> There is a finite amount of money at any one time.
True, however you are forgetting one tiny but import little detail...
The VALUE of money is _dynamic_ - especially when used to exchange for hard assets. i.e. The value of gold / silver gooes up/down due to demand/supply, even though the amount of money hasn't changed.
The _same_ object can have multiple VALUE at the same time by different people.
So to say that there is only a fixed amount of money is igoring the other half of the equation.
Actually one of my buddies as his internet connection is crap.
When he's online we easily blow through Expert difficulty. Offline, he likes the challenge of trying to succesfully complete the game with Artifical Idiots.
The single player experience would be greatly more satisfying if the you could give just one command to the bots: STAY HERE.
> here is no reason we couldn't have multiple people who play an adventure, except that it would largely be impractical, adventures take 20-60 hours to finish
You don't need this "epic" 60 hour story to have fun. You need to quit drinking the marketing kool-aid. There is no reason you can't "scale" down adventure games to be much more manageable sized like an hour, or a few hours. These 20-60 hours is just pulling numbers out of your arse.
The time constraint is a red herring as DnD shows. It is entirely possible to design multiplayer adventures games are meant to played in an hour. It is just not a focus for commercial companies because they think "Bigger is Better" and falsely thinks the ROI is better.
> That is why MMORPGs are fairly popular however, it's not a single coherent storyline but an adventure nonetheless, shared with other people. The real issue is that, at this time, authors haven't developed the skills necessary to write well when the audience is able to interact/change the story dynamically. MMOs "cheat" in using a linear story, and as you admit can't even get a "single coherent storyline" together.
> If you don't like the story, don't play adventures
* whoosh *
My complaint is tendency/momentum of ALL modern games to be story-driven. There is a time and a place for it. Too many designers don't understand when NOT to use story. There are certain genres where story is NOT needed/wanted. There are certain genres where story IS mandatory.
I've been playing Adventure games since the early '80's with Zork, before some idiot decided to call them "Interactive Fiction." I've played the first graphical adventures on the Apple ][ (Prisoner II), enjoyed 7th Guest, 11th Hour, and still have a rich fondness for classic adventure games such as Loom, Monkey Island, the _brilliant_ ICO, and even games that are redefining and blurring the genres such as Shenmue, and Mirror's Edge. (I did not include Myst as it is boring, and completely over-rated, but understand most people like a dumbed-down adventure game as it fits their challenge level.)
I've been having fun playing Rainbow Six Las Vegas 2 with a buddy. When the story doesn't get in the way of the game, I have no problem with it. When you have games like Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising forcing you to wait 5 mins every dam time in campaign mode for the idiot to shut up about his spiel about your objectives, THAT is when I have a problem with it. It KILLS replay ability.
> it is what makes DnD the best game there is (and that is my personal opinion, just to be clear). Agreed. In my work-in-progress book, Fundamentals of Game Design, I explicitly list the reasons WHY DnD is the best game. It is not just some subjective opinion -- there are REAL principles that were used in its design (either consciously or unconsciously) that guaranteed it. Allowing players to drive the _pacing_ is one of them.
> Same with FTL. Our current method of going faster is to simply accelerate more. General relativity tells us that that approach won't work even for reaching C, much less exceeding it. > So, we need a workaround.
You DO realize we live in more then 4 dimensions, right?
The physical dimension is only the "bottom" that we are normally perceptive too. The speed of light is not a barrier in higher realms, and is easily "broken" in them.
The workaround is: 1. Shift to another dimension 2. Travel 3. Shift back to physical dimension
> A pet hypothesis of mine is that perhaps as an object with mass approaches C, conventional laws of physics break down and we need a whole new set of physics to figure out what happens at those velocities. Yes, the same way conventional laws of physics break down at the micro (Quantum Mechanics), they break down at the macro (General Relativity).
> sense that they don't violate what we know about physics. That's the biggest hurdle at the moment. Scienctists knows jack about physics and meta-physics outside the normal 4D as they are still missing 2 fundamental forces. Until we can answer _basic_ questions such as: "What is electricity? What is gravity? What is magnetism? What is light? What is time? What is the soul? What is the source of all these things?" our understanding will be limited to simply _using_ them.
> The empirical evidence strongly suggests that traveling at or above C is, indeed, impossible. Humans are currently limited to sub-light speed until the 24th century, as they have not learned how to be responsible with what they _already_ have. When you still have people who live like kings and throw whatever they don't want away (America), people whose daily existance is starvation (Africa), people arguing over who's God is "right" by killing everyone who doesn't agree with them (Islam), ignorant pseudo skeptics who have made a Religion of out atheism (Randi) ( http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/skeptic.htm, http://www.rpi.edu/~sofkam/talk/talk.html, http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Introduction.htm ), the brainwashing of the public school education, er, sorry indoctrination system ( http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm ) humanity will never make progress on _External_ knowledge until they first learn the source of ALL (internal) wisdom: KNOW THYSELF.
As we spiritually grow up, FTL and time-travel will naturally open up.
> and think it's a wonderful thing that different things work for different people.
Agreed that is a beautiful design! While there are infinite paths to "God", there only one path that is "valid" -- the one _you_ take.
As a mystic I am able to apprecaite the path of atheism because I see its strenths and weaknesses -- it provides an valid learning perpsective that none of the other theistic paths do.
> A single-player game does not need to be challenging to be fun.
That's mostly nonsense, and shows you don't know much about game design.
Most people do NOT play games with cheats because there is _no_ challenge. Without a challenge, games become boring. Even when kids "play" they still setup mini-goals to solve.
Now we can have sandbox games but even then people will make a _game_ out of _anything_, heck even something as "stupid" as "getting the highest forum post count" Why? Because people _create_ their own _challenges_. e.g. Look at how many people "tortured" their Sims -- how long can I anti-play the game and see how long it runs...
The WHOLE reason we even have Game Genres is because we like to CLASSIFY the TYPE of game CHALLENGE so we can make a quick judgement on whether we will find it fun.
You were correct the first time, and should of stopped at: "Lots of games challenge players in different ways"
> A single-player game can present an interesting storyline With the operative word being CAN. Storylines are just a _optional_ backdrop. Go review your '80's computer game history or even puzzle games. We're making multi-dimensional comptuer games, not writing a fucking novel here people.
Storylines are only _one_ way that the game presents something to overcome. Go read the Classic Novels. Why do we have the common themes: Man vs Man, Man vs Nature, etc.. The story line is the only way for _books_ to present this challenge and the results of whether the protangist won/lost. In our digital media, our focus is different as we have other ways to present information to the player.
Quick! What's the story in multiplayer CoD MW2, Team Fortress 2, BFBC2, or most other shooters? With Respect To Multiplayer, people mostly don't give a fuck about story. Now, as you move from twitch real-time to thinking strategey based games, then yes, story becomes more important as it adds another dimenion for how the challenges are conveyed to the player. Especially with RPG it (creates and) conveys digestable mini-goals.
> A single-player game can present an interesting storyline in ways that a multi-player game cannot (or, at least, has not yet). Considering how _long_ it takes to create a good story from a single point of view, e.g. Tolkien, it is no surprise we don't have multi-story media. Part of the problem is lack of control over Time in multiplayer. In a single player game you can easily do "flashbacks" and control the pacing. In multiplayer, good luck.
Heck, taking a single-player story and "upscaling" it to multiplayer is hard enough. I've seen few games that pulled this off. Diablo II did this in a brilliant way.
If you want the ULTIMATE storyline, go play some good 'ol fashioned DnD with your buddies. Where your party and the DM co-create the story & pacing.
Sorry, don't mean to sound grump, but as a game developer, unskippable cut-scene crap just rubs me the wrong way. I want to PLAY the game, not watch a dam movie.
Agreed, the OP is an idiot and can't tell the difference between blind faith and intuition. Anybody who thinks there isn't a difference obviously doesn't know many women.
Any good mathematician uses intuition when solving problems. Scientists do as well. When you "act on your beliefs" you have faith. If you do nothing with them, then they are just that, beliefs. Faith eventually produces proof.
The Wright brother demonstrated faith by trying to build an airplane. They didn't _know_ the outcome until they _did_ it. A few people had the mere belief that lighter then air travel was possible, but how many put this belief to the test in an earnest desire to know if this belief was true or false.
To add yet another dimension to this discussion, even if every man, woman, and child, knew 100% about their Higher Self, it wouldn't change the nature of Religion. Religion is the kindergarten version of spirituality. You don't criticize a child for going through elementary school in order to enter university / colleage!
What the OP is unable to see is that both atheism & theism are built upon the ignorance of higher reality. Only a gnostic / mystic is able too see what the *theists are blind too. At least the agnostic is little more honest in that he has begun the first step towards knowledge: "I don't know."
> You literally win the dumbest comment on slashdot award for today.
Too bad you are still a loser... but then again I shouldn't respond to anonymous cowards who have to resort to Ad hominem without adding anything interesting, informative, or insightful to the discussion at hand.
> Most games, with a few exceptions, are single-threaded applications. Gamers are much better off with a higher clocked dual core system than a slower-clocked, 6 core system.
False, for games written after 2006 - 2008. If a game is cross platform such that it is meant to run on PS3 or XBox360, then it is pretty much garanteed to be multi-threaded - you'll never get great performance if your game is single threaded on those consoles, especially on the PS3 where you have 6 SPUs.
You are a citizen of the State _AND_ of the united States. You can Renounce your united States citizen and still keep your State Citizenship. The capitalization difference between united States and United States is IMPORTANT; the Founding Fathers knew of this differences when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and specifically used the phrase "united States of America". http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Us_declaration_independence.jpg
Yes, I know people who have successfully legally opted out Federal Citizenship (and by extension of all Socialist Slave Programs), and never had to legally pay taxes again. Personally, I wouldn't waste years in the sovereignty movement, when it won't really matter in the long run. e.g. Good luck going in debt as you try to educate ignorant judges of this fact, researching the 3 types of U.S. definitions, fighting banks who can't understand the concept that you can still own assets even though you don't have a SSN, trying to get people to understand that the Constitution means shit since you never _signed_ it (_ALL_ contracts must be agreed either written or orally for them to be legally binding), etc.
Ownership is mostly a myth these days anyways. You used to truely own your own land, via allodial title, but the governement didn't like it that you didn't have to pay for the privelege (tax) to use your own land, so that was quickly abolished last century.
> oh well, i'm figuring that he's probably right seeing as science is just a bunch of atheistic dogma anyway...
Considering that Max Plank said:
"Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als belehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, daß ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und daß die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut gemacht ist." which is translated as
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." or paraphrased as the common English phrase:
"Truth never triumphs -- its opponents just die out."
"Science advances one funeral at a time."
> Current gen consoles are looking at lasting 6+ years.
Sony is expecting 10 years with the PS3. We are already into year 4.
> Try running your COD4 on a 6 year old PC with a 6 year old graphics card. so something like an ATI X600 or Geforce 6600 ( 5 years ago)
Less then 2 years ago I used to regularly play COD4:MW (the first one) on an GeForce 6600GT + Athlon XP 3000 just fine thank you very much; my gaming rig was built in 2003, so that makes it 7 years old. I'm upgrading this year because L4D is only playable at 640x480 on the old rig to an Athlon X4 955 BE + 5770 which will last YEARS because it has o/c headroom.
Everybody wants 1920x1080 these days, but I was gaming before you young whipper snappers even knew about playing Quake at 512x384 on a Voodoo 1. Considering that consoles have the equivalent of an GeForce 7800, which version of pixel shaders isn't going away anytime soon.
> It is the only reason to watch something like Star Trek Voyager. Where each episode they would kill people off, or mutate or something and then hit the big ol' reset button to reset things back to how they were at the start of the episode.
Really? I could think of seven other reasons. Maybe nine...;-)
Instead of Windows wasting the WHOLE space of the title bar, BeOS had two advantages:
- they took up minimal space instead of wasting space
- you can slide them ALONG the top of the window, so you could quickly switch between overlapping windows
"For example, a BeOS web site used to advertise itself with the slogan, "Little. Yellow. Different." Instead of having a title bar that covers the whole top of the window, Be used little yellow tabs. The yellow immediately sets BeOS apart from all the grays and blues of other operating systems. One neat feature was that you could slide the tab if you held the shift key down. So you could stack several windows on top of each other with tabs in different places much like the interface of Apple's web site. That would be fabulous, but when you close the window or restart the computer, BeOS doesn't remember where you slid the tab - so they all get stacked on top of each other next time. It is a little detail, but it matters."
I agree the GTS 250 would be a inexpensive gaming card. For better bang/buck though, I would still recommend the 5770 as you can pick up another one in a year's time at a reduced price, and get double the frame rate.:-)
I agree that you can definitely build it cheaper. I took the road of "future proofing" (if such a thing is possible in this industry) for a slightly higher dollar amount for a much greater ROI.
- The 965BE already includes a fan+heatsink. As you say, you can easily get an upgraded cooler and o/c the CPU for even a greater bang/buck. You could even save a few bucks and go with a 955BE ($160) or even a 940BE ($120).
- The 5770 GPU won't need to be upgraded for a few years. Spending a little more money upfront on a beefier PSU and MOBO now (+$30), means that when you upgrade your video card, you can simply get another 5770 at a reduced price and get almost double your framerate.:-)
Having been burnt on both ends, I believe there is a sweet spot between cheap and expensive. It lets you maximize your performance without burning money constantly playing the "upgrade" game.
You wouldn't to know of a "Best CPU for the money", kind of like how Tom's Hardware (yes, I know), has one for GPUs by chance?
e.g. 10 pages of fluff sumarized...
Best Graphic Cards for the money: June 2010 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-card-geforce-radeon,2646.html (Categorys $90, $100-$190, $200-$275, $280-$400, over $400 $999 Radeon HD 5870 $310 Radeon HD 5770x2 ($170) idle 151W load 390W ** -- HD 4870x2 idle 204W $400 Radeon HD 5850 $250 Radeon HD 5750x2 ($104-$140) $220 Radeon HD 5830 $155 Radeon HD 5770 idle 35W load 256W ** -- or HD 4870.. load 338 $125 Radeon HD 5750 $100 Radeon HD 4850, GeForce GTS 250 $80 GeForce 9600GT $70 Radeon HD 5570 $40 Radeon HD 4650
Slashdot Mirror
> big long ass url here.
You cut the link at the first & ... like so...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815235002
> There is a finite amount of money at any one time.
True, however you are forgetting one tiny but import little detail...
The VALUE of money is _dynamic_ - especially when used to exchange for hard assets.
i.e.
The value of gold / silver gooes up/down due to demand/supply, even though the amount of money hasn't changed.
The _same_ object can have multiple VALUE at the same time by different people.
So to say that there is only a fixed amount of money is igoring the other half of the equation.
Actually one of my buddies as his internet connection is crap.
When he's online we easily blow through Expert difficulty. Offline, he likes the challenge of trying to succesfully complete the game with Artifical Idiots.
The single player experience would be greatly more satisfying if the you could give just one command to the bots: STAY HERE.
> here is no reason we couldn't have multiple people who play an adventure, except that it would largely be impractical, adventures take 20-60 hours to finish
You don't need this "epic" 60 hour story to have fun. You need to quit drinking the marketing kool-aid. There is no reason you can't "scale" down adventure games to be much more manageable sized like an hour, or a few hours. These 20-60 hours is just pulling numbers out of your arse.
The time constraint is a red herring as DnD shows. It is entirely possible to design multiplayer adventures games are meant to played in an hour. It is just not a focus for commercial companies because they think "Bigger is Better" and falsely thinks the ROI is better.
> That is why MMORPGs are fairly popular however, it's not a single coherent storyline but an adventure nonetheless, shared with other people.
The real issue is that, at this time, authors haven't developed the skills necessary to write well when the audience is able to interact/change the story dynamically. MMOs "cheat" in using a linear story, and as you admit can't even get a "single coherent storyline" together.
> If you don't like the story, don't play adventures
* whoosh *
My complaint is tendency/momentum of ALL modern games to be story-driven. There is a time and a place for it. Too many designers don't understand when NOT to use story. There are certain genres where story is NOT needed/wanted. There are certain genres where story IS mandatory.
I've been playing Adventure games since the early '80's with Zork, before some idiot decided to call them "Interactive Fiction." I've played the first graphical adventures on the Apple ][ (Prisoner II), enjoyed 7th Guest, 11th Hour, and still have a rich fondness for classic adventure games such as Loom, Monkey Island, the _brilliant_ ICO, and even games that are redefining and blurring the genres such as Shenmue, and Mirror's Edge. (I did not include Myst as it is boring, and completely over-rated, but understand most people like a dumbed-down adventure game as it fits their challenge level.)
I've been having fun playing Rainbow Six Las Vegas 2 with a buddy. When the story doesn't get in the way of the game, I have no problem with it. When you have games like Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising forcing you to wait 5 mins every dam time in campaign mode for the idiot to shut up about his spiel about your objectives, THAT is when I have a problem with it. It KILLS replay ability.
> it is what makes DnD the best game there is (and that is my personal opinion, just to be clear).
Agreed. In my work-in-progress book, Fundamentals of Game Design, I explicitly list the reasons WHY DnD is the best game. It is not just some subjective opinion -- there are REAL principles that were used in its design (either consciously or unconsciously) that guaranteed it. Allowing players to drive the _pacing_ is one of them.
> Same with FTL. Our current method of going faster is to simply accelerate more. General relativity tells us that that approach won't work even for reaching C, much less exceeding it.
> So, we need a workaround.
You DO realize we live in more then 4 dimensions, right?
The physical dimension is only the "bottom" that we are normally perceptive too. The speed of light is not a barrier in higher realms, and is easily "broken" in them.
The workaround is:
1. Shift to another dimension
2. Travel
3. Shift back to physical dimension
> A pet hypothesis of mine is that perhaps as an object with mass approaches C, conventional laws of physics break down and we need a whole new set of physics to figure out what happens at those velocities.
Yes, the same way conventional laws of physics break down at the micro (Quantum Mechanics), they break down at the macro (General Relativity).
> sense that they don't violate what we know about physics.
That's the biggest hurdle at the moment. Scienctists knows jack about physics and meta-physics outside the normal 4D as they are still missing 2 fundamental forces. Until we can answer _basic_ questions such as: "What is electricity? What is gravity? What is magnetism? What is light? What is time? What is the soul? What is the source of all these things?" our understanding will be limited to simply _using_ them.
> The empirical evidence strongly suggests that traveling at or above C is, indeed, impossible.
Humans are currently limited to sub-light speed until the 24th century, as they have not learned how to be responsible with what they _already_ have. When you still have people who live like kings and throw whatever they don't want away (America), people whose daily existance is starvation (Africa), people arguing over who's God is "right" by killing everyone who doesn't agree with them (Islam), ignorant pseudo skeptics who have made a Religion of out atheism (Randi) ( http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/skeptic.htm, http://www.rpi.edu/~sofkam/talk/talk.html, http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Introduction.htm ), the brainwashing of the public school education, er, sorry indoctrination system ( http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm ) humanity will never make progress on _External_ knowledge until they first learn the source of ALL (internal) wisdom: KNOW THYSELF.
As we spiritually grow up, FTL and time-travel will naturally open up.
--
"Mind, not Space" is the FINAL frontier
> and think it's a wonderful thing that different things work for different people.
Agreed that is a beautiful design! While there are infinite paths to "God", there only one path that is "valid" -- the one _you_ take.
As a mystic I am able to apprecaite the path of atheism because I see its strenths and weaknesses -- it provides an valid learning perpsective that none of the other theistic paths do.
> A single-player game does not need to be challenging to be fun.
That's mostly nonsense, and shows you don't know much about game design.
Most people do NOT play games with cheats because there is _no_ challenge. Without a challenge, games become boring. Even when kids "play" they still setup mini-goals to solve.
Now we can have sandbox games but even then people will make a _game_ out of _anything_, heck even something as "stupid" as "getting the highest forum post count" Why? Because people _create_ their own _challenges_. e.g. Look at how many people "tortured" their Sims -- how long can I anti-play the game and see how long it runs...
The WHOLE reason we even have Game Genres is because we like to CLASSIFY the TYPE of game CHALLENGE so we can make a quick judgement on whether we will find it fun.
You were correct the first time, and should of stopped at: "Lots of games challenge players in different ways"
> A single-player game can present an interesting storyline
With the operative word being CAN. Storylines are just a _optional_ backdrop. Go review your '80's computer game history or even puzzle games. We're making multi-dimensional comptuer games, not writing a fucking novel here people.
Storylines are only _one_ way that the game presents something to overcome. Go read the Classic Novels. Why do we have the common themes: Man vs Man, Man vs Nature, etc.. The story line is the only way for _books_ to present this challenge and the results of whether the protangist won/lost. In our digital media, our focus is different as we have other ways to present information to the player.
Quick! What's the story in multiplayer CoD MW2, Team Fortress 2, BFBC2, or most other shooters? With Respect To Multiplayer, people mostly don't give a fuck about story. Now, as you move from twitch real-time to thinking strategey based games, then yes, story becomes more important as it adds another dimenion for how the challenges are conveyed to the player. Especially with RPG it (creates and) conveys digestable mini-goals.
> A single-player game can present an interesting storyline in ways that a multi-player game cannot (or, at least, has not yet).
Considering how _long_ it takes to create a good story from a single point of view, e.g. Tolkien, it is no surprise we don't have multi-story media. Part of the problem is lack of control over Time in multiplayer. In a single player game you can easily do "flashbacks" and control the pacing. In multiplayer, good luck.
Heck, taking a single-player story and "upscaling" it to multiplayer is hard enough. I've seen few games that pulled this off. Diablo II did this in a brilliant way.
If you want the ULTIMATE storyline, go play some good 'ol fashioned DnD with your buddies. Where your party and the DM co-create the story & pacing.
Sorry, don't mean to sound grump, but as a game developer, unskippable cut-scene crap just rubs me the wrong way. I want to PLAY the game, not watch a dam movie.
Agreed, the OP is an idiot and can't tell the difference between blind faith and intuition. Anybody who thinks there isn't a difference obviously doesn't know many women.
Any good mathematician uses intuition when solving problems. Scientists do as well. When you "act on your beliefs" you have faith. If you do nothing with them, then they are just that, beliefs. Faith eventually produces proof.
The Wright brother demonstrated faith by trying to build an airplane. They didn't _know_ the outcome until they _did_ it. A few people had the mere belief that lighter then air travel was possible, but how many put this belief to the test in an earnest desire to know if this belief was true or false.
To add yet another dimension to this discussion, even if every man, woman, and child, knew 100% about their Higher Self, it wouldn't change the nature of Religion. Religion is the kindergarten version of spirituality. You don't criticize a child for going through elementary school in order to enter university / colleage!
What the OP is unable to see is that both atheism & theism are built upon the ignorance of higher reality. Only a gnostic / mystic is able too see what the *theists are blind too. At least the agnostic is little more honest in that he has begun the first step towards knowledge: "I don't know."
Well it IS on a stock HSF. And you know how crap those are.
I didn't feel like spending $30 on a good CPU cooler. I'll pick up a cheap water cooler late this year $70 and easily push 4+ GHz.
> It's not like it's an Athlon or something that is both slow, 32 bit and single core.
I have an Athlon XP 3200+ you insensitive clod!
(Upgraded to an Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.6 GHz though :-) (Yes, o/c'd from the stock 3.2 Ghz on air)
Awww, did I confuse your itty bitty brain using such big words as Allodial Title...
http://www.google.com/search?q=allodial+title
Yup, guess Texas and Nevada must be dumb for allowing "Allodial Title"...
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071205134703AA2nVPJ
> You literally win the dumbest comment on slashdot award for today.
Too bad you are still a loser... but then again I shouldn't respond to anonymous cowards who have to resort to Ad hominem without adding anything interesting, informative, or insightful to the discussion at hand.
If you are going the SSD route, make sure you read this article first
The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738
> Most games, with a few exceptions, are single-threaded applications. Gamers are much better off with a higher clocked dual core system than a slower-clocked, 6 core system.
False, for games written after 2006 - 2008. If a game is cross platform such that it is meant to run on PS3 or XBox360, then it is pretty much garanteed to be multi-threaded - you'll never get great performance if your game is single threaded on those consoles, especially on the PS3 where you have 6 SPUs.
References:
* http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060906/monkkonen_01.shtml
* http://techreport.com/articles.x/11237
* http://software.intel.com/file/1478
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-core_processor#Disadvantages
* http://scrawlfx.com/2008/06/killzone-2-uses-4-12-of-ps3s-6-cell-chip-cores
The parent is missing quite a lot of facts.
You are a citizen of the State _AND_ of the united States. You can Renounce your united States citizen and still keep your State Citizenship. The capitalization difference between united States and United States is IMPORTANT; the Founding Fathers knew of this differences when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and specifically used the phrase "united States of America".
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Us_declaration_independence.jpg
Yes, I know people who have successfully legally opted out Federal Citizenship (and by extension of all Socialist Slave Programs), and never had to legally pay taxes again. Personally, I wouldn't waste years in the sovereignty movement, when it won't really matter in the long run. e.g. Good luck going in debt as you try to educate ignorant judges of this fact, researching the 3 types of U.S. definitions, fighting banks who can't understand the concept that you can still own assets even though you don't have a SSN, trying to get people to understand that the Constitution means shit since you never _signed_ it (_ALL_ contracts must be agreed either written or orally for them to be legally binding), etc.
Ownership is mostly a myth these days anyways. You used to truely own your own land, via allodial title, but the governement didn't like it that you didn't have to pay for the privelege (tax) to use your own land, so that was quickly abolished last century.
That should be trololo ....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
Please Mod Parent Up.
This is _precisely_ why the US has the Tenth Ammendment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
I just want to know who the fucktard developer was that completely redesigned the FF 3 Add Bookmark dialog so it is
- non-resizable, unless you use a add-on
- made the dam borders so wide that the readable space is tiny
Thank God for something like OpenBook - but seriously, FF ver 2 default dialog was WAY better.
Personas don't bug me. I use them at home, but not at work. It is not like you are forced to use them.
> but from what I can tell, right now, the bang-for-your-buck crown goes to Nvidia.
Um, no.
$320 5770 CF >= $500 GTX 295
$400 5870 = $500 GTX 295
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2856/
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2841/
> oh well, i'm figuring that he's probably right seeing as science is just a bunch of atheistic dogma anyway...
Considering that Max Plank said:
"Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als belehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, daß ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und daß die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut gemacht ist."
which is translated as
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
or paraphrased as the common English phrase:
"Truth never triumphs -- its opponents just die out."
"Science advances one funeral at a time."
You might be right on the dogma bit.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck
> Current gen consoles are looking at lasting 6+ years.
Sony is expecting 10 years with the PS3. We are already into year 4.
> Try running your COD4 on a 6 year old PC with a 6 year old graphics card. so something like an ATI X600 or Geforce 6600 ( 5 years ago)
Less then 2 years ago I used to regularly play COD4:MW (the first one) on an GeForce 6600GT + Athlon XP 3000 just fine thank you very much; my gaming rig was built in 2003, so that makes it 7 years old. I'm upgrading this year because L4D is only playable at 640x480 on the old rig to an Athlon X4 955 BE + 5770 which will last YEARS because it has o/c headroom.
Everybody wants 1920x1080 these days, but I was gaming before you young whipper snappers even knew about playing Quake at 512x384 on a Voodoo 1. Considering that consoles have the equivalent of an GeForce 7800, which version of pixel shaders isn't going away anytime soon.
That's destined to become a classic, much like "Goto considered harmful" !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful
Cheers
> It is the only reason to watch something like Star Trek Voyager. Where each episode they would kill people off, or mutate or something and then hit the big ol' reset button to reset things back to how they were at the start of the episode.
Really? I could think of seven other reasons. Maybe nine... ;-)
Have you used BeOS ?
Instead of Windows wasting the WHOLE space of the title bar, BeOS had two advantages:
- they took up minimal space instead of wasting space
- you can slide them ALONG the top of the window, so you could quickly switch between overlapping windows
Here is a picture...
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/47/152400976_bef7854aa1_o_d.png
And another description....
http://lowendmac.com/backnforth/010423.html
"For example, a BeOS web site used to advertise itself with the slogan, "Little. Yellow. Different." Instead of having a title bar that covers the whole top of the window, Be used little yellow tabs. The yellow immediately sets BeOS apart from all the grays and blues of other operating systems. One neat feature was that you could slide the tab if you held the shift key down. So you could stack several windows on top of each other with tabs in different places much like the interface of Apple's web site. That would be fabulous, but when you close the window or restart the computer, BeOS doesn't remember where you slid the tab - so they all get stacked on top of each other next time. It is a little detail, but it matters."
For a few bucks more, you can get a much beefier GPU...
$125 (MiR) 5770 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131328
The 5770 is twice as fast athe 240. Compare 103 fps vs. 54 fps @ 1680x01050.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2917/12
It appears Newegg is only stocking the GTS 250; lowest price is $90.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814134094&cm_re=geforce_gts_250-_-14-134-094-_-Product
I agree the GTS 250 would be a inexpensive gaming card. For better bang/buck though, I would still recommend the 5770 as you can pick up another one in a year's time at a reduced price, and get double the frame rate. :-)
I agree that you can definitely build it cheaper. I took the road of "future proofing" (if such a thing is possible in this industry) for a slightly higher dollar amount for a much greater ROI.
- The 965BE already includes a fan+heatsink. As you say, you can easily get an upgraded cooler and o/c the CPU for even a greater bang/buck. You could even save a few bucks and go with a 955BE ($160) or even a 940BE ($120).
- The 5770 GPU won't need to be upgraded for a few years. Spending a little more money upfront on a beefier PSU and MOBO now (+$30), means that when you upgrade your video card, you can simply get another 5770 at a reduced price and get almost double your framerate. :-)
Having been burnt on both ends, I believe there is a sweet spot between cheap and expensive. It lets you maximize your performance without burning money constantly playing the "upgrade" game.
You wouldn't to know of a "Best CPU for the money", kind of like how Tom's Hardware (yes, I know), has one for GPUs by chance?
e.g. 10 pages of fluff sumarized...
Best Graphic Cards for the money: June 2010 .. load 338
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-card-geforce-radeon,2646.html
(Categorys $90, $100-$190, $200-$275, $280-$400, over $400
$999 Radeon HD 5870
$310 Radeon HD 5770x2 ($170) idle 151W load 390W ** -- HD 4870x2 idle 204W
$400 Radeon HD 5850
$250 Radeon HD 5750x2 ($104-$140)
$220 Radeon HD 5830
$155 Radeon HD 5770 idle 35W load 256W ** -- or HD 4870
$125 Radeon HD 5750
$100 Radeon HD 4850, GeForce GTS 250
$80 GeForce 9600GT
$70 Radeon HD 5570
$40 Radeon HD 4650
Cheers