Topic: PC Games/Hardware/Microsoft

Here's an interesting theory on why Microsoft's kernel isn't updated as often as the Linux kernel family is:

See, component owners are generally openly hostile to outside patches: if you're a dev, accepting an outside patch makes your lead angry (due to the need to maintain this patch and to justify in in shiproom the unplanned design change), makes test angry (because test is on the hook for making sure the change doesn't break anything, and you just made work for them), and PM is angry (due to the schedule implications of code churn). There's just no incentive to accept changes from outside your own team. You can always find a reason to say "no", and you have very little incentive to say "yes".

There's also little incentive to create changes in the first place. On linux-kernel, if you improve the performance of directory traversal by a consistent 5%, you're praised and thanked. Here, if you do that and you're not on the object manager team, then even if you do get your code past the Ob owners and into the tree, your own management doesn't care.

Now, this might be inherent to business - after all, Linux doesn't have companies demanding that patches don't break their entire business model.

This is just too juicy an analogy not to explore.

But maybe Microsoft can turn it around, if the analogy works. And if they don't insult customers further by trying to force us into "what they think we want" rather than giving us what we actually want.

Word from the sales arena isn't good - Windows 8 is apparently responsible for a massive drop in PC sales.

The problem? Touchscreens are not just inwieldy in a desk environment, they add to costs of a PC.

All signs so far point to Windows 8 being a flop.

"Unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only didn't provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market," IDC Vice President Bob O'Donnell said.

The newest version of Windows is designed to work well with touch-sensitive screens, but the displays add to the cost of a PC. Together, the changes and higher prices "have made PCs a less attractive alternative to dedicated tablets and other competitive devices," O'Donnell said.

The Pentium chip is now officially 20 years old.

Amazing how long it took Intel to jettison that brand name in favor of "Core."

Well, so much for SimCity 5 being an option to play.

The online requirement for a single-player game is killing it.

Just say no to EA and online-tied games.

I have nothing to say other than you have got to see this.

First time I've ever seen the term "metric duckload" used to describe tape and glue.

THQ is no more. Gone. So dead, in fact, that the internet now has the letter the CEO sent to the employees.

I remember them as the purveyor of almost universally mediocre WWF Wrestling games, but hey, they did have some other good properties in the past. It'll be interesting to see where the game properties and THQ staffers go from here.

Reason.com has an incredibly astute article on how many things went horribly wrong with 38 Studios and the crony capitalism that bankrolled it.

Worth a read, all around.

Here's an interesting article about the old MPC spec and what a modern version might look like.

One of the main reasons people don't game on their PCs is because their graphics card is often more anemic than Kate Moss on a diet—and all hail Cthulhu if the processor doesn't play second fiddle to that. It's pretty hard to get excited about games when they run like molasses.

Old enough to remember computing in the 90s? That time when most computers only produced strings of beeps as sound, when 640x480 was a good new year's resolution (that pun is as old as SVGA, so I'm entitled to it), and when having an optical drive was a lustful pecadillo. Things we take for granted today, like spoken word and videos, were rare and exotic attractions. When technology advanced, the industry came up with a certification specification to ensure punters didn't miss out—and consequently spent more on better PCs. That spec was called MPC, short for Multimedia Personal Computer. The first version of the MPC spec said, in simple terms:

Thy computer shalt be blessed with a sound card and speakers.
Thou shalt be provided a CD-ROM drive in which to receive silver discs.
Thy processor shalt not be completely crap.

In order to do this, we have to get Intel's graphics card division discontinued. Good luck with that.

AMD's expanding their offerings - they've licensed an ARM chip design to be on the shelves in 2014.

AMD hopes to distinguish itself with two SeaMicro technologies -- a custom chip that integrates many components from a traditional server board onto one chip, allowing for dense server designs; and its Freedom Fabric, which can connect thousands of servers in a cluster with low latency and at relatively low cost.

"The fabric technology is the secret sauce; this is what will make AMD's server solution different from other vendors," Su said.

Intel has said it won't make ARM-based processors, in part because it doesn't want to pay ARM a royalty on each chip. But it has been working hard to reduce the power consumption of its own server chips and said it is confident of its technology roadmap.

Let the new server wars begin!