Not agreing with the troll of course (from what I see it's not worth it for me to even check what he specifically wrote), but Intel is still more open, in practice, in one important factor.
Fully usable free software GFX drivers on the Linux side. You can have a trouble-free experience not relying on binary blobs (well, excluding BIOS/etc.).
Well, if you want to go that far, to Athlon and GF256 days, Intel had their share of problems too... (unstable P3 Coppermines just above 1GHz mark? Flaky motherboards with Rambus chipset & bridge?)
That said, yes, many chipsets for AMD had problems - but you could always find something solid. SiS chipsets which you don't seem to even remember were particularly impressive - perhaps slightly slower than Via, Nv or ATI alternatives, but absolutelly rock-solid and troublefree, on par with Intel (for example, when you wanted to use demanding PCI card for editing video, it was either Intel chipset or...SiS; I had also quite explosive combination of Radeon 8500, Aureal Vortex 2 and bt878 TV card...no issues at all). Only problem with SiS - largely ignored, hard to find and often (but not always!) on low-end motherboards. Or ULi ones at some point (K7 days)...killed by Nv. Lately it's becoming good though, with AMD offering their own whole "platform".
BTW, Intel wasn't so impressive until very recently when it comes to power usage. Yes, their CPUs were better...but you have to look system-wide. And Intel chipsets were made on old processes, rather power-hungry. AMD ones use few Watts for quite some time. Of course that should change now, with Core i5. But when you look at Top500 Green Supercomputer list - if there's x86 chip present, it's usually AMD.
But while saying this you should have in mind, say, PC version of Quake and port of it on PS1...
Wii is largery out of scope here, it's very different, with large portion of exclusive games (which also require vastly different coding practices) and those games aren't the ones people think about when saying "console port". PS3 seems to invalidate my point...but, when you look closer, multiplatform titles present also on PS3 are sometimes built on middleware engine; and often simply end up not very good on either PS3 or Win/X360 side (usually the former, not utilizing the console properly)
Yes, there are still differences, otherwise we wouldn't have any distinction (or exclusives). But now they are too often mostly a case of different targets in scope of the same effort. Issues with CPUs that you rightfully point out are not that far from going from 32 to 64 bits on the x86 side, which some engines did.
In regards to controllers, remember that many of those "hybrid" (!) games are clunky on console side, too...for example in the form of harmful, IMHO, rush of PC-style FPPs (with game mechanics built around pointing with mouse at things...), while even in scope of consoles there were other kinds of FPPs for a long time (lightgun kind for example; no, not all of them were on rails - but those weren't mouselook + WASD game/level design either), now ignored. I'm afraid we will at some point see a ruch of strategies/tactical games with similar problem, ignoring quite nice working UIs & game mechanics of console side present since SNES days (and at the same time with frustrating simplifications on PC side! Since the game as a whole had to be forced into "pointing UI" on a pad). At the same time genres which work good only on a digital or analogue pad are already somewhat forgotten...partly because they can't really be made big sellers on both consoles and PCs.
This isn't about games being designed for consoles. It's about them being designed for both platforms, with harmfull compromises on both sides.
Yup, convenient for publishers indeed...it's "their" fault, those dumb console gamers.
Haven't it ever crossed your mind that for people who, for a long time, also enjoy console for a long time those "hybrid games" (that's more proper term) are also horrible? Also dumbed down?
Hey, might as well have come from Peggle, Solitaire or flashgames, right?...
If that were true, it would correlate with European automotive industry in general being "parasites"; which is far from true, they managed to go through the hard times in a much more gracefull way than US automakers. Maybe there's a problem with the latter and their handling of subsidiaries...
I would also be glad to see the term "console port" go away. It's nonsensical, implies there was some amount of "porting" being done...while that's not really true nowadays, not after efforts of MS. Same dev tools, same team, same engine, similar art assets; there's no porting taking place, only two parallel and largely common efforts. Not exploiting the strenghts of both platforms (do you think console side of such game is really optimised for hardware?)
But the term must be convenient for publishers, with players pointing fingers at those "evil consoles" instead of pointing them at...publishers.
Intel processors in lower-end price brackets might often score a win, but only if you consider the price of CPU alone. Intel GFX is crappy. There's Nvidia integrated GFX available...but for some reason the motherboards with them are usually quite a bit more expensive than AMD ones. Cheap AMD CPU with cheap integrated GFX offers best all-around performance - as good as any other setup for "daily" tasks, definatelly more 3D oomph than comparatively priced alternatives.
It's fast enough for any usual non-gaming usage...and also for most games, if you're fine with mostly ignoring latest gen ones (and really, with so many great older ones that's easy). Plus it is consistantly passively cooled.
Of course it's impressive. But saying in one breath that it's especially impressive because it was "designed" to last only 90 is a total misunderstanding.
Plus now, after wheel operations (and perhaps heating of few subsystems crucial for wheel movement?) have ceased, there might be some chance it will survive the winter...
It wasn't designed to operate for only 90 days. The intention was for it to last at least 90 days. But certainly nobody cut corners during construction because of that, so "that part can fail after 100 days".
I don't think there ever were. Certainly not as far future of humanity goes, and as far as significant enough portion of humanity existing at the time is concerned.
For something like proper Project Orion - I wouldn't mind volunteering, if there was no other place available (mine being quite big for it to be useful in this case...). Even if I'm on the ground during launch.
You know you will going to die, right? Ultimately the only thing that might slightly matter is what you have done for humanity.
On the other hand, I do believe that in the very long term self-sustaining off-world colonies are both possible and desirable.
It's just the idea that we could actually pull that off, yet not be able to pull off keeping the earth habitable even in the aftermath of severe catastrophe, seems pretty silly to me.
Eventually "we" won't be able to pull that off, so off-world colonies will become necessary. The Sun warms up, Earth will become inhospitable in few hundred million years, billion tops (and yes, that time scale is why I used "we" loosely; beings which can be still classified as us won't be able to fix the situation...and most likely won't exist; OTOH one might hope that it's fixable/irrelevant for the intelligence that might exist then)
And this crew escape system might be in large part useless. There are not only doubts if it can pull off the capsule clear quickly enough out of failing rocket (which, although failing, is still firing), but there's huge issue afterwards:
- capsule uses parachutes for soft landing
- first stage of the rocket, likely disintegrated at this point, was filled with, essentially, termite-like substance
-...which now gives you rain of ignited termite
- in an area where capsule needs to use parachutes
NextStep lives on in the form of OS X; I would argue that the new wave of touchscreen "phones" is also something noteworthy. And useful voice operated UIs seem to be right around the corner. So it's not so bad...
Though if it would be possible to mine this form of coal in industrial quantities, it could suddenly become useful as a mineral... (yes, I know diamonds are useful already - but those are usually small amounts of manufactured ones). There's even one book by Stephenson more or less about it. And hey, you have whole moon out there full of hydrocarbons, in quantities many times greater than deposits on Earth.
Is it impractical now? Hell yeah. Will it always be? I don't know. But I'm sure many people would laugh at you only few thousand years ago for suggesting that dark rocks can be used as a source of energy. A thousands years ago for suggesting the same with whale oil on industrial scale. 200 years ago with that black oily substance seeping from the ground here and there. Rocks from which people get mysteriously sick used for power generation and most powerful explosives? Tapping the power of a volcano? Splitting water to get to the Moon? That's insane!
See, there's a very, very easy way around that. Not "call nine one one" but "call an ambulance/police/emergency number/whatever". Used reasonably often in movies of course.
Which makes me suspect writers of productions with "911" either don't realize it's not universal (BTW, if anything is, that's 112, integral part of GSM/3GPP standards) or they don't expect their shit to go very far...
It seems to be so prevalent because cellphones don't appear to feed back what you're talking into the earpiece of your handset.
They can start with doing just that. Bonus: recognize high levels of noise in the environment (nowadays often not having much impact on the actual transmission due to noise suppression) and yank your volume in the speaker even more, to combat the reflex of talking even more loud.
Though I'm not sure how to make people understand that talking clearly is better than just being loud. Side effect of voice operated UIs, eventually?
See, your first example reminded me of one interesting experience.
In primary school there was one buddy of mine who tried sailing one summer. With nice results ultimately, I might add; but the first week was miserable, from what he said. Essentially he...didn't move at all, "couldn't catch the wind" (his words). Me...I jumped into a boat and managed to do it on the first try (essentially I saw the sail for what it was - a wing positioned in a "weird" way). It was clumsy, sure, but it was proper sailing. (and I was...surprised when he tried diving and haven't heard about pressure / nitrogen sickness)
Yeah, me being a bit of a geek/nerd back then, too; whatever. Not having the basic ideas about things, not being able (or not wanting) to apply them, having closed mind is not "normal". It's "old". Which doesn't have that much to do with age.
You can save quite a bit of fuel then, too (though I've heard that doesn't make much difference in standard issue US car with automatic transmission...)
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Not agreing with the troll of course (from what I see it's not worth it for me to even check what he specifically wrote), but Intel is still more open, in practice, in one important factor.
Fully usable free software GFX drivers on the Linux side. You can have a trouble-free experience not relying on binary blobs (well, excluding BIOS/etc.).
Well, if you want to go that far, to Athlon and GF256 days, Intel had their share of problems too... (unstable P3 Coppermines just above 1GHz mark? Flaky motherboards with Rambus chipset & bridge?)
That said, yes, many chipsets for AMD had problems - but you could always find something solid. SiS chipsets which you don't seem to even remember were particularly impressive - perhaps slightly slower than Via, Nv or ATI alternatives, but absolutelly rock-solid and troublefree, on par with Intel (for example, when you wanted to use demanding PCI card for editing video, it was either Intel chipset or...SiS; I had also quite explosive combination of Radeon 8500, Aureal Vortex 2 and bt878 TV card...no issues at all). Only problem with SiS - largely ignored, hard to find and often (but not always!) on low-end motherboards. Or ULi ones at some point (K7 days)...killed by Nv. Lately it's becoming good though, with AMD offering their own whole "platform".
BTW, Intel wasn't so impressive until very recently when it comes to power usage. Yes, their CPUs were better...but you have to look system-wide. And Intel chipsets were made on old processes, rather power-hungry. AMD ones use few Watts for quite some time. Of course that should change now, with Core i5. But when you look at Top500 Green Supercomputer list - if there's x86 chip present, it's usually AMD.
But while saying this you should have in mind, say, PC version of Quake and port of it on PS1...
Wii is largery out of scope here, it's very different, with large portion of exclusive games (which also require vastly different coding practices) and those games aren't the ones people think about when saying "console port". PS3 seems to invalidate my point...but, when you look closer, multiplatform titles present also on PS3 are sometimes built on middleware engine; and often simply end up not very good on either PS3 or Win/X360 side (usually the former, not utilizing the console properly)
Yes, there are still differences, otherwise we wouldn't have any distinction (or exclusives). But now they are too often mostly a case of different targets in scope of the same effort. Issues with CPUs that you rightfully point out are not that far from going from 32 to 64 bits on the x86 side, which some engines did.
In regards to controllers, remember that many of those "hybrid" (!) games are clunky on console side, too...for example in the form of harmful, IMHO, rush of PC-style FPPs (with game mechanics built around pointing with mouse at things...), while even in scope of consoles there were other kinds of FPPs for a long time (lightgun kind for example; no, not all of them were on rails - but those weren't mouselook + WASD game/level design either), now ignored. I'm afraid we will at some point see a ruch of strategies/tactical games with similar problem, ignoring quite nice working UIs & game mechanics of console side present since SNES days (and at the same time with frustrating simplifications on PC side! Since the game as a whole had to be forced into "pointing UI" on a pad). At the same time genres which work good only on a digital or analogue pad are already somewhat forgotten...partly because they can't really be made big sellers on both consoles and PCs.
This isn't about games being designed for consoles. It's about them being designed for both platforms, with harmfull compromises on both sides.
Yup, convenient for publishers indeed...it's "their" fault, those dumb console gamers.
Haven't it ever crossed your mind that for people who, for a long time, also enjoy console for a long time those "hybrid games" (that's more proper term) are also horrible? Also dumbed down?
Hey, might as well have come from Peggle, Solitaire or flashgames, right?...
If that were true, it would correlate with European automotive industry in general being "parasites"; which is far from true, they managed to go through the hard times in a much more gracefull way than US automakers. Maybe there's a problem with the latter and their handling of subsidiaries...
w8, takeover from US company results in cars becoming Euro junk?
So, would there really be any difference if Nvidia board similar to Intel 9300 ones was the variant...for AMD?
I would also be glad to see the term "console port" go away. It's nonsensical, implies there was some amount of "porting" being done...while that's not really true nowadays, not after efforts of MS. Same dev tools, same team, same engine, similar art assets; there's no porting taking place, only two parallel and largely common efforts. Not exploiting the strenghts of both platforms (do you think console side of such game is really optimised for hardware?)
But the term must be convenient for publishers, with players pointing fingers at those "evil consoles" instead of pointing them at...publishers.
Intel processors in lower-end price brackets might often score a win, but only if you consider the price of CPU alone. Intel GFX is crappy. There's Nvidia integrated GFX available...but for some reason the motherboards with them are usually quite a bit more expensive than AMD ones. Cheap AMD CPU with cheap integrated GFX offers best all-around performance - as good as any other setup for "daily" tasks, definatelly more 3D oomph than comparatively priced alternatives.
It's fast enough for any usual non-gaming usage...and also for most games, if you're fine with mostly ignoring latest gen ones (and really, with so many great older ones that's easy). Plus it is consistantly passively cooled.
Of course it's impressive. But saying in one breath that it's especially impressive because it was "designed" to last only 90 is a total misunderstanding.
Plus now, after wheel operations (and perhaps heating of few subsystems crucial for wheel movement?) have ceased, there might be some chance it will survive the winter...
It wasn't designed to operate for only 90 days. The intention was for it to last at least 90 days. But certainly nobody cut corners during construction because of that, so "that part can fail after 100 days".
There aren't any big plans or visions anymore.
I don't think there ever were. Certainly not as far future of humanity goes, and as far as significant enough portion of humanity existing at the time is concerned.
For something like proper Project Orion - I wouldn't mind volunteering, if there was no other place available (mine being quite big for it to be useful in this case...). Even if I'm on the ground during launch.
You know you will going to die, right? Ultimately the only thing that might slightly matter is what you have done for humanity.
That's why I said "more or less", only as far large scale usage of diamond structures goes.
On the other hand, I do believe that in the very long term self-sustaining off-world colonies are both possible and desirable.
It's just the idea that we could actually pull that off, yet not be able to pull off keeping the earth habitable even in the aftermath of severe catastrophe, seems pretty silly to me.
Eventually "we" won't be able to pull that off, so off-world colonies will become necessary. The Sun warms up, Earth will become inhospitable in few hundred million years, billion tops (and yes, that time scale is why I used "we" loosely; beings which can be still classified as us won't be able to fix the situation...and most likely won't exist; OTOH one might hope that it's fixable/irrelevant for the intelligence that might exist then)
And this crew escape system might be in large part useless. There are not only doubts if it can pull off the capsule clear quickly enough out of failing rocket (which, although failing, is still firing), but there's huge issue afterwards:
- capsule uses parachutes for soft landing
- first stage of the rocket, likely disintegrated at this point, was filled with, essentially, termite-like substance
- ...which now gives you rain of ignited termite
- in an area where capsule needs to use parachutes
See the problem?
NextStep lives on in the form of OS X; I would argue that the new wave of touchscreen "phones" is also something noteworthy. And useful voice operated UIs seem to be right around the corner. So it's not so bad...
Though if it would be possible to mine this form of coal in industrial quantities, it could suddenly become useful as a mineral... (yes, I know diamonds are useful already - but those are usually small amounts of manufactured ones). There's even one book by Stephenson more or less about it. And hey, you have whole moon out there full of hydrocarbons, in quantities many times greater than deposits on Earth.
Is it impractical now? Hell yeah. Will it always be? I don't know. But I'm sure many people would laugh at you only few thousand years ago for suggesting that dark rocks can be used as a source of energy. A thousands years ago for suggesting the same with whale oil on industrial scale. 200 years ago with that black oily substance seeping from the ground here and there. Rocks from which people get mysteriously sick used for power generation and most powerful explosives? Tapping the power of a volcano? Splitting water to get to the Moon? That's insane!
See, there's a very, very easy way around that. Not "call nine one one" but "call an ambulance/police/emergency number/whatever". Used reasonably often in movies of course.
Which makes me suspect writers of productions with "911" either don't realize it's not universal (BTW, if anything is, that's 112, integral part of GSM/3GPP standards) or they don't expect their shit to go very far...
Quick options toggle menu -> enable/disable plugins.
(with whitelisting and blacklisting of particular sites available of course)
It seems to be so prevalent because cellphones don't appear to feed back what you're talking into the earpiece of your handset.
They can start with doing just that. Bonus: recognize high levels of noise in the environment (nowadays often not having much impact on the actual transmission due to noise suppression) and yank your volume in the speaker even more, to combat the reflex of talking even more loud.
Though I'm not sure how to make people understand that talking clearly is better than just being loud. Side effect of voice operated UIs, eventually?
Did come back to life...
Or so the story goes. Only one of huge number of myths about resurrection deities.
See, your first example reminded me of one interesting experience.
In primary school there was one buddy of mine who tried sailing one summer. With nice results ultimately, I might add; but the first week was miserable, from what he said. Essentially he...didn't move at all, "couldn't catch the wind" (his words). Me...I jumped into a boat and managed to do it on the first try (essentially I saw the sail for what it was - a wing positioned in a "weird" way). It was clumsy, sure, but it was proper sailing. (and I was...surprised when he tried diving and haven't heard about pressure / nitrogen sickness)
Yeah, me being a bit of a geek/nerd back then, too; whatever. Not having the basic ideas about things, not being able (or not wanting) to apply them, having closed mind is not "normal". It's "old". Which doesn't have that much to do with age.
You can save quite a bit of fuel then, too (though I've heard that doesn't make much difference in standard issue US car with automatic transmission...)