Yes but who's going to give you a loan of twice your market cap? That's too risky. Ati posted an income of ~30 million USD last quarter if I read that SEC filing right, a loan of eight billion dollars would take a while to repay at that rate.
I think you're referring to that 1T "S"RAM tech that was used in the Gamecube and is going into the Wii as well. That'll probably work. Not sure if SRAM isn't a bit overkill for that purpose, though.
You know, there's nothing more pointless than using a complicated and large file type for something that could have been expressed perfectly well in text. Text can be read as fast or slow as you like, you can skip text passages without having to search for a sentence to start, you can search it, you can quote it easily and you can reread parts you want to read again much faster than having to skip to a point in a sound file.
But then again pointless seems to describe many endeavours undertaken by politicians.
That's 3-4 megabytes per buffer at 1280x960. Graphics cards are supposed to do more than that and usually they have to use 2-3 buffers. You can't throw that on a die easily.
They don't seem to bother with adding shaders or RAM that is appropriate for graphics cards. Instead they use the system's main RAM which is too slow for that purpose.
I'd be much more inclined to go plop down $50 on a new game if I could run it at high resolution with all the detail on with my *AVERAGE* PC. That would impress me a hell of a lot more than awesome new graphics that only people with brand new hardware can fully appreciate.
That would compromise the whole point of adjustable graphics settings. Why should a developer limit the maximum settings to what would otherwise be the medium settings just to make you feel good that your PC can run them at max detail? That'd annoy everyone with a PC that's better than yours since they'd be limited to what your PC can output rather than use their own PC to its fullest potential.
I'm thinking he meant "the party I don't vote for" because a lot of people seem to believe the only ideals out there are conservative and liberal and everything they don't agree with gets labelled with the other ideal's name.
How many parents actually know what the little symbols on the game mean anyway?
Of course they know what those letters mean. They are review scores. Apparently out of 17 because why else would the children ask for games with a 17 and dismiss games with e.g. a 6?
How much negative feedback is there in an MMO these days? If you ran out of lives in an arcade game it was back to the beginning which marks the perfect time to stop playing if you wanted to do something else anyway. But in an MMO there isn't much to interrupt your flow. Sure, you drop dead but most of the excessive players probably have someone to rez them nearby anyway so they're back to full strength in less than a minute. Even offline games are getting easier on the average since players become less and less tolerant of losses. Setbacks get smaller, challenges take fewer tries to overcome, etc. So you can remain in the flow of positive feedback and play through the game in fewer sittings, ready to buy a new one. Of course that's only the SP games, after all they end at a point. MMOs just lock you into a loop of positive feedback. And since the rewards they can give are limited to pretty much the same amount as in SP games they have to add more filler. Lower drop rates and experience gain.
Of course the negative feedback bit may be wrong, that's just my observations of myself which may not match other players since I'm an information addict (primary drug: Slashdot). I tend to play a game as long as I'm in the "flow" and frustration can interrupt that (as can defined places where the game itself stops or changes flowing like level ends). If a place in a game breaks my flow by forcing me to retry lots of times wheras I previously was blazing through the game or by ending the flow of a level and throwing me back to some sort of level selection I often end up stopping the session for now and either resuming at a later date or forgetting about the game (more exactly: Shelving it and remembering "I got stuck at place X").
Or perhaps they just like sleeping in front of the running TV and get angry if anyone switches it off even when they are busy elsewhere (yes I know such a guy). Then he lectures me about the energy use of my air conditioning unit that runs a few days per year (and only in short bursts).
Ironically liberal anti-capitalist price control policies on energy companies prevent this from happening.
Liberal and price control are incompatible ideals since liberalism's fundamental idea is to remove all restrictions on the market. Price control is a concept present in socialism but not liberalism.
While they are losing less per console now, they also have a large 360 R&D cost to recoup.
The only option to avoid those would be to make no next-gen console at all so the early release didn't hurt it.
On top of that is XBox Silver service offered for free
That doesn't offer many features though. Since silver accounts are used for accessing the marketplace as well that probably brings in more money than it loses.
interestingly there is nothing illegal about using a vast sum of money you have got from a different monopoly to attept to storm a different industry through sheer ability to outspend.
Not? MS was convicted of using their OS monopoly to gain a monopoly on browsers and media formats.
Some psychological feedback that makes you feel good from getting that rare drop and makes you desire more. Pavlov observed that random positive feedback can "program" a person to do something. By randomly giving you positive feedback in the form of drops your brain gets wired to understand that killing mobs can mean happyness and as such you want to keep killing mobs to get that boost of happyness. That same mechanism drives Diablo and its derivatives, which includes Titan Quest.
I think the elimination of strong negative feedback (i.e. losses) does help with that as well. Negative feedback gets you down so you might decide to stop playing for now. If there is no such strong negative feedback you won't see a point where to interrupt your flow of playing.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes but who's going to give you a loan of twice your market cap? That's too risky. Ati posted an income of ~30 million USD last quarter if I read that SEC filing right, a loan of eight billion dollars would take a while to repay at that rate.
I think you're referring to that 1T "S"RAM tech that was used in the Gamecube and is going into the Wii as well. That'll probably work. Not sure if SRAM isn't a bit overkill for that purpose, though.
On the other hand the deaf (or nearly deaf) and those with a poor grasp of the language are able to understand it better in writing.
You know, there's nothing more pointless than using a complicated and large file type for something that could have been expressed perfectly well in text. Text can be read as fast or slow as you like, you can skip text passages without having to search for a sentence to start, you can search it, you can quote it easily and you can reread parts you want to read again much faster than having to skip to a point in a sound file.
But then again pointless seems to describe many endeavours undertaken by politicians.
That's 3-4 megabytes per buffer at 1280x960. Graphics cards are supposed to do more than that and usually they have to use 2-3 buffers. You can't throw that on a die easily.
They don't seem to bother with adding shaders or RAM that is appropriate for graphics cards. Instead they use the system's main RAM which is too slow for that purpose.
I'd be much more inclined to go plop down $50 on a new game if I could run it at high resolution with all the detail on with my *AVERAGE* PC. That would impress me a hell of a lot more than awesome new graphics that only people with brand new hardware can fully appreciate.
That would compromise the whole point of adjustable graphics settings. Why should a developer limit the maximum settings to what would otherwise be the medium settings just to make you feel good that your PC can run them at max detail? That'd annoy everyone with a PC that's better than yours since they'd be limited to what your PC can output rather than use their own PC to its fullest potential.
Well, AMD is claiming Intel is abusing its monopoly position to make it difficult for AMD to sell chips to OEMs.
You could have looked at the market cap on the many pages that list stocks, Ati's (ATYT) mentions 4.2 Billion USD while AMD's (AMD) lists 8.84.
I'm thinking he meant "the party I don't vote for" because a lot of people seem to believe the only ideals out there are conservative and liberal and everything they don't agree with gets labelled with the other ideal's name.
If they wanted they could invent a "new" class that is just a pally with different names on everything and a different lore to it.
This is Warcraft we're talking about, asymmetrical sides wouldn't be true to the source material.
How many parents actually know what the little symbols on the game mean anyway?
Of course they know what those letters mean. They are review scores. Apparently out of 17 because why else would the children ask for games with a 17 and dismiss games with e.g. a 6?
How much negative feedback is there in an MMO these days? If you ran out of lives in an arcade game it was back to the beginning which marks the perfect time to stop playing if you wanted to do something else anyway. But in an MMO there isn't much to interrupt your flow. Sure, you drop dead but most of the excessive players probably have someone to rez them nearby anyway so they're back to full strength in less than a minute. Even offline games are getting easier on the average since players become less and less tolerant of losses. Setbacks get smaller, challenges take fewer tries to overcome, etc. So you can remain in the flow of positive feedback and play through the game in fewer sittings, ready to buy a new one. Of course that's only the SP games, after all they end at a point. MMOs just lock you into a loop of positive feedback. And since the rewards they can give are limited to pretty much the same amount as in SP games they have to add more filler. Lower drop rates and experience gain.
Of course the negative feedback bit may be wrong, that's just my observations of myself which may not match other players since I'm an information addict (primary drug: Slashdot). I tend to play a game as long as I'm in the "flow" and frustration can interrupt that (as can defined places where the game itself stops or changes flowing like level ends). If a place in a game breaks my flow by forcing me to retry lots of times wheras I previously was blazing through the game or by ending the flow of a level and throwing me back to some sort of level selection I often end up stopping the session for now and either resuming at a later date or forgetting about the game (more exactly: Shelving it and remembering "I got stuck at place X").
Or perhaps they just like sleeping in front of the running TV and get angry if anyone switches it off even when they are busy elsewhere (yes I know such a guy). Then he lectures me about the energy use of my air conditioning unit that runs a few days per year (and only in short bursts).
That was removed in the SCPH 70000 (slim) redesign. Probably the biggest downside to the new versions.
Do you understand how CMOS technology works?
and even has a free Tibet bumper sticker.
What a cheapass. Where I come from we pay for our Tibet bumper stickers!
Ironically liberal anti-capitalist price control policies on energy companies prevent this from happening.
Liberal and price control are incompatible ideals since liberalism's fundamental idea is to remove all restrictions on the market. Price control is a concept present in socialism but not liberalism.
I think Sony should change its name to Sirius. That way they can call their robotics department the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
I can't say it's all shit because I haven't looked at it for years so I wouldn't know.
I prefer this variant:
http://www.vgcats.com/news/comic_spore_Will.jpg
While they are losing less per console now, they also have a large 360 R&D cost to recoup.
The only option to avoid those would be to make no next-gen console at all so the early release didn't hurt it.
On top of that is XBox Silver service offered for free
That doesn't offer many features though. Since silver accounts are used for accessing the marketplace as well that probably brings in more money than it loses.
interestingly there is nothing illegal about using a vast sum of money you have got from a different monopoly to attept to storm a different industry through sheer ability to outspend.
Not? MS was convicted of using their OS monopoly to gain a monopoly on browsers and media formats.
Pretty much the reason I've stopped watching TV, I don't like getting my schedule dictated.
Some psychological feedback that makes you feel good from getting that rare drop and makes you desire more. Pavlov observed that random positive feedback can "program" a person to do something. By randomly giving you positive feedback in the form of drops your brain gets wired to understand that killing mobs can mean happyness and as such you want to keep killing mobs to get that boost of happyness. That same mechanism drives Diablo and its derivatives, which includes Titan Quest.
I think the elimination of strong negative feedback (i.e. losses) does help with that as well. Negative feedback gets you down so you might decide to stop playing for now. If there is no such strong negative feedback you won't see a point where to interrupt your flow of playing.