True. I should have said, "The fact that the USA has by far the most powerful military on earth isn't necessarily something to be proud of. ", seeing that it was in reply to a poster who was proud of belonging to the most powerful nation on earth.
I saw the ad on the side of a bus shelter in York as I was cycling past this morning. It had Mitchell holding up a sign saying, "I'm a PC" and Webb holding up a sign saying, "I'm a Mac".
Mitchell and Webb are a 'comedy duo' who first did a rather dark and twisted sitcom called "Peep Show", and then more recently a sketch show called "That Mitchell and Webb Look". In the sitcom, and the sketch show to a lesser extent, Mitchell is a dull, sensible, nerdy bloke with a safe boring job, whereas Webb is a partying, splif-smoking, foolhardy layabout.
Personally, I rather resented the implication that Mac users have more fun than PC users, but saw why they'd put these ads out - it's about reinforcing the popular image of Macs being colourful and 'fun' and PCs being grey, dull and run-of-the-mill.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't they choosing to render html in Outlook using Word to ensure that the appearance of the email as a whole doesn't suddenly alter when one replies to a html email and begins editing that html in Word?
I'm pretty sure that it's a lot more easier to code html editing when the same engine is used to edit the html and render the results, else one will get a lot of incongruities between the appearance of the email while you're editing it, and the email while you're viewing it that can only be fixed by tweaking the Word html rendering to exactly match the IE html rendering.
I think the above post is a good point, not flamebait. There is a place for simple, streamlined software that anyone can figure out how to use, and the perfect place for it is on a $125 PC. OpenOffice and Firefox are not simple, and not streamlined. There's no point someone having an expensive PC (by which I mean $400+) running these apps if the user doesn't want to or doesn't know how to utilize them fully.
There is plenty of software that can perform the same basic internet and office tasks while using far less CPU cycles and memory. How else could my mobile phone be capable of browsing xhtml web pages?
The Conroe was released to be in competition with AMD's future offerings, it is intended to be the final product. AMD released the FX62 to be in a pissing contest with Intel, but Intel has just pissed way further than AMD can reach with the FX62, putting them behind again, and upsetting the 'stupid' people who rushed out to change to an AMD system just because AMD was statistically better.
According to the figures at http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2795&p=2, Intel has won the price/performance ratio war. The Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 outperforms the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ in all benchmarks and is likely to sell for $86 less ($316 compared to $403).
It's irrelevant that in many games there won't be an significant difference in fps between these two CPUs. The Conroe E6600 is faster than the Athlon X2 5000 in all CPU bound benchmarks. So the only reason to buy AMD now is if you're tied to the AMD platform and only stress your CPU out in games.
I'm aware of price watches, which give the week-on-week price changes for components, but what I believe would be really handy is a graph of the price of any given component over time (with a time range of anything from three months to three years).
One could then analyse the steepness of the curve and come to some conclusions, such as the best time to buy a graphics card is nine or twelve months after release, LCD panel prices are unlikely to experience the same rate of decrease in the coming twelve months than in the previous twelve months, etc. (these statements are just examples of the possible sorts of conclusions)
I'm guessing that CPUs have a reasonably shallow curve (since the product lifespan is longer than the typical motherboard or graphics card), but I'm not sure.
Could you post a link to the CPU price charts you're referring to? When timing the purchase of a new CPU (or any PC component for that matter) it'd be great to be able to buy when the price has bottomed out rather than when it's in the middle of a steep decline.
Should we take it then that you've played all the great games ever written? That's the only way you can know for a fact that there are a maximum of twenty three (ish) games that are better than Fallout and Starcraft.
So, unless you have spent your life playing all the great games ever written, I don't think you should tell people who can think of more than twenty three games that are better than Fallout and Starcraft that they don't belong in a discussion about the quality of games. If they're familiar with that many top class games, they probably do.
1. Joked around with quests and put in blatant references. Check 2. Dialogue worth listening to. Check 3. Open ended gameplay and multiple methods of completing quests. Check
The most important thing in a game is being able to feel involved. Here's a good test - if, in the game, you will take the time to carry out tasks (conversation topics, location visits, flower picking, whatever) that isn't going to improve your in game situation (stronger armies, stronger character etc.) or move you closer towards completing the level / quest / game, then it's a game that's really worth playing, regardless of the graphics.
That's why games like the Elder Scrolls quadrilogy, Simcity and The Sims have been so popular. If you'll forgive me the cliche, it's not about winning, it's about taking part.
If Microsoft implements OpenDocument (or anything like it) in Office 2007 it will make a lot of people very happy.
A blank Word document takes up eleven kilobytes, and a one page document takes up about forty. If this becomes the de facto standard for documents rather than the Word document format, then document file sizes will shrink significantly, and a lot of bandwidth and disk space on office networks will be saved as a result.
When you type text into the address bar of Firefox which isn't an url it performs a 'I'm feeling lucky' search on Google. There isn't an option to use an alternative search engine anywhere in Firefox.
Is it still anti-competitive behaviour when your presets (for example, Google searching on Firefox) benefits another company rather than yourselves?
Once Google buys Mozilla it'll be anti-competitive. But I don't think it is at the moment.
The BBC's Website
on
On The BBC 2.0
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The first and possibly only thing they should change about the BBC home page is the fact that it's designed to be viewed at a resolution of 800x600. Surely a company as big as the BBC is capable of producing a web site that utilizes all of the screen space available in a browser window?
Re:Staying Relevant
on
On The BBC 2.0
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I shall further this informed and relevant debate thus...
I think Fox needs to first get rid its right wing, anti-Europe bias if it wants to be relevant in the digital age. That would be the first thing that needs to be changed.
In this age of left-leaning blogs that can monitor Fox's biases, people will realize how much of an agenda they have.
Sure, the upgrade path of socket 939 may be limited, but reports suggest (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx ?i=2741) that performance of AM2 and S939 CPUs will be very similar. Assuming that the new range of processors for socket AM2 is priced higher than the current Socket 939 range, those buying a Socket 939 x2 now will actually get a better price-to-performance deal than if they waited for an AM2, albeit at the expense of limited futureproofing.
Since there's no such thing as a 100% secure browser codebase, why criticise Mozilla for security bugs? It's an unrealistic expectation - personally, I'm very happy having the application feature of "less security bugs than the competition!".
Do the gigantic mindless entities that are Nestle and Shell understand and respond to a tiny portion of their market boycotting their goods? They operate in terms of future share price only; if events have no ability to affect this then they won't even appear on their radar. Hence the car/gasoline analogy is good, but imho the premise that boycotting is making a serious dent in the bottom line of Intel or any other multi-national of income is flawed.
It's certainly true that the number of background processes running on a typical windows pc has vastly increased in the past year. But this is an argument for investing in RAM, not dual core processors.
Windows XP runs fine on a Pentium III, especially if there's 512+ RAM on the system. Hence business users and non-games home users should just save their money. How can an extra core make a difference when the apps they use don't even require 50% of the cycles of a single CPU?
My friend Sam would always insist on games of one-to-one Quake 3 Arena Deathmatch. He was way better than me so I changed my strategy; I would attempt to commit suicide before getting slaughtered. I became vastly more successful at the game as a result, I would nearly always succeed in killing myself, except on space maps where Sam was a dab hand at the railgun, and would shoot me through the head before I could reach the edge of the platform. Perhaps the two of you could try something similar?
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Consumers don't expect that, that's just us computer geeks who get so demanding.
True. I should have said, "The fact that the USA has by far the most powerful military on earth isn't necessarily something to be proud of. ", seeing that it was in reply to a poster who was proud of belonging to the most powerful nation on earth.
Well yes, but it depends what how one interprets 'most powerful'. I was going by budget rather than numbers.
The fact that the USA has by far the largest military on earth isn't necessarily something to be proud of.
I saw the ad on the side of a bus shelter in York as I was cycling past this morning. It had Mitchell holding up a sign saying, "I'm a PC" and Webb holding up a sign saying, "I'm a Mac".
Mitchell and Webb are a 'comedy duo' who first did a rather dark and twisted sitcom called "Peep Show", and then more recently a sketch show called "That Mitchell and Webb Look". In the sitcom, and the sketch show to a lesser extent, Mitchell is a dull, sensible, nerdy bloke with a safe boring job, whereas Webb is a partying, splif-smoking, foolhardy layabout.
Personally, I rather resented the implication that Mac users have more fun than PC users, but saw why they'd put these ads out - it's about reinforcing the popular image of Macs being colourful and 'fun' and PCs being grey, dull and run-of-the-mill.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't they choosing to render html in Outlook using Word to ensure that the appearance of the email as a whole doesn't suddenly alter when one replies to a html email and begins editing that html in Word?
I'm pretty sure that it's a lot more easier to code html editing when the same engine is used to edit the html and render the results, else one will get a lot of incongruities between the appearance of the email while you're editing it, and the email while you're viewing it that can only be fixed by tweaking the Word html rendering to exactly match the IE html rendering.
I think the above post is a good point, not flamebait. There is a place for simple, streamlined software that anyone can figure out how to use, and the perfect place for it is on a $125 PC. OpenOffice and Firefox are not simple, and not streamlined. There's no point someone having an expensive PC (by which I mean $400+) running these apps if the user doesn't want to or doesn't know how to utilize them fully.
There is plenty of software that can perform the same basic internet and office tasks while using far less CPU cycles and memory. How else could my mobile phone be capable of browsing xhtml web pages?
The Conroe was released to be in competition with AMD's future offerings, it is intended to be the final product. AMD released the FX62 to be in a pissing contest with Intel, but Intel has just pissed way further than AMD can reach with the FX62, putting them behind again, and upsetting the 'stupid' people who rushed out to change to an AMD system just because AMD was statistically better.
According to the figures at http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2795&p=2, Intel has won the price/performance ratio war. The Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 outperforms the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ in all benchmarks and is likely to sell for $86 less ($316 compared to $403).
It's irrelevant that in many games there won't be an significant difference in fps between these two CPUs. The Conroe E6600 is faster than the Athlon X2 5000 in all CPU bound benchmarks. So the only reason to buy AMD now is if you're tied to the AMD platform and only stress your CPU out in games.
I'm aware of price watches, which give the week-on-week price changes for components, but what I believe would be really handy is a graph of the price of any given component over time (with a time range of anything from three months to three years).
One could then analyse the steepness of the curve and come to some conclusions, such as the best time to buy a graphics card is nine or twelve months after release, LCD panel prices are unlikely to experience the same rate of decrease in the coming twelve months than in the previous twelve months, etc. (these statements are just examples of the possible sorts of conclusions)
I'm guessing that CPUs have a reasonably shallow curve (since the product lifespan is longer than the typical motherboard or graphics card), but I'm not sure.
Could you post a link to the CPU price charts you're referring to? When timing the purchase of a new CPU (or any PC component for that matter) it'd be great to be able to buy when the price has bottomed out rather than when it's in the middle of a steep decline.
Should we take it then that you've played all the great games ever written? That's the only way you can know for a fact that there are a maximum of twenty three (ish) games that are better than Fallout and Starcraft.
So, unless you have spent your life playing all the great games ever written, I don't think you should tell people who can think of more than twenty three games that are better than Fallout and Starcraft that they don't belong in a discussion about the quality of games. If they're familiar with that many top class games, they probably do.
If you liked Fallout, you should try Oblivion.
1. Joked around with quests and put in blatant references. Check
2. Dialogue worth listening to. Check
3. Open ended gameplay and multiple methods of completing quests. Check
The most important thing in a game is being able to feel involved. Here's a good test - if, in the game, you will take the time to carry out tasks (conversation topics, location visits, flower picking, whatever) that isn't going to improve your in game situation (stronger armies, stronger character etc.) or move you closer towards completing the level / quest / game, then it's a game that's really worth playing, regardless of the graphics.
That's why games like the Elder Scrolls quadrilogy, Simcity and The Sims have been so popular. If you'll forgive me the cliche, it's not about winning, it's about taking part.
If Microsoft implements OpenDocument (or anything like it) in Office 2007 it will make a lot of people very happy.
A blank Word document takes up eleven kilobytes, and a one page document takes up about forty. If this becomes the de facto standard for documents rather than the Word document format, then document file sizes will shrink significantly, and a lot of bandwidth and disk space on office networks will be saved as a result.
When you type text into the address bar of Firefox which isn't an url it performs a 'I'm feeling lucky' search on Google. There isn't an option to use an alternative search engine anywhere in Firefox.
Is it still anti-competitive behaviour when your presets (for example, Google searching on Firefox) benefits another company rather than yourselves?
Once Google buys Mozilla it'll be anti-competitive. But I don't think it is at the moment.
The first and possibly only thing they should change about the BBC home page is the fact that it's designed to be viewed at a resolution of 800x600. Surely a company as big as the BBC is capable of producing a web site that utilizes all of the screen space available in a browser window?
I shall further this informed and relevant debate thus...
I think Fox needs to first get rid its right wing, anti-Europe bias if it wants to be relevant in the digital age. That would be the first thing that needs to be changed.
In this age of left-leaning blogs that can monitor Fox's biases, people will realize how much of an agenda they have.
Sure, the upgrade path of socket 939 may be limited, but reports suggest (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx ?i=2741) that performance of AM2 and S939 CPUs will be very similar. Assuming that the new range of processors for socket AM2 is priced higher than the current Socket 939 range, those buying a Socket 939 x2 now will actually get a better price-to-performance deal than if they waited for an AM2, albeit at the expense of limited futureproofing.
Since there's no such thing as a 100% secure browser codebase, why criticise Mozilla for security bugs? It's an unrealistic expectation - personally, I'm very happy having the application feature of "less security bugs than the competition!".
Do the gigantic mindless entities that are Nestle and Shell understand and respond to a tiny portion of their market boycotting their goods? They operate in terms of future share price only; if events have no ability to affect this then they won't even appear on their radar. Hence the car/gasoline analogy is good, but imho the premise that boycotting is making a serious dent in the bottom line of Intel or any other multi-national of income is flawed.
Is that just a lame excuse to rip off music for free?
Heh. I spent £12 grand to get a degree with no future (Philosophy) and I don't regret it one bit.
Why would anyone spend $50 grand to do an easy degree? No point if it's easy.
It's certainly true that the number of background processes running on a typical windows pc has vastly increased in the past year. But this is an argument for investing in RAM, not dual core processors.
Windows XP runs fine on a Pentium III, especially if there's 512+ RAM on the system. Hence business users and non-games home users should just save their money. How can an extra core make a difference when the apps they use don't even require 50% of the cycles of a single CPU?
My friend Sam would always insist on games of one-to-one Quake 3 Arena Deathmatch. He was way better than me so I changed my strategy; I would attempt to commit suicide before getting slaughtered. I became vastly more successful at the game as a result, I would nearly always succeed in killing myself, except on space maps where Sam was a dab hand at the railgun, and would shoot me through the head before I could reach the edge of the platform. Perhaps the two of you could try something similar?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but investment in Africa hasn't stemmed destablizing wars, it's just given them more to fight over.