Well that and the markup on flu shots ain't that great. Now cancer? There is a disease i doubt they'll ever find a cure for, because if it did it would cost them billions. They make crazy markups on those and people will pay, even if the odds sucks ass, just to try to cheat death a little longer, so that is one disease that will be here to stay.
Question: If Canonical announced tomorrow "We are going broke, either we have the Amazon search or we close our doors" which would you choose? Frankly most of the improvements on usability on the desktop can be traced back to Canonical and like it or not if they go under there is nobody lining up to take their place.All the major corps are spending their budgets on SERVER improvements and frankly couldn't give a rat's ass about the desktop...after all their locked down Windows desktops work just fine for them.
So what do you choose? That is what it ultimately comes down to as TINSTAAFL and somebody has to sink those millions into the desktop if you want it to go anywhere...or would you prefer going back to "Bob's Distro" where its just the same packages with a new theme and a couple of little things switched around, like 2/3rds of the ones on distrowatch?
Friend, haven't you noticed the trend? Apple is pushing retina, the HDTV companies are set to roll out 4K resolution sets, the fricking games are starting to look Crysis levels of "Holy Shit!" as far as effects and explosions...people want MOAR, moar effects, more explosions, more resolution, moar moar and moar.
Try running a phone from just 2 years ago with today's apps and see how damned pokey it feels, its like a 486DX trying to run Win98, and as I have just pointed out that is going NOWHERE but up. Does that mean ARM is fucked? Nope, i bet they'll hang onto the low end feature phones and probably the low end smartphones as well, but as Apple has shown that AIN'T where the good money is at.
The simple fact is ARM just doesn't scale well, it just don't. to get it up to even the levels of a Pentium 4 from 8 years ago will frankly blow the power budget to hell, now try to get ARM to match the new Atoms and AMD Hondo chips...you can't do it, you'd have a battery life of 10 minutes on the thing because you'd have to make up for the lack of IPC by throwing more specialized cores at it, just as you suggest with HD. This blows your power budget all to hell while Intel who has IPC coming out the ass can simply cut down existing designs and lower the power.
Uhhh...what idiots are putting their HACKED X360s on XBL? Seems like a good way to be banhammered to me. But on a positive note, just one more plus for us PC gamers, yay us!
That won't happen because of one single fact...Canonical needs the money. I mean look at their track record since Shuttleworth said he wouldn't sink more money into Canonical, its been a desperate throwing ideas at the wall hoping to find a way to keep the company afloat. Ubuntu Netbook Edition, Ubuntu Server (remember when Shuttleworth said that Ubuntu "was gonna be for desktops and not servers"? Boy that tune changed quick) Ubuntu selling MP3s through Amazon and now Amazon search.
But I predict Canonical will be joining that long list, Corel and Xandros and Linspire and Mandriva and more I can't even remember off hand, that tried to make a living off of desktop Linux and failed. there is simply no money in Linux desktops and it costs a LOT of money to create and improve Ubuntu so...well you get what you have now, begging on the download page and Amazon search. So long Canonical, it was a nice idea, too bad it just didn't work out..
LOL Wut? ARM has YET to hit even the IPC of a Pentium 4, how many years ago was that chip released? They aren't even close to the Core series, and in case you ain't noticed companies like Nvidia, that have sank BIG bux into ARM, are having to pile on the cores to get decent performance which of course blows the power budget to shit.
The simple facts are 1.- ARM doesn't scale and 2.- Its a hell of a lot easier for Intel, who already has insane levels of IPC, to scale down and have low power chips than it is for ARM to scale up and not blow their power budgets. Even the ARM group has been talking of "dark silicon" because their new designs will blow through the power if you run the whole chip, so they are gonna have to shut bits of it off and only kick them on when absolutely needed.
Lets face facts folks, ARM has just about run its course and the consumers want MOAR, MOAR performance, MOAR multimedia, MOAR everything and Intel will be able to deliver that with crazy IPC on their new Atoms and CULV Core chips while ARM will be blowing just as much if not more power than Intel trying to get the IPC up there. Its ironic that the head of AMD is trying to hitch onto ARM when they have the same problem, lack of IPC.
Weight, it ALL comes down to weight. Every solar powered aircraft you've seen has to be light as hell because 1.- Solar cells simply aren't very efficient, even the most expensive are something like 40%, and 2.- batteries to store enough power to supplement the cells would make the system too damned heavy to fly.
Bitch is, the Brits are testing a system right now that makes gasoline from seawater and the carbon exhaust of factories. I'm sorry but my Google Fu sucks, but I believe the article was on last week's The Reg about the pilot program they've set up. If they can get this to scale we'll be able to extract the waste from our plants and basically "recycle" carbon from them and the ocean to power our vehicles. Now maybe you could boost the savings a plant like that gives you by solar powering it and then running the plane on the gas it produces but the cells themselves simply won't cut it for something as heavy as an airliner. Should work great for Big Brother "eye in the sky" style UAVs though.
And there is "magically" gonna be demand for the Windows appstore? Valves has DOUBLED THEIR PROFITS every single year for the last 7 years...you don't think MSFT wants some of that money?
The simple fact is MSFT SUCKS ASS at doing consumer friendly...hell look at the X360, nobody LIKES the X360 UI, they put up with it because they want Halo 4, that's all. Might I remind you they spent millions of getting exclusives for PC and X360, yet they can't even fix the UI problems enough to get people to buy from them? I can post page after page of reviews on Amazon for games that say "USES GFWL, STAY AWAY!" and I'm sure if you talk to developers they'll tell you having GFWL baked into your game costs you a good 30% of sales...do you think this will inspire confidence in devs, make them want to use the Windows appstore, or will it make them be leery and stay away?
If they can't even get GFWL right after this many years and a competitor they could just crib off of what makes you think they can get it right with the appstore?
Multi-booting is a royal PITA and I've never seen anybody use it for any length of time. its always the same thing, they multi-boot, then they end up using one more than the other, then they don't go into the other unless they have to, then they don't go into the other at all.
But you STILL haven't answered my question, which is thus: How can you make a GPL compatible DRM system? I don't think its possible, not without having a black box hardware dongle deal like a TiVo which of course would kill any appeal that valve had since you'd have to buy specialized hardware to run it on Linux...or just run it on Windows for free.
So I'm sorry, you said in an earlier post "the world has to play by our rules" when in reality they can just do what they have for 20+ years and simply ignore you. No software, no drivers, no support, nothing. You don't exist, they don't know you nor do they care.
Ultimately this is what happens with a black and white "myway or the highway" attitude, especially when people have choices, is they'll choose the highway. Valve will end up with ONLY their games and a few indies, the same ones you can get on the humble bundles WITHOUT Steam, and you mark my words after a year they are gonna look at the cost of maintaining a Linux version, with the system devs doing everything they can to break Steam because they can't go GPL, and compare that with the meager sales and they'll pull the plug.
The simple fact is I have plenty of examples to prove that I'm correct, Corel, Xandros, Linspire, Mandriva, soon Canonical and after them Steam. You simply can't make money off of software with the GPL model, RMS made sure of that. you can sell services on TOP of GPLed software such as Red Hat, but unless they are gonna charge for MP access (yeah THAT would go over well, when the Windows users get it free) then that won't fly, you can sell hardware like TiVo, which while they may come out with a DRM in a box console that won't have shit to do with PC gaming or Linux, or you can use the tin cup model which sure as fuck isn't gonna pay for $100+ million dollar triple A titles.
So its just not gonna work, the devs think they can force the world to follow their GPL ways, yet 20+ years have proven that to be false, and DRM is about as loved in the FOSS community as abortion clinics are loved by the RNC, so they'll have too many of the community fucking shit up every chance they can get because they can't release as GPL. Valve is stuck between a rock and a hard place and will fail, they simply have ZERO chance of success. hell they'd have better odds of pulling an Apple and coming up with their own BSD variant than they would trying to put a DRM platform on GPLed OS, it will just never fly.
This is why I think the ones that come out with a $50 disposable smartphone are gonna make a fucking killing, because all it takes is seeing what a 2 year old can do to an iPhone ONE time to make you realize that having insanely expensive small devices is a BAD idea for families. In that vein I've seen a lot of my customers giving up their iPhones for those sub $100 Android phones at Walmart, they don't get locked into a contract and if the phone gets flushed or stomped you don't have a damned coronary like you do when its a $700 smartphone.
Because desktops are where you work out the power problems and is the test bed of the parts that end up in mobile? Its no coincidence that the parts start on desktops, the GPUs start as discretes and IGPs, because you don't have to worry about hitting the insanely low heat and power requirements on the mobiles as you refine the process while you still get paid.
This is one advantage AMD and Intel has had over their competitors, because they don't have to get the power and cooling right off the bat, they can sell the chips and refine them before trying to squeeze them into a little piece of plastic.
But the IPC is soooo terrible that you'd need a 2GHz boost to beat the X6 on IPC and the problem as always when it comes to bumping up the MHz is power and heat and the BD/PD/SR design is a power pig, not the thing to be when everyone is talking green and worried about rising power and cooling costs.
Lets face it...its AMD's netburst is what it is. Just like Intel they focused on only one metric and got a chip that OCs well but with such a low IPC that frankly on all but the absolute highest SKU you HAVE to OC just to get anywhere near a decent IPC out of the chip and the heat and power just go crazy when you crank the BD design. If you'll look at the link I gave in the under $200 chips frankly THREE of the previous chips beat the FX 8120, including not one but two quads...that ain't good. Frankly the only way they've been having BD beat the Thubans is by pairing FX 8 against Thuban X6 and even with a supposed 2 core advantage it can't get more than a few percent ahead and in many cases it falls by a few percent.
Anyway you slice it the Bulldozer design is just a bad call, it was approved by a CEO that did a slash and burn on R&D and engineering and expected computer layouts to save them and instead it gave them a power sucking hog.
I actually have one of the new Via HD audio chips in my board and...its quite nice actually. I figured I'd have to swap in a discrete but since I already had a SB X-Fi given to me by a customer and other than Via audio the board was just a steal, 4 RAM slots, Xfire ready, 8 SATA, ton of USBs, etc for $45 I could always just ignore the Via sound but I have to say at least for this board somebody got it right as the sound is quite nice, no crashy driver or hassles.
Nice to see somebody else sees what is going on. They need to go back to the K8, get on bended knee and bring the Athlon64 guys back, but that will take time. They've got the Thuban design that was getting damned near 100% yields, they also have the Magny Cours socket, put them together, take a 95w X6 and unlock the multiplier and put 2 of them in the Magny Cours socket for the gamers, and for those that stuck with AM3 give them an 8 core Thuban. This would bring up the IPC enough to keep them afloat while they get the chip guys that know WTF they are doing to go back to K8, just as Intel did with the P3 and Core, and build them something great.
But if they stick with Bulldozer/Piledriver/Steamroller they are just fucked, royally fucked. Its not a good design and I don't think there is any way to fix it, it just has too many shared resources and the IPC is just too shitty. When you have 8 fricking cores and can't compete with a 4 core of the other guy? The chip is shit. Hell I'm still selling the socket AM3 chips because their IPC is still higher than the average user will need while being a good value and not blowing through the power, they need to get back to that short term along with making a multi-chip module for Brazos, bolt 2 Brazos modules together minus the GPU on the second one and you'd have a sub 25w quad that is cheap and has decent graphics for HTPCs and netbooks/notebooks. Hell plenty of OEMs are still using Brazos because its a good deal, a quad would sell like hotcakes.
I truly hope they pull out of the death spiral they are in but ARM is EXACTLY the wrong move, as you pointed out they are gonna be late to the party, by about 4 years, with Nvidia already having the job of good graphics paired to ARM that would have been theirs. They really have to rebuild after being gutted by their CEO and that takes time, so going back to what worked and just bolting two chips together would at least give them a product to sell that could at least keep up with and in some cases beat i5 and the first gen i7.
Uhh...what great chips? The Thubans were good, but everything based on Bulldozer just blows through power while having terrible IPC, thanks to having shared integer and floating point units. If they were to be honest the "modules" would be treated as single cores with hardware assisted hyperthreading, because the benches show that is a hell of a lot closer to what they are than to true cores. Hell since the release of BD they don't even have a single slot anymore on Tom's Hardware "Best Gaming CPU" list whereas they used to pretty much OWN everything under $200. Hell look at how badly their new chips rate compared to even their old chips, with not only the X6 but no less than TWO of the X4s, the 980 and 955, scoring better than their new FX 8120. So I'm sorry, this is coming from someone who has been building AMD exclusively since i heard about the OEM bribery, but the new chips? Just not good.
And sadly ARM isn't gonna save them either, they are too late to the game and from the looks of it ARM simply isn't gonna scale while keeping its lower power budget. Just look at how companies like Nvidia, that have been sinking a ton into ARM, are having to use ever more cores to get the performance up, it just doesn't scale. And since Intel has the fabs they can get to the lower sizes quicker, and their chips are frankly getting lower powered all the time. A 55w Ivy will frankly curbstomp a 125w Piledriver and with servers while there are some loads you can run without the IPC frankly there are a LOT more loads where you'll need that IPC and AMD just doesn't have it, and with electricity costs and cooling costs? It really don't look good for AMD, damned I wish it weren't true but it is what it is, AMD is in REAL bad shape right now.
What's sad is how bad the former CEO fucked AMD by doing a total slash and burn on their engineering and R&D and pushing for cheaper automated layouts that simply don't cut it. The Athlon64 guys? GONE. The Cryix guys? GONE. they pretty much have their backs against the wall because the former CEO burned the fucking company to get a short term bounce, which I'm sure he cashed out on.
And anybody who thinks ARM will save them might be interested in some magic beans I have for sale, as ARM frankly doesn't scale very well and from the early looks ARM64 isn't gonna be really any better for power than the CULV Intel chips while having a HELL of a lot worse IPC. Frankly, and this is coming from someone who has been building AMD systems exclusively for awhile now and is still hanging onto AM3+ for all its worth, the only real selling point they had was "bang for the buck" but by burning R&D and killing Thuban the former CEO left them holding the bag without shit besides Bulldozer, which we all know blows too much power, is too damned hot, and frankly their octocores get stomped by Intel quads on IPC while using a third of the power.
I have to agree with the engineer in that link, they should have done the same thing Intel did with Core, go back to their earlier K8 designs and start from there just as Intel did with P3 mobile but now they just don't have the money or the time. I truly hope the Athlon64/Apple A6 chip designer they hired back can come up with a design to save the company because right now? Right now they really got nothing. Hell the former CEO even pulled the plug on Krishna, which would have been a sub 20w quad core bobcat, which is why all we're seeing now is minor speedbumps on a 3+ year old design. I swear they got fucked raw by bad management and I only hope they pull through. Maybe if they would have done this 4 years ago they could have the niche Nvidia now holds, but now? Its just not enough.
Music they pay the artists a pittance, in some cases nothing at all, games cost nearly 100 MILLION a game for a triple A rated title...do you HONESTLY think they are gonna put you on the "honor system' for a 100 million dollar plus product and the entire company on the line? BTW you brought up music...has music piracy gone down since they switched to MP3? Not really, their numbers fall every year...you think the game companies are gonna trust you to be nice and pay them?
Either you accept the rules or you don't get the product, its THAT simple. Now seeing as Valve has made PC gaming on windows frankly one of the cheapest entertainment platforms on the planet, free patches, matchmaking, full support that responds quickly to problems, well I think they have EVERY right to insure they aren't ripped off like the games you see on TPB.
But you do seem like a reasonable person, but sadly your beliefs are held by too many of the devs, which is why Linux on Steam will fail. I think too many of the FOSS camp live their lives by the "is ought" fallacy in that they have decided how the world OUGHT to be and refuse to see how it IS, and how it is is this, Steam is the ONLY company that have doubled their profits every year for the last 7 years, while companies like EA and Activision are on the auction block.....why do you think that is? i'll tell you, because you have to buy from Valve if you want to play on Steam with full functionality, hell more and more retail games I'm seeing are just Steam games in a box.
So I'm sorry but sadly your beliefs will win, to the detriment of Linux and the community. Linux will never have the triple A titles, won't ever get photoshop or Quickbooks or any of the other software people buy Windows for, thus insuring that MSFT can put out a turkey every other release and still make enough sales to do as they please. Like it or not the world will NEVER switch to a GPL model, you've had over 30 years of the GPL now and things haven't changed, over 20 years of Linux and yet not a single box in any store, because its the politics and beliefs such as yours that will insure that non GPL software never runs on Linux, thus making sure Apple and MSFT will own the desktop and from the looks of things mobile too, especially if MSFT has full DirectX support on their tablets.
Thanks, you nailed it. I too drank the koolaid, ran Linux on my laptop nearly 3 years while being told 'Oh in the next release that'll get fixed for sure!" only to have 4 other things be broken, usually by devs not caring about anything but their own little corner. You certainly can't sell machines to the public with Linux on it, its just too unstable and drivers broken too often. this is why the ONLY people you see sell Linux systems are online brokers, all sales final, no support given.
And what everyone seems to be missing here is we are talking about a DRM PLATFORM on an OS that has some of the most militant ANTI-DRM developers that ever drew a breath? Look at the rest of this thread, how many are actually ROOTING for Valve to have Steam broken, because it isn't FOSS?
Linux is great in firewalls and storage servers, webservers and routers, but it will simply never have a shot on the desktop and neither will Steam on Linux, because the GPL zealots will burn the place to the ground before letting FOSS become a home for DRM. Mark my words Steam will get broken every time you turn around, drivers will be screwed, it'll be a mess, until Valve gives up and sticks with Windows. Its the same reason why I can run a 5 year old and 5 day old driver on Windows but I can't on Linux, pure politics.
I don't think so, and here is why...Games For Windows Live. How many years has GFWL been out? And it STILL SUCKS, MSFT simply doesn't know how to do consumer friendly to save their lives. I mean here I am, running GFWL on a PC, and when i look for a title, what do I get? FIFTY XBOX GAMES and not a damned single result for the PC? Oh, its buried on the ninth page? thanks for nothing MSFT, I'll go buy from Steam now.
They can fix bugs all they want, hell they may even get those that think "gaming" is Angry Birds and Plants VS Zombies, but anybody that actually wants to play fricking PC games isn't gonna go with the Windows appstore, as it'll be just as big of a POS as GFWL, and will probably give you 14 pages of Cut The Rope style flash games when you are looking for Bioshock Infinite, or worse it'll try to shove 40 fucking X360 games down your damned throat when you don't WANT THE FRICKING X360 VERSION YOU JERKS!!!
Notice I get labeled a fricking troll for pointing out what should be fucking obvious? For all those Linux zealots I'll spell it out...STEAM IS A DRM PLATFORM...
Now do YOU believe that the FOSSie faction will allow a DRM PLATFORM to function and thrive on Linux Lukester? I don't, in fact I can look it to my magical obvious ball and tell you EXACTLY what will happen...6 months after Valve releases? Ooops. changes to some of the core files broke sound, well that wouldn't happen Gabe if you'd open up the code but as long as its closed...oh well, shit happens. 6 months later...Oops, well the X11 is fucked for Steam, and so is the networking, well that wouldn't happen Gabe If you just would open up your code but as long as its closed? Oh well, shit happens.
If there is ANYONE that doesn't believe there are serious GPL zealots in the top ranks of the code devs you obviously haven't been paying attention. hell look at how VLC can't be offered on the iPad because a SINGLE dev refused to allow it to be anywhere that didn't "respect the GPL". Hell the very first fucking POST I MADE HERE had multiple responses that were basically "GPL will win, they can't stop us"...yeah but you know what they CAN do? They can NOT ALLOW THEIR GAMES ON YOUR SYSTEM because you refuse to quit breaking the DRM platform it runs on!
Now as far as Tux Racer? Really not surprised, I've offered my "Hairyfeet challenge" here for years against those that believe Linux is truly a functional system, not ONE taker will to step up, not one. It simply doesn't work because too many of the devs treat critical internals as their own hobbyist playground, where they can just change what they want and if it breaks shit? Oh well you have the source so YOU can fix it...yeah, like Suzy the checkout girl is gonna spend 4 years in college learning C programming to fix YOUR messes, not likely Sparky.
Mark my words, whether win 8 bombs or not Valve WILL end up abandoning Steam on Linux, because the low level system devs will make it impossible to keep it running, no different than how the games Loki released won't run on Linux but the Windows versions? Still run just fine. The ONLY chance valve has is if they "pull a Google" and simply take the system AWAY from the devs, something like a Steambox with hardware DRM, but of course that will cost tens of millions because they will have to go through it with a fine tooth comb to make sure no GPL V3 code is in it, then they will have to maintain the entire thing in house.
Personally i think Gabe drank too much of the koolaid and thinks the Linux devs will be nice to him, when reality they are gonna fuck him HARD because Steam is DRM and they HATE DRM and anything not GPL. You watch, when valve refuses to open Steam they will have it broken constantly by the devs, its gonna be a fucking nightmare for them. They'd be better off crawling back to MSFT and trying to become the games part of the Windows appstore than they would trying to make money with DRM on Linux.
The problem is gonna be, as this article notes the chips get a LOT worse with each shrink with more failures and more trouble with throughput. As their tests show single does best, triple cell does worst, but of course we all knew that and what we are seeing on the market is mostly MLC.
I have a feeling SSDs are gonna be a "stop gap" on our way to something like the PRAM that HP is working on, but until it gets here the keyword with SSDs is gonna be backup, backup backup backup. We know that is smart to do anyway, but you'd be surprised how many normal folks will think the SSDs are no different than the HDDs and just trust it and find out the hard way you get NO warning with SSDs. This article may be a little old but its still true, with SSDs its a hot/crazy scale with hot speeds and crazy failure rates.
That is because no matter the device if you try to get it to do two VERY different roles, like content creation (netbook/notebook) and media consumption (tablet) you either end up with something insanely expensive like the MBA or a "jack of all trades, master of none" like the Surface and those lame flip Atom notebooks they want $600+ for.
Best to do just as you suggested, get a laptop for when you need a laptop and a tablet for when you need a tablet, because from what I've seen the Surface is more like a cellphone with a BT keyboard than a serious desktop replacement.
Riddle me this....How can you have Open Source DRM? Answer? You can't, which is why this won't work. And since when is Linux mainstream?/Looks around Walmart/...nope no Linux desktops. if you mean Android that is GOOGLE not Linux, do you see a CLI? Do you see the four freedoms held inviolate on Android? hell the new Motorola Droid units (owned by Google now remember?) are LOCKED DOWN, no different than Apple and MSFT!
If people WANT Dirt 2, they will NOT settle for Tux Racer. Linux has gotten as far as it has on ersatz, Firefox for IE, LO for MS Office, etc, but what we are talking about is A DRM PLATFORM and YOU know and I know and soon Valve will know that they will NOT allow a DRM platform to thrive on linux, the low level devs would burn the fucking place to the ground before giving up the GPL, as your post demonstrates, thanks.
if you want the AAA titles you gotta play by the rules and they means DRM, no DRM no AAA titles. Hold onto your delusion that the world is gonna embrace the GPL, but you are more likely to get Ron Paul in the White House than you are to have the entire gaming industry open their code and go to a tin cup or services model, the only two models that have made ANY money with FOSS.
Hell at least the iToys have decent resale value...what did the touchpads end up going for? With MSFT's history of abandoning products anybody that buys a Surface before they've been out a year and a half AT LEAST is just a fool. Zune, Kin, Sidekick, WinPhone isn't getting anything but a cosmetic update and then its toast too, they just don't have a decent track record when it comes to mobile so as i'm telling my customers just avoid the Win 8/RT tabs until they've been out awhile and we can see whether they are gonna be in this long term or if its another one of Ballmer's screwball ideas...squirting Zunes anyone?
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Well that and the markup on flu shots ain't that great. Now cancer? There is a disease i doubt they'll ever find a cure for, because if it did it would cost them billions. They make crazy markups on those and people will pay, even if the odds sucks ass, just to try to cheat death a little longer, so that is one disease that will be here to stay.
Question: If Canonical announced tomorrow "We are going broke, either we have the Amazon search or we close our doors" which would you choose? Frankly most of the improvements on usability on the desktop can be traced back to Canonical and like it or not if they go under there is nobody lining up to take their place.All the major corps are spending their budgets on SERVER improvements and frankly couldn't give a rat's ass about the desktop...after all their locked down Windows desktops work just fine for them.
So what do you choose? That is what it ultimately comes down to as TINSTAAFL and somebody has to sink those millions into the desktop if you want it to go anywhere...or would you prefer going back to "Bob's Distro" where its just the same packages with a new theme and a couple of little things switched around, like 2/3rds of the ones on distrowatch?
Friend, haven't you noticed the trend? Apple is pushing retina, the HDTV companies are set to roll out 4K resolution sets, the fricking games are starting to look Crysis levels of "Holy Shit!" as far as effects and explosions...people want MOAR, moar effects, more explosions, more resolution, moar moar and moar.
Try running a phone from just 2 years ago with today's apps and see how damned pokey it feels, its like a 486DX trying to run Win98, and as I have just pointed out that is going NOWHERE but up. Does that mean ARM is fucked? Nope, i bet they'll hang onto the low end feature phones and probably the low end smartphones as well, but as Apple has shown that AIN'T where the good money is at.
The simple fact is ARM just doesn't scale well, it just don't. to get it up to even the levels of a Pentium 4 from 8 years ago will frankly blow the power budget to hell, now try to get ARM to match the new Atoms and AMD Hondo chips...you can't do it, you'd have a battery life of 10 minutes on the thing because you'd have to make up for the lack of IPC by throwing more specialized cores at it, just as you suggest with HD. This blows your power budget all to hell while Intel who has IPC coming out the ass can simply cut down existing designs and lower the power.
Uhhh...what idiots are putting their HACKED X360s on XBL? Seems like a good way to be banhammered to me. But on a positive note, just one more plus for us PC gamers, yay us!
That won't happen because of one single fact...Canonical needs the money. I mean look at their track record since Shuttleworth said he wouldn't sink more money into Canonical, its been a desperate throwing ideas at the wall hoping to find a way to keep the company afloat. Ubuntu Netbook Edition, Ubuntu Server (remember when Shuttleworth said that Ubuntu "was gonna be for desktops and not servers"? Boy that tune changed quick) Ubuntu selling MP3s through Amazon and now Amazon search.
But I predict Canonical will be joining that long list, Corel and Xandros and Linspire and Mandriva and more I can't even remember off hand, that tried to make a living off of desktop Linux and failed. there is simply no money in Linux desktops and it costs a LOT of money to create and improve Ubuntu so...well you get what you have now, begging on the download page and Amazon search. So long Canonical, it was a nice idea, too bad it just didn't work out..
LOL Wut? ARM has YET to hit even the IPC of a Pentium 4, how many years ago was that chip released? They aren't even close to the Core series, and in case you ain't noticed companies like Nvidia, that have sank BIG bux into ARM, are having to pile on the cores to get decent performance which of course blows the power budget to shit.
The simple facts are 1.- ARM doesn't scale and 2.- Its a hell of a lot easier for Intel, who already has insane levels of IPC, to scale down and have low power chips than it is for ARM to scale up and not blow their power budgets. Even the ARM group has been talking of "dark silicon" because their new designs will blow through the power if you run the whole chip, so they are gonna have to shut bits of it off and only kick them on when absolutely needed.
Lets face facts folks, ARM has just about run its course and the consumers want MOAR, MOAR performance, MOAR multimedia, MOAR everything and Intel will be able to deliver that with crazy IPC on their new Atoms and CULV Core chips while ARM will be blowing just as much if not more power than Intel trying to get the IPC up there. Its ironic that the head of AMD is trying to hitch onto ARM when they have the same problem, lack of IPC.
Weight, it ALL comes down to weight. Every solar powered aircraft you've seen has to be light as hell because 1.- Solar cells simply aren't very efficient, even the most expensive are something like 40%, and 2.- batteries to store enough power to supplement the cells would make the system too damned heavy to fly.
Bitch is, the Brits are testing a system right now that makes gasoline from seawater and the carbon exhaust of factories. I'm sorry but my Google Fu sucks, but I believe the article was on last week's The Reg about the pilot program they've set up. If they can get this to scale we'll be able to extract the waste from our plants and basically "recycle" carbon from them and the ocean to power our vehicles. Now maybe you could boost the savings a plant like that gives you by solar powering it and then running the plane on the gas it produces but the cells themselves simply won't cut it for something as heavy as an airliner. Should work great for Big Brother "eye in the sky" style UAVs though.
And there is "magically" gonna be demand for the Windows appstore? Valves has DOUBLED THEIR PROFITS every single year for the last 7 years...you don't think MSFT wants some of that money?
The simple fact is MSFT SUCKS ASS at doing consumer friendly...hell look at the X360, nobody LIKES the X360 UI, they put up with it because they want Halo 4, that's all. Might I remind you they spent millions of getting exclusives for PC and X360, yet they can't even fix the UI problems enough to get people to buy from them? I can post page after page of reviews on Amazon for games that say "USES GFWL, STAY AWAY!" and I'm sure if you talk to developers they'll tell you having GFWL baked into your game costs you a good 30% of sales...do you think this will inspire confidence in devs, make them want to use the Windows appstore, or will it make them be leery and stay away?
If they can't even get GFWL right after this many years and a competitor they could just crib off of what makes you think they can get it right with the appstore?
Multi-booting is a royal PITA and I've never seen anybody use it for any length of time. its always the same thing, they multi-boot, then they end up using one more than the other, then they don't go into the other unless they have to, then they don't go into the other at all.
But you STILL haven't answered my question, which is thus: How can you make a GPL compatible DRM system? I don't think its possible, not without having a black box hardware dongle deal like a TiVo which of course would kill any appeal that valve had since you'd have to buy specialized hardware to run it on Linux...or just run it on Windows for free.
So I'm sorry, you said in an earlier post "the world has to play by our rules" when in reality they can just do what they have for 20+ years and simply ignore you. No software, no drivers, no support, nothing. You don't exist, they don't know you nor do they care.
Ultimately this is what happens with a black and white "myway or the highway" attitude, especially when people have choices, is they'll choose the highway. Valve will end up with ONLY their games and a few indies, the same ones you can get on the humble bundles WITHOUT Steam, and you mark my words after a year they are gonna look at the cost of maintaining a Linux version, with the system devs doing everything they can to break Steam because they can't go GPL, and compare that with the meager sales and they'll pull the plug.
The simple fact is I have plenty of examples to prove that I'm correct, Corel, Xandros, Linspire, Mandriva, soon Canonical and after them Steam. You simply can't make money off of software with the GPL model, RMS made sure of that. you can sell services on TOP of GPLed software such as Red Hat, but unless they are gonna charge for MP access (yeah THAT would go over well, when the Windows users get it free) then that won't fly, you can sell hardware like TiVo, which while they may come out with a DRM in a box console that won't have shit to do with PC gaming or Linux, or you can use the tin cup model which sure as fuck isn't gonna pay for $100+ million dollar triple A titles.
So its just not gonna work, the devs think they can force the world to follow their GPL ways, yet 20+ years have proven that to be false, and DRM is about as loved in the FOSS community as abortion clinics are loved by the RNC, so they'll have too many of the community fucking shit up every chance they can get because they can't release as GPL. Valve is stuck between a rock and a hard place and will fail, they simply have ZERO chance of success. hell they'd have better odds of pulling an Apple and coming up with their own BSD variant than they would trying to put a DRM platform on GPLed OS, it will just never fly.
This is why I think the ones that come out with a $50 disposable smartphone are gonna make a fucking killing, because all it takes is seeing what a 2 year old can do to an iPhone ONE time to make you realize that having insanely expensive small devices is a BAD idea for families. In that vein I've seen a lot of my customers giving up their iPhones for those sub $100 Android phones at Walmart, they don't get locked into a contract and if the phone gets flushed or stomped you don't have a damned coronary like you do when its a $700 smartphone.
Because desktops are where you work out the power problems and is the test bed of the parts that end up in mobile? Its no coincidence that the parts start on desktops, the GPUs start as discretes and IGPs, because you don't have to worry about hitting the insanely low heat and power requirements on the mobiles as you refine the process while you still get paid.
This is one advantage AMD and Intel has had over their competitors, because they don't have to get the power and cooling right off the bat, they can sell the chips and refine them before trying to squeeze them into a little piece of plastic.
But the IPC is soooo terrible that you'd need a 2GHz boost to beat the X6 on IPC and the problem as always when it comes to bumping up the MHz is power and heat and the BD/PD/SR design is a power pig, not the thing to be when everyone is talking green and worried about rising power and cooling costs.
Lets face it...its AMD's netburst is what it is. Just like Intel they focused on only one metric and got a chip that OCs well but with such a low IPC that frankly on all but the absolute highest SKU you HAVE to OC just to get anywhere near a decent IPC out of the chip and the heat and power just go crazy when you crank the BD design. If you'll look at the link I gave in the under $200 chips frankly THREE of the previous chips beat the FX 8120, including not one but two quads...that ain't good. Frankly the only way they've been having BD beat the Thubans is by pairing FX 8 against Thuban X6 and even with a supposed 2 core advantage it can't get more than a few percent ahead and in many cases it falls by a few percent.
Anyway you slice it the Bulldozer design is just a bad call, it was approved by a CEO that did a slash and burn on R&D and engineering and expected computer layouts to save them and instead it gave them a power sucking hog.
I actually have one of the new Via HD audio chips in my board and...its quite nice actually. I figured I'd have to swap in a discrete but since I already had a SB X-Fi given to me by a customer and other than Via audio the board was just a steal, 4 RAM slots, Xfire ready, 8 SATA, ton of USBs, etc for $45 I could always just ignore the Via sound but I have to say at least for this board somebody got it right as the sound is quite nice, no crashy driver or hassles.
Nice to see somebody else sees what is going on. They need to go back to the K8, get on bended knee and bring the Athlon64 guys back, but that will take time. They've got the Thuban design that was getting damned near 100% yields, they also have the Magny Cours socket, put them together, take a 95w X6 and unlock the multiplier and put 2 of them in the Magny Cours socket for the gamers, and for those that stuck with AM3 give them an 8 core Thuban. This would bring up the IPC enough to keep them afloat while they get the chip guys that know WTF they are doing to go back to K8, just as Intel did with the P3 and Core, and build them something great.
But if they stick with Bulldozer/Piledriver/Steamroller they are just fucked, royally fucked. Its not a good design and I don't think there is any way to fix it, it just has too many shared resources and the IPC is just too shitty. When you have 8 fricking cores and can't compete with a 4 core of the other guy? The chip is shit. Hell I'm still selling the socket AM3 chips because their IPC is still higher than the average user will need while being a good value and not blowing through the power, they need to get back to that short term along with making a multi-chip module for Brazos, bolt 2 Brazos modules together minus the GPU on the second one and you'd have a sub 25w quad that is cheap and has decent graphics for HTPCs and netbooks/notebooks. Hell plenty of OEMs are still using Brazos because its a good deal, a quad would sell like hotcakes.
I truly hope they pull out of the death spiral they are in but ARM is EXACTLY the wrong move, as you pointed out they are gonna be late to the party, by about 4 years, with Nvidia already having the job of good graphics paired to ARM that would have been theirs. They really have to rebuild after being gutted by their CEO and that takes time, so going back to what worked and just bolting two chips together would at least give them a product to sell that could at least keep up with and in some cases beat i5 and the first gen i7.
Uhh...what great chips? The Thubans were good, but everything based on Bulldozer just blows through power while having terrible IPC, thanks to having shared integer and floating point units. If they were to be honest the "modules" would be treated as single cores with hardware assisted hyperthreading, because the benches show that is a hell of a lot closer to what they are than to true cores. Hell since the release of BD they don't even have a single slot anymore on Tom's Hardware "Best Gaming CPU" list whereas they used to pretty much OWN everything under $200. Hell look at how badly their new chips rate compared to even their old chips, with not only the X6 but no less than TWO of the X4s, the 980 and 955, scoring better than their new FX 8120. So I'm sorry, this is coming from someone who has been building AMD exclusively since i heard about the OEM bribery, but the new chips? Just not good.
And sadly ARM isn't gonna save them either, they are too late to the game and from the looks of it ARM simply isn't gonna scale while keeping its lower power budget. Just look at how companies like Nvidia, that have been sinking a ton into ARM, are having to use ever more cores to get the performance up, it just doesn't scale. And since Intel has the fabs they can get to the lower sizes quicker, and their chips are frankly getting lower powered all the time. A 55w Ivy will frankly curbstomp a 125w Piledriver and with servers while there are some loads you can run without the IPC frankly there are a LOT more loads where you'll need that IPC and AMD just doesn't have it, and with electricity costs and cooling costs? It really don't look good for AMD, damned I wish it weren't true but it is what it is, AMD is in REAL bad shape right now.
What's sad is how bad the former CEO fucked AMD by doing a total slash and burn on their engineering and R&D and pushing for cheaper automated layouts that simply don't cut it. The Athlon64 guys? GONE. The Cryix guys? GONE. they pretty much have their backs against the wall because the former CEO burned the fucking company to get a short term bounce, which I'm sure he cashed out on.
And anybody who thinks ARM will save them might be interested in some magic beans I have for sale, as ARM frankly doesn't scale very well and from the early looks ARM64 isn't gonna be really any better for power than the CULV Intel chips while having a HELL of a lot worse IPC. Frankly, and this is coming from someone who has been building AMD systems exclusively for awhile now and is still hanging onto AM3+ for all its worth, the only real selling point they had was "bang for the buck" but by burning R&D and killing Thuban the former CEO left them holding the bag without shit besides Bulldozer, which we all know blows too much power, is too damned hot, and frankly their octocores get stomped by Intel quads on IPC while using a third of the power.
I have to agree with the engineer in that link, they should have done the same thing Intel did with Core, go back to their earlier K8 designs and start from there just as Intel did with P3 mobile but now they just don't have the money or the time. I truly hope the Athlon64/Apple A6 chip designer they hired back can come up with a design to save the company because right now? Right now they really got nothing. Hell the former CEO even pulled the plug on Krishna, which would have been a sub 20w quad core bobcat, which is why all we're seeing now is minor speedbumps on a 3+ year old design. I swear they got fucked raw by bad management and I only hope they pull through. Maybe if they would have done this 4 years ago they could have the niche Nvidia now holds, but now? Its just not enough.
Music they pay the artists a pittance, in some cases nothing at all, games cost nearly 100 MILLION a game for a triple A rated title...do you HONESTLY think they are gonna put you on the "honor system' for a 100 million dollar plus product and the entire company on the line? BTW you brought up music...has music piracy gone down since they switched to MP3? Not really, their numbers fall every year...you think the game companies are gonna trust you to be nice and pay them?
Either you accept the rules or you don't get the product, its THAT simple. Now seeing as Valve has made PC gaming on windows frankly one of the cheapest entertainment platforms on the planet, free patches, matchmaking, full support that responds quickly to problems, well I think they have EVERY right to insure they aren't ripped off like the games you see on TPB.
But you do seem like a reasonable person, but sadly your beliefs are held by too many of the devs, which is why Linux on Steam will fail. I think too many of the FOSS camp live their lives by the "is ought" fallacy in that they have decided how the world OUGHT to be and refuse to see how it IS, and how it is is this, Steam is the ONLY company that have doubled their profits every year for the last 7 years, while companies like EA and Activision are on the auction block.....why do you think that is? i'll tell you, because you have to buy from Valve if you want to play on Steam with full functionality, hell more and more retail games I'm seeing are just Steam games in a box.
So I'm sorry but sadly your beliefs will win, to the detriment of Linux and the community. Linux will never have the triple A titles, won't ever get photoshop or Quickbooks or any of the other software people buy Windows for, thus insuring that MSFT can put out a turkey every other release and still make enough sales to do as they please. Like it or not the world will NEVER switch to a GPL model, you've had over 30 years of the GPL now and things haven't changed, over 20 years of Linux and yet not a single box in any store, because its the politics and beliefs such as yours that will insure that non GPL software never runs on Linux, thus making sure Apple and MSFT will own the desktop and from the looks of things mobile too, especially if MSFT has full DirectX support on their tablets.
Thanks, you nailed it. I too drank the koolaid, ran Linux on my laptop nearly 3 years while being told 'Oh in the next release that'll get fixed for sure!" only to have 4 other things be broken, usually by devs not caring about anything but their own little corner. You certainly can't sell machines to the public with Linux on it, its just too unstable and drivers broken too often. this is why the ONLY people you see sell Linux systems are online brokers, all sales final, no support given.
And what everyone seems to be missing here is we are talking about a DRM PLATFORM on an OS that has some of the most militant ANTI-DRM developers that ever drew a breath? Look at the rest of this thread, how many are actually ROOTING for Valve to have Steam broken, because it isn't FOSS?
Linux is great in firewalls and storage servers, webservers and routers, but it will simply never have a shot on the desktop and neither will Steam on Linux, because the GPL zealots will burn the place to the ground before letting FOSS become a home for DRM. Mark my words Steam will get broken every time you turn around, drivers will be screwed, it'll be a mess, until Valve gives up and sticks with Windows. Its the same reason why I can run a 5 year old and 5 day old driver on Windows but I can't on Linux, pure politics.
I don't think so, and here is why...Games For Windows Live. How many years has GFWL been out? And it STILL SUCKS, MSFT simply doesn't know how to do consumer friendly to save their lives. I mean here I am, running GFWL on a PC, and when i look for a title, what do I get? FIFTY XBOX GAMES and not a damned single result for the PC? Oh, its buried on the ninth page? thanks for nothing MSFT, I'll go buy from Steam now.
They can fix bugs all they want, hell they may even get those that think "gaming" is Angry Birds and Plants VS Zombies, but anybody that actually wants to play fricking PC games isn't gonna go with the Windows appstore, as it'll be just as big of a POS as GFWL, and will probably give you 14 pages of Cut The Rope style flash games when you are looking for Bioshock Infinite, or worse it'll try to shove 40 fucking X360 games down your damned throat when you don't WANT THE FRICKING X360 VERSION YOU JERKS!!!
Notice I get labeled a fricking troll for pointing out what should be fucking obvious? For all those Linux zealots I'll spell it out...STEAM IS A DRM PLATFORM...
Now do YOU believe that the FOSSie faction will allow a DRM PLATFORM to function and thrive on Linux Lukester? I don't, in fact I can look it to my magical obvious ball and tell you EXACTLY what will happen...6 months after Valve releases? Ooops. changes to some of the core files broke sound, well that wouldn't happen Gabe if you'd open up the code but as long as its closed...oh well, shit happens. 6 months later...Oops, well the X11 is fucked for Steam, and so is the networking, well that wouldn't happen Gabe If you just would open up your code but as long as its closed? Oh well, shit happens.
If there is ANYONE that doesn't believe there are serious GPL zealots in the top ranks of the code devs you obviously haven't been paying attention. hell look at how VLC can't be offered on the iPad because a SINGLE dev refused to allow it to be anywhere that didn't "respect the GPL". Hell the very first fucking POST I MADE HERE had multiple responses that were basically "GPL will win, they can't stop us"...yeah but you know what they CAN do? They can NOT ALLOW THEIR GAMES ON YOUR SYSTEM because you refuse to quit breaking the DRM platform it runs on!
Now as far as Tux Racer? Really not surprised, I've offered my "Hairyfeet challenge" here for years against those that believe Linux is truly a functional system, not ONE taker will to step up, not one. It simply doesn't work because too many of the devs treat critical internals as their own hobbyist playground, where they can just change what they want and if it breaks shit? Oh well you have the source so YOU can fix it...yeah, like Suzy the checkout girl is gonna spend 4 years in college learning C programming to fix YOUR messes, not likely Sparky.
Mark my words, whether win 8 bombs or not Valve WILL end up abandoning Steam on Linux, because the low level system devs will make it impossible to keep it running, no different than how the games Loki released won't run on Linux but the Windows versions? Still run just fine. The ONLY chance valve has is if they "pull a Google" and simply take the system AWAY from the devs, something like a Steambox with hardware DRM, but of course that will cost tens of millions because they will have to go through it with a fine tooth comb to make sure no GPL V3 code is in it, then they will have to maintain the entire thing in house.
Personally i think Gabe drank too much of the koolaid and thinks the Linux devs will be nice to him, when reality they are gonna fuck him HARD because Steam is DRM and they HATE DRM and anything not GPL. You watch, when valve refuses to open Steam they will have it broken constantly by the devs, its gonna be a fucking nightmare for them. They'd be better off crawling back to MSFT and trying to become the games part of the Windows appstore than they would trying to make money with DRM on Linux.
The problem is gonna be, as this article notes the chips get a LOT worse with each shrink with more failures and more trouble with throughput. As their tests show single does best, triple cell does worst, but of course we all knew that and what we are seeing on the market is mostly MLC.
I have a feeling SSDs are gonna be a "stop gap" on our way to something like the PRAM that HP is working on, but until it gets here the keyword with SSDs is gonna be backup, backup backup backup. We know that is smart to do anyway, but you'd be surprised how many normal folks will think the SSDs are no different than the HDDs and just trust it and find out the hard way you get NO warning with SSDs. This article may be a little old but its still true, with SSDs its a hot/crazy scale with hot speeds and crazy failure rates.
I like what Yahoo Breakout says.."If I have to start over and learn all over again, why stick with Microsoft?" and they nail it I think, if you have to start over what is the selling point of MSFT over Apple? WinRT don't run legacy,no selling point there, so why should we care?
That is because no matter the device if you try to get it to do two VERY different roles, like content creation (netbook/notebook) and media consumption (tablet) you either end up with something insanely expensive like the MBA or a "jack of all trades, master of none" like the Surface and those lame flip Atom notebooks they want $600+ for.
Best to do just as you suggested, get a laptop for when you need a laptop and a tablet for when you need a tablet, because from what I've seen the Surface is more like a cellphone with a BT keyboard than a serious desktop replacement.
Riddle me this....How can you have Open Source DRM? Answer? You can't, which is why this won't work. And since when is Linux mainstream? /Looks around Walmart/...nope no Linux desktops. if you mean Android that is GOOGLE not Linux, do you see a CLI? Do you see the four freedoms held inviolate on Android? hell the new Motorola Droid units (owned by Google now remember?) are LOCKED DOWN, no different than Apple and MSFT!
If people WANT Dirt 2, they will NOT settle for Tux Racer. Linux has gotten as far as it has on ersatz, Firefox for IE, LO for MS Office, etc, but what we are talking about is A DRM PLATFORM and YOU know and I know and soon Valve will know that they will NOT allow a DRM platform to thrive on linux, the low level devs would burn the fucking place to the ground before giving up the GPL, as your post demonstrates, thanks.
if you want the AAA titles you gotta play by the rules and they means DRM, no DRM no AAA titles. Hold onto your delusion that the world is gonna embrace the GPL, but you are more likely to get Ron Paul in the White House than you are to have the entire gaming industry open their code and go to a tin cup or services model, the only two models that have made ANY money with FOSS.
Hell at least the iToys have decent resale value...what did the touchpads end up going for? With MSFT's history of abandoning products anybody that buys a Surface before they've been out a year and a half AT LEAST is just a fool. Zune, Kin, Sidekick, WinPhone isn't getting anything but a cosmetic update and then its toast too, they just don't have a decent track record when it comes to mobile so as i'm telling my customers just avoid the Win 8/RT tabs until they've been out awhile and we can see whether they are gonna be in this long term or if its another one of Ballmer's screwball ideas...squirting Zunes anyone?