I'm cautious of the analogue cordless phones (some operate around 900mhz though) because they're so open, it creates problems with eaves dropping and people "borrowing" your phone line
In fact, there were (still are?) enough people with analogue cordless phones about that you could wander around in a car with a handset until you got a dial-tone, then park up and "borrow" their phone line for a while;-) [I'd assume that this isn't legal though]
Disclaimer: I, of course, have never done this myself...;-)
I know the question of `what has happened to all the webpads?' has been asked before, but has anyone used something like an older 3/4/586 machine with a wireless network card, maybe running as a simple dumb X-server?
I, for one, would love to have a touchscreen diskless dumb-X-terminal kind of webpad, and use it simply as a display for a remote PC running all the apps you want (Mozilla, opensource Graffiti-like handwriting recognition etc?).
The price is the big issue, along with exactly when they can get it to market. But we cannot know these things with any certainty until they actually ship.
There have been a lot of figures thrown around as the Xbox train has been gathering momentum, kinda peaking a while ago at a 1GHz Athlon and NVidia graphics for about $149! The most recent I've heard is that they are aiming to be the same price as the Playstation and Playstation2 _at release_ ie. about 40,000 yen in Japan. So, it's about $350 under current estimates..
Will certainly be interesting how much they end up charging for it though, especially considering the price of Win2000 alone;-)
*suspicious mode on* I was wondering how they are going to make it `not a PC', as they have claimed. Looks more like a PC than my Dreamcast, if you ask me. And PC + Windows2000 + DirectX 8 (or more) + textures + framebuffer in 64Mb? Even when cut down (e.g. WinCE), I haven't seen them manage anything near as low as these requirements.. Hmmm... *suspicious mode off*
Maybe a poll about the X-box is in order? - Won't happen - Will cause Micro$oft to crash and burn - Will be better than PSX2 ..etc..
600Mhz, Nvidia video, DVD... gee, sounds like my PC, only with less RAM. So what can I do with this that I can't do with my PC? What games can it play - the ones I can play on my PC? I don't see what the hype's all about...
Less RAM _and_ it's unified with the graphics memory...* Anyone have a PC with one of those really cheap motherboards with unified memory? I wonder if the X-box will suck as much as though did;-)
* http://www.xbox.com/intro.htm says "64 MB of RAM (unified memory architecture)" at the bottom in the specs.
[A bit OT, but can you still get those m/bs anymore, or did they die off as quickly as they seemed to appear?]
Well, I was at the GDC2000 announcement (March 10th -- isn't this totally old news that's already been posted on Slashdot before?) and the X-box was shaped just like an `X'. Everyone there was like "That is _sooooo_ cheesy...";-)
Are you planning on doing long compiles? Are you planning on doing serious number crunching that would benefit via multiple processors?
I have been wondering about this for a while too, so to test it out I compiled the newest Linux kernel I could find (2.3.48) with it's default options on the two boxes I have to hand: A dual PII-450 with SCSI (/proc/pci says it's an `Adaptec AIC-7895U') and an Athlon 750 with on-board EIDE.
Well.. the dual PII (using make bzImage modules -j2) managed it in 4 mins 3 seconds, while the single Athlon made 4 mins 15 seconds. So the single CPU option isn't too shappy, especially when you consider the far better floating point performance which 3D-Now allows (4 flops/cycle compared to the PII at 1 flop/cycle). I'm sure these results would be different with PIII's, but then so would the price, and PII performance is probably closer to Celeron than PII.
It's a shame that there's no SMP Athlon boards yet (are there?):'-(
What I'd like to see is a book on multiplatform game development, using libraries like SDL and OpenGL.
Isn't the whole point here that the book (which I admit that I have only just started reading) is to demonstrate Architecture and Design, not implementation? So it doesn't matter what platform the examples use, as long as they get their point across. Personally, I'd have preferred it if they had used OpenGL and Linux and..., but I think their ideas transfer well with the current examples along with the OMT diagrams.
If you want an OpenGL development tutorial, buy an OpenGL book...
I heard from a (reasonably well-informed) friend that there are some `issues' with the use of Bluetooth devices in wet weather -- no matter how waterproof the device is, apparantly the protocol isn't? (i.e. the range drops from 10m+ to zero in the rain)
Does this affect 802.11 devices too? I was hoping that I could point a yagi at a friends house to play Quake 3 Arena, whatever the weather %-)
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, there were (still are?) enough people with analogue cordless phones about that you could wander around in a car with a handset until you got a dial-tone, then park up and "borrow" their phone line for a while
Disclaimer: I, of course, have never done this myself...
I know the question of `what has happened to all the webpads?' has been asked before, but has anyone used something like an older 3/4/586 machine with a wireless network card, maybe running as a simple dumb X-server?
I, for one, would love to have a touchscreen diskless dumb-X-terminal kind of webpad, and use it simply as a display for a remote PC running all the apps you want (Mozilla, opensource Graffiti-like handwriting recognition etc?).
Any ideas/suggestions?
Dave
There have been a lot of figures thrown around as the Xbox train has been gathering momentum, kinda peaking a while ago at a 1GHz Athlon and NVidia graphics for about $149! The most recent I've heard is that they are aiming to be the same price as the Playstation and Playstation2 _at release_ ie. about 40,000 yen in Japan. So, it's about $350 under current estimates..
Will certainly be interesting how much they end up charging for it though, especially considering the price of Win2000 alone
*suspicious mode on*
I was wondering how they are going to make it `not a PC', as they have claimed. Looks more like a PC than my Dreamcast, if you ask me.
And PC + Windows2000 + DirectX 8 (or more) + textures + framebuffer in 64Mb? Even when cut down (e.g. WinCE), I haven't seen them manage anything near as low as these requirements.. Hmmm...
*suspicious mode off*
Maybe a poll about the X-box is in order?
- Won't happen
- Will cause Micro$oft to crash and burn
- Will be better than PSX2
..etc..
/end venting
Less RAM _and_ it's unified with the graphics memory...* Anyone have a PC with one of those really cheap motherboards with unified memory? I wonder if the X-box will suck as much as though did
* http://www.xbox.com/intro.htm says "64 MB of RAM (unified memory architecture)" at the bottom in the specs.
[A bit OT, but can you still get those m/bs anymore, or did they die off as quickly as they seemed to appear?]
> What doeas the actual unit look like?
;-)
Well, I was at the GDC2000 announcement (March 10th -- isn't this totally old news that's already been posted on Slashdot before?) and the X-box was shaped just like an `X'.
Everyone there was like "That is _sooooo_ cheesy..."
I have been wondering about this for a while too, so to test it out I compiled the newest Linux kernel I could find (2.3.48) with it's default options on the two boxes I have to hand: A dual PII-450 with SCSI (/proc/pci says it's an `Adaptec AIC-7895U') and an Athlon 750 with on-board EIDE.
Well.. the dual PII (using make bzImage modules -j2) managed it in 4 mins 3 seconds, while the single Athlon made 4 mins 15 seconds. So the single CPU option isn't too shappy, especially when you consider the far better floating point performance which 3D-Now allows (4 flops/cycle compared to the PII at 1 flop/cycle).
I'm sure these results would be different with PIII's, but then so would the price, and PII performance is probably closer to Celeron than PII.
It's a shame that there's no SMP Athlon boards yet (are there?)
Isn't the whole point here that the book (which I admit that I have only just started reading) is to demonstrate Architecture and Design, not implementation? So it doesn't matter what platform the examples use, as long as they get their point across. Personally, I'd have preferred it if they had used OpenGL and Linux and
If you want an OpenGL development tutorial, buy an OpenGL book...
I heard from a (reasonably well-informed) friend that there are some `issues' with the use of Bluetooth devices in wet weather -- no matter how waterproof the device is, apparantly the protocol isn't?
(i.e. the range drops from 10m+ to zero in the rain)
Does this affect 802.11 devices too? I was hoping that I could point a yagi at a friends house to play Quake 3 Arena, whatever the weather %-)