See Ya'

Looks like I'm going to go quiet for a while, maybe forever. My employer just issued some blogging guidelines that, in my reading anyway, make almost all of what I write here pretty much out of bounds. Here are a few parting thoughts:

--Windows Vista is actually a pretty damn sweet piece of software. My wife, who has a Mac with OS X, keeps hogging my computer so she can try out new features.

--"24" is over-rated, at least for the first season. We're a little more than halfway through and it hasn't totally gripped us like some other shows.

--Like "Lost", which resumed after a 2-month hiatus and shows it can still kick ass. This is the best stuff Carrie-Anne Moss has done since "The Matrix" trilogy.

--Number One Son has a loose tooth, and he is learning to read. Exciting developments, both.

--If you ignored my earlier post on the San Francisco band "Ride the Blinds", repent now and correct your mistake. I saw them live the other night and they blew the club away. Think vintage Stones crossed with a bit of Allman Brothers and even some Skynyrd (minus the whole hokey Southern thing). These guys are really, seriously good. If you want me to send you some tracks, write me at scott.lmnop -- at -- gmail.com.

That's all I got. I'll still be lurking around various comments sections, and I'll be checking the above e-mail occassionally.

Later.

Not That There's Anything Wrong With That...

Was as it as good for you as it was for me, coach? Was it just me or was this one of the gayer Super Bowls in recent memory?

Not only did you have a rather androgynous dude perform at halftime, but he plastered his male/female symbol everywhere.

There was at least one gay-themed ad, with the two guys eating a Snickers from both ends and who end up having their lips meet. Oh, and in the new "Survivor" ad, one guy goes, "I got to be friends with Richard, but not in a homosexual way".

And then there is the above photo, with Tony Dungy gazing into Peyton Manning's eyes. I hope Peyton carried him across the threshold later. I hope he was gentel, too.

Again, as the post is titled, Not That There's Anything Wrong With That!

Stupor Bowl

Well, no surprises here.

--The slick ball and turnovers made it more interesting than it had any right to be.

--The halftime show was maybe the best I've ever seen. I know, I know, that's like saying, "Wow that was the best case of genital warts I've ever had." But I don't even like Prince.

--The commercials were decidedly so-so. My favorite was probably the K-Fed one, followed by the Bud Light one with the face slapping.

--My least favorite was the Fed-Ex one on the moon. It started out promising but the unfunnily grisly ending totally ruined it for me. I guess we should be relieved the guy didn't die a slow death floating out in the hard vacuum of space, but instead got killed by a fiery meteor (why was it on fire, there's no atmosphere on the moon to cause friction)?

Graphics Follow-Up

So after being a tad disappointed with the super-duper high-end Nvidia card I'm trying out, I spoke with some from Nvidia who told me to go ahead and crank all the settings in my games up to their highest levels. That means highest resolution, highest quality shadows, lighting, particle effects, anti-aliasing, etc.

This is basically because these chips are now so goddamned powerful that they take almost all the processing load off the CPU. The CPU is now mainly relegated to crunching triangles and physics, and even those will probably get moved over to the GPU in the next few years.

This graphics chip probably has triple the number of transistors on my main processor. It basically consists of 128 "streaming processors" that act in parallel and each of which can dynamically take up whatever task is being demanded of it at the moment.

Previous GPU designs have basically had pipelines dedicated to certain tasks, and so if you were cruising along in a game and something happened, like a massive explosion that threw up all kinds of particles and debris and shadows and shit, the game might bog down because the part of chip dedicated to those effects would be totally used up and unable to offload anywhere else, even if other parts of the chip were lying idle. But the 8800's "unified architecture" means any part of the chip can handle any processing task that comes its way. Idle transistors are dynamically allocated to pick up the slack.

That's just a geeked out way of saying that it doesn't matter what you throw at this fucker -- it's going to chew through it like a hot-buttered scone and pump out a clean, smooth image.

I fired up "Far Cry" (the spiritual predecessor to "Crysis" mentioned in a previous post) and cranked everything as high as it would go. It ran beautifully. (Note: that picture is not a screenshot taken from my machine. I just pulled it off Gamespot).

The "Hoax" Hoax

It's official: the War on Terror has turned us into a nation of humorless chickenshits. Why do I say this? The Boston "bomb hoax".

At first, the news reports were using vaguely menacing terminology that "electronic devices" had been placed on bridges and other structures around Boston.

I ask, does the "device" at the right look even remotely menacing? Yes, I suppose the funny-looking blob is giving us the finger, but really.

Let's think about what we know about terrorists: when they blow shit up, they like to do it discreetly. This means they plant bombs in trucks or in backpacks stuffed under bus seats, not call attention to them with brightly lit cartoon characters placed in well-travelled areas.

People who intend to surreptitiously blow up lots of other people in sneak attacks also aren't really known for their sense of humor.

Now Boston police have arrested a couple people for planting "hoax" devices. Please. I'm all for vigilance and a measure of seriousness in a time of war, but it was clear this harmless stunt was about as far away from a terrorist threat as skywriting.

California Dim Bulb

Ah, life in the great People's Republic...

No, not of China, of California.

Having banned smoking in bars and driving with cell phones, and having recently proposed to ban spanking (of children, presumably not of adults), a Golden State lawmaker wants to ban incandescent light bulbs within 5 years.

Despite the fact that the quality of light new flourescent bulbs is inferior to traditional bulbs and that they cost quite a bit more, their use is spreading rapidly. Like hybrid vehicles. Do we really need a politician to tell us what kind of light bulbs we can use in our homes and businesses?

How would they enforce this? Light bulb police? Border checks to make sure you're not bringing in contraband bulbs?

C'mon, this is just basic market principles. Let businesses come up with softer, warmer lights and bring the price down, and people will naturally start to use them. A great way to stop innovation in lighting is to mandate what people have to use. Once your consumers are locked in, there's no incentive to improve.

LED bulbs are probably the future anyway.

Fat Cheating Bastards

If any of you read the book Freakonomics, you'll doubtless remember their analysis of sumo matches in Japan and how statistical analysis showed that rigging matches was a rather common phenomenon.

Now there is an interesting post over at the Freakonomics blog, talking about how the authors had expected a Japanese media frenzy over their conclusions. To their surprise, Japanese media have largely taken a pass on the story, except for cases that involve foreigners. There is a sensible rejoinder to this interpretation in the comments.

The situation reminds of a case in China a couple years ago. As usual, China was drawing heavy fire for its unwillingness to crack down on pirated movies, software, etc. Finally the Chinese government issued a detailed judicial ruling spelling out stiff fines and other penalties for trafficking in counterfeit goods. A short time later, Chinese authorities triumphantly announced their first arrests under the new legal guidelines -- a pair of Americans.

Hey, you said you wanted us to get tough on piracy, right?

Cool Globe

Here is a cool 3D globe showing economic activity. This would be a great concept to apply to Google Earth. Mash it up with the CIA Factbook or Zillow or some other online repository of lots of awesome data.

It would also be a cool thing to work into strategy video games. Instead of having to peer at sheets of statistics concerning your cities, civilizations, or troops, show it with 3D visuals. Want to know which city is producing the most, or consuming the most resources? Done. Want to see troop levels? Done.

Graphics Smackdown

Since I had a $600 graphics card just sitting around, I figured I might as well install it. This morning I took my PC and the card to a local computer repair and supply shop.

I had previously tried to install it myself, and failed because due to the card's bulk I couldn't figure out how to line up the output jacks with the port in the back of the PC casing.

Turns out I was just being a complete idiot. All I need to do was remove the metal covering of the port below the one I was trying to use. The card is so bulky it basically takes up two slots. It uses one port for the output jacks and the other port is for the exhaust from the heat sink/fan.

But it was worth it because the guy also hooked up an old hard drive (turns out I needed an extra cable I didn't have) and de-fucked up a DVD-RW drive I installed about a month ago. For this he asked a grand total of $35. Money well spent, in my view.

So how does the card stack up? Well, I'm proud to say I had the foresight to download and run a gaming benchmark utility called AquaMark before I removed the old card. I then ran it on the new card as well.

Unfortunately, the free version of AquaMark just runs a basic test with set paramaters: resolution set to 1028x768, anti-aliasing off and details set to "very high". My PC has an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ running at 2.0 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, and Windows XP. The old card is an Asus sporting an Nvidia 6800.

AquaMark runs a series of short clips rendered with a game-style engine. It then keeps tracks of your frames per second for each section, and produces three numbers at the end: one for the GPU, one for the CPU, and one for the system.

My old card cranked out 15.4 million triangles per second with an average 51.2 frames per second. It performed worst in "large scale vegetation rendering", which bogged the framerate down to less than 28 per second. It did poorly in "massive overdraw", in which a single large explosion dominated the screen, and in "high particle count" rendering smoke effects. Both those sections were under 40 fps. Its highest score was in "dynamic occlusion culling", which as far as I can make out, measures how well it renders a large scene with multiple moving objects. My old card scored 85 fps here.

In the end, AquaMark gave my GPU a score of 7,560, the CPU got 7,942, and the system total was 51,226. The numbers themselves don't mean anything to me except as something to compare the new card to.

Ah, the new card. I can hear it now, whirring away inside my case. I like to think of my PC as the SRT-4 of the computer world: pretty bland from the outside, but with a slammin' turbocharged motor under the hood waiting to kick in.

When I ran AquaMark again, my machine generated a whopping 23.1 million triangles per second, fully 50 percent more than before. The average framerate was 76.8 per second, again a gain of about half.

On that "large scale vegetation" test, it clocked in at nearly 77 fps, "high particle count" was 72 fps, and "massive overdraw" was 66 fps. So performance was basically doubled in the most intensive categories.

The final scores were 14,235 for the GPU, 8,340 for the CPU, and 76,807 for the whole system.

So there were significant improvements in the benchmarks. But how does it perform in the real world? Here things get a bit murkier. I fired up three games: "Doom 3", "Far Cry" and "Company of Heroes".

In "Doom 3", the game adjusted my default graphics settings to "high" instead of "medium" as previously. The game ran in 1028x768, but anti-aliasing (which gets rid of jaggies) was turned off. To be honest, I couldn't see much difference though the game may have ran more smoothly than I remember it being before.

On "Far Cry", the game said my machine specs were "very high", but it put most of the advanced graphics (textures, particle count, shadows, lighting quality, etc) settings to "medium". It ran smoothly with those settings, then I cranked most of them up to "high" and replayed the same area. I didn't notice any difference in picture quality but the framerate got a bit choppy.

Finally, I ran "Company of Heroes", a WWII strategy game with detailed graphics, destructible environments and lots of moving parts. Here I went straight for the juggler and set everything on "high" except for physics and anti-aliasing. Sure enough, the game looked fantastic. Everything was crisp and detailed. And then I tried to move stuff. Everything just bogged down and stuttered. Things got a little smoother after a minute or two but it was not a pleasant gaming experience.

Sadly, it was clear that although I now have the best graphics card on the market, my system is now limited by the CPU. When I bought the PC in late 2005, it was essentially the best mainstream processor you could get. Stepping up a notch would have meant shelling out an extra $500-$1000 for an overpriced gaming processor. When buying a PC, I always devote more dollars in the budget to the CPU since everything else (RAM, storage, GPU) is easily upgradeable. My current system is like having a car with a 400-horsepower, turbocharged engine, but a stock tranny and narrow little street tires. Lotsa power (rendering ability), but no way to get it to the road (screen).

There are two rays of hope for better future performance. One is to put in another gig of RAM. The other is that most games coming out this year will be optimized to take advantage of dual-core processors. It's taken a while for developers to learn to tap the multi-core technology. Hopefully games like "Crysis" and "Supreme Commander" will make better use of system resources.

Oh, there's one more reason that things could get better. DirectX 10, the Microsoft graphics technology game developers write to when making games for Windows, comes out in Windows Vista. Although early reviews say Vista is a bit of a pain in the butt and doesn't necessarily deliver performance advantages on existing games, those DirectX 10 ones coming out soon should really scream.

But in the end, I don't know if I can say that this graphics card is worth $600, unless you already have a super high-end PC that results in a lot of synergies.

Xbox Weakness?

It looks like Xbox 360 sales may not be as robust as Microsoft had hoped. This has to be especially worrying in light of expectations that the sky-high price tag on the PS3 would drive more people to buy a cheaper and better-supported 360.

I would guess that the Wii is taking more of a toll than Microsoft expected. They just didn't see it coming: who would have thought that a $250, low-rez toy would trouce two powerful, hi-def machines? And it probably throws a wet towel over anticipation of some sort of "Wii60" phenomenon, where the Wii is so cheap that people can afford to buy both it and a 360.

It might also be the case that Microsoft has extra inventory now because they shipped a ton of extra boxes to meet their target of having "sold" 10 million units by the end of the year. "Sold" here meaning, shipped to retailers, not necessarily bought by an actual consumer.

What I find really interesting, and almost completely unnoticed so far, is the continued strength of the PS2. Sony is still moving gobs of those boxes. Even in Japan, the PS3 is only barely outselling the PS2.

San Jose Mercury News reporter Dean Takahashi wrote recently about "good enough", the idea that once a new technology reaches a certain level of sophistication, it become good enough for the majority of consumers, who don't see the need to spend more on marginally better technologies. He wrote that in the context of the Wii, but I wonder if it's just as applicable to the PS2.

I wonder if Microsoft regrets its decision to stop production of the original Xbox. Their reasoning was that they wanted to put all their marketing muscle and dollars behind the new product. But what if they had kept Xbox on the market for $120 or so? Maybe a lot of people who don't have the bucks to spring for a 360 would have opted to pick one up, which might increase their chances of buying a 360 in a couple years. It might also have provided a little cash flow to Microsoft's entertainment group, which is still losing money.

Weirdos

Who are these guys at the right? No, not the Mitchieville city council. These are some real weirdos.

A 29-year-old convicted sex offender from Oklahoma allegedly conned two Arizona men into believing he was a 12-year-old boy, moving into their home and having an ongoing sexual relationship with them, sheriff's officials in Yavapai County said Friday.

They were caught when the guy posing as a pre-pubescent boy tried to enroll at a local school. The guys he was living with were understandably pissed when the police showed up.

"They were very upset when the detectives told them they had been having a sexual relationship with a 29-year-old man and not a pre-teen boy," [sheriff's office spokeswoman Susan] Quayle said, referring to the two men.

Oh, the name of the old dude in the photo? Lonnie Stiffler. Although it looks like the guys, who had prior sex convictions, will be charged with failing to register as sex offenders, the cops say they can't get them on any molestation charges because, after all, the "kid" the were diddling was actually 29 years old.

Yuck. I gotta go take a shower after writing this post.

Hold On A Sec, Honey, I'm Almost Finished With This Level

I fired up the Xbox 360 tonight and saw to my surprise that I had a text message waiting for me from an old friend, SmallAngryMan. I hadn't heard from SAM in months, nor seen him on Xbox Live, so I wondered what was up. Here is the content of his message in full:

"[my wife] is giving birth imminently. probably explains why i'm on xbox. hope ur well".

How awesome is that? His wife is in labor and he signs on to get a little "Splinter Cell: Double Agent" action in before things get messy.

I have to say here that my own wife/gaming record is pretty good. Number One Son was born a week before the original Xbox went on sale, and I got my hands on an early release of the hardware two days after we got home from the hospital. I tell you, "Halo" and "NFL 2K2" were awesome late-night companions when I had to get up for late-night feedings or what have you.