Performance is not so much a problem as that stuff looks like it would run on a 486SX (if the 2D graphics card were fast enough) Bigger problem is that the game is unreliable - though factors such as using Wifi may make it so. There was a pianpo keyboard near the spawn. Game can't decide which mouse button plays the piano, and whether striking a key works immediately, never or plays a delayed sound. A couple minute later after climbing up like 100 meters, I hear some piano notes again.
Are those differences consistent?, are there differences between runs on the same machine?
Monte-Carlo rendering : from the name, that's using a lot of random numbers (like throwing a million darts at a wall and seeing what they hit.). So the software or even hardware implementation of random number generators may be important. Newer CPUs may have a built-in random generator which uses thermal noise - but the software has to use that ; and I presume it's foremost for security applications. I suppose 3D renderes use single precision floating point. Perhaps the math issue has no bearing.
It used to be that a gaming PC was a regular PC with an added graphics card, but these days you can go really low end or use an about 5 year old good low end PC for non-gaming use. e.g. you can get the newest Atom or its AMD competitors on an everything-integrated desktop motherboard and everything is possible already (web browsing, image editing, video encoding, multitasking, running a VM..), ditto with a lowest end "regular" CPU (Celeron, AMD A4 or A6).
Games are the mainstream apps really requiring a faster CPU (quad core or i3) and more RAM (if you want to be lazy and not close the web browser when launching a game). So I would argue you can get a low end PC plus a gaming console for about the price of a gaming PC alone. (roughly $200 or $300 PC + $400 console versus $600 or $700 gaming PC). Else, a "middle-ground PC" like your solution is adequate if you "future-proof" the CPU enough (a demanding game can at least run on a strong CPU and a weak GPU)
Re-decoding and re-drawing the image everytime would be very sensible, if it's hardware accelerated - even at every screen refresh. Graphics cards have been doing that since 1999/2000 in games by supporting compressed textures - S3TC and such - which I guess even the phone's poor GPU support. Newest GPUs support newer texture compression formats, and there's even a new real time compression standard intended to compress the stream between a GPU/SoC/whatever and a display (to reduce power consumed by the transmission or e.g. to allow 8K on Displayport 1.3)
Ideally the JPEG/PNG picture would be decompressed (a dedicated hardware block or image processing DSP might assist. Cell phone SoC do have such stuff), re-compressed by dedicated hardware (and maybe resized) into the latest and greatest texture compression format, then the browser uses the GPU to compose the web page's display.
this. More browser control is needed (block ads, block scripts, disable images..)
The poor phone maybe does well on wikipedia, which is uncluttered and has a Web 1.0 GUI. Meanwhile, some big sites out there are so ridiculously heavy that I don't like/don't want to load them even on a desktop.
Many laptops live permanently on a desk, and are lugged at a kitchen table, dining table or a low lying table in front of the sofa at best. Or they're taken to a music performance and sit on a table. It might as well be an Osborne 1. Using a laptop on a lap is silly sometimes (it hurts and the keyboard + trackpad combination is miserable when you need it much)
Not seen that problem on Samsung, Nokia and Wiko dumbphones (though I didn't try the very latest Nokia). By dumbphones, those are those that don't come with a browser - but the phone may have microSD, bluetooth, FM radio, microUSB, white LED and even what I call a webcam.
From what I've read (blogs, bug reports, whatever) I'm even waiting for version 2.1. Reasonable high hopes with it. I can't remember what was in that version though. But good enough FF OS would give asm.js, WebRTC, copy/paste and whatnot (I suppose WebRTC can be hijacked for various streaming purposes)
Alright, I did a lazy and inaccurate description. I think it's about right if I say it's swapping to a compressed ramdisk (whose size maybe is dynamic but I don't know)
A lot of the concerns are legitimate and likely due to needing 2x-4x the RAM to function properly. But a notification LED? Why the fuck would I want that? I don't even have one on a desktop or laptop. No comment on GPS (law enforcement and drone strikes may use GSM triangulation anyway). Lack of multitouch and prediction on the keyboard? like I would want to hit different keys at once and want my keyboard to wipe my ass for me? (also in such place as India I guess they still have dozens languages). The camera shots? exponentially better than my dumbphone. Losing time? If I remove the CR2032 on my desktop or battery on my phone, I lose time. Just don't remove your fucking battery. No storage? add 32GB SD and it beats iphone 6.
Multitasking? not really needed. But sadly the phone kind of fails at single tasking. (and music or FM playback should be "almost multitasking" that works).
That's said it's a failure ; someone needs to invent micro-DIMM DRAM I guess (not that it would make much sense, though). Same lesson as on a desktop computer : 512MB is usable (yes even today, latest linux+lxde+firefox), 256MB you're pushing it, 128MB it's slideshows and you're pretending stuff works but only really good for music playback, video playback, text editor and minesweeper.
Amiga stuff and friends were made in assembly, C or even BASIC for the slow stuff, with no memory protection, no safety and no networking. Dumbphone firmware would be the boring, shitty equivalent - someone needs to build sprite hardware and nice games into dumbphones, but then again the keypads only register one key at a time.
But here we have a "smartphone" so it needs to execute random shit javascript code from the internet. No way around it, unless you can convince people they want an equivalent of Lynx with pictures. So, many sites you can't login to, webmails you can't read, no youtube for you etc. It's extraordinary resource hungry and that's why Firefox OS dedicates all resources (even "ROM" space) to it. And to make thing worse CPU-wise the RAM is compressed like the hard drive in bad old Doublespace days.
Trying OSS may be worth it. It even became Free seven years ago. Alternatively writing a script that triggers when you hit the hardware mute button might be a fine band aid. (xbindkeys or your window manager would call it)
3. A lot of zoning and house regulations (associations) don't permit on roof solar in many areas - get rid of that and require all utilities to purchase excess solar at peak rates and you can get 50 percent solar by 2020. As in, now.
As in make the poor subsidize the rich. You want your affluent lifestyle to be rewarded by feel-good stuff paid by others. Appartment dwellers who can't climb on their roof and run a power cord through their window will pay for the hundreds billions in grid upgrades/repairs your grand plan needs, because you're a home owner so you deserve it.
But maybe I misunderstood you or I misrepresent you, I don't necessarily want to flame you. If buying at peak rate is done at peak need times, it makes sense. If you build up energy storage (at your own cost) and stored excess energy is what you sell, it makes sense. If "excess solar" means dumping your unneeded power without caring about whether it's useful or not, I don't think that is helpful.
I wasn't aware that GUI feature existed, I now remember I once launched it about once. Old news : the Gnome 2 fork is one of the major DEs out there.
It displays not many things, though. Not even the ssh server. Avahi is absent of the list, yet is running on my system (two processes) In fact that a small subset of running things is represented there proves that things don't run together well enough and are too disjointed, no?
I forgot to add the beauty of Slashdot is ACs are modded +4 or +5 all the time and their comments are appraised by the other posters or readers, AC or not.
It's probably useful to demean the "Anonymous" poster a bit. For all we can agree about internet freedom and the need for privacy, shit behavior and gratuitous insults always sneak in and these days it's become more of a problem than in the past.. Either we grow tired of it after 10/15 years, or the poor sobs that post under real names or weak pseudos are all universally and instantly googlable and the worst insults and libel follow them. Especially the 4chan "Anonymous" phenomenom doesn't deserve much respect. "We are Anonymous, we are 1st world cry babies with a fake attitude of dissent, we're against the system but nothing is important, nothing counts, here's some script-kiddy stuff we made and a cool ascii art boat, we're Anonymous so you won't know we're slaving away in corporate jobs and entrenched in consumerism when not doing some protest shit and oh, here's some underage necrophilia pics".
I tend to be a systemd hater, on the grounds of not using it and being sad it's some linux-only thing. But pulseaudio gives me a global software volume control that doesn't put cracks in the sound when I change volume, and I can leave the "hardware" master volume fixed. So I like it for that I guess. What I don't like is I have no idea how to set up OSSv4 + pulseaudio instead of ALSA + pulseaudio.
Slashdot Mirror
Performance is not so much a problem as that stuff looks like it would run on a 486SX (if the 2D graphics card were fast enough)
Bigger problem is that the game is unreliable - though factors such as using Wifi may make it so.
There was a pianpo keyboard near the spawn. Game can't decide which mouse button plays the piano, and whether striking a key works immediately, never or plays a delayed sound. A couple minute later after climbing up like 100 meters, I hear some piano notes again.
If it works with a driver disk then it's not that unsupported.
Are those differences consistent?, are there differences between runs on the same machine?
Monte-Carlo rendering : from the name, that's using a lot of random numbers (like throwing a million darts at a wall and seeing what they hit.). So the software or even hardware implementation of random number generators may be important. Newer CPUs may have a built-in random generator which uses thermal noise - but the software has to use that ; and I presume it's foremost for security applications.
I suppose 3D renderes use single precision floating point. Perhaps the math issue has no bearing.
It used to be that a gaming PC was a regular PC with an added graphics card, but these days you can go really low end or use an about 5 year old good low end PC for non-gaming use.
e.g. you can get the newest Atom or its AMD competitors on an everything-integrated desktop motherboard and everything is possible already (web browsing, image editing, video encoding, multitasking, running a VM..), ditto with a lowest end "regular" CPU (Celeron, AMD A4 or A6).
Games are the mainstream apps really requiring a faster CPU (quad core or i3) and more RAM (if you want to be lazy and not close the web browser when launching a game).
So I would argue you can get a low end PC plus a gaming console for about the price of a gaming PC alone. (roughly $200 or $300 PC + $400 console versus $600 or $700 gaming PC). Else, a "middle-ground PC" like your solution is adequate if you "future-proof" the CPU enough (a demanding game can at least run on a strong CPU and a weak GPU)
Re-decoding and re-drawing the image everytime would be very sensible, if it's hardware accelerated - even at every screen refresh. Graphics cards have been doing that since 1999/2000 in games by supporting compressed textures - S3TC and such - which I guess even the phone's poor GPU support.
Newest GPUs support newer texture compression formats, and there's even a new real time compression standard intended to compress the stream between a GPU/SoC/whatever and a display (to reduce power consumed by the transmission or e.g. to allow 8K on Displayport 1.3)
Ideally the JPEG/PNG picture would be decompressed (a dedicated hardware block or image processing DSP might assist. Cell phone SoC do have such stuff), re-compressed by dedicated hardware (and maybe resized) into the latest and greatest texture compression format, then the browser uses the GPU to compose the web page's display.
this.
More browser control is needed (block ads, block scripts, disable images..)
The poor phone maybe does well on wikipedia, which is uncluttered and has a Web 1.0 GUI. Meanwhile, some big sites out there are so ridiculously heavy that I don't like/don't want to load them even on a desktop.
Many laptops live permanently on a desk, and are lugged at a kitchen table, dining table or a low lying table in front of the sofa at best. Or they're taken to a music performance and sit on a table. It might as well be an Osborne 1. Using a laptop on a lap is silly sometimes (it hurts and the keyboard + trackpad combination is miserable when you need it much)
Not seen that problem on Samsung, Nokia and Wiko dumbphones (though I didn't try the very latest Nokia).
By dumbphones, those are those that don't come with a browser - but the phone may have microSD, bluetooth, FM radio, microUSB, white LED and even what I call a webcam.
Mod this Flame bait!
From what I've read (blogs, bug reports, whatever) I'm even waiting for version 2.1. Reasonable high hopes with it. I can't remember what was in that version though. But good enough FF OS would give asm.js, WebRTC, copy/paste and whatnot (I suppose WebRTC can be hijacked for various streaming purposes)
To me it's more like booting linux straight into emacs, but it's a long order of magnitude more heavy.
"128 megabytes and constantly swapping"
Alright, I did a lazy and inaccurate description. I think it's about right if I say it's swapping to a compressed ramdisk (whose size maybe is dynamic but I don't know)
A lot of the concerns are legitimate and likely due to needing 2x-4x the RAM to function properly. But a notification LED? Why the fuck would I want that? I don't even have one on a desktop or laptop. No comment on GPS (law enforcement and drone strikes may use GSM triangulation anyway). Lack of multitouch and prediction on the keyboard? like I would want to hit different keys at once and want my keyboard to wipe my ass for me? (also in such place as India I guess they still have dozens languages). The camera shots? exponentially better than my dumbphone. Losing time? If I remove the CR2032 on my desktop or battery on my phone, I lose time. Just don't remove your fucking battery. No storage? add 32GB SD and it beats iphone 6.
Multitasking? not really needed. But sadly the phone kind of fails at single tasking. (and music or FM playback should be "almost multitasking" that works).
That's said it's a failure ; someone needs to invent micro-DIMM DRAM I guess (not that it would make much sense, though). Same lesson as on a desktop computer : 512MB is usable (yes even today, latest linux+lxde+firefox), 256MB you're pushing it, 128MB it's slideshows and you're pretending stuff works but only really good for music playback, video playback, text editor and minesweeper.
Amiga stuff and friends were made in assembly, C or even BASIC for the slow stuff, with no memory protection, no safety and no networking. Dumbphone firmware would be the boring, shitty equivalent - someone needs to build sprite hardware and nice games into dumbphones, but then again the keypads only register one key at a time.
But here we have a "smartphone" so it needs to execute random shit javascript code from the internet. No way around it, unless you can convince people they want an equivalent of Lynx with pictures. So, many sites you can't login to, webmails you can't read, no youtube for you etc.
It's extraordinary resource hungry and that's why Firefox OS dedicates all resources (even "ROM" space) to it.
And to make thing worse CPU-wise the RAM is compressed like the hard drive in bad old Doublespace days.
Yep there's one about it!
It made me not get very enthusiastic about app stores and such.
Can I have a barony of dirt?
I remember the very same kind of game percent-ratings on paper magazines in 1992.
Trying OSS may be worth it. It even became Free seven years ago.
Alternatively writing a script that triggers when you hit the hardware mute button might be a fine band aid. (xbindkeys or your window manager would call it)
Then watching it be intercepted by a fighter jet and escorted to safety will be all the more neat.
3. A lot of zoning and house regulations (associations) don't permit on roof solar in many areas - get rid of that and require all utilities to purchase excess solar at peak rates and you can get 50 percent solar by 2020. As in, now.
As in make the poor subsidize the rich. You want your affluent lifestyle to be rewarded by feel-good stuff paid by others. Appartment dwellers who can't climb on their roof and run a power cord through their window will pay for the hundreds billions in grid upgrades/repairs your grand plan needs, because you're a home owner so you deserve it.
But maybe I misunderstood you or I misrepresent you, I don't necessarily want to flame you. If buying at peak rate is done at peak need times, it makes sense. If you build up energy storage (at your own cost) and stored excess energy is what you sell, it makes sense. If "excess solar" means dumping your unneeded power without caring about whether it's useful or not, I don't think that is helpful.
Considering a perpetual 3% annual growth in energy use makes it more fun.
I wasn't aware that GUI feature existed, I now remember I once launched it about once. Old news : the Gnome 2 fork is one of the major DEs out there.
It displays not many things, though. Not even the ssh server. Avahi is absent of the list, yet is running on my system (two processes)
In fact that a small subset of running things is represented there proves that things don't run together well enough and are too disjointed, no?
I forgot to add the beauty of Slashdot is ACs are modded +4 or +5 all the time and their comments are appraised by the other posters or readers, AC or not.
It's probably useful to demean the "Anonymous" poster a bit. For all we can agree about internet freedom and the need for privacy, shit behavior and gratuitous insults always sneak in and these days it's become more of a problem than in the past.. Either we grow tired of it after 10/15 years, or the poor sobs that post under real names or weak pseudos are all universally and instantly googlable and the worst insults and libel follow them.
Especially the 4chan "Anonymous" phenomenom doesn't deserve much respect. "We are Anonymous, we are 1st world cry babies with a fake attitude of dissent, we're against the system but nothing is important, nothing counts, here's some script-kiddy stuff we made and a cool ascii art boat, we're Anonymous so you won't know we're slaving away in corporate jobs and entrenched in consumerism when not doing some protest shit and oh, here's some underage necrophilia pics".
I tend to be a systemd hater, on the grounds of not using it and being sad it's some linux-only thing.
But pulseaudio gives me a global software volume control that doesn't put cracks in the sound when I change volume, and I can leave the "hardware" master volume fixed. So I like it for that I guess. What I don't like is I have no idea how to set up OSSv4 + pulseaudio instead of ALSA + pulseaudio.