> Once upon a time mcrbids doth spoketh... > The last item before that spike is the one I buy. > Notice: hard drives. (pricewatch.com =) > $49 = 20 GB > $58 = 30 GB > $59 = 40 GB (who'd get a 30?) > $67 = 60 GB > $77 = 80 GB > $100 = 100 GB (small spike = 80'd be ok) > $106 = 120 GB (don't bother with the 100) > $151 = 160 (Big spike. Go with an 80 or a 120)
Hey thx for the table! You're right about the 80 GB and the 120 GB as being the best buy -- $0.96/Gb, and $0.88/Gb respectively.
No, not a 2200 or 2400 !! They suck for overclocking, since the multiplier is too high. The 1700 and the 2100 are the best* CPUs for overclocking currently. Basically you can easily reach the same MHZ as the model number!
Check the scores at: http://www.cpudatabase.com/
*Best = Fantastic performance at a great price if o/c'd. Since a 1700+ can hit over 2 GHz (Air), and 2100+ around 2.2 GHz (Air) !
Cheers
-- The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.
- Tacitus, 55-120 AD
> I have a Sony Playstation 2, and I have been converting a lot of home movies to DVD recently, and getting seriously pissed off in the process. The stupid PS2 only seems to like Verbatim DVD-R discs, and nothing else
You probably have an older PS2, and since the Verbatim are highly quality then the "no-name" brand, they are the only ones working for you.
You *can* use other media -- it depends on which *version* of the PS2 you have. The newer version 7 has much better support for media. US PS2 Versions UK PS2 Versions
I've been using Ritek http://www.allmediaoutlet.com/P-DVD-R-4.7-R100free.html burning at 2x on my Sony DRU-500, and they have played perfectly so far in my PS2. (Last month I picked up a 100 pack for $104, plus free shipping... not too bad!!)
> What they need is a standards based API for graphics engines.
Already done -- middleware such as RenderWare, Net Immerse, etc., already provide this, and are starting to be used more and more.
The reason there hasn't been a standard for graphic engines, is because the problem is an old one -- flexibility (abstraction) vs performance (hard-coded). Game engines that are flexible used to suffer a HUGE frame rate hit, which is completely unacceptable on consoles, where they needed 30 fps minimum.
e.g. BSP Trees vs Sphere Tree. A BSP Tree needs to be processed off-line (meant for static data, not dynamic), but gives perfect sorting, in linear time. Sphere Trees can handle dynamic objects just fine, but can't be used for sorting.
As CPUs have been become faster, and the graphics work has been offloaded to a dedicated GPU, the CPU has more time for the "general" solution, that is "fast enough."
> Limited flexibility. Ok, you've got DEBUG_LOG in every function. What if you want to change the logging to only happen on one function, on functions that write to data structures (not read it), on functions that are suspected to be slow? To support this kind of thing, you'd need to change the DEBUG_LOG in every single call.
You don't need a DEBUG_LOG in *every* function. Only the ones that you are interested in.
I ran into exactly this type of problem when I was working on a sound system (PS2) last year. (Debugging real-time systems - ugh.)
> (Some people do this. They give DEBUG_LOG an integer argument, which is masked against a debugging variable set at program startup. That's still limited)
Yeah, a "debug level" or "debug bitmasks" are the 2 common ways of doing this. The orthogonal logging drove me to a variation on the "bitmask" style.
> Once every single function has a macro in it, the total length of the program has increased. I haven't found this to be an issue -- and this is on a console, where memory is tight! The logging doesn't add THAT much to the code size. Logging is ONLY enabled for when I need to debug "full optimization" builds. When everything works, I turn the logging off.
Besides which, logging everything, brings the entire game down to a complete crawl.
I know, I love co-op games too, but they just cost too much money to make, and don't make enough profit to "justify" making them. Exceptions, are when it doesn't take too much work to make multiplayer co-op (ala Diablo 2)
> I'm personally very sick of playing Quake1 coop over and over simply becuase its the basically the only one out there. I'm sure there are others, but they've hidden pretty well from me. Check out Serious Sam -- you can make the enemies scale up by people in the game, and/or just make then +x% harder.
Once upon a time, Monokeros doth spoketh > Here's the (condensed) deal with the MHz myth:
[ long explaination snipped... ]
I like my description better...;-0
MHz is like RPM. Pretend you have 2 engines pulling a heavy load. One is at a high RPM, but with a few cylinders (Pentium 4), and the other at low RPM, but lots of cylinders (Athlon XP). Both can pull the load effectively the same, but watch out when the one with more cylinders gets its RPM up.
It's not completely accurate, but then again, its an anology to illustrate the point.
> Open office is really nice... and in my opinion, better than MS Office.
I just tried it out this week, after trying (unsucessfully) to get Excel to replace '*' in a spreadsheet. I like what I see so far in OpenOffice.org Calc ! It has a *very* nice find/replace dialog - it even supports regular expressions.
What I don't like: - Memory usage seems worse then Excel - Doesn't support the macros in my Excel sheets:( - The 'thumbtab' in the bottom right is too small, and not the standard Windows one. - The UI and hotkeys are not close enough to the Excel layout. (PageUp PageDown doesn't work in Print Preview, etc)
Regardless, it *has* piqued my curiousity for me wanting to take a look at the source, and maybe even see what's involved in contributing.
It is possible to support a 'community wish list' ? I'd pay a few dollars to have some features added!
Bringing this back on topic... any Plans for DRM in OpenOffice ? I can see it's usefullness by password protecting, and only allowing viewing. Pretty much what PDFs already support, but at least we would have a "free" editor.
GrandParent> 2. You could never have > 50 karma, because it was capped at 50. Remember 50 + 2 - 1 = 49? Parent> When it was capped at 50, people with > 50 didn't loose any points, so people who had 100's of karma points kept them
Thats not entirely the whole story.
Yes, if you *already* had more then 50, when the 50 cap was in place, then yes you wouldn't loose karma.
BUT, if you had less then 50, hit the 50 limit, and THEN got modded like the grandparent poster mentioned, you would actually loose it.
> Religion is based on faith, that's what defines it.
At the risk of beig pedantic, so is science. It's based on the faith that the scientific principle & logic a) works, b) is the best way to learn about the physical universe
BOTH science and religion start with assumptions that you can't prove.
> Three cheers for the BP6. Hip-Hip Hooray!;-) Did you ever read bp6.com? That was THE site for it back then.
> I built the system for $200 with eBay and Pricewatch Nice price! I got my 2 cpu's when the price bottomed out at $35 each (!!), a few years back. I bought two fan/coolers from 1coolPC (when they were still called 3dfxcool.com!) for ~ $70. Cheap SMP for the masses. Or at least the geeks:)
> Its fast, stable, and a really nice SMP box. Yes, I love mine too. What OS you running on it? I need to put BeOS back on it, and look into using it as a home mp3 player.
>Does Jim the C++ programmer need a 3 GHz machine when he's already got a perfectly fine 450 MHz machine? No, he doesn't!
You've never worked on a big project, where compiling takes between 30 minutes and 1 hour have you? (And yes, this is WITH precompiled headers) Compiling is CPU bound, not I/O bound (say like linking.)
Cheers -- George Moeckel: So let me get this straight -- I need to upgrade my video card to play UT2003 at the same frame rate I was getting with UT on my old video card? Poho: Right!
Q1. If the universe is expanding, wouldn't it do so in roughly a spherical shape? Isn't there a "bulge" in the center of the universe?
Q2. I'm curious if the orbits are always drawn as being 2D because they really are, or just because it's simpler to demonstrate. My encylopedia lists one factor in the orbit is the inclination, or tilt, of the orbital plane to the reference plance. But what is the reference plane? Why would our planets have an elliptical orbits that lie in the same plane if the universe is expanding? It seems strange that only Pluto and Neptunes orbit "cross". Anyone have any [links to] diagrams showing the realistic orbits?
Cheers ~~ Let me get this straight - I need to upgrade my video card to play UT2003 at the same frame rate as I did with UT on my older video card?
- George Moeckel
This is why I love my HP48's. They have dedicated math keys, Sin, Cos, Tan, [], x^y, sqrt(x), etc. Sure, I've finally gotten around to memorizing which alpha keys to use when running Emu48, but dedicated math keys would be a boon. It doesn't even have to be attached to the keyboard, an USB keypad would do the trick.
The other thing I would love to see, is a way to DISABLE the Caps key from changing case. I use it in all my games, and drives me nuts when my next team message is in all caps.
> I once disliked Java for that very reason, but I have since realized that enum is not as essential as you might think in an object-oriented language.
Enums provide a few big benefits in C++
1. They are constants 2. You can't take the addres of them inadvertantly. 3. They are guaranteed to be inlined.
Basically, they are a safe #define replacement.
Plus, the autoincrementing of the value is another big factor. Especially when used in tricks like this sizeof() bitcounting..
> all the trees are cheap 2-d cheats and keep the same "front" towards you as you move past or around them
You're pretty ignorant about graphics.
1. The proper technical name for that technique is called billboarding.
2. Billboard sprites are commonly used in games. From Doom, all the way to the latest XBox games, such as Bungine's Halo. (Look at the trees on top of the hills in the 2nd Level.)
> And 16 million colours is more than the eye can see,
Nonsense. With only 8-Bits for the green channel, I still see banding. Create an 256x256 bitmap. Do a gradient blend from RGB: 0,0,0 (upper right) to RGB: 0,255,0 (lower left)
Sony has the PS2 Linux Kit, why doesn't Microsoft something comparable? Oh wait, it has to do with actually making money off the hardware!;-)
That's what I don't understand: If Microsoft had designed the XBox so that they could of made a slight profit just selling the hardware (instead of a massive loss), and allowed anyone to hack on it, they WOULD have a lot more developers - both Amateur and Professional. More developers = More software. Plain and simple.
Interestingly enough, MS and nVidia just recently settled a dispute over pricing of parts!
> The GNU philosophy is intended to keep the software free - I don't care about your freedom to enslave my software.
You know, that's a very good summary of GNU software. The freedom of the software is more important then the freedom of users. BSD applies the reverse philosophy. Which license is better, is subjective.
Slashdot Mirror
> Once upon a time mcrbids doth spoketh ...
// here, availability is the issue
> The last item before that spike is the one I buy.
> Notice: hard drives. (pricewatch.com =)
> $49 = 20 GB
> $58 = 30 GB
> $59 = 40 GB (who'd get a 30?)
> $67 = 60 GB
> $77 = 80 GB
> $100 = 100 GB (small spike = 80'd be ok)
> $106 = 120 GB (don't bother with the 100)
> $151 = 160 (Big spike. Go with an 80 or a 120)
Hey thx for the table! You're right about the 80 GB and the 120 GB as being the best buy -- $0.96/Gb, and $0.88/Gb respectively.
> Or, perhaps, AMD CPUs?
> $50 1500 Mhz
> $49 1600 Mhz
> $50 1700 Mhz
> $58 1800 Mhz
> $63 1900 Mhz
> $71 2000 Mhz
> $83 2100 Mhz
> $95 2200 Mhz
> $122 2400 Mhz
> $170 2500 Mhz (Big spike, get a 2200 or 2400)
No, not a 2200 or 2400 !! They suck for overclocking, since the multiplier is too high. The 1700 and the 2100 are the best* CPUs for overclocking currently. Basically you can easily reach the same MHZ as the model number!
Check the scores at: http://www.cpudatabase.com/
*Best = Fantastic performance at a great price if o/c'd. Since a 1700+ can hit over 2 GHz (Air), and 2100+ around 2.2 GHz (Air) !
Cheers
--
The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.
- Tacitus, 55-120 AD
> I have a Sony Playstation 2, and I have been converting a lot of home movies to DVD recently, and getting seriously pissed off in the process. The stupid PS2 only seems to like Verbatim DVD-R discs, and nothing else
e .html burning at 2x on my Sony DRU-500, and they have played perfectly so far in my PS2. (Last month I picked up a 100 pack for $104, plus free shipping ... not too bad!!)
You probably have an older PS2, and since the Verbatim are highly quality then the "no-name" brand, they are the only ones working for you.
You *can* use other media -- it depends on which *version* of the PS2 you have. The newer version 7 has much better support for media.
US PS2 Versions
UK PS2 Versions
I've been using Ritek http://www.allmediaoutlet.com/P-DVD-R-4.7-R100fre
As always, check Reseller Ratings before buying online.
Cheers
> What they need is a standards based API for graphics engines.
Already done -- middleware such as RenderWare, Net Immerse, etc., already provide this, and are starting to be used more and more.
The reason there hasn't been a standard for graphic engines, is because the problem is an old one -- flexibility (abstraction) vs performance (hard-coded). Game engines that are flexible used to suffer a HUGE frame rate hit, which is completely unacceptable on consoles, where they needed 30 fps minimum.
e.g.
BSP Trees vs Sphere Tree. A BSP Tree needs to be processed off-line (meant for static data, not dynamic), but gives perfect sorting, in linear time. Sphere Trees can handle dynamic objects just fine, but can't be used for sorting.
As CPUs have been become faster, and the graphics work has been offloaded to a dedicated GPU, the CPU has more time for the "general" solution, that is "fast enough."
Cheers
> Limited flexibility. Ok, you've got DEBUG_LOG in every function. What if you want to change the logging to only happen on one function, on functions that write to data structures (not read it), on functions that are suspected to be slow? To support this kind of thing, you'd need to change the DEBUG_LOG in every single call.
:
:
:
You don't need a DEBUG_LOG in *every* function. Only the ones that you are interested in.
I ran into exactly this type of problem when I was working on a sound system (PS2) last year. (Debugging real-time systems - ugh.)
My solution was to use a 2 tier system.
e.g.
// Master enable/disable
#define LOG_SOUND 1
// Specific logging
#define LOG_SOUND_UPLOAD 1
#define LOG_SOUND_CREATE 0
#define LOG_SOUND_PLAY 0
#define LOG_SOUND_VOLUME 0
Sound::Play()
{
#if LOG_SOUND & LOG_SOUND_PLAY
printf( "Playing..." )
#endif
}
Sound::Upload()
{
#if LOG_SOUND & LOG_SOUND_PLAY
printf( "Uploading..." )
#endif
}
Sound::Pan()
{
}
> (Some people do this. They give DEBUG_LOG an integer argument, which is masked against a debugging variable set at program startup. That's
still limited)
Yeah, a "debug level" or "debug bitmasks" are the 2 common ways of doing this. The orthogonal logging drove me to a variation on the "bitmask" style.
> Once every single function has a macro in it, the total length of the program has increased.
I haven't found this to be an issue -- and this is on a console, where memory is tight! The logging doesn't add THAT much to the code size. Logging is ONLY enabled for when I need to debug "full optimization" builds. When everything works, I turn the logging off.
Besides which, logging everything, brings the entire game down to a complete crawl.
Cheers
> 3 - NO FREAKIN COOP GAMES.
I know, I love co-op games too, but they just cost too much money to make, and don't make enough profit to "justify" making them. Exceptions, are when it doesn't take too much work to make multiplayer co-op (ala Diablo 2)
> I'm personally very sick of playing Quake1 coop over and over simply becuase its the basically the only one out there. I'm sure there are others, but they've hidden pretty well from me.
Check out Serious Sam -- you can make the enemies scale up by people in the game, and/or just make then +x% harder.
Cheers
Once upon a time, Monokeros doth spoketh
...;-0
> Here's the (condensed) deal with the MHz myth:
[ long explaination snipped... ]
I like my description better
MHz is like RPM. Pretend you have 2 engines pulling a heavy load. One is at a high RPM, but with a few cylinders (Pentium 4), and the other at low RPM, but lots of cylinders (Athlon XP). Both can pull the load effectively the same, but watch out when the one with more cylinders gets its RPM up.
It's not completely accurate, but then again, its an anology to illustrate the point.
Cheers
> ... , this would be the first female entry in their email client's contact list!
;-)
Probably the second -- you forgot Mom's email address !
> Open office is really nice ... and in my opinion, better than MS Office.
:(
... any Plans for DRM in OpenOffice ? I can see it's usefullness by password protecting, and only allowing viewing. Pretty much what PDFs already support, but at least we would have a "free" editor.
I just tried it out this week, after trying (unsucessfully) to get Excel to replace '*' in a spreadsheet. I like what I see so far in OpenOffice.org Calc ! It has a *very* nice find/replace dialog - it even supports regular expressions.
What I don't like:
- Memory usage seems worse then Excel
- Doesn't support the macros in my Excel sheets
- The 'thumbtab' in the bottom right is too small, and not the standard Windows one.
- The UI and hotkeys are not close enough to the Excel layout. (PageUp PageDown doesn't work in Print Preview, etc)
Regardless, it *has* piqued my curiousity for me wanting to take a look at the source, and maybe even see what's involved in contributing.
It is possible to support a 'community wish list' ? I'd pay a few dollars to have some features added!
Bringing this back on topic
Thx for that link ! I lost it a few years ago, and never could find it.
Now to find the one that lists all the products MS has made by buying it.
GrandParent> 2. You could never have > 50 karma, because it was capped at 50. Remember 50 + 2 - 1 = 49?
Parent> When it was capped at 50, people with > 50 didn't loose any points, so people who had 100's of karma points kept them
Thats not entirely the whole story.
Yes, if you *already* had more then 50, when the 50 cap was in place, then yes you wouldn't loose karma.
BUT, if you had less then 50, hit the 50 limit, and THEN got modded like the grandparent poster mentioned, you would actually loose it.
Mod this whole thread OT
> Religion is based on faith, that's what defines it.
At the risk of beig pedantic, so is science. It's based on the faith that the scientific principle & logic
a) works,
b) is the best way to learn about the physical universe
BOTH science and religion start with assumptions that you can't prove.
> Three cheers for the BP6. ;-)
:)
Hip-Hip Hooray!
Did you ever read bp6.com? That was THE site for it back then.
> I built the system for $200 with eBay and Pricewatch
Nice price! I got my 2 cpu's when the price bottomed out at $35 each (!!), a few years back. I bought two fan/coolers from 1coolPC (when they were still called 3dfxcool.com!) for ~ $70. Cheap SMP for the masses. Or at least the geeks
> Its fast, stable, and a really nice SMP box.
Yes, I love mine too. What OS you running on it? I need to put BeOS back on it, and look into using it as a home mp3 player.
Cheers
Pity that there wasn't any dual Celerons benchmarked in there. I still use my Abit BP6 Dual Celrys 366 o/c to 550 as a 2nd gaming box.
>Does Jim the C++ programmer need a 3 GHz machine when he's already got a perfectly fine 450 MHz machine? No, he doesn't!
You've never worked on a big project, where compiling takes between 30 minutes and 1 hour have you? (And yes, this is WITH precompiled headers) Compiling is CPU bound, not I/O bound (say like linking.)
Cheers
--
George Moeckel: So let me get this straight -- I need to upgrade my video card to play UT2003 at the same frame rate I was getting with UT on my old video card?
Poho: Right!
Q1. If the universe is expanding, wouldn't it do so in roughly a spherical shape? Isn't there a "bulge" in the center of the universe?
Q2. I'm curious if the orbits are always drawn as being 2D because they really are, or just because it's simpler to demonstrate. My encylopedia lists one factor in the orbit is the inclination, or tilt, of the orbital plane to the reference plance. But what is the reference plane? Why would our planets have an elliptical orbits that lie in the same plane if the universe is expanding? It seems strange that only Pluto and Neptunes orbit "cross". Anyone have any [links to] diagrams showing the realistic orbits?
Cheers
~~
Let me get this straight - I need to upgrade my video card to play UT2003 at the same frame rate as I did with UT on my older video card?
- George Moeckel
This is why I love my HP48's. They have dedicated math keys, Sin, Cos, Tan, [], x^y, sqrt(x), etc. Sure, I've finally gotten around to memorizing which alpha keys to use when running Emu48, but dedicated math keys would be a boon. It doesn't even have to be attached to the keyboard, an USB keypad would do the trick.
The other thing I would love to see, is a way to DISABLE the Caps key from changing case. I use it in all my games, and drives me nuts when my next team message is in all caps.
Cheers
> I once disliked Java for that very reason, but I have since realized that enum is not as essential as you might think in an object-oriented language.
Enums provide a few big benefits in C++
1. They are constants
2. You can't take the addres of them inadvertantly.
3. They are guaranteed to be inlined.
Basically, they are a safe #define replacement.
Plus, the autoincrementing of the value is another big factor. Especially when used in tricks like this sizeof() bitcounting..
> all the trees are cheap 2-d cheats and keep the same "front" towards you as you move past or around them
You're pretty ignorant about graphics.
1. The proper technical name for that technique is called billboarding.
2. Billboard sprites are commonly used in games. From Doom, all the way to the latest XBox games, such as Bungine's Halo. (Look at the trees on top of the hills in the 2nd Level.)
3. How many games have you written or worked on?
> You can buy a car and own it afterward.
... if you need a license to drive it on a public road THEN you don't really own it. License means permission from THE OWNER.
Oh really
> And 16 million colours is more than the eye can see,
Nonsense. With only 8-Bits for the green channel, I still see banding. Create an 256x256 bitmap. Do a gradient blend from RGB: 0,0,0 (upper right) to RGB: 0,255,0 (lower left)
Rest of your post is spot on.
Sony has the PS2 Linux Kit, why doesn't Microsoft something comparable? Oh wait, it has to do with actually making money off the hardware! ;-)
That's what I don't understand: If Microsoft had designed the XBox so that they could of made a slight profit just selling the hardware (instead of a massive loss), and allowed anyone to hack on it, they WOULD have a lot more developers - both Amateur and Professional. More developers = More software. Plain and simple.
Interestingly enough, MS and nVidia just recently settled a dispute over pricing of parts!
Cheers
--
#30794h SYSEVAL
> There was no GTS Pro either. The rev was called the Geforce 2 Ultra.
What are you talking about ? There was the Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS Pro.
> The GNU philosophy is intended to keep the software free - I don't care about your freedom to enslave my software.
You know, that's a very good summary of GNU software. The freedom of the software is more important then the freedom of users. BSD applies the reverse philosophy. Which license is better, is subjective.
Oooh, good one!
/. to find out what's so special about "today" ;-)
It's sad when you have to read BluesNews or
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