Yes, a quad-core x86_64 machine would be unable to emulate a tri-core PPC system, at full speed. The memory map has to be translated (in addition to the opcodes), and that will slow down transfer to and from the graphics hardware, which must also be emulated (probably at least partially by the CPU). Add the fact that the xbox 360's Xenon PPC processor is a big-endian chip, while x86 is little endian, and you're going to be doing a lot of word-reordering. Any time that you emulate a multi-processor system, you have to have extra work to make sure that your timings are accurate concerning communication between the chips.
Virtualization, such as something like VMware, doesn't emulate to a large degree. Most of its work is virtualized. That is to say, the instructions are sent from the guest OS directly to the host processor, and VMware just manages the work as a thread on a host machine. Full processor emulation takes significantly more resources. Don't believe me? Check out PearPC. It's an emulator developed about 5 years ago, capable of running the PowerPC version of Mac OS X. It's slow as a dog. That's what you can expect with PowerPC emulation on an X86 machine.
As another point, you can easily emulate more CPU cores than your computer actually contains. That's the whole point of actual emulation; you don't need the hardware to physically exist. That's the whole point of a Turing-complete computer.
I've run HL2 on my mid-2002 laptop with 16MB Radeon card and 512MB of RAM....granted, none of the characters have pupils and I run it at lowest graphics...but it runs around 40fps on an old laptop which wasn't top of the line even when it was released. I've always been really impressed by the Source engine.
In fact, I believe that a technique was recently developed to make it quicker and cheaper to produce large, clear artificial diamonds. Previously, they had to use some sort of pressure chamber, which severely limited the size of the diamonds produced, and required more time for larger stones. There's a new method that I read about roughly a month ago that uses microwaves to do the purification. Unfortunately, I can't remember the details, and I can't find a link.
I use Time Warner cable internet (I guess they bought Roadrunner or something). 10Mb down, 1Mb up, $45/month. I don't pay for cable or phone through them or anyone else.
My first Linux distro was in 2001 or 2002. Mandrake. I played with it for a while, but some of my hardware didn't work out of the box, I didn't know how to fix it, and all the automated scripts made it worse. Exact same problem when I tried Red Hat. Fast forward to 2003, when I entered college...and my neighbor in the dorms introduced me to Slackware. I ran it for the next two years, and it was an *awesome* basis for my Linux knowledge.
Then there are the years of mindless "advocacy" that bring everyone on Slashdot down by association and hurt FOSS more than anything Microsoft could do
Hmmm....that's an interesting idea. Twitter could actually be the ultimate Microsoft astroturfer, keeping the people on the brink of switching from seeing the *good* side of the Linux-using community.
, Valve will unlock all the Steam installs if they go out of business. I have no idea if it will actually work that way, of course. There could just as easily be "unavoidable technical issues" (i.e. newly developed contractual obligations with former competitors or whatever) that prevent them from unlocking the games.
Looking at old games, I guess I can point out how many needed a manual, or a key decoder spinner or whatever. So many of those have been cracked (eventually). I can still play them, even when the companies are gone. The same thing will happen here. Copy protection, DRM, all that cruft....essentially useless. It's broken within days of the games' releases. So while I dislike DRM strongly, I somehow doubt that it'll work well as a lock against access to older games.
I guess the way that I think about it is that I have access to my account from anywhere. I can load my games onto some random computer and be good to go. A friend's house or whatever. I like that value. And if they do something to lock me out, I would have no problem whatsoever with downloading a Steam crack, and continuing to play my games. In theory, I'm against DRM. But I feel like it become a moot point when it actually provides me some value, and I have the power to circumvent it should I choose to. Note that I don't play online often, when I say this.
I enjoyed Dreamfall. When I got to the end, my biggest problem was the "to be continued" feel. Other than that, I thought that the gameplay mechanic of switching between characters was a good way to keep things flowing and interesting....and it didn't hurt to see Arcadia and Stark in nice 3d graphics!
And soon after they come out, most or all Steam games have Steam cracks anyhow. If Valve doesn't unlock them when it goes down, then the community will.
You're just pointing out that there are some situations that have fewer opportunities than other situations (e.g. some people can get decent internet connections, and some can't). If someone can't afford a good connection, or can't afford to live somewhere that a good connection is available, then where are they going to download their mods anyhow? It's like saying "What if I don't have the money for a big screen TV, or the cable company won't provide me HD service in my area". Guess what? It happens. And your hypothetical gamer is basically SOL.
That would make you a business entity. The parent said "corporate entity", but I'm sure they meant "business". Regardless, there are important differences between trademark, copyrights, and patents; there should be separate laws for each. For instance, as long as a company is producing a product, it should have exclusive use of its trademark (i.e. product name, company name, product logo, etc).
I started playing with programming in 3rd grade on my family's DOS machine. By 8th grade, I knew significantly more about computers than anyone in my family. That knowledge helped me get my software engineering job, as well as more than one IT job, so I understand your viewpoint. But you know that most of the children will use the computers for games or chatting. They aren't going to be worried about how to use it (not seriously, anyhow)
Seven had one of her eyes removed as a child, when she was originally assimilated. The Voyager doctor gave her a replacement implant. I don't think that it (normally) did anything more than normal human sight...although there were a few episodes that they "tuned" it to act as an extra-dimensional detector or something.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, a quad-core x86_64 machine would be unable to emulate a tri-core PPC system, at full speed. The memory map has to be translated (in addition to the opcodes), and that will slow down transfer to and from the graphics hardware, which must also be emulated (probably at least partially by the CPU). Add the fact that the xbox 360's Xenon PPC processor is a big-endian chip, while x86 is little endian, and you're going to be doing a lot of word-reordering. Any time that you emulate a multi-processor system, you have to have extra work to make sure that your timings are accurate concerning communication between the chips.
Virtualization, such as something like VMware, doesn't emulate to a large degree. Most of its work is virtualized. That is to say, the instructions are sent from the guest OS directly to the host processor, and VMware just manages the work as a thread on a host machine. Full processor emulation takes significantly more resources. Don't believe me? Check out PearPC. It's an emulator developed about 5 years ago, capable of running the PowerPC version of Mac OS X. It's slow as a dog. That's what you can expect with PowerPC emulation on an X86 machine.
As another point, you can easily emulate more CPU cores than your computer actually contains. That's the whole point of actual emulation; you don't need the hardware to physically exist. That's the whole point of a Turing-complete computer.
I've run HL2 on my mid-2002 laptop with 16MB Radeon card and 512MB of RAM....granted, none of the characters have pupils and I run it at lowest graphics...but it runs around 40fps on an old laptop which wasn't top of the line even when it was released. I've always been really impressed by the Source engine.
In fact, I believe that a technique was recently developed to make it quicker and cheaper to produce large, clear artificial diamonds.
Previously, they had to use some sort of pressure chamber, which severely limited the size of the diamonds produced, and required more time for larger stones. There's a new method that I read about roughly a month ago that uses microwaves to do the purification. Unfortunately, I can't remember the details, and I can't find a link.
Rogue may have been a bad choice of word. I just assumed that the article had meant to call him unusual, since he is that.
I think the problem is that there's no "-1, whoosh" moderation.
I use Time Warner cable internet (I guess they bought Roadrunner or something). 10Mb down, 1Mb up, $45/month. I don't pay for cable or phone through them or anyone else.
My first Linux distro was in 2001 or 2002. Mandrake. I played with it for a while, but some of my hardware didn't work out of the box, I didn't know how to fix it, and all the automated scripts made it worse. Exact same problem when I tried Red Hat. Fast forward to 2003, when I entered college...and my neighbor in the dorms introduced me to Slackware. I ran it for the next two years, and it was an *awesome* basis for my Linux knowledge.
Then there are the years of mindless "advocacy" that bring everyone on Slashdot down by association and hurt FOSS more than anything Microsoft could do
Hmmm....that's an interesting idea. Twitter could actually be the ultimate Microsoft astroturfer, keeping the people on the brink of switching from seeing the *good* side of the Linux-using community.
theoretically
, Valve will unlock all the Steam installs if they go out of business. I have no idea if it will actually work that way, of course. There could just as easily be "unavoidable technical issues" (i.e. newly developed contractual obligations with former competitors or whatever) that prevent them from unlocking the games.
Looking at old games, I guess I can point out how many needed a manual, or a key decoder spinner or whatever. So many of those have been cracked (eventually). I can still play them, even when the companies are gone. The same thing will happen here. Copy protection, DRM, all that cruft....essentially useless. It's broken within days of the games' releases. So while I dislike DRM strongly, I somehow doubt that it'll work well as a lock against access to older games.
I guess the way that I think about it is that I have access to my account from anywhere. I can load my games onto some random computer and be good to go. A friend's house or whatever. I like that value. And if they do something to lock me out, I would have no problem whatsoever with downloading a Steam crack, and continuing to play my games. In theory, I'm against DRM. But I feel like it become a moot point when it actually provides me some value, and I have the power to circumvent it should I choose to. Note that I don't play online often, when I say this.
I enjoyed Dreamfall. When I got to the end, my biggest problem was the "to be continued" feel. Other than that, I thought that the gameplay mechanic of switching between characters was a good way to keep things flowing and interesting....and it didn't hurt to see Arcadia and Stark in nice 3d graphics!
That makes me curious what Vas An Corp would do in a graveyard...
Sure they do. Elder Scrolls Oblivion's expansion pack does (I bought it on a DVD, and had to install it prior to use), and I'm sure there are others.
And soon after they come out, most or all Steam games have Steam cracks anyhow. If Valve doesn't unlock them when it goes down, then the community will.
You're just pointing out that there are some situations that have fewer opportunities than other situations (e.g. some people can get decent internet connections, and some can't).
If someone can't afford a good connection, or can't afford to live somewhere that a good connection is available, then where are they going to download their mods anyhow? It's like saying "What if I don't have the money for a big screen TV, or the cable company won't provide me HD service in my area". Guess what? It happens. And your hypothetical gamer is basically SOL.
medical stuff
Awesome, are you implying the future existence of robot paramedics and doctors?
That would make you a business entity. The parent said "corporate entity", but I'm sure they meant "business". Regardless, there are important differences between trademark, copyrights, and patents; there should be separate laws for each. For instance, as long as a company is producing a product, it should have exclusive use of its trademark (i.e. product name, company name, product logo, etc).
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
I knew a large community of movie downloaders, so most of the people with whom I was familiar had several hundred gigabytes. I guess I'm just weird...
I've tried it (on a friend's custom server). I liked it even less than I liked playing the game multiplayer.
Say it aloud, and it makes sense. "Hire".
I started playing with programming in 3rd grade on my family's DOS machine. By 8th grade, I knew significantly more about computers than anyone in my family. That knowledge helped me get my software engineering job, as well as more than one IT job, so I understand your viewpoint. But you know that most of the children will use the computers for games or chatting. They aren't going to be worried about how to use it (not seriously, anyhow)
He's a cop, you idiot! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBICj64ak0k
Seven had one of her eyes removed as a child, when she was originally assimilated. The Voyager doctor gave her a replacement implant. I don't think that it (normally) did anything more than normal human sight...although there were a few episodes that they "tuned" it to act as an extra-dimensional detector or something.
Note: with that mantissa, the unit is spelled (or at least pronounced) jiggawatts =)