You do know that your console doesn't even run most games in the past 3 years at 30 fps? More like the 20's.
This is why I don't run said games on a console, and use a pc with adequate specs instead of something that is anaemic.
Dude, the Wii, with it's magical friend codes,
Yeah like monster hunter tri I really have to use friend codes for it/sarcasm
And the only reason why it appears more fluid is because you're not using a mouse and using slow controller, so you don't see how painful it really is.
I can see how painful it is when it hits 20 most definitely, 30 can be hidden with slower gameplay, but again I tend to only play the console games with a solid 60fps (metroid prime 3 and f-zero gx are good examples)
As a side note, I also love how you only point out 2 games, and one of them being Crysis
This comes down to me primarily liking older games anyway, and part of my prerequisites were that they "aren't primarily made for consoles with crappy ports to pc", which pretty much excludes most of your list, unless you can honestly say bioshock 2 wasn't graphically limited to what the xbox etc was capable of and took full use of the latest pc hardware of the time of it's release.
Being surprised ports run on pc well is like being amazed you can emulate wii games on a modern pc... not very surprising, try running some real pc games not gimped and see how far you get (thus the two games I mentioned)
Most proper pc games that fuck off consoles actually USE the power of the pc, most ports are limiting themselves to five year old hardware.
Fact: moderate specs in 2007 were a C2D and a 8800 GT
Well, where did you get 8 years from originally then? counting 8 years back form now yields beginning 2003. last I checked you were arguing a rig from xbox's release (late 2005 not 2007) was more efficient.
Basically, I say pick an argument and stick with it. Either you say that a pc can give 8 years (circa 2003 till now) of gaming and cost less, or you say a box of awesome bought when the xbox was released (2005) is a better gaming system in value for money.
Seriously your reply is the weakest and most un-informed I've ever seen.
Coming from someone who goes 'no, that multiplayer could not possibly be fun, we all say it isn't' that's rich.
and I now see you're using end of 2005 top of the range specs, that takes down the live subscription time from 8 years to five
Quake 4 was released the same year as that and while there is an xbox port it is nasty and extremely laggy, even the 7950 ducks well below 60fps at times.. and this is from a game when the hardware was new, let alone more modern things that are released this year.
The Wii doesn't count because it's online multiplayer is well plain awful.
This is subjective, my wii has received more online game time than my xbox360 has by about a factor of ten.
Man, can't run anything with your specs huh?
Most of those games are from circa 2005-2007... of course a top of the line rig made in 2007 will be able to play them just fine. Some of those games will absolutely chug on a machine from even 2004/5 though.
\
When I talk about pc games I'm meaning current shit, if your argument is you don't need a pc for 8 years then that means trying to run crysis and dragon age origins on a geforce 5 series card.
Dragon age won't even start on a geforce 5, a 6 is required minimum and you'll get slideshow framerates... sure it might run, but 5-8fps is not what most gamers would consider acceptable.
Make a list with some cutting edge new games that aren't four years old and aren't primarily made for consoles with crappy ports to pc, and run on a p4 with geforce 5 series card, and your original point will stand.
You'd rather just bow out of PC gaming that play your precious PC game at HIGH settings?
Actually, I'd like a solid 60fps graphics be damned, if the frame rate ever severely stutters, something is wrong.
I note that at no stage did you offer any counter-argument to any of my points, instead you just mouthed off anonymously - that tells everyone all they need to know about your position...
While I am not him, it speaks nothing of his position and moreso just a general "*sigh* not another misguided one" and lazyness of explanation.
First of all, carrier grade nat causes it's own problems and does _not_ scale, you can still only put so many active devices behind a nat before things start getting nasty (they kind of already are if you have to resort to it anyway though).
The primary problem though is in effect NAT turns the internet into a one-way affair, it destroys any service where you would want to be the one receiving an incoming message (say for instance VOIP or clicking 'host game' on your favourite game of choice).
While port forwarding is acceptable to those who only need one device doing a service when you have multiple that need to do the same service you are screwed.
ipv6 is the _proper_ solution, and the matter of fact is if you go with carrier grade nat you will _still_ wind up running out of addresses and hit the limits of what nat can do. At which point you would have seriously broken most if not all two-way internet connectivity.
Nat is quite evil.
The only reason we keep getting these chicken-licken pronouncements of impending doom is because those with a vested interest in trying to flog IPv6 gear find their sales are down. Nothing more.
Could it be because we are actually *gasp* running out of addresses? The moment we run out won't be complete doom and gloom but it will destroy and separate part of the architecture of the internet if everyone doesn't jump on the ipv6 bandwagon. Most people here don't want there to be two separate portions of the net inaccessible to each other.
How about a compromise. If you buy it subsidized with the 2 year contract, you get the unlock code at the end of it
No, if they have a two year contract, they get the unlock code at the start, because even if they toss the phone or use it with another provider, they are still locked in to a two year contract, and the provider gets their money regardless.
It is pre-paid instances where the phone is both heavily subsidized and the purchaser is not locked into a contract that you need to lock them in.
You guys need to understand that if the courts uphold that the FCC can regulate the internet, it means they can also regulate CONTENT of the internet.
Yes.. because it's not like they regulate phone companies right now at all. Obviously because of that they can censor what two private parties say to each other over the phone line... \sarcasm.
Regulating network access is like regulating telephone network access. It is done for the greater good, otherwise you would wind up with companies that try to real-time censor etc with phone lines after adding a delay.. because they can.
What you propose only works if you separate who owns the infrastructure from the ISP.
Only when that happens will you have real competition. If it is not like that the barriers of entry are far too high and you wind up with a few companies raping everyone in prices and service with no solution to the end user in sight.
Well nothing is safe if you throw enough resources at it, even drm in silicon can generally be worked around by reverse engineering it all and reimplementing in your own sans drm functionality
It's kind of like protecting your house/yourself from thieves or vandalls. Hell you could have a nuclear bunker, people will still be able to gain access with sufficient resources. But unless you are a very high value target, it won't be worth it.
So the better the drm the more valuable breaking it has to be to justify it.
If you took a console from that same era today like the Super NES [wikipedia.org] and just slid the cartridge in chances are it's not going to work first try either, because that cartridge is old and not made to play 20 years later.
As an avid snes collector I must correct you, they do 'just work' worst case you have dust on the connector which is kind of like having fingerprints on a cd... you just wipe it off.
ROM chips almost never die unless you do something stupid with them.
so wait... you are taking 8 years of xbox live account subscription into this (never mind that it's the only console out there that charges for regular multiplayer for most games) and yet not accounting that within 8 years you WILL need new pc hardware?
In 2003 we were using 2ghz p4's with 512mb-1gb ram tops, do you seriously think a modern game can play on that machine by your 8 year lifecycle of pc's idea?
Either cut back the xbox live subscription years in your equation (and hard disk since you wouldn't be talking about an ancient model) or add in the cost of significantly upgrading the pc over said time.
Also, I am presently running an otherwise very modern quad core, 6gb ram etc with an ancient (circa 2006) geforce 7950, if you seriously think that it is sufficient for most 'modern' pc games, you are sorely mistaken.
You assume pc hardware requirements haven't went up because newer consoles haven't been released. In the pc only realm requirements have went up over time significantly.
There was software before the 1910s? Huh. Who knew?
Nice try, software patents only became enforceable around the 1990's onwards
So you know, people were patenting software in the 60s and 70s, in much the same way as they do now - tied to specific machines.
Software patents itself was a very murky area until the 90's because a few notable court cases in that time frame established them.
Hell the EU doesn't recognize software patents and yet STILL grants them in case it does in the future, go figure.
People weren't stupid enough to think ideas should be patented back then only implementations of ideas... and implementations of software ARE covered by copyright.
There are three primary things that facebook is useful for imho, first is the chat system which is xmpp based (open standard, gtalk etc uses it too) which everyone uses so many friends that do not use other IM system such as msn, aol etc are available to talk to.
Next is the event system complete with iCal support, friends can invite me to events and it will magically appear with details on my android.
Finally where facebook started, photo sharing and tagging, the ability to quickly share things with friends by simply uploading them.
The value comes from the ease of use of sharing information. But of course, this comes with the caveat that you should only put information on there that you _want_ to be shared.
If you limit what you've said to the last ten years (which I think is reasonable for a company that innovates a lot apparently) you'd be left with only the ipad. Which is essentially just a gigantic size ipod touch...
If you consider restricting what users can do with their devices and simplifying things to the point where for a lot of people it is simply not functional anymore innovating, then yes they are innovating quite well.
Apples designs are only good for set pieces of functionality, if your needs differ from that functionality that steve has dictated, you are boned.
For the majority of people most of the functionality offered suffices because to be frank they do not know or care about what their devices are actually capable of. Those that do hate apple.
Crimes that are easier to commit (in this case downloading a torrent versus buying a shovel and digging for a few days) now need to have higher deterrents, because it is far less likely to get a conviction.
It is this kind of thinking that leads to blokes pissing on a tree becoming listed as 'sex offenders'
Isn't the law system meant to be about 'justice' whatever happened to that idea?
We may aswell imprison people for life for jaywalking because it is so damn easy to do.
'why should I bother switching to something that doesn't work right out of the box and to which there is seemingly no basic level user support?'
Well by that logic nobody should ever install something different than what was originally on their hardware, because it would be unsupported and has the slight possibility of not magically working.
What's that? vista on a former xp machine? possibility of drivers not working, better not do it.
The argument works for any upgrade that was not on the original hardware or is not supported by the original vendors. The fact that linux works so well when installed on seemingly random hardware it was never specifically tailored for is a testament to it's flexibility.
Basically, what are you doing installing an os unless you know what you are doing in the first place? If you want a fully functioning linux system find someone like me that can do it for you and get everything going to your needs and requirements, otherwise expect troubles.
One of the many points you've overlooked is that with open source is that if the vendor refuses to fix the issues when brought up you are able to fix them yourself or hire someone to fix them.
The only instance where open source is worse than closed source is where you both have a crappy vendor and the device is locked down, i.e. the tivo.
There people can look at the source and find bugs but are unable to fix them even if they tried.
That's exactly the approach that makes most people who try Linux give up after a very short time. I personally tried it twice and found any problems I encountered making things work had no simple step by step instructions on how to fix.
Research and independent learning, not everything is going to be spoon fed to you.
Slashdot Mirror
You do know that your console doesn't even run most games in the past 3 years at 30 fps? More like the 20's.
This is why I don't run said games on a console, and use a pc with adequate specs instead of something that is anaemic.
Dude, the Wii, with it's magical friend codes,
Yeah like monster hunter tri I really have to use friend codes for it /sarcasm
And the only reason why it appears more fluid is because you're not using a mouse and using slow controller, so you don't see how painful it really is.
I can see how painful it is when it hits 20 most definitely, 30 can be hidden with slower gameplay, but again I tend to only play the console games with a solid 60fps (metroid prime 3 and f-zero gx are good examples)
As a side note, I also love how you only point out 2 games, and one of them being Crysis
This comes down to me primarily liking older games anyway, and part of my prerequisites were that they "aren't primarily made for consoles with crappy ports to pc", which pretty much excludes most of your list, unless you can honestly say bioshock 2 wasn't graphically limited to what the xbox etc was capable of and took full use of the latest pc hardware of the time of it's release.
Being surprised ports run on pc well is like being amazed you can emulate wii games on a modern pc... not very surprising, try running some real pc games not gimped and see how far you get (thus the two games I mentioned)
Most proper pc games that fuck off consoles actually USE the power of the pc, most ports are limiting themselves to five year old hardware.
Fact: moderate specs in 2007 were a C2D and a 8800 GT
Well, where did you get 8 years from originally then? counting 8 years back form now yields beginning 2003. last I checked you were arguing a rig from xbox's release (late 2005 not 2007) was more efficient.
Basically, I say pick an argument and stick with it. Either you say that a pc can give 8 years (circa 2003 till now) of gaming and cost less, or you say a box of awesome bought when the xbox was released (2005) is a better gaming system in value for money.
Seriously your reply is the weakest and most un-informed I've ever seen.
Coming from someone who goes 'no, that multiplayer could not possibly be fun, we all say it isn't' that's rich.
and I now see you're using end of 2005 top of the range specs, that takes down the live subscription time from 8 years to five
Quake 4 was released the same year as that and while there is an xbox port it is nasty and extremely laggy, even the 7950 ducks well below 60fps at times.. and this is from a game when the hardware was new, let alone more modern things that are released this year.
The Wii doesn't count because it's online multiplayer is well plain awful.
This is subjective, my wii has received more online game time than my xbox360 has by about a factor of ten.
Man, can't run anything with your specs huh?
Most of those games are from circa 2005-2007... of course a top of the line rig made in 2007 will be able to play them just fine. Some of those games will absolutely chug on a machine from even 2004/5 though.
\
When I talk about pc games I'm meaning current shit, if your argument is you don't need a pc for 8 years then that means trying to run crysis and dragon age origins on a geforce 5 series card.
Dragon age won't even start on a geforce 5, a 6 is required minimum and you'll get slideshow framerates... sure it might run, but 5-8fps is not what most gamers would consider acceptable.
Make a list with some cutting edge new games that aren't four years old and aren't primarily made for consoles with crappy ports to pc, and run on a p4 with geforce 5 series card, and your original point will stand.
You'd rather just bow out of PC gaming that play your precious PC game at HIGH settings?
Actually, I'd like a solid 60fps graphics be damned, if the frame rate ever severely stutters, something is wrong.
I'd say latex plaintext then with accompanying pdf rendered version.
Then again the real world is a lot more forgiving in layout and style than anal-retentive latex users are ;)
I note that at no stage did you offer any counter-argument to any of my points, instead you just mouthed off anonymously - that tells everyone all they need to know about your position...
While I am not him, it speaks nothing of his position and moreso just a general "*sigh* not another misguided one" and lazyness of explanation.
First of all, carrier grade nat causes it's own problems and does _not_ scale, you can still only put so many active devices behind a nat before things start getting nasty (they kind of already are if you have to resort to it anyway though).
The primary problem though is in effect NAT turns the internet into a one-way affair, it destroys any service where you would want to be the one receiving an incoming message (say for instance VOIP or clicking 'host game' on your favourite game of choice).
While port forwarding is acceptable to those who only need one device doing a service when you have multiple that need to do the same service you are screwed.
ipv6 is the _proper_ solution, and the matter of fact is if you go with carrier grade nat you will _still_ wind up running out of addresses and hit the limits of what nat can do. At which point you would have seriously broken most if not all two-way internet connectivity.
Nat is quite evil.
The only reason we keep getting these chicken-licken pronouncements of impending doom is because those with a vested interest in trying to flog IPv6 gear find their sales are down. Nothing more.
Could it be because we are actually *gasp* running out of addresses? The moment we run out won't be complete doom and gloom but it will destroy and separate part of the architecture of the internet if everyone doesn't jump on the ipv6 bandwagon. Most people here don't want there to be two separate portions of the net inaccessible to each other.
and wear out just as fast as any other mouse.
I'm still using my logitech mouse I bought over five years ago, a properly built mouse lasts for more than long enough.
How about a compromise. If you buy it subsidized with the 2 year contract, you get the unlock code at the end of it
No, if they have a two year contract, they get the unlock code at the start, because even if they toss the phone or use it with another provider, they are still locked in to a two year contract, and the provider gets their money regardless.
It is pre-paid instances where the phone is both heavily subsidized and the purchaser is not locked into a contract that you need to lock them in.
You guys need to understand that if the courts uphold that the FCC can regulate the internet, it means they can also regulate CONTENT of the internet.
Yes.. because it's not like they regulate phone companies right now at all. Obviously because of that they can censor what two private parties say to each other over the phone line... \sarcasm.
Regulating network access is like regulating telephone network access. It is done for the greater good, otherwise you would wind up with companies that try to real-time censor etc with phone lines after adding a delay.. because they can.
+1 informative
mod parent up
What you propose only works if you separate who owns the infrastructure from the ISP.
Only when that happens will you have real competition. If it is not like that the barriers of entry are far too high and you wind up with a few companies raping everyone in prices and service with no solution to the end user in sight.
Well nothing is safe if you throw enough resources at it, even drm in silicon can generally be worked around by reverse engineering it all and reimplementing in your own sans drm functionality
It's kind of like protecting your house/yourself from thieves or vandalls. Hell you could have a nuclear bunker, people will still be able to gain access with sufficient resources. But unless you are a very high value target, it won't be worth it.
So the better the drm the more valuable breaking it has to be to justify it.
If you took a console from that same era today like the Super NES [wikipedia.org] and just slid the cartridge in chances are it's not going to work first try either, because that cartridge is old and not made to play 20 years later.
As an avid snes collector I must correct you, they do 'just work' worst case you have dust on the connector which is kind of like having fingerprints on a cd... you just wipe it off.
ROM chips almost never die unless you do something stupid with them.
so wait... you are taking 8 years of xbox live account subscription into this (never mind that it's the only console out there that charges for regular multiplayer for most games) and yet not accounting that within 8 years you WILL need new pc hardware?
In 2003 we were using 2ghz p4's with 512mb-1gb ram tops, do you seriously think a modern game can play on that machine by your 8 year lifecycle of pc's idea?
Either cut back the xbox live subscription years in your equation (and hard disk since you wouldn't be talking about an ancient model) or add in the cost of significantly upgrading the pc over said time.
Also, I am presently running an otherwise very modern quad core, 6gb ram etc with an ancient (circa 2006) geforce 7950, if you seriously think that it is sufficient for most 'modern' pc games, you are sorely mistaken.
You assume pc hardware requirements haven't went up because newer consoles haven't been released. In the pc only realm requirements have went up over time significantly.
but most of our files get sent to other people outside this company and so we have to use the format that makes it easy to deal with the real world.
So you use pdf then?
and unlike the DS required only software modifications after the first few iterations of the hacks.
You didn't see this did you?
Not requiring any extra hardware is a significant advantage to the hack, surprise surprise some countries block the import of ds flash carts etc.
There was software before the 1910s? Huh. Who knew?
Nice try, software patents only became enforceable around the 1990's onwards
So you know, people were patenting software in the 60s and 70s, in much the same way as they do now - tied to specific machines.
Software patents itself was a very murky area until the 90's because a few notable court cases in that time frame established them.
Hell the EU doesn't recognize software patents and yet STILL grants them in case it does in the future, go figure.
People weren't stupid enough to think ideas should be patented back then only implementations of ideas... and implementations of software ARE covered by copyright.
There are three primary things that facebook is useful for imho, first is the chat system which is xmpp based (open standard, gtalk etc uses it too) which everyone uses so many friends that do not use other IM system such as msn, aol etc are available to talk to.
Next is the event system complete with iCal support, friends can invite me to events and it will magically appear with details on my android.
Finally where facebook started, photo sharing and tagging, the ability to quickly share things with friends by simply uploading them.
The value comes from the ease of use of sharing information. But of course, this comes with the caveat that you should only put information on there that you _want_ to be shared.
If you limit what you've said to the last ten years (which I think is reasonable for a company that innovates a lot apparently) you'd be left with only the ipad. Which is essentially just a gigantic size ipod touch...
If you consider restricting what users can do with their devices and simplifying things to the point where for a lot of people it is simply not functional anymore innovating, then yes they are innovating quite well.
Apples designs are only good for set pieces of functionality, if your needs differ from that functionality that steve has dictated, you are boned.
For the majority of people most of the functionality offered suffices because to be frank they do not know or care about what their devices are actually capable of. Those that do hate apple.
Nokia ceases to matter? Bullshit, they sell more phones than everyone else there combined. To write them off as a phone manufacturer is a big call.
Nokia may not be doing well in smart phones, but comparatively feature phones make smart phones look like a drop in the bucket.
Crimes that are easier to commit (in this case downloading a torrent versus buying a shovel and digging for a few days) now need to have higher deterrents, because it is far less likely to get a conviction.
It is this kind of thinking that leads to blokes pissing on a tree becoming listed as 'sex offenders'
Isn't the law system meant to be about 'justice' whatever happened to that idea?
We may aswell imprison people for life for jaywalking because it is so damn easy to do.
'why should I bother switching to something that doesn't work right out of the box and to which there is seemingly no basic level user support?'
Well by that logic nobody should ever install something different than what was originally on their hardware, because it would be unsupported and has the slight possibility of not magically working.
What's that? vista on a former xp machine? possibility of drivers not working, better not do it.
The argument works for any upgrade that was not on the original hardware or is not supported by the original vendors. The fact that linux works so well when installed on seemingly random hardware it was never specifically tailored for is a testament to it's flexibility.
Basically, what are you doing installing an os unless you know what you are doing in the first place? If you want a fully functioning linux system find someone like me that can do it for you and get everything going to your needs and requirements, otherwise expect troubles.
One of the many points you've overlooked is that with open source is that if the vendor refuses to fix the issues when brought up you are able to fix them yourself or hire someone to fix them.
The only instance where open source is worse than closed source is where you both have a crappy vendor and the device is locked down, i.e. the tivo.
There people can look at the source and find bugs but are unable to fix them even if they tried.
That's exactly the approach that makes most people who try Linux give up after a very short time. I personally tried it twice and found any problems I encountered making things work had no simple step by step instructions on how to fix.
Research and independent learning, not everything is going to be spoon fed to you.