What is Counter-Strike anyway? I've been playing it since the very first beta - and quite frequently so. In retrospective, I feel obliged to say that Counter-Strike hasn't been consistent in its content at all. How much is actually still the same from the original betas?
The physics of a player are totally different (i.e. weapon handling, bunny jumping, etc). Weapons are different. CS_ maps are no longer played and are basically replaced in favor of the DE_ maps. The list is very long and could be expanded forever.
My point is that Counter-Strike has never been Counter-Strike, simply because it is changing so frequently that the game can only be defined as a tactical FPS. Looking at other games, such as Quake III: Arena or even QuakeWorld, these games are easier to define because they haven't changed much at all.
I don't think Valve will stop making changes to CS and CS:S. At least that's what history has told us so far.
I don't exactly consider the Zune to be an iPod competitor. At least I don't know why an iPod fan boy would buy a Zune. I do however think that Microsoft has an excellent player that is set to compete with Creative, iRiver and all the other major non-iPod mp3 player developers.
The Zune has a totally different set of features, such as wireless connectivity and such, so if Microsoft sells it for anything less than a 30 GB iPod, it's just going to be another bl*wjob for Steve.
While I do think that 1080p is a great thing, I doubt it is going to make people go crazy about it simply because 1080p is still a few years away from major distribution.
Some people will already be on 1080p and a few already are, but any sane company would go for the masses, not the less than 1 percent cake of people who are looking for top notch hardware.
I am definitely waiting for 1080p as my next TV replacement, but anything above $2,000 is just not gonna do it for me, so I'll wait a little longer and stick to 720p, which is also very nice.
I believe he left out a few requirements, so here they are.
You may not loop around me with a Segway. EVER.
You may not replace my speech tool with a southern state gay accent. It aggrevates me.
You may not stack pornography in "A Brief History of Time" and "The Universe in a Nutshell".
You may not answer my great question, "How can the human race survive the next hundred years" with anything related to Star Trek or Star Wars anecdotes.
You may not ask me to do a 360 with my vehicle.
You may not replace pawns with queens once they've reached the other end of the chess table.
In Sweden, we had a raging debate over this a few years ago. It all started out when a mall wanted to put camera surveillance in the dressing rooms. Apparently, this is where most of the thefts occur.
I seriously doubt that we will have a waterproof method anytime soon, but I imagine that we will eventually have nano technology that you can simply spray on merchandise and deactivate it only at the desk. You can't remove what you cannot see but as long as we're using bulky stuff and stamps on it, people will always find a way to remove it safely and just walk away.
It's safe to say that this is the most disputed release of any operating system made by Microsoft. The software giant has not had huge delays prior to this release and therefore it had not yet stressed out a pre-Vista product like it is doing it now.
Microsoft loses whatever they do from now on. If they delay the product even further, share holders will complain and people will lose faith in them. If they release it too soon (i.e. as currently planned), it is likely going to require significant upgrades and probably also a super fast SP1 upgrade. That too will make people upset and techies will have to upgrade computers over and over again.
I am a Windows XP user and I must say that I am satisfied with this product as it is right now. I am not going to upgrade to Vista before we see the first, second and third wave of reactions.
I doubt we will ever see a space elevator. Not only is it incredibly difficult to create. The article clearly states that this technology is nowhere near and it would probably take at least a decade to create, if not two. By the time this is actually a reality - which is unlikely going to happen within 30 years - we will probably have way more efficient space travels as even commercial space tourism has started to kick in as well.
Point is, it would probably not take long before such elevator would be completely useless due to its slow speed and low capacity.
That's funny.. A friend of mine works at a very large Scandinavian distributor of hardware and he's telling me that Maxtor is on par with other hard drives. Most people rely so heavily on Seagate, but five year warranty is commonplace nowadays and the fact is that these drives fail as often as other major brands (more or less). At least that's what I've heard. If anyone has other info, please correct me.
Eh. Apparently you can use the Wi-fi feature to "loan" other Zune owners music for some short period (a day), giving them the opportunity to buy the tracks themselves from the Zune music store. While this is a cool idea, and could work well for ubiquitous iPods, it gets an "eh" here because you're unlikely to randomly bump into other people who have Zunes, and unless Microsoft actually gives away music, you're even more unlikely to find people who are willing to purchase tracks from its latest music store.
I am not sure what this guy is on to here. While it is very wise commenting for any music player from a company like Creative or iRiver, this is just dumb. Microsoft already told people it will market this thing even at a loss. Although I doubt it's going to be as cool as what we're likely to see in the next iPod, I think it is very safe to say that a lot of people will buy this thing. A lot of people speculated this way about the Xbox, but that one turned out great if you ask me. Say all you want, but Microsoft is very successful with hardware. They sell a lot of keyboards, mice, Xboxes and probably also mp3 players.
It is difficult to speculate what Apple has to offer on their next generation of iPods, besides the very large touch screen that has been rumored for so long. Honestly though, I have two iPods next to me that I've stopped using many months ago. I have the latest generation of iPods and the Nano. The big one I don't use because it is simply too big for my taste. I've come to the conclusion that keys, a mobile phone, a wallet and a music player is a lot of stuff at once, and you hardly want to mix the tools because they will just make scratches on the other one (aside from the wallet, which requires its own pocket). So what I did was to get a Nano, but I quickly realized that the small form factor was even offered in phones, so I got a phone with a 6 GB hard drive. Now I'm very happy with that choice. Fewer items to wear in my pockets, less to care about, less to forget, less to charge when I get home.
The summary: I honestly think that cell phones with growing hard drives and flash drive capability are the future. I doubt it would go from mp3 players to phones simply because PDA:s have taken that path with not so much success. It's probably because of the form factor, but also the fact that people want this device to work primarily as a phone, secondarily (yet with ease) as a media player and then every thing else overshadowed. As for businessmen, there are plenty of phone/PDA/media player solutions already, but kids, teenagers and probably a whole lot of other people are probably more and more interested in phones with mp3 capability.
Microsoft will sell Zunes all over the world and I am sure people will buy them. I just don't think Apple and Microsoft can compete with such players as soon as phones increase capacity to 10 GB and with a better interface. I know Nokia is investing in their own music store, so it is a safe to say that we're going to see a lot of new media phones very soon. Bulky players like these will obviously always be there, because some people still prefer large displays and video capability, but I think that larger phones with a large 300 DPI display and 10 GB drive would beat it if it was offered at $300, like Zune and about like iPod.
That's just silly. Yes, you can blow up any building in the world but it's a lot easier to fly a Boeing 767 into a building than delivering explosives to a tightly secured area. I agree that nothing is certain, but at least it will keep the odds down significantly. Additionally, it is hard to match the power of a large plane crashing into a building. You don't want 10 shoe bombers ruining your flight every day, do you?
I would personally wait the extra hour to live under the illusion (your description, not mine) that I'm safe.
That's exactly my thought too. I hope that they have improved this just recently, because the most recent test I have seen, dated three months back or so, showed the following results. That poor smiley's up for a horrible massacre.
On the other hand, Microsoft has always chosen its own path with Internet Explorer and even occationally claimed that IE4, IE5 and IE6 was complying with standards. Now that they admit it wasn't, perhaps we'll see some improvements. Question is, do they use Acid for measurement?
I do need the capslock key occationally, so I am not sure why you want it removed. After all, there is a plethora of key remappers for all major operating systems. If you don't like that key, then remap it to whatever makes you happy.
On a sidenote, my old guy still uses the capslock whenever he's typing a capital letter. In other words, to type "Hello", he uses Capslock, H, Capslock, ello.:)
I don't agree with your argumentation. Gravity, relativity and the number zero (which is relative, btw) are things that exist and can be experienced everywhere. They are not really in conflict with other beliefs. The evolution is based on scientific findings but in the eyes of an unexperienced person, this could as well be nonsense. Plus, it collides with many religions, which may explain the numbers. Do you believe in aliens? I do too but some people may think I'm an idiot for doing so. After all, it's difficult to prove that they really do exist.
This research was very interesting but I would like to know how many of the yes and no-sayers are religious. Perhaps there's a connection?
I doubt that the release of a quad core CPU has anything to do with Intel getting desperate. AMD has stolen a lot of market shares from Intel in the server area so it is only natural for them to extend the current line-up with even more, faster CPU:s. You know, there is actually a market for quad core CPU:s as many server applications will benefit strongly from such architecture.
Additionally, AMD gets to claim the quad core market before Intel, just like it got to 1000 MHz before Intel did. It's not only positioning, but also marketing.
Last but not least, you can bet on an entirely new architecture from AMD coming next year. As with all new CPU designs, this is a difficult, expensive and time-consuming project so it's not like Intel and AMD are ramping out new CPU:s too often. Instead, they try to improve current technology and make the most out of it.
We always hear about AMD and Intel giving out tons of information on roadmaps and what we're expected to see in the near future but hard drive development is a relatively silent business. Does anyone know what we can expect to see in tomorrow's hard drives? What's scheduled for the next two years?
Measuring the amount of TB in future disks is easy. The capacity doubles every x months and so and that's probably not going to change for some time, so I frankly don't care too much about hard drive space as it has never been an issue to me. What I do care about is the other technology inside of a hard drive. Seek times, write/read speed and throughput. How's that going? Are we eventually going to see some major difference between SATA150 and SATA300? If so, when?
I am not sure about you guys but I am growing increasingly dependent on fast hard drives rather than a shitload of space. My workstations are usually bundled with a fast Raptor disk combined with a Seagate at some 250 to 500 GB, so I put the big who-cares-about-speed files on the big one while my operating system, applications and games rest on my Raptor.
So once again, does anyone know what we're going to see in 2007 and 2008?
"I think DirectX sucks for a variety of reasons but the truth of the matter is there are no real video card features DX9 doesn't currently implement. Neither Nvidia or ATI have yet to release a card with the new feature sets in DX10."
Well, you can run games using older versions of DirectX in Vista, so how exactly is this a problem. DirectX 10 isn't out yet and you're complaining about the lack of DX10 cards? ATI and nVidia are on development cycles and they would obviously not include DX10 support on current graphics cards, simply because DX10 wasn't mature when today's architecture was under development. I am very sure both nVidia and ATI are dying to get DX10 cards out as soon as Vista is out, since selling the first fully Vista compatible cards is a huge thing. You can't expect today's tech to support something that isn't even released yet. That doesn't make sense.
Even then it makes me wonder what the point is. When games like WoW get all the headlines using technology that barely require DX8. Maybe if you are into FPS games this will matter but for everyone else the featureset you are calling dated far outpaced the software that runs on it years ago.
Excuse me, but are you even aware of how many of today's games rely heavily on DX9 technology? You are also saying that games like World of WarCraft barely use any DX9 tech. Do you have any documentation on that? Also, what is "games like WoW"? In fact, many "games like WoW" today use pixel shaders and therefore require DX9. Yes, FPS games are clearly taking advantage of the latest technology, but the simple reason is that realism is far more important in such games than, say, strategy games. But on the other hand, there are so many types of FPS titles. We have racing games, action games, MMORPG and even adventure games. World of WarCraft may not be the most graphically advanced game, but this is for three main reasons: it's huge and would simply require too many gigs of space if it was more complex than it already is. Blizzard is also targeting a larger mass who isn't constantly upgrading its hardware as much as some other groups do. Last but not least, have you ever thought of how much more time and money Blizzard would have to invest to include the latest technology with the highest level of detail?
I'm pretty skeptical of how OpenGL will survive in games now that Carmack has sold out. It's a bleak future for those of us gamers who want to someday drop Windows and use a real OS.
You know, Carmack has all the money in the world already. I doubt he would kiss Microsoft's ass if OpenGL was more promising than DirectX. After all, as a DirectX developer, you also get to release your games for the Xbox without too much hazzle, which is only one of many reasons why DirectX is more successful. OpenGL is in no way a poor API, but most developers currently support DirectX because it looks more promising than OpenGL. Also, Carmack was one of the main donators to the OpenGL foundation. Why would he fund a project like this and then kill it? I'm sure it was painful but as Carmack is always set on developing the latest in technology, he is also looking at the two API:s individually before deciding what to go for.
I know Microsoft does not deserve all the roses in the world for its software, but some users in here seem to think beyond all reasoning. How exactly is the announcement of features bundled in DirectX 10.1 a bad thing? It's great that we're seeing some development even beyond DXX simply because the next release is supposedly groundbreaking according to people outside of Microsoft. Complaining about a release that comes shortly after is no good because that only prompts developers to adapt its features sooner rather than later. It will still be backwards-compatible with cards that support 10.0 only, just like with DX9c,b,a, etc.
I am also stunned to see that so many of you are upset with DXX being a Vista only choice. I don't consider this to be a big deal, really. Microsoft is not forcing you into buying Vista and developers are not forced into developing under DXX. I'm quite sure there will be plenty of top releases for WinXP before we all upgrade to Vista. While some of you guys are at it, you might want to complain about the fact that your current cards do not support DX10 specific features. Isn't that just awful? Now they are forcing us into upgrades?
Microsoft is evolving its software just like hardware developers are evolving hardware. It is generally very difficult for a person to accept that $4,000 worth of today's hardware is obsolete in top gaming within a year, but why should software developers not respect that software too needs to evolve?
To sum things up, Microsoft isn't doing anything wrong here. They realize that DXX isn't feasible for the aged architecture of WinXP and feel like moving on, and as long as there's a big bunch of WinXP users, no one has to worry about not using Vista. Once the majority has migrated to Vista, gamers will still have to buy new hardware to run the newest games and might as well cash out a few extra bucks to get Vista, right?
This innovation will make it easier to spot blurry images and ensure your photo is framed properly.
Say what? The images that are rendered onto the tiny screen of a camera are sized down with aliasing algorithms. Although the resizing will happen at 640x480 instead, this will have little impact since we do no longer take memorable pictures at this resolution. Memory is so cheap now and I'm sure we can get four gigs under a hundred bucks soon, too. So, either way, the picture is always going to be scaled down and viewed in proper resolution once you've zoomed in a few times.
Also, the higher resolution won't do anything at all for those of you who want to spot blurred pictures with more ease. Even if it's definitely a higher DPI, you end up watching at 3 inches which is very small, so blurred objects that appear not so sharp will appear sharp on this tiny display, simply because the blurred area will appear so small on a small screen, it won't even be noticable. Once again, zooming in is the only solution.
Either way, I'm sure someone will come up with an algorithm that detects blurred images automatically. It may not be 100 percent proof, but that's still a lot better.
I'm obviously trolling here, however. More DPI is always nice and I bet we can go to 1000 DPI before we stop bothering that much about it, but the arguments used in this article made no sense to me.
Slashdot Mirror
What is Counter-Strike anyway? I've been playing it since the very first beta - and quite frequently so. In retrospective, I feel obliged to say that Counter-Strike hasn't been consistent in its content at all. How much is actually still the same from the original betas?
The physics of a player are totally different (i.e. weapon handling, bunny jumping, etc). Weapons are different. CS_ maps are no longer played and are basically replaced in favor of the DE_ maps. The list is very long and could be expanded forever.
My point is that Counter-Strike has never been Counter-Strike, simply because it is changing so frequently that the game can only be defined as a tactical FPS. Looking at other games, such as Quake III: Arena or even QuakeWorld, these games are easier to define because they haven't changed much at all.
I don't think Valve will stop making changes to CS and CS:S. At least that's what history has told us so far.
New Yorker can rest. Yun is famous again now that Slashdot and other web sites are printing his lawyer's words.
I don't exactly consider the Zune to be an iPod competitor. At least I don't know why an iPod fan boy would buy a Zune. I do however think that Microsoft has an excellent player that is set to compete with Creative, iRiver and all the other major non-iPod mp3 player developers.
The Zune has a totally different set of features, such as wireless connectivity and such, so if Microsoft sells it for anything less than a 30 GB iPod, it's just going to be another bl*wjob for Steve.
While I do think that 1080p is a great thing, I doubt it is going to make people go crazy about it simply because 1080p is still a few years away from major distribution.
Some people will already be on 1080p and a few already are, but any sane company would go for the masses, not the less than 1 percent cake of people who are looking for top notch hardware.
I am definitely waiting for 1080p as my next TV replacement, but anything above $2,000 is just not gonna do it for me, so I'll wait a little longer and stick to 720p, which is also very nice.
I am definitely buying one of those immortal mice to my daughter. That should teach her a valuable lesson about life.
The article is about the difficulties of processing data from a C64 - which is funny. It is not focusing directly on his death.
If it was "Man killed in train accident - Laugh, it's funny", then it would be morbid.
In Sweden, we had a raging debate over this a few years ago. It all started out when a mall wanted to put camera surveillance in the dressing rooms. Apparently, this is where most of the thefts occur.
I seriously doubt that we will have a waterproof method anytime soon, but I imagine that we will eventually have nano technology that you can simply spray on merchandise and deactivate it only at the desk. You can't remove what you cannot see but as long as we're using bulky stuff and stamps on it, people will always find a way to remove it safely and just walk away.
It's safe to say that this is the most disputed release of any operating system made by Microsoft. The software giant has not had huge delays prior to this release and therefore it had not yet stressed out a pre-Vista product like it is doing it now.
Microsoft loses whatever they do from now on. If they delay the product even further, share holders will complain and people will lose faith in them. If they release it too soon (i.e. as currently planned), it is likely going to require significant upgrades and probably also a super fast SP1 upgrade. That too will make people upset and techies will have to upgrade computers over and over again.
I am a Windows XP user and I must say that I am satisfied with this product as it is right now. I am not going to upgrade to Vista before we see the first, second and third wave of reactions.
I doubt we will ever see a space elevator. Not only is it incredibly difficult to create. The article clearly states that this technology is nowhere near and it would probably take at least a decade to create, if not two. By the time this is actually a reality - which is unlikely going to happen within 30 years - we will probably have way more efficient space travels as even commercial space tourism has started to kick in as well.
Point is, it would probably not take long before such elevator would be completely useless due to its slow speed and low capacity.
That's funny.. A friend of mine works at a very large Scandinavian distributor of hardware and he's telling me that Maxtor is on par with other hard drives. Most people rely so heavily on Seagate, but five year warranty is commonplace nowadays and the fact is that these drives fail as often as other major brands (more or less). At least that's what I've heard. If anyone has other info, please correct me.
This is totally cool. The world's first Hard Drive Burner?
Eh. Apparently you can use the Wi-fi feature to "loan" other Zune owners music for some short period (a day), giving them the opportunity to buy the tracks themselves from the Zune music store. While this is a cool idea, and could work well for ubiquitous iPods, it gets an "eh" here because you're unlikely to randomly bump into other people who have Zunes, and unless Microsoft actually gives away music, you're even more unlikely to find people who are willing to purchase tracks from its latest music store.
I am not sure what this guy is on to here. While it is very wise commenting for any music player from a company like Creative or iRiver, this is just dumb. Microsoft already told people it will market this thing even at a loss. Although I doubt it's going to be as cool as what we're likely to see in the next iPod, I think it is very safe to say that a lot of people will buy this thing. A lot of people speculated this way about the Xbox, but that one turned out great if you ask me. Say all you want, but Microsoft is very successful with hardware. They sell a lot of keyboards, mice, Xboxes and probably also mp3 players.
It is difficult to speculate what Apple has to offer on their next generation of iPods, besides the very large touch screen that has been rumored for so long. Honestly though, I have two iPods next to me that I've stopped using many months ago. I have the latest generation of iPods and the Nano. The big one I don't use because it is simply too big for my taste. I've come to the conclusion that keys, a mobile phone, a wallet and a music player is a lot of stuff at once, and you hardly want to mix the tools because they will just make scratches on the other one (aside from the wallet, which requires its own pocket). So what I did was to get a Nano, but I quickly realized that the small form factor was even offered in phones, so I got a phone with a 6 GB hard drive. Now I'm very happy with that choice. Fewer items to wear in my pockets, less to care about, less to forget, less to charge when I get home.
The summary: I honestly think that cell phones with growing hard drives and flash drive capability are the future. I doubt it would go from mp3 players to phones simply because PDA:s have taken that path with not so much success. It's probably because of the form factor, but also the fact that people want this device to work primarily as a phone, secondarily (yet with ease) as a media player and then every thing else overshadowed. As for businessmen, there are plenty of phone/PDA/media player solutions already, but kids, teenagers and probably a whole lot of other people are probably more and more interested in phones with mp3 capability.
Microsoft will sell Zunes all over the world and I am sure people will buy them. I just don't think Apple and Microsoft can compete with such players as soon as phones increase capacity to 10 GB and with a better interface. I know Nokia is investing in their own music store, so it is a safe to say that we're going to see a lot of new media phones very soon. Bulky players like these will obviously always be there, because some people still prefer large displays and video capability, but I think that larger phones with a large 300 DPI display and 10 GB drive would beat it if it was offered at $300, like Zune and about like iPod.
That's just silly. Yes, you can blow up any building in the world but it's a lot easier to fly a Boeing 767 into a building than delivering explosives to a tightly secured area. I agree that nothing is certain, but at least it will keep the odds down significantly. Additionally, it is hard to match the power of a large plane crashing into a building. You don't want 10 shoe bombers ruining your flight every day, do you?
I would personally wait the extra hour to live under the illusion (your description, not mine) that I'm safe.
"Jenn... Uhh Mam, please remove your bra for further security inspection. Yes, you can stand over there next to the.. Uhh.. X-ray camera."
That's exactly my thought too. I hope that they have improved this just recently, because the most recent test I have seen, dated three months back or so, showed the following results. That poor smiley's up for a horrible massacre.
On the other hand, Microsoft has always chosen its own path with Internet Explorer and even occationally claimed that IE4, IE5 and IE6 was complying with standards. Now that they admit it wasn't, perhaps we'll see some improvements. Question is, do they use Acid for measurement?
I do need the capslock key occationally, so I am not sure why you want it removed. After all, there is a plethora of key remappers for all major operating systems. If you don't like that key, then remap it to whatever makes you happy.
:)
On a sidenote, my old guy still uses the capslock whenever he's typing a capital letter. In other words, to type "Hello", he uses Capslock, H, Capslock, ello.
I don't agree with your argumentation. Gravity, relativity and the number zero (which is relative, btw) are things that exist and can be experienced everywhere. They are not really in conflict with other beliefs. The evolution is based on scientific findings but in the eyes of an unexperienced person, this could as well be nonsense. Plus, it collides with many religions, which may explain the numbers. Do you believe in aliens? I do too but some people may think I'm an idiot for doing so. After all, it's difficult to prove that they really do exist.
This research was very interesting but I would like to know how many of the yes and no-sayers are religious. Perhaps there's a connection?
Come on, we have the evidence right in the White House.
Check out the evidence!
I doubt that the release of a quad core CPU has anything to do with Intel getting desperate. AMD has stolen a lot of market shares from Intel in the server area so it is only natural for them to extend the current line-up with even more, faster CPU:s. You know, there is actually a market for quad core CPU:s as many server applications will benefit strongly from such architecture.
Additionally, AMD gets to claim the quad core market before Intel, just like it got to 1000 MHz before Intel did. It's not only positioning, but also marketing.
Last but not least, you can bet on an entirely new architecture from AMD coming next year. As with all new CPU designs, this is a difficult, expensive and time-consuming project so it's not like Intel and AMD are ramping out new CPU:s too often. Instead, they try to improve current technology and make the most out of it.
We always hear about AMD and Intel giving out tons of information on roadmaps and what we're expected to see in the near future but hard drive development is a relatively silent business. Does anyone know what we can expect to see in tomorrow's hard drives? What's scheduled for the next two years?
Measuring the amount of TB in future disks is easy. The capacity doubles every x months and so and that's probably not going to change for some time, so I frankly don't care too much about hard drive space as it has never been an issue to me. What I do care about is the other technology inside of a hard drive. Seek times, write/read speed and throughput. How's that going? Are we eventually going to see some major difference between SATA150 and SATA300? If so, when?
I am not sure about you guys but I am growing increasingly dependent on fast hard drives rather than a shitload of space. My workstations are usually bundled with a fast Raptor disk combined with a Seagate at some 250 to 500 GB, so I put the big who-cares-about-speed files on the big one while my operating system, applications and games rest on my Raptor.
So once again, does anyone know what we're going to see in 2007 and 2008?
So what's the matter, NASA?
"I think DirectX sucks for a variety of reasons but the truth of the matter is there are no real video card features DX9 doesn't currently implement. Neither Nvidia or ATI have yet to release a card with the new feature sets in DX10."
Well, you can run games using older versions of DirectX in Vista, so how exactly is this a problem. DirectX 10 isn't out yet and you're complaining about the lack of DX10 cards? ATI and nVidia are on development cycles and they would obviously not include DX10 support on current graphics cards, simply because DX10 wasn't mature when today's architecture was under development. I am very sure both nVidia and ATI are dying to get DX10 cards out as soon as Vista is out, since selling the first fully Vista compatible cards is a huge thing. You can't expect today's tech to support something that isn't even released yet. That doesn't make sense.
Even then it makes me wonder what the point is. When games like WoW get all the headlines using technology that barely require DX8. Maybe if you are into FPS games this will matter but for everyone else the featureset you are calling dated far outpaced the software that runs on it years ago.
Excuse me, but are you even aware of how many of today's games rely heavily on DX9 technology? You are also saying that games like World of WarCraft barely use any DX9 tech. Do you have any documentation on that? Also, what is "games like WoW"? In fact, many "games like WoW" today use pixel shaders and therefore require DX9. Yes, FPS games are clearly taking advantage of the latest technology, but the simple reason is that realism is far more important in such games than, say, strategy games. But on the other hand, there are so many types of FPS titles. We have racing games, action games, MMORPG and even adventure games. World of WarCraft may not be the most graphically advanced game, but this is for three main reasons: it's huge and would simply require too many gigs of space if it was more complex than it already is. Blizzard is also targeting a larger mass who isn't constantly upgrading its hardware as much as some other groups do. Last but not least, have you ever thought of how much more time and money Blizzard would have to invest to include the latest technology with the highest level of detail?
I'm pretty skeptical of how OpenGL will survive in games now that Carmack has sold out. It's a bleak future for those of us gamers who want to someday drop Windows and use a real OS.
You know, Carmack has all the money in the world already. I doubt he would kiss Microsoft's ass if OpenGL was more promising than DirectX. After all, as a DirectX developer, you also get to release your games for the Xbox without too much hazzle, which is only one of many reasons why DirectX is more successful. OpenGL is in no way a poor API, but most developers currently support DirectX because it looks more promising than OpenGL. Also, Carmack was one of the main donators to the OpenGL foundation. Why would he fund a project like this and then kill it? I'm sure it was painful but as Carmack is always set on developing the latest in technology, he is also looking at the two API:s individually before deciding what to go for.
I know Microsoft does not deserve all the roses in the world for its software, but some users in here seem to think beyond all reasoning. How exactly is the announcement of features bundled in DirectX 10.1 a bad thing? It's great that we're seeing some development even beyond DXX simply because the next release is supposedly groundbreaking according to people outside of Microsoft. Complaining about a release that comes shortly after is no good because that only prompts developers to adapt its features sooner rather than later. It will still be backwards-compatible with cards that support 10.0 only, just like with DX9c,b,a, etc.
I am also stunned to see that so many of you are upset with DXX being a Vista only choice. I don't consider this to be a big deal, really. Microsoft is not forcing you into buying Vista and developers are not forced into developing under DXX. I'm quite sure there will be plenty of top releases for WinXP before we all upgrade to Vista. While some of you guys are at it, you might want to complain about the fact that your current cards do not support DX10 specific features. Isn't that just awful? Now they are forcing us into upgrades?
Microsoft is evolving its software just like hardware developers are evolving hardware. It is generally very difficult for a person to accept that $4,000 worth of today's hardware is obsolete in top gaming within a year, but why should software developers not respect that software too needs to evolve?
To sum things up, Microsoft isn't doing anything wrong here. They realize that DXX isn't feasible for the aged architecture of WinXP and feel like moving on, and as long as there's a big bunch of WinXP users, no one has to worry about not using Vista. Once the majority has migrated to Vista, gamers will still have to buy new hardware to run the newest games and might as well cash out a few extra bucks to get Vista, right?
This innovation will make it easier to spot blurry images and ensure your photo is framed properly.
Say what? The images that are rendered onto the tiny screen of a camera are sized down with aliasing algorithms. Although the resizing will happen at 640x480 instead, this will have little impact since we do no longer take memorable pictures at this resolution. Memory is so cheap now and I'm sure we can get four gigs under a hundred bucks soon, too. So, either way, the picture is always going to be scaled down and viewed in proper resolution once you've zoomed in a few times.
Also, the higher resolution won't do anything at all for those of you who want to spot blurred pictures with more ease. Even if it's definitely a higher DPI, you end up watching at 3 inches which is very small, so blurred objects that appear not so sharp will appear sharp on this tiny display, simply because the blurred area will appear so small on a small screen, it won't even be noticable. Once again, zooming in is the only solution.
Either way, I'm sure someone will come up with an algorithm that detects blurred images automatically. It may not be 100 percent proof, but that's still a lot better.
I'm obviously trolling here, however. More DPI is always nice and I bet we can go to 1000 DPI before we stop bothering that much about it, but the arguments used in this article made no sense to me.