No matter the vision or implementation, no SNES game looks as good as the best games from last generation. Yet as long as the hardware is within a binary order of magnitude, the development plays a major role, even dominant.
No matter how you want to subjectively rate it, the PS2 was close enough to the other two systems that it looked good, and with the right developer it looked great. Wii is more or less in the same boat.
Changing the microarchitecture would have implications for backwards compatibility with Gamecube software. My personal opinion (as someone who has programmed for Gamecube in the past and is working on a next-gen game) is that they will have made no changes. The new part is just a die-shrunk up-clocked Gekko and there's nothing wrong with that.
No it wouldn't. Backward compatability is an ISA (as in the interface to the chip) feature, not a microarchitectural feature. This is why a modern x86 CPU can run the same software as the OP's 386 -- from the standpoint of software expecting a 386, it looks just like a super fast 386 even though internally it is radically different -- in fact, internally, modern chips don't even use x86 any more. Badly written code might depend on the (lack of) speed of execution, but modern systems and code can use non-cpu-specific methods of measuring time. The kinds of microarchitectural features I'm talking about are things that you as a programmer would most likely never have been aware of.
To back your more general point up, although people seem to have a low opinion of what the Gamecube hardware was capable of it's unwarranted. It's true that many games didn't get much out of it, but look at Starfox Adventures (from 2002 no less) to see what you could achieve.
Yeah, Starfox Adventures was a great showcase for what the GC could do. Shaders and other effects were the real power of the GC, not raw horespower, and it was when those powers were used well that the GC rivaled the Xbox for graphics.
I basically agree with you that I'm dissapointed in the price point, but first, you've never bought a Nintendo console for $200 that came with a game at launch.
Is Wii sports worth $50? Eh, not to me, but the point is you can't directly compare to previous launches, because this isn't like previous launches.
Technology becomes cheaper over time, but inflation makes dollars worth less. The fact that they've always been $200 is more a testiment to Nintendo's commitment to low prices than evidence that a new console must be just as cheap to produce. 90nm parts will be cheaper to produce once the yields are at the same point as they were before, but right now they're paying off R&D, and paying as they try to get those yields up. When they drop the price to $200 or $150 and still make a profit off each one, that will be because of the economies of scale from the shrink.
I may wish the Wii was $200, but I can't say I find it "irksome", because I can't see how Nintendo could be adding more than a few dollars of extraneous profit onto the price.
Well, not really. The ISA may be the same, but the microarchitecture is completely different. Your PC's CPU looks nothing like a 386, it just happens to speak the same language (and certainly some new instructions, if not entire operating modes like 64-bit, besides).
The point of the article is that the Wii's CPU is really microarchitecturally similar to the Gecko, down to the number of FP pipelines and such, and is basically a 90nm shrink of the old chip with higher clock speeds.
Now personally I find it hard to believe that IBM would go through the trouble of shrinking the chip to 90nm (which isn't as easy as just applying a scaling factor to your old mask) without tweaking the architecture even if there were no major changes planned. I guarantee there were improvements that they either wanted to add to Gecko but didn't have time/resources for, or flaws in the Gecko that they discovered after it was produced that they would like to fix. The shrink to 90nm is the perfect time to get some of those changes in, so I'm betting they did.
Which brings me back to your point, which was: So what? Indeed, so what? So it's the same chip, only at a much higher frequency and probably with a small percent boost in IPC performance besides. How is that bad? It isn't. It just isn't a super brand new highly experimental chip that requires new (or, going back to mainframes with slews of I/O controllers, old) programming methods. So for anyone who was hoping Nintendo would have some incredible hardware specs for them to drool over, dissapointment may ensue. Oh well, there's still a good chance it will be good enough.
Look at the last generation: The Xbox and GC were fighting for best graphics (xbox winning mostly, but GC showing some astounding performances from time to time), and also fighting for 2nd place. 1st place went to the console with the worst graphics, but they were good enough to be part of that generation, and it had the games. The Wii will certainly be representative of this generation of graphics, even if it will be the worst in that regard. Personally I, like anyone who favors a PS2, just hope it has lots of fun games.
I don't know about Altered Beast, but I have played both versions of Golden Axe and the Genesis version is the one I'd say was much better... What with being more than twice as long. The arcade version felt like a rip-off, slightly better graphics be damned.
Yeah, I'd figure they're waiting on Zelda 3. Or maybe they think that if you really loved Zelda, you'd buy a GBA and Zelda 3. Me, I'll just plug in my still-working SNES and enjoy it the way it was meant to be enjoyed: Drunk. I mean with the SNES controller.
That for me is the problem with the virtual console lineup here. My SNES and NES still work, and almost all the games I'd want to play I already have -- including Solomon's Key, which I am surprised to see, but glad that a new generation will get to see the most evil puzzle game ever.
But those Sega games! I don't own a Genesis, and I think Golden Axe and Altered Beast are going to be my first Virtual Console purchases, followed shortly by Toe Jam and Earl.
I guess my point is that while every one of us could pick games that we'd like to see, this is a pretty good launch lineup for the VC, and I'm guessing that most people's wishes will be met as they continue to release games.
I think a lot of that is just new-console-jitters. We may love the Wii, but that doesn't mean the suits at these publishers are convinced it will be a hit. Vivendi is the only one who is offering only movie tie-ins. Other than that, a movie tie in is an easy piece of crap to dump out and make some money from, but they've all got at least one real game for the console.
Even if it is disturbingly populated with movie/tv show tie ins, you have to admit that as far as third party support goes this launch is ten times better than the Game Cube's and a hundred times better than the N64's. If the Wii does well over Christmas, I'd expect these publishers who launched one or two real games as experiments to start going for more.
You'd think there'd be a link in the submission, but that's because you're new to slashdot.
Buddy Builder can be found here: http://onguardonline.gov/quiz/index.html But whatever magic is needed to play, I don't have because it just pops up a blank window. Damn, now I'll never learn how to keep myself safe while having fun doing it!
Anyway, all I know from TFA is that this question: "Accept or Deny: Wazzup? I think I know U send me your pic (in swimsuit, pls!)?" was blatantly and may I add illegally ripped from my IM session. The worst part was that "partygrrl666", aka "Bert the middle aged FTC agent", did send me a pic of himself in a swimsuit. Okay, you got me twice now Bert!
Are they doing this because they're afraid of risking the shuttle or is NASA afraid of risking the astronauts?
The astronauts. The reason they have the backup shuttle ready to go is so that in the event that the shuttle servicing Hubble undergoes irreparable damage during the mission and would not be able to safetly re-enter the atmosphere, the other shuttle can be launched to pick up its crew.
At which point the original shuttle would most likely be lost. The astronauts would be safe, though, which is the point.
Manned spaceflight would never have gotten off the ground if NASA had exhibited such risk averse behavior almost 50 years ago.
From TFA:
"I believe the risks are worth the reward of going into space for just about any mission, in particular the Hubble mission," said astronaut Jim Newman, who was on the last space shuttle mission to Hubble in 2002.
There's nothing wrong or overly "risk averse" to having a backup plan to rescue astronauts in case something goes wrong. Knowing and understanding risks and having plans to account for them is a good thing, and I think the astronauts appreciate it despite, as you can see from the quote, still having the explorer's attitude that made the space programe great in the 50's and 60's.
Plus they do have to consider the politics -- space exploration is always a favorite target for those seeking to cut budgets, and is seen as unnecessary by a large number of people. Losing another shuttle crew, aside from being a disaster worth avoiding, would be just the impetus needed for Congresscritters to scrap not just Shuttle but manned exploration. So they need to be extra dilligent in avoiding failures. I think having a backup shuttle to launch in case of an emergency is a perfect way to mitigate risk, both physical and political.
I would only be dissapointed in how risk averse NASA had become if they had decided against a Hubble mission on the basis of it being too risky.
This is a good first step, but is it too late? Don't they have a new deep space telescope on the books already?
Yes, but it isn't exactly a replacement for Hubble, it's newer and better tech but also designed for different uses.
I had heard previously that once the gyros were repaired and it had its orbit boosted that Hubble would last until 2020. It would be fantastic to have both HST and JWST operating at the same time. The article says only 2013 (when JWST is theoretically going to be launched), which makes me wonder if they're just sandbagging or if this mission they are planning doesn't include enough repairs to make it last that long. I notice that the article doesn't mention changing Hubble's orbit, so maybe that was scrapped from the mission.
If they need to fix Hubble to bridge the gap then let us get it done.
Yeah, and Jack was also payed by 2 Live Crew to give that band ten times more media exposure than their craptacular act ever deserved.
You don't need a conspiracy theory to explain it. Jack Thompson is really only about promoting one thing: Himself. Being "that crazy idiot who hates profane hip-hop/violent video games" has kept his name in headlines for well over a decade now, when otherwise nobody would know or care anything about "that useless lawyer that never wins any cases". The fact that the targets of his insane tirades and lawsuits generally benefit from the publicity is really just incidental to the main goal of him getting air time.
Is there a name for the type of relationship in which the two entities are nominally enemies, but actually receive mutual benefit from each other's actions? I think that more accurately describes the situation.
Whoa, that is wrong... I can't even figure out how you'd do that... Pray (not in game) for a wand of polymorph/ring of poly control to turn into an undead before you starve?
This is going to sound a bit weird at first, especially if you're new to the game, but really... NetHack isn't that hard. After a few years of playing, NetHack is "normal" difficulty, and most other games come under "easy". Redefining terms to suit myself? Yes, but once you get going, losing a game due to bad luck or lack of knowledge becomes less and less believable.
I've ascended a couple times, and I still think the game is hard. Once you've got a bag of holding full of wands, scrolls, and potions for every occasion and are sporting a good number of pieces of your Ascension Kit(tm), then sure it's not terribly hard and mostly a matter of paying attention -- because even fully decked out, one slip up can mean YASD.
Before that, though, the game is very difficult and the random number generator can be very cruel to you. For example, if you haven't found some form of magic resistance (I prefer the grey dragon mail) before reaching roughly the castle level, then you're in danger of being on the reciving end of a Touch of Death that ends your game instantly. Or just because you know not to handle a cockatrice corpse doesn't keep you from getting blinded, confused, and then stumbling into a pit which contains a cockatrice corpse. Or you could encounter my nemesis before finding sufficient armor to stave them off: the soldier ant.
On the other hand, there are so many ways to deal with problems that many things that seem bad are survivable. If you're surrounded by monsters, and don't actually have any scrolls of teleportation, you might have a wand of digging to dig yourself an escape hole down to the next level.
In the end, I'd say nethack is hard, but not cheap. Games like Diablo II achieve "hard" by being "cheap" (Multiple shot - fire - lightning enchant anyone?), where you can be killed instantly by random chance, or games where the RoF/damage/hit-points of enemies scales ridiculously until you can't possibly evade them. I think this is part of what sets nethack apart.
Very few people want homosexual content in their games. There will be quite a number of people who were going to buy Bully and now they won't. The vast majority of heterosexual males are disgusted with homosexuality. This isn't something that liberals want to hear, but it's true. This is about forcing something on the consumer that they don't want. The standard reaction of the consumer is not to buy it.
If it was a game where homo-smooches were a major component, you might almost have a point. But this is one thing in a game that is otherwise devoid of any more homo-eroticism than there already was in the dominance games of boys in school.
I have a suggestion: If you don't want to kiss a boy, then try refraining from going around trying to kiss boys. It's that simple.
I do find it kinda funny to suggest that you're having this 'forced' on you, as if having the feature in the game means you will be irresistably drawn to it (insert joke about homophobia/repressed homosexuality here).
On the same note, I'm not a big fan of the "pick up a whore" feature of GTA... so I refrain from picking up whores. Magical.
Yeah, as usual people whine about it being to hard to get a useless item that they don't need. If you don't want to spend the money, don't get it! It isn't like some powerful item that only uber-raiders can get, it's a piece of crap that will make you look cool for two seconds.
Besides, they're easy to get. I've almost got mine already.
Sure, if you just buy enough cards off the Auction House, you'll have to spend 900-2000g to get the trinket, and of course that isn't worth it. Instead, just grind it out!
The day after they patched the game to include the cards, I went to the Franklin Elementary Playground zone during lunch. The weak mobs there were dropping packs of cards pretty often, and other loot besides. Plus they have a really hilarious crying emote they do when you hit them. The "Save me mommy!" one was the best; keep at it until you hear it, trust me! After an hour the mobs stopped spawning, but I came back later and there were big crowds of them all lined up in front of where the big yellow tram comes. I must have taken out a hundred of them in like fifteen minutes. A few tougher mobs aggroed from the trams, though, so be warned.
All told in about an hour and a half of grinding, plus travel time, I got a total of 10k points towards my ogre trinket, a few g worth of cash, a Nintendo DS Lite and a Nintendo DS (strangely the Lite sold for more on the AH even though it is white and the DS is blue... go figure). Compared to most of the semi-worthless things you grind for in WoW this is easy, so those complaining about the price should just STFU.
One more note... I know this is probably just the Random Number Generator screwing with me, but I went back to Franklin the next day and it seemed like nobody was dropping WoW cards any more. So I left and went to Washington Middle School nearby. The mobs were a little harder, but still pretty easy and they droppped more cash and the WoW cards to boot.
Uh oh, gotta go, the My Boss elite is patrolling this way.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the idea that knowledge should be locked up, that you should not be allowed to know something and to then share that knowledge, to be an anti-human attitude. The ability to communicate complex ideas, sharing knowledge, and then expanding on it, is the foundation for human existence.
So is treating information as a public resource first anti-business? Um, maybe, if they can only conceive of information as commodity, but I don't care. More importantly, treating information as a public resource is pro-human, accepting that the natural status of information is that it can be shared freely without it being lost to the sharer. If, after acknowledging this, we wish to add on what are necessarily artifical regulations which prevent information from being shared freely, then so be it. But it should always be seen as what it is: an artificial restriction, given for a specific purpose, on top of the natural unrestricted state.
It is not copyright or other IP law that is the problem. Not inherently, at least. The base problem, the cause that results in the laws becoming a problem, is the mentality that information is something to be owned first, and only if nobody wants to own it should it then be public. The right mentality is to view information as an infinitely shareable resource that we allow, in some select circumstances and for limited times, to be "owned" as long as it benefits society at large.
In terms of 1980s gaming, it actually may have. Remember, this is back when "fight some monsters to kill a bad guy!" was considered a plot line. Zelda 2 had sub-plots, side quests, and NPCs. Limited, yes, but still a new idea.
I'd have to look at it relative to other games such as FF, release dates and such, to really justify it though.
I thought he was trying to kill me when I found our toaster in the diswasher. But that was 7 years ago, and I'm not dead. Yet.
:)
Hmm... Has it seemed like, since then, that your boyfriend hasn't payed much if any attention to you? Your friends seem to just ignore you when you walk by and say hello? Is there a weird little kid who seems to be the only one who talks to you?
Just wondering.
It's a heirarchical system that has been abused by the registrars to the point where it's effectively a flat naming system; *.com.
.gov).
.net, and commercial ventures like slashdot.org using .org. Would somebody come around to investigate slashdot's not/for-profit status and deny them the name? This confusion would result in your idea's original purpose -- to divide domains by their markets so that brand confusion is less of an issue -- to no longer work, because as a practical matter nobody would expect that the category in the domain name would match the actual market.
Or *.net or *.org, which nobody uses correctly anyway, so it's basically a completely flat namespace with a couple different optional endings and a couple actually meaningful ones (.edu and
But your idea has basically two problems, in increasing order of importance:
1) Creating and managing all the sub categories, and making meaningful and enforceable categories. Is a veterinary supply store blah.pets.shopping.com or blah.medical.shopping.com or blah.medicine.pets.com or blah.veterinary.medical.com or... You see? And what happens when somebody thinks they need a new category? They wait for ICANN or whoever you think should be administering these things? Um, no. They'll do what happens today: use whatever is most convenient. Thus you get non-network providers using
2) I could no longer play "enter a random website name into the address bar and see what pops up".
This is a very fun game. Go ahead and try it! I just entered "giantbanana.com" into the address bar and got a web page with some crazy stick-figure artwork on it. Next I tried "mastication.com". A web site devoted to chewing, perhaps selling chewing aids and with a bulletin board about chewing different types of food? No! They sell polymers and sealants, apparently. If I had to also guess the random category that 'mastication' was filed under, I'd never get to it.
Please don't ruin my fun!
The PS2 has pretty much an entire PSone on a chip. It's called the IOP.
:)
Heh, right, I forgot about that. Pretty snazy solution if you can hack it.
I generally consider consoles to be embedded because they do one thing, namely play games, and one piece of software gets complete access to the hardware, down to the metal, while it's fulfilling that role.
Good enough for me. Though hacking on my 286 was "down to the metal", even if I did lean on DOS sometimes to handle disk access for me.
This distinction is becoming blurred on this coming generation of consoles because of the things they do behind your back (network presence and so on).
Hmm, that's true... Do you think this complicates things with the Wii network connectivity and GC games?
It's a much higher-level issue than individual packet flow at the bottom of the pipeline where the time a cache line prefetch takes or a dependent single-precision FP multiple takes may cause you to write something to memory before the GPU has finished reading it (for example).
Got it.
I fully expect that the rest of the Wii hardware has been clocked up by the same amount to make all this stuff work.
Sure. You know, I just realized that there is still probably enhancements. I know there is at least one, the cache memory locking. Sounds like a software-controllable feature, so no problem if running a GC game. And then it hit me: hardware features controlled by software with config registers. It isn't even abnormal to have microarchitectural features that you can disable with a configurable register; mainstream CPU vendors do it all the time in case a feature doesn't work right ("chicken bits" they're called). So they could add bypass networks, scheduler optimizations, all the kinds of tweaks I was thinking about, without actually impacting the ability of the chip to look like it's the same old Gecko to GC software.
I'm still just thinking it's unlikely IBM would take the time to develop the chip without adding enhancements. If matching the GC CPU is that important, config bits could easily degrade it to the baseline.
Anyway, thanks for the info.
Maybe I'll go out and market a new video disc that has players at $10000 so that when I release my game console at $5000 people will think they're getting a deal...
Ugh! I'd have to get a second job to be able to afford that! But it must be worth it compared to that cheap-ass PS3... when can I pre-order?
Then even just the change in clock speed is going to break compatability, unless the rest of the system is still identical and has an identical increase in clock speed -- which strikes me as unlikely. Especially if there's a synchronizer between clock domains anywhere in the system.
I'll admit I'm confused by your usage of 'embedded'. I don't think of 'embedded' as something you stick a CD loaded with software into. And I'm used to games that hit a trouble spot dropping in frame rate rather than choking, making it look at worst like a soft-real-time system.
I guess I'm just surprised to hear that games are still programmed this way. Are these super-timing-dependent codes part of the OS, something that could perhaps be replaced in Wii's GC-compatability mode? How do the PS2/PS3 get away with it -- obviously they have to emulate or translate parts of the code to account for hardware that isn't there, but how do they get the expected timing correct? Cycle accurate emulation is incredibly hard even if you aren't trying to do it in real time.
Call me when I can turn off in-order writes
That's a memory consistancy model issue, so of course it is the same. Besides, weaker conistancy models require stronger memory barrier instructions. I think the IA32 "processor consistancy" model is a good trade off, personally. Hyperthreading was just a bad idea, as was the whole Netburst architecture.
Most of the things you list in your follow on post are just features you wish x86 processors had -- even though some of them do have those features, demonstrating that their presence/absence is not mandatory for 386 compatability.
But of course there are plenty of things which are required for 386 compatability. This doesn't change the fact that, internally, modern x86 processors are completely different from the 386, and share much more in common with Alpha and Power PC.
If the Broadway has as many microarchitectural enhancements over the Gecko as a modern Pentium has from the 386, the title of this article would be: "New Wii chip an incredible revolution in processing power unparalleled in the history of computing".
Since you seem to be more impressed with Alpha's system architecture (no arguments really), would you call the 21464 just a "souped up 21064"?
Sorry to rehash old arguments but your statements are not entirely true. The issue here is how one rates graphics, since we are talking about a very subjective topic.
Yep, and subjectively the PS2 had by far the worst graphics of the three. No cross-platform game I played looked as good on the PS2 as the GC or Xbox, and the showcase graphics games for PS2 didn't look as impressive as the Xbox or GC showcase games. For cross-platform, Xbox seemed to eek out GC, but the showcases were very comparable in quality.
the highest polygon counts for characters (I believe, and could be wrong, Jak 3 had the highest poly counts for a character in the previous generation)
Raw poly count hasn't been the most important aspect of graphics since the invention of the pixel shader. An object that has realistic reflections that give a sense of texture and material do more for enhancing an image than adding more polygons. This is a major reason why PS2 games fell behind graphically imo, and is also why the GC was able to compete with the Xbox despite having less raw poly-pushing power.
and the most artistic vision (ICO, SOC, and Okami come to mind).
Artistic vision -- as in style -- is a completely different thing, and a high-quality vision works with and thus moves beyond the system limitations to make something pleasing.
Interestingly enough, I am saying this to actually support your overall point. So far no game written has every been fully optimized and fully taxed the system it was written for. In the end each generation comes down to the development and not the hardware (or at least the combination of the two and certainly not the hardware alone).
Right. I think your parenthetical there captures the essence of what I'm saying. Hardware matters. No matter the vision or implementation, no SNES game looks as good as the best games from last generation. Yet as long as the hardware is within a binary order of magnitude, the development plays a major role, even dominant.
No matter how you want to subjectively rate it, the PS2 was close enough to the other two systems that it looked good, and with the right developer it looked great. Wii is more or less in the same boat.
Changing the microarchitecture would have implications for backwards compatibility with Gamecube software. My personal opinion (as someone who has programmed for Gamecube in the past and is working on a next-gen game) is that they will have made no changes. The new part is just a die-shrunk up-clocked Gekko and there's nothing wrong with that.
No it wouldn't. Backward compatability is an ISA (as in the interface to the chip) feature, not a microarchitectural feature. This is why a modern x86 CPU can run the same software as the OP's 386 -- from the standpoint of software expecting a 386, it looks just like a super fast 386 even though internally it is radically different -- in fact, internally, modern chips don't even use x86 any more. Badly written code might depend on the (lack of) speed of execution, but modern systems and code can use non-cpu-specific methods of measuring time. The kinds of microarchitectural features I'm talking about are things that you as a programmer would most likely never have been aware of.
To back your more general point up, although people seem to have a low opinion of what the Gamecube hardware was capable of it's unwarranted. It's true that many games didn't get much out of it, but look at Starfox Adventures (from 2002 no less) to see what you could achieve.
Yeah, Starfox Adventures was a great showcase for what the GC could do. Shaders and other effects were the real power of the GC, not raw horespower, and it was when those powers were used well that the GC rivaled the Xbox for graphics.
I basically agree with you that I'm dissapointed in the price point, but first, you've never bought a Nintendo console for $200 that came with a game at launch.
Is Wii sports worth $50? Eh, not to me, but the point is you can't directly compare to previous launches, because this isn't like previous launches.
Technology becomes cheaper over time, but inflation makes dollars worth less. The fact that they've always been $200 is more a testiment to Nintendo's commitment to low prices than evidence that a new console must be just as cheap to produce. 90nm parts will be cheaper to produce once the yields are at the same point as they were before, but right now they're paying off R&D, and paying as they try to get those yields up. When they drop the price to $200 or $150 and still make a profit off each one, that will be because of the economies of scale from the shrink.
I may wish the Wii was $200, but I can't say I find it "irksome", because I can't see how Nintendo could be adding more than a few dollars of extraneous profit onto the price.
And my PC is just a supercharged 386. So what?
Well, not really. The ISA may be the same, but the microarchitecture is completely different. Your PC's CPU looks nothing like a 386, it just happens to speak the same language (and certainly some new instructions, if not entire operating modes like 64-bit, besides).
The point of the article is that the Wii's CPU is really microarchitecturally similar to the Gecko, down to the number of FP pipelines and such, and is basically a 90nm shrink of the old chip with higher clock speeds.
Now personally I find it hard to believe that IBM would go through the trouble of shrinking the chip to 90nm (which isn't as easy as just applying a scaling factor to your old mask) without tweaking the architecture even if there were no major changes planned. I guarantee there were improvements that they either wanted to add to Gecko but didn't have time/resources for, or flaws in the Gecko that they discovered after it was produced that they would like to fix. The shrink to 90nm is the perfect time to get some of those changes in, so I'm betting they did.
Which brings me back to your point, which was: So what? Indeed, so what? So it's the same chip, only at a much higher frequency and probably with a small percent boost in IPC performance besides. How is that bad? It isn't. It just isn't a super brand new highly experimental chip that requires new (or, going back to mainframes with slews of I/O controllers, old) programming methods. So for anyone who was hoping Nintendo would have some incredible hardware specs for them to drool over, dissapointment may ensue. Oh well, there's still a good chance it will be good enough.
Look at the last generation: The Xbox and GC were fighting for best graphics (xbox winning mostly, but GC showing some astounding performances from time to time), and also fighting for 2nd place. 1st place went to the console with the worst graphics, but they were good enough to be part of that generation, and it had the games. The Wii will certainly be representative of this generation of graphics, even if it will be the worst in that regard. Personally I, like anyone who favors a PS2, just hope it has lots of fun games.
I don't know about Altered Beast, but I have played both versions of Golden Axe and the Genesis version is the one I'd say was much better... What with being more than twice as long. The arcade version felt like a rip-off, slightly better graphics be damned.
The window was blue, actually. No grues to be seen (ha!).
Yeah, I'd figure they're waiting on Zelda 3. Or maybe they think that if you really loved Zelda, you'd buy a GBA and Zelda 3. Me, I'll just plug in my still-working SNES and enjoy it the way it was meant to be enjoyed: Drunk. I mean with the SNES controller.
That for me is the problem with the virtual console lineup here. My SNES and NES still work, and almost all the games I'd want to play I already have -- including Solomon's Key, which I am surprised to see, but glad that a new generation will get to see the most evil puzzle game ever.
But those Sega games! I don't own a Genesis, and I think Golden Axe and Altered Beast are going to be my first Virtual Console purchases, followed shortly by Toe Jam and Earl.
I guess my point is that while every one of us could pick games that we'd like to see, this is a pretty good launch lineup for the VC, and I'm guessing that most people's wishes will be met as they continue to release games.
I think a lot of that is just new-console-jitters. We may love the Wii, but that doesn't mean the suits at these publishers are convinced it will be a hit. Vivendi is the only one who is offering only movie tie-ins. Other than that, a movie tie in is an easy piece of crap to dump out and make some money from, but they've all got at least one real game for the console.
Even if it is disturbingly populated with movie/tv show tie ins, you have to admit that as far as third party support goes this launch is ten times better than the Game Cube's and a hundred times better than the N64's. If the Wii does well over Christmas, I'd expect these publishers who launched one or two real games as experiments to start going for more.
I hope.
You'd think there'd be a link in the submission, but that's because you're new to slashdot.
Buddy Builder can be found here: http://onguardonline.gov/quiz/index.html
But whatever magic is needed to play, I don't have because it just pops up a blank window. Damn, now I'll never learn how to keep myself safe while having fun doing it!
Anyway, all I know from TFA is that this question: "Accept or Deny: Wazzup? I think I know U send me your pic (in swimsuit, pls!)?" was blatantly and may I add illegally ripped from my IM session. The worst part was that "partygrrl666", aka "Bert the middle aged FTC agent", did send me a pic of himself in a swimsuit. Okay, you got me twice now Bert!
The astronauts. The reason they have the backup shuttle ready to go is so that in the event that the shuttle servicing Hubble undergoes irreparable damage during the mission and would not be able to safetly re-enter the atmosphere, the other shuttle can be launched to pick up its crew.
At which point the original shuttle would most likely be lost. The astronauts would be safe, though, which is the point.
Manned spaceflight would never have gotten off the ground if NASA had exhibited such risk averse behavior almost 50 years ago.
From TFA:
There's nothing wrong or overly "risk averse" to having a backup plan to rescue astronauts in case something goes wrong. Knowing and understanding risks and having plans to account for them is a good thing, and I think the astronauts appreciate it despite, as you can see from the quote, still having the explorer's attitude that made the space programe great in the 50's and 60's.
Plus they do have to consider the politics -- space exploration is always a favorite target for those seeking to cut budgets, and is seen as unnecessary by a large number of people. Losing another shuttle crew, aside from being a disaster worth avoiding, would be just the impetus needed for Congresscritters to scrap not just Shuttle but manned exploration. So they need to be extra dilligent in avoiding failures. I think having a backup shuttle to launch in case of an emergency is a perfect way to mitigate risk, both physical and political.
I would only be dissapointed in how risk averse NASA had become if they had decided against a Hubble mission on the basis of it being too risky.
This is a good first step, but is it too late? Don't they have a new deep space telescope on the books already?
Yes, but it isn't exactly a replacement for Hubble, it's newer and better tech but also designed for different uses.
I had heard previously that once the gyros were repaired and it had its orbit boosted that Hubble would last until 2020. It would be fantastic to have both HST and JWST operating at the same time. The article says only 2013 (when JWST is theoretically going to be launched), which makes me wonder if they're just sandbagging or if this mission they are planning doesn't include enough repairs to make it last that long. I notice that the article doesn't mention changing Hubble's orbit, so maybe that was scrapped from the mission.
If they need to fix Hubble to bridge the gap then let us get it done.
The correct phrasing is: "Git 'er done!"
Yeah, and Jack was also payed by 2 Live Crew to give that band ten times more media exposure than their craptacular act ever deserved.
You don't need a conspiracy theory to explain it. Jack Thompson is really only about promoting one thing: Himself. Being "that crazy idiot who hates profane hip-hop/violent video games" has kept his name in headlines for well over a decade now, when otherwise nobody would know or care anything about "that useless lawyer that never wins any cases". The fact that the targets of his insane tirades and lawsuits generally benefit from the publicity is really just incidental to the main goal of him getting air time.
Is there a name for the type of relationship in which the two entities are nominally enemies, but actually receive mutual benefit from each other's actions? I think that more accurately describes the situation.
Whoa, that is wrong... I can't even figure out how you'd do that... Pray (not in game) for a wand of polymorph/ring of poly control to turn into an undead before you starve?
I'm going for a weaponless, illiterate, wishless, genocideless, vegan monk. If I can do that, I figure I can give the game up permanently.
:)
That's not that hard... ascend a weaponless, illiterate, wishless, genocideless, vegan tourist and I'd say you've 'won' the game completely.
This is going to sound a bit weird at first, especially if you're new to the game, but really... NetHack isn't that hard. After a few years of playing, NetHack is "normal" difficulty, and most other games come under "easy". Redefining terms to suit myself? Yes, but once you get going, losing a game due to bad luck or lack of knowledge becomes less and less believable.
I've ascended a couple times, and I still think the game is hard. Once you've got a bag of holding full of wands, scrolls, and potions for every occasion and are sporting a good number of pieces of your Ascension Kit(tm), then sure it's not terribly hard and mostly a matter of paying attention -- because even fully decked out, one slip up can mean YASD.
Before that, though, the game is very difficult and the random number generator can be very cruel to you. For example, if you haven't found some form of magic resistance (I prefer the grey dragon mail) before reaching roughly the castle level, then you're in danger of being on the reciving end of a Touch of Death that ends your game instantly. Or just because you know not to handle a cockatrice corpse doesn't keep you from getting blinded, confused, and then stumbling into a pit which contains a cockatrice corpse. Or you could encounter my nemesis before finding sufficient armor to stave them off: the soldier ant.
On the other hand, there are so many ways to deal with problems that many things that seem bad are survivable. If you're surrounded by monsters, and don't actually have any scrolls of teleportation, you might have a wand of digging to dig yourself an escape hole down to the next level.
In the end, I'd say nethack is hard, but not cheap. Games like Diablo II achieve "hard" by being "cheap" (Multiple shot - fire - lightning enchant anyone?), where you can be killed instantly by random chance, or games where the RoF/damage/hit-points of enemies scales ridiculously until you can't possibly evade them. I think this is part of what sets nethack apart.
Very few people want homosexual content in their games. There will be quite a number of people who were going to buy Bully and now they won't. The vast majority of heterosexual males are disgusted with homosexuality. This isn't something that liberals want to hear, but it's true. This is about forcing something on the consumer that they don't want. The standard reaction of the consumer is not to buy it.
If it was a game where homo-smooches were a major component, you might almost have a point. But this is one thing in a game that is otherwise devoid of any more homo-eroticism than there already was in the dominance games of boys in school.
I have a suggestion: If you don't want to kiss a boy, then try refraining from going around trying to kiss boys. It's that simple.
I do find it kinda funny to suggest that you're having this 'forced' on you, as if having the feature in the game means you will be irresistably drawn to it (insert joke about homophobia/repressed homosexuality here).
On the same note, I'm not a big fan of the "pick up a whore" feature of GTA... so I refrain from picking up whores. Magical.
Yeah, as usual people whine about it being to hard to get a useless item that they don't need. If you don't want to spend the money, don't get it! It isn't like some powerful item that only uber-raiders can get, it's a piece of crap that will make you look cool for two seconds.
Besides, they're easy to get. I've almost got mine already.
Sure, if you just buy enough cards off the Auction House, you'll have to spend 900-2000g to get the trinket, and of course that isn't worth it. Instead, just grind it out!
The day after they patched the game to include the cards, I went to the Franklin Elementary Playground zone during lunch. The weak mobs there were dropping packs of cards pretty often, and other loot besides. Plus they have a really hilarious crying emote they do when you hit them. The "Save me mommy!" one was the best; keep at it until you hear it, trust me! After an hour the mobs stopped spawning, but I came back later and there were big crowds of them all lined up in front of where the big yellow tram comes. I must have taken out a hundred of them in like fifteen minutes. A few tougher mobs aggroed from the trams, though, so be warned.
All told in about an hour and a half of grinding, plus travel time, I got a total of 10k points towards my ogre trinket, a few g worth of cash, a Nintendo DS Lite and a Nintendo DS (strangely the Lite sold for more on the AH even though it is white and the DS is blue... go figure). Compared to most of the semi-worthless things you grind for in WoW this is easy, so those complaining about the price should just STFU.
One more note... I know this is probably just the Random Number Generator screwing with me, but I went back to Franklin the next day and it seemed like nobody was dropping WoW cards any more. So I left and went to Washington Middle School nearby. The mobs were a little harder, but still pretty easy and they droppped more cash and the WoW cards to boot.
Uh oh, gotta go, the My Boss elite is patrolling this way.