This is Slashdot; I know better than to ask why someone's installing KitchingApplianceLinux 0.3 on his toaster, or trying to get his car to boot off a Knoppix disc, but this, to me, seems asinine.
Paying the absurd premium for Apple hardware just to rip the already-beautiful OS off of it and install *nix?
It's like buying a souped-up $50,000 Cadillac and replacing the engine with something out of a Honda. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Hondas, but if that's the performance you want, why on earth would you spend the money on the Cadillac?
DRM is the future, you can't stop it. Your children in 20 years won't be able to buy plain old music CDs anymore because the RIAA won't release it unsecured like that. If they still sell physical media, they'll have changed the format over to something DRM'd.
Defeating DRM is also the future.
This is a war the RIAA and its ilk can't possibly hope to win. With the increasing saturation of high-tech devices, people are forced to adapt and becoming increasingly competant with technology.
By the time we hit the point where Joe User knows how to find DRM-defeating applications, what hope do the DRM purveyors possibly have?
The market for such chips is currently limited to tech enthusiasts (such as PC gamers) and those with specialized computational needs.
More the latter than the former.
While the Alienware-buying crowd may be in an uproar over dual core CPUs right now, most gamers seem to recognize that switching to a dual-core design at this point is spending far more money for far less performance (since multi-threaded games are almost non-existant).
No doubt, at some point in the future (I'm guessing at least a couple years), dual core CPUs will rule the day in gaming, too. But for now, they're strictly the domain of high-end workstations.
Uhm, no, that wasn't me, or I would've pointed out that I wasn't speaking strictly of new cars, rather than make the asinine argument that a 350z could be had brand new for $10,000 less than it typically goes for.
Also, what games in particular are multi-threaded? I can think of is UT2k4, and I'm not even positive it is.
AS STATED BEFORE, the PCI-e 6800GT is more expensive because it supports SLI.
You seem utterly sold on the idea that SLI is somehow more than a gimmicky technology for the wealthy and that it'll be any different this time around than it was in the Voodoo2 days.
The far more likely truth is that the PCIe 6800GT is more expensive because it can be. Initially I thought it was due to the card being natively AGP, and being made PCIe with the addition of a bridge chip, however, nVidia's price point on the PCIe 6600GT shows that they obviously have the capability to manufacture PCIe-native cards and still be price competetive.
So, neither makes sense; it's obviously not the bridge chip, and it's obviously got nothing to do with SLI (which, if you'll take notice, the 6600GT also supports, yet still manages to remain competetive in price).
As for Doom3 benchmarks, well... who cares? It's one game, using a technology exclusively perpetuated by a single company whose release schedule is something like one game every 3 years. Add to the fact that their games themselves are less games and more shallow tech demos, and... really, it's not all that relevant.
The 6800GT trumps the X800XL or any other X800 based card in another way, too: They're available for sale.
You sound like one of those Slashdotters that rails against Windows bluescreening despite the fact that it hasn't been a problem for years.
The X800XL is available just about anywhere; my local Best Buy and CompUSA even have them in stock, for $300.
Besides, who the hell buys a video card at a brick and mortar store, anyways? You can almost always find better prices online, at places like NewEgg and Monarch Computer (both of which have customer service that's way out of Best Buy and CompuSA's league, too).
Also, about SLI: How can I possibly not have a clue about gaming hardware? SLI boxes are the bleeding hyperexpensive edge of gaming hardware these days.
Yes, they're the bleeding edge, and a giant step backwards in terms of cost effectiveness. Once the newness of the technology wears off, and people stop using it as a buzzword and realize you can use a single 6800 Ultra or X850XT PE and run anything out there at high resolution with all the bells and whistles and still push well over 60FPS, it'll die off just like it did with the Voodoo2. Why spend a premium on a mainboard and slave yourself to some beastly power supply and cooling system just to accommodate a pair of cards whose only benefit over a single-card solution is higher benchmark scores?
And yes, a 40% performance gain is huge, but when are you using it? Up front, when the card's new/current? All that means is paying 200% of the price for 140% of the performance, when in many cases, 100% of the performance is already overkill.
And as an upgrade path, as was pointed out, it's just not viable. You're left a generation behind in features, and 40% performance boost isn't terribly significant in the face of the 100-200% performance gap you typically see between a generation of cards.
As for dual-core, well... perhaps you can explain how games, which are overwhelmingly single threaded, will run faster on one 2ghz core than they would on, say, a 3.8ghz single CPU. Surely background processes aren't eating up nearly 50% of your CPU time.
While I agree with your assessment that a lot of people simply don't have the knowledge or inclination to build their own PCs, paying Alienware to do it is like wanting a sports car and paying $40,000 for a riced-up Lancer when a stock Ion Red Line or 350z would blow it off the road for ~$20,000 less.
Alienware's premiums are absurd, their rigs too ugly for words, and their construction quality and support questionable at best. They're Dell "quality" with an even larger markup. Their adherence to flagrantly overpriced & uncompetetive technologies (i.e. Pentium 4s & [i]PCIe[/i] 6800GTs*) isn't doing anyone any good either.
I mean, [i]come on[/i] these idiots are going to offer a dual core [i]gaming system[/i]! In its present incarnation, dual core is to gaming what electric hybrid engines are to rally racing.
*Note I said [i]PCIe[/i]; the 6800GT is a great card, but the PCIe variant is nearly $100 more than the virtually identical X800XL.
Simply being profitable wasn't enough for them; they kept pushing for higher sales until, ultimately, the game gave up being a war sim and devolved into MMO Quake with some of the worst net code conceivable, and it's still not any more successful, yet they've alienated most of the original players that weren't there for verbal wanking over kill stats.
There are town areas, as you already know, then, right outside the town, there are staging areas for parties to get groups together. That's probably what you're thinking of. They're sort of gateways into the instanced areas, with nothing else really going on (accept having mercs to recruit), but these are usually in remote areas.
Guild Wars is not a MMO. People label it as such, constantly, but it has far, far more in common with Diablo 2.
Gameplay is done entirely in instanced zones. For anyone unfamiliar with that concept, it's essentially a private copy of a zone for each player (or group) - it's just like Diablo 2.
The only part of Guild Wars that even vaguely touches on being massive are the handful city zones. However, they serve only as a staging area for missions and a place for players to trade. Once players go out into the world, it's all instanced, again. Think of them more as graphical Battlenet chatrooms, and you'll get the idea.
...none of this is to say Guild Wars is a bad game. I enjoyed the beta and am considering purchasing a copy. The environments are absolutely amazing, the PvP system outstanding and quite remarkably balanced, the character advancement system is very well thought-out, classes are refreshingly diverse (there are only a handful of classes, per se, but the sheer variety of abilities each has and the limitation to actively using 8 at a time means two players that are both the same class can have wildly divergant functions), and the game's animations are exceptionally fluid and well-done (especially the monk dance emotes). But for crying out loud, GUILD WARS IS NOT A MMO!
Apparently, the article is already slashdotted, so you'll have to forgive me for following tradition and not R(ing)TFA, but I have to say, I'd love to get my hands on this.
I use iTunes quite a bit (yes, in conjunction with Jhymn so I can listen to the music I buy on the CDMP3 player in my car), and while I appreciate iTMS' decent selection of indie and less-known bands, I have to say that their suggestion system sucks.
I find most iMixes to be abhorrently bad, and iTMS' recommendations as to what other users bought are, quite frankly, nuts. I'll be looking at an indie rock/screamo band (like Sparta), and I'm getting recommendations to buy, and I'm not kidding, opera, elevator muzak, and some christian metal. What the hell?
Hopefully, Indie will work a bit better than that. Can't wait to try it out - I'm running out of suggestions on Gnoosic and Music Plasma.;)
There is absolutely no reason any gamer should even be considering a dual-core CPU. I can understand Dell selling these things in workstations, but Alienware? Don't they sell excessively overpriced gaming systems full of gimmicky garbage to woefully underinformed consumers?...on second thought, dual-core is a perfect fit for Alienware.;)
Seriously, though, some of these reviewers, especially the one linked the the article, need a good, swift kick to the groin. Games are almost universally single threaded these days. Spending $1000 or so on a dual-core P4EE is going to lead to drastically worse performance in gaming than a run-of-the-mill, say, 3.2ghz P4....not like any self-respecting gamers are buying Intel these days, anyways.;)
Anyways, good post - dual-core can have some solid benefits on the workstation end of things, but as far as gaming goes, they should be avoided. I mean, if you're a gamer and you need to go for a gimmick, get SLI. At least you get a benefit to spending all that money, then.
I last played about 6 months ago, and it's nothing but zerging. Especially since the introduction of stat tracking. People are so overwhelmingly concerned with their kill count that all you saw were Reavers rocket-spamming infantry, and infantry using HA/RExoshield setups.
Stat tracking destroyed any semblance of tactics left in that game. I mean, sure, theoretically a semi-organized zerg would win against a disorganized zerg, but honestly, have you ever seen that? No one listens to the commanders, and considering command experience is a derrivative of your kill count, it's no wonder. The "commanders" aren't leaders of knowledgeable, they've just been the squad leader when a few bases got capped....besides, who the hell wants to run support these days, like driving an AMS, when everyone and his bloody dog has an orbital strike and stealthers practically outnumber regular infantry. The average lifespan of an AMS on the battlefield these days is measured in seconds.
I'm just pretty bummed by Planetside. It could've been a brilliant niche game. Instead, it tried to turn into MMO Quake. The last vestiages of tactical consideration in Planetside are just paying lip service to what the game should've been.
Compared with Planet Side, there are some common features such as MMO, PW, and FPS. However, the biggest difference is the level of action. Planet Side is an enjoyable game, but it is a strategy-focused FPS game rather than an action-focused FPS game.
I have to ask the submitter - have you ever played Planetside? This comment leads me to believe you have not.
I've actually found the exact opposite to be true.
Anecdotal as it may be, the PSP is sold out everywhere around here. Within about a half hour drive of my apartment, there's 3 EBgames, 2 Gamestops, an EBX, 2 Targets, 2 Best Buys, and 2 Circuit Cities. Not a single one of them still has a PSP in stock.
Conversely, while I certainly won't argue that the DS had a better launch (I think that can largely be attributed to Sony's complete lack of advertising, and the price point), I've watched the price for a DS trade-in at the local EBgames go from $100 to $80 to $70, and now $50. When I asked why, the store manager told me that they've had so many DS units traded in that they don't have a means to stock them all at the store. He added that virtually everybody has the same complaint: the game lineup for the DS sucks. I'm inclined to agree.
...which is sort of what catches me off-guard about your comment that the DS lineup wasn't any better. Honestly, I think the DS had the most stunningly, abysmally bad launch line-up of any gaming system, ever (save the N64). It was nothing but a handful of low-grade puzzle games, a 3rd-rate driving game, the usual EA sports garbage, and a Mario64 clone with infuriatingly inadequate controls. It hasn't improved much since; I mean, if I want simplisitic puzzle games, I've got Tetris, Columns, Bejewled, and a host of other similar games on my cell phone, and it doesn't involve hauling around an extra brick of a gaming system, either. Sadly, the array of games on the DS haven't improved in the nearly 6 months since launch, either.
As others have pointed out, the homogenization of FM radio in most markets has ruined it for many of us.
Take the metro Detroit market, for instance: we have one independant rock station that used to kick ass, and now comes across as MTV minus the rap (88.7). We have at least 2 rap/hip-hop stations (97.9, 105.9) more of this "urban contemporary" bullshit than anyone could possibly have a use for (92.3, 93.1, 93.9, 95.5, 102.7) one oldies station (104.3), and a couple soccer-mom-on-prozac type stations that play elevator muzak around the clock (100.3, 105.1). Oh, and then there's the all-day-long Creed-Michelle Branch-Sara McLaughlin (and inexplicably, "Roxanne" by the Police) station (96.3).
Sure, we occaisionally have some decent programs; 96.3 runs one called Big Sonic Heaven at like 2am Monday morning, and 88.7 has a Canadian Imports show, and the Homeboy Show (local music), but they're on when most of us are sleeping, too. During the day, though? It's the same, incessant, uniformly-bad garbage you hear everywhere else.
Detroit used to have some really badass indie radio stations. They've all tanked or become indistinguishable from the Clear Channel & Infnity stations. Now, the entire market is nothing but various takes on top 40, talk radio, and jazz that all play 25 minutes of commercials each hour.
So when I have the option of buying a device that has an FM tuner, or getting one without it that's a bit smaller or saves me a few bucks, guess which I'll go for. You'll find a lot of people share the sentinment.
And I can assume you comment "are people really that cloistered and stuffy?" is intended as irony, because it's FM radio that's playing the same 20 songs all day long. People who don't want to listen to that crap are cloistered and stuffy? That's like going to an indipendant film festival and telling people they're lacking culture because they aren't watching Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.
The permeation of flash-based advertising, unnecessarily-bloated UI design, and lack of consideration towards lower-resolution displays have put a damper on mobile web access.
I know it's at the point where I've recently canceled my unlimited data access on my Sony Ericsson S710a. Why? There just isn't anything to do with it....and that may be my one gripe with this article. It seems to be blaming web designers for the lack of functionality on mobile web access. While I think that may, in part, be true, that most mobile devices have low-resolution displays, very little processing power, and less-than-efficient interfaces, operating on overpriced, under-performing data networks is a much larger barrier for the use of mobile web access than just web design.
Mobile web, right now, is basically about IM, sports scores, news, and very limited email and document handling, and that is the fault of the devices themselves, not web designers.
As I understand it, Google's POP access is a very buggy feature.
I've never tried it with a PC email client, but having tried to get it to work on several mobile devices, including a Sony Ericsson S710a, Motorola Razr V3, and and Palm Treo 650, I can say that it doesn't work at all for them.
Apparently, this is a well-known and widespread problem with Gmail as well. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be a need for sites like gmailwireless or Sourceforge projects like gmail-mobile.
Don't get me wrong, I love Gmail so much I've abandoned all my other email accounts, but the POP access definitely needs some work.
Seriously, a lot of phones in Japan have the capability to work in the US with Cingular and T-Mobile (not so much Spring, Nextel, or Verizon).
Seriously - get these phones unlocked, and eBay them to Americans.
I just spent $500 on a brand new Sony Ericsson S710a that isn't even available in this part of the country yet. It's got all sorts of cool features, including a 1.3 MP camera (pretty damned nice, for a phone). But I still can't help but to feel like an ass for spending the money knowing that, for instance, Samsung has a phone of nearly identical size out in South Korea with a 3MP camera and significantly more memory.
Second-hand phones in the Asian market are still better than cutting edge in the US. Given that most high-end phones can work with the majority of service providers in the world, I'm amazed there isn't a sort of cottage industry around, selling second-hand phones to the US market for discount prices.
Believe me - take a look at sites like Howard Forums - there are a lot of cell phone/gadget enthusiasts out there that would be plenty happy to not have to buy the overpriced, under-performing phones marketed in the US.
Napster started to catch on in late '99, which was right after I had moved away to school. I was living in the dorms, and had access to a fast connection.
When I went into college, all I listened to was metal (Corrosion of Conformity, Prong, Pantera, White Zombie) and the sort of crap you heard on the radio all the time.
These days, based largely on P2P access (and more recently, iTunes), not only do I buy more music, but I listen to a lot of lesser-known bands. My tastes range everywhere from Ryoskopp, Jem, and Styrofoam to Steel Train and Guster to My Chemical Romance, Unwritten Law, and Senses Fail to Down to Earth Approach, Number One Fan, and Sense Field.
That's what was always my big draw to P2P - not so much the free music, but the way to be exposed to new indie music I enjoyed without spending hours listening to hours of trendwhore, hipster, it's-cool-because-it's-obscure bullshit like most indie radio stations play.
I don't use P2P apps much these days, but it really, really transformed my musical tastes.
You based your video card purchase on an OpenGL benchmark... there's a great idea.:\
Re:FUD Biased Article with Inaccuracies
on
SLI Primer
·
· Score: 1
You are turning this into an ATI v NVIDIA issue.
Since when? The fastest single cards on the market are ATi. It's not bias, it's a fact. Taking multiple, slower, less efficient cards that run in SLI to compete with it is just sloppy.
So, Team Ninja Criticizes the Tekken guys for trying to make a better fighting game?
How could the Tekken devs possibly retort? Point out that DoA's boob jiggling physics aren't realistic enough? I mean, this would be like the Myst devs bitching about Doom 3 for not having enough shooting.
Team Ninja needs to stop beating (heheh) around the bush (heheh) and just start making porn games, because a desire for a solid fighting game is the last thing on someone's mind when he buys a DoA game.
Re:Asinine
on
SLI Primer
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Did you even bother to look at the benchmarks I linked?
Your 19" LCD is native to 1280x1024, which is a fairly low resolution. By adding a second 6800 GT, even with AA and AF cranked up, you can't hope to get anything near double the performance. If you get even an extra 15% to your framerate, I'd be amazed.
And again, dual core CPUs won't be coming anywhere near doubling your performance. They're essentially SMP on a single chip. They'll help with compiling, yes, but gaming? It amounts to a lot of nothing.
And for the record, the "slowest" 939 A64 is the 3000+, which you can actually pick up in Winchester core, too. Apparently, you didn't do much research into building this rig of yours.
Re:Superior...
on
SLI Primer
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
CompUSA is using the MSRP; you can pick up the ATi-manufactured one there for $300.
Point being, the 6600 GT is the most credible instance of an SLI implimentation. The cost/performance of a pair of 6800 GTs or 6800 Ultras compared to a single X850XT PE is just laughably bad.
Slashdot Mirror
This is Slashdot; I know better than to ask why someone's installing KitchingApplianceLinux 0.3 on his toaster, or trying to get his car to boot off a Knoppix disc, but this, to me, seems asinine.
Paying the absurd premium for Apple hardware just to rip the already-beautiful OS off of it and install *nix?
It's like buying a souped-up $50,000 Cadillac and replacing the engine with something out of a Honda. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Hondas, but if that's the performance you want, why on earth would you spend the money on the Cadillac?
Defeating DRM is also the future.
This is a war the RIAA and its ilk can't possibly hope to win. With the increasing saturation of high-tech devices, people are forced to adapt and becoming increasingly competant with technology.
By the time we hit the point where Joe User knows how to find DRM-defeating applications, what hope do the DRM purveyors possibly have?
More the latter than the former.
While the Alienware-buying crowd may be in an uproar over dual core CPUs right now, most gamers seem to recognize that switching to a dual-core design at this point is spending far more money for far less performance (since multi-threaded games are almost non-existant).
No doubt, at some point in the future (I'm guessing at least a couple years), dual core CPUs will rule the day in gaming, too. But for now, they're strictly the domain of high-end workstations.
Also, what games in particular are multi-threaded? I can think of is UT2k4, and I'm not even positive it is.
You seem utterly sold on the idea that SLI is somehow more than a gimmicky technology for the wealthy and that it'll be any different this time around than it was in the Voodoo2 days.
The far more likely truth is that the PCIe 6800GT is more expensive because it can be. Initially I thought it was due to the card being natively AGP, and being made PCIe with the addition of a bridge chip, however, nVidia's price point on the PCIe 6600GT shows that they obviously have the capability to manufacture PCIe-native cards and still be price competetive.
So, neither makes sense; it's obviously not the bridge chip, and it's obviously got nothing to do with SLI (which, if you'll take notice, the 6600GT also supports, yet still manages to remain competetive in price).
As for Doom3 benchmarks, well... who cares? It's one game, using a technology exclusively perpetuated by a single company whose release schedule is something like one game every 3 years. Add to the fact that their games themselves are less games and more shallow tech demos, and... really, it's not all that relevant.
You sound like one of those Slashdotters that rails against Windows bluescreening despite the fact that it hasn't been a problem for years.
The X800XL is available just about anywhere; my local Best Buy and CompUSA even have them in stock, for $300.
Besides, who the hell buys a video card at a brick and mortar store, anyways? You can almost always find better prices online, at places like NewEgg and Monarch Computer (both of which have customer service that's way out of Best Buy and CompuSA's league, too).
Yes, they're the bleeding edge, and a giant step backwards in terms of cost effectiveness. Once the newness of the technology wears off, and people stop using it as a buzzword and realize you can use a single 6800 Ultra or X850XT PE and run anything out there at high resolution with all the bells and whistles and still push well over 60FPS, it'll die off just like it did with the Voodoo2. Why spend a premium on a mainboard and slave yourself to some beastly power supply and cooling system just to accommodate a pair of cards whose only benefit over a single-card solution is higher benchmark scores?
And yes, a 40% performance gain is huge, but when are you using it? Up front, when the card's new/current? All that means is paying 200% of the price for 140% of the performance, when in many cases, 100% of the performance is already overkill.
And as an upgrade path, as was pointed out, it's just not viable. You're left a generation behind in features, and 40% performance boost isn't terribly significant in the face of the 100-200% performance gap you typically see between a generation of cards.
As for dual-core, well... perhaps you can explain how games, which are overwhelmingly single threaded, will run faster on one 2ghz core than they would on, say, a 3.8ghz single CPU. Surely background processes aren't eating up nearly 50% of your CPU time.
While I agree with your assessment that a lot of people simply don't have the knowledge or inclination to build their own PCs, paying Alienware to do it is like wanting a sports car and paying $40,000 for a riced-up Lancer when a stock Ion Red Line or 350z would blow it off the road for ~$20,000 less.
Alienware's premiums are absurd, their rigs too ugly for words, and their construction quality and support questionable at best. They're Dell "quality" with an even larger markup. Their adherence to flagrantly overpriced & uncompetetive technologies (i.e. Pentium 4s & [i]PCIe[/i] 6800GTs*) isn't doing anyone any good either.
I mean, [i]come on[/i] these idiots are going to offer a dual core [i]gaming system[/i]! In its present incarnation, dual core is to gaming what electric hybrid engines are to rally racing.
*Note I said [i]PCIe[/i]; the 6800GT is a great card, but the PCIe variant is nearly $100 more than the virtually identical X800XL.
Let's hope Sony learned well from Planetside.
Simply being profitable wasn't enough for them; they kept pushing for higher sales until, ultimately, the game gave up being a war sim and devolved into MMO Quake with some of the worst net code conceivable, and it's still not any more successful, yet they've alienated most of the original players that weren't there for verbal wanking over kill stats.
There are town areas, as you already know, then, right outside the town, there are staging areas for parties to get groups together. That's probably what you're thinking of. They're sort of gateways into the instanced areas, with nothing else really going on (accept having mercs to recruit), but these are usually in remote areas.
Guild Wars is not a MMO. People label it as such, constantly, but it has far, far more in common with Diablo 2.
Gameplay is done entirely in instanced zones. For anyone unfamiliar with that concept, it's essentially a private copy of a zone for each player (or group) - it's just like Diablo 2.
The only part of Guild Wars that even vaguely touches on being massive are the handful city zones. However, they serve only as a staging area for missions and a place for players to trade. Once players go out into the world, it's all instanced, again. Think of them more as graphical Battlenet chatrooms, and you'll get the idea.
Apparently, the article is already slashdotted, so you'll have to forgive me for following tradition and not R(ing)TFA, but I have to say, I'd love to get my hands on this.
;)
I use iTunes quite a bit (yes, in conjunction with Jhymn so I can listen to the music I buy on the CDMP3 player in my car), and while I appreciate iTMS' decent selection of indie and less-known bands, I have to say that their suggestion system sucks.
I find most iMixes to be abhorrently bad, and iTMS' recommendations as to what other users bought are, quite frankly, nuts. I'll be looking at an indie rock/screamo band (like Sparta), and I'm getting recommendations to buy, and I'm not kidding, opera, elevator muzak, and some christian metal. What the hell?
Hopefully, Indie will work a bit better than that. Can't wait to try it out - I'm running out of suggestions on Gnoosic and Music Plasma.
If I had points, I'd mod you up.
...on second thought, dual-core is a perfect fit for Alienware. ;)
...not like any self-respecting gamers are buying Intel these days, anyways. ;)
There is absolutely no reason any gamer should even be considering a dual-core CPU. I can understand Dell selling these things in workstations, but Alienware? Don't they sell excessively overpriced gaming systems full of gimmicky garbage to woefully underinformed consumers?
Seriously, though, some of these reviewers, especially the one linked the the article, need a good, swift kick to the groin. Games are almost universally single threaded these days. Spending $1000 or so on a dual-core P4EE is going to lead to drastically worse performance in gaming than a run-of-the-mill, say, 3.2ghz P4.
Anyways, good post - dual-core can have some solid benefits on the workstation end of things, but as far as gaming goes, they should be avoided. I mean, if you're a gamer and you need to go for a gimmick, get SLI. At least you get a benefit to spending all that money, then.
I last played about 6 months ago, and it's nothing but zerging. Especially since the introduction of stat tracking. People are so overwhelmingly concerned with their kill count that all you saw were Reavers rocket-spamming infantry, and infantry using HA/RExoshield setups.
...besides, who the hell wants to run support these days, like driving an AMS, when everyone and his bloody dog has an orbital strike and stealthers practically outnumber regular infantry. The average lifespan of an AMS on the battlefield these days is measured in seconds.
Stat tracking destroyed any semblance of tactics left in that game. I mean, sure, theoretically a semi-organized zerg would win against a disorganized zerg, but honestly, have you ever seen that? No one listens to the commanders, and considering command experience is a derrivative of your kill count, it's no wonder. The "commanders" aren't leaders of knowledgeable, they've just been the squad leader when a few bases got capped.
I'm just pretty bummed by Planetside. It could've been a brilliant niche game. Instead, it tried to turn into MMO Quake. The last vestiages of tactical consideration in Planetside are just paying lip service to what the game should've been.
I have to ask the submitter - have you ever played Planetside? This comment leads me to believe you have not.
I've actually found the exact opposite to be true.
...which is sort of what catches me off-guard about your comment that the DS lineup wasn't any better. Honestly, I think the DS had the most stunningly, abysmally bad launch line-up of any gaming system, ever (save the N64). It was nothing but a handful of low-grade puzzle games, a 3rd-rate driving game, the usual EA sports garbage, and a Mario64 clone with infuriatingly inadequate controls. It hasn't improved much since; I mean, if I want simplisitic puzzle games, I've got Tetris, Columns, Bejewled, and a host of other similar games on my cell phone, and it doesn't involve hauling around an extra brick of a gaming system, either. Sadly, the array of games on the DS haven't improved in the nearly 6 months since launch, either.
Anecdotal as it may be, the PSP is sold out everywhere around here. Within about a half hour drive of my apartment, there's 3 EBgames, 2 Gamestops, an EBX, 2 Targets, 2 Best Buys, and 2 Circuit Cities. Not a single one of them still has a PSP in stock.
Conversely, while I certainly won't argue that the DS had a better launch (I think that can largely be attributed to Sony's complete lack of advertising, and the price point), I've watched the price for a DS trade-in at the local EBgames go from $100 to $80 to $70, and now $50. When I asked why, the store manager told me that they've had so many DS units traded in that they don't have a means to stock them all at the store. He added that virtually everybody has the same complaint: the game lineup for the DS sucks. I'm inclined to agree.
As others have pointed out, the homogenization of FM radio in most markets has ruined it for many of us.
Take the metro Detroit market, for instance: we have one independant rock station that used to kick ass, and now comes across as MTV minus the rap (88.7). We have at least 2 rap/hip-hop stations (97.9, 105.9) more of this "urban contemporary" bullshit than anyone could possibly have a use for (92.3, 93.1, 93.9, 95.5, 102.7) one oldies station (104.3), and a couple soccer-mom-on-prozac type stations that play elevator muzak around the clock (100.3, 105.1). Oh, and then there's the all-day-long Creed-Michelle Branch-Sara McLaughlin (and inexplicably, "Roxanne" by the Police) station (96.3).
Sure, we occaisionally have some decent programs; 96.3 runs one called Big Sonic Heaven at like 2am Monday morning, and 88.7 has a Canadian Imports show, and the Homeboy Show (local music), but they're on when most of us are sleeping, too. During the day, though? It's the same, incessant, uniformly-bad garbage you hear everywhere else.
Detroit used to have some really badass indie radio stations. They've all tanked or become indistinguishable from the Clear Channel & Infnity stations. Now, the entire market is nothing but various takes on top 40, talk radio, and jazz that all play 25 minutes of commercials each hour.
So when I have the option of buying a device that has an FM tuner, or getting one without it that's a bit smaller or saves me a few bucks, guess which I'll go for. You'll find a lot of people share the sentinment.
And I can assume you comment "are people really that cloistered and stuffy?" is intended as irony, because it's FM radio that's playing the same 20 songs all day long. People who don't want to listen to that crap are cloistered and stuffy? That's like going to an indipendant film festival and telling people they're lacking culture because they aren't watching Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.
It's not about bandwidth, it's about usability.
...and that may be my one gripe with this article. It seems to be blaming web designers for the lack of functionality on mobile web access. While I think that may, in part, be true, that most mobile devices have low-resolution displays, very little processing power, and less-than-efficient interfaces, operating on overpriced, under-performing data networks is a much larger barrier for the use of mobile web access than just web design.
The permeation of flash-based advertising, unnecessarily-bloated UI design, and lack of consideration towards lower-resolution displays have put a damper on mobile web access.
I know it's at the point where I've recently canceled my unlimited data access on my Sony Ericsson S710a. Why? There just isn't anything to do with it.
Mobile web, right now, is basically about IM, sports scores, news, and very limited email and document handling, and that is the fault of the devices themselves, not web designers.
As I understand it, Google's POP access is a very buggy feature.
I've never tried it with a PC email client, but having tried to get it to work on several mobile devices, including a Sony Ericsson S710a, Motorola Razr V3, and and Palm Treo 650, I can say that it doesn't work at all for them.
Apparently, this is a well-known and widespread problem with Gmail as well. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be a need for sites like gmailwireless or Sourceforge projects like gmail-mobile.
Don't get me wrong, I love Gmail so much I've abandoned all my other email accounts, but the POP access definitely needs some work.
I'd have to agree. I don't see magic lassos and invisble planes winning over any fans these days.
There are cool comic properties today. Why do the studios insit on dredging up chracters that haven't been popular in 15, 20, 25 years?
I mean, come on, Daredevil? Cat Woman? The Fantastic Four? Wonder Woman? What's next, Captain America & Bucky?
Seriously, a lot of phones in Japan have the capability to work in the US with Cingular and T-Mobile (not so much Spring, Nextel, or Verizon).
Seriously - get these phones unlocked, and eBay them to Americans.
I just spent $500 on a brand new Sony Ericsson S710a that isn't even available in this part of the country yet. It's got all sorts of cool features, including a 1.3 MP camera (pretty damned nice, for a phone). But I still can't help but to feel like an ass for spending the money knowing that, for instance, Samsung has a phone of nearly identical size out in South Korea with a 3MP camera and significantly more memory.
Second-hand phones in the Asian market are still better than cutting edge in the US. Given that most high-end phones can work with the majority of service providers in the world, I'm amazed there isn't a sort of cottage industry around, selling second-hand phones to the US market for discount prices.
Believe me - take a look at sites like Howard Forums - there are a lot of cell phone/gadget enthusiasts out there that would be plenty happy to not have to buy the overpriced, under-performing phones marketed in the US.
Napster started to catch on in late '99, which was right after I had moved away to school. I was living in the dorms, and had access to a fast connection.
When I went into college, all I listened to was metal (Corrosion of Conformity, Prong, Pantera, White Zombie) and the sort of crap you heard on the radio all the time.
These days, based largely on P2P access (and more recently, iTunes), not only do I buy more music, but I listen to a lot of lesser-known bands. My tastes range everywhere from Ryoskopp, Jem, and Styrofoam to Steel Train and Guster to My Chemical Romance, Unwritten Law, and Senses Fail to Down to Earth Approach, Number One Fan, and Sense Field.
That's what was always my big draw to P2P - not so much the free music, but the way to be exposed to new indie music I enjoyed without spending hours listening to hours of trendwhore, hipster, it's-cool-because-it's-obscure bullshit like most indie radio stations play.
I don't use P2P apps much these days, but it really, really transformed my musical tastes.
You based your video card purchase on an OpenGL benchmark... there's a great idea. :\
Since when? The fastest single cards on the market are ATi. It's not bias, it's a fact. Taking multiple, slower, less efficient cards that run in SLI to compete with it is just sloppy.
My apologies, I gave the price of the X800XT PE.
In Doom 3. You know, the game that uses OpenGL? Name one other modern game that uses OpenGL.
Let's see a link to one, much less one that could be realistically fit into the total cost of $1600 for a new system.
So, Team Ninja Criticizes the Tekken guys for trying to make a better fighting game?
How could the Tekken devs possibly retort? Point out that DoA's boob jiggling physics aren't realistic enough? I mean, this would be like the Myst devs bitching about Doom 3 for not having enough shooting.
Team Ninja needs to stop beating (heheh) around the bush (heheh) and just start making porn games, because a desire for a solid fighting game is the last thing on someone's mind when he buys a DoA game.
Did you even bother to look at the benchmarks I linked?
Your 19" LCD is native to 1280x1024, which is a fairly low resolution. By adding a second 6800 GT, even with AA and AF cranked up, you can't hope to get anything near double the performance. If you get even an extra 15% to your framerate, I'd be amazed.
And again, dual core CPUs won't be coming anywhere near doubling your performance. They're essentially SMP on a single chip. They'll help with compiling, yes, but gaming? It amounts to a lot of nothing.
And for the record, the "slowest" 939 A64 is the 3000+, which you can actually pick up in Winchester core, too. Apparently, you didn't do much research into building this rig of yours.
CompUSA is using the MSRP; you can pick up the ATi-manufactured one there for $300.
Point being, the 6600 GT is the most credible instance of an SLI implimentation. The cost/performance of a pair of 6800 GTs or 6800 Ultras compared to a single X850XT PE is just laughably bad.