Yes, Creative has nice sound treatment, like EAX 3+, however, they keep them to themselves as a competitive argument and by doing so, they are slowing their market adoption.
Before them, you had also A3D2, which was actually coupled with the geometry environment to generate the sound (so, real 3D, but at the expanse of huge bandwidth).
Also, Onboard sound has probably improved more in the past 5 years than dedicated cards. Except for the cards in the ~$100 range, most onbard can cope. And Intel is pushing for even MUCH better onboard sounds, so it will keep pushing the creatives of the world into the high end.
That being said, the improvement in onboard sound (and as such average available sound on a PC) are equivalent to the ones in onboard video. They are still basic compared to the discrete ones, but we would have killed for those 5 years ago...
Contrary to video, where games require the top, sound can do with onboard. Not always a bad thing...
And games continue to push the enveloppe too, as Doom3 is supposed to have full Dolby Digital sound. Time will tell...
Better rendered or animated graphisms help a game to get better *UP TO A POINT*. At the time Prince of Persia (the first one) got released, you had ugly stiff characters The prince, by comparison, seemed so fluid in his movements... the game looked and felt great because of that. Game play was good too (commands) although not revolutionnary.
The new Prince of Persia (Sands of Time) renew with this formula. The 3D modeling and the fluidity of animation, coupled with a perfect control set makes a great action game. It looks good, play well and is well dosed, so that you can play it in 10-15 minutes sessions. Once again, not a revolution, but a well done game.
The problem with graphics, is that we are hitting a plateau. Nowadays, rendering improvements are only incrementals and do not bring much to a game anymore, so as said, emphasis needs to be put on gameplay.
We will see if Doom3 or HL2 can contradict this (great game thanks to superior graphisms?) or if they will come with a solid gameplay too (or just fall short of the great expectations and fail).
I dont know where you people all shop for your games, but i'm just back from my neighbouhng Fry's and all the EA 2004 sport lineup is already at $19.99. Most of the new PC releases are also around $35. Some games keep the premium and sell at $50, but most dont.
Moreover, prices fall sharply quite fast for those "premium" games. A few months and they are at $29 or $19.
On top of that, Fry's often special sales just on the release date of big games.
With all that, i dont think i've paid $50 for a game in a long time... And this is good, as this way, I buy more of them. ^_^
This answer is actually quite interesting. In it Ken Brown mix all the issues to light favorably his own agenda. The omissions and the bias of the author are probably even more interesting that what he writes.
- he values software only as a mean to make MONEY (and only money, no common good, progress or anything else). Of course, free software (a la GPL) runs against this when BSD-type licenses allow for commercial interest to take off from it.
- he speaks of trust but of course avoid to talk about the same subject for commercial software. Worse, he implies that commercial software (hence close sourced and unverifiable) is a better source of trust than open software.
- he mixes the GLP community with the hacker community.
- he sees confusion where there is none (Tanenbaum's account of early Linux Kernels)
- he seems to be of the idea that "from scratch" means leaving in a bubble and having benefited of no advancement done before.
Basically, if KB consider Linux like a cave man that should come out with the Linux kernel directly, sure, there is something wrong. Now, we know he had Minix (he is using the same file system and some other parts) and read some other UNIX specifications. How surprising is it after that?
If KB's big discovery is that Linus had the "help" of other people writing similar software and documenting them (even going so far as giving a class on it for Tanenbaum), then it is already beating on a dead horse. But i guess that for such a limited mind, cooperation is a new idea...
but then, if every business do like you, young people right out of college/education will never find a job...
It was a bit dis-heartening to look for job and see requirements of 3 or 5 years experience everywhere.
Moreover, some company need to train their workers anyway (given that some industruy are not taught in schools), so taking younger people allow then a carriers starting in your company. It is also sometime cheaper for a company to take inexperienced people and train them.
I'm going to prove you wrong and with a concrete game example. Here are 2 games that are using the *SAME* game engine. They are:
- Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
- Beyond good and evil
Those 2 ubisoft games are based on the same engine, however they are completly different both graphically (you can still see some common effects), in type, objectives, markets and playability. Both are great games.
This *could* be one of the effect of DNA, if it is done correctly. If they give you some solid and flexible engine/libraries, then the developpers can concentrate on the game.
would you really play UT2k4 on a 533MHz processor anyway? I did not think so...
However, if you think about the kind of games that come out on the GBA, this is a *VERY* capable console. Hell, 30%+ of the games on GBA are nothing more than ports of SNES games to the portable. I emulated SNES perfectly on whimpier computers than that.
To compete with the GBA games, that would be fine. Supermarkets are full of ~$10 games that are 3-5 years old and still as fun. Someone mentioned Monkey Island, you could talk about tetris, worms or other simple games that came originally on FLOPPIES!
The only problem so far is price (and it is a big one). But game possibilities and multimedia? This side seems covered...
another note, does anyone know the bandwidth of PC2100 DDR ram? or even PC2800 DDR ram? i'm wondering what the max bw is on DDR RAM vs the bw of the new PCI-express.
Is that a joke or a trick question? You're answering your own question here...
DDR2100 (or DDR266) has... 2100MBi/s of maximum theoritical bandwidth (64bits * 133MHz * 2 exchange/clock). If you use a dual channel chipset, you double it (2* 64bits bus).
Same for the rest of the memory. The name *IS* the maximum single channel theoritical bandwidth.
PCI-E is 1.25Gib/s per channel. So, a 16x PCI-E port (used for graphics) is 20Gib/s or 2500MiB/s.
You'll need at least DDR2700 memory (DDR333) to keep it fed. As the chipset including PCI-E will *start* with DDR3200 dual channel DDR1 and go up, that shouldn't be a problem in itself...
You have 2 kinds of users for "pirated" or illegal software:
- the savvy computer user: that guy always find a way to get the software/music/whatever. Either you just exchange those with your friends around and just through expanding "circles of friends" (can gather quite a few things this way) or now through the net, P2P, crackers and such. This user will probably go through and continue it.
- the average house user: get scared when the authority interest themselves to its little illegal dealings. Make it if it's easy, buy if not. Those are the people targetted by copy protection and those scare tactics.
Also, most people use "pirated" software as students (mostly because they are broke and the fast pipes make it easy to DL. Moreover, so many people together with loose morals make it easier to even find it just at a friend's place). Habits change when they have a job, can afford it and judge that it is worth their hard earned cash.
I think this is this "priority" and size of the operation that people are complaining about.
If those are really "crime networks", all the power to the cops for that bust. Yes, it is illegal to do this and they just applied the laws. Hell, it's probably a better time spent at cracking at groups like that or other *real* organize4d criome taking advantage of those to make money than going after P2P. In P2P, there is no money involved (except for the maker of the programs and not even always). Here, some are selling those stuffs...
But some Corporation's ability to make a buck off of me shouldn't be more important than my freedom to do whatever the heck I want to with my own property.
Actually, i dont think they would disagree with that. Their problem is more do whatever you want with an illegal copy of stolen property.
Most of the Blizzard games are seen at their bests only on Battle.net. Seriously, in the latest ones, Diablo2 was fun once in single, but countless of times in multi.
Same thing with war3, that has been transformed from a RTS game to a platform used to build new games (a map on Bnet lately is almost a game in itself). Without Bnet, those games would not be the success they are. And without Bnet, there is no incentive for the people to pay for it.
Sure, you can catch a CD key generator that will let you install the game, but it probably wont work on Bnet. This *IS* Blizzard's main weapon against piracy, the incentive for people to buy: a free service that verify that you are authorized to play.
And their problem with Bnetd was that it had either
- no key check
- a key check routine in the source code, distributed freely.
Yes, their usage of the DMCA is stupid, but they just try to defend their business model (give free service that verify your game copy is right).
HL2 has a lot of buzz going for it, however, more than the awesome graphics, this is especially the HL1 legacy that people are looking for:
- great story
- great levels
- good playability
- never boring
The games with wonderful graphics are 5 a dozen, what is lacking lately is gameplay and HL1 had lots of it.
For the recards, HL1 was one of the most delayed game. When they had an almost final product, the team met and reviewed it objectively, reaching the conclusion than their game was a "me too!" game on the quake engine. They refused to release it, studied it, found what was good and built on it. The rest is history.
Doom3 follows the same syndrome. For the first time since doom2, ID will release a GAME, not just a 3D engine. The emphasis is on the 1st player game, with music, ambiance an story. Built with a next gen 3D engine, this is highly anticipated.
Games are often late, but the reason behind it can be very different. When a Blizzard game was late, we all assumed they were testing and balancing it, so that the final product is FUN.
Delays hurt any industry, bad products hurt too...
The fact is that De Beers is playing the sentimental trump. They are doing all they can to separate the "natural" diamonds from the "articifial" ones. They spent millions over the year to make every wife in every occudental country dream about a clear stone on her finger. They very wisely chose their sloga nas "a diamond last foreever" and are turning it around by saying the for a proof of forever love, you should give a gem that took forever to mature.
Those people are very smart and very skilled at protecting their monopoly. Moreover, they are not over a bit of illegality and extortion if it can help them.
They will hammer into our heads that the only good diamand are the "real" ones. Will it work? Time will tell... Anyway, diamond semiconductor might be a better outlet for thos artificial diamonds anyway...
SCO is not going to sue anybody.
As usual, they are all talk and no act. They just want to scare the companies using Linux and force them to pay. I would be VERY surprised if any litigation came out of this grand annoncement. And even if it did, i'm sure the FSF and other association would gladly support the defendant through the process.
Until it can show code, SCO had nothing. Hence, they will toot their horn as loud as possible to scare people and force them to settle. It is called extortion. Moreover, it pumps their stock price up...
There is also a difference of scale in the sheer number of computers running the infected software. Outside of/., what is the percentage of people running anything else than windows on their desktop?
Moreover, what are the technical competencies of those people?
M$ tried to make the update process as painless as possible through their windows update website, but it seems to me that it is STILL a failure. 300k+ computers already infected? I cant believe this is ONLY NT4 machines with no auto updates...
To me, Bittorrent looks like a dedicated server of Edonkey. You share/download one file at a time on a given "tracker" (server). For people used to P2P, it looks like a scam or unefficient, but you forget the biggest sell point of bittorrent:
ease of use.
Any user can DL and install that program under windows and get it to work. Sure, they may close the window right after the download finished, but you still enjoyed their bandwidth during the transfer. It is a HUGE step from an http DL.
Bittorrent makes sense for a server point of view. Using it, you can cut your bandwidth cost, especially when it hurts the most: at release time. After that, if the number of DL is low anyway, it wont impact you much if your server is the only one sending.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, Creative has nice sound treatment, like EAX 3+, however, they keep them to themselves as a competitive argument and by doing so, they are slowing their market adoption.
Before them, you had also A3D2, which was actually coupled with the geometry environment to generate the sound (so, real 3D, but at the expanse of huge bandwidth).
Also, Onboard sound has probably improved more in the past 5 years than dedicated cards. Except for the cards in the ~$100 range, most onbard can cope. And Intel is pushing for even MUCH better onboard sounds, so it will keep pushing the creatives of the world into the high end.
That being said, the improvement in onboard sound (and as such average available sound on a PC) are equivalent to the ones in onboard video. They are still basic compared to the discrete ones, but we would have killed for those 5 years ago...
Contrary to video, where games require the top, sound can do with onboard. Not always a bad thing...
And games continue to push the enveloppe too, as Doom3 is supposed to have full Dolby Digital sound. Time will tell...
Better rendered or animated graphisms help a game to get better *UP TO A POINT*. At the time Prince of Persia (the first one) got released, you had ugly stiff characters The prince, by comparison, seemed so fluid in his movements... the game looked and felt great because of that. Game play was good too (commands) although not revolutionnary. The new Prince of Persia (Sands of Time) renew with this formula. The 3D modeling and the fluidity of animation, coupled with a perfect control set makes a great action game. It looks good, play well and is well dosed, so that you can play it in 10-15 minutes sessions. Once again, not a revolution, but a well done game. The problem with graphics, is that we are hitting a plateau. Nowadays, rendering improvements are only incrementals and do not bring much to a game anymore, so as said, emphasis needs to be put on gameplay. We will see if Doom3 or HL2 can contradict this (great game thanks to superior graphisms?) or if they will come with a solid gameplay too (or just fall short of the great expectations and fail).
I dont know where you people all shop for your games, but i'm just back from my neighbouhng Fry's and all the EA 2004 sport lineup is already at $19.99. Most of the new PC releases are also around $35. Some games keep the premium and sell at $50, but most dont.
Moreover, prices fall sharply quite fast for those "premium" games. A few months and they are at $29 or $19.
On top of that, Fry's often special sales just on the release date of big games.
With all that, i dont think i've paid $50 for a game in a long time... And this is good, as this way, I buy more of them. ^_^
Yop, Linux on the desktop, really soon...
As soon as BSD is completly dead or Dukenukem Forever gets released.
As they say, really soon... yup yup
This answer is actually quite interesting. In it Ken Brown mix all the issues to light favorably his own agenda. The omissions and the bias of the author are probably even more interesting that what he writes.
- he values software only as a mean to make MONEY (and only money, no common good, progress or anything else). Of course, free software (a la GPL) runs against this when BSD-type licenses allow for commercial interest to take off from it.
- he speaks of trust but of course avoid to talk about the same subject for commercial software. Worse, he implies that commercial software (hence close sourced and unverifiable) is a better source of trust than open software.
- he mixes the GLP community with the hacker community.
- he sees confusion where there is none (Tanenbaum's account of early Linux Kernels)
- he seems to be of the idea that "from scratch" means leaving in a bubble and having benefited of no advancement done before.
Basically, if KB consider Linux like a cave man that should come out with the Linux kernel directly, sure, there is something wrong. Now, we know he had Minix (he is using the same file system and some other parts) and read some other UNIX specifications. How surprising is it after that?
If KB's big discovery is that Linus had the "help" of other people writing similar software and documenting them (even going so far as giving a class on it for Tanenbaum), then it is already beating on a dead horse. But i guess that for such a limited mind, cooperation is a new idea...
but then, if every business do like you, young people right out of college/education will never find a job...
It was a bit dis-heartening to look for job and see requirements of 3 or 5 years experience everywhere.
Moreover, some company need to train their workers anyway (given that some industruy are not taught in schools), so taking younger people allow then a carriers starting in your company. It is also sometime cheaper for a company to take inexperienced people and train them.
I'm going to prove you wrong and with a concrete game example.
Here are 2 games that are using the *SAME* game engine. They are:
- Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
- Beyond good and evil
Those 2 ubisoft games are based on the same engine, however they are completly different both graphically (you can still see some common effects), in type, objectives, markets and playability.
Both are great games.
This *could* be one of the effect of DNA, if it is done correctly. If they give you some solid and flexible engine/libraries, then the developpers can concentrate on the game.
As always, wait and see...
would you really play UT2k4 on a 533MHz processor anyway? I did not think so... However, if you think about the kind of games that come out on the GBA, this is a *VERY* capable console. Hell, 30%+ of the games on GBA are nothing more than ports of SNES games to the portable. I emulated SNES perfectly on whimpier computers than that. To compete with the GBA games, that would be fine. Supermarkets are full of ~$10 games that are 3-5 years old and still as fun. Someone mentioned Monkey Island, you could talk about tetris, worms or other simple games that came originally on FLOPPIES! The only problem so far is price (and it is a big one). But game possibilities and multimedia? This side seems covered...
Is that a joke or a trick question? You're answering your own question here...
DDR2100 (or DDR266) has... 2100MBi/s of maximum theoritical bandwidth (64bits * 133MHz * 2 exchange/clock). If you use a dual channel chipset, you double it (2* 64bits bus).
Same for the rest of the memory. The name *IS* the maximum single channel theoritical bandwidth.
PCI-E is 1.25Gib/s per channel. So, a 16x PCI-E port (used for graphics) is 20Gib/s or 2500MiB/s.
You'll need at least DDR2700 memory (DDR333) to keep it fed. As the chipset including PCI-E will *start* with DDR3200 dual channel DDR1 and go up, that shouldn't be a problem in itself...
Yes, the PCI-E 16x will support more power: ~75W.
No, it is NOT enough for the latest generation graphic cards, as they can use up to ~120W.
Nvidia, for example, has planned to put "only" one molex connector on their GF6 PCI-E cards, instead of 2 on the AGP one...
or pay for your car upgrades with your body (as a female character, at least...) and even make the guy explode with the sentence:
:p
"too... much... sex..."
dealing 9999999 points of damage
Adobe has one. It's anything but light, but it works quite well. I read a few books using it on an old m105.
e rforpal m.html
You can find it here:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/read
You have 2 kinds of users for "pirated" or illegal software:
- the savvy computer user: that guy always find a way to get the software/music/whatever. Either you just exchange those with your friends around and just through expanding "circles of friends" (can gather quite a few things this way) or now through the net, P2P, crackers and such. This user will probably go through and continue it.
- the average house user: get scared when the authority interest themselves to its little illegal dealings. Make it if it's easy, buy if not. Those are the people targetted by copy protection and those scare tactics.
Also, most people use "pirated" software as students (mostly because they are broke and the fast pipes make it easy to DL. Moreover, so many people together with loose morals make it easier to even find it just at a friend's place). Habits change when they have a job, can afford it and judge that it is worth their hard earned cash.
I think this is this "priority" and size of the operation that people are complaining about. If those are really "crime networks", all the power to the cops for that bust. Yes, it is illegal to do this and they just applied the laws. Hell, it's probably a better time spent at cracking at groups like that or other *real* organize4d criome taking advantage of those to make money than going after P2P. In P2P, there is no money involved (except for the maker of the programs and not even always). Here, some are selling those stuffs...
Actually, i dont think they would disagree with that. Their problem is more do whatever you want with an illegal copy of stolen property.
Most of the Blizzard games are seen at their bests only on Battle.net. Seriously, in the latest ones, Diablo2 was fun once in single, but countless of times in multi.
Same thing with war3, that has been transformed from a RTS game to a platform used to build new games (a map on Bnet lately is almost a game in itself). Without Bnet, those games would not be the success they are. And without Bnet, there is no incentive for the people to pay for it.
Sure, you can catch a CD key generator that will let you install the game, but it probably wont work on Bnet. This *IS* Blizzard's main weapon against piracy, the incentive for people to buy: a free service that verify that you are authorized to play.
And their problem with Bnetd was that it had either
- no key check
- a key check routine in the source code, distributed freely.
Yes, their usage of the DMCA is stupid, but they just try to defend their business model (give free service that verify your game copy is right).
HL2 has a lot of buzz going for it, however, more than the awesome graphics, this is especially the HL1 legacy that people are looking for:
- great story
- great levels
- good playability
- never boring
The games with wonderful graphics are 5 a dozen, what is lacking lately is gameplay and HL1 had lots of it.
For the recards, HL1 was one of the most delayed game. When they had an almost final product, the team met and reviewed it objectively, reaching the conclusion than their game was a "me too!" game on the quake engine. They refused to release it, studied it, found what was good and built on it. The rest is history.
Doom3 follows the same syndrome. For the first time since doom2, ID will release a GAME, not just a 3D engine. The emphasis is on the 1st player game, with music, ambiance an story. Built with a next gen 3D engine, this is highly anticipated.
Games are often late, but the reason behind it can be very different. When a Blizzard game was late, we all assumed they were testing and balancing it, so that the final product is FUN.
Delays hurt any industry, bad products hurt too...
The fact is that De Beers is playing the sentimental trump. They are doing all they can to separate the "natural" diamonds from the "articifial" ones. They spent millions over the year to make every wife in every occudental country dream about a clear stone on her finger. They very wisely chose their sloga nas "a diamond last foreever" and are turning it around by saying the for a proof of forever love, you should give a gem that took forever to mature. Those people are very smart and very skilled at protecting their monopoly. Moreover, they are not over a bit of illegality and extortion if it can help them. They will hammer into our heads that the only good diamand are the "real" ones. Will it work? Time will tell... Anyway, diamond semiconductor might be a better outlet for thos artificial diamonds anyway...
SCO is not going to sue anybody. As usual, they are all talk and no act. They just want to scare the companies using Linux and force them to pay. I would be VERY surprised if any litigation came out of this grand annoncement. And even if it did, i'm sure the FSF and other association would gladly support the defendant through the process. Until it can show code, SCO had nothing. Hence, they will toot their horn as loud as possible to scare people and force them to settle. It is called extortion. Moreover, it pumps their stock price up...
There is also a difference of scale in the sheer number of computers running the infected software. Outside of /., what is the percentage of people running anything else than windows on their desktop?
Moreover, what are the technical competencies of those people?
M$ tried to make the update process as painless as possible through their windows update website, but it seems to me that it is STILL a failure. 300k+ computers already infected? I cant believe this is ONLY NT4 machines with no auto updates...
To me, Bittorrent looks like a dedicated server of Edonkey. You share/download one file at a time on a given "tracker" (server). For people used to P2P, it looks like a scam or unefficient, but you forget the biggest sell point of bittorrent:
ease of use.
Any user can DL and install that program under windows and get it to work. Sure, they may close the window right after the download finished, but you still enjoyed their bandwidth during the transfer. It is a HUGE step from an http DL.
Bittorrent makes sense for a server point of view. Using it, you can cut your bandwidth cost, especially when it hurts the most: at release time. After that, if the number of DL is low anyway, it wont impact you much if your server is the only one sending.