alanschu

My roommate has convinced me to pick this game up again. Though I won't be able to play it for a few days though because of school responsibilities. The expansion sounds neat. I kind of hope it's "free" though I doubt it. There is a subscription fee that we pay, and it kind of sucks to segregatte the game members by only having some people be able to go certain places.

That move was phenomenal all right.

The more I think about it the more I hate the idea of having different models of the same console brand. The big thing about the consoles has always been the standardized equipment. The thing I hate most about PC games is that games are often designed for the lowest (or at least lower) common denominators. It's not quite as bad now (which I anticipated with the release of the XBox), but it's still kind of irritating to see potential get wasted. I guess it's a blessing in disguise too, as it means cards are good for longer than 6 months :D

It's mostly just a tech demo from what I understand. I believe Aftermath will use the same tech so you'll get an idea about whether or not your computer will support it well.

I don't mind the shootout either. I've only seen one myself (in the regular season).

In an effort to keep my GPA high and to provide something for my Christmas list to my parents, I am asking for it for Christmas.

I doubt the teams/players would have ever agreed to endless overtimes during the regular season. Also, I think part of the multiple overtimes being exciting is that during the playoffs, each game has a more tangible meaning and impact. In the regular season, particularly at the beginning, it's tough to get fired up over two points that seem much more inconsequential.

Seems the progression for "liar" to "coward" is complete.

Then I'm surprised you enjoyed Half-Life as well. I didn't find there to be much for the stuff that you want in that game either.

Backwards compatibility is not much of a selling point for me. I certainly don't make purchasing decisions for games that may interest me because it may or may not be supported via backwards compatibility. If this was the case, I'd never buy any games, as all hardware is eventually outdated. My Ultima 7 games don't particularly like the faster computers (though the people at Exult made it possible). I love Police Quest 3, but the driving scenes require me to use MoSlow programs that don't seem to work very well. Though for the most part, once I've played the crap out of a game, I don't particularly feel like playing it a whole lot anyways. No urges to play the original Civilization, Super Mario 3, or NHL '94. Backwards compatibility is a nice convenience factor, but if I really want to play a PSX game, I can just pull it out of the closet and hook it up in a few minutes. When I'm done, I'll put it back. I don't have that urge too often though.

Meh, whatever. No biggie. There was some good things in the Oilers game at least....but hopefully we can get it going soon.

The "Emotion Engine" was not the (figuratively speaking) graphics chip. The graphics chip on the Playstation 2 was very much like the TNT2s, the Voodoo3s, etc. It took care of the graphics responsibilities such as the rendering of the screen. The CPU's graphical responsibilities was the polygon transformation and lighting effects (in particular). Every texture was rendered and applied on the Graphics Synthesizer for the Playstation 2. It's as much of a "GPU" as the TNT2/Voodoo/Rage128 etcetera was. Supposing all of the graphics calculations truly were done by the CPU, why did the Graphics Synthesizer exist? What purpose did it have? Also, the "Emotion Engine" IS the Playstation 2 CPU. It's not "part of" it. It was just a marketting term that Sony created for the chip. It consists of the R5900 MIPS processor, in addition to it's FPU co-processor and two vector units. The Emotion Engine was the amalgamation of all those processors.

The same thing that the initial Cell design was going to be. An onboard, "GPU-like" arcitecture that was part of the CPU. The PS1 and the PS2 did not have an actual GPU like the Gamecube, Xbox, X360, or PS3. Disagree again, so you continue your streak of disagreement out of spite, rather than knowledge. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I think you're getting too caught up in the industry buzzwords (aka "GPU"). You stated the following: That statement is not correct. I was hoping you were going to clarify the statement with respect to hardware T&L or something. Instead you chose to insult me. The R5900 did not do all of the graphics calculations. Much like ALL of the video cards prior to the original GeForce chipset, that chip's responsibilities was rendering of the screen. At the time, this was still a humongous performance increase over the CPU doing all the calculations. At the time, T&L chipsets (aka the GeForce) actually had a performance penalty compared to letting the CPU take care of the T&L responsibilities. This was demonstrated by numerable tests in the late 1999s, showing that it was better to use the GeForce as a "standard" video card, rather than enabling Hardware T&L (assuming you had a fast processor, preferably with SSE). Thing is, most people who purchased GeForce cards were getting the high speed Pentiums (during the race to 1 GHz, new ones were coming out almost weekly). I know that the GPU of the PS2 did not support hardware T&L, but it was still a hardware solution for graphics. And it was not part of the CPU. To say that the CPU did all of the graphics calculations is incorrect. And I am not disagreeing out of spite either. It's not an opinion. I'm pointing out the mistakes you made.

The PS1 had a different GPU chipset than the PS2 (I'm pretty positive )....they didn't seem to have too much of a problem. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Neither the PS1 or the PS2 had an actual GPU, all graphics calculations were done via the CPU. So having backwards compatibility was easy between the two machines, since they were essentially the same chipsets, with higher clock speeds and more RAM. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What's that 150 MHz, 16-pixel pipeline, with the 2560-bit interface to it's memory, "Graphics Synthesizer" used for? As for the processors, I'm not familiar enough with the R5900 compared to the R3000 (though I did find it kind of funny that the R3000 was used for the I/O for the PS2).

It turns many players into the superstars they become. Like Mark Messier. I figured since you claimed to be a fan, you'd actually know something about him. For the rest of your post, it's clear you have no understanding about the psychology of sports. Nor do you have any inkling about how contracts work in the NHL. Or sports in general. Have a nice day.

Free is never bad.

No predictions. Hopefully a win, and if it's a loss, it better not be because of poor play on our part Oh, one more thing to mention regarding the "demotion" earlier. It certainly didn't seem to hurt Mark Messier's career :D

You can't 'fire' an NHL player. At best you can put him on waivers, but if no one picks him up, you still have to pay his contract. At best you can negotiate a contract buyout, but those can only be done at the beginning of the season, and from now on will still count against your salary cap. Furthermore, he hasn't been "sent down" to the minors. He's been put on a "conditioning stint." Conditioning stints are for a maximum of 2 weeks, and require the consent of the player. In other words, Ty Conklin had to agree with the decision. It wasn't the organization "demoting him." Yet again, you cannot compare professional sports with a standard job. The reason why he wasn't put outright onto waivers is because the team is NOT giving up on him. They are trying to put him in situations where he can regain his confidence, because he's clearly shaken by his performance thus far in the season. The Edmonton Oilers organization has not given up on Ty Conklin. Otherwise he'd be tossed onto waivers.

"Back then?" I have been seeing 3.5" hard drives for at least 5 years though (when I started building my own machines. I know that the drives used to be really big, but I've never heard of them approaching 500 GB. At any size. I remember when Quantum had a 36 GB SCSI 5.25" drive and it was huuuuuuge in 1999. I know DEC had a hard drive that was in two big cases when my Dad worked for them in the early 80s....took up half the room, with 16 discs in each. It held about 20 MB. Just because the Hard Drives were much bigger back then (when is "back then" anyways?), doesn't mean they were holding 500 GB of information. The density of sectors on the platters is what's pushing up the drive. I mean, the 3.5" floppy held more information than the 5.25" floppy. The earliest I had seen for a 500 GB drive was LaCie's external 5.25" drive, in the early part of 2004. Though I had heard nothing but bad things about their reliability, and the $1000 price tag didn't exactly fill me with warm fuzzies. Did your Hard Drive have a fan Shadow? Because I know those things were VERY hot.

Being outshot 24-6 in that period, I couldn't bring myself for blaming Belfour for any goals against in that period.

Yeah. The previous 500 GBs were SCSI and Firewire.....maybe USB.

woohoo! Watch the GPA plummet!

Hehe, never underestimate an eye injury. Tough to play when you cannot see. It's why people figured Berard was done. I still can't believe how many people had written off Belfour at the beginning of the season. 49 saves, including 24 in a single period. Give him the game ball for that one.

Oooo, that's news to me. I figured they'd do something though. This next game is big, and I'd say probably the defining moment for the team. If they bounce back after things finally all went to crap and play a convincing game and win on Tuesday, I'm still optimistic that things will turn out pretty good. Otherwise, it could be a long season.