Nintendo is the only one that is taking upgrades so incrementally. Gamecube went from a few 480p titles, to the Wii where most are 480p. So the next system might be 720p, hopefully?
The Wii is only a little bit more powerful than the Gamecube. In some ways, the Wii is weaker than many modern phones - it has less RAM than even weak smartphones (compare the Wii's 91 MB total RAM to the original iPhone's 128 MB and the iPhone 4's 512 MB).. High-end smartphone CPUs are beating the Wii in CPU, with the fastest Android devices clocked at 1.0 GHz or higher.
Another round of "incremental" from Nintendo would result in a product that's weaker performance-wise than a smartphone. They will need a new gimmick to sell it.
Sony and Microsoft jumped all the way to 1080p in one move. Now they have no higher to go...
The PS3 and Xbox 360 are capable of outputting 1080p, but most games are rendered at 720p or less. (The Xbox 360 will scale all of them to 1080p, but the PS3 seems to prefer outputting at 720p for many games.) Both systems have been outperformed by $100 video cards for the past 2+ years. And both the PS2 and original Xbox could output video at 1080i, although hardly any software supported it.
While both systems have GPUs and CPUs much more powerful than anything currently seen in smartphones or lightweight tablets, they are lacking in RAM.
Also the gamecube was a good system, the wii is not the same beast. Much faster, still weaker than a ps3 but no gamecube
Based on all the reports I've read, the Wii isn't even twice as fast as the GameCube.
It seems it's about as capable as an (original) Xbox with a Bluetooth controller... except the Xbox GPU can output at resolutions higher than 480/576p.
But as someone else mentioned, current-gen consoles can max out the resolution of most (HD)TVs that are out there, so why put a bunch of money into R&D that isn't going to affect the end experience that much?
The motherboard that I then got had terrible on-board audio. Anything above about 70% volume caused a lot of clipping and sounded horrible. No idea why, but even a cheap ad-on card was an improvement.
In what operating system and sound system?
I've had this problem consistently with Linux and ALSA and integrated audio. The problem never occurs on the same hardware with Mac OS X or Windows.
Heck, we might be seeing CPU/GPU combos on the same chip in the near future, I believe AMD and ATI were working on that?
Intel has had this in production since the beginning of the year, but it's not quite the same as what happened with audio; the GPU is included on the same chip as the CPU, but the CPU and GPU are still independent. The combination provides performance and power benefits, with the memory controller, CPU, and GPU all integrated into the processor.
When I bought my last desktop (2008) I noticed a huge drop in audio quality and volumes going from my SB Live! in my Pentium 4 box to the Realtek HD onboard in the new system. A year ago I added an SB Audigy to my C2D box I noticed a huge jump in the sound output - I didn't have to crank my speakers up to understand speech, recording quality went up, and I started to notice the difference in 128Kb/s vs 192Kb/s (especially on percussion).
I have used many systems with integrated audio, mostly with Realtek codecs, and have never had any of the problems you describe... except when using Linux and ALSA. Things were fine when using OSS4, Mac OS X, or Windows.
You really wanna save thousands of lives a year, across the world? Make them all legal. Make them prescription-only, regulate them, tax them, let doctors manage them. Let the big drug companies produce and supply pure drugs in reliable delivery mechanisms. No way that organised crime will be able to complete with the big pharma corps. No more deaths due to heroin cut with ajax, no more deaths because the cartels are trying to protect their illegal crops.
Methamphetamine is already available with a prescription, yet there's a huge market for non-pharmaceutical, clandestinely manufactured product.
Stability - Windows hasn't been as bad as Linux fanboys wish for almost 10 years now, but Linux still wins by an ever shrinking margin IMO
I disagree. Windows 7 can restart the graphics driver at runtime, without losing the desktop session or having to close any applications (except perhaps the kind of games that cause graphics driver failures). Linux desktops have some limited capability to do this by restarting the X server, but in doing so, the entire desktop session is lost. Here, Windows is simply objectively better.
Other than that, there's nothing fundamentally different from the Linux and Windows NT kernels that makes Linux more stable - both are vulnerable to faults in kernel space caused by poorly written drivers. Windows drivers do get much more QA, and while a large part of this is due to greater market share, it's also helped by the stabler API/ABI in Windows - less changes, less risk of breaking something.
A unit load is defined as 100 mA in USB 2.0, and was raised to 150 mA in USB 3.0. A maximum of 5 unit loads (500 mA) can be drawn from a port in USB 2.0, which was raised to 6 (900 mA) in USB 3.0.
Devices like media players should provide the full 500 mA for each port, ideally with two ports, so they will work with bus-powered USB 2.5" hard drives.
You could always rent a foreign film from amazon on demand.
Why? Do you think non-American films are overall better than American ones?
They have a bunch of bad movies too; those ones don't get international attention. So the "foreign films" that get marketed and played in the United States are much better on average than the average American film.
And why are they still using an old-fashioned AC adapter? They ought to power the box through industry standard USB or PoE.
Standard USB doesn't provide enough power for a device like this, especially if the device itself is a USB host. And Power over Ethernet is not a standard for consumer electronics.
I'm pretty sure two flags on a pole is some sort of faux pas.
not entirely uncommon. I've seen the state beneath the US flag, for example, sometimes with a corporate flag too (below or above the state flag, I can't remember).
No, that's not what I said. I said that the EPA ratings are estimates and you need to drive in the same way as their tests to get the same results.
The new car is a little less powerful and requires a little less (but not as much less as the drop in HP would suggest) fuel to operate. So, no, there's no improvement to date.
Across the board, manufacturers have been making bigger, more powerful, and more efficient engines.
They get--using NEW EPA numbers and the NEW EPA 55/45 city/hwy spread...wait for it...about 7% better mileage. (200SX@29.5 [fueleconomy.gov] vs Mazda2@31.7 [fueleconomy.gov])
Old vehicles were not retested with the new EPA tests; the new EPA estimates are guesses based on the previous test results.
By taking the 70MPG(J) as 70MPG(USEPA) I'm erring on the conservative side. "Most vehicles will achieve higher fuel economy on the U.S. test cycle than on the European or Japanese cycles." [ornl.gov]. If Mazda is to be believed, USEPA will give them a rating above 70MPG.
This document is from before the new EPA tests were created.
40MPG without even trying, and I can get 42 out of it if I keep the speed down and coast a lot.
Are you driving your car using the exact route and procedures as used in the new EPA fuel economy tests? I think you are not. Drive a modern vehicle of similar size and displacement in the same way you drive your Nissan, and you'll probably get better fuel economy than the 200SX.
Is it? According to web statistics, Apple Safari users are only double the size of Opera users, and Opera routinely gets ignored. I'm not convinced ignoring Apple Mac users will be a travesty.
Linux had auto-detection of video hardware handled the same time as Windows did for the same exact reason: The HARDWARE finally supported it.
Windows 95 had this working on PCI systems in 1995. Linux still didn't have this working as well as Windows 95 a few years later on the same hardware. PCI detection wasn't the issue, but the automatic display driver loading... wasn't. Instead, a configuration file was generated by some script. If the hardware changed, the script had to be ran again.
There's much more than simply identifying the PCI device and selecting a driver. Specifically, I am referring to tasks performed after the graphics adapter is identified and loaded:
identifying the display device(s) and supported resolutions, if information is available
re-using the previous display configuration for a given device, if it's not the first time the device is used with a system
selecting a reasonable output resolution if data is not available (should only occur for outputs without EDID like RGB/YPbPr component, or if the monitor does not provide information)
selecting the best possible output resolution when the display device(s) provide information
These should occur whenever the driver is initialized, whenever a new device is plugged in, etc.
Today X11 automatically detects everything on startup, from your keyboard, to your graphics card, to your monitor. It also manages to do this with a much wider spectrum of hardware then the small sample MacOS X needs to deal with.
Input devices are handled by the kernel (in Linux) since the early 00s.
That Linux/X.org can do this is not that impressive. This is all stuff Windows and Mac OS had working in the 90s. It took a long time for X.org to get display detection for multiple video outputs working well and resolution changing at runtime; I had problems with that up until two or three years ago.
I'd venture to say that more than 50% of of OSX is F/OSS code and Apple has generally been quite good about working with the projects they use.
citation needed.
Regardless of how much of OS X is open source, the majority of the code that differentiates OS X from a garden variety UNIX or unixlike system is not open source. The window server and graphics drivers are closed source. The audio server is closed source. The Cocoa and Carbon implementations are closed source. The Finder and Dock are closed source. Nearly all of Apple's applications that are included with OS X are closed source, including Mail, iCal, XCode, etc. Without all the closed-source parts, Darwin wouldn't even be a compelling competitor to FreeBSD or Linux.
Safer? Bittorrent already has built in checksumming which most people don't do with regular downloads anyways. By that metric alone I'd say the BitTorrent is safer than a regular download.
Automated download/update systems can go one step further than simple checksum verification: they may perform signature verification. (I assume many do.) Windows (at the shell/IE level) will validate any signatures in downloaded installers/executable files.
Automated download systems using SSL can furthermore verify that the server is trusted.
2 it is hooked into grades since you must A be enrolled in a school B be making "satisfactory academic progress" to continue getting your grant
Related to grades, but barely. Grants (and subsidized loans) provide funding to students regardless of their capacity to complete the program of study, demand for graduates of the program, or likeliness to benefit from the program. At some state/public colleges, simply showing up to class and trying is sufficient to get passing grades.
Slashdot Mirror
The Wii is only a little bit more powerful than the Gamecube. In some ways, the Wii is weaker than many modern phones - it has less RAM than even weak smartphones (compare the Wii's 91 MB total RAM to the original iPhone's 128 MB and the iPhone 4's 512 MB).. High-end smartphone CPUs are beating the Wii in CPU, with the fastest Android devices clocked at 1.0 GHz or higher.
Another round of "incremental" from Nintendo would result in a product that's weaker performance-wise than a smartphone. They will need a new gimmick to sell it.
The PS3 and Xbox 360 are capable of outputting 1080p, but most games are rendered at 720p or less. (The Xbox 360 will scale all of them to 1080p, but the PS3 seems to prefer outputting at 720p for many games.) Both systems have been outperformed by $100 video cards for the past 2+ years. And both the PS2 and original Xbox could output video at 1080i, although hardly any software supported it.
While both systems have GPUs and CPUs much more powerful than anything currently seen in smartphones or lightweight tablets, they are lacking in RAM.
Based on all the reports I've read, the Wii isn't even twice as fast as the GameCube.
It seems it's about as capable as an (original) Xbox with a Bluetooth controller... except the Xbox GPU can output at resolutions higher than 480/576p.
Actually, current gen console games frequently render at less than 720p:
GTA IV runs at 640p on the PS3
Halo 3 renders at 640p on the Xbox 360
We are getting close to the point (if we haven't passed it already) where low-end ($50) PC GPUs outperform current consoles.
In what operating system and sound system?
I've had this problem consistently with Linux and ALSA and integrated audio. The problem never occurs on the same hardware with Mac OS X or Windows.
Intel has had this in production since the beginning of the year, but it's not quite the same as what happened with audio; the GPU is included on the same chip as the CPU, but the CPU and GPU are still independent. The combination provides performance and power benefits, with the memory controller, CPU, and GPU all integrated into the processor.
I have used many systems with integrated audio, mostly with Realtek codecs, and have never had any of the problems you describe... except when using Linux and ALSA. Things were fine when using OSS4, Mac OS X, or Windows.
Methamphetamine is already available with a prescription, yet there's a huge market for non-pharmaceutical, clandestinely manufactured product.
It's the OOM Killer
More correctly, it uses MTP, which has implementations on operating systems other than Windows.
In any case, you should have better researched your purchase.
Some iPod interfaces will respect the gapless flag
But people buy systems that do what they want or need. They don't buy systems with software they don't need to make a "fair comparison".
I disagree. Windows 7 can restart the graphics driver at runtime, without losing the desktop session or having to close any applications (except perhaps the kind of games that cause graphics driver failures). Linux desktops have some limited capability to do this by restarting the X server, but in doing so, the entire desktop session is lost. Here, Windows is simply objectively better.
Other than that, there's nothing fundamentally different from the Linux and Windows NT kernels that makes Linux more stable - both are vulnerable to faults in kernel space caused by poorly written drivers. Windows drivers do get much more QA, and while a large part of this is due to greater market share, it's also helped by the stabler API/ABI in Windows - less changes, less risk of breaking something.
from Wikipedia:
Devices like media players should provide the full 500 mA for each port, ideally with two ports, so they will work with bus-powered USB 2.5" hard drives.
Why? Do you think non-American films are overall better than American ones?
They have a bunch of bad movies too; those ones don't get international attention. So the "foreign films" that get marketed and played in the United States are much better on average than the average American film.
Standard USB doesn't provide enough power for a device like this, especially if the device itself is a USB host. And Power over Ethernet is not a standard for consumer electronics.
not entirely uncommon. I've seen the state beneath the US flag, for example, sometimes with a corporate flag too (below or above the state flag, I can't remember).
The "online" part is Slashdot; it's a website on the Internet, so any story discussion on it can be considered "online".
No, that's not what I said. I said that the EPA ratings are estimates and you need to drive in the same way as their tests to get the same results.
Across the board, manufacturers have been making bigger, more powerful, and more efficient engines.
Old vehicles were not retested with the new EPA tests; the new EPA estimates are guesses based on the previous test results.
This document is from before the new EPA tests were created.
Are you driving your car using the exact route and procedures as used in the new EPA fuel economy tests?
I think you are not.
Drive a modern vehicle of similar size and displacement in the same way you drive your Nissan, and you'll probably get better fuel economy than the 200SX.
Windows 95 had this working on PCI systems in 1995. Linux still didn't have this working as well as Windows 95 a few years later on the same hardware. PCI detection wasn't the issue, but the automatic display driver loading... wasn't. Instead, a configuration file was generated by some script. If the hardware changed, the script had to be ran again.
There's much more than simply identifying the PCI device and selecting a driver. Specifically, I am referring to tasks performed after the graphics adapter is identified and loaded:
These should occur whenever the driver is initialized, whenever a new device is plugged in, etc.
Input devices are handled by the kernel (in Linux) since the early 00s.
That Linux/X.org can do this is not that impressive. This is all stuff Windows and Mac OS had working in the 90s. It took a long time for X.org to get display detection for multiple video outputs working well and resolution changing at runtime; I had problems with that up until two or three years ago.
citation needed.
Regardless of how much of OS X is open source, the majority of the code that differentiates OS X from a garden variety UNIX or unixlike system is not open source. The window server and graphics drivers are closed source. The audio server is closed source. The Cocoa and Carbon implementations are closed source. The Finder and Dock are closed source. Nearly all of Apple's applications that are included with OS X are closed source, including Mail, iCal, XCode, etc. Without all the closed-source parts, Darwin wouldn't even be a compelling competitor to FreeBSD or Linux.
Automated download/update systems can go one step further than simple checksum verification: they may perform signature verification. (I assume many do.) Windows (at the shell/IE level) will validate any signatures in downloaded installers/executable files.
Automated download systems using SSL can furthermore verify that the server is trusted.
Related to grades, but barely. Grants (and subsidized loans) provide funding to students regardless of their capacity to complete the program of study, demand for graduates of the program, or likeliness to benefit from the program. At some state/public colleges, simply showing up to class and trying is sufficient to get passing grades.