ok, check it out.. the media is abuzz with next-gen hd media being cracked. the content providers know damn well the physical limitations of drm schemes.. so now you have AMD, a company who's market share is more than just slip sliding away, making a desperate bid to gain the good graces of our media overlords by allowing drm to be even more hard-coded into PCs. AMD arent stupid.. they know that if they want to hold on to their slice of the pie, they need a niche, and they need to hold onto that niche. the current generation of amd cpus no longer offer top-shelf computing power at bottom-shelf prices, so they are being smart and dynamic and adjusting their business model to cater to another crowd. what does this mean for Joe Consumer? simply that his Dell media center PC is going to have AMD under the hood instead of a core 2. really, thats about it.. (well, other than he payed $600 more than it's worth, and it came pre-loaded with bloatware.) i know DRM is an issue/. folks like to get all worked up about, but this doesnt mean AMD is going to sneak into your house at night and wreck up the joint..
"Linux has its uses, and they are many. Gaming is not currently among them, and this hack (yeah, I went there; Cedega is a hack, nothing more) is not the solution to bring Linux gaming into the mainstream." i really disagree with that statement. i think Cedega is, in fact, a great step towards bringing linux gaming into the mainstream. let me extrapolate.. the reason cedega is significant is because there are users willing to pay money to a subscription service that is specifically geared towards gamers who's preferred OS is *nix. in other words, there is a number of people purchasing a product for the express purpose of playing video games under the *nix OS's. The reason i think that is significant is because in order for a subscription-based service like cedega to work, there has to be not only a user base, but a fairly dedicated user base. that is to say, people who keep their subscriptions to cedega are most likely not someone who plays games under *nix sporadically, but rather people who play often, and are interested in playing newer games. i say they are probably interested in playing newer games because if you just play counter-strike or whatever your game of choice is, then you would probably just configure wine to run that one game, rather than buy a subscription to a service that tries to keep up-to-date on the newer stuff. the bottom line? cedega proves there is a market for games under *nix. basically, if a market exists, companies will step in to make money off of that market. if Cedega subscriptions suddenly skyrocketed, i bet you would eventually see large game publishers releasing native linux ports of games. sure, progress is slow, and the market is tiny, but with with time is it really insane to think that this small market will become statistically significant to large companies?
nevermind, i read an article about it. apparently one of the mechanics was a chronic masterbater and smeared some vasoline on the engine. that's against the rules, i guess.
haha! im going to go read about it right now, but as of this moment i have no idea how someone can cheat at an activity that involves going really fast in a big circle for a bunch of laps. "wait a minute, that's not really an impala, that's not an impala at all! somethings not right here!"
i am not a physicist, but i'm pretty sure that the laws of mathematics work flawlessly as you work backwards in time untill you hit the singularity. theres a theory called 'm theory' that has a pretty neat sounding explanation for the singularity. as i understand it, m theory states that there are an infinite number of universes that exist within a multiverse. the universes inside the multiverse are sort of amoeba looking membranes kinda floating around, and the edges of these membranes can, and do, collide with one another, creating off chute universes. again, i am not a physicist, and im not sure if im grasping the concept correctly, but it sounds to me like a plausible explanation for the big bang. as i understand it, each of these universes that make up the multiverse each have different laws of physics, so in m theory, our laws of physics would have been created by the collision and combination of those two sets of laws that ruled the universes that clashed to create ours. i apologize to any physicists reading this that want to bash my head against a wall for butchering their elegant theories, and i admit that i really dont know enough about the subject to even open my mouth, but since we are debating something that will likely never be resolved, i thought i'd throw my wild conjectures out there too.
imo, the problem lies in tradition. for the record, i was raised christian, and i was made to go to church until i was old enough to debate to no end the flaws of religion. my mother eventually just decided that i was not going to accept it, and let me stay home when she went to church. now, don't get me wrong, i DO think that spirituality is a good thing. in fact, i think it's spirituality that most christians lack. imo, religion takes a good thing--spirituality--and perverts it into a system of control. if one were to look back at history and the socio-economical clime of the times in which religion was most prevalent, i think one would find a direct correlation between the need for controlling mass populations and the persistence of religion. this being said, i think that the first part of the new testament; mathew, mark, luke, and john, are an excellent story that one should read, and understand the concepts of. however, like most fairy tales, it should not be taken literally. science may be able to prove or disprove a great many things, but that is not to say that one should not embrace spirituality as a basic motivation. i do what i feel is right, despite what cold, hard logic would lead me to believe. i.e. family comes before work, school, or anything else, even if it isnt necessarily a good idea in terms of convenience or economics. i guess what i'm trying to say is that zealots are bad, no matter what side they are on.
you mean two ugly, desperate people will go on the internet and lie to each other in a desperate attempt to get sex? now, you've got to be pulling my chain.
or, how about an example of the exact opposite? like the wii. i guess the fact that its selling like hotcakes means no ones willing to spend money on it since it's new and unproven. i guess the ps3 is selling so well because of it's a member of a series.. oh wait.. its not selling, i forgot.
i think the more appropriate question is why would someone take the time to review every scene in a game like Spore, just to give it a rating that no one will pay attention to? isnt the problem with the current esrb rating system that no one pays any attention to it whatsoever? as far as i can tell, games are rated quite appropriately.
well, if you want to get techical..
Wikipedia != Fact
but seriously.. it seems whenever some new material is concocted, they use misleading terminology to try and hype it up. although i may just find it confusing, because i'm a layman.
all that aside, i'm always excited about these types of breakthroughs.. the possible applications of new materials is really limitless and as a student of mechanical engineering, i'm sure i'll get to discuss this tomorrow in class.
cheers
-rob
ok, i was mistakenly referring to it as "DRM" when it's actually called "content protection."
and vista does not disable spdif passthru, since apparently some users report Media Center can use spdif. however, if you can get spdif to work with Power DVD or even Media Player, i'd love to hear your workaround.. so far no one i've talked to has had any luck whatsoever. The sound card in question is an X-fi card. i've tried the official vista driver, as well as the modded driver. The soundcard i prefer to use, and the one i use in XP and Linux is an M-Audio Delta 66. M-Audio does not have vista drivers out, and tech support told me over the phone that vista drivers will not be available for "some time." i joined the e-mail notification list and was told i would receive an e-mail when drivers are available. As a side-note, i have found no official word on the matter, but the vibe from Digidesign seems to be that there is no current plans to support a Vista flavor of Pro Tools. Considering when OS X came out, Digidesign had a compatable product ready to ship, methinks it a bit strange that they have apparently avoided Vista, and seem content to continue doing so. If digidesign stays away from vista alltogether, it's significant. that would be like autodesk deciding to not develop autocad for Vista. if it turns out to be true, there has to be a real rock solid reason behind it.
"Avoiding DRM in Vista is really, really easy (which is presumably why so many Microsoft haters are FUDing their hearts out trying to make it appear complex): if you don't use DRM encumbered media, you will never even know DRM exist"
well, i guess i'll paraphrase my previous post, since you didnt read it. vista does not allow you to use lossless high-quality audio passthru like spdif of digital. this does not have ANYTHING to do with media, let alone "DRM encumbered media." this is a case of hardware being crippled at an OS level to prevent DRM circumvention.
i wrote a song for you to explain the whole thing called "FUD me? FUD you!" but i must have saved the raw audio file as "DRM encumbered" because vista wont let me play that thru spdif either.
I think Microsoft has really shot themselves in the foot with Vista's DRM scam. Audiophiles and/or musicians who have a small PC-based home recording setup will be real pissed when they realize that their brand new $400 sound card with S/PDIF and Digital i/o is crippled thanks to the Vista DRM nightmare. Vista takes the liberty of "downgrading" unsigned sound signals going into or out of the PC. (sorry, no link) This basically means that the ever-growing market of home recording enthusiasts will be SOL unless they stick with XP. as legacy support for XP runs out, i think you'll see a migration en mass to Apple hardware.
I recently spoke to an engineer/producer who has a mid-sized pro studio. i asked him about his stance on Vista, and he sort of chuckled and replied "We're an Apple shop now." Pro's won't wait to see how it pans out.. they will go with what works, and more importantly, what Pro Tools works on.
Linux has never really been an option as a pro audio solution for small studios, but along with all the advances with oss, alsa, jackd, and many other fine audio tools, linux-as-an-audio-studio is actually a better solution than Vista.
*disclaimer: i run a linux-based PC recording setup currently, and i love it, but let's face it.. linux is not a multimedia editing OS.
just my 2 cents.. Vista's broken, and it's by design. Am i the only one who's pissed off by this? i know there's gotta be a lot of audiophiles on/.
-robbie
Slashdot Mirror
ok, check it out.. the media is abuzz with next-gen hd media being cracked. the content providers know damn well the physical limitations of drm schemes.. so now you have AMD, a company who's market share is more than just slip sliding away, making a desperate bid to gain the good graces of our media overlords by allowing drm to be even more hard-coded into PCs. AMD arent stupid.. they know that if they want to hold on to their slice of the pie, they need a niche, and they need to hold onto that niche. the current generation of amd cpus no longer offer top-shelf computing power at bottom-shelf prices, so they are being smart and dynamic and adjusting their business model to cater to another crowd. what does this mean for Joe Consumer? simply that his Dell media center PC is going to have AMD under the hood instead of a core 2. really, thats about it.. (well, other than he payed $600 more than it's worth, and it came pre-loaded with bloatware.) i know DRM is an issue /. folks like to get all worked up about, but this doesnt mean AMD is going to sneak into your house at night and wreck up the joint..
"Linux has its uses, and they are many. Gaming is not currently among them, and this hack (yeah, I went there; Cedega is a hack, nothing more) is not the solution to bring Linux gaming into the mainstream." i really disagree with that statement. i think Cedega is, in fact, a great step towards bringing linux gaming into the mainstream. let me extrapolate.. the reason cedega is significant is because there are users willing to pay money to a subscription service that is specifically geared towards gamers who's preferred OS is *nix. in other words, there is a number of people purchasing a product for the express purpose of playing video games under the *nix OS's. The reason i think that is significant is because in order for a subscription-based service like cedega to work, there has to be not only a user base, but a fairly dedicated user base. that is to say, people who keep their subscriptions to cedega are most likely not someone who plays games under *nix sporadically, but rather people who play often, and are interested in playing newer games. i say they are probably interested in playing newer games because if you just play counter-strike or whatever your game of choice is, then you would probably just configure wine to run that one game, rather than buy a subscription to a service that tries to keep up-to-date on the newer stuff. the bottom line? cedega proves there is a market for games under *nix. basically, if a market exists, companies will step in to make money off of that market. if Cedega subscriptions suddenly skyrocketed, i bet you would eventually see large game publishers releasing native linux ports of games. sure, progress is slow, and the market is tiny, but with with time is it really insane to think that this small market will become statistically significant to large companies?
i hope this wont fuck up my preorder of duke nukem forever!
nevermind, i read an article about it. apparently one of the mechanics was a chronic masterbater and smeared some vasoline on the engine. that's against the rules, i guess.
haha! im going to go read about it right now, but as of this moment i have no idea how someone can cheat at an activity that involves going really fast in a big circle for a bunch of laps. "wait a minute, that's not really an impala, that's not an impala at all! somethings not right here!"
wtf is the nascar scandal? im not saying this to prove a point, i really have no idea what you are talking about.
i am not a physicist, but i'm pretty sure that the laws of mathematics work flawlessly as you work backwards in time untill you hit the singularity. theres a theory called 'm theory' that has a pretty neat sounding explanation for the singularity. as i understand it, m theory states that there are an infinite number of universes that exist within a multiverse. the universes inside the multiverse are sort of amoeba looking membranes kinda floating around, and the edges of these membranes can, and do, collide with one another, creating off chute universes. again, i am not a physicist, and im not sure if im grasping the concept correctly, but it sounds to me like a plausible explanation for the big bang. as i understand it, each of these universes that make up the multiverse each have different laws of physics, so in m theory, our laws of physics would have been created by the collision and combination of those two sets of laws that ruled the universes that clashed to create ours. i apologize to any physicists reading this that want to bash my head against a wall for butchering their elegant theories, and i admit that i really dont know enough about the subject to even open my mouth, but since we are debating something that will likely never be resolved, i thought i'd throw my wild conjectures out there too.
imo, the problem lies in tradition. for the record, i was raised christian, and i was made to go to church until i was old enough to debate to no end the flaws of religion. my mother eventually just decided that i was not going to accept it, and let me stay home when she went to church. now, don't get me wrong, i DO think that spirituality is a good thing. in fact, i think it's spirituality that most christians lack. imo, religion takes a good thing--spirituality--and perverts it into a system of control. if one were to look back at history and the socio-economical clime of the times in which religion was most prevalent, i think one would find a direct correlation between the need for controlling mass populations and the persistence of religion. this being said, i think that the first part of the new testament; mathew, mark, luke, and john, are an excellent story that one should read, and understand the concepts of. however, like most fairy tales, it should not be taken literally. science may be able to prove or disprove a great many things, but that is not to say that one should not embrace spirituality as a basic motivation. i do what i feel is right, despite what cold, hard logic would lead me to believe. i.e. family comes before work, school, or anything else, even if it isnt necessarily a good idea in terms of convenience or economics. i guess what i'm trying to say is that zealots are bad, no matter what side they are on.
you mean two ugly, desperate people will go on the internet and lie to each other in a desperate attempt to get sex? now, you've got to be pulling my chain.
oh, sorry about that, that was actually an artist's rendering of the security in window's vista.
or, how about an example of the exact opposite? like the wii. i guess the fact that its selling like hotcakes means no ones willing to spend money on it since it's new and unproven. i guess the ps3 is selling so well because of it's a member of a series.. oh wait.. its not selling, i forgot.
i think the more appropriate question is why would someone take the time to review every scene in a game like Spore, just to give it a rating that no one will pay attention to? isnt the problem with the current esrb rating system that no one pays any attention to it whatsoever? as far as i can tell, games are rated quite appropriately.
well, if you want to get techical.. Wikipedia != Fact but seriously.. it seems whenever some new material is concocted, they use misleading terminology to try and hype it up. although i may just find it confusing, because i'm a layman. all that aside, i'm always excited about these types of breakthroughs.. the possible applications of new materials is really limitless and as a student of mechanical engineering, i'm sure i'll get to discuss this tomorrow in class. cheers -rob
ok, i was mistakenly referring to it as "DRM" when it's actually called "content protection." and vista does not disable spdif passthru, since apparently some users report Media Center can use spdif. however, if you can get spdif to work with Power DVD or even Media Player, i'd love to hear your workaround.. so far no one i've talked to has had any luck whatsoever. The sound card in question is an X-fi card. i've tried the official vista driver, as well as the modded driver. The soundcard i prefer to use, and the one i use in XP and Linux is an M-Audio Delta 66. M-Audio does not have vista drivers out, and tech support told me over the phone that vista drivers will not be available for "some time." i joined the e-mail notification list and was told i would receive an e-mail when drivers are available. As a side-note, i have found no official word on the matter, but the vibe from Digidesign seems to be that there is no current plans to support a Vista flavor of Pro Tools. Considering when OS X came out, Digidesign had a compatable product ready to ship, methinks it a bit strange that they have apparently avoided Vista, and seem content to continue doing so. If digidesign stays away from vista alltogether, it's significant. that would be like autodesk deciding to not develop autocad for Vista. if it turns out to be true, there has to be a real rock solid reason behind it.
"Avoiding DRM in Vista is really, really easy (which is presumably why so many Microsoft haters are FUDing their hearts out trying to make it appear complex): if you don't use DRM encumbered media, you will never even know DRM exist" well, i guess i'll paraphrase my previous post, since you didnt read it. vista does not allow you to use lossless high-quality audio passthru like spdif of digital. this does not have ANYTHING to do with media, let alone "DRM encumbered media." this is a case of hardware being crippled at an OS level to prevent DRM circumvention. i wrote a song for you to explain the whole thing called "FUD me? FUD you!" but i must have saved the raw audio file as "DRM encumbered" because vista wont let me play that thru spdif either.
I think Microsoft has really shot themselves in the foot with Vista's DRM scam. Audiophiles and/or musicians who have a small PC-based home recording setup will be real pissed when they realize that their brand new $400 sound card with S/PDIF and Digital i/o is crippled thanks to the Vista DRM nightmare. Vista takes the liberty of "downgrading" unsigned sound signals going into or out of the PC. (sorry, no link) This basically means that the ever-growing market of home recording enthusiasts will be SOL unless they stick with XP. as legacy support for XP runs out, i think you'll see a migration en mass to Apple hardware. I recently spoke to an engineer/producer who has a mid-sized pro studio. i asked him about his stance on Vista, and he sort of chuckled and replied "We're an Apple shop now." Pro's won't wait to see how it pans out.. they will go with what works, and more importantly, what Pro Tools works on. Linux has never really been an option as a pro audio solution for small studios, but along with all the advances with oss, alsa, jackd, and many other fine audio tools, linux-as-an-audio-studio is actually a better solution than Vista. *disclaimer: i run a linux-based PC recording setup currently, and i love it, but let's face it.. linux is not a multimedia editing OS. just my 2 cents.. Vista's broken, and it's by design. Am i the only one who's pissed off by this? i know there's gotta be a lot of audiophiles on /.
-robbie