People are talking a lot about how the time it takes to dig up an underground power line is a big factor, but are completely forgetting about the fact that you have to FIND where to dig first! With overhead powerlines, it's easy to see where the line is down, but if it's underground, who knows where the problem is?
The parent is absolutely right, and gives more great examples of innovative games than any other poster. I think this post alone is proof that Crawford didn't think this one through enough before speaking...
The second half of the article talks about why the author thinks that the fun factor of HL2 isn't nearly as high as in HL1, but as you'd expect this whole "rating" and "depreciation" score thing is completely subjective and made up. I really have no idea why this thing made Slashdot...
Well, I think the group size is really too small, and thus trying to measure changes in sex and drugs habits for such a small population is pretty ridiculous, but they did choose an interesting comparison in games.
In a study like this, it's really difficult to avoid comparing apples and oranges. And really, the only way I can think of doing that is to compare a violent game and one of those made-for-Walmart special versions of the game, which I don't even know exist anymore. However, Gamespot's review of The Simpsons: Hit & Run mentions that the game's pretty much a cartoon, less violent GTA, so I've definitely seen worse comparisons when videogames are involved.
That being said, their measurements are still pretty crappy. Homer drinks tons of beer, whether characters in GTA games use condoms or not isn't really explicit, and there are times in Tetris where I'm sure my blood pressure would be higher than in either of these two games...
Actually, according to the article, the results come "with all graphics intact." So it'll come with both images and text, but everything better be compressed, or that's just a huge waste of space.
So they aren't selling it really cheap, the costs are mitigated by ads. I imagine if they were truly selling it for actual money, no-one would ever buy it. It still makes it a pretty crappy idea with, I'm sure, an even crappier business plan.
There isn't an x86 version planned, yet. Ironically however, there was one made over ten years ago, based on the Pentium architecture. Unfortunately that project never got out the door, and Intel didn't do any fully-async follow-ups.
Sure, parts of a clocked processor can be shut off given certain conditions, but clockless processors have this ability built-in, and it works for every individual component rather than pre-designed blocks of the processor.
And clockless designs are more flexible than you might think. You can only overclock a CPU so much before the effect of the slowest component taking more time than the new clock cycle happens, and then things start going very wrong. ASync chips run faster simply with higher voltage, and that speed increase isn't just going to be in discrete quantities, like the Intel P4 M. It's better than SpeedStep, it's SpeedRamp!
Unfortunately not, since the word technically has no meaning here, but as you've probably read, you can actually crank up the voltage to produce faster performance at the expense of the extra power.
I can only hope we see laptops running clockless processors in the next few years. Intel's Pentium 4 M, with it's lower power comsumption and all the other nice enhancements it had, is a good step. But a good clockless processor, almost by definition, would still ran faster and use even less power.
Many people throughout the years have experimented with the idea of clockless chips. In fact, when Turing and all those others were designing the first computers, they had to choose between synchronous and asynchronous designs (meaning that the idea was around even then). However, since what they had to use back then were those stupid vacuum tubes and basically lots of parts that you couldn't really rely on, a clocked design was chosen, and rightly so. However, even then the manufacturing got better, everyone stuck with clocked designs because the tech was already well-known, and people didn't want to start down a new path. And clocked designs served us well for a long while... but it's time for a change.
In 1989, Ivan Sutherland wrote a paper that, for the first time, actually got people interested in clockless designs again. Then Caltech guy Alain Martin drew up a clockless processor in only about 6 months that, unlike what the summary claims, was the first true clockless microprocessor. So yes, many people have looked into this after the past half century, but the idea never became popular until rather recently.
I haven't heard about AMD, but Intel has already been using "clockless islands" in their Pentium 4 processors. These are sections of the chip that are started by a clock, but then asynchronously do some task before giving the result back to a clocked portion of the chip.
Clockless chips will be excellent for PDA's and cellphones, and Phillips (owner of the Handshake Solutions mentioned in the article) already developed a clockless pager years ago that has twice as much battery life as competitors.
If that Windows Update crap bothers you again in the future, run the following command (Start->Run): sc stop wuauserv Unlike trying to close the process with task manager, this kills the service that's generating that process, and it doesn't come back until you use "sc start wuauserv" or restart your computer.
In Firefox, clearing an individual cookie can be done by selecting Tools, Options, clicking on Privacy on the left sidebar, then clicking on Cookies on the right, and hitting the View Cookies button there. In the list, find google.com in the left column (which is best done by clicking the list and typing "google" in) and look for an entry with PREF in the right column. Highlight that cookie, and hit the Remove Cookie button.
In IE, it's quite a bit more difficult to delete specific cookies, so you're best off either deleting all of them through Internet Options or searching in your Temporary Internet Files folder for google and cookie and deleting that file.
I think it was kinda dumb for the article not to point out how to reverse the process, but oh well, you can read it here.
Slashdot Mirror
People are talking a lot about how the time it takes to dig up an underground power line is a big factor, but are completely forgetting about the fact that you have to FIND where to dig first! With overhead powerlines, it's easy to see where the line is down, but if it's underground, who knows where the problem is?
The parent is absolutely right, and gives more great examples of innovative games than any other poster. I think this post alone is proof that Crawford didn't think this one through enough before speaking...
Oh my god this is so true it's ridiculous...
The second half of the article talks about why the author thinks that the fun factor of HL2 isn't nearly as high as in HL1, but as you'd expect this whole "rating" and "depreciation" score thing is completely subjective and made up. I really have no idea why this thing made Slashdot...
Jack Thompson's behavior is easier to understand if you remember his origins
Well, I think the group size is really too small, and thus trying to measure changes in sex and drugs habits for such a small population is pretty ridiculous, but they did choose an interesting comparison in games.
In a study like this, it's really difficult to avoid comparing apples and oranges. And really, the only way I can think of doing that is to compare a violent game and one of those made-for-Walmart special versions of the game, which I don't even know exist anymore. However, Gamespot's review of The Simpsons: Hit & Run mentions that the game's pretty much a cartoon, less violent GTA, so I've definitely seen worse comparisons when videogames are involved.
That being said, their measurements are still pretty crappy. Homer drinks tons of beer, whether characters in GTA games use condoms or not isn't really explicit, and there are times in Tetris where I'm sure my blood pressure would be higher than in either of these two games...
Actually, according to the article, the results come "with all graphics intact." So it'll come with both images and text, but everything better be compressed, or that's just a huge waste of space.
From the article, Webaroo is a:
free, ad-supported search service
So they aren't selling it really cheap, the costs are mitigated by ads. I imagine if they were truly selling it for actual money, no-one would ever buy it. It still makes it a pretty crappy idea with, I'm sure, an even crappier business plan.
There isn't an x86 version planned, yet. Ironically however, there was one made over ten years ago, based on the Pentium architecture. Unfortunately that project never got out the door, and Intel didn't do any fully-async follow-ups.
Sure, parts of a clocked processor can be shut off given certain conditions, but clockless processors have this ability built-in, and it works for every individual component rather than pre-designed blocks of the processor.
And clockless designs are more flexible than you might think. You can only overclock a CPU so much before the effect of the slowest component taking more time than the new clock cycle happens, and then things start going very wrong. ASync chips run faster simply with higher voltage, and that speed increase isn't just going to be in discrete quantities, like the Intel P4 M. It's better than SpeedStep, it's SpeedRamp!
Unfortunately not, since the word technically has no meaning here, but as you've probably read, you can actually crank up the voltage to produce faster performance at the expense of the extra power.
I can only hope we see laptops running clockless processors in the next few years. Intel's Pentium 4 M, with it's lower power comsumption and all the other nice enhancements it had, is a good step. But a good clockless processor, almost by definition, would still ran faster and use even less power.
Many people throughout the years have experimented with the idea of clockless chips. In fact, when Turing and all those others were designing the first computers, they had to choose between synchronous and asynchronous designs (meaning that the idea was around even then). However, since what they had to use back then were those stupid vacuum tubes and basically lots of parts that you couldn't really rely on, a clocked design was chosen, and rightly so. However, even then the manufacturing got better, everyone stuck with clocked designs because the tech was already well-known, and people didn't want to start down a new path. And clocked designs served us well for a long while... but it's time for a change.
In 1989, Ivan Sutherland wrote a paper that, for the first time, actually got people interested in clockless designs again. Then Caltech guy Alain Martin drew up a clockless processor in only about 6 months that, unlike what the summary claims, was the first true clockless microprocessor. So yes, many people have looked into this after the past half century, but the idea never became popular until rather recently.
I haven't heard about AMD, but Intel has already been using "clockless islands" in their Pentium 4 processors. These are sections of the chip that are started by a clock, but then asynchronously do some task before giving the result back to a clocked portion of the chip.
Clockless chips will be excellent for PDA's and cellphones, and Phillips (owner of the Handshake Solutions mentioned in the article) already developed a clockless pager years ago that has twice as much battery life as competitors.
If that Windows Update crap bothers you again in the future, run the following command (Start->Run):
sc stop wuauserv
Unlike trying to close the process with task manager, this kills the service that's generating that process, and it doesn't come back until you use "sc start wuauserv" or restart your computer.
In Firefox, clearing an individual cookie can be done by selecting Tools, Options, clicking on Privacy on the left sidebar, then clicking on Cookies on the right, and hitting the View Cookies button there. In the list, find google.com in the left column (which is best done by clicking the list and typing "google" in) and look for an entry with PREF in the right column. Highlight that cookie, and hit the Remove Cookie button.
In IE, it's quite a bit more difficult to delete specific cookies, so you're best off either deleting all of them through Internet Options or searching in your Temporary Internet Files folder for google and cookie and deleting that file.
I think it was kinda dumb for the article not to point out how to reverse the process, but oh well, you can read it here.