What surprises me the most about all of this, is that no one has bothered to make use of Sealand's co-location service. It undoubtedly costs an arm and a leg, but it's certainly not an easy target for a raid.
Oh yea, this will work real well. I mean, you can only host a tracker on a top of the line server in an American(or American friendly) high-bandwidth facility; it's not like it can be run on cheaper hardware in a non-copyright friendly nation like Russia, right?
I know you're trying to be humorous, but seriously, the original GameBoy had a great battery live. Wikipedia pegs the original at ~35 hours while all the handhelds after that have been significantly less(the GBA SP can get around 16, but only if the light is off). It's really unfortunate that handhelds like that really aren't possible these days.
Speaking of the PSP's battery life, I'm getting a bit concerned about heat from the unit. The first thing that caught my eye is that in one of Lik Sang's PSP photos, you can clearly see what resembles a heat vent on the top of the unit, which throws up an orange flag immediately. Then when today's article came up, they had a picture of the battery which is rated 1800mAh@3.6V. Already being an owner of a GBA SP, I wanted to see how it compared to that and the DS, so Lik Sang has a picture of the GBASP and DS batteries which come in at 600mAh@3.8V, and 850mAh@3.7V. So all things considered, the PSP's battery is roughly 3 times the power of the GBA SP, and a little over 2x that of the DS.
That taken in to consideration, this is where I really start to get worried about heat. If we take the 4-6hour battery life at face value, we'll say that the PSP runs about half as long as the GBA SP. But when we also take in to consideration the battery differences, we're talking about the PSP effectively burning though power at (2x3=6) times the rate of the GBA SP. Obviously there's a huge difference between the two with that large LCD(so not all energy leaving the system will be heat energy), but still, doesn't all this energy it's burning through have to go somewhere? I doubt Sony has created a hand-held laptop in terms of heat, but after an extended play session, are we going to have to worry about the PSP being warm to the touch(i.e. will it be warm enough to discourage long play sessions)?
As someone interested in buying a unit later on, this has me seriously concerned that the PSP is going to be the first mass-market portable game device where heat is a concern.
Actually, Katmai wasn't a process shrink, it was just the addition of SSE and the SECC-2 cartridge format. It was still at 250nm, just like the last P2 core that preceded it(Deschutes). Coppermine included a process shrink down to 180nm though.
We could have been a good deal more feisty legally, but we're still in court over something that happened five years ago and I think we were hesitant to open up another front when the first one was already as much as we could afford.
Does anyone know what Tycho is talking about? I'm familiar with the SS incident of course, but I'm not aware of them being in court with anyone else.
Just because "the future" isn't happening in N. America yet, doesn't mean that it isn't happening elsewhere. N. America is constrained by its last mile problem, but Asian nations like S. Korea and Japan don't suffer this, which is why they already have multi-megabit fiber drops to homes and businesses. Sure, we on our miniscule ADSL and Cable hookups may not see the need for such massive bandwidth since we can't use it, but when you have a 1000 unit apartment complex with 100Mb fiber drops, this kind of intense technology is necessary.
The use for it exists, it just hasn't reached us yet.
After reading that press release, and correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not sure what's really "new" about the Cell other than On-chip hardware in support of security system for intellectual property protection. There are other Power designs already that do multicore, do high performance, and do vector ops(Altivect), so the only thing that I haven't heard about a design for is their security system.
Considering the companies involved, and the devices that they want to put the chip in, I'm really tempted to say that the Cell is nothing more than the biggest effort we've ever seen to get a DRM (trusted computing) CPU and associated parts on to the market. Obviously, this scares the bejesus out of me, since it would mean that these Cell devices would effectively be mod-proof; systems like Xbox Live already keep cheaters away, so this seems to be an attempt to stop modding alltogether. So, I have to ask: how is this going to benefit me, the consumer? If Live already gets rid of possible cheaters, how does stopping me from modding my box altogether help me?
If these assumptions are right, I don't like where this is going.
You're correct of course that they're a manufacturer, but there seems to be at least some distinction between their retail efforts, and their review efforts. For as many reviews from them as I have read (a dozen or so), the numbers and data they generate are in-line with other reviews of the same product, so I don't believe there's any foul play going on.
I think the OP was referring to Creative's other efforts in the sound market as much as they were referring to the Zen music players. Creative's legacy in the sound card market is suing Aureal under BS terms to drive them bankrupt, then selling the same sound card again and again(we're up to the 4th year that the Audigy has been their high-end card line). They even bought the assets of Aureal and Sensaura in order to keep other companies from easily coming in to the market with competitive products, which is made more difficult by the number of patents they own due to those acquisitions.
It's not like Creative to compete based on features - they're far more interested in getting a big enough piece of the market that they can slow down progress to a point where they can maximize profits on whatever the current generation is.
He's right, MGA's fighting component is a card game. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it's not going to be the kind of MG game Americans are used to.
Are you people suggesting waiting for next generation PCI-express to invest your money again?! I know PCIe is relatively new, and I waited long enough before AGP 4x was the motherboard standard. Is it safe to say that in another year... many motherboards will have multiple PCIe slots for SLI if needed? AGP IMHO exploded onto the scene over the original PCI. Even with all my research, I am having a hard time seeing the growth of PCIe right now.
No, the "next generation PCI-express" is a long way off - PCIe is supposed to last as long as PCI did(the currently overpowered 16x slot is proof of that, it's going to be a long time until everything needs that kind of bandwidth). The only thing that's going to change in the near future is that boards are going to be built with more than 20 PCIe lanes, which allows them to have more/faster PCIe slots, but all of this is going to be backward/forward compatible since the actual slot won't change. As for "many motherboards" having SLI capabilities, that will be limited to high-end gamer's(and possibly some workstation) boards, as there's no demand or need for such functionality in most boards.
As for the growth of PCIe, it's here and it's going to stay - the only reason people avoid it right now is because the OEMs(i.e. Dell) are sucking up all the PCIe video cards - once that changes in 2005, there's going to be no good reason to get an AGP system + card over a PCIe system + card, and in fact you'll want the latter.
The parent is spot-on. Current AGP 8x bandwidth is 8x(266*8, 2128MB/sec), but the performance difference between 4x(266*4, 1064MB/sec) and 8x is negligable(around a percent, within experimental error). Considering that x1 PCIe is 250MB/sec, PCIe and AGP are effectively running at the same speed given the same multiplier. If you take in to consideration that we just said that we aren't making use of anything past AGP 4x yet, it's a logical assumption that PCIe x4 should also be enough, and that x8 would be enough for the next generation of cards that would somehow need the doubled bandwidth.
But getting back to the point, the current PCIe graphics standard is x16, which at 4GB/sec(and this is each way, BTW - PCIe is full duplex, AGP is half) is far more than we need. The current solution of dividing up the 16 lanes from that single slot in to 2 groups of 8 lanes for 2 PCIe x8 slots(though using an x16 connector for power issues) still results in each card recieving more bandwidth than it can effectively use. With a single x16 slot, PCIe is future-proof enough that bandwidth won't be an issue for some long period of time, and than the x8 SLI solution won't be bandwidth limited for some shorter, but still long enough period of time that it's not going to be a realistic issue until at least the 3rd or 4th generation PCIe motherboard chipsets are released, at which point they can be built with more lanes.
Although this has been posted elsewhere in the comments for this story, it needs to be posted again.
The retail version of Half Life 2 is effectively a copy of the Steam cache of HL2 on discs. In order to play the game, you have to log in to the Steam authentication servers and activate it. This is being forced, as the game did not ship with the module containing the actual executable code(likely dubbed "half-life 2 client.gcf"), so the Steam authentication will allow buyers to acquire the last piece they need to play the game. Since the game didn't ship with this code however, no one can possibly crack the game ahead of time - the best they can do is work around the auth module and wait until the executable is released on November 16th.
The first people to play the game will be those who buy it, people waiting on the "free" version will likely be waiting at least a day for it to be cracked.
Of course I realize that it's licensed, and to that extent I don't mind the current hoops we have to jump through, such as copy protection and cd-keys(though I don't really like the former), but it's like this is the straw that broke the camel's back. I used to be able to exercise some control when I played my games offline, but with this I feel like I've given too much - I don't want to have to get Valve's permission to do something that couldn't possibly affect anyone besides me(playing the game offline). At this point, I'm starting to doubt that I'm going to buy the game because of this.
I'm sort of torn on the whole issue. On the one hand, The Inq is spot-on that it's cool that Valve has found a way to make sure that everyone can be the first guy to play the game, and that it's not leaked ahead of time, but on the flip side, I'm not comfortable with this level of control. Who is Valve to say that I, a customer who shelled out $55+ for their game, can not play it until they say so, even though they already have my money and I have their software? When I put down that kind of money for a AAA title, I don't think it's unreasonable that I should be able to play it offline how I want, when I want, considering I've done nothing wrong unless buying a game is wrong.
Yea, Valve now has the ability to make sure everyone gets it together, but at what cost? Must I now always be a slave to them just to play an offline game that could run perfectly fine without their meddling? I'm not at all the least bit comfortable with where this is going - I should have more control over my computer and my games than this.
Except that the Xbox GPU can't do floating point. It's a DX8(Pixel Shader 1.x) class GPU, so it's limited to short pixel shaders in the 32bit(RGBA) integer space. Future consoles will no doubt be able to make use of the GPU like you anticipate, but the GPUs in current consoles predate the modern technology needed.
That's just a repack: it has Alliance, and the Collector's Editions(i.e. the versions upgraded to use the Xwing vs. Tie Fighter engine) of X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and their expansions.
It's a shame that if they're not going to push out another game though, that they don't just OSS the whole shebang like Volition did with Freespace. You'd be damned surprised what can happen when the engine can be modified, and a blind-eye is turned towards letting modders release updated versions of cannon craft.
Zelda.com definitely has an interesting history. It was at one point an amateur site(mid-90's), but then went big and commercialized soon after that(changed owners, I think), touting a huge 10Mb Internet link. It then changed formats some more, last belonging to "Erotic Box Office" before Nintendo got control of it(I'm not sure how). The biggest problem with the site is that unlike modern standards where potentially offensive material is not on the front page for any serious adult web site, everything up to 1999 had not-work-safe material on the front page(NWS link, duh). I seriously don't know how Nintendo put up with it for so long; it's a company's worst nightmare, and a very good example for pro-regulation arguments for the Internet.
Slashdot Mirror
What surprises me the most about all of this, is that no one has bothered to make use of Sealand's co-location service. It undoubtedly costs an arm and a leg, but it's certainly not an easy target for a raid.
Oh yea, this will work real well. I mean, you can only host a tracker on a top of the line server in an American(or American friendly) high-bandwidth facility; it's not like it can be run on cheaper hardware in a non-copyright friendly nation like Russia, right?
Just to cover the stupid questions, you're using iTunes itself to browse the store, right?
I know you're trying to be humorous, but seriously, the original GameBoy had a great battery live. Wikipedia pegs the original at ~35 hours while all the handhelds after that have been significantly less(the GBA SP can get around 16, but only if the light is off). It's really unfortunate that handhelds like that really aren't possible these days.
That taken in to consideration, this is where I really start to get worried about heat. If we take the 4-6hour battery life at face value, we'll say that the PSP runs about half as long as the GBA SP. But when we also take in to consideration the battery differences, we're talking about the PSP effectively burning though power at (2x3=6) times the rate of the GBA SP. Obviously there's a huge difference between the two with that large LCD(so not all energy leaving the system will be heat energy), but still, doesn't all this energy it's burning through have to go somewhere? I doubt Sony has created a hand-held laptop in terms of heat, but after an extended play session, are we going to have to worry about the PSP being warm to the touch(i.e. will it be warm enough to discourage long play sessions)?
As someone interested in buying a unit later on, this has me seriously concerned that the PSP is going to be the first mass-market portable game device where heat is a concern.
Actually, Katmai wasn't a process shrink, it was just the addition of SSE and the SECC-2 cartridge format. It was still at 250nm, just like the last P2 core that preceded it(Deschutes). Coppermine included a process shrink down to 180nm though.
Does anyone know what Tycho is talking about? I'm familiar with the SS incident of course, but I'm not aware of them being in court with anyone else.
The use for it exists, it just hasn't reached us yet.
Considering the companies involved, and the devices that they want to put the chip in, I'm really tempted to say that the Cell is nothing more than the biggest effort we've ever seen to get a DRM (trusted computing) CPU and associated parts on to the market. Obviously, this scares the bejesus out of me, since it would mean that these Cell devices would effectively be mod-proof; systems like Xbox Live already keep cheaters away, so this seems to be an attempt to stop modding alltogether. So, I have to ask: how is this going to benefit me, the consumer? If Live already gets rid of possible cheaters, how does stopping me from modding my box altogether help me?
If these assumptions are right, I don't like where this is going.
Have you seen the prices on Itanium chips and chipsets? With the current prices, 3 billion dollars is only a dozen or so Itanium setups.;-)
You're correct of course that they're a manufacturer, but there seems to be at least some distinction between their retail efforts, and their review efforts. For as many reviews from them as I have read (a dozen or so), the numbers and data they generate are in-line with other reviews of the same product, so I don't believe there's any foul play going on.
I think the OP was referring to Creative's other efforts in the sound market as much as they were referring to the Zen music players. Creative's legacy in the sound card market is suing Aureal under BS terms to drive them bankrupt, then selling the same sound card again and again(we're up to the 4th year that the Audigy has been their high-end card line). They even bought the assets of Aureal and Sensaura in order to keep other companies from easily coming in to the market with competitive products, which is made more difficult by the number of patents they own due to those acquisitions.
It's not like Creative to compete based on features - they're far more interested in getting a big enough piece of the market that they can slow down progress to a point where they can maximize profits on whatever the current generation is.
He's right, MGA's fighting component is a card game. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it's not going to be the kind of MG game Americans are used to.
No, the "next generation PCI-express" is a long way off - PCIe is supposed to last as long as PCI did(the currently overpowered 16x slot is proof of that, it's going to be a long time until everything needs that kind of bandwidth). The only thing that's going to change in the near future is that boards are going to be built with more than 20 PCIe lanes, which allows them to have more/faster PCIe slots, but all of this is going to be backward/forward compatible since the actual slot won't change. As for "many motherboards" having SLI capabilities, that will be limited to high-end gamer's(and possibly some workstation) boards, as there's no demand or need for such functionality in most boards.
As for the growth of PCIe, it's here and it's going to stay - the only reason people avoid it right now is because the OEMs(i.e. Dell) are sucking up all the PCIe video cards - once that changes in 2005, there's going to be no good reason to get an AGP system + card over a PCIe system + card, and in fact you'll want the latter.
The parent is spot-on. Current AGP 8x bandwidth is 8x(266*8, 2128MB/sec), but the performance difference between 4x(266*4, 1064MB/sec) and 8x is negligable(around a percent, within experimental error). Considering that x1 PCIe is 250MB/sec, PCIe and AGP are effectively running at the same speed given the same multiplier. If you take in to consideration that we just said that we aren't making use of anything past AGP 4x yet, it's a logical assumption that PCIe x4 should also be enough, and that x8 would be enough for the next generation of cards that would somehow need the doubled bandwidth.
But getting back to the point, the current PCIe graphics standard is x16, which at 4GB/sec(and this is each way, BTW - PCIe is full duplex, AGP is half) is far more than we need. The current solution of dividing up the 16 lanes from that single slot in to 2 groups of 8 lanes for 2 PCIe x8 slots(though using an x16 connector for power issues) still results in each card recieving more bandwidth than it can effectively use. With a single x16 slot, PCIe is future-proof enough that bandwidth won't be an issue for some long period of time, and than the x8 SLI solution won't be bandwidth limited for some shorter, but still long enough period of time that it's not going to be a realistic issue until at least the 3rd or 4th generation PCIe motherboard chipsets are released, at which point they can be built with more lanes.
They're married - if they don't pick their wives, no one is going to that Desert Isle.
Although this has been posted elsewhere in the comments for this story, it needs to be posted again.
The retail version of Half Life 2 is effectively a copy of the Steam cache of HL2 on discs. In order to play the game, you have to log in to the Steam authentication servers and activate it. This is being forced, as the game did not ship with the module containing the actual executable code(likely dubbed "half-life 2 client.gcf"), so the Steam authentication will allow buyers to acquire the last piece they need to play the game. Since the game didn't ship with this code however, no one can possibly crack the game ahead of time - the best they can do is work around the auth module and wait until the executable is released on November 16th.
The first people to play the game will be those who buy it, people waiting on the "free" version will likely be waiting at least a day for it to be cracked.
Of course I realize that it's licensed, and to that extent I don't mind the current hoops we have to jump through, such as copy protection and cd-keys(though I don't really like the former), but it's like this is the straw that broke the camel's back. I used to be able to exercise some control when I played my games offline, but with this I feel like I've given too much - I don't want to have to get Valve's permission to do something that couldn't possibly affect anyone besides me(playing the game offline). At this point, I'm starting to doubt that I'm going to buy the game because of this.
Yea, Valve now has the ability to make sure everyone gets it together, but at what cost? Must I now always be a slave to them just to play an offline game that could run perfectly fine without their meddling? I'm not at all the least bit comfortable with where this is going - I should have more control over my computer and my games than this.
Let me guess: Interplay?
Except that the Xbox GPU can't do floating point. It's a DX8(Pixel Shader 1.x) class GPU, so it's limited to short pixel shaders in the 32bit(RGBA) integer space. Future consoles will no doubt be able to make use of the GPU like you anticipate, but the GPUs in current consoles predate the modern technology needed.
That's just a repack: it has Alliance, and the Collector's Editions(i.e. the versions upgraded to use the Xwing vs. Tie Fighter engine) of X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and their expansions. It's a shame that if they're not going to push out another game though, that they don't just OSS the whole shebang like Volition did with Freespace. You'd be damned surprised what can happen when the engine can be modified, and a blind-eye is turned towards letting modders release updated versions of cannon craft.
Zelda.com definitely has an interesting history. It was at one point an amateur site(mid-90's), but then went big and commercialized soon after that(changed owners, I think), touting a huge 10Mb Internet link. It then changed formats some more, last belonging to "Erotic Box Office" before Nintendo got control of it(I'm not sure how). The biggest problem with the site is that unlike modern standards where potentially offensive material is not on the front page for any serious adult web site, everything up to 1999 had not-work-safe material on the front page(NWS link, duh). I seriously don't know how Nintendo put up with it for so long; it's a company's worst nightmare, and a very good example for pro-regulation arguments for the Internet.
AnandTech's tour of Abit's Chinese facility.
Not very long. Today's stock movement:
HP: Down 0.42 to 17.94
Dell: Down 0.43 to 35.01
IBM: Down 0.71 to 87.39
Obviously stock price movement won't just be tied to this, but the markets sure don't seem to be happy either.