I looked all this up after first reading the book, when the page was still live. From what I read, this observation simply means that Solitaire has undesireable properties and that therefore there may be an attack that is possible against it. There is no mention of any specific attack, which is what I would call "broken".
OK, so they're actually my wife's secret master. Last night, we spent over an hour driving to and looking in three different grocery stores all in a vain quest to find Cadbury eggs.
Since they're your wife's secret master, and as evidenced by this store she is your not-so-secret master, I'd say it would be fair to refer to the Cadbury Eggs as your secret master as well.:)
I don't recall seeing Birdo in any of the later SMB games (though I have never owned a Nintendo portable, so can't speak to any gameboy mario games). Bob-ombs first appeared in SMB2, and have definitely been a mainstay of the series since. They were even in SMB3, if I recall correctly.
According to a scientist interviewed on NPR last week, who talked about localized glacier melting it, even if all humans on earth were to stop all emmisions the temperature would still increase by over 1 degree.
Okay, did he say also that the temperature would not increase even more if we didn't stop all emmisions?
Of course the temperature will rise -- we've already done a lot of damage, and that damage isn't going to vanish if we simply stop doing more damage. Even something like the ozone layer which naturally replinishes itself took years to recover after we stopped producing CFCs -- yet on the other hand, in the long term the damage is largely undone.
Without having heard the piece, I can't guess what his point was. Perhaps it was that we will have a price to pay for our previous pollution, no matter what we do in the future?
Thanks for explaining the connection between using "gay" as an insult in contexts not obviously related to sexual preference with the underlying "gay is bad" assumption in a better way than I did.
You know what's really gay? People who complain about gay evolving to mean "stupid/absurd". Nothing the fudge-packers say (see, now that's a derogatory term) will change that. Either live with people saying things are gay (as in, stupid) or - well, I dunno. Go to another country and speak another language, I don't care.
Just because the "homosexual == bad" connection is so strong in your head that you can use the terms interchangeably does not mean that you have actually changed the meaning of the word. The fact is that the same people who use "gay" as a generic insult meaning bad or stupid also will use the exact same word as an insult meaning "homosexual", with the exact same negative connotations of undesireability.
"Gay" is only used as an insult because of the notion that being gay is bad and one does not want to be gay; it is a direct outcome of homophobia and gay-bashing. You're trying to claim that you have separated yourself from this etemology, but in fact you have not, you are playing on it more heavily than ever. You have simply spread the usage of the word "gay, meaning deplorable" to a broader spectrum of usage, using the "gay == bad" connotation to impunge upon things that couldn't technically be homosexual.
Guess what. People used to complain about people using "retarded" to mean stupid. People still say "wow, that's retarded" when refering to stupid decisions. Live with it.
You'd have to be mentally retarded to not realize what a bad example that is. Hint: The meaning of this word has not actually changed, other than to be used in a coloquial, non-clinical way. It still means "very stupid, as if resulting from mental retardation".
Which is basically what "gay" means, and using the word "gay" to refer to things that cannot actually be homosexual doesn't change that the foundation of the insult is "gay == bad".
I'm sure most of the Slashdot community is used to living outside the mainstream, and almost everyone on Slashot seems to be able to get along in normal life without turning some clear rules infraction into a four-month tirade against the "restrictions of speech" in an online game (particularly one that specifies in the terms of service that are agreed to that they may regulate the speech on their chat channels).
Remember the kid who got in trouble for breaking the rule against black trenchcoats? Or any of a hundred incidents after Columbine, when everyone "different" was being persecuted with ridiculous regulations? I guess they should have just shut up...
Honestly, I would think that the experiences of "most of the Slashdot comumnity" would make them more sympathetic to a persecuted sub-culture (not that it would even compare with the persecution of homosexuals). But apparently not. I suppose most of those geeks persecuted in high school went on to get jobs and realized that they weren't "geeks" any more, and are now enjoying their privileged positions as middle class straight white males in American society, and looking down on those who have yet to make the leap from ostracized to privileged.
I find that pathetic.
GLBT issues really have no right to be in Slashdot, let alone Azeroth. This repeated "Blizzard censors GLBT guild" thing is getting to be really gay.
No right, eh? Funny you should use those terms. Given all the homophobia present in this very thread, I'd say it has every right, even a need, to be on Slashdot. The fact is that I was right the first time: You're fine with tossing the word "gay" around as long as it means "bad and stupid", but as soon as the word is brought up in a non-derogetory fashion, you're offended and think that kind of usage "has no right to be in Slashdot".
WRONG! It is not declaring your existance at all. It is shoving your existance down other peoples throats.
Why is it accepted for people to get pissed off at telemarketers that keep calling them but it is not ok to get pissed off at people advertising their "gay friendly" clans? Thats all it is, advertising. These people in the game do not start up a conversation with another player and then say "Oh yeah I am in clan DKDD we are gay friendly". I would be fine with this. Instead they fill the chat rooms with their advertisements.
Thank you, Mr. Example Of Exactly What I'm Talking About.
Do you see other advertising in-game? You talk about telemarketers (who interrupt your life with a ringing phone) but not in-game advertising (which appears in the exact same place as the GLBT guild advertisments). Is the guy who "WTS [Hanzo Sword]" shoving said sword down your throat? Is every lame-ass comment about Chuck Norris that appears in your chat window shoving Chuck Norris down your throat? What about every third line of chat that includes the word "gay" in a derogetory fashion?
No, you don't complain about any of that (and if you did dislike it, you'd just turn off the general and trade channels). So obviously the GLBT groups are different to you. Merely having a pro-gay guild appearing in your chat window amongst all the other drivel is "shoving it down your throat".
It's just like I said: "shut up faggot" is fine, "Hey, I have a GLBT guild where you won't hear that kind of talk" is a direct assault on your ability to pretend homosexuals don't exist and thus offensive to you.
I think it is interesting that people thinking "That is so gay" is negative.
I think it's interesting that you can pretend it isn't completely obvious from context that it is intended to be negative.
If someone is gay, and there first thought is that saying something is gay is negative, what does that say about how they view their lifestyle?
Gee, maybe they view their lifestyle as something that a large number of people find abhorrent and would associate something with in order to insult that thing. In other words, completely accurately.
Well, presumeably part of the "gay agenda" is to not have to hide one's identity, and instead to be accepted, as gay, as a full first-class member of society.
So by proclaiming that one is gay, and by advertising for a gay guild without being censored by the authorities, you have "forced" people to consider the fact that people playing the game may actually be gay, and that they have the same rights to speech and to association as all other citizens.
That's the logic, such as it is.
All these people keep saying they don't want to hear about it, because they don't care. This is nonsense, they obviously care very much or they'd let it be, instead of feeling like you are imposing on them merely by declaring your existence. What they really mean is that they don't want to hear anything about gay people, so they can pretend everyone is straight. This is why having your own little gay club offends them -- they can no longer pretend that people in that guild are straight, and you have "forced" them to realize that they are sharing a game server with a homosexual.
It's as lame an answer as saying that it's the GLBT groups who brough sexual preference into the game in the first place. No, it's the people using "faggot" as their pejorative of choice that brought the issue of homophobia into the game. A GLBT group is just an attempt to escape from this environment. It's as ludicrous as blaming a black person for bringing race issues into the game when he complains that everyone is tossing "nigger" around with reckless abandon.
Oh, but of course racism is frowned upon by mainstream society, and thus spewing "lol u nigger" would be frowned upon. It's still socially acceptable to be a homophobe, so "i hate teh gheys" is fine, everyday speech and "hey I'm gay that offends me" is bringing up issues that don't belong in the game.
...that the NEW anti-piracy system will not be Starforce. It doesn't mean it won't be copy protected or that the new system will be any less malicious than Starforce.
I think it's safe to say that it will be, simply by virtue of it being so difficult to be more malicious. What would that even be? They send somebody to your house to personally demolish your computer with a sledgehammer to ensure it isn't running pirated (or any other) programs?
Yeah, personally I was expecting him to say "Honestly, at this point we just want to continue dicking around with it for another decade."
It sounds to me like he realises the endless rewrites were a mistake, but it also sounds like he's resigned to the fact that nobody cares if they release tomorrow or five years from now. He's gone from being optimistic about realising it soon (which granted was always incorrect), to saying he hopes they someday finish it (which may turn out to actually occur).
Either way, I forsee at least another year of "Duke Nukem Whenever" jokes, followed by a whole slew of new jokes based on the crappy game they actually release.
As for actual control it was mouselook with the controller and trigger, and movement with nunchaku controller. The time us small folks got with it was brief, but my impressions were that it was much smaller and lighter than I had thought. The actual amount of movement needed was minimal, totally the opposite of all the fanboys who keep saying that you will need herculean wrist strength and be at a constant risk of carpal tunnel.
Well I'm more of an N fanboy if anything, but that was one of the more obvious possible problems. Sounds like it's not the case!
You are a little off. What a P4 does is "speed stepping" where if it is overheating it will down the clock and avoid areas on the chip that are the hottest, if it gets too hot it will shut down completely. This is designed so that permanent damage does not happen as a result of heat. AMD also has a similar feature now (or claims to, I've heard some cases of people having a heat sink failure and their AMD being trashed as a result), but they didn't used to
AMD added this feature in the Athlon XP (maybe not the first release... perhaps Thoroughbred?), but it requires motherboard support and thus took a little longer before it became useful. I wish it'd been in earlier; I once forgot to take the sticker off the bottom of a heat sink, fried the processor in seconds.:P
P4's speed stepping doesn't actually change the clock speed, it just changes the duty cycle so the clock runs full speed for a while, then not at all for a while. Not what I expected at first, but really an elegent solution since it doesn't require designing a complicated PLL, but gives the same effect as cutting the frequency in half.
For the GP: When the P4 enters this mode it isn't really overheating per se, it has simply gone above its Total Design Power. When intel reports power usage, in particular power usage as needed by OEMs who design cooling solutions, it doesn't use the typical method of maximum theoretical power usage (which is the number AMD reports). Instead, it uses a power usage that is safely above what the majority of commone code paths will see (which is substantially lower than maximum, easing the burden on the cooling system designers and letting them tout lower effective power usage). The clock gating is their method of ensuring that the power doesn't actually go above their stated power level -- unfortunately, when this happens it is usually during some extremely intense computations that you don't really want to slow down by 50%. I've seen reviews of P4 parts which show the effects of this. It looks really odd unless you know what's going on under the covers.
The Wavebird really is the first wireless controller that works.
Good point. I was just thinking about the GC controller released at launch, and not the awesome Wavebird that I didn't pick up until a couple years later. So it took them a while, but N did come up with a "must have" controller feature for the GC/Xbox/PS2 generation.
Ok, you have a point about Soul Calibur, but think about the gigantic buttons on the arcade machine that game was designed for. GC has a horrible controller design for ported arcade games.
True. The only way I've found that worked decently was to lay the controller on my lap and hover my fingers over the buttons like I would at the arcade, which still isn't that great.
maybe we should add that the decission for EM64T came directly after Microsoft communicated that furture versions of Windows will only run on AM64....
Well at the point when Microsoft said that they would only be supporting a single 64-bit x86 ISA it was pretty clear that Intel was going to be releasing their own x86-64 already. Microsoft had surely communicated that they wouldn't support multiple ISAs to Intel well before. Dell is the reason why Intel released an x86-64 part to begin with, Microsoft is the reason why Intel's extensions were an almost perfect match for AMD's.
And that begs the question: If Dell is not "Intels lapdog" why couldn't they start selling those Opterons?
Dell gets preferential pricing on Intel parts and first choice of lots when supplies of a new part are low based on their exclusive use of Intel parts. Dell will continue to be Intel-only as long as it is financially beneficial for them to do so. At this time it is better for them to be able to threaten to sell Opterons so as to get better deals from Intel. If Intel hadn't come out with 64-bit x86 chips, this may have changed, but the fact that Dell made Intel dance to their tune shows the kind of advantage Dell has with the current situation.
Not that Dell isn't their lapdog. Though really since the power goes both ways, I think "codependent" is the better term.
Dude, x86-64 is AMD's spec not Intel's. Google around, you'll even find an Intel bug due to AMD updating their orginal specs later on.
Yes, I'm aware, including Intel's usage of a pre-release reference with errors in it. That was the most amusing part of their announcement of 64-bitness that didn't even mention AMD even though it was the same thing + bugs. I'm sure AMD would have been happy to give Intel more up-to-date information, but Intel still couldn't stand to admit they were following their little rival.
Neveretheless, Intel was developing x86-64 extensions as a side project probably before AMD was (Intel being very large can do things like this -- send a team off to design a 64-bit x86 part that they don't intend to actually produce). It was AMD's Opteron and subsequent pressure from Dell that made Intel release their part, but it was Microsoft who forced them to follow AMD's specification.
and here all this time I thought Intel ripped AMD's 64-bit spec for x86.
Heh, and how right you are. The differences between Intel's and AMD's implementation are the same as the errors that were in the pre-release documentation AMD made available, so they did in fact rip off the spec. Too bad they couldn't swallow their pride and ask AMD for updated docs.
Not that "ripped off" is really the right word. Intel had x86-64 extensions in the works before AMD did, but didn't go to market with them. AMD got to market first, and Microsoft was only willing to support one x86-64 spec. When it comes to ISAs in Wintel land Microsoft has the final word, so Intel had no choice but to be compatible with AMD.
He specifically said Intel 64-bit x86 extensions, and that's absolutely true. Intel had 64-bit x86 extensions in the works for a long time, even longer than AMD, but did not want to release them. Why? One word: Itanium. Intel was fully aware that the main differentiating feature of Itanium versus Xeon was that Itanium was 64-bit, and that adding 64-bit extensions to Xeon with the commensurate promise of full compatability and performance for their 32-bit apps would kill off the already anemic Itanium sales.
When AMD released their 64-bit parts, Intel didn't respond and let AMD take the technology leadership position in the x86 market, in the name of preserving Itanium. Opteron started doing very well in the server market, though, and Dell's server division was getting knocked around. Their customers wanted 64-bit, and they vastly preferred an x86 chip to do it. "Why can't we have a 64-bit x86 chip?" they were saying, either directly to Dell or indirectly by buying Opteron-based servers. Thus the pressure Dell put on Intel to come out with x86-64, which they surely knew Intel was holding in their back pocket. I imagine an ultimatum to release a 64-bit Xeon or Dell would start selling Opterons is what did it.
People understimate the pressure Dell can apply to Intel. Sure, Dell really needs Intel and definitely benefits from preferential pricing, and thus wants to make Intel happy. On the other hand, Intel needs the world's largest OEM to be pure-Intel, creating a marketshare buffer zone (and commensurate dependable income) to help in their battle with AMD, and thus must keep Dell happy too. A Dell defection would be very bad for Intel, and issues like 64-bit x86 could have forced Dell's hand.
Hey, could you maybe briefly describe the setup to give us a feel for how this worked? I love Metroid Prime, but find its controls slightly awkward (though I understand the reason): joystick to move forward/back and turn, trigger+joystick to look up/down and strafe. At the conceptual level I see how the Rev controller could be great for allowing you to freelook, but I can't get much beyond that... Did it use the "nunchuck" setup with an analog controller to allow movement/looking at the same time? Thanks.
Well I assumed that by "living up to its predecessors" he meant "set a new standard for game controllers which all other companies would soon follow". The Gamecube controller is the first Nintendo controller which didn't do this. The NES controller introduced the D-pad, the SNES controller introduced shoulder buttons (and is still the best controller for playing Street Fighter), the N64 controller had the analog stick. The Gamecube is nothing but a well-done variation of the ubiquitous Dual Shock design (that was originally inspired by the N64). In that sense, there's nothing really wrong with it, but it certainly doesn't live up to its predecessors. The Revolution controller has a chance to outdo its standard-setting predecossors, but we'll see.
Considering the GC controller on its own, it's decent enough. Personally I find the Z button to be essentially useless for anything I have to do quickly. I wish they had made it a trigger button, like the N64's Z button. Metroid Prime uses Z to call up the map; for this it works fine.
I'm also not a huge fan of the giant A button. I think it's a little too large, and I think the B button is a little too small. Games that require you to hit multiple buttons at once (e.g. Soul Calibur) are awkward unless you're trying to hit A + something else.
Other than that, it's fine. I slightly prefer the N64's analog stick, but the C-stick is nice. The analog triggers are good too, especially once game makers figured out that for binary operations the the "on" state should be a small amount of depression, not full.
Of course two degrees doesn't sound scary, by itself. When you think of all the energy represented by raising the temperature of the entire planet by two degrees, and then think about how that extra energy will affect weather systems, perhaps you should start to be a little more scared.
I'm reminded of scene from a movie, that one featuring Tommy Lee Jones versus a volcano that pops up under LA. Not a very good movie, but nevertheless... There's a scene where the love interest/geologist is explaining in worried tones to Tommy Lee Jones that the water temperature of some pond had risen by a few degrees in some short period of time. Mr. Jones, like yourself is non-plussed. She then goes on to explain just how much energy it would take to raise the temperature of such a body of water by the seemingly small amount, e.g. "a geological event". Cue lava spewing out of the streets of LA as science flees for the hills, never to be seen again...
What I'm saying is that just because a number sounds small and non-scary doesn't mean it is. A few degrees represents an enormous impact on our environment, the kind anti-global-warming types claim humans could never have. Yet the fact is that CO2 levels are vastly higher than they've been in hundreds of thousands of years. We have outstripped volcanoes and any other natural method of increasing CO2 levels beyond the normal seasonal plant uptake/release. CO2 is almost certainly part of a strong feedback cycle with global temperature. We are having an impact, and a few degrees is both huge and just the tip of the iceberg if we don't change things.
I believe the "scientific" aspect he was speaking of was solely looking for evidence that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. I could be wrong, but he was discerning that ID's claim of supernatural origins of life made it philosophy/religion not science. So he probably recognizes that the "God did it" part of his belief is not in fact science as well.
Slashdot Mirror
I looked all this up after first reading the book, when the page was still live. From what I read, this observation simply means that Solitaire has undesireable properties and that therefore there may be an attack that is possible against it. There is no mention of any specific attack, which is what I would call "broken".
OK, so they're actually my wife's secret master. Last night, we spent over an hour driving to and looking in three different grocery stores all in a vain quest to find Cadbury eggs.
:)
Since they're your wife's secret master, and as evidenced by this store she is your not-so-secret master, I'd say it would be fair to refer to the Cadbury Eggs as your secret master as well.
I don't recall seeing Birdo in any of the later SMB games (though I have never owned a Nintendo portable, so can't speak to any gameboy mario games). Bob-ombs first appeared in SMB2, and have definitely been a mainstay of the series since. They were even in SMB3, if I recall correctly.
According to a scientist interviewed on NPR last week, who talked about localized glacier melting it, even if all humans on earth were to stop all emmisions the temperature would still increase by over 1 degree.
Okay, did he say also that the temperature would not increase even more if we didn't stop all emmisions?
Of course the temperature will rise -- we've already done a lot of damage, and that damage isn't going to vanish if we simply stop doing more damage. Even something like the ozone layer which naturally replinishes itself took years to recover after we stopped producing CFCs -- yet on the other hand, in the long term the damage is largely undone.
Without having heard the piece, I can't guess what his point was. Perhaps it was that we will have a price to pay for our previous pollution, no matter what we do in the future?
Thanks for explaining the connection between using "gay" as an insult in contexts not obviously related to sexual preference with the underlying "gay is bad" assumption in a better way than I did.
You know what's really gay? People who complain about gay evolving to mean "stupid/absurd". Nothing the fudge-packers say (see, now that's a derogatory term) will change that. Either live with people saying things are gay (as in, stupid) or - well, I dunno. Go to another country and speak another language, I don't care.
Just because the "homosexual == bad" connection is so strong in your head that you can use the terms interchangeably does not mean that you have actually changed the meaning of the word. The fact is that the same people who use "gay" as a generic insult meaning bad or stupid also will use the exact same word as an insult meaning "homosexual", with the exact same negative connotations of undesireability.
"Gay" is only used as an insult because of the notion that being gay is bad and one does not want to be gay; it is a direct outcome of homophobia and gay-bashing. You're trying to claim that you have separated yourself from this etemology, but in fact you have not, you are playing on it more heavily than ever. You have simply spread the usage of the word "gay, meaning deplorable" to a broader spectrum of usage, using the "gay == bad" connotation to impunge upon things that couldn't technically be homosexual.
Guess what. People used to complain about people using "retarded" to mean stupid. People still say "wow, that's retarded" when refering to stupid decisions. Live with it.
You'd have to be mentally retarded to not realize what a bad example that is. Hint: The meaning of this word has not actually changed, other than to be used in a coloquial, non-clinical way. It still means "very stupid, as if resulting from mental retardation".
Which is basically what "gay" means, and using the word "gay" to refer to things that cannot actually be homosexual doesn't change that the foundation of the insult is "gay == bad".
I'm sure most of the Slashdot community is used to living outside the mainstream, and almost everyone on Slashot seems to be able to get along in normal life without turning some clear rules infraction into a four-month tirade against the "restrictions of speech" in an online game (particularly one that specifies in the terms of service that are agreed to that they may regulate the speech on their chat channels).
Remember the kid who got in trouble for breaking the rule against black trenchcoats? Or any of a hundred incidents after Columbine, when everyone "different" was being persecuted with ridiculous regulations? I guess they should have just shut up...
Honestly, I would think that the experiences of "most of the Slashdot comumnity" would make them more sympathetic to a persecuted sub-culture (not that it would even compare with the persecution of homosexuals). But apparently not. I suppose most of those geeks persecuted in high school went on to get jobs and realized that they weren't "geeks" any more, and are now enjoying their privileged positions as middle class straight white males in American society, and looking down on those who have yet to make the leap from ostracized to privileged.
I find that pathetic.
GLBT issues really have no right to be in Slashdot, let alone Azeroth. This repeated "Blizzard censors GLBT guild" thing is getting to be really gay.
No right, eh? Funny you should use those terms. Given all the homophobia present in this very thread, I'd say it has every right, even a need, to be on Slashdot. The fact is that I was right the first time: You're fine with tossing the word "gay" around as long as it means "bad and stupid", but as soon as the word is brought up in a non-derogetory fashion, you're offended and think that kind of usage "has no right to be in Slashdot".
WRONG! It is not declaring your existance at all. It is shoving your existance down other peoples throats.
Why is it accepted for people to get pissed off at telemarketers that keep calling them but it is not ok to get pissed off at people advertising their "gay friendly" clans? Thats all it is, advertising. These people in the game do not start up a conversation with another player and then say "Oh yeah I am in clan DKDD we are gay friendly". I would be fine with this. Instead they fill the chat rooms with their advertisements.
Thank you, Mr. Example Of Exactly What I'm Talking About.
Do you see other advertising in-game? You talk about telemarketers (who interrupt your life with a ringing phone) but not in-game advertising (which appears in the exact same place as the GLBT guild advertisments). Is the guy who "WTS [Hanzo Sword]" shoving said sword down your throat? Is every lame-ass comment about Chuck Norris that appears in your chat window shoving Chuck Norris down your throat? What about every third line of chat that includes the word "gay" in a derogetory fashion?
No, you don't complain about any of that (and if you did dislike it, you'd just turn off the general and trade channels). So obviously the GLBT groups are different to you. Merely having a pro-gay guild appearing in your chat window amongst all the other drivel is "shoving it down your throat".
It's just like I said: "shut up faggot" is fine, "Hey, I have a GLBT guild where you won't hear that kind of talk" is a direct assault on your ability to pretend homosexuals don't exist and thus offensive to you.
This is entirely your problem.
I think it is interesting that people thinking "That is so gay" is negative.
I think it's interesting that you can pretend it isn't completely obvious from context that it is intended to be negative.
If someone is gay, and there first thought is that saying something is gay is negative, what does that say about how they view their lifestyle?
Gee, maybe they view their lifestyle as something that a large number of people find abhorrent and would associate something with in order to insult that thing. In other words, completely accurately.
As if you didn't understand this.
Well, presumeably part of the "gay agenda" is to not have to hide one's identity, and instead to be accepted, as gay, as a full first-class member of society.
So by proclaiming that one is gay, and by advertising for a gay guild without being censored by the authorities, you have "forced" people to consider the fact that people playing the game may actually be gay, and that they have the same rights to speech and to association as all other citizens.
That's the logic, such as it is.
All these people keep saying they don't want to hear about it, because they don't care. This is nonsense, they obviously care very much or they'd let it be, instead of feeling like you are imposing on them merely by declaring your existence. What they really mean is that they don't want to hear anything about gay people, so they can pretend everyone is straight. This is why having your own little gay club offends them -- they can no longer pretend that people in that guild are straight, and you have "forced" them to realize that they are sharing a game server with a homosexual.
It's as lame an answer as saying that it's the GLBT groups who brough sexual preference into the game in the first place. No, it's the people using "faggot" as their pejorative of choice that brought the issue of homophobia into the game. A GLBT group is just an attempt to escape from this environment. It's as ludicrous as blaming a black person for bringing race issues into the game when he complains that everyone is tossing "nigger" around with reckless abandon.
Oh, but of course racism is frowned upon by mainstream society, and thus spewing "lol u nigger" would be frowned upon. It's still socially acceptable to be a homophobe, so "i hate teh gheys" is fine, everyday speech and "hey I'm gay that offends me" is bringing up issues that don't belong in the game.
...that the NEW anti-piracy system will not be Starforce. It doesn't mean it won't be copy protected or that the new system will be any less malicious than Starforce.
I think it's safe to say that it will be, simply by virtue of it being so difficult to be more malicious. What would that even be? They send somebody to your house to personally demolish your computer with a sledgehammer to ensure it isn't running pirated (or any other) programs?
Yeah, personally I was expecting him to say "Honestly, at this point we just want to continue dicking around with it for another decade."
It sounds to me like he realises the endless rewrites were a mistake, but it also sounds like he's resigned to the fact that nobody cares if they release tomorrow or five years from now. He's gone from being optimistic about realising it soon (which granted was always incorrect), to saying he hopes they someday finish it (which may turn out to actually occur).
Either way, I forsee at least another year of "Duke Nukem Whenever" jokes, followed by a whole slew of new jokes based on the crappy game they actually release.
As for actual control it was mouselook with the controller and trigger, and movement with nunchaku controller. The time us small folks got with it was brief, but my impressions were that it was much smaller and lighter than I had thought. The actual amount of movement needed was minimal, totally the opposite of all the fanboys who keep saying that you will need herculean wrist strength and be at a constant risk of carpal tunnel.
Well I'm more of an N fanboy if anything, but that was one of the more obvious possible problems. Sounds like it's not the case!
Thanks for the info.
You are a little off. What a P4 does is "speed stepping" where if it is overheating it will down the clock and avoid areas on the chip that are the hottest, if it gets too hot it will shut down completely. This is designed so that permanent damage does not happen as a result of heat. AMD also has a similar feature now (or claims to, I've heard some cases of people having a heat sink failure and their AMD being trashed as a result), but they didn't used to
:P
AMD added this feature in the Athlon XP (maybe not the first release... perhaps Thoroughbred?), but it requires motherboard support and thus took a little longer before it became useful. I wish it'd been in earlier; I once forgot to take the sticker off the bottom of a heat sink, fried the processor in seconds.
P4's speed stepping doesn't actually change the clock speed, it just changes the duty cycle so the clock runs full speed for a while, then not at all for a while. Not what I expected at first, but really an elegent solution since it doesn't require designing a complicated PLL, but gives the same effect as cutting the frequency in half.
For the GP: When the P4 enters this mode it isn't really overheating per se, it has simply gone above its Total Design Power. When intel reports power usage, in particular power usage as needed by OEMs who design cooling solutions, it doesn't use the typical method of maximum theoretical power usage (which is the number AMD reports). Instead, it uses a power usage that is safely above what the majority of commone code paths will see (which is substantially lower than maximum, easing the burden on the cooling system designers and letting them tout lower effective power usage). The clock gating is their method of ensuring that the power doesn't actually go above their stated power level -- unfortunately, when this happens it is usually during some extremely intense computations that you don't really want to slow down by 50%. I've seen reviews of P4 parts which show the effects of this. It looks really odd unless you know what's going on under the covers.
The Wavebird really is the first wireless controller that works.
Good point. I was just thinking about the GC controller released at launch, and not the awesome Wavebird that I didn't pick up until a couple years later. So it took them a while, but N did come up with a "must have" controller feature for the GC/Xbox/PS2 generation.
Ok, you have a point about Soul Calibur, but think about the gigantic buttons on the arcade machine that game was designed for. GC has a horrible controller design for ported arcade games.
True. The only way I've found that worked decently was to lay the controller on my lap and hover my fingers over the buttons like I would at the arcade, which still isn't that great.
maybe we should add that the decission for EM64T came directly after Microsoft communicated that furture versions of Windows will only run on AM64....
Well at the point when Microsoft said that they would only be supporting a single 64-bit x86 ISA it was pretty clear that Intel was going to be releasing their own x86-64 already. Microsoft had surely communicated that they wouldn't support multiple ISAs to Intel well before. Dell is the reason why Intel released an x86-64 part to begin with, Microsoft is the reason why Intel's extensions were an almost perfect match for AMD's.
And that begs the question: If Dell is not "Intels lapdog" why couldn't they start selling those Opterons?
Dell gets preferential pricing on Intel parts and first choice of lots when supplies of a new part are low based on their exclusive use of Intel parts. Dell will continue to be Intel-only as long as it is financially beneficial for them to do so. At this time it is better for them to be able to threaten to sell Opterons so as to get better deals from Intel. If Intel hadn't come out with 64-bit x86 chips, this may have changed, but the fact that Dell made Intel dance to their tune shows the kind of advantage Dell has with the current situation.
Not that Dell isn't their lapdog. Though really since the power goes both ways, I think "codependent" is the better term.
Dude, x86-64 is AMD's spec not Intel's. Google around, you'll even find an Intel bug due to AMD updating their orginal specs later on.
Yes, I'm aware, including Intel's usage of a pre-release reference with errors in it. That was the most amusing part of their announcement of 64-bitness that didn't even mention AMD even though it was the same thing + bugs. I'm sure AMD would have been happy to give Intel more up-to-date information, but Intel still couldn't stand to admit they were following their little rival.
Neveretheless, Intel was developing x86-64 extensions as a side project probably before AMD was (Intel being very large can do things like this -- send a team off to design a 64-bit x86 part that they don't intend to actually produce). It was AMD's Opteron and subsequent pressure from Dell that made Intel release their part, but it was Microsoft who forced them to follow AMD's specification.
and here all this time I thought Intel ripped AMD's 64-bit spec for x86.
Heh, and how right you are. The differences between Intel's and AMD's implementation are the same as the errors that were in the pre-release documentation AMD made available, so they did in fact rip off the spec. Too bad they couldn't swallow their pride and ask AMD for updated docs.
Not that "ripped off" is really the right word. Intel had x86-64 extensions in the works before AMD did, but didn't go to market with them. AMD got to market first, and Microsoft was only willing to support one x86-64 spec. When it comes to ISAs in Wintel land Microsoft has the final word, so Intel had no choice but to be compatible with AMD.
He specifically said Intel 64-bit x86 extensions, and that's absolutely true. Intel had 64-bit x86 extensions in the works for a long time, even longer than AMD, but did not want to release them. Why? One word: Itanium. Intel was fully aware that the main differentiating feature of Itanium versus Xeon was that Itanium was 64-bit, and that adding 64-bit extensions to Xeon with the commensurate promise of full compatability and performance for their 32-bit apps would kill off the already anemic Itanium sales.
When AMD released their 64-bit parts, Intel didn't respond and let AMD take the technology leadership position in the x86 market, in the name of preserving Itanium. Opteron started doing very well in the server market, though, and Dell's server division was getting knocked around. Their customers wanted 64-bit, and they vastly preferred an x86 chip to do it. "Why can't we have a 64-bit x86 chip?" they were saying, either directly to Dell or indirectly by buying Opteron-based servers. Thus the pressure Dell put on Intel to come out with x86-64, which they surely knew Intel was holding in their back pocket. I imagine an ultimatum to release a 64-bit Xeon or Dell would start selling Opterons is what did it.
People understimate the pressure Dell can apply to Intel. Sure, Dell really needs Intel and definitely benefits from preferential pricing, and thus wants to make Intel happy. On the other hand, Intel needs the world's largest OEM to be pure-Intel, creating a marketshare buffer zone (and commensurate dependable income) to help in their battle with AMD, and thus must keep Dell happy too. A Dell defection would be very bad for Intel, and issues like 64-bit x86 could have forced Dell's hand.
Hey, could you maybe briefly describe the setup to give us a feel for how this worked? I love Metroid Prime, but find its controls slightly awkward (though I understand the reason): joystick to move forward/back and turn, trigger+joystick to look up/down and strafe. At the conceptual level I see how the Rev controller could be great for allowing you to freelook, but I can't get much beyond that... Did it use the "nunchuck" setup with an analog controller to allow movement/looking at the same time? Thanks.
Well I assumed that by "living up to its predecessors" he meant "set a new standard for game controllers which all other companies would soon follow". The Gamecube controller is the first Nintendo controller which didn't do this. The NES controller introduced the D-pad, the SNES controller introduced shoulder buttons (and is still the best controller for playing Street Fighter), the N64 controller had the analog stick. The Gamecube is nothing but a well-done variation of the ubiquitous Dual Shock design (that was originally inspired by the N64). In that sense, there's nothing really wrong with it, but it certainly doesn't live up to its predecessors. The Revolution controller has a chance to outdo its standard-setting predecossors, but we'll see.
Considering the GC controller on its own, it's decent enough. Personally I find the Z button to be essentially useless for anything I have to do quickly. I wish they had made it a trigger button, like the N64's Z button. Metroid Prime uses Z to call up the map; for this it works fine.
I'm also not a huge fan of the giant A button. I think it's a little too large, and I think the B button is a little too small. Games that require you to hit multiple buttons at once (e.g. Soul Calibur) are awkward unless you're trying to hit A + something else.
Other than that, it's fine. I slightly prefer the N64's analog stick, but the C-stick is nice. The analog triggers are good too, especially once game makers figured out that for binary operations the the "on" state should be a small amount of depression, not full.
That is fine and dandy, but one has to wonder if this goes on all the time.
You have to wonder if cronyism and giving government positions to connected corporate interests occurs all the time?
Let me help you out: Yes, it goes on all the time.
In this sense, the OP was right that a mere undersecretary position isn't anything special.
Of course two degrees doesn't sound scary, by itself. When you think of all the energy represented by raising the temperature of the entire planet by two degrees, and then think about how that extra energy will affect weather systems, perhaps you should start to be a little more scared.
I'm reminded of scene from a movie, that one featuring Tommy Lee Jones versus a volcano that pops up under LA. Not a very good movie, but nevertheless... There's a scene where the love interest/geologist is explaining in worried tones to Tommy Lee Jones that the water temperature of some pond had risen by a few degrees in some short period of time. Mr. Jones, like yourself is non-plussed. She then goes on to explain just how much energy it would take to raise the temperature of such a body of water by the seemingly small amount, e.g. "a geological event". Cue lava spewing out of the streets of LA as science flees for the hills, never to be seen again...
What I'm saying is that just because a number sounds small and non-scary doesn't mean it is. A few degrees represents an enormous impact on our environment, the kind anti-global-warming types claim humans could never have. Yet the fact is that CO2 levels are vastly higher than they've been in hundreds of thousands of years. We have outstripped volcanoes and any other natural method of increasing CO2 levels beyond the normal seasonal plant uptake/release. CO2 is almost certainly part of a strong feedback cycle with global temperature. We are having an impact, and a few degrees is both huge and just the tip of the iceberg if we don't change things.
I believe the "scientific" aspect he was speaking of was solely looking for evidence that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. I could be wrong, but he was discerning that ID's claim of supernatural origins of life made it philosophy/religion not science. So he probably recognizes that the "God did it" part of his belief is not in fact science as well.