To be fair to the technicians, I've talked to a few of them when they've had to come out and most of the time the end of the 4 hour window isn't often their fault. It's thumbless muppets who don't have their computers booted up, don't know where the cable jacks in their house are, who've fucked up some splice job, etc. that Comcast's tech now needs to fix to get things running. I actually had one tech just about floored because I had the modem set up, the computer running, all he had to do was do his password mojo and be on his way. He thanked me for helping him get back on schedule after all the twits before me.
Remember, they're contractors;) Some good, some bad... try to be nice though. It's not all their fault.
Ok, I realize much more than you give me credit for, so I'll go paragraph by paragraph:
First off, many console games would LIKE to have user-created maps and mods and such. It would extend the life of the games, just like it does for the PC's, and the game developers love anything that keeps the games selling. That has nothing to do with driver issues or anything, just user extensibility.
Secondly, level loading will take more time if you allow user-created levels as I proposed above. You have to generate the graphics trees, paths, etc. and optimize them from their stored format to one that you can play in. And even then, you still have to do some processing of sorts to load anything, so why not offload that to another processor? Get away from the in-between 'Loading..." screens.
Ok, no LOD considerations... what if you wanted a dynamic LOD in your game? Make things smoother? Just because it IS that way doesn't mean is HAS to be that way. I can sure as hell use higher resolution textures than someone else if I have the power to do so. I used to use the S3 textures for UT, which were much better than the stock ones. I could still play with everyone else.
Lastly, just because they're new doesn't mean that you shouldn't anticipate them. They're HUGE in the PC world, and they'll take off in the console world just the same, especially with all the network connectedness of the new systems.
I suppose my main point is that you're a luddite. "Things are fine the way they are... why do this fancy-schmancy multiple processors if I can't see an instant way to make it better?". Threaded applications are becoming more and more common. Games do multiple things... it can make them better to have more resources available for disparate tasks (sound processing, AI, graphics, network communication... maybe a dedicated server of some sort? Offload it to the non-playing CPU's so that it won't lag down your game while you're playing it?)
And the point of offloading the AI? So you have more LOCAL resources for the graphics. Amazing concept there, eh?
FYI, the reason that you don't want them to be too 'human' is outlined in this treatise called the Uncanny Valley. A rather interesting read for both you and the GPP if you haven't already.
So, AI and Graphics are the only things that a game system does? Hey, what about helping pre-load levels in the background allowing for a much larger, more seamless world? No, that takes more than just data... you need to process a lot of it. Especially if you allow user-created mods, which is where the PC really wins over consoles. They want some of that.
And your network latency issue things? Yeah, they have a lot of those issues already with any online game. It seems to work pretty well, AI and everything. Perhaps you could just accept that having more processing power available is never really a bad thing? Help make the graphics sharper, AI more responsive, whatever?
Yes, but you can't get a tank to a lot of places a walker-style mech would be able to get to easily, carrying a lot of cargo, and still be much lower profile than something airborne. It's basically the difference between a hammer and a screwdriver. Both can be used on both nails and screws, but only one of the two is ideal for each situation.
But this is all theory until the AT-AT's climb up the mountains to get me;)
Of course, Germany covers appx. 138,000 square miles (~598 people/sq. mile). Colorado (the state I live in) covers 104,100 square miles (~41 people/sq. mile)
The US has a very, very different culture, and things are much more spread out. Our habits dictate a need for vehicles MUCH more so than most Europeans, not the least of which because the distance from Los Angeles to Denver is as far as it would be to cross Europe east to west.
Wait, what? You're saying that the use of a tool should take precedence over the business that they are trying to accomplish? That sounds... stupid. The system should be built to NOT ALLOW USERS TO BREAK IT. Period. Policy is grand, but a hammer isn't supposed to break when you pound in a nail, hit a rock with it, hit yourself in the head, whatever. A computer should be the same way, and especially a network. Perhaps you need to become a better administrator.
I think you missed the whole point of his post. That it's not supposed to be like that. It's not "just the the way of life for us in the computer age." It's a symptom of a deeply broken system that has no visions of actually repairing it. Virus scanners, adware scans, firewalls... they're band-aids. They don't address the true causes of the problems, that the system is failing miserably.
Ehhh. Most people in the know just disabled the serial number in the BIOS, so it was a non-issue. AMD's offerings really didn't get much better than the Pentium line until right after the original Athlon.
Says the gentleman with the ESR quote in his signature. I leave the irony as an exercise to the reader.
No matter how much you would love to claim that you're superhuman and somehow defy what all other people have learned through the millenia, you aren't able to be productive 80 hours a week. It's impossible. I would like to issue you this challenege:
Try getting in only 40 hours a week of work, and sleep AT LEAST 7 hours a night. Do this for two weeks. See if your productivity is the same if not better after that time. If you're honest with yourself, I'd guarantee you that you will a) be at least as productive and b) have more time to yourself to do things you would like to do, things away from the computer.
They actually pass through Redhat and SuSE's compilers. Not Linus'. Most of the mainstream distros have custom kernel patches and the like that aren't in Linus' vanilla kernel. It is still very much so a bazaar. Linus maintains a 'reference' version, and other people tweak with it as they see fit.
Or perhaps you should just learn to be a decent parent and, oh, I don't know, TRUST that you raised her right? Jesus. Kids do dumb things. It's a given. Your job is to teach her how to fly, not to fly with her every second of every day. That only teaches her to be dependent.
You do realise that that the Jurassic Park thing is a real SGI/Irix file manager called fsn?
The system it models is something different... but it is a quite real Unix filemanager.
Though I do agree that many people attribute some kind of magical qualities to computers that don't exist. As Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
I'd also like to offer a corrolary:
"Any person insufficently advanced is unable to distinguish technology from magic." I think that this is the case with most of the general public that watches crap like CSI and believes all of it.
Depends. Do you know where, say, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon or Wisconsin are in relation to the rest of the US? East, west, central? Many Europeans are just as ignorant on our political geography as Americans are on theirs;)
Of course, the climate has stayed perfectly stable throughout earth's whole history. You realize that the ice caps in general are a relatively recent thing? Didn't happen until the ice age? I love how people get this complex that makes them somehow think that humans are the only force of change in the world. That cycles and change don't happen from other processes that we don't directly control. Things change. We deal with them. As does the rest of the world, including all the plants and animals and such.
No, this isn't an argument for the wholesale raping of the planet. It's an argument for a little bit of sanity in the whole tree-hugger crowd.
Access can use an SQL backend. Start the move there. Let Access be the frontend, have the forms, all that. Stop it from storing the data in it's awful file format.
So, rather than do Internet over the telephone for $27/line plus $20/mo, you can do telephone over the Internet for a grand total of $50/mo. Not to mention that this will increase broadband adoption, hopefully lowering prices. So this is perfectly reasonable for the less well-off, and better for everyone as a whole. The local POTS is a hegemony system anyway. It's called 'choice', and we now have it, where before you had the illusion of it.
I'm all for this. It'll be meaningful competition finally. Though regulations exist for the leasing of infrastructure to smaller companies at reasonable rates, those are still abused. Once voice is just packets, it's a totally level playing field.
I can understand and fix what's wrong with my car in most basic instances, I can fix basic plumbing, do electrical work, etc. I'm a professional programmer, though. No, it's laziness that these people have. It is stupidity.
It's even easier to fix if you have ctrl+mouse wheel to change font sizes... that forces a page refresh of the layout. I just scroll up and then down a size, and all is hunky-dory.
"Get a clue" from the guy who can't spell "labelling" or "Iraq". You're just taken by the rhetoric.
And FYI, when someone lies to you repeatedly, you eventually stop caring what they say. Brute force is sometimes the only language people understand. And forcing GM food to be accepted in the EU? Hah. Right. Don't buy it then. Oh, you guys can't grow your own? It sounds like you're trying to force the USA to do something that you want, by making us grow non-GM food, when it's more economical for us to grow the modified beans. Huh. It's funny when you look at BOTH sides of the argument, eh?
Perhaps you need to get out a little more before you start accusing other people of not having brains.
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Not all matching MD5 summed files dig guys with lots of storage space, though
To be fair to the technicians, I've talked to a few of them when they've had to come out and most of the time the end of the 4 hour window isn't often their fault. It's thumbless muppets who don't have their computers booted up, don't know where the cable jacks in their house are, who've fucked up some splice job, etc. that Comcast's tech now needs to fix to get things running. I actually had one tech just about floored because I had the modem set up, the computer running, all he had to do was do his password mojo and be on his way. He thanked me for helping him get back on schedule after all the twits before me.
;) Some good, some bad... try to be nice though. It's not all their fault.
Remember, they're contractors
Ok, I realize much more than you give me credit for, so I'll go paragraph by paragraph: First off, many console games would LIKE to have user-created maps and mods and such. It would extend the life of the games, just like it does for the PC's, and the game developers love anything that keeps the games selling. That has nothing to do with driver issues or anything, just user extensibility.
Secondly, level loading will take more time if you allow user-created levels as I proposed above. You have to generate the graphics trees, paths, etc. and optimize them from their stored format to one that you can play in. And even then, you still have to do some processing of sorts to load anything, so why not offload that to another processor? Get away from the in-between 'Loading..." screens.
Ok, no LOD considerations... what if you wanted a dynamic LOD in your game? Make things smoother? Just because it IS that way doesn't mean is HAS to be that way. I can sure as hell use higher resolution textures than someone else if I have the power to do so. I used to use the S3 textures for UT, which were much better than the stock ones. I could still play with everyone else.
Lastly, just because they're new doesn't mean that you shouldn't anticipate them. They're HUGE in the PC world, and they'll take off in the console world just the same, especially with all the network connectedness of the new systems.
I suppose my main point is that you're a luddite. "Things are fine the way they are... why do this fancy-schmancy multiple processors if I can't see an instant way to make it better?". Threaded applications are becoming more and more common. Games do multiple things... it can make them better to have more resources available for disparate tasks (sound processing, AI, graphics, network communication... maybe a dedicated server of some sort? Offload it to the non-playing CPU's so that it won't lag down your game while you're playing it?)
And the point of offloading the AI? So you have more LOCAL resources for the graphics. Amazing concept there, eh?
FYI, the reason that you don't want them to be too 'human' is outlined in this treatise called the Uncanny Valley. A rather interesting read for both you and the GPP if you haven't already.
So, AI and Graphics are the only things that a game system does? Hey, what about helping pre-load levels in the background allowing for a much larger, more seamless world? No, that takes more than just data... you need to process a lot of it. Especially if you allow user-created mods, which is where the PC really wins over consoles. They want some of that.
And your network latency issue things? Yeah, they have a lot of those issues already with any online game. It seems to work pretty well, AI and everything. Perhaps you could just accept that having more processing power available is never really a bad thing? Help make the graphics sharper, AI more responsive, whatever?
Yes, but you can't get a tank to a lot of places a walker-style mech would be able to get to easily, carrying a lot of cargo, and still be much lower profile than something airborne. It's basically the difference between a hammer and a screwdriver. Both can be used on both nails and screws, but only one of the two is ideal for each situation. ;)
But this is all theory until the AT-AT's climb up the mountains to get me
Of course, Germany covers appx. 138,000 square miles (~598 people/sq. mile). Colorado (the state I live in) covers 104,100 square miles (~41 people/sq. mile)
The US has a very, very different culture, and things are much more spread out. Our habits dictate a need for vehicles MUCH more so than most Europeans, not the least of which because the distance from Los Angeles to Denver is as far as it would be to cross Europe east to west.
Wait, what? You're saying that the use of a tool should take precedence over the business that they are trying to accomplish? That sounds... stupid. The system should be built to NOT ALLOW USERS TO BREAK IT. Period. Policy is grand, but a hammer isn't supposed to break when you pound in a nail, hit a rock with it, hit yourself in the head, whatever. A computer should be the same way, and especially a network. Perhaps you need to become a better administrator.
I think you missed the whole point of his post. That it's not supposed to be like that. It's not "just the the way of life for us in the computer age." It's a symptom of a deeply broken system that has no visions of actually repairing it. Virus scanners, adware scans, firewalls... they're band-aids. They don't address the true causes of the problems, that the system is failing miserably.
Ehhh. Most people in the know just disabled the serial number in the BIOS, so it was a non-issue. AMD's offerings really didn't get much better than the Pentium line until right after the original Athlon.
Says the gentleman with the ESR quote in his signature. I leave the irony as an exercise to the reader.
No matter how much you would love to claim that you're superhuman and somehow defy what all other people have learned through the millenia, you aren't able to be productive 80 hours a week. It's impossible. I would like to issue you this challenege:
Try getting in only 40 hours a week of work, and sleep AT LEAST 7 hours a night. Do this for two weeks. See if your productivity is the same if not better after that time. If you're honest with yourself, I'd guarantee you that you will a) be at least as productive and b) have more time to yourself to do things you would like to do, things away from the computer.
"It's clobberin' time!"? I can't seem to find that one... help?
They actually pass through Redhat and SuSE's compilers. Not Linus'. Most of the mainstream distros have custom kernel patches and the like that aren't in Linus' vanilla kernel. It is still very much so a bazaar. Linus maintains a 'reference' version, and other people tweak with it as they see fit.
Or perhaps you should just learn to be a decent parent and, oh, I don't know, TRUST that you raised her right? Jesus. Kids do dumb things. It's a given. Your job is to teach her how to fly, not to fly with her every second of every day. That only teaches her to be dependent.
You do realise that that the Jurassic Park thing is a real SGI/Irix file manager called fsn?
The system it models is something different... but it is a quite real Unix filemanager.
Though I do agree that many people attribute some kind of magical qualities to computers that don't exist. As Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
I'd also like to offer a corrolary:
"Any person insufficently advanced is unable to distinguish technology from magic." I think that this is the case with most of the general public that watches crap like CSI and believes all of it.
Depends. Do you know where, say, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon or Wisconsin are in relation to the rest of the US? East, west, central? Many Europeans are just as ignorant on our political geography as Americans are on theirs ;)
Of course, the climate has stayed perfectly stable throughout earth's whole history. You realize that the ice caps in general are a relatively recent thing? Didn't happen until the ice age? I love how people get this complex that makes them somehow think that humans are the only force of change in the world. That cycles and change don't happen from other processes that we don't directly control. Things change. We deal with them. As does the rest of the world, including all the plants and animals and such.
No, this isn't an argument for the wholesale raping of the planet. It's an argument for a little bit of sanity in the whole tree-hugger crowd.
Access can use an SQL backend. Start the move there. Let Access be the frontend, have the forms, all that. Stop it from storing the data in it's awful file format.
Duly noted, categorized and archived.
:)
So, rather than do Internet over the telephone for $27/line plus $20/mo, you can do telephone over the Internet for a grand total of $50/mo. Not to mention that this will increase broadband adoption, hopefully lowering prices. So this is perfectly reasonable for the less well-off, and better for everyone as a whole. The local POTS is a hegemony system anyway. It's called 'choice', and we now have it, where before you had the illusion of it.
I'm all for this. It'll be meaningful competition finally. Though regulations exist for the leasing of infrastructure to smaller companies at reasonable rates, those are still abused. Once voice is just packets, it's a totally level playing field.
I can understand and fix what's wrong with my car in most basic instances, I can fix basic plumbing, do electrical work, etc. I'm a professional programmer, though. No, it's laziness that these people have. It is stupidity.
It's even easier to fix if you have ctrl+mouse wheel to change font sizes... that forces a page refresh of the layout. I just scroll up and then down a size, and all is hunky-dory.
Wget will report itself as whatever browser you want it to. It's an option. man wget.
"Get a clue" from the guy who can't spell "labelling" or "Iraq". You're just taken by the rhetoric.
And FYI, when someone lies to you repeatedly, you eventually stop caring what they say. Brute force is sometimes the only language people understand. And forcing GM food to be accepted in the EU? Hah. Right. Don't buy it then. Oh, you guys can't grow your own? It sounds like you're trying to force the USA to do something that you want, by making us grow non-GM food, when it's more economical for us to grow the modified beans. Huh. It's funny when you look at BOTH sides of the argument, eh?
Perhaps you need to get out a little more before you start accusing other people of not having brains.