>>there's little advantage to using a PC over a console for games.
Other than the fact that PC users can download and run games released as free software, freeware, or shareware, produced by any developer with a copy of Windows and a copy of GCC?
This is only a theoretical advantage. Until people actually start playing freeware games on a PC written in GCC, it's not a real advantage. How many popular games can you list to make this a non-theoretical advantage.
There's also the big problem of installing binaries from someone you don't know (a non major publisher) or for your average PC gamer to DL and install GCC and download and compile the source for a game before running it. Perhaps if there were a universally known repository for shareware games that could be "trusted" with easy download and playing... like back in the Amiga days for those of you who remember Fred Fish.
Animation done on 2-frames (15 frames per second for TV, 12 for film) was considered acceptable - for animation. I guess it still is. A lot of kid stuff was done on 4-frames. I don't do combat games.
There is a big difference between animation which you watch passively and interactive video games. The world in games responds to you and your brain actually processes motion and events very differently when working interactively than when passively viewing something. Too much delay, bad frame rates, inconsistencies can lead to serious "VR lag" or headaches. Faster framerates and smoother navigation make it easier for your brain to process. The interesting thing here is that data overload (i.e. frame rates faster than your brain can handle) is processed more easily than data underflow. The reason is that your brain/eyes simply average or throw out extra data very quickly but in the case of underflow, your brain works very hard to interpolate and extract missing information. BTW, modern film effects spend a lot of time on extras like motion blur which performs the "interpolation" step for your brain -- most video games have very cheesy motion blur or none at all.
Video games start looking crappy around 30 FPS or slower. We're not so much concerned with the average framerate but with the lowest possible framerate. Jon Carmack had a big post about this on his blog way back in the 90's and if you've read Michael Abrash's articles or Zen books you'd note he's mentioned it as well. It's actually better to have a game run at 30 if it's consistent then run at 60 and periodically drop to 5 or 10 FPS. Since the problem is the lowest framerate, having the fastest card out there becomes more important for the user and identifying and eliminating frame spikes becomes imperative to the developer.
so fucking what? How much of that 10-20 million did you get personally?
It's not all about the money but to answer your question, Midway actually does have a royalty plan and higher selling games do get royalty bonuses for the team. The team splits a fair share of the profits after development, marketing, and distribution costs are covered. Games right now have a larger development cost so royalty expectations are more modest but there's nothing that would keep the team members personally from taking home wheelbarrows full of cash for their share of royalties if the next game is one of the top console sellers (and the chances of that happening on a console game are quite a bit higher than PC games right now).
However, like I said, it's not all about the money. It just feels GOOD to have your game be purchased and played by over two million people. It's something to be proud of on a personal level. And it's a lot harder to get all that excited in developing new content for the PC market where the only games in that range is WOW. The next PC contender for 2007 was pushing merely one forth of that which was a Sim's add-on module. This years top PC game according to other posts in this thread (although slashdottter posts are hardly a reliable reference) is doing 1/10th as well as the game I work on.
A DirectX architect says that console games are on the way out, and PC games are coming back.
First of all, Alex St John was hardly a primary DirectX Architect. He was, however, the first official DirectX Evangelist. That's like comparing Spock to Uhura.
Second, ASJ's current software company, WildTangent, is predominantly mentioned as some of the cruftware most of you guys were screaming to have removed in the Sony article earlier today.
Third, DirectX is doing as much for consoles by making the XBOX easy to program as it is for PC's. Why do you think the original XBOX console came out of nowhere and did so well? It took the best of DirectX ease of programming and subtracted a big chunk of the cruft and compatibility pains of Windows PC's and put them to work in a common target.
The one thing I agree with ASJ is that Intel is own worst enemy when it comes to PC games. Intel wants the PC game market to thrive which will help sell their $$$ high-end processors but there is nothing out there recently that has held back the PC game market more than the crappy performance of Intel's IGP's which are in about 70-80% of consumer PCs.
This has to be slashdot for an actual video game developer gets modded down as offtopic while the response that's full of technical errors about pc vs console performance gets modded "+5 insightful".
Sigh... oh well, that's probably why there are so few posts from actual people in the industry here.
The biggest problem plaguing most PC releases nowadays is that in order to keep up with the high power of most console games, a huge amount of PC horsepower is required; Hell, the X-Box 360 is more powerful than my PC. The Wii probably is, for that matter.
...
So, why should I, stuck with my crappy old Radeon 9600 Pro, go out and buy Crysis, even if I really wanted to? The answer is: I shouldn't. There's no possible way I could even squeeze 2FPS on that one.
You really don't know what you're talking about here. Your Radeon 9600 Pro is orders of magnitude faster than the Wii graphics chipset (which is basically just an update from the GameCube. If you think that consoles are even remotely close to being as fast as a baseline PC with a decent modern video card, you've been drinking the marketing Kool-Aid that's been around since before the "Emotion Engine" was supposed to be so powerful that it would render images that would make you cry when you played PS2 games.
The reason that good games run decently on consoles is the small group of really smart programmers who spend several man years optimizing each game plus you have another team of really talented artists who massage the hell of out the content. All of the "wow" in console games comes from knowing where to cut corners plus a lot of sweat and hard work.
BTW, if you want a glimpse of publicly available CELL code (no NDA info) that shows just what sort of hoops actual console game programmers are willing to jump through for a couple extra clock cycles, check out Mike Acton's site.
FTA "So even though Galactic Civilizations II sold 300,000 copies making [eight] digits in revenue on a budget of less than $1 million, it's still largely off the radar. I practically have to agree to mow editors' lawns to get coverage... [Sins of a Solar Empire] has already sold about 200,000 copies in the first month of release. It's the highest-rated PC game of 2008 and probably the best-selling 2008 PC title. Neither of these titles have CD copy protection"
The game I work on, Mortal Kombat, sold close to two million units on all SKU's on the last release. Guitar Hero sales have just racked up $1 billion for the franchise. That's correct, $1 billion. When you're the top selling title of '08 on the PC and you're gonna make $2-3 million that's nothing compared to being just a contender on the consoles where you can make $10-20 million.
I personally believe the biggest difference is in the users. Say the words "flame war" to a linux user and he'll imagine a heated conversation about the virtues of emacs vs vi. Say "flame war" to an average windows user and they'll think of playing an FPS shooter where you have some sort of mega flame-thrower as your primary weapon.
Maybe people who feel the CLI is superior to a GUI and prefer to use VI to interact with a computer's configuration aren't necessarily going to have a large intersection with graphics happy button mashers?
An intel integrated graphics card still can't run Quake 3 well.
Unfortunately, this is still true and Intel is way behind the ball on integrated graphics adapters. The first cheap consumer integrated chipset that can actually run games is the 780G that was released by AMD. Plus the integrated graphics doesn't sit around doing nothing if you buy a dedicated video card -- the 780G is actually fast enough that you can use it with Crossover (ATI's SLI) and get a speed boost in addition to your add-in card.
Astrology is a flawed mental shortcut for NOT understanding the world.
Astrology is not a more-flawed model; it's not a model at all.
...
Astrology is not a model, and can't be proven wrong as it is not evidence based, and makes no testable predictions.
Replace the word Astrology with Religion and somehow your words become extremely controversial while still maintaining the same degree of technical "correctness".
Astrology is simply a spiritual / religious theory of how the world works. No more incorrect than creationism as far as theories go and that's good enough for most people. Heck since we're teaching creationism in schools nowdays, why don't we include astrology alongside those pesky other theories of physics.
- The religion that's indoctrinated them has done so since birth. You're going to ear bash them for an hour or two and expect them to change their lifelong beliefs? You'll only create resentment.
- You have a much better chance at reaching the parents through the children. However if you only reach the children, it simply won't be an issue in 40 years.
This is why the Creationists want to teach Intelligent Design to children. To get to them through repeated indoctrination and brainwashing so they won't question their beliefs as adults. Teaching evolution to children frightens them because it might mean they grow up as adults who don't believe in a Creationist God.
My actual excuse for the iPhone is that I use speakerphone a lot on my current phone (for hands free conversations in my car) and the iPhone has a very weak speakerphone. Also, just the maximum phone volume on the normal speaker for the iPhone is pretty low for when you are in a crowded public place (bus, train, bar, etc) and it's hard to use. When Apple makes the volume (speakerphone and normal speaker) go up to at least "8" (on a scale where 10 == the average max volume for a phone) I'll buy an iPhone... right now the volume on them goes up to about a "6" vs other phones.
there is a major difference though. if you dont also pay another seperate subscription fee for the internet and all that crap the iphone is useless. so its not just 400 anymore...
First off, every iPhone plan includes internet access and costs not much more than a regular cell phone plan. You could easily pay more for a cell plan with the same features and have a crappier phone that can't make use of those features. Also using cars as an comparison to phones because there are no "subscription fees" (ongoing regular cost for use) is terrible:
Car's have "subscription fees" - the monthly cost for use includes the following "fees":
Gasoline (think of this as a charge per "minutes")
I've always been amazed by the controller that came with the Atari 2600.
You must have had a different type of controller than I did because the plastic "seat" which pressed on the four direction switches inside at the end of the stick was a ring connected by four little diagonal supports to the control stick and as soon as one of those supports broke, the two directions controlled by that diagonal would be kinda lame.
you do realize you can say "fuck" on Slashdot, right? Watch: Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. It's pretty cool
Depends on who has mod points that day. I once got modded down to "-1 flamebait" for pointing out that RTFM means "Read The Fucking Manual" as opposed to "Read The Fine Manual" which appeared in a linked article. I'm sure if the creators of RTFM thought the manual was "fine", they'd be saying RTFFM anyhow:)
After all IMHO, a pdf reader going on a rampage is something that I'd consider simply unacceptable, rather than something I'd want to be informed of...
How exactly do you define Rampage?
Adobe Reader just installs itself...
oh... and a little service program to speed up loading that runs on load (Adobe Reader Speed Launch)...
oh... and a little service for shared reviews and subscriptions that runs on load (Adode Synchronizer)...
oh... and a small background utility that automatically checks for updates and pop up a window asking you to install a new version...
oh... and by default (unless you click NO I DON'T WANT THIS) an Internet Exploder Toolbar (Yahoo or Google depending on who's paying) to take over^B^B^B^B^B^B^B^B^B help you out with searching and browsing.
Adobe Acrobat Reader decides that they own my system and just sets about installing crap.
One of the things I hate most about living in a Windows World is that every program has a second program that installs as a system service that does nothing other than check for updates... and these programs load at boot and stay resident eating memory and occasional CPU cycles. You have the Adobe update, Java Update (JUSCHED.exe), iTunes Update, Antivirus update, etc. If windows actually had a common update notification API (you have version X software installed and registered with the computer and it checks website Y if there's a version newer than X), we could probably get rid of a dozen programes running on every computer. These update programs take memory and slow down boot time and they mainly exist because 99.9% of windows software ships so buggy you need autoupdates to be on.
The code for the Mandelbrot Set is beautiful too... merely a repetition of ' Z = Z^2 + C '.
The Bresenham integer line stepper is genius, especially for it's time, but now it's commonly implemented in hardware and isn't even learned by many new 3D coders. That's not knocking it's importance... it's the graphical equivalent of inventing the wheel. What you're looking at with demos now-days though is a Ferrari -- definitely a technological achievement and arguably art. Like the demos and basic line drawing, a Ferrari is much more complex than the simple wheel, but would never have been possible without the wheel's invention.
It's like saying that Americans can't speak more than two languages.
I think the general assumption around the world is that Americans can't speak MORE than *ONE* language and most of them don't even speak the one very well. That's certainly the image our current president propagates to the rest of the planet.
When you see a magnetic field, your first question should always be, "Where's the current?"
Have you ever heard of permanent magnets?
There are two methods of producing magnetism: 1) by current and 2) by aligning particles with non-zero magnetic moments (quantum spin) within a substance.
Electromagnets use the first method while permanent magnets use the second.
OK, I'm not an expert in biosecurity, but wouldn't the reduced air pressure in the room be accomplished by pumping air out of the room?
If the secure research facility is air-tight, pumping a little bit of air out would produce a vacuum / differential pressure (compared to the positive pressure suit systems) that would could be maintained without pumping out any more air.
Furthermore, the little bit of air that does get pumped out can be processed to eliminate or kill viruses -- it can be filtered, passed through a High-Output Ozone emitter or Ultraviolet array, pass through a chemical wash, or even burned (in the case of a novel I read about a theoretical BSL5 facility).
The transmission capacity of an electronic pathway such as a communications line, computer bus or computer channel. In a digital line, it is measured in bits per second or bytes per second (see Mb/sec). In an analog channel or in a digital channel that is wrapped in a carrier frequency, bandwidth is the difference between the highest and lowest frequencies and is measured in Hertz (kHz, MHz, GHz).
In computer networking literature, digital bandwidth refers to data rate measured in bit/s, for example channel capacity (digital bandwidth capacity) or throughput (digital bandwidth consumption). The reason for this usage is that the channel capacity in bit/s is proportional to the analogue bandwidth in hertz according to Hartley's law.
Slashdot Mirror
>>there's little advantage to using a PC over a console for games.
Other than the fact that PC users can download and run games released as free software, freeware, or shareware, produced by any developer with a copy of Windows and a copy of GCC?
This is only a theoretical advantage. Until people actually start playing freeware games on a PC written in GCC, it's not a real advantage. How many popular games can you list to make this a non-theoretical advantage.
There's also the big problem of installing binaries from someone you don't know (a non major publisher) or for your average PC gamer to DL and install GCC and download and compile the source for a game before running it. Perhaps if there were a universally known repository for shareware games that could be "trusted" with easy download and playing... like back in the Amiga days for those of you who remember Fred Fish.
Animation done on 2-frames (15 frames per second for TV, 12 for film) was considered acceptable - for animation. I guess it still is. A lot of kid stuff was done on 4-frames. I don't do combat games.
There is a big difference between animation which you watch passively and interactive video games. The world in games responds to you and your brain actually processes motion and events very differently when working interactively than when passively viewing something. Too much delay, bad frame rates, inconsistencies can lead to serious "VR lag" or headaches. Faster framerates and smoother navigation make it easier for your brain to process. The interesting thing here is that data overload (i.e. frame rates faster than your brain can handle) is processed more easily than data underflow. The reason is that your brain/eyes simply average or throw out extra data very quickly but in the case of underflow, your brain works very hard to interpolate and extract missing information. BTW, modern film effects spend a lot of time on extras like motion blur which performs the "interpolation" step for your brain -- most video games have very cheesy motion blur or none at all.
Video games start looking crappy around 30 FPS or slower. We're not so much concerned with the average framerate but with the lowest possible framerate. Jon Carmack had a big post about this on his blog way back in the 90's and if you've read Michael Abrash's articles or Zen books you'd note he's mentioned it as well. It's actually better to have a game run at 30 if it's consistent then run at 60 and periodically drop to 5 or 10 FPS. Since the problem is the lowest framerate, having the fastest card out there becomes more important for the user and identifying and eliminating frame spikes becomes imperative to the developer.
so fucking what? How much of that 10-20 million did you get personally?
It's not all about the money but to answer your question, Midway actually does have a royalty plan and higher selling games do get royalty bonuses for the team. The team splits a fair share of the profits after development, marketing, and distribution costs are covered. Games right now have a larger development cost so royalty expectations are more modest but there's nothing that would keep the team members personally from taking home wheelbarrows full of cash for their share of royalties if the next game is one of the top console sellers (and the chances of that happening on a console game are quite a bit higher than PC games right now).
However, like I said, it's not all about the money. It just feels GOOD to have your game be purchased and played by over two million people. It's something to be proud of on a personal level. And it's a lot harder to get all that excited in developing new content for the PC market where the only games in that range is WOW. The next PC contender for 2007 was pushing merely one forth of that which was a Sim's add-on module. This years top PC game according to other posts in this thread (although slashdottter posts are hardly a reliable reference) is doing 1/10th as well as the game I work on.
A DirectX architect says that console games are on the way out, and PC games are coming back.
First of all, Alex St John was hardly a primary DirectX Architect. He was, however, the first official DirectX Evangelist. That's like comparing Spock to Uhura.
Second, ASJ's current software company, WildTangent, is predominantly mentioned as some of the cruftware most of you guys were screaming to have removed in the Sony article earlier today.
Third, DirectX is doing as much for consoles by making the XBOX easy to program as it is for PC's. Why do you think the original XBOX console came out of nowhere and did so well? It took the best of DirectX ease of programming and subtracted a big chunk of the cruft and compatibility pains of Windows PC's and put them to work in a common target.
The one thing I agree with ASJ is that Intel is own worst enemy when it comes to PC games. Intel wants the PC game market to thrive which will help sell their $$$ high-end processors but there is nothing out there recently that has held back the PC game market more than the crappy performance of Intel's IGP's which are in about 70-80% of consumer PCs.
I just blogged about my purchase of a QuadCore Gateway with a lot of cruft on it. To bad Decrapifyer doesn't work on all the apps on Gateway's or Sony's. It seems mostly targetted towards Dell cruft.
This has to be slashdot for an actual video game developer gets modded down as offtopic while the response that's full of technical errors about pc vs console performance gets modded "+5 insightful".
Sigh... oh well, that's probably why there are so few posts from actual people in the industry here.
The biggest problem plaguing most PC releases nowadays is that in order to keep up with the high power of most console games, a huge amount of PC horsepower is required; Hell, the X-Box 360 is more powerful than my PC. The Wii probably is, for that matter.
...
So, why should I, stuck with my crappy old Radeon 9600 Pro, go out and buy Crysis, even if I really wanted to? The answer is: I shouldn't. There's no possible way I could even squeeze 2FPS on that one.
You really don't know what you're talking about here. Your Radeon 9600 Pro is orders of magnitude faster than the Wii graphics chipset (which is basically just an update from the GameCube. If you think that consoles are even remotely close to being as fast as a baseline PC with a decent modern video card, you've been drinking the marketing Kool-Aid that's been around since before the "Emotion Engine" was supposed to be so powerful that it would render images that would make you cry when you played PS2 games.
The reason that good games run decently on consoles is the small group of really smart programmers who spend several man years optimizing each game plus you have another team of really talented artists who massage the hell of out the content. All of the "wow" in console games comes from knowing where to cut corners plus a lot of sweat and hard work.
BTW, if you want a glimpse of publicly available CELL code (no NDA info) that shows just what sort of hoops actual console game programmers are willing to jump through for a couple extra clock cycles, check out Mike Acton's site.
FTA "So even though Galactic Civilizations II sold 300,000 copies making [eight] digits in revenue on a budget of less than $1 million, it's still largely off the radar. I practically have to agree to mow editors' lawns to get coverage... [Sins of a Solar Empire] has already sold about 200,000 copies in the first month of release. It's the highest-rated PC game of 2008 and probably the best-selling 2008 PC title. Neither of these titles have CD copy protection"
The game I work on, Mortal Kombat, sold close to two million units on all SKU's on the last release. Guitar Hero sales have just racked up $1 billion for the franchise. That's correct, $1 billion. When you're the top selling title of '08 on the PC and you're gonna make $2-3 million that's nothing compared to being just a contender on the consoles where you can make $10-20 million.
You will cave in.
So you have a pile of Serial-ATA HD's you can't use with your laptop? I'm confused?!?
I personally believe the biggest difference is in the users. Say the words "flame war" to a linux user and he'll imagine a heated conversation about the virtues of emacs vs vi. Say "flame war" to an average windows user and they'll think of playing an FPS shooter where you have some sort of mega flame-thrower as your primary weapon.
Maybe people who feel the CLI is superior to a GUI and prefer to use VI to interact with a computer's configuration aren't necessarily going to have a large intersection with graphics happy button mashers?
An intel integrated graphics card still can't run Quake 3 well.
Unfortunately, this is still true and Intel is way behind the ball on integrated graphics adapters. The first cheap consumer integrated chipset that can actually run games is the 780G that was released by AMD. Plus the integrated graphics doesn't sit around doing nothing if you buy a dedicated video card -- the 780G is actually fast enough that you can use it with Crossover (ATI's SLI) and get a speed boost in addition to your add-in card.
Astrology is a flawed mental shortcut for NOT understanding the world.
...
Astrology is not a more-flawed model; it's not a model at all.
Astrology is not a model, and can't be proven wrong as it is not evidence based, and makes no testable predictions.
Replace the word Astrology with Religion and somehow your words become extremely controversial while still maintaining the same degree of technical "correctness".
Astrology is simply a spiritual / religious theory of how the world works. No more incorrect than creationism as far as theories go and that's good enough for most people. Heck since we're teaching creationism in schools nowdays, why don't we include astrology alongside those pesky other theories of physics.
- The religion that's indoctrinated them has done so since birth. You're going to ear bash them for an hour or two and expect them to change their lifelong beliefs? You'll only create resentment.
- You have a much better chance at reaching the parents through the children. However if you only reach the children, it simply won't be an issue in 40 years.
This is why the Creationists want to teach Intelligent Design to children. To get to them through repeated indoctrination and brainwashing so they won't question their beliefs as adults. Teaching evolution to children frightens them because it might mean they grow up as adults who don't believe in a Creationist God.
My actual excuse for the iPhone is that I use speakerphone a lot on my current phone (for hands free conversations in my car) and the iPhone has a very weak speakerphone. Also, just the maximum phone volume on the normal speaker for the iPhone is pretty low for when you are in a crowded public place (bus, train, bar, etc) and it's hard to use. When Apple makes the volume (speakerphone and normal speaker) go up to at least "8" (on a scale where 10 == the average max volume for a phone) I'll buy an iPhone... right now the volume on them goes up to about a "6" vs other phones.
First off, every iPhone plan includes internet access and costs not much more than a regular cell phone plan. You could easily pay more for a cell plan with the same features and have a crappier phone that can't make use of those features. Also using cars as an comparison to phones because there are no "subscription fees" (ongoing regular cost for use) is terrible:
Car's have "subscription fees" - the monthly cost for use includes the following "fees":
I've always been amazed by the controller that came with the Atari 2600.
You must have had a different type of controller than I did because the plastic "seat" which pressed on the four direction switches inside at the end of the stick was a ring connected by four little diagonal supports to the control stick and as soon as one of those supports broke, the two directions controlled by that diagonal would be kinda lame.
you do realize you can say "fuck" on Slashdot, right? Watch: Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. It's pretty cool
:)
Depends on who has mod points that day. I once got modded down to "-1 flamebait" for pointing out that RTFM means "Read The Fucking Manual" as opposed to "Read The Fine Manual" which appeared in a linked article. I'm sure if the creators of RTFM thought the manual was "fine", they'd be saying RTFFM anyhow
After all IMHO, a pdf reader going on a rampage is something that I'd consider simply unacceptable, rather than something I'd want to be informed of...
How exactly do you define Rampage?
Adobe Reader just installs itself...
oh... and a little service program to speed up loading that runs on load (Adobe Reader Speed Launch)...
oh... and a little service for shared reviews and subscriptions that runs on load (Adode Synchronizer)...
oh... and a small background utility that automatically checks for updates and pop up a window asking you to install a new version...
oh... and by default (unless you click NO I DON'T WANT THIS) an Internet Exploder Toolbar (Yahoo or Google depending on who's paying) to take over^B^B^B^B^B^B^B^B^B help you out with searching and browsing.
Adobe Acrobat Reader decides that they own my system and just sets about installing crap.
One of the things I hate most about living in a Windows World is that every program has a second program that installs as a system service that does nothing other than check for updates... and these programs load at boot and stay resident eating memory and occasional CPU cycles. You have the Adobe update, Java Update (JUSCHED.exe), iTunes Update, Antivirus update, etc. If windows actually had a common update notification API (you have version X software installed and registered with the computer and it checks website Y if there's a version newer than X), we could probably get rid of a dozen programes running on every computer. These update programs take memory and slow down boot time and they mainly exist because 99.9% of windows software ships so buggy you need autoupdates to be on.
The subject made me think of some really beautiful pieces of code that I've seen in my life. Breseham's algorithm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bresenham's_line_algorithm
The code for the Mandelbrot Set is beautiful too... merely a repetition of ' Z = Z^2 + C '.
The Bresenham integer line stepper is genius, especially for it's time, but now it's commonly implemented in hardware and isn't even learned by many new 3D coders. That's not knocking it's importance... it's the graphical equivalent of inventing the wheel. What you're looking at with demos now-days though is a Ferrari -- definitely a technological achievement and arguably art. Like the demos and basic line drawing, a Ferrari is much more complex than the simple wheel, but would never have been possible without the wheel's invention.
It's like saying that Americans can't speak more than two languages.
I think the general assumption around the world is that Americans can't speak MORE than *ONE* language and most of them don't even speak the one very well. That's certainly the image our current president propagates to the rest of the planet.
When you see a magnetic field, your first question should always be, "Where's the current?"
Have you ever heard of permanent magnets?
There are two methods of producing magnetism: 1) by current and 2) by aligning particles with non-zero magnetic moments (quantum spin) within a substance.
Electromagnets use the first method while permanent magnets use the second.
OK, I'm not an expert in biosecurity, but wouldn't the reduced air pressure in the room be accomplished by pumping air out of the room?
If the secure research facility is air-tight, pumping a little bit of air out would produce a vacuum / differential pressure (compared to the positive pressure suit systems) that would could be maintained without pumping out any more air.
Furthermore, the little bit of air that does get pumped out can be processed to eliminate or kill viruses -- it can be filtered, passed through a High-Output Ozone emitter or Ultraviolet array, pass through a chemical wash, or even burned (in the case of a novel I read about a theoretical BSL5 facility).
You're one of those people who say "Unsolicited Bulk Email" rather than "spam" right???
bandwidth -- definition
The transmission capacity of an electronic pathway such as a communications line, computer bus or computer channel. In a digital line, it is measured in bits per second or bytes per second (see Mb/sec). In an analog channel or in a digital channel that is wrapped in a carrier frequency, bandwidth is the difference between the highest and lowest frequencies and is measured in Hertz (kHz, MHz, GHz).
Here's the Wikipedia definition that says roughly the same thing.
In computer networking literature, digital bandwidth refers to data rate measured in bit/s, for example channel capacity (digital bandwidth capacity) or throughput (digital bandwidth consumption). The reason for this usage is that the channel capacity in bit/s is proportional to the analogue bandwidth in hertz according to Hartley's law.