Anybody else catch the thank-you letter from Paul McCartney to a cop who served as his bodyguard in Miami (it's a little more than halfway down on the left side)? Four pages! How cool is that?
I am not sure who or what I should be insulting here
Perhaps you shouldn't be insulting anybody? It's a generally interesting article, and a lot of slashdot users like Linux and Playstation so it seems relevant to me. If it doesn't appeal to *you* personally and seems like a waste of your time, why not just move on rather than wasting yet more time to insult people?
Furthermore, I really think people are missing the point when they say "why install linux on a [insert atypical hardware here] when you can install it on a cheap PC for less?". The whole point in doing something like this is necessarily because it's practical but because it is *fun*.
I'm pretty ignorant of OSX from a development perspective. What's the upside in dropping the carbon API? I imagine it frees up Apple's development resources by focusing solely on cocoa, but are there advantages for a third-party developer? For an end-user?
About 4 years ago 1gig of RAM was an acceptable configuration for "most people". Now it is increasingly common for people to bump up against the 4gig limit. I'm not saying that most people need more than 4gigs, but times change and i can see it being a standard fairly soon.
That's one reason for going 64-bit. I doubt many applications will benefit from 64-bit instructions (in fact some applications see a performance hit), but they will benefit from the 64-bit address space.
You only have 256mb RAM. The other 256 is video RAM, and Sony prohibits direct access to it. Unfortunately that means no hardware accelerated graphics either. Kindof a shame, but I imagine it's still neat to play around with, and I doubt you'll find a cheaper Cell dev platform.
On the 360 side, hobbyist developers have a different set of trade-offs. You can write games C# using XNA Game Studio, 512mb shared memory, and even get hardware acceleration (some of the demos are quite impressive). On the flipside, there's a $100/year membership and fat chance of ever running linux (in any official capacity at least)
I don't have any mod points left, but welcome to my friends list pal. You've just echoed the feelings that made me become an independent.
I think the final straw for me was when Team of Rivals came out, and all of the neocon pundits essentially ran a smear campaign... against Lincoln!! The Republicans of today are in name only.
Because data is data. It's not like Time Warner created the adds. They were sent by a third party. Time Warner incur's as much cost sending you ads from a third party as much as sending you any other kind of data.
If metered internet becomes popular, more people will aggressively use ad-blocking software until advertisers get the hint and make the adds less obtrusive.
But Safari places them on the desktop by default. This is the key problem, and in fact a good number of security vulnerabilities woudn't be an issue if it weren't for the fact that the majority of users stick with the default settings.
And you can't make the argument that the only people downloading Safari are power users anymore - if you have an iPod, odds are that Apple Update has pushed Safari to your machine.
That's exactly my point. Traditionally, new products with more features are introduced at the same price point as the predecessor. So why are these saps buying the predecessor!?
Okay, so that confirms that they're idiots, right? I mean, by all accounts the 3G iPhone will be in stores in less than a month. For the same price as what is currently available.
Seeing as how you failed to get the parent post's joke, I'm starting to wonder if you were also oblivious to the interpretations of the name "Uncle Focker".
It's worth noting that Star Wars: Episode I got great reviews from Aint It Cool News. So if they are panning Crystal Skull it may actually be a great movie!
Come back after you've turned off anti-aliasing.
on
A Billion-Color Display
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· Score: 5, Informative
Is it really possible to improve screens further, in a way that's visible to the naked eye?
I think so. As a quick example of why I think this, temporarily turn off anti-aliasing in your OS. The characters on the screen should look pretty crappy relative to a book or an illustration. So, I think we have a ways to go. I think the same is true for color depth, it's just hard to recognize it because we have gotten used to 8 bits/pixel.
Most new displays have a resolution of 96dpi, whereas low-end printers can easily pull off 300dpi. Same goes for color-depth. Black and White screen images at 8 bits/pixel simply cant match the range of black&white print & film.
When you think about it, techniques such as anti-aliasing are really just hacks to work around the limitations of today's monitors. If monitors could pull off 300dpi, you wouldn't need anti-aliasing.
I'll stop browsing the web and playing Quake in class when professors start giving a shit and actually forming a coherent lecture
If this is the case, why are you even attending class in the first place? What not just show up for test days and be done with it? It's not like they're taking attendance. Seems like it would be easier to just stay in your dorm and play quake there.
But then who foots the bill for various things like all the ads that get displayed?
Well, the end customer would. Probably not the answer that you'd like to hear but who else should be paying it? You pay for all of the electricity required to run your television even if 50% of the time was spent watching advertisements.
ISPs needed to stop using the term 'unlimited' to describe their services and make it clear that if people wanted to watch hours of downloaded video content they would have to pay a higher tariff...
Absolutely right. I've often wondered why we don't treat internet service like any other utility. If I use more water, I get a larger water bill. Same goes for electricity. Why don't we do the same thing for ISP's? A lot of people bristle at the idea of this, but I kindof like it. That way people that only use the internet for email and light web surfing are charged less than people who troll Youtube all day.
Yeah, this guy's blog (with all of two posts) doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. Sounds like he skimmed what little Windows 7 info is out there and extrapolated it into pure fantasy. In fact, at least one microsoft source has already labeled it rubbish.
Well, yes and no. I would say that pc-to-console ports still have scaled down graphics w/respect to polygon count and texture size, but you are right in that it is becoming less and less discernible. On Oblivion, you have much shorter draw distances on the ps3 vs. an average gaming pc, but besides that they look similar.
Going forward, I think the biggest differentiator will be AI and physics. The ps3 is hamstrung at 256MB of ram, and good AI and physics tend to take a lot of both.
I don't think that is really true of *current* console games. I don't have a PC game rig, but PS3 games look VERY nice on a 1080p projector.
I don't doubt that, when you compare your PS3 to the gaming PC that you don't have, the PS3 fares much better. However, those of us with both a pc and a ps3 know the truth.
Let's take a current console game: Half Life 2: Episode 2. On the PS3, your running at 1080p@30fps with anti-aliasing turned off. Of course, on the PS3 the frame rate has dips but let's give you the benefit of the doubt.
Check out these specs for an Nvidia 9600GT (which is an entry-to-mid level card). They have Half Life 2: Episode 2 running at 1600p@56.2 fps at 4X anti-aliasing. In other words, it absolutely crushes the ps3 specs. I could show you similar comparisons with Oblivion, UT 3, or Call of Duty 4.
It doesn't suck because it's made by MS or ripped off from something. It sucks because the documentation is piss-poor.
I'm not the biggest fan of Microsoft, I gotta disagree with you here . I also work with PHP and Java, and the thing that is most refreshing to me is how good the documentation is by comparison. MSDN is is order of magnitude more robust than the docs coming from Sun, Apple, or the PHP community.
One notable exception that I'll grant you is in their Vista Platform SDK docs. Especially the gadget API. But I tend to attribute it to the general train wreck that is Vista;-)
I can't speak for this singular "Slashdot"guy that you speak of, but it's not as though your points are mutually exclusive.
Personally, I *do* think that telcos are dragging their feet with respect to services and new technologies. But AppleTV, XBox Live Marketplace, even Netflix are examples of digital download providers that are increasing in popularity. And keep in mind that you are only talking about the US market. Other parts of the world have better broadband penetration, and I imagine that digital distribution will pose an even bigger threat to Blu-Ray in those areas.
Slashdot Mirror
Anybody else catch the thank-you letter from Paul McCartney to a cop who served as his bodyguard in Miami (it's a little more than halfway down on the left side)? Four pages! How cool is that?
Furthermore, I really think people are missing the point when they say "why install linux on a [insert atypical hardware here] when you can install it on a cheap PC for less?". The whole point in doing something like this is necessarily because it's practical but because it is *fun*.
About 4 years ago 1gig of RAM was an acceptable configuration for "most people". Now it is increasingly common for people to bump up against the 4gig limit. I'm not saying that most people need more than 4gigs, but times change and i can see it being a standard fairly soon.
That's one reason for going 64-bit. I doubt many applications will benefit from 64-bit instructions (in fact some applications see a performance hit), but they will benefit from the 64-bit address space.
You only have 256mb RAM. The other 256 is video RAM, and Sony prohibits direct access to it. Unfortunately that means no hardware accelerated graphics either. Kindof a shame, but I imagine it's still neat to play around with, and I doubt you'll find a cheaper Cell dev platform.
On the 360 side, hobbyist developers have a different set of trade-offs. You can write games C# using XNA Game Studio, 512mb shared memory, and even get hardware acceleration (some of the demos are quite impressive). On the flipside, there's a $100/year membership and fat chance of ever running linux (in any official capacity at least)
I don't have any mod points left, but welcome to my friends list pal. You've just echoed the feelings that made me become an independent.
I think the final straw for me was when Team of Rivals came out, and all of the neocon pundits essentially ran a smear campaign... against Lincoln!! The Republicans of today are in name only.
Because data is data. It's not like Time Warner created the adds. They were sent by a third party. Time Warner incur's as much cost sending you ads from a third party as much as sending you any other kind of data.
If metered internet becomes popular, more people will aggressively use ad-blocking software until advertisers get the hint and make the adds less obtrusive.
Let's just be thankful he was so proud of the pringles can. I'm uncomfortable with the thought of him being freeze-dried or, even worse, fried.
But Safari places them on the desktop by default. This is the key problem, and in fact a good number of security vulnerabilities woudn't be an issue if it weren't for the fact that the majority of users stick with the default settings.
And you can't make the argument that the only people downloading Safari are power users anymore - if you have an iPod, odds are that Apple Update has pushed Safari to your machine.
That's exactly my point. Traditionally, new products with more features are introduced at the same price point as the predecessor. So why are these saps buying the predecessor!?
Okay, so that confirms that they're idiots, right? I mean, by all accounts the 3G iPhone will be in stores in less than a month. For the same price as what is currently available.
Seeing as how you failed to get the parent post's joke, I'm starting to wonder if you were also oblivious to the interpretations of the name "Uncle Focker".
It's worth noting that Star Wars: Episode I got great reviews from Aint It Cool News. So if they are panning Crystal Skull it may actually be a great movie!
Most new displays have a resolution of 96dpi, whereas low-end printers can easily pull off 300dpi. Same goes for color-depth. Black and White screen images at 8 bits/pixel simply cant match the range of black&white print & film.
When you think about it, techniques such as anti-aliasing are really just hacks to work around the limitations of today's monitors. If monitors could pull off 300dpi, you wouldn't need anti-aliasing.
Somehow I have a feeling that my comments won't see the light of day.
Yeah, this guy's blog (with all of two posts) doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. Sounds like he skimmed what little Windows 7 info is out there and extrapolated it into pure fantasy. In fact, at least one microsoft source has already labeled it rubbish.
The ps3 has 512MB RAM, but it is split such that 256MB is for video, 256MB is general purpose.
Well, yes and no. I would say that pc-to-console ports still have scaled down graphics w/respect to polygon count and texture size, but you are right in that it is becoming less and less discernible. On Oblivion, you have much shorter draw distances on the ps3 vs. an average gaming pc, but besides that they look similar.
Going forward, I think the biggest differentiator will be AI and physics. The ps3 is hamstrung at 256MB of ram, and good AI and physics tend to take a lot of both.
Let's take a current console game: Half Life 2: Episode 2. On the PS3, your running at 1080p@30fps with anti-aliasing turned off. Of course, on the PS3 the frame rate has dips but let's give you the benefit of the doubt.
Check out these specs for an Nvidia 9600GT (which is an entry-to-mid level card). They have Half Life 2: Episode 2 running at 1600p@56.2 fps at 4X anti-aliasing. In other words, it absolutely crushes the ps3 specs. I could show you similar comparisons with Oblivion, UT 3, or Call of Duty 4.
One notable exception that I'll grant you is in their Vista Platform SDK docs. Especially the gadget API. But I tend to attribute it to the general train wreck that is Vista
I can't speak for this singular "Slashdot"guy that you speak of, but it's not as though your points are mutually exclusive.
Personally, I *do* think that telcos are dragging their feet with respect to services and new technologies. But AppleTV, XBox Live Marketplace, even Netflix are examples of digital download providers that are increasing in popularity. And keep in mind that you are only talking about the US market. Other parts of the world have better broadband penetration, and I imagine that digital distribution will pose an even bigger threat to Blu-Ray in those areas.