Ok, I'll admit that like everyone else commenting so far, I'm pretty pissed off at this "reboot". It sounds, to me, that they've just ripped off Deus Ex, maybe put a small tweak to that formula here and there, but ripped it off none the less.
I have no problem with this.
I like Deus Ex and the game that they're proposing actually sounds like it could be good (The developers are decent, too). There aren't enough games out there like Deus Ex, so why not?
My problem is that I still want a new Syndicate game. This is Syndicate in name only, in much the same way that C&C: Generals was C&C in name only. I still want a strategy game that allows me to have a squad of 4 people running around a city, persuading an army, shoving them all into a car and going on a rampage - all in the name of corporate glory. There may not be many Deus Ex-Style games out there, but there's a hell of a lot more of them than there are Syndicate-style games.
Syndicate was ahead of its time and it still is by most measurements (So was Deus Ex. Human Revolution, while still a great game, is a cut-down version of Deus Ex)).
I have a degree in making computer games, but my day job ended up being a regular boring IT fair. I've been thinking of starting a personal project, an open-source game, I just hadn't decided what. I considered making a Syndicate clone, but with rumours of a reboot, I figured I'd hold off as I doubt I'd be able to make anything as good as a AAA developer like EA. Having heard this news, I'm seriously considering starting my project (Especially since Corporate Mayhem - http://mayhem.sourceforge.net/ - seems to be long dead). It may never come to anything, but what the hell, it doesn't look like EA is going to do much better.
HTC has access to the Honeycomb source code, just like many other manufacturers, meaning it's a non-issue for them. Just because it's not on the AOSP doesn't mean that vendors don't have it.
Unless you're specifically referring to Ice Cream Sandwich, in which case this is no different to ANY other version of Android, whereby a select group got access first, then everyone else. Besides, HTC has done a lot (more than most) to differentiate themselves from other Manufacturers, with Sense.
What I think most people miss is that HTC don't just make Android phone. They also make Windows Phones and (for some reason known only to them) Brew phones. What's the big deal with having another OS they can peddle, something that they can make entirely theirs? Samsung has Bada, yet they're still doing pretty well with Android, so it can be done.
The only thing we're really arguing here is what constitutes as "Basic". These days, youtube and video streaming should count as "basic" internet. For me, On Demand video is very much "the done" thing in that average joe will use it somewhat regularly (at least in the UK, where our basic channels all have free online streaming)
Indeed, it smells of "x should be enough for anyone" and does nothing but stifle progress. The thing with a lot of IT stuff is it's a bit chicken and egg, sometimes just because you don't need something now doesn't mean that someone won't come up with a novel use for it. A few years ago, you could have argued that you don't really need much more than 1Mbit down. In an age of 56k modems, 1meg would have certainly made you king of the castle, as it were, but today 1meg isn't nearly enough for basic internet use.
Furthermore, their example as to why it's not needed - a "generic" laptop couldn't handle it, is rubbish. That's like saying we don't need better fuel sources because our existing power producers can't use it.
I can't imagine the original models would be terribly useful today, except as a point of reference? By today's standards, they must be pretty low quality and would probably have to be redone anyway. At the very least, it'd be no different to the redone special effects Star Trek (TOS) got, in that the original material was more or less dumped and duplicated in a modern way.
Not to mention that B5's special effects weren't all that brilliant anyway, they were probably the most obvious signs of budget constraints within the whole show. Realistically, to really do B5 some justice, I'd like to see someone make a genuine attempt at a reboot. I know, I'm crazy, but if someone could figure out how the hell they managed to turn Battlestar Galactica from a campy mess into one of the finest pieces of Sci-fi to hit our TV's in decades, then apply that formula to B5, then I'm all for it.
Stop me if I'm wrong, but since it was originally filmed in a wide-screen capable format (or at least, that's what I gleamed from reading the article), we might actually get a proper widescreen conversion. I guess it depends on what's been cut off from the sides of various shots, as long as there aren't too many dumbass ensigns picking their nose or scratching their balls, they might decide to use it all.
I guess that depends on how much it's compressed and what it's compressed with. Not to mention the other operations the CPU must perform to load that data into memory. I'm sure it'd be I/O bound if you were just bltting the whole pagefile back to memory, but there's probably a bit more to it than that. I couldn't possibly say, though, it's certainly not a topic I know a great deal about.
Not necessarily. Annoyingly, they almost glance over this point, but if we read it carefully -
which is able to use all of the cores in a multi-core system in parallel, to split the work of reading from the hiberfile and decompressing the contents.
This sounds more to me like they've implemented a sort of FIFO system that allows the contents of the file to be decompressed and loaded as it's still being read from disk. It also implies (but doesn't directly state) that the operation is CPU bound, even on typical mechanical hard drives. I'd believe this, as even a cheap, slow mechanical HDD is capable of read speeds of 50-80Mb/s, which probably takes longer than 1s for a single core CPU to decompress, parse and load.
If you've got THAT much access to the system, you probably don't need to do anything fancy to keep it there. Besides, if the user does a restart, it'll wipe the hibernate file anyway.
They're not killing hibernate, they're not REMOVING anything, they're simply making the computer start up and shut down operate differently by default. They've actually increased hybernate's resume speed as well because of this, so everyone benefits.
If you read the article, the hybrid booting is only part of the upgrade.
It’s faster because resuming the hibernated system session is comparatively less work than doing a full system initialization, but it’s also faster because we added a new multi-phase resume capability, which is able to use all of the cores in a multi-core system in parallel, to split the work of reading from the hiberfile and decompressing the contents. For those of you who prefer hibernating, this also results in faster resumes from hibernate as well.
True, perhaps I did overstate that somewhat, but there is still a significant difference between them.
A Pentium 4, running at 3.4Ghz, gets a passmark score of 549 (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+4+3.40GHz). A Core i5-2500 running at 3.3Ghz gets a score of 6560 (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-2500+%40+3.30GHz), which is very nearly 12x faster. Of course, it's not really a fair comparison as a P4 is a single-core chip and such, but it does give an idea as to how much faster today's processors are compared to those from a few years ago.
I think the poster above you is confusing the Xbox CPU with the PS2 CPU, but even so the PS2 CPU isn't a mhz-mhz comparison. When it comes to emulation, it's even more difficult to compare as after a certain point, emulation quality is almost exponential to the amount of CPU power you need. That's why you can emulate a SNES on a 200Mhz CPU and play 95% of games, but to play 99.99% of games, you'll want closer to 2.5Ghz (of a modern CPU, which is orders of magnitude faster than a P4 at that speed).
A few years ago, AMD had intel by the balls. I mean, seriously they were the king in terms of price, performance AND efficiency. I'm talking about the Athlon and Opteron 64's, the clawhammer/sledgehammer. They had a brilliant chip design, they pushed 64bit computing and all Intel could offer was the Pentium 4, which struggled to go above 3Ghz and could heat your entire home.
Intel bet on pushing more and more Ghz while AMD decided to go down the efficiency route. Sure, they had to create a new way to name processors so people didn't get confused about a 2.2Ghz Athlon 64 beating a 3.06Ghz P4, but none the less Intel hit a brick wall while AMD kept on going. 3000+, 4000+, then dual core. Intel had their own dual core chips, but they were somewhat crude by design, little more than gluing a couple of Prescott P4's together and hoping for the best.
AMD were on a roll, so while the Gravy train was in, they bought ATI with the intention of creating some sort of monster "hybrid" chip that combined the CPU and GPU. Fusion was the future that AMD was going to pioneer, just like they did with 64bit and dual core desktop chips.
What happened? Intel got their shit together, that's what. Intel dumped the P4, went back to the P3 and came up with Conroe, a real performer that didn't overheat the way Prescott did. AMD stagnated, fusion got pushed back again and again, then it got castrated more and more. Within less than a year, AMD/ATI was worth less than what AMD paid for ATI. Fusion has only recently appeared and, surprise surprise, Intel now has graphics embedded in the CPU as well. Whatever advantage AMD was hoping to curtail has gone. AMD needs to step it up several gears, they need something new, another home run like the Athlon 64's and just hope Intel makes another mistake like the P4.
I can't see that happening, though.
*Note: all of this was typed from memory, so some dates/names may be slightly wrong.
That would certainly make a lot of sense. Just because you're building a totally new system doesn't mean you shouldn't model it on something that you're familiar with. Then again, I still find it hard to believe that they'd just ignore the existing windows codebase, especially considering how similar the Xbox1's hardware was.
I've read more than once that the XboxOS was based on Win 2000. I'm sure I can find some examples -
http://www.windowsfordevices.com/c/a/News/The-scoop-on-the-Xbox-360s-embedded-OS/ "The original Xbox ran an OS that had its roots in Windows 2000. Granted, by the time you strip out everything that is not needed in a console like the Xbox and replace some of the parts with stuff specific to that device (like the file system), and add a few pieces, it hardly resembles anything remotely like Windows 2000 at all. But you could say that's where its original roots lie, even if 95 percent of it has been cut or heavily altered."
Granted, neither of those sources are remotely "official", but this one is interesting - http://www.caustik.com/cxbx/progress.htm "The Xbox uses a stripped down and partially modified Windows 2000 Kernel."
That's from a developer of cxbx, an Xbox emulator. Surely he of all people would have figured if the kernel was completely different? Then again, who knows how relevant that is to emulation itself. With people like that making the same claim, it's no wonder the misconception is so common.
Slashdot Mirror
Optimising an x86 chip?
Ok, I'll admit that like everyone else commenting so far, I'm pretty pissed off at this "reboot". It sounds, to me, that they've just ripped off Deus Ex, maybe put a small tweak to that formula here and there, but ripped it off none the less.
I have no problem with this.
I like Deus Ex and the game that they're proposing actually sounds like it could be good (The developers are decent, too). There aren't enough games out there like Deus Ex, so why not?
My problem is that I still want a new Syndicate game. This is Syndicate in name only, in much the same way that C&C: Generals was C&C in name only. I still want a strategy game that allows me to have a squad of 4 people running around a city, persuading an army, shoving them all into a car and going on a rampage - all in the name of corporate glory. There may not be many Deus Ex-Style games out there, but there's a hell of a lot more of them than there are Syndicate-style games.
Syndicate was ahead of its time and it still is by most measurements (So was Deus Ex. Human Revolution, while still a great game, is a cut-down version of Deus Ex)).
I have a degree in making computer games, but my day job ended up being a regular boring IT fair. I've been thinking of starting a personal project, an open-source game, I just hadn't decided what. I considered making a Syndicate clone, but with rumours of a reboot, I figured I'd hold off as I doubt I'd be able to make anything as good as a AAA developer like EA. Having heard this news, I'm seriously considering starting my project (Especially since Corporate Mayhem - http://mayhem.sourceforge.net/ - seems to be long dead). It may never come to anything, but what the hell, it doesn't look like EA is going to do much better.
HTC makes Android, Windows and Brew phones. Why would this make them dump them all?
HTC has access to the Honeycomb source code, just like many other manufacturers, meaning it's a non-issue for them.
Just because it's not on the AOSP doesn't mean that vendors don't have it.
Unless you're specifically referring to Ice Cream Sandwich, in which case this is no different to ANY other version of Android, whereby a select group got access first, then everyone else. Besides, HTC has done a lot (more than most) to differentiate themselves from other Manufacturers, with Sense.
What I think most people miss is that HTC don't just make Android phone. They also make Windows Phones and (for some reason known only to them) Brew phones. What's the big deal with having another OS they can peddle, something that they can make entirely theirs? Samsung has Bada, yet they're still doing pretty well with Android, so it can be done.
The only thing we're really arguing here is what constitutes as "Basic". These days, youtube and video streaming should count as "basic" internet. For me, On Demand video is very much "the done" thing in that average joe will use it somewhat regularly (at least in the UK, where our basic channels all have free online streaming)
Indeed, it smells of "x should be enough for anyone" and does nothing but stifle progress. The thing with a lot of IT stuff is it's a bit chicken and egg, sometimes just because you don't need something now doesn't mean that someone won't come up with a novel use for it.
A few years ago, you could have argued that you don't really need much more than 1Mbit down. In an age of 56k modems, 1meg would have certainly made you king of the castle, as it were, but today 1meg isn't nearly enough for basic internet use.
Furthermore, their example as to why it's not needed - a "generic" laptop couldn't handle it, is rubbish. That's like saying we don't need better fuel sources because our existing power producers can't use it.
I heard a rumour that the original/early B5 CGI was done on Amiga systems. Is this true?
I can't imagine the original models would be terribly useful today, except as a point of reference? By today's standards, they must be pretty low quality and would probably have to be redone anyway. At the very least, it'd be no different to the redone special effects Star Trek (TOS) got, in that the original material was more or less dumped and duplicated in a modern way.
Not to mention that B5's special effects weren't all that brilliant anyway, they were probably the most obvious signs of budget constraints within the whole show. Realistically, to really do B5 some justice, I'd like to see someone make a genuine attempt at a reboot. I know, I'm crazy, but if someone could figure out how the hell they managed to turn Battlestar Galactica from a campy mess into one of the finest pieces of Sci-fi to hit our TV's in decades, then apply that formula to B5, then I'm all for it.
Stop me if I'm wrong, but since it was originally filmed in a wide-screen capable format (or at least, that's what I gleamed from reading the article), we might actually get a proper widescreen conversion. I guess it depends on what's been cut off from the sides of various shots, as long as there aren't too many dumbass ensigns picking their nose or scratching their balls, they might decide to use it all.
I guess that depends on how much it's compressed and what it's compressed with. Not to mention the other operations the CPU must perform to load that data into memory. I'm sure it'd be I/O bound if you were just bltting the whole pagefile back to memory, but there's probably a bit more to it than that. I couldn't possibly say, though, it's certainly not a topic I know a great deal about.
Not necessarily. Annoyingly, they almost glance over this point, but if we read it carefully -
which is able to use all of the cores in a multi-core system in parallel, to split the work of reading from the hiberfile and decompressing the contents.
This sounds more to me like they've implemented a sort of FIFO system that allows the contents of the file to be decompressed and loaded as it's still being read from disk. It also implies (but doesn't directly state) that the operation is CPU bound, even on typical mechanical hard drives. I'd believe this, as even a cheap, slow mechanical HDD is capable of read speeds of 50-80Mb/s, which probably takes longer than 1s for a single core CPU to decompress, parse and load.
If you've got THAT much access to the system, you probably don't need to do anything fancy to keep it there. Besides, if the user does a restart, it'll wipe the hibernate file anyway.
Shutdown/Startup are hybrid methods.
Reboot works like it does today (i.e. is a FULL Shutdown/Restart).
Hibernate works as it does today, only faster.
They're not killing hibernate, they're not REMOVING anything, they're simply making the computer start up and shut down operate differently by default. They've actually increased hybernate's resume speed as well because of this, so everyone benefits.
If you read the article, the hybrid booting is only part of the upgrade.
It’s faster because resuming the hibernated system session is comparatively less work than doing a full system initialization, but it’s also faster because we added a new multi-phase resume capability, which is able to use all of the cores in a multi-core system in parallel, to split the work of reading from the hiberfile and decompressing the contents. For those of you who prefer hibernating, this also results in faster resumes from hibernate as well.
True, perhaps I did overstate that somewhat, but there is still a significant difference between them.
A Pentium 4, running at 3.4Ghz, gets a passmark score of 549 (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+4+3.40GHz).
A Core i5-2500 running at 3.3Ghz gets a score of 6560 (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-2500+%40+3.30GHz), which is very nearly 12x faster.
Of course, it's not really a fair comparison as a P4 is a single-core chip and such, but it does give an idea as to how much faster today's processors are compared to those from a few years ago.
I think the poster above you is confusing the Xbox CPU with the PS2 CPU, but even so the PS2 CPU isn't a mhz-mhz comparison.
When it comes to emulation, it's even more difficult to compare as after a certain point, emulation quality is almost exponential to the amount of CPU power you need. That's why you can emulate a SNES on a 200Mhz CPU and play 95% of games, but to play 99.99% of games, you'll want closer to 2.5Ghz (of a modern CPU, which is orders of magnitude faster than a P4 at that speed).
Except that all came about when AMD came around with the Athlon 64's, because people were asking why the likes of Dell refused to sell them.
A few years ago, AMD had intel by the balls. I mean, seriously they were the king in terms of price, performance AND efficiency. I'm talking about the Athlon and Opteron 64's, the clawhammer/sledgehammer. They had a brilliant chip design, they pushed 64bit computing and all Intel could offer was the Pentium 4, which struggled to go above 3Ghz and could heat your entire home.
Intel bet on pushing more and more Ghz while AMD decided to go down the efficiency route. Sure, they had to create a new way to name processors so people didn't get confused about a 2.2Ghz Athlon 64 beating a 3.06Ghz P4, but none the less Intel hit a brick wall while AMD kept on going. 3000+, 4000+, then dual core. Intel had their own dual core chips, but they were somewhat crude by design, little more than gluing a couple of Prescott P4's together and hoping for the best.
AMD were on a roll, so while the Gravy train was in, they bought ATI with the intention of creating some sort of monster "hybrid" chip that combined the CPU and GPU. Fusion was the future that AMD was going to pioneer, just like they did with 64bit and dual core desktop chips.
What happened? Intel got their shit together, that's what. Intel dumped the P4, went back to the P3 and came up with Conroe, a real performer that didn't overheat the way Prescott did. AMD stagnated, fusion got pushed back again and again, then it got castrated more and more. Within less than a year, AMD/ATI was worth less than what AMD paid for ATI. Fusion has only recently appeared and, surprise surprise, Intel now has graphics embedded in the CPU as well. Whatever advantage AMD was hoping to curtail has gone. AMD needs to step it up several gears, they need something new, another home run like the Athlon 64's and just hope Intel makes another mistake like the P4.
I can't see that happening, though.
*Note: all of this was typed from memory, so some dates/names may be slightly wrong.
Make it illegal/fail MOT?
I want one of these and I can easily afford (and own) PC's worth 4-figures.
I don't know why, I just want one.
Why is everyone assuming it's an American date? Surely the more likely option is that it's FROM THE FUTURE.
Indeed, let's stifle progress based on what COULD go wrong.
That would certainly make a lot of sense. Just because you're building a totally new system doesn't mean you shouldn't model it on something that you're familiar with.
Then again, I still find it hard to believe that they'd just ignore the existing windows codebase, especially considering how similar the Xbox1's hardware was.
Interesting, I hadn't seen this before.
I've read more than once that the XboxOS was based on Win 2000. I'm sure I can find some examples -
http://www.windowsfordevices.com/c/a/News/The-scoop-on-the-Xbox-360s-embedded-OS/
"The original Xbox ran an OS that had its roots in Windows 2000. Granted, by the time you strip out everything that is not needed in a console like the Xbox and replace some of the parts with stuff specific to that device (like the file system), and add a few pieces, it hardly resembles anything remotely like Windows 2000 at all. But you could say that's where its original roots lie, even if 95 percent of it has been cut or heavily altered."
http://www.xbox365.com/stories/xdkcomplete.shtml
"The kernel is based on Microsoft® Windows® 2000."
Granted, neither of those sources are remotely "official", but this one is interesting -
http://www.caustik.com/cxbx/progress.htm
"The Xbox uses a stripped down and partially modified Windows 2000 Kernel."
That's from a developer of cxbx, an Xbox emulator. Surely he of all people would have figured if the kernel was completely different? Then again, who knows how relevant that is to emulation itself. With people like that making the same claim, it's no wonder the misconception is so common.