Actually, I can see there being two models of XBox 2 - one with a hard disk (and a *big* one at that), and one without. Developers will be told not to *rely* on the disk, but to include optional extras which use it (much like GBA/GC connectivity).
The big difference between the model with the hard disk and the model without is whether or not you use it as your media centre, not the add-ons in games - the "with hard disk" one could be a PVR, music centre, etc. Basically, I would expect MS to release a version of the XBox 2 which included XP Media Centre (or some variant thereof). Such a device would be great for those who wanted an all in one box, but would be too expensive for those who only wanted games.
The wretched four-way button at the top is awful. When it's used so much for navigation, they should really have made sure that it always goes the way you want it to go (and the right number of times).
Maybe I'm just unlucky, but the number of times it's registered one of up/down as left/right (or vice versa) or double hit (a problem with some of the other buttons too) is no joke - and I've only had it for a couple of weeks!
This is a UK model, so it may have a different build quality from the US models.
In short, it's *designed* wonderfully, but implemented slightly less so.
Well, consider if you were the party considering taking over the project. Would a bunch of hostile users really encourage you, or might you need a bit more persuading?
The difference, however, is that there's no need for actual text parsing/validation. That *is* a big difference, IMO, in efficiency. Sure, you still need to have some storage mechanism or other, but I suspect that isn't the major inefficiency in XML.
The messages aren't in textual XML format, they're in WBXML, which isn't going to require nearly as much work in parsing etc. (Whether you consider WBXML messages to be "fixed binary format" or not is up to you.)
The Worms3D website (www.worms3d.com) has this on the forums:
<quote> Please be aware that the English demo was leaked and we therefore didn't expect it to be available at this point and it's based on somewhat older game code. A german demo is also available. We will release an updated English demo (with first person mouselook for instance) shortly.
Since it's now around, here's some advice.
To run the demo, unzip the contents to a folder and then run the RUN.CMD file, if you have an O/S earlier than 2000 then you will need to change this to.BAT, do not run the WORMS3D.EXE in the BIN folder since this is not how the game runs and it will crash.
There appears to be an issue with the demo on some machines (results in a "cannot read memory" error) and we're now looking into this, which is likely to be a driver/installation problem - we anticipate fixing it shortly and will post more information later today.
For those who are able to run it without problem, we hope you enjoy a very small taste of whats in the full version. </quote>
Nice to see a company accepting the fact that it's leaked and not instantly jumping up and down in a tantrum: instead, they've tried to help those who are obviously very keen to play the game (including myself) and alerted everyone to possible problems. How refreshing.
The/. summary of this article is very misleading. It says:
<quote> The legendary Yamauchi is customarily dismissive about Sony's attempts to get into handheld gaming with the PSP ("I don't think [Sony] understand the game business... but software for both machines will be much different, and it would be a mistake to consider them in direct competition."), <quote>
Actually, Yamauchi isn't dismissive at all, and the [Sony] in the summary is incorrect. It's the *analysts* who don't understand the game business. Here's the actual interview quote:
<quote> Sony's PSP isn't expected to hit the market until late 2004, and there's still many unknown details about it. There have been analysts who think Nintendo has a monopoly over the handheld market and Sony maybe able to break it - I don't think they understand the game business. New product competition in this industry is important. Although Nintendo's core business is software, having another hardware developer will allow us to judge the superority or inferority of our machine. But software for both machines will be much different, and it would be a mistake to consider them in direct competition. </quote>
Now, where exactly is he dismissive of Sony? Doesn't he actually accept the possibility that the Nintendo machine will be inferior?
Please use some basic reading comprehension before coming up with summaries like this...
Note that there's a difference between "not online gaming" and "single-player gaming". I mostly bought my console (a GameCube) for party games such as Super Smash Bros Melee - and I still believe that's the most entertaining type of game around (for me) even though I obviously enjoy Metroid Prime, Zelda etc.
Although the exact figures are unknown, it's at the very least widely rumoured that the GameCube has *always* been sold at a profit - and that it can be turned out now for under $50. (I even read a figure of $27, but that sounds a little *too* low...)
I believe the PS2 is now profitable as well, after saving various costs by reducing the number of components (combining things etc).
No idea about the X-Box though - I'd guess it's never been profitable and probably won't be for its entire lifetime (just in terms of hardware, that is).
Having read the other posts, I'm now confused myself. However, I'm pretty sure it's *not* just a case of taking a normal ISO and reversing the order of the bits...
I don't think you understand. It's not that the ISO has the bits backwards, it's that the "groove" is backwards - clockwise instead of anti-clockwise, or vice versa.
I don't know how the Q works - perhaps its drive can spin in both directions?
Absolutely. And it's not just with files, either. Network connections, importantly *database* connections, anything that's likely to have an open resource. Then there's the kind of resource which holds a lock while you've got it open - fail to close one of those, and you'll end up in deadlock.
The effect of try/finally is a wonderful thing - and the C# "using" statement makes it delightfully simple for the most common cases.
This is one of the nicer things about C#. How often in Java do we see code such as:
BufferedReader br = null; try { br = new BufferedReader (...); // Do some stuff... } finally { if (br != null) { try { br.close(); } catch (IOException e) { // Never been sure what to put here... // just logging? } } }
The equivalent of this in C# is:
using (BufferedStream bs = new BufferedStream (...)) { // Do stuff }
Basically it's the same thing (can't remember what happens to exceptions during Dispose, admittedly).
Much easier to get right. Means having a common interface for "I've finished with this object", but that's not too hard...
I'm hoping to put together a proper RFE for this at some stage.
Note, however, that not recognising there's a card in slot B when there isn't one in slot A is different to not giving you the choice when you've got a card in both, which is a more likely situation. I'll check out which of my games work with the "cards in both" scenario tonight...
One of the problems with large memory GC cards at the moment is that they're still limited to 128 save files. Presumably the file system such as it is has a fixed size FAT of some kind, which would explain why the MC59 and MC251 are both 5 blocks short of a power of 2 - presumably the FAT is 5 blocks.
Now, the real question is whether that just happens to be how all the memory cards so far have worked (including 3rd party ones with over 1000 blocks) or whether it's something which is hard-coded into the GameCube itself.
One possibility is that it's hard-coded, but the SD adapter comes with a way of selecting which virtual memory card to show to the rest of the Cube, much as some 3rd party PlayStation memory cards did.
It'll be interesting to see how games use large amounts of space though - I'd imagine that few games would wish to alienate those still using MC59/MC251 by storing thousand-block files, for instance... and if games *don't* use it, the SD adapter becomes limited in its use. My MC251 is still only half full, despite a reasonable collection of games.
Well, that actually addresses startup time, which is pretty irrelevant for an SMTP server, I'd have thought. (The general problem is being tackled more thoroughly in a JSR for an isolation API.)
There's no reason why Java shouldn't be fine for this task.
What you really need is generics (as in C++ templates). Java collections are vile, since they suffer from type loss even when used with "real" objects. I'm surprised that didn't come into this top ten; it's a major language deficiency.
The article was about what can't be built on top of Java2. As Java2 (in 1.5) will be getting generics, I'm not surprised this was left out of the article.
I believe there may well be some automatic boxing if you wish to use it, e.g.
List<Integer> x = new List<Integer>(); x.add (5);
but it's all up for debate at the moment of course...
"I would have plausible deniability if someone wanted to attribute something to me," said Ms. Roberts, who lives in Austin, Tex.
In other words, she wants to be able to pretend she didn't say something that she said.
Mr. Fahmawi, the economist, said he envied the ability to be a name in the crowd. "If I had a more generic name, I'd sign petitions with impunity," he said.
Isn't the whole point of signing petitions that you're saying, "I wish to stand up and be counted as having such-and-such an opinion"?
It strikes me that these people are afraid of who they are and what they believe in. If you don't wish your view on a topic to be known, don't sign a petition - but then don't complain that your views aren't being heard. If someone confronts me with an opinion I've expressed on the web somewhere, I'm quite happy to either admit I was wrong and have now changed my mind, or give the reasons why I still hold that opinion.
Absolutely. I draw the reader's attention to the difference between the headline ("Is profiling useless in today's world?") with the text which is *only* talking about native profiling in Linux.
Not everyone, not even all/. readers, just write code which is just compiled to Linux native code.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I can see there being two models of XBox 2 - one with a hard disk (and a *big* one at that), and one without. Developers will be told not to *rely* on the disk, but to include optional extras which use it (much like GBA/GC connectivity).
The big difference between the model with the hard disk and the model without is whether or not you use it as your media centre, not the add-ons in games - the "with hard disk" one could be a PVR, music centre, etc. Basically, I would expect MS to release a version of the XBox 2 which included XP Media Centre (or some variant thereof). Such a device would be great for those who wanted an all in one box, but would be too expensive for those who only wanted games.
Only speculation, but it makes sense to me...
Returning the remote would be interesting - I got it second-hand, as you can't buy new Tivos in the UK any more!
The wretched four-way button at the top is awful. When it's used so much for navigation, they should really have made sure that it always goes the way you want it to go (and the right number of times).
Maybe I'm just unlucky, but the number of times it's registered one of up/down as left/right (or vice versa) or double hit (a problem with some of the other buttons too) is no joke - and I've only had it for a couple of weeks!
This is a UK model, so it may have a different build quality from the US models.
In short, it's *designed* wonderfully, but implemented slightly less so.
Well, consider if you were the party considering taking over the project. Would a bunch of hostile users really encourage you, or might you need a bit more persuading?
Just a thought.
The difference, however, is that there's no need for actual text parsing/validation. That *is* a big difference, IMO, in efficiency. Sure, you still need to have some storage mechanism or other, but I suspect that isn't the major inefficiency in XML.
Jon
The messages aren't in textual XML format, they're in WBXML, which isn't going to require nearly as much work in parsing etc. (Whether you consider WBXML messages to be "fixed binary format" or not is up to you.)
Jon
The Worms3D website (www.worms3d.com) has this on the forums:
.BAT, do not run the WORMS3D.EXE in the BIN folder since this is not how the game runs and it will crash.
<quote>
Please be aware that the English demo was leaked and we therefore didn't expect it to be available at this point and it's based on somewhat older game code. A german demo is also available. We will release an updated English demo (with first person mouselook for instance) shortly.
Since it's now around, here's some advice.
To run the demo, unzip the contents to a folder and then run the RUN.CMD file, if you have an O/S earlier than 2000 then you will need to change this to
There appears to be an issue with the demo on some machines (results in a "cannot read memory" error) and we're now looking into this, which is likely to be a driver/installation problem - we anticipate fixing it shortly and will post more information later today.
For those who are able to run it without problem, we hope you enjoy a very small taste of whats in the full version.
</quote>
Nice to see a company accepting the fact that it's leaked and not instantly jumping up and down in a tantrum: instead, they've tried to help those who are obviously very keen to play the game (including myself) and alerted everyone to possible problems. How refreshing.
The /. summary of this article is very misleading. It says:
<quote>
The legendary Yamauchi is customarily dismissive about Sony's attempts to get into handheld gaming with the PSP ("I don't think [Sony] understand the game business... but software for both machines will be much different, and it would be a mistake to consider them in direct competition."),
<quote>
Actually, Yamauchi isn't dismissive at all, and the [Sony] in the summary is incorrect. It's the *analysts* who don't understand the game business. Here's the actual interview quote:
<quote>
Sony's PSP isn't expected to hit the market until late 2004, and there's still many unknown details about it. There have been analysts who think Nintendo has a monopoly over the handheld market and Sony maybe able to break it - I don't think they understand the game business. New product competition in this industry is important. Although Nintendo's core business is software, having another hardware developer will allow us to judge the superority or inferority of our machine. But software for both machines will be much different, and it would be a mistake to consider them in direct competition.
</quote>
Now, where exactly is he dismissive of Sony? Doesn't he actually accept the possibility that the Nintendo machine will be inferior?
Please use some basic reading comprehension before coming up with summaries like this...
Note that there's a difference between "not online gaming" and "single-player gaming". I mostly bought my console (a GameCube) for party games such as Super Smash Bros Melee - and I still believe that's the most entertaining type of game around (for me) even though I obviously enjoy Metroid Prime, Zelda etc.
Although the exact figures are unknown, it's at the very least widely rumoured that the GameCube has *always* been sold at a profit - and that it can be turned out now for under $50. (I even read a figure of $27, but that sounds a little *too* low...)
I believe the PS2 is now profitable as well, after saving various costs by reducing the number of components (combining things etc).
No idea about the X-Box though - I'd guess it's never been profitable and probably won't be for its entire lifetime (just in terms of hardware, that is).
Having read the other posts, I'm now confused myself. However, I'm pretty sure it's *not* just a case of taking a normal ISO and reversing the order of the bits...
I don't think you understand. It's not that the ISO has the bits backwards, it's that the "groove" is backwards - clockwise instead of anti-clockwise, or vice versa.
I don't know how the Q works - perhaps its drive can spin in both directions?
Absolutely. And it's not just with files, either. Network connections, importantly *database* connections, anything that's likely to have an open resource. Then there's the kind of resource which holds a lock while you've got it open - fail to close one of those, and you'll end up in deadlock.
The effect of try/finally is a wonderful thing - and the C# "using" statement makes it delightfully simple for the most common cases.
This is one of the nicer things about C#. How often in Java do we see code such as:
// Do some stuff...
// Never been sure what to put here...
// just logging?
// Do stuff
BufferedReader br = null;
try
{
br = new BufferedReader (...);
}
finally
{
if (br != null)
{
try
{
br.close();
}
catch (IOException e)
{
}
}
}
The equivalent of this in C# is:
using (BufferedStream bs = new BufferedStream (...))
{
}
Basically it's the same thing (can't remember what happens to exceptions during Dispose, admittedly).
Much easier to get right. Means having a common interface for "I've finished with this object", but that's not too hard...
I'm hoping to put together a proper RFE for this at some stage.
Note, however, that not recognising there's a card in slot B when there isn't one in slot A is different to not giving you the choice when you've got a card in both, which is a more likely situation. I'll check out which of my games work with the "cards in both" scenario tonight...
Which games have you got which only recognise the first slot? I'm pretty sure most of mine recognise both...
Slight correction: wherever the parent article says 128, read 127.
One of the problems with large memory GC cards at the moment is that they're still limited to 128 save files. Presumably the file system such as it is has a fixed size FAT of some kind, which would explain why the MC59 and MC251 are both 5 blocks short of a power of 2 - presumably the FAT is 5 blocks.
Now, the real question is whether that just happens to be how all the memory cards so far have worked (including 3rd party ones with over 1000 blocks) or whether it's something which is hard-coded into the GameCube itself.
One possibility is that it's hard-coded, but the SD adapter comes with a way of selecting which virtual memory card to show to the rest of the Cube, much as some 3rd party PlayStation memory cards did.
It'll be interesting to see how games use large amounts of space though - I'd imagine that few games would wish to alienate those still using MC59/MC251 by storing thousand-block files, for instance... and if games *don't* use it, the SD adapter becomes limited in its use. My MC251 is still only half full, despite a reasonable collection of games.
Where are you getting your exchange rates from? According to the currency converter I usually use it's just over 17 million USD...
Well, that actually addresses startup time, which is pretty irrelevant for an SMTP server, I'd have thought. (The general problem is being tackled more thoroughly in a JSR for an isolation API.)
There's no reason why Java shouldn't be fine for this task.
Jon
The article was about what can't be built on top of Java2. As Java2 (in 1.5) will be getting generics, I'm not surprised this was left out of the article. I believe there may well be some automatic boxing if you wish to use it, e.g.
List<Integer> x = new List<Integer>();
x.add (5);
but it's all up for debate at the moment of course...
Jon
Jon
"I would have plausible deniability if someone wanted to attribute something to me," said Ms. Roberts, who lives in Austin, Tex.
In other words, she wants to be able to pretend she didn't say something that she said.
Mr. Fahmawi, the economist, said he envied the ability to be a name in the crowd. "If I had a more generic name, I'd sign petitions with impunity," he said.
Isn't the whole point of signing petitions that you're saying, "I wish to stand up and be counted as having such-and-such an opinion"?
It strikes me that these people are afraid of who they are and what they believe in. If you don't wish your view on a topic to be known, don't sign a petition - but then don't complain that your views aren't being heard. If someone confronts me with an opinion I've expressed on the web somewhere, I'm quite happy to either admit I was wrong and have now changed my mind, or give the reasons why I still hold that opinion.
Jon
Surely the easiest way of finding out is to visit the website. From the front page:
Directories, renames and file meta-data are versioned.
Commits are truly atomic.
Apache as network server, WebDAV/DeltaV for protocol
Branching and tagging are cheap (constant time) operations.
Natively client/server, layered library design.
Client/server protocol sends diffs in both directions.
Costs are proportional to change size, not data size.
Efficient handling of binary files.
Parseable output.
For more details, see the website.
Jon
Absolutely. I draw the reader's attention to the difference between the headline ("Is profiling useless in today's world?") with the text which is *only* talking about native profiling in Linux.
/. readers, just write code which is just compiled to Linux native code.
Not everyone, not even all
Jon