I remember an interview with John Carmack where he said that developers would have to "sweat blood" to code for the PS3. He had somewhat more favorable things to say about developing on the Xbox. Now personally I don't really care, I have both systems and this is not fan-boy ranting or endorsement of either platform, but Sony really missed the mark by thinking programmers were going to be able to make the base engines use all those cores effectively. Yes, for graphics, going full out parallel has clearly been the way to go, but for the main engine, just about every game to date has had a very single threaded execution path. I can see a lot of potential for things like enhancing AI, but for the core logic, I have not seen things change much, even long after the introduction of multiple cores on PC's.
WTF are consumers going to do when Apple pushes an update that breaks this (intentionally, or not) and all of a sudden this marvelous sync stops working?
I'm sure that will go over well, since that's equivalent to also killing legacy iPod support along with it. If Palm did their job right then the thing will not be distinguishable from a real iPod. If their implementation is good enough Apple's only recourse is going to be legal, not technical.
Windows Admin is easily reset via Linux bootdisk, even on NTFS.
Just a few minutes of google and I'd say there is a fair chance at breaking into it. Without taking REAL precautions physical access is FULL access. Those login prompts don't mean much when using the actual console unless it's specifically configured for it.
In theory that might work, however a more fool-proof method is already available.
I think it's more likely content providers will just start packing their entire site into flash. Stream everything through a flash viewer. There are already a few sites that are like this, although many still offer a "flash free" version as well. Enough content goes this route and the options are going to be : 1) disable flash and drastically limit viewable sites or 2) enable flash and deal with it.
Filtering a raw byte-stream for add content will be almost impossible.
Why wouldn't one person buy it, then immediately put it in online in a torrent for everyone else to get for free?
Changes nothing, that's already the situation they are in. If it's happening now I don't see an online store changing that in any significant way. So now they don't need to rip the DVD and encode, OK, saved a few minutes, so what? On the other hand now the person who had no option other than piracy can now make a choice. I think your assumption that people are not willing to pay for it is without merit. If the big media companies set this up and expect people to pay what they charge for DVD's then maybe they would have a problem. I think the price would need to come down significantly and that people would be willing to purchase it before the price hits zero.
Wrong. I was in the Beta test and the matchmaking/network system never really worked then either. I almost always had a full game of Bots. I think there might have been an actual player in maybe one or two games. Since the actual release won't force-populate a game with bots, now there's a lot of very empty games. I have not seen a game go beyond 2v2 yet. The Beta effectively did NOTHING to stress test player load since it was stuffing all the games with AI.
Now perhaps if you could get custom games to work, there might have been a few matches against actual players. However the Beta test group was so small, it was unlikely to ever fill more than a few games here and there. The concept of stress testing was not even remotely approached in what they called the Beta.
Battery life on laptops still sucks relative to both XP and Windows 7.
Well I guess we could double the time and just make the countdown faster like on windows but what's the point?
Odd, when I read that I didn't automatically jump to the conclusion that he was talking about "reported" battery life. An engineer of 20 years is probably not going to place absolute trust in what the battery meter is reporting, from either OS. I think we all understand that the values seen there are approximated. I'd give the GP more credit and assume that was supposed to mean REAL battery life.
All that being said, I think it's an interesting point if it's true. What is being done in Linux that sucks the juice out and why can Windows make do with less?
E.T. the Extraterrestrial for the Atari. I played that goddamn thing left and right, and it was annoying as hell.
Yeah, you might be right about that, but how is that different from any other Atari game? Ever try the Indiana Jones game? I've seen E.T. referenced about a dozen times for how annoying it was, but there were a lot of bad, annoying, difficult games back then. I'll admit, there are a few gaming gems in the Atari library, but if you kept playing it, was it really that bad?
It's not always such a small difference. I'm running an i7-920 at 3.2, which is what the i7-965 is set to. That's a 20% boost, and buying the 965 would have been $700 more at the time. Even a nice liquid cooling loop was a lot cheaper. Heck, I can replace a fair chunk of the other hardware for $700 as well. So for anyone looking at Intel's top of the line this logic doesn't really hold up. The "extra $100" only holds up when looking at the lower end.
Sure you can lock down both OpenBSD and Linux with additional patches.
Huh??? What OpenBSD patches are you talking about that would lock it down any more than the base install? The whole point of OpenBSD is secure by default. The system is quite minimal as is. I don't know of anything that would be added which would help this 'lock down' you mentioned. Maybe patches for applications installed by the user?
Ok, maybe for Linux, but throwing OBSD in there was just random.
but then there is the question where you draw the line between OS and applications
Yes indeed, where have you drawn that line exactly?
Pay for a Vista service pack? No thanks. I moved to Vista long after SP1 and since I have an actual licensed copy, it would be nice to not have to pay more $ for what amounts to a simple update. I suppose as long as MS doesn't do something stupid like make a DX 11 for Win 7 there isn't really any need to buy it.
I've also heard grumblings from OpenBSD people about corrupted filesystems with softdep enabled.
Interesting... I've never experienced corruption on any OBSD box I've setup, and that includes a fair bit of random power cycling. I figured it was stable enough that if I didn't feel like ssh'ing in for power operations I'd actually just use the switch. I suppose it's possible I just got lucky and that might have been a bad idea. I never really researched the whole softdep thing since everything seemed robust enough in my use.
Phoenix, AMI (do they still exist?), HP, Intel, etc.
AMI - American Megatrends - Definately still exists. I recently built a box with Asus R2E motherboard and they went with AMI. In fact, it's one of the most advanced BIOS in terms of tweakage I've ever seen. I hadn't seen a board with AMI in very a long time, so I was rather surprised that they were not only still around, but making stuff on the cutting edge.
Total cost of ownership turns out to be a lot more similar in the long term though. I don't think the PS3 should have any problem competing with the 360. The initial price sticker shock may be having some effect but consider that:
PS3 - Stock wireless controller is rechargeable. XB360 Stock controller requires user to provide rechargeables, or just burn through normal batteries.
PSN Online is provided free of charge, with multiplayer gaming. XBox Gold membership is something like $50/year, and is required to actually play multiplayer games on XBLive.
Most PS3 models have built in wireless support (although there were some that didn't), the XB360 Wireless Network adapter is something around $50.
PS3 ships with a larger hard drive than the XB360 (80GB PS3 has been the standard model for some time now). The hard drive is also replaceable with a standard consumer drive. XB360 drive is upgradeable but only with MS product (although I think there are adapters to use other devices, the adapter is once again cost added).
PS3 is bluetooth headset compatable, XBox 360 requires use of proprietary headset if the user wants to have a wireless earpiece.
With accessories and online costs considered, I'd say it evens out, and rather quickly at that.
Didn't RTFA (this is/. after all), but this reminds me of a list I developed defining what is not fair PvP. And if it's not fair PvP I don't really consider it PvP at all (more like bullying at that point).
Also, since there seems to be some confusion about the definition of skill as seen in above comment, I'm using the commonly understood definition of : Proficiency, facility, or dexterity that is acquired or developed through training or experience. Experience being PLAYER experience, NOT the player's game character.
A lot of these points are redundant, mostly just pointing out what different cases would apply to various situations.
If all teams are not composed of the exact same number of players it's not PvP.
If a player disconnects or leaves before the match can be unequivocally delcared "over", it's not PvP.
If any player or team has an advantage over the other team that is for any reason other than skill, it's not PvP.
If a player starts with an obvious net superiority in stats or level than any other player in the game it's not PvP.
If a player starts the match with an obvious net superiority in gear, equipment, funds, or assets when compared to other players it's not PvP.
If a player uses hacks, exploits, or cheats which give them any advantage over players who are not using any hacks, exploits, or cheats, then it's not PvP.
If any player has a handicap or multiplier applied, which is not universal across all players, it's not PvP.
If any teams roster is uneven due to the addition of NPC players which is not equally balanced for other teams, it's not PvP.
If any teams NPC players are set to a difficulty level different from another teams NPC players, it's not PvP.
If luck or chance has more influence on the outcome of a game than player skill, it's not PvP.
Of course Microsoft is too cheap to setup servers that actually run the game on their end, which would benefit everyone by having a more ideal point of contact for all players. The matchmaking service is only matchmaking. The game itself is actually Peer to Peer, which of course causes lag when the best peer isn't very good. Even worse, it's probably more like the best peer with the proper ports forwarded. And when the host leaves the game needs to iterate back through that process to pick the next best peer, which might also be bad. So Halo 3 has linked it's billionth set of peers, which served themselves.
This is exactly why I have not considered Mac as a viable option for me. The video card offerings are just not current enough. Why is it that everything else in the system is relatively high end and the video cards fall off the face of the planet on the low end or mid-range at best?
Until they either offer a base system with either NO VIDEO CARD (choose your own later) or something in the GTX 200 series, I can see no point in buying one. And what's up with the single HD4870, why not at least offer an X2? High end everything else and then crap for video card makes a nice workstation, but it's an insanely underpowered gaming rig. And at the price range of the Mac Pro, the only reasonable thing to compare it to is gaming class systems.
Media Player's library view is designed to surface and showcase one's content. However, in some cases items were displayed that couldn't be played. For example, Apple's lossless.M4A or.H263 MPEG-4 content would be shown in a library even though Media Player could not play them. In RC, this content will no longer appear in the library view so that there is better expectation of what is supported by the player.
Here's a thought, why not instead of filtering out content Windows cannot deal with just support playback of the format?! These formats are not exactly on the fringe here. The way it's being dealt with is as surprising as the fact they are not supported.
What specifically are you referring to? I'll admit, some of the tweaks I've had to make have been surprisingly arcane for a Windows OS and have been only available on the command line (vssadmin), but I've yet to find something I've been unable to change in Vista. "Ultimate control" doesn't exactly point to anything in particular.
From your comments, I'm guessing you haven't tried to up-clock anything even relatively modern. The term overclock itself is sorta silly since the advertised frequency is based on some paranoid assumptions.
If we're talking about Intel chips here, they have always had relatively good protection against burning themselves up. In the past I know AMD has had some chips where you actually were taking a risk, but this discussion is about Intel. These newer chips are basically idiot proof, you probably could not break it before it turned itself off.
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I remember an interview with John Carmack where he said that developers would have to "sweat blood" to code for the PS3. He had somewhat more favorable things to say about developing on the Xbox. Now personally I don't really care, I have both systems and this is not fan-boy ranting or endorsement of either platform, but Sony really missed the mark by thinking programmers were going to be able to make the base engines use all those cores effectively. Yes, for graphics, going full out parallel has clearly been the way to go, but for the main engine, just about every game to date has had a very single threaded execution path. I can see a lot of potential for things like enhancing AI, but for the core logic, I have not seen things change much, even long after the introduction of multiple cores on PC's.
You do realize the bus width on the Nvidia cards is wider?
Take a look at Mountain-Mods. They already have several dual-PSU cases.
I'm sure that will go over well, since that's equivalent to also killing legacy iPod support along with it. If Palm did their job right then the thing will not be distinguishable from a real iPod. If their implementation is good enough Apple's only recourse is going to be legal, not technical.
Or just boot into single user mode.
Windows Admin is easily reset via Linux bootdisk, even on NTFS.
Just a few minutes of google and I'd say there is a fair chance at breaking into it. Without taking REAL precautions physical access is FULL access. Those login prompts don't mean much when using the actual console unless it's specifically configured for it.
In theory that might work, however a more fool-proof method is already available.
I think it's more likely content providers will just start packing their entire site into flash. Stream everything through a flash viewer. There are already a few sites that are like this, although many still offer a "flash free" version as well. Enough content goes this route and the options are going to be : 1) disable flash and drastically limit viewable sites or 2) enable flash and deal with it.
Filtering a raw byte-stream for add content will be almost impossible.
Changes nothing, that's already the situation they are in. If it's happening now I don't see an online store changing that in any significant way. So now they don't need to rip the DVD and encode, OK, saved a few minutes, so what? On the other hand now the person who had no option other than piracy can now make a choice. I think your assumption that people are not willing to pay for it is without merit. If the big media companies set this up and expect people to pay what they charge for DVD's then maybe they would have a problem. I think the price would need to come down significantly and that people would be willing to purchase it before the price hits zero.
Wrong. I was in the Beta test and the matchmaking/network system never really worked then either. I almost always had a full game of Bots. I think there might have been an actual player in maybe one or two games. Since the actual release won't force-populate a game with bots, now there's a lot of very empty games. I have not seen a game go beyond 2v2 yet. The Beta effectively did NOTHING to stress test player load since it was stuffing all the games with AI.
Now perhaps if you could get custom games to work, there might have been a few matches against actual players. However the Beta test group was so small, it was unlikely to ever fill more than a few games here and there. The concept of stress testing was not even remotely approached in what they called the Beta.
Well I guess we could double the time and just make the countdown faster like on windows but what's the point?
Odd, when I read that I didn't automatically jump to the conclusion that he was talking about "reported" battery life. An engineer of 20 years is probably not going to place absolute trust in what the battery meter is reporting, from either OS. I think we all understand that the values seen there are approximated. I'd give the GP more credit and assume that was supposed to mean REAL battery life.
All that being said, I think it's an interesting point if it's true. What is being done in Linux that sucks the juice out and why can Windows make do with less?
Yeah, you might be right about that, but how is that different from any other Atari game? Ever try the Indiana Jones game? I've seen E.T. referenced about a dozen times for how annoying it was, but there were a lot of bad, annoying, difficult games back then. I'll admit, there are a few gaming gems in the Atari library, but if you kept playing it, was it really that bad?
It's not always such a small difference. I'm running an i7-920 at 3.2, which is what the i7-965 is set to. That's a 20% boost, and buying the 965 would have been $700 more at the time. Even a nice liquid cooling loop was a lot cheaper. Heck, I can replace a fair chunk of the other hardware for $700 as well. So for anyone looking at Intel's top of the line this logic doesn't really hold up. The "extra $100" only holds up when looking at the lower end.
Huh??? What OpenBSD patches are you talking about that would lock it down any more than the base install? The whole point of OpenBSD is secure by default. The system is quite minimal as is. I don't know of anything that would be added which would help this 'lock down' you mentioned. Maybe patches for applications installed by the user?
Ok, maybe for Linux, but throwing OBSD in there was just random.
Yes indeed, where have you drawn that line exactly?
Pay for a Vista service pack? No thanks. I moved to Vista long after SP1 and since I have an actual licensed copy, it would be nice to not have to pay more $ for what amounts to a simple update. I suppose as long as MS doesn't do something stupid like make a DX 11 for Win 7 there isn't really any need to buy it.
Interesting... I've never experienced corruption on any OBSD box I've setup, and that includes a fair bit of random power cycling. I figured it was stable enough that if I didn't feel like ssh'ing in for power operations I'd actually just use the switch. I suppose it's possible I just got lucky and that might have been a bad idea. I never really researched the whole softdep thing since everything seemed robust enough in my use.
AMI - American Megatrends - Definately still exists. I recently built a box with Asus R2E motherboard and they went with AMI. In fact, it's one of the most advanced BIOS in terms of tweakage I've ever seen. I hadn't seen a board with AMI in very a long time, so I was rather surprised that they were not only still around, but making stuff on the cutting edge.
Aww, the lightning gun was at least somewhat useful. Particularly in the pool on DM3. *evil grin*
With accessories and online costs considered, I'd say it evens out, and rather quickly at that.
Didn't RTFA (this is /. after all), but this reminds me of a list I developed defining what is not fair PvP. And if it's not fair PvP I don't really consider it PvP at all (more like bullying at that point).
Also, since there seems to be some confusion about the definition of skill as seen in above comment, I'm using the commonly understood definition of : Proficiency, facility, or dexterity that is acquired or developed through training or experience. Experience being PLAYER experience, NOT the player's game character.
A lot of these points are redundant, mostly just pointing out what different cases would apply to various situations.
Heh, you must be reading Newegg hard drive reviews. My favorites are the 1 star reviews complaining about missing drive space.
Emphasis mine. This is false. If it's just Steam activation it's a one time deal. After that you can play it in Steam offline mode without problems.
Of course Microsoft is too cheap to setup servers that actually run the game on their end, which would benefit everyone by having a more ideal point of contact for all players. The matchmaking service is only matchmaking. The game itself is actually Peer to Peer, which of course causes lag when the best peer isn't very good. Even worse, it's probably more like the best peer with the proper ports forwarded. And when the host leaves the game needs to iterate back through that process to pick the next best peer, which might also be bad. So Halo 3 has linked it's billionth set of peers, which served themselves.
This is exactly why I have not considered Mac as a viable option for me. The video card offerings are just not current enough. Why is it that everything else in the system is relatively high end and the video cards fall off the face of the planet on the low end or mid-range at best?
Until they either offer a base system with either NO VIDEO CARD (choose your own later) or something in the GTX 200 series, I can see no point in buying one. And what's up with the single HD4870, why not at least offer an X2? High end everything else and then crap for video card makes a nice workstation, but it's an insanely underpowered gaming rig. And at the price range of the Mac Pro, the only reasonable thing to compare it to is gaming class systems.
Here's a thought, why not instead of filtering out content Windows cannot deal with just support playback of the format?! These formats are not exactly on the fringe here. The way it's being dealt with is as surprising as the fact they are not supported.
What specifically are you referring to? I'll admit, some of the tweaks I've had to make have been surprisingly arcane for a Windows OS and have been only available on the command line (vssadmin), but I've yet to find something I've been unable to change in Vista. "Ultimate control" doesn't exactly point to anything in particular.
From your comments, I'm guessing you haven't tried to up-clock anything even relatively modern. The term overclock itself is sorta silly since the advertised frequency is based on some paranoid assumptions.
If we're talking about Intel chips here, they have always had relatively good protection against burning themselves up. In the past I know AMD has had some chips where you actually were taking a risk, but this discussion is about Intel. These newer chips are basically idiot proof, you probably could not break it before it turned itself off.