It was mentioned in a comment on slashdot somewhere that the code in the ATI or nVidia drivers may be propriatary and closed source as liscensed from someone else. They may have bought code from company x but company x may not allow for that code to be open source. So instead of re-writing the drivers entirely so that nVidia/ATI own all of their own code, they may just stick with the binary drivers to protect other companies IP.
Does it suck? yes, very much so, but the world is like that with software patents. Though I am not sure how those patents would apply in this case.
> So what do I call an article that raves about something that I can only actually see if I pay money? An advertisement.
Its called "copyRIGHT law" The screenies were described, and the product is not even available, and it did say that they would probably be made public soon.
Think back to before reality TV, remember how there were good shows and they didnt need reality TV to support them? Yes, it was all of 7 years ago or so.
Teh best trick is to not actually do anything, when you had been making a buildup to think that they would. Yes, its lame, and not even funny, but I need to justify my lack of actually pulling a prank.
USB is a fairly large plug for a PDA or a cell phone, its not exactly small, but its not big either. There is the smaller USB cables (its USB-B I think), but those are not as common.
Besides, selling propraitary cables makes them money.
And I am sure you can think of many of those "vast majority" of Presidents who could not get elected today who never deserved to be elected in the first place.
Abe Lincon. He was not even close to being attractive, apparently had a terribly gruff voice, grew up in a log cabbin, and was one of the best Presidents ever.
Everyone needs to have their anti-alised fonts stored in the 24mb of cache, that way they dont need to waste cycles on it and can be used doing stuff like inflating the price and being hard to program.
I remember seing one of those graphs in the book my Ray Kurziweil called "Age of Spiritual Machines" not only is the graph identical, but even the scale is the same. You probably cant copyright a graph, but I am now doubting the originality of that article.
I never said that it was not superior (which it is) but that it was less intuitive. You fumble around for a long time with the mouse/keyboard getting used to things like "mouse look" and all that, whereas with Goldeneye, you could pick up and play it with the "1.1 Honey" config very easily, joystick move, no mouse look, z is fire. Granted, goldeneye never really needed to have looking (you could switch to 1.2 solitaire if you wanted that, which I did once I discovered it).
A lot of the decline in PC games is the lack of marketing, lack of (good) original titles, and high initial cost to get started with it.
Lots of console games are being released on the PC, and a lot of PC games released on the consoles. Consoles attract more money to developers because there is a larger installed userbase, PC Gamers need to be a bit more tech savvy then their console brothers and sisters to get games to work, and the keyboard/mouse configuration is less intuitive then a gamepad.
Because they have lack of common sense and someone probably thought that it would be a good idea to speed up customs on people and make in even harder to fake passports (as encryption is hard to fake).
But wait, they forgot that people can break encryption given enough time, its not ID theifs that are the real problem, its organized attack by foreign governments (maybe Iran or othe nations with state sponsored terrorism or government agents sympathetic to it) because they have the computing resources to crack the encrytion given enough packets sniffed coupled with the computing power.
Graphics X/10 Story Y/10 Gaming Z/10 Overall ([X+Y+Z]/3)/10
I dont like the cumulative score system, I find that it places too much emphisis on things like "graphics" and "sound" and not enough on things like "fun". I dont play games to be a tech demo for surround sound or graphics and zero gameplay (granted, the "gaming" part is supposed to ballance this out, but not always). If another game based on the Infinity engine came out (it wont but this is beside the point), then the graphics would suck, but the gameplay could be fantastic and deservinc of a 90%+, but if the graphics are weighted too heavily, then it could drop it down to an 85, when it deserves more.
It all depends on the reviewer, but ever game review that I have read that did not have any kind of rating at the end left me wondering whether the game was good or bad, I can hardly ever tell. Granted, the places that I saw them were not very high quality, but it leaves a lot to be desired in what I can tell. A 5-star system to me always makes me think "how can a game be perfect?" After all, a 5/5 is a perfect score. I know its not SUPPOSED to seem like that, and they really mean its fantastic, but its something that rubs the wrong way with me. I read a copy of a friends CGW, and the rating system was just not detiailed enough. They had expanded the 5/5 to basically a 10/10 with "half stars"
I read PC Gamer (US edition, the UK one was mentioned in the article i believe) which has the % system. Any game that has a 90% is great, 80% is great too, and 70% is for fans. Anything less is usually not worth buying. PCG started as a UK magazine imitating a US magazine, and the US version is a US magazine imitating a UK magazine imitating a US magazine (in the 100th anniversary issue they explained this).
While a game can be given a 3/5, a 7/10 it still says "above average, fans of genre". The % system allows people to say "71%" which is above average, but not by much, or "79%" or "almost excellent, but not quite." I am biased about this, I like the % system better, I like the extra detail it can provide. Perhaps with a mentality shift I can learn to live with the 5/5 or 10/10 system, but I still like the 100/100 one better.
I dont know whats wrong with the "old" style. I buy games based on reviews from magazines based on the "old" style. It works, thats why I use it. A writeup discuussing the games pros/cons, features, basic story, etc. then a score out of 100 based on the reviewers overall opinion.
0-30% awful, avoid like the plague 40-50% terrible games, some redeeming features 50-60% average, has significant flaws 60-70% you may enjoy these, but there are better choices 70-80% very good 80-90% excellent 90-100% editors choice (no game should ever be given 100%)
Whats wrong with that? Its informative, entertainig and it works.
Slashdot Mirror
It was mentioned in a comment on slashdot somewhere that the code in the ATI or nVidia drivers may be propriatary and closed source as liscensed from someone else. They may have bought code from company x but company x may not allow for that code to be open source. So instead of re-writing the drivers entirely so that nVidia/ATI own all of their own code, they may just stick with the binary drivers to protect other companies IP.
Does it suck? yes, very much so, but the world is like that with software patents. Though I am not sure how those patents would apply in this case.
Always sticking together, watch Quebec separate and join France again. /completely off topic
> So what do I call an article that raves about something that I can only actually see if I pay money? An advertisement.
Its called "copyRIGHT law" The screenies were described, and the product is not even available, and it did say that they would probably be made public soon.
In Solviet Russia, General faults YOU
Think back to before reality TV, remember how there were good shows and they didnt need reality TV to support them? Yes, it was all of 7 years ago or so.
> Dropping reality tv will not make good shows appear.
Well, it does, because the good expensive shows that dont have high enough ratings are canceled to make way for the shovelware.
Teh best trick is to not actually do anything, when you had been making a buildup to think that they would. Yes, its lame, and not even funny, but I need to justify my lack of actually pulling a prank.
You could always mail it to the MP who is introducing the singatures to parliment postage free at:
House of Commons
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada
K1A 0A6
Its not how the organizers want it, but it will work, maybe.
4. Resonable drinking age of 19, as the highway dept. funding is not controlled by M.A.D.
Its 18 in Quebec and Alberta, 19 elsewhere (like Ontario), and its M.A.D.D., not M.A.D.
Run seti@home, folding@home, and distributed.net all at once. That should really go for them. Plus they are all linux compatible as well as windows.
USB is a fairly large plug for a PDA or a cell phone, its not exactly small, but its not big either. There is the smaller USB cables (its USB-B I think), but those are not as common.
Besides, selling propraitary cables makes them money.
And I am sure you can think of many of those "vast majority" of Presidents who could not get elected today who never deserved to be elected in the first place.
Abe Lincon. He was not even close to being attractive, apparently had a terribly gruff voice, grew up in a log cabbin, and was one of the best Presidents ever.
Yes, but he didnt put Rap as a reference at the bottom of the page like he did other authors, which is the only reason that I mentioned it.
Everyone needs to have their anti-alised fonts stored in the 24mb of cache, that way they dont need to waste cycles on it and can be used doing stuff like inflating the price and being hard to program.
High initial cost to buy a PC capable of gaming, which is what I said, I talked about development in a seperate paragraph.
I remember seing one of those graphs in the book my Ray Kurziweil called "Age of Spiritual Machines" not only is the graph identical, but even the scale is the same. You probably cant copyright a graph, but I am now doubting the originality of that article.
Intel's latest Itanium chip has 1.7 billion transistors!"
No wonder they call it the Itanic! Both were big and huge and failed miserably.
The mods are drunk again, "privacy" is better.
I never said that it was not superior (which it is) but that it was less intuitive. You fumble around for a long time with the mouse/keyboard getting used to things like "mouse look" and all that, whereas with Goldeneye, you could pick up and play it with the "1.1 Honey" config very easily, joystick move, no mouse look, z is fire. Granted, goldeneye never really needed to have looking (you could switch to 1.2 solitaire if you wanted that, which I did once I discovered it).
Microsoft is working on this already, /. had it, search for "tray and play."
A lot of the decline in PC games is the lack of marketing, lack of (good) original titles, and high initial cost to get started with it.
Lots of console games are being released on the PC, and a lot of PC games released on the consoles. Consoles attract more money to developers because there is a larger installed userbase, PC Gamers need to be a bit more tech savvy then their console brothers and sisters to get games to work, and the keyboard/mouse configuration is less intuitive then a gamepad.
Having said that, I like PC Gaming MUCH better.
Because they have lack of common sense and someone probably thought that it would be a good idea to speed up customs on people and make in even harder to fake passports (as encryption is hard to fake).
But wait, they forgot that people can break encryption given enough time, its not ID theifs that are the real problem, its organized attack by foreign governments (maybe Iran or othe nations with state sponsored terrorism or government agents sympathetic to it) because they have the computing resources to crack the encrytion given enough packets sniffed coupled with the computing power.
Graphics X/10 Story Y/10 Gaming Z/10 Overall ([X+Y+Z]/3)/10
I dont like the cumulative score system, I find that it places too much emphisis on things like "graphics" and "sound" and not enough on things like "fun". I dont play games to be a tech demo for surround sound or graphics and zero gameplay (granted, the "gaming" part is supposed to ballance this out, but not always). If another game based on the Infinity engine came out (it wont but this is beside the point), then the graphics would suck, but the gameplay could be fantastic and deservinc of a 90%+, but if the graphics are weighted too heavily, then it could drop it down to an 85, when it deserves more.
It all depends on the reviewer, but ever game review that I have read that did not have any kind of rating at the end left me wondering whether the game was good or bad, I can hardly ever tell. Granted, the places that I saw them were not very high quality, but it leaves a lot to be desired in what I can tell. A 5-star system to me always makes me think "how can a game be perfect?" After all, a 5/5 is a perfect score. I know its not SUPPOSED to seem like that, and they really mean its fantastic, but its something that rubs the wrong way with me. I read a copy of a friends CGW, and the rating system was just not detiailed enough. They had expanded the 5/5 to basically a 10/10 with "half stars"
I read PC Gamer (US edition, the UK one was mentioned in the article i believe) which has the % system. Any game that has a 90% is great, 80% is great too, and 70% is for fans. Anything less is usually not worth buying. PCG started as a UK magazine imitating a US magazine, and the US version is a US magazine imitating a UK magazine imitating a US magazine (in the 100th anniversary issue they explained this).
While a game can be given a 3/5, a 7/10 it still says "above average, fans of genre". The % system allows people to say "71%" which is above average, but not by much, or "79%" or "almost excellent, but not quite." I am biased about this, I like the % system better, I like the extra detail it can provide. Perhaps with a mentality shift I can learn to live with the 5/5 or 10/10 system, but I still like the 100/100 one better.
I dont know whats wrong with the "old" style. I buy games based on reviews from magazines based on the "old" style. It works, thats why I use it. A writeup discuussing the games pros/cons, features, basic story, etc. then a score out of 100 based on the reviewers overall opinion.
0-30% awful, avoid like the plague
40-50% terrible games, some redeeming features
50-60% average, has significant flaws
60-70% you may enjoy these, but there are better choices
70-80% very good
80-90% excellent
90-100% editors choice (no game should ever be given 100%)
Whats wrong with that? Its informative, entertainig and it works.