By calling it 'Cell local memory' the inquirer has confirmed they have confused the RSX's Local Memory (i.e. graphics memory) with the Cell's Local Store (roughly a processor cache but more important then normal due to the Cell's architecture).
Normally the would be little need for the CPU to take directly to the graphics memory, it would just tell the GPU to pull it from main memory. However with the Cell's SPEs meant to account for up to 30% of the shader though put this would be likely to have an effect.
Luckily the RSX was always designed to use main memory as as well as its local memory for rendering. It has large caches to offset the increased latency and slower speed. If these figures are right I can only presume that Sony indents all Cell/RSX co-operation to happen in main memory.
However the architecture diagrams from GDC 2006 make this all seem highly suspicious:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20060329/ 3dps303.htm
MS are using a cleaver new marketing technique when they say they don't mind the Wii being a 'second console'. (It is believed to be called lying).
Okay they can be blasé and say that owning a Wii doesn't stop you buying a xBox360. The can even be happy about Nintendo taking $250 out of the pockets of their customers so they can't spend it where they should, on MS games. But the is no way on this earth, that MS are happy that every time little Johnny drops by the games shop he will be looking at two shelves, only one of which will be earning MS their money.
In fact MS will be much much more happy with their games sitting on the shelf next to the PS3. When you have a head start to market, a largely similar product, and you can undercut the opposition, then you are happy.
A more experienced competitor with clever new ideas and a product set to massive undercut you is not MS's idea of a friend.
To be fair Carmack's role is more along the lines of cinematographer then director. He may be the headliner at ID, but he is the technical lead, not art/design.
Carmack would certainly not have any difficulty in working on movie CG technology, and would probably be a considerably better camera man than the average Jo.
Similarly the is no reason that a good director should not be able to handle the art direction on a game as easily as a film.
On the other hand the writing of a film is in no way comparable to the design of a game. However Spielberg doesn't write his film's and the is no reason to suppose he will try and design a game without expert help.
The Canon Digital SLR cameras (Digital Rebel) have been using CMOS sensors for years. The low-end (for SLR) 350D (Rebel XT) hit 8 megapixels over a year ago.
I accept these are good sensors and it is nice they are going to be put in cheaper cameras (thought at this level it usually is the lens not the sensor that matters), but this is hardly news.
I think they can (and will) do this with software:
If they patch the OS to request and compare the entire DVD firmware before booting. You can hack the firmware to respond to this request however you like. But you will need to find a way of storing both your hacked firmware and the fake original firmware on a flash chip designed to only hold one.
Whilst in the current firmware might have space, all they have to do is release a firmware with all the space filled with uncompressable data and this becomes impossible.
I don't think you could read the original firmware from a disk as the OS is bound to be able to detect this via timing (if not by monitoring the DVDs power lines).
You could fake it out once by pretending to be a v1 firmware, then when it tried to write the new random data you could cache it to the drives RAM cache (I assume it has one) and regurgitate this when needed. However if the OS logged this update to the motherboard BIOS then you couldn't keep doing this.
It would probably be possible to install a larger flash chip on the drive to work around this, however this would certainly not be trivial.
I think the article was taking the academic, cautious approach here. A hardware attacks (modchips) on this system are theoretically possible. However you would have to attach directly to the processor's internal bus.
This would mean attaching to 90nm wires at 3.2 Gigs; that is it going to make mod chips a bit harder.
(The Xbox modchips use a 33Mhz bus and existing solder points on the motherboard (i.e. a 100 times slower and over a 1,000 times larger)
I know this is news for nerds but please. We all know most business managers are not technical and can make stupendously silly decisions when they do not understanding technology. But the is a very good reason they are managers, they are good at business. One thing they will have no trouble understanding is the underhand marketing tactics of an abusive monopoly.
Any technology guy can say:
"We have two options for our web servers, one is technically superior and the other is run by a company that is actively supporting the lowlifes who are holding hostage all those clever names you marketing bods brainstormed. Just to mask their pitiful market share in the server market."
Being associated with squatters dose no ones reputation any good, why stoop to Microsoft's level?
A system that dose 1:1 compresion is not a system that can achive 'by at least 1' as he states.
Whilst you can passthough uncompressable input, any compression system that can ever achive better then 1:1 is going to have to add at least one bit to uncompresable input to flag it as uncompressed.
Otherwise your arbitory input my happen to look exactly like a valid compressed file with difrent contents and the uncompressor would not know what to return.
As I have absolutly zero chance of ever buying anything form any online advert I am actually doing both the advertiser and the content site a service by saving them the bandwidth. Everyone who downloads an Ad without buying the crap actuall reduces the value of the ad, and so the amount the advitiser is likly to pay the content site in the long run.
The aren't enough people who would install a "I'm an idiot who keeps giving my details to complete strangers" extensions, and the ones who did would be the ones who needed it least.
I am assuming that all this does is look up URL's in a blacklist (presumably maintaining this is where Google fit in), the is no reason that it should be complex on the client side (and I am sure it will be easy to turn off).
However I would worry a lot about the privacy issues (we all know how much Google loves tracking the pages you visit), and freedom of speech (obviously all references to Tiananmen Square are part of a complex scam in the eyes of CPC).
OpenOffice Impress has a SWF export and http://openlaszlo.org/ is SWF based use your C skills to improve these (nether are at the level to write many games yet).
SWF may only be partially open (fully documented and encouraged to create application that write SWF, but forbiden to create competing players), but it is a lot more open then the rest of the PSP!
I know we all hate Flash, but surly this is at least a part answer to all the homebrew calls. Okay they are not opening up the platform so we can port MAME. But you can knock together some pretty fun games in Flash.
I accept you point that the are a lot of commercial vehicles that leave SpaceShipOne in the dust, however that doesn't mean is was not worth while and important.
A better analogy might be computing:
Government funded programs created the first computers and established IBM and the seven dwarfs who went on to become a commercial success.
When the early Commodors and Ataris came out they were useless when compared to the mainframes of the day, and were often dismissed as gimmicks or toys. This seems to be very much where SpaceShipOne fits in.
We may have to wait for Boeing to react (as IBM did) before we have a useful and cheep commercial space ship. But SpaceShipOne may herald an entirely new market for the space industry.
(or it might not, but $10m wouldn't buy you one ship's peanut in that industry so what was lost?)
In a world where the only ocean going supertankers are government owned and nearing retirement. The X-Prise inspired an industry focused on making river boats into producing a sea going yacht.
Granted they may not be ready to cross the ocean or carry cargo, and the technology may never be adaptable to these tasks, but at least the industry has new horizons!
Surly this was dealt with eons ago (in computer terms). All the old CPC tape covers had a very tiny disclaimer on the bottom saying that the screen shots were taken form a C64 or some other computer with better graphics.
TFA is a bit light on details but it sounds to me like they are using Winelib to port to Linux, not simply providing an installer to run the Windows binaries under Wine.
This is a very significant difference because Winelib is not x86 specific (unlike Wine). This will be a native application capable of running anywhere Linux runs (or FreeBSD). They would only be using Winelib as an API wrapper so they don't have to rewrite every line of code.
I think they will even get Mac OS support, which might be important as I can't actually see many Linux fans liking the very frustrating interface Picasso provides.
Unfortunately you biased view of India is about the same as your biased view of America. India's actual GDP is nearer $650b (http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2004/01/24/st ories/2004012400690400.htm) based on the true exchange rait. (And as this is what Microsoft's figure will be based on it is a fairer comparison).
A 0.065%GDP investment my sound small, but it is not!
DNA proved his genius yet again by turning the limitations of the game into the game. I am reluctant to explain further here for fear of spoiling the amazing about of fun that can be had from unquestioningly (and quite intentionally) the most annoying game ever written.
Becouse the 'Cinea' DVDs contain a watermark that Dolby (who own Cinea) claim will even be detectable if just use a videocamera to film the output on your TV. The studio can prove that your copy of the film, which could only be played on a device in your livingroom, was copied. The court case is going to be fairly short.
On one hand we have a bunch of TV pundits who are not even famous in their own time; on the other we have a man who's scientific and mathematical genus has remained legendary over 20 century.
On one hand we have a dozen enthusiastic lackies trying to help; on the other we have hundreds of well trained soldiers accustomed to working in a disciplined unit, fighting for the lives of their families.
On one hand we have the fairly respectable budget of a successful TV show; on the other we have the amassed wealth of one of the richest cities in history.
I can see that failing to recreate his feet within the dictates of their filming schedule is clear proof that a highly motivated genius with virtually unlimited resources must also have failed!
The fact that a small group of undergraduates working with almost no budget managed to achieve what the TV production could not, only goes to show why you shouldn't believe everything you see on TV.
I accept that this is only enforcing something that is already a moral and legal obligation, and in the processes giving the user something back in the increased convince. However this does not make it an acceptable use of DRM. (as it precisely this sort of back-door approach which will get people to accept mainstream DRM.)
Even if you ignore the issue of publicly funded library's lining the pockets of mega-rich corporations, using Microsoft DRM presumably locks our everyone using none-MS platforms. I should also imaging that this requires an Internet connection to verify the DRM (how else can it know the correct date). The primary purpose of library is to ensure everyone has access to information, this is obviously failing miserably.
Library's historically provided information in a convenient, accessible format, that the majority of people could access with no special equipment. This format was long-lasting, and completely unencumbered with patents and DRM. We should not be willing to trade away any of these in exchange for being to lazy to return items that are due.
If a library wants to distribute digital content then they need to use open formates not protected by patents that are free and easy to implement on any computer. Their primary goal is to ensure easy universal access. It is up to another of our public institutions to police that people are using the material in an appropriate manner.
IANAL: The games companies often claim EULAs are legal contracts, if this bloke agreed to a contract with the intention of breaking it to make money then it is a clear case of fraud.
However, these companies are setting themselfs up for a world of pain when govenments sudenly realise that these cames should be regulated as gambling, or worse that vertial transactions are taxable. Why should the police protect your virual property if you arn't paying real TAX!
Slashdot Mirror
By calling it 'Cell local memory' the inquirer has confirmed they have confused the RSX's Local Memory (i.e. graphics memory) with the Cell's Local Store (roughly a processor cache but more important then normal due to the Cell's architecture). Normally the would be little need for the CPU to take directly to the graphics memory, it would just tell the GPU to pull it from main memory. However with the Cell's SPEs meant to account for up to 30% of the shader though put this would be likely to have an effect. Luckily the RSX was always designed to use main memory as as well as its local memory for rendering. It has large caches to offset the increased latency and slower speed. If these figures are right I can only presume that Sony indents all Cell/RSX co-operation to happen in main memory. However the architecture diagrams from GDC 2006 make this all seem highly suspicious: http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20060329/ 3dps303.htm
MS are using a cleaver new marketing technique when they say they don't mind the Wii being a 'second console'. (It is believed to be called lying).
Okay they can be blasé and say that owning a Wii doesn't stop you buying a xBox360. The can even be happy about Nintendo taking $250 out of the pockets of their customers so they can't spend it where they should, on MS games. But the is no way on this earth, that MS are happy that every time little Johnny drops by the games shop he will be looking at two shelves, only one of which will be earning MS their money.
In fact MS will be much much more happy with their games sitting on the shelf next to the PS3. When you have a head start to market, a largely similar product, and you can undercut the opposition, then you are happy.
A more experienced competitor with clever new ideas and a product set to massive undercut you is not MS's idea of a friend.
To be fair Carmack's role is more along the lines of cinematographer then director.
He may be the headliner at ID, but he is the technical lead, not art/design.
Carmack would certainly not have any difficulty in working on movie CG technology, and would probably be a considerably better camera man than the average Jo.
Similarly the is no reason that a good director should not be able to handle the art direction on a game as easily as a film.
On the other hand the writing of a film is in no way comparable to the design of a game. However Spielberg doesn't write his film's and the is no reason to suppose he will try and design a game without expert help.
The Canon Digital SLR cameras (Digital Rebel) have been using CMOS sensors for years. The low-end (for SLR) 350D (Rebel XT) hit 8 megapixels over a year ago.
I accept these are good sensors and it is nice they are going to be put in cheaper cameras (thought at this level it usually is the lens not the sensor that matters), but this is hardly news.
I think they can (and will) do this with software:
If they patch the OS to request and compare the entire DVD firmware before booting. You can hack the firmware to respond to this request however you like. But you will need to find a way of storing both your hacked firmware and the fake original firmware on a flash chip designed to only hold one.
Whilst in the current firmware might have space, all they have to do is release a firmware with all the space filled with uncompressable data and this becomes impossible.
I don't think you could read the original firmware from a disk as the OS is bound to be able to detect this via timing (if not by monitoring the DVDs power lines).
You could fake it out once by pretending to be a v1 firmware, then when it tried to write the new random data you could cache it to the drives RAM cache (I assume it has one) and regurgitate this when needed. However if the OS logged this update to the motherboard BIOS then you couldn't keep doing this.
It would probably be possible to install a larger flash chip on the drive to work around this, however this would certainly not be trivial.
I think the article was taking the academic, cautious approach here. A hardware attacks (modchips) on this system are theoretically possible. However you would have to attach directly to the processor's internal bus.
This would mean attaching to 90nm wires at 3.2 Gigs; that is it going to make mod chips a bit harder.
(The Xbox modchips use a 33Mhz bus and existing solder points on the motherboard (i.e. a 100 times slower and over a 1,000 times larger)
I know this is news for nerds but please. We all know most business managers are not technical and can make stupendously silly decisions when they do not understanding technology. But the is a very good reason they are managers, they are good at business. One thing they will have no trouble understanding is the underhand marketing tactics of an abusive monopoly.
Any technology guy can say:
"We have two options for our web servers, one is technically superior and the other is run by a company that is actively supporting the lowlifes who are holding hostage all those clever names you marketing bods brainstormed. Just to mask their pitiful market share in the server market."
Being associated with squatters dose no ones reputation any good, why stoop to Microsoft's level?
A system that dose 1:1 compresion is not a system that can achive 'by at least 1' as he states.
Whilst you can passthough uncompressable input, any compression system that can ever achive better then 1:1 is going to have to add at least one bit to uncompresable input to flag it as uncompressed.
Otherwise your arbitory input my happen to look exactly like a valid compressed file with difrent contents and the uncompressor would not know what to return.
Becouse /. would be so much better without all the comments.
As I have absolutly zero chance of ever buying anything form any online advert I am actually doing both the advertiser and the content site a service by saving them the bandwidth. Everyone who downloads an Ad without buying the crap actuall reduces the value of the ad, and so the amount the advitiser is likly to pay the content site in the long run.
The aren't enough people who would install a "I'm an idiot who keeps giving my details to complete strangers" extensions, and the ones who did would be the ones who needed it least.
I am assuming that all this does is look up URL's in a blacklist (presumably maintaining this is where Google fit in), the is no reason that it should be complex on the client side (and I am sure it will be easy to turn off).
However I would worry a lot about the privacy issues (we all know how much Google loves tracking the pages you visit), and freedom of speech (obviously all references to Tiananmen Square are part of a complex scam in the eyes of CPC).
OpenOffice Impress has a SWF export and http://openlaszlo.org/ is SWF based use your C skills to improve these (nether are at the level to write many games yet).
Or try:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/swfsource/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/libswf/
http://sswf.sourceforge.net/
SWF may only be partially open (fully documented and encouraged to create application that write SWF, but forbiden to create competing players), but it is a lot more open then the rest of the PSP!
I know we all hate Flash, but surly this is at least a part answer to all the homebrew calls. Okay they are not opening up the platform so we can port MAME. But you can knock together some pretty fun games in Flash.
I accept you point that the are a lot of commercial vehicles that leave SpaceShipOne in the dust, however that doesn't mean is was not worth while and important.
A better analogy might be computing:
Government funded programs created the first computers and established IBM and the seven dwarfs who went on to become a commercial success.
When the early Commodors and Ataris came out they were useless when compared to the mainframes of the day, and were often dismissed as gimmicks or toys. This seems to be very much where SpaceShipOne fits in.
We may have to wait for Boeing to react (as IBM did) before we have a useful and cheep commercial space ship. But SpaceShipOne may herald an entirely new market for the space industry.
(or it might not, but $10m wouldn't buy you one ship's peanut in that industry so what was lost?)
In a world where the only ocean going supertankers are government owned and nearing retirement. The X-Prise inspired an industry focused on making river boats into producing a sea going yacht.
Granted they may not be ready to cross the ocean or carry cargo, and the technology may never be adaptable to these tasks, but at least the industry has new horizons!
Surly this was dealt with eons ago (in computer terms). All the old CPC tape covers had a very tiny disclaimer on the bottom saying that the screen shots were taken form a C64 or some other computer with better graphics.
TFA is a bit light on details but it sounds to me like they are using Winelib to port to Linux, not simply providing an installer to run the Windows binaries under Wine.
This is a very significant difference because Winelib is not x86 specific (unlike Wine). This will be a native application capable of running anywhere Linux runs (or FreeBSD). They would only be using Winelib as an API wrapper so they don't have to rewrite every line of code.
I think they will even get Mac OS support, which might be important as I can't actually see many Linux fans liking the very frustrating interface Picasso provides.
But 1.7Bn over FOUR years...
Unfortunately you biased view of India is about the same as your biased view of America. India's actual GDP is nearer $650b (http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2004/01/24/st ories/2004012400690400.htm) based on the true exchange rait. (And as this is what Microsoft's figure will be based on it is a fairer comparison).
A 0.065%GDP investment my sound small, but it is not!
If you though HHGTTG was fun you will just LOVE Beurocacy (http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/bur.html).
n .shtml
DNA proved his genius yet again by turning the limitations of the game into the game. I am reluctant to explain further here for fear of spoiling the amazing about of fun that can be had from unquestioningly (and quite intentionally) the most annoying game ever written.
p.s. HHGTTG can be played online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game_nola
p.p.s. DNA also proved Graphics Adventures could be just as annoying with Starship Titanic
Which is probably why he said 'DB2 Express' which is processor and memory limited, not storage size.
Becouse the 'Cinea' DVDs contain a watermark that Dolby (who own Cinea) claim will even be detectable if just use a videocamera to film the output on your TV. The studio can prove that your copy of the film, which could only be played on a device in your livingroom, was copied. The court case is going to be fairly short.
Please let us get some perspective here:
On one hand we have a bunch of TV pundits who are not even famous in their own time; on the other we have a man who's scientific and mathematical genus has remained legendary over 20 century.
On one hand we have a dozen enthusiastic lackies trying to help; on the other we have hundreds of well trained soldiers accustomed to working in a disciplined unit, fighting for the lives of their families.
On one hand we have the fairly respectable budget of a successful TV show; on the other we have the amassed wealth of one of the richest cities in history.
I can see that failing to recreate his feet within the dictates of their filming schedule is clear proof that a highly motivated genius with virtually unlimited resources must also have failed!
The fact that a small group of undergraduates working with almost no budget managed to achieve what the TV production could not, only goes to show why you shouldn't believe everything you see on TV.
I accept that this is only enforcing something that is already a moral and legal obligation, and in the processes giving the user something back in the increased convince. However this does not make it an acceptable use of DRM. (as it precisely this sort of back-door approach which will get people to accept mainstream DRM.)
Even if you ignore the issue of publicly funded library's lining the pockets of mega-rich corporations, using Microsoft DRM presumably locks our everyone using none-MS platforms. I should also imaging that this requires an Internet connection to verify the DRM (how else can it know the correct date). The primary purpose of library is to ensure everyone has access to information, this is obviously failing miserably.
Library's historically provided information in a convenient, accessible format, that the majority of people could access with no special equipment. This format was long-lasting, and completely unencumbered with patents and DRM. We should not be willing to trade away any of these in exchange for being to lazy to return items that are due.
If a library wants to distribute digital content then they need to use open formates not protected by patents that are free and easy to implement on any computer. Their primary goal is to ensure easy universal access. It is up to another of our public institutions to police that people are using the material in an appropriate manner.
IANAL: The games companies often claim EULAs are legal contracts, if this bloke agreed to a contract with the intention of breaking it to make money then it is a clear case of fraud.
However, these companies are setting themselfs up for a world of pain when govenments sudenly realise that these cames should be regulated as gambling, or worse that vertial transactions are taxable. Why should the police protect your virual property if you arn't paying real TAX!