Re:The PS3's hardware is nothing to sniff at
on
Come the Revolution
·
· Score: 1
So what exactly do you want to do on a PS3? Zoom infinitely on dual 1080P displays on dynamically calculated Mandelbrot sets? Because that's about all the Cell can do better than anything else.
When I said "Real World Applications" I meant Games. What are you expecting? That they next generation of Hardware is going facilitate some software revolution? That the games of 12-36 months from now are going to magically transform into programs that don't follow a standard game loop of
while(GameIsRunnning)
{
GetUserInput()
DoAI()
UpdateWorldState()
PlaySound()
PlayMusic()
DrawScreen()
}
Seriously, if you're wanting innovative Gameplay I think you're looking in the wrong place if you're expecting it to come overly complex hardware. All this hype about "the Cell" is exactly the bullshit we got fed about the PS2's GraphicSynth. The GS didn't give us profound revolutionary gameplay on the PS2, and the Cell won't give us profound revolutionary gameplay on the PS3. The Cell is a special purpose solution, looking desperatly for a problem.
If you're talking about stuff like Spore, that WILL be available on the PC.
Re:The PS3's hardware is nothing to sniff at
on
Come the Revolution
·
· Score: 1
It flies at churning through specially tuned, non-interactive demos. However, the Cell is a dog at GENERAL computing tasks (and it's DSPs don't have sufficient precision for it to be good at scientific tasks) It's running a stripped down POWER chip that's the equivalent of a 604e with a longer pipeline, it's overclocked 1995 technology. Nobody has yet to come up with a way to turn standard game code into 9-way SMP DSP code, and I'll wager that nobody will, given other limitations of the way the DSPs can access memory external to their own (very small) cache.
The cell is another Graphics Synth, a heavily hyped custom chip, that when it comes right down to it, can't even compete with the more standard commodity hardware it's supposed to "blow away." The X-box 360, with its three overclocked 604e's will clearly outperform the Cell in every real world application.
Here's to hoping the Revolution uses a G5 based chip and not one or two PPE's. A single G5 running at half the clock speed would stomp all the other consoles.
Except that we HAD a well regulated monopoly before (Pre-Breakup), and now we're getting an effectively completely UNREGULATED monopoly now. And we all know what unregulated monopolies.
I'm glad Google owns all that dark fibre. At least there is a chance (if slim) the 'States might see a little competition to counteract a new Zombie-MaBell with no government oversight, and no requirement to cooperate with anyone.
That's the one thing that really hurts about the intel transition. We lost 64-bit addressing. My G5 could hold up to 16GB of RAM, all of it usable by the system. While I suspect the pro-systems will use Xeons and their hacked on 48-bit addressing to get around this. If they don't their will be an unholy ruckus from the pro-users. The G5's are used for Pro HD A/V, and high resolution still camera work, and there are many working systems out there USING 4+GB of RAM. Of course, we probably won't see a replacement for the G5 tower until ALL the pro-apps are fully ported anyway, which should still be awhile, although I'm sure they're working furiously on it now.
I can see replacing my G5 tower with a decendent of the current dual core mini in a few years, I just hope they increase the ram ceiling by then. Realistically my computing needs could be met by a maxed out dual-core mini with a couple of mini-stack 3.5in HD enclosures connected by FW.
My one plea: Ever since I've switched from windows, the ONE(!) app I miss dearly is Irfanview. My now fellow macheads don't understand, because showing it run under emulation cripples it horribly, but I'd pay a LOT for a Mac port of Irfanview.
And the great point about all of this is that pro-gun people in the states think that they're going to be able to use their guns to protect their freedom. RIIIIGHT. Maybe if we had stormed D.C. in the 1920's with the revolution armed with Thompson sub-machine guns, and various automatic (i.e. semi-auto) rifles vs. the national guard and U.S. military armed with very little more than that. Not today. Forget about it. The U.S. is already a fascist dictatorship. They control the media, so they don't have to worry if a few people squawk. The disparity in terms of hardware between the private citizen and the organized military is just too large for guns to be an issue at this point.
We could try to take back the country at the polls, except the voting machines are rigged with no paper trail, and even IF, IF they were honest the media control, and the U.S. winner-take-all elections make it impossible.
Guns are pointless, all the do is make the paramilitary nuts feel like they can protect their home from minorities they have a rascist bias against.
Ah, but the nature of podcasting prevents that from happening, because barring government regulation granting "podcasting monopolies" the barriers to entry into podcasting can only drop! Studio Recording equipment gets cheaper every year, as does bandwidth. Therefore (again barring some kind of regulatory catastrophe) podcasters MUST compete on content quality, if the ads become too invasive, too objectionable, there's always a dozen more broadcasters eager to have the listener's ear.
To be frank, up front, honest advertising doesn't bother me that much. If you listen to a gaming podcast, are really going to be that bothered if it is sponsored by Nvidia, or ATI, or even Creative Labs, as long as do so openly? And back in the day I used to buy CGW in part FOR the ads, because they were often creative and interesting; of course, as the medium became more popular they started catering to the lowest common denominator.
It's my hope that things like podcasting and direct to pdf publishing (ala "The Escapist") will provide a permanent answer to this problem. With barriers to entry so low, people can create content in their spare time with an audience that may only be in the hundreds, or just a couple thousand, and there's a reasonably good chance that the good ones will build up a group willing to donate, at least to the extent to cover costs. And as the tools continue to improve, and the costs continue to fall the chasm of difference between professionally produced content, and amatuer produced content gets smaller to the point it starts to disappear. As I've noted before, to create a studio capable of creating pro-level recordings in 1990 would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. To equal that level of quality today costs less than $5000, including the computer. To get "acceptable" levels (say around FM radio) costs practically nothing, if you have a computer, any computer. All that's needed is a machine to run audacity, an audio interface, and a microphone.
Your argument is why I don't think this pay system will work. Podcasts are based on open formats, and when you alter that, its no longer a podcast, you're back to proprietary annoying Realaudio crap. But this won't kill podcasts as a whole by any means. I rather think that the correct approach is more along the lines old style radio advertisements. "This episode brought you by the XYZ Company Nvidia Geforce 10000, a fast card for fast gamers."
Yes, we've had similar things for years, but the difference now is that they aren't tied to some obnoxious proprietary player, like Realplayer. Podcasts leverage an open standard, RSS, to communicate the release of episodic material generally in a format everyone can play, MP3. You can access podcasts purely with firefox. That's the advantage. And it's not "for the ipod" The idea is that podcasts can function as a portable replacement for Talk Radio. The "Pod" in podcast comes from the fact that the iPod is far and away the most popular portable mp3 player. (You can argue whether that status is deserved or not, but it is true) The ipod name gets attached to vaguely related phenomena in the same way it is common to speak of "xeroxing" regardless of whether the device one uses is manufactured by xerox, or canon, or lexmark, etc.
The real advantage of Podcasts is that they can be accessed by anyone with a computer that has an RSS reader, and can be played back by any device that plays MP3. That's just about as darn near universal as I can imagine. And that IS a worthwhile contribution.
That it also lowers the barrier to entry of distribution is also valuable because podcasters HAVE to compete on quality, whether you are a megacorp with a $10Million dollar studio, or an amateur with just a mic and a dream, or anywhere in between, You compete based on quality of content.
Even better is that in terms of audio quality, studio equipment has become so inexpensive that with an investment of just one or two thousand dollars, it's possible to have quality indistinguishable from a huge studio to the average listener. It really is a means for democratization of the media.
In my experience podcasts are generally commercial free in the sense that I consider relevant. The World's Largest Dungeon from RPGMP3.com certainly JOKES about ads, but all they actually do give a "Thank You" shout-out to people who have donated money to their site since the last podcast, which I don't think any reasonable person can find offensive in the least. Generally that's the format I've seen in most of the podcasts I've found worth listening too.
Not too big actually, just a few percentage points of change would totally reverse the process. It could be done quite feasibly, but good luck trying to get anybody behind it.
Cel-Animated (Not Shaded! actual animation!) and Rotoscope animated adventure games of the Era! They don't make 'em like that anymore! I'd trade a whole hell of a lot for a new Cel animated adventure game. On another note, if Tell-tale games actually manages to ship the new Sam and Max, I'll have to build a PC just to play it, and I will too.
I switched to Macs as a result of the dearth of PC games that I liked, my gaming needs being better served by my Nintendo Gamecube, and the upcoming Revolution.
Generally this isn't true in the 'states. Especially with the rise of two income households, the way the tax system is structured, if you actually make enough money that you PAY taxes (rather than getting everything back at the end of the year) a couple is probably better off remaining unmarried in a financial sense. This is ESPECIALLY true if they have no children. On the other hand, you do miss out on a few of the freebies from common law, joint ownershiop, automatic inheritance, etc (Although I'm rather curious what the consequences of setting up as an business partnership would be), and the ability to not testify against each other in court. Although I'd think for pagans the last one would be kind of a non-issue. (Sure! I swear not to tell a lie on the book of yahweh *snort*) The threat of libel being pretty weak to begin with.
However, wouldn't a patient have to remain on such a regimen for the rest of his life to avoid resurgence of the virus? And while it would probably lessen the degree to which people would be contagious, I wouldn't think the risk would be eliminated. Also, this would seem to create selective pressures for a variant of the virus that would bind to alternate receptors, which would be quite worrying.
eh? Your post still doesn't make sense, because "gift" was "nouned" into the form we recognize it today. There was a transition in which people began to speak of "giving gifts" rather than "gifting *object*". The infinitive "to gift" is quite old and has a very specific meaning. To say, "He gifted $XXX to the YZ foundation." is quite valid english and has been for centuries!
Suppose you come up with a way of identifying and eleminating latently infected cells. What good does that do you when doing so dissolves half the patient's nervous system? That is to say, why wouldn't this process just kill the patient outright?
The Intellectual property laws, as a system don't do any better at providing for the creative individuals, than the patronage system. At BEST what they do is match it. So how does your argument make sense?
Similarly I've argued with people over the morality of downloading music, consistently the the argument pops up: "But wouldn't you want to be paid for your works?" And then they ignore the protest that the artists aren't paid under the current system. They still live overwhelmingly either in poverty, or working at another job to support their art, barring the very few rock stars that manage to support themselves. (In what way are the Beatles, Mick Jagger, etc, different from Mozart, or Bach? At least in terms of their ability to support themselves on their art?)
Where I truly go far against mainstream thought is the point at which I assert that APD is grounds for removing people from the political discussion, and further asserting then, that APD is an intrisinic property of the philosophy of the radical right. That and asserting that the "screw everybody else as long as I get mine" attitude is probably a damn good diagnostic indicator. American society cultivates this attitude as much as it cultivates the high fructose corn syrup that fuels American obescity, (i.e. in vast, vast fields in middle america)
Here's a point we may really need to consider: That global dimming may be the answer to global warming long term.
I'm not saying let loose the smog filters on coal plants (PLEASE NO!) We may need to start a program to block out a percentage of solar radiation via some means so as to allow polar ice to reform. As in Large scale orbital polarization filters and so on. It would work, and a slight decrease in daytime brightness (back to early 20th century levels) would be nowhere near as bad as what we're looking at now.
Descartes argument is different, and perhaps even weaker. Your argument is essentially:
1. God needs to exist without being caused (P, proposition)
2. Therefore, God exists without being caused (P, same proposition again)
You don't really even have an argument there, you're just making an arbitrary fact claim with no evidence, and no argument. You can expand this and make it more fancy, but it's always reducible to this fact claim. Arguably the greatest mistake is fact claim "Everything needs a cause." Which is either correct, or incorrect, if it is correct, then god can't be uncaused, and therefore, accordingly to your logic the universe can't exist (deus ex machina not being allowed in proper logic), if it is incorrect, then god isn't necessary for the universe to exist anyway. God may exist, but by Occam's razor, it is the simplest explanation that it does not.
Since bloody when? I hear this argument used all the time by conservatives to attack things they don't like. "I don't want my money paying for abortions!" "I don't want to have to pay for other people healthcare" I don't want to pay to do X" where X is generally some social good. You know what? Too Fucking bad!
What about what *I* don't want to pay to support? huh? Like illegal invasions of other countries? Like defense spending that's so overbloated as to prevent any and all social progess programs, and scientific research? In a perfect world a large portion of America wouldn't have any voice in government at all, because they are so twisted, evil, judgemental, greedy, and vicious they should be locked away in pyschiatric wards.
Nope, jupiter is about only 1/8 the mass needed to make it a proper brown dwarf, and it's far and away the most massive of the planets, throw in Saturn and all the other planets, plus the asteroid belt, and all known Kupier Belt objects, and you're only up to about 3/8 or so of a brown dwarf at the very most, and I'm being generous.
Given that Si and O are some of the largest components of the earth crust by mass, this isn't ever going to become an issue. We'll run out of carbon to make people out of first
Really, do you want right wing diploma mills like Bob Jones University to have a.edu??? REALLY??? There needs to be international accredation process possibly, but don't let.edu be polluted!
Slashdot Mirror
When I said "Real World Applications" I meant Games. What are you expecting? That they next generation of Hardware is going facilitate some software revolution? That the games of 12-36 months from now are going to magically transform into programs that don't follow a standard game loop of
while(GameIsRunnning)
{
GetUserInput()
DoAI()
UpdateWorldState()
PlaySound()
PlayMusic()
DrawScreen()
}
Seriously, if you're wanting innovative Gameplay I think you're looking in the wrong place if you're expecting it to come overly complex hardware. All this hype about "the Cell" is exactly the bullshit we got fed about the PS2's GraphicSynth. The GS didn't give us profound revolutionary gameplay on the PS2, and the Cell won't give us profound revolutionary gameplay on the PS3. The Cell is a special purpose solution, looking desperatly for a problem.
If you're talking about stuff like Spore, that WILL be available on the PC.
The cell is another Graphics Synth, a heavily hyped custom chip, that when it comes right down to it, can't even compete with the more standard commodity hardware it's supposed to "blow away." The X-box 360, with its three overclocked 604e's will clearly outperform the Cell in every real world application.
Here's to hoping the Revolution uses a G5 based chip and not one or two PPE's. A single G5 running at half the clock speed would stomp all the other consoles.
I'm glad Google owns all that dark fibre. At least there is a chance (if slim) the 'States might see a little competition to counteract a new Zombie-MaBell with no government oversight, and no requirement to cooperate with anyone.
I can see replacing my G5 tower with a decendent of the current dual core mini in a few years, I just hope they increase the ram ceiling by then. Realistically my computing needs could be met by a maxed out dual-core mini with a couple of mini-stack 3.5in HD enclosures connected by FW.
My one plea: Ever since I've switched from windows, the ONE(!) app I miss dearly is Irfanview. My now fellow macheads don't understand, because showing it run under emulation cripples it horribly, but I'd pay a LOT for a Mac port of Irfanview.
We could try to take back the country at the polls, except the voting machines are rigged with no paper trail, and even IF, IF they were honest the media control, and the U.S. winner-take-all elections make it impossible.
Guns are pointless, all the do is make the paramilitary nuts feel like they can protect their home from minorities they have a rascist bias against.
Note that the Laserscope isn't Nintendo Fault. It's clearly listed as being a KONAMI product.
To be frank, up front, honest advertising doesn't bother me that much. If you listen to a gaming podcast, are really going to be that bothered if it is sponsored by Nvidia, or ATI, or even Creative Labs, as long as do so openly? And back in the day I used to buy CGW in part FOR the ads, because they were often creative and interesting; of course, as the medium became more popular they started catering to the lowest common denominator.
It's my hope that things like podcasting and direct to pdf publishing (ala "The Escapist") will provide a permanent answer to this problem. With barriers to entry so low, people can create content in their spare time with an audience that may only be in the hundreds, or just a couple thousand, and there's a reasonably good chance that the good ones will build up a group willing to donate, at least to the extent to cover costs. And as the tools continue to improve, and the costs continue to fall the chasm of difference between professionally produced content, and amatuer produced content gets smaller to the point it starts to disappear. As I've noted before, to create a studio capable of creating pro-level recordings in 1990 would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. To equal that level of quality today costs less than $5000, including the computer. To get "acceptable" levels (say around FM radio) costs practically nothing, if you have a computer, any computer. All that's needed is a machine to run audacity, an audio interface, and a microphone.
Your argument is why I don't think this pay system will work. Podcasts are based on open formats, and when you alter that, its no longer a podcast, you're back to proprietary annoying Realaudio crap. But this won't kill podcasts as a whole by any means. I rather think that the correct approach is more along the lines old style radio advertisements. "This episode brought you by the XYZ Company Nvidia Geforce 10000, a fast card for fast gamers."
The real advantage of Podcasts is that they can be accessed by anyone with a computer that has an RSS reader, and can be played back by any device that plays MP3. That's just about as darn near universal as I can imagine. And that IS a worthwhile contribution.
That it also lowers the barrier to entry of distribution is also valuable because podcasters HAVE to compete on quality, whether you are a megacorp with a $10Million dollar studio, or an amateur with just a mic and a dream, or anywhere in between, You compete based on quality of content.
Even better is that in terms of audio quality, studio equipment has become so inexpensive that with an investment of just one or two thousand dollars, it's possible to have quality indistinguishable from a huge studio to the average listener. It really is a means for democratization of the media.
In my experience podcasts are generally commercial free in the sense that I consider relevant. The World's Largest Dungeon from RPGMP3.com certainly JOKES about ads, but all they actually do give a "Thank You" shout-out to people who have donated money to their site since the last podcast, which I don't think any reasonable person can find offensive in the least. Generally that's the format I've seen in most of the podcasts I've found worth listening too.
Not too big actually, just a few percentage points of change would totally reverse the process. It could be done quite feasibly, but good luck trying to get anybody behind it.
Cel-Animated (Not Shaded! actual animation!) and Rotoscope animated adventure games of the Era! They don't make 'em like that anymore! I'd trade a whole hell of a lot for a new Cel animated adventure game. On another note, if Tell-tale games actually manages to ship the new Sam and Max, I'll have to build a PC just to play it, and I will too. I switched to Macs as a result of the dearth of PC games that I liked, my gaming needs being better served by my Nintendo Gamecube, and the upcoming Revolution.
Generally this isn't true in the 'states. Especially with the rise of two income households, the way the tax system is structured, if you actually make enough money that you PAY taxes (rather than getting everything back at the end of the year) a couple is probably better off remaining unmarried in a financial sense. This is ESPECIALLY true if they have no children. On the other hand, you do miss out on a few of the freebies from common law, joint ownershiop, automatic inheritance, etc (Although I'm rather curious what the consequences of setting up as an business partnership would be), and the ability to not testify against each other in court. Although I'd think for pagans the last one would be kind of a non-issue. (Sure! I swear not to tell a lie on the book of yahweh *snort*) The threat of libel being pretty weak to begin with.
However, wouldn't a patient have to remain on such a regimen for the rest of his life to avoid resurgence of the virus? And while it would probably lessen the degree to which people would be contagious, I wouldn't think the risk would be eliminated. Also, this would seem to create selective pressures for a variant of the virus that would bind to alternate receptors, which would be quite worrying.
eh? Your post still doesn't make sense, because "gift" was "nouned" into the form we recognize it today. There was a transition in which people began to speak of "giving gifts" rather than "gifting *object*". The infinitive "to gift" is quite old and has a very specific meaning. To say, "He gifted $XXX to the YZ foundation." is quite valid english and has been for centuries!
Suppose you come up with a way of identifying and eleminating latently infected cells. What good does that do you when doing so dissolves half the patient's nervous system? That is to say, why wouldn't this process just kill the patient outright?
Similarly I've argued with people over the morality of downloading music, consistently the the argument pops up: "But wouldn't you want to be paid for your works?" And then they ignore the protest that the artists aren't paid under the current system. They still live overwhelmingly either in poverty, or working at another job to support their art, barring the very few rock stars that manage to support themselves. (In what way are the Beatles, Mick Jagger, etc, different from Mozart, or Bach? At least in terms of their ability to support themselves on their art?)
Where I truly go far against mainstream thought is the point at which I assert that APD is grounds for removing people from the political discussion, and further asserting then, that APD is an intrisinic property of the philosophy of the radical right. That and asserting that the "screw everybody else as long as I get mine" attitude is probably a damn good diagnostic indicator. American society cultivates this attitude as much as it cultivates the high fructose corn syrup that fuels American obescity, (i.e. in vast, vast fields in middle america)
I'm not saying let loose the smog filters on coal plants (PLEASE NO!) We may need to start a program to block out a percentage of solar radiation via some means so as to allow polar ice to reform. As in Large scale orbital polarization filters and so on. It would work, and a slight decrease in daytime brightness (back to early 20th century levels) would be nowhere near as bad as what we're looking at now.
1. God needs to exist without being caused (P, proposition)
2. Therefore, God exists without being caused (P, same proposition again)
You don't really even have an argument there, you're just making an arbitrary fact claim with no evidence, and no argument. You can expand this and make it more fancy, but it's always reducible to this fact claim. Arguably the greatest mistake is fact claim "Everything needs a cause." Which is either correct, or incorrect, if it is correct, then god can't be uncaused, and therefore, accordingly to your logic the universe can't exist (deus ex machina not being allowed in proper logic), if it is incorrect, then god isn't necessary for the universe to exist anyway. God may exist, but by Occam's razor, it is the simplest explanation that it does not.
What about what *I* don't want to pay to support? huh? Like illegal invasions of other countries? Like defense spending that's so overbloated as to prevent any and all social progess programs, and scientific research? In a perfect world a large portion of America wouldn't have any voice in government at all, because they are so twisted, evil, judgemental, greedy, and vicious they should be locked away in pyschiatric wards.
Between the drunk rednecks, and the trailor park methlabs, you think there's no crime?
Nope, jupiter is about only 1/8 the mass needed to make it a proper brown dwarf, and it's far and away the most massive of the planets, throw in Saturn and all the other planets, plus the asteroid belt, and all known Kupier Belt objects, and you're only up to about 3/8 or so of a brown dwarf at the very most, and I'm being generous.
Given that Si and O are some of the largest components of the earth crust by mass, this isn't ever going to become an issue. We'll run out of carbon to make people out of first
Really, do you want right wing diploma mills like Bob Jones University to have a .edu??? REALLY??? There needs to be international accredation process possibly, but don't let .edu be polluted!