Actually, it doesn't take much. A good doubling filter on the backgrounds and antialiasing on the polygon models, and FFVII looks better at 1280x960 than it ever did on a console. FFVIII doesn't do as well, though: I think it was the extensive use of textured polygons that causes problems.
Then there was the lady who didn't understand why her night photos of Niagara Falls (taken with a Kodax Disc camera) didn't turn out, because she distinctly remembered that the flash went off. We had to explain to her that if her flash could illuminate all of the Falls from that distance, it would probably kill everybody within 10 feet of her.
I know a professional photographer who has flash gear capable of taking a night shot of American Falls. No, you do not want to be standing near one of the strobes when it goes off, but it probably won't kill you, either.
I cut corners on network cards, cooling fans, and hard drives for my backup system (3-drive RAID 1 in a broken-mirror rotation, so it would take three simultaneous failures before I'd lose data).
My webserver has no need for anything larger than the 1.2GB hard drive that came with it. Besides, that small drive makes for a very easy backup system: 'dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/net/backup/webserver.img'
If one of the non-parity drives fails, you can calculate what was on it from the contents of the other non-parity drives + the contents of the parity drive. Any controller can do this; a good controller can do this at the same speed that it could have read the data from the disk.
And as a technical point, the parity information is spread out across all the disks for better performance. This doesn't change how RAID-5 works on a conceptual level, though.
Same here, which is why my computers have everything from a 250MB hard drive to the latest addition, a 300GB drive. I do change drives between tasks: the two 60GB drives the 300 replaced are now in removable caddies as part of my offsite backup system.
You picked the wrong books to start with. Heinlein's works divide into two groups: his early works, which are entertaining stories with a strong survivalist, libertarian bent, and his later works, which are just plain strange. If you want a book that will make you think, read "Starship Troopers", and find out why us fans prefer to ignore the existance of the movie. If you want entertainment, try any of his juvenile fiction -- it's not just for kids.
That's why I'm getting a Wii. Now I can play PS1, PS2, GCN, and Wii games all with only two consoles. If only someone would work in Saturn / Dreamcast / Sega CD support, I could unhook all these other disc-based consoles I own...
It's why I've got a Linux PC: Now I can play PS1, N64, XBox, SNES, NES, DOS, Windows, 68k Mac, C64, etc. games all on one box.
Another major factor is speed. You can do cycle-perfect emulation -- most SNES, NES, and similar emulators do this -- but at major cost to speed. Or you can translate functionality -- most PSX and PS2 emulators translate graphics into OpenGL or DirectX calls -- but at the cost of accuracy.
After reading the Vista EULA while installing a copy at work for compatibility testing, it became very obvious to me that the only way Vista would make it onto any computer I own is if I were to install a pirated copy of Vista Ultimate with all the anti-piracy features removed. I figure that since there's no way in hell I'm going to comply with the EULA, why follow copyright law, either?
My apartment has electric baseboard heating, an electric stove, an electric water heater, and electric computers (no steampunk for me). All of them are devices that turn electricity into heat. The computer, water heater, and stove happen to have useful byproducts, so I use them in preference to the electric heater.
My computer has a 400 watt PSU. It does indeed use almost 400 watts: during the split-second after you hit the power switch and before all the motors start spinning. After that, it settles down to about 120 watts when running folding@home, 180 watts when gaming.
5 days between restarts? Yeesh, I'm glad I don't pay this guy's electricity bills. Call me crazy, but I shut my machine down when I'm not using it (mostly because the awesome fan power would keep me awake).
I don't know about the original poster, but my apartment is all-electric: in the winter, it doesn't matter if the computer is running or not, I'll be using the same amount of electricity. If the energy's going to be used, I'd prefer to be turning out F@H workunits than doing nothing with it.
Gaming sucks on Linux? Why didn't anybody tell me? I'm just finishing up Final Fantasy V, and was thinking of trying Secret of Monkey Isle next. If I'd known that it sucks, I would have installed Windows to run the emulators on.
The overuse of the term "addiction" is sorta funny, though. I especially like the concept of people being addicted to sex. All "addicted" really means these days is that you enjoy something. Being against addiction now just means you're opposed to anything that's fun.
Actually, what they're discovering is that psychological addiction is an abnormal reaction to any pleasurable stimulus: you really can get addicted to anything that's fun. Physical addiction, where the body's biochemistry incorporates a substance into its normal operations, is an entirely different matter. Drugs tend to activate both mechanisms, which is why they're so easy to get addicted to.
They did nail some egregious errors (deus ex 2, Final Fantasy 8) but it seems they could only think of a handle full and just looked for games that grew some hatred, but wasn't exactly "bad" games.
Final Fantasy 8 isn't a bad game, it just isn't a Final Fantasy game. If they'd stuck a different name on it, it would have been just fine.
You see, this is what I liked about the SNES Final Fantasy games: the cutscenes were rendered using the game engine. Technology has gone downhill since then.
In the last year I can only think of one, maybe two, good titles worth purchasing.
I agree: there are one or two titles that I'm interested in purchasing in any given year. The difference is that I'm looking at games from last year and the year before to decide what to purchase. This has some major advantages: if people are still talking about it after two years, it's probably a pretty good game. Any bugfixes have already been released, so I'm not stuck with an unplayable game. The mod community has had a chance to produce all sorts of interesting mods, extending the game's life. And finally, my computer is powerful enough to play the game at maximum quality.
It depends very strongly on where you live. In Detroit, the newspaper covers maybe 50-70 murders a year, out of around 1000 in the metro area (population: 3 million or so). In Spokane, the newspaper covers every murder within 50 miles of the city (population: around 600,000).
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Actually, it doesn't take much. A good doubling filter on the backgrounds and antialiasing on the polygon models, and FFVII looks better at 1280x960 than it ever did on a console. FFVIII doesn't do as well, though: I think it was the extensive use of textured polygons that causes problems.
I know a professional photographer who has flash gear capable of taking a night shot of American Falls. No, you do not want to be standing near one of the strobes when it goes off, but it probably won't kill you, either.
Is there ANY component where this does not apply?
I cut corners on network cards, cooling fans, and hard drives for my backup system (3-drive RAID 1 in a broken-mirror rotation, so it would take three simultaneous failures before I'd lose data).
250 Meg HDD from a Performa 630. Now used as the boot drive for BasiliskII.
My webserver has no need for anything larger than the 1.2GB hard drive that came with it. Besides, that small drive makes for a very easy backup system: 'dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/net/backup/webserver.img'
If one of the non-parity drives fails, you can calculate what was on it from the contents of the other non-parity drives + the contents of the parity drive. Any controller can do this; a good controller can do this at the same speed that it could have read the data from the disk.
And as a technical point, the parity information is spread out across all the disks for better performance. This doesn't change how RAID-5 works on a conceptual level, though.
Same here, which is why my computers have everything from a 250MB hard drive to the latest addition, a 300GB drive. I do change drives between tasks: the two 60GB drives the 300 replaced are now in removable caddies as part of my offsite backup system.
You picked the wrong books to start with. Heinlein's works divide into two groups: his early works, which are entertaining stories with a strong survivalist, libertarian bent, and his later works, which are just plain strange. If you want a book that will make you think, read "Starship Troopers", and find out why us fans prefer to ignore the existance of the movie. If you want entertainment, try any of his juvenile fiction -- it's not just for kids.
It's why I've got a Linux PC: Now I can play PS1, N64, XBox, SNES, NES, DOS, Windows, 68k Mac, C64, etc. games all on one box.
Another major factor is speed. You can do cycle-perfect emulation -- most SNES, NES, and similar emulators do this -- but at major cost to speed. Or you can translate functionality -- most PSX and PS2 emulators translate graphics into OpenGL or DirectX calls -- but at the cost of accuracy.
They're doing better than commercially-viable nuclear fusion, which has been twenty years away since the 1950s.
No Mike Tyson. Nintendo dropped him from the game when he was charged with rape. Other than the graphics, the game's the same, though.
I'm very glad I waited on playing the later Final Fantasy games until there was a Playstation emulator available.
I think the metaphor you want is "went off the deep end", or maybe "shot themselves in the foot".
After reading the Vista EULA while installing a copy at work for compatibility testing, it became very obvious to me that the only way Vista would make it onto any computer I own is if I were to install a pirated copy of Vista Ultimate with all the anti-piracy features removed. I figure that since there's no way in hell I'm going to comply with the EULA, why follow copyright law, either?
So? Doesn't mean the games aren't still good.
My apartment has electric baseboard heating, an electric stove, an electric water heater, and electric computers (no steampunk for me). All of them are devices that turn electricity into heat. The computer, water heater, and stove happen to have useful byproducts, so I use them in preference to the electric heater.
My computer has a 400 watt PSU. It does indeed use almost 400 watts: during the split-second after you hit the power switch and before all the motors start spinning. After that, it settles down to about 120 watts when running folding@home, 180 watts when gaming.
I don't know about the original poster, but my apartment is all-electric: in the winter, it doesn't matter if the computer is running or not, I'll be using the same amount of electricity. If the energy's going to be used, I'd prefer to be turning out F@H workunits than doing nothing with it.
Gaming sucks on Linux? Why didn't anybody tell me? I'm just finishing up Final Fantasy V, and was thinking of trying Secret of Monkey Isle next. If I'd known that it sucks, I would have installed Windows to run the emulators on.
Actually, what they're discovering is that psychological addiction is an abnormal reaction to any pleasurable stimulus: you really can get addicted to anything that's fun. Physical addiction, where the body's biochemistry incorporates a substance into its normal operations, is an entirely different matter. Drugs tend to activate both mechanisms, which is why they're so easy to get addicted to.
Final Fantasy 8 isn't a bad game, it just isn't a Final Fantasy game. If they'd stuck a different name on it, it would have been just fine.
You see, this is what I liked about the SNES Final Fantasy games: the cutscenes were rendered using the game engine. Technology has gone downhill since then.
I agree: there are one or two titles that I'm interested in purchasing in any given year. The difference is that I'm looking at games from last year and the year before to decide what to purchase. This has some major advantages: if people are still talking about it after two years, it's probably a pretty good game. Any bugfixes have already been released, so I'm not stuck with an unplayable game. The mod community has had a chance to produce all sorts of interesting mods, extending the game's life. And finally, my computer is powerful enough to play the game at maximum quality.
It depends very strongly on where you live. In Detroit, the newspaper covers maybe 50-70 murders a year, out of around 1000 in the metro area (population: 3 million or so). In Spokane, the newspaper covers every murder within 50 miles of the city (population: around 600,000).