FW IEEE-1394a added asynchronous support, but may have been too late; USB is ubiquitous on consumer grade cameras and camcorders, and firewire was dropped by MoBo manufacturers, and as you say, is now much less common.
Firewire support has also been reduced by Apple who was the main Firewire proponent.
My old iPod (the first with the dock connector) could use both a dock connector -> USB or a dock connector -> firewire cable (I have a combo cable that has both). My newer iPhone will only connect through USB. Can't even charge the battery through dock -> firewire cable.:-)
I upgraded the firmware on my DVD player. Now I can fast forward through the FBI/Interpol warnings, and turn macrovision off. Is there a Blu-Ray player that can do that?
How did you do that? Is that an approved firmware or a third-party firmware? That has to be a CCA violation -- don't ever expect that sort of thing to appear from the manufacturer for Blu-Rays, otherwise the manufacturer will get their hardware revoked, and that's not a situation they'd want to be in.
I've never had an issue, and since I don't own a Blu-Ray player, I have to rip all my discs.
Do you have a handy guide available? The stuff on doom9 often seems like it's out of date. Huge bonus points if this works under Linux. I have WinXP and Windows 7 VMs under VirtualBox, but I don't know if the ripping will work properly under a VM, even if the VM is given direct access to the drive. Encoding, etc, that should all be easy -- the most difficult part for me has always been getting the unencrypted DRM-stripped content off the Blu-Ray. I'd watch my Blu-Rays a hell of a lot more if I could actually do this.
Common/. fallacy is to assume everyone is at the (high) user level that you are.
Another common/. fallacy is to assume that everyone reading (or at least the vast majority) lives in the United States. Those people outside of Region 1 get to live with the hassles of region codes all the time. Those in region 1 do not, since nearly everything they want to watch is already released first-run in Region 1.
Blu-Ray is an odd creation. You say it was rapidly licensed and non-proprietary. But it's proprietary enough to make it difficult for the consumer to do things with the format, and that led to a number of inconvenience problems that really add up.
People have gotten used to the convenience of DVD, and a newer format with better quality but less convenience isn't a big win for them. So people can watch Blu-Rays on their PS3 -- so what? It didn't turn into the must-have media center machine that Sony proclaimed it would. Instead, people can't watch these Blu-Rays on their laptops. That's a fail. Or their desktops. That's another fail. They can't space-shift their movies like they could on other devices, so no burning to DVD for car trips. No making a safe copy for the kids. If the kids get their grubby fingerprints on it, you get to purchase that movie all over again. Instead, now you get Blu-Ray/DVD 'combo packs' that jack up the price for movies even more, just to get what consumers had all along with DVDs. And if a DVD does everything you want it to, then why purchase another player and more expensive discs when you'll save a bundle instead?
The Blu-Ray is the DRM-encumbered format that the movie studios love, but end-users have never wanted DRM, they've wanted the uses that DRM forbids.
What would the industry have had to do to make Blu-Ray the consumer standard? Here's how it would have worked: *) Price Blu-Rays the same as DVDs. Having a Blu-Ray premium means the studios are lining their coffers only from the high-end users buying movies for their home theaters. *) No restrictive DRM. DRM is not stopping high-quality copies of movies from appearing on file-sharing sites. It is stopping your casual movie watcher from watching a movie the way he wants to. It's a disincentive. (And I still can't get over the fact that you can't plug an Apple 30" display into a PS3 solely due to the ACD not supporting the HDCP DRM)
Need I point out that it wasn't until Team Twiizers complained - and rightly so - that geohot was taking 100% of the credit for the Jailbreak exploit that he finally acknowledged on his site that maybe he didn't do it single-handedly? Then, after beating his chest to every media outlet that would listen about how HE was the one who completely blew open the PS3, he got sued by Sony - I call it karmic justice, if not legal or moral - and suddenly he's every hacker's favorite martyr, with everyone happily glossing over the fact that it was Team Twiizers that figured out the key exploit in the first place.
Sounds like this works out for everybody (except Geohot). Team Twiizers isn't in the cross-hairs, Sony gets a target to sue.
Amityville fucking Horror - she's no journalist. She's writes fiction and pretends it's real so people should be warned about her. Not to mention the disgusting stalking behavior going after PJ's mother.
That was pretty disgusting. I'm sure the fact that the company she owned, G2 Computer Intelligence, was a creditor for SCO had nothing to do with that papparazi.
The other two are not such obvious slime that they have an international bad reputation so I'll leave that to others.
I think Rob Enderle is pretty bad. Not as slimy as O'Gara was, but his constant relentless anti-Linux rants aren't what was I would expect from a credible "very smart analyst." You can say what you want about the Free Software community, but the notion that it contributes nothing to the common good or a private good is foolish.
I think law needs to be understandable, and if it isnt accessible, its a failure.
How do you reconcile that aim with the aim that the law be thorough and exact, to get rid of any grey areas? It seems a good portion of the legalese I see is that way because every situation the law (or contract) covers needs to be written down there.
The real problem is that we continue to vote for that crook even AFTER the actions take place. And we'll continue to vote for him until he's well into his 90s, senile, and still as corrupt as hell.
"He may be a crook, but he's a crook on my side, and he'll fight like a caged animal for me."
Curiosity got the better of me this week and I checked YouTube for "Friday" by Rebecca Black. I've apologized to my brain, and will never do that again. Please Google, please kill the current music cartels.
As far as I know, the culpability of the big music cartels is merely indirect. Rebecca Black wasn't signed to a record label, "Friday" was a video her mom purchased from the Ark Music Factory, a firm that takes singers who have never done anything before, writes a quick song for them to sing, crafts a hasty music video, and releases it in the hopes that a music company will like what they see and sign the singer. I think it was a bad decision (given the results, how could it not be a bad decision?) because the auto-tuning negatives any benefits of her voice and it gives no insight whatsoever to her as an artist (and there may be no artistic interest in the first place). Good job, mom, I bet you didn't guess this would backfire so badly!
When I say "the culpability of the big music cartels is merely indirect," its their fault for pushing this type of vapid music so heavily and concentrating on the teenage girl demographic so heavily.:-P
After Friday, Rebecca Black's next single was called "LOL." I have always been afraid to look.
So, you've never noticed all of this advanced technology all around us? It's all based on science, and it works. Ford didn't build up a car and pray that it worked. Intel didn't throw a bunch of silicon together and say, "I hope God will make this thing run Windows 95."
Why, it almost sounds like everything was intelligently designed!
You know, Apple stuff all comes from China, not Japan.
("Designed" in California though. In case you only buy American "designed" stuff)
Not necessarily, certain parts are sourced in Japan. Specifically, from an eWeek.com article on supply woes: "iPad 2 components sourced from Japan, said the firm, include NAND flash from Toshiba; DRAMs (dynamic RAMs) from Elpida Memory; an electronic compass from AKM Semiconductor; the system battery from Apple Japan; and the iPad 2's touch-screen overlay glass, which, while not confirmed by Apple, is suspected to be from Asahi Glass."
How many people have AIDS today because the Catholic church lied to them about contraception?
Can I blame the school because you failed health class?
No, but you can blame the school because you failed health class. Condoms prevent AIDS, Fact. The Catholic Church is opposed to condoms. Ergo, the Catholic Church is in favor of AIDS.
If this was any other topic, there would already have several people pointing out the horrible logical fallacy you just made. But as illustration:
Ice cream sales rise in the summer. Crime increases in the the summer. Ergo, ice cream leads to crime.
I believe in an unmoderated Internet. People will use the Internet to display pictures of bestiality, child porn, etc. Ergo, I must support bestiality, child porn, etc.
Just because the first two statements are true and related does not make the third true.
How many people live with unnecessary guilt due to psychological abuse heaped on them by nuns?
Actions of one define the whole, check.
One? Sure. One nun is responsible for the horror stories told by every former Catholic student I've ever met.
I attended a Catholic high school, and the nuns were by far my favorite people there. Even though they knew I was an atheist/agnostic. Their attitude was that if they showed true kindness, humility, and piety, that others may be convinced and try to follow their example. I wish more would act like they do; the evangelicals in particular seem to have forgotten in particular the humility part completely. Most of the teachers were pretty nice (except for one weird guy who said any non-Catholic denomination was Satanic. He didn't last all that long). It was the students I couldn't stand, but really that was more the problem that high school kids are generally dicks.
The only reason it has gotten as big as it has is because of standard church policy to assume that ALL men of god are above the law of men.
I don't think that was the defining attitude, there were two other attitudes that just compounded the problem: 1) That those who seem truly repentant must be forgiven. 2) That prayer and belief is all that's necessary to overcome social behaviors that psychologists believe are mental disorders or are internally wired (like pedophilia). Which also explains the various ex-gay organizations who believe religious faith and prayer overcome homosexuality, since God wouldn't possibly wire a person to be gay.
Maybe we will get real volunteer politicians in office
Volunteer politicians would be even more beholden to corporate interests than they are now; they would be focused on one thing -- securing a cushy job after they leave the public sector. At least at the moment they can maintain the charade that they'd care about the job itself.
that actually give a damn about anything other than ways they can screw the average American for their own benefit
As long as the job allows for and rewards the screwing over of the average American, it will attract those with ambition and willingness to do just that.
No, but shoes are designed according to how human feet work. Poorly made shoes can be far more damaging to the feet than not wearing shoes at all.
Driving a car? I bet evolution never had that in mind.
I think that's apples and oranges. It's really an extension of what we've been doing for millions of years -- using our senses in the natural world. Hitting things with our feet, grasping things with our hands, looking around to see and adjust to our surroundings.
Sitting all day? Ok that has been proven to be bad for you.
Typing on a keyboard? Using a mouse? w00t!
That can also be bad for you! Especially if you position your hands improperly! You can do a lot of permanent damage if you're not careful.
There may well be reasons why staring at 3DTV for hours on end is bad for us (by which I mean worse than staring at regular TV for hours on end), but "evolution never designed us for that" isn't really an explanation.
"It's not natural" is never a good explanation by itself, but there are certainly reasons why throwing images that confuse the optics of the eye and the brain can cause problems. As the blog post mentioned, we -can- adjust to it of course, otherwise 3d movies wouldn't work at all. But the convergence/focus issue causes the visual processing centers of the brain to work much harder than it normally would to make sense of those discrepancies, thus causing headaches for some people (the movie industry spin, as the slashdot linked article points out, is that this extra work causes the brain to be more attentive, causing a more pleasurable experience). This is probably why whenever I've watched 3d movies, I have a hard time making visual sense of the first half-hour, but then afterwards it just feels "easier."
For myself, I've never gotten headaches or motion sickness, but the 3d never quite worked for me. It was never as clear or coherent as the 2d image, and my mind always got tripped up when I tried to focus on something that wasn't in focus.
The issue, doctors say, is that 3D works by tricking the brain into making you think you are physically moving in relation to your surroundings
No, that's not the worst issue. Walter Murch describes in an entry on Roger Ebert's blog, the convergence/focus issue, where the eye is expected to work in a way that millions of years of evolution never designed it to, where your eyes are asked to focus on an image very close, yet converge very far away. A quote from the article:
"But the deeper problem is that the audience must focus their eyes at the plane of the screen -- say it is 80 feet away. This is constant no matter what.
But their eyes must converge at perhaps 10 feet away, then 60 feet, then 120 feet, and so on, depending on what the illusion is. So 3D films require us to focus at one distance and converge at another. And 600 million years of evolution has never presented this problem before. All living things with eyes have always focussed and converged at the same point.... Consequently, the editing of 3D films cannot be as rapid as for 2D films, because of this shifting of convergence: it takes a number of milliseconds for the brain/eye to "get" what the space of each shot is and adjust."
The latter part being bad news now that quick cuts are all the rage.
Grey area. I've never used it, but from the readme, it sounds like an open-source engine to play the original game. That is, you need the original game and it uses the original game files. "The actual data files from Ultima 4 are loaded at runtime, which means that a copy of Ultima 4 for DOS must be present at runtime."
It then follows that up with: "Fortunately, Ultima IV is available as closed-source freeware on the internet (legally). A copy is mirrored at xu4.sourceforge.net." That at least is incorrect (it is no longer freeware), and xu4 is merely currently under the radar.
Why do people keep spending money on EA Games? They treat the gaming community like utter crap at every opportunity, yet people continue to keep eating it up constantly. I refuse to spend a dime on any EA product, and I have no doubt many/.'ers share my sentiments.
It's probably because most people don't pay attention to the publisher of a title, only the title itself. I don't think "oh hey, another shitty EA game," much like I don't think "Oh, that movie was made by Paramount? They can't make anything right," or even "that artist signed with MCA. PASS." (Well, if I still bought music, anyway...)
There are a few rare exceptions where publisher loyalty really comes into play (like Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks for movies, Bioware, Valve, and Blizzard for games), but the more that the creative people aren't direct, permanent employees of that publisher, the more people disassociate the publisher from the product.
Slashdot Mirror
FW IEEE-1394a added asynchronous support, but may have been too late; USB is ubiquitous on consumer grade cameras and camcorders, and firewire was dropped by MoBo manufacturers, and as you say, is now much less common.
Firewire support has also been reduced by Apple who was the main Firewire proponent.
My old iPod (the first with the dock connector) could use both a dock connector -> USB or a dock connector -> firewire cable (I have a combo cable that has both). My newer iPhone will only connect through USB. Can't even charge the battery through dock -> firewire cable. :-)
I upgraded the firmware on my DVD player. Now I can fast forward through the FBI/Interpol warnings, and turn macrovision off. Is there a Blu-Ray player that can do that?
How did you do that? Is that an approved firmware or a third-party firmware? That has to be a CCA violation -- don't ever expect that sort of thing to appear from the manufacturer for Blu-Rays, otherwise the manufacturer will get their hardware revoked, and that's not a situation they'd want to be in.
I've never had an issue, and since I don't own a Blu-Ray player, I have to rip all my discs.
Do you have a handy guide available? The stuff on doom9 often seems like it's out of date. Huge bonus points if this works under Linux. I have WinXP and Windows 7 VMs under VirtualBox, but I don't know if the ripping will work properly under a VM, even if the VM is given direct access to the drive. Encoding, etc, that should all be easy -- the most difficult part for me has always been getting the unencrypted DRM-stripped content off the Blu-Ray. I'd watch my Blu-Rays a hell of a lot more if I could actually do this.
Common /. fallacy is to assume everyone is at the (high) user level that you are.
Another common /. fallacy is to assume that everyone reading (or at least the vast majority) lives in the United States. Those people outside of Region 1 get to live with the hassles of region codes all the time. Those in region 1 do not, since nearly everything they want to watch is already released first-run in Region 1.
Blu-Ray is an odd creation. You say it was rapidly licensed and non-proprietary. But it's proprietary enough to make it difficult for the consumer to do things with the format, and that led to a number of inconvenience problems that really add up.
People have gotten used to the convenience of DVD, and a newer format with better quality but less convenience isn't a big win for them.
So people can watch Blu-Rays on their PS3 -- so what? It didn't turn into the must-have media center machine that Sony proclaimed it would.
Instead, people can't watch these Blu-Rays on their laptops. That's a fail. Or their desktops. That's another fail.
They can't space-shift their movies like they could on other devices, so no burning to DVD for car trips. No making a safe copy for the kids. If the kids get their grubby fingerprints on it, you get to purchase that movie all over again. Instead, now you get Blu-Ray/DVD 'combo packs' that jack up the price for movies even more, just to get what consumers had all along with DVDs. And if a DVD does everything you want it to, then why purchase another player and more expensive discs when you'll save a bundle instead?
The Blu-Ray is the DRM-encumbered format that the movie studios love, but end-users have never wanted DRM, they've wanted the uses that DRM forbids.
What would the industry have had to do to make Blu-Ray the consumer standard? Here's how it would have worked:
*) Price Blu-Rays the same as DVDs. Having a Blu-Ray premium means the studios are lining their coffers only from the high-end users buying movies for their home theaters.
*) No restrictive DRM. DRM is not stopping high-quality copies of movies from appearing on file-sharing sites. It is stopping your casual movie watcher from watching a movie the way he wants to. It's a disincentive. (And I still can't get over the fact that you can't plug an Apple 30" display into a PS3 solely due to the ACD not supporting the HDCP DRM)
Look at the movie industry. They have a very clear and concise way to define what makes a film rated R.
Oh man! Damn, you couldn't have picked a worse example.
The only new-style TLD that I've seen had much modicum of success is .tv. And that's cheating, too.
Need I point out that it wasn't until Team Twiizers complained - and rightly so - that geohot was taking 100% of the credit for the Jailbreak exploit that he finally acknowledged on his site that maybe he didn't do it single-handedly? Then, after beating his chest to every media outlet that would listen about how HE was the one who completely blew open the PS3, he got sued by Sony - I call it karmic justice, if not legal or moral - and suddenly he's every hacker's favorite martyr, with everyone happily glossing over the fact that it was Team Twiizers that figured out the key exploit in the first place.
Sounds like this works out for everybody (except Geohot). Team Twiizers isn't in the cross-hairs, Sony gets a target to sue.
The best part is how the haters aren't the ones who were being sued. They have no vested interest, and nothing to lose. Screw them.
Except, of course, for the money they gave when he asked for donations to fight Sony, which he's not giving back.
The whole point of the case was that he had done those things because he believed (and still believes) that they are not against the law.
It sounds like he got some good legal advice after being hit by the lawsuit and not surprisingly, very little of that before the lawsuit.
Amityville fucking Horror - she's no journalist. She's writes fiction and pretends it's real so people should be warned about her. Not to mention the disgusting stalking behavior going after PJ's mother.
That was pretty disgusting. I'm sure the fact that the company she owned, G2 Computer Intelligence, was a creditor for SCO had nothing to do with that papparazi.
The other two are not such obvious slime that they have an international bad reputation so I'll leave that to others.
I think Rob Enderle is pretty bad. Not as slimy as O'Gara was, but his constant relentless anti-Linux rants aren't what was I would expect from a credible "very smart analyst." You can say what you want about the Free Software community, but the notion that it contributes nothing to the common good or a private good is foolish.
I think its the reverse.
I think law needs to be understandable, and if it isnt accessible, its a failure.
How do you reconcile that aim with the aim that the law be thorough and exact, to get rid of any grey areas? It seems a good portion of the legalese I see is that way because every situation the law (or contract) covers needs to be written down there.
The real problem is that we continue to vote for that crook even AFTER the actions take place. And we'll continue to vote for him until he's well into his 90s, senile, and still as corrupt as hell.
"He may be a crook, but he's a crook on my side, and he'll fight like a caged animal for me."
It's become this year's Rick'Roll.
Except that was a good song, and Rick Astley's a good singer.
Curiosity got the better of me this week and I checked YouTube for "Friday" by Rebecca Black. I've apologized to my brain, and will never do that again. Please Google, please kill the current music cartels.
As far as I know, the culpability of the big music cartels is merely indirect. Rebecca Black wasn't signed to a record label, "Friday" was a video her mom purchased from the Ark Music Factory, a firm that takes singers who have never done anything before, writes a quick song for them to sing, crafts a hasty music video, and releases it in the hopes that a music company will like what they see and sign the singer. I think it was a bad decision (given the results, how could it not be a bad decision?) because the auto-tuning negatives any benefits of her voice and it gives no insight whatsoever to her as an artist (and there may be no artistic interest in the first place). Good job, mom, I bet you didn't guess this would backfire so badly!
When I say "the culpability of the big music cartels is merely indirect," its their fault for pushing this type of vapid music so heavily and concentrating on the teenage girl demographic so heavily. :-P
After Friday, Rebecca Black's next single was called "LOL." I have always been afraid to look.
So, you've never noticed all of this advanced technology all around us? It's all based on science, and it works. Ford didn't build up a car and pray that it worked. Intel didn't throw a bunch of silicon together and say, "I hope God will make this thing run Windows 95."
Why, it almost sounds like everything was intelligently designed!
You know, Apple stuff all comes from China, not Japan.
("Designed" in California though. In case you only buy American "designed" stuff)
Not necessarily, certain parts are sourced in Japan. Specifically, from an eWeek.com article on supply woes: "iPad 2 components sourced from Japan, said the firm, include NAND flash from Toshiba; DRAMs (dynamic RAMs) from Elpida Memory; an electronic compass from AKM Semiconductor; the system battery from Apple Japan; and the iPad 2's touch-screen overlay glass, which, while not confirmed by Apple, is suspected to be from Asahi Glass."
How many people have AIDS today because the Catholic church lied to them about contraception?
Can I blame the school because you failed health class?
No, but you can blame the school because you failed health class. Condoms prevent AIDS, Fact. The Catholic Church is opposed to condoms. Ergo, the Catholic Church is in favor of AIDS.
If this was any other topic, there would already have several people pointing out the horrible logical fallacy you just made. But as illustration:
Ice cream sales rise in the summer.
Crime increases in the the summer.
Ergo, ice cream leads to crime.
I believe in an unmoderated Internet.
People will use the Internet to display pictures of bestiality, child porn, etc.
Ergo, I must support bestiality, child porn, etc.
Just because the first two statements are true and related does not make the third true.
How many people live with unnecessary guilt due to psychological abuse heaped on them by nuns?
Actions of one define the whole, check.
One? Sure. One nun is responsible for the horror stories told by every former Catholic student I've ever met.
I attended a Catholic high school, and the nuns were by far my favorite people there. Even though they knew I was an atheist/agnostic. Their attitude was that if they showed true kindness, humility, and piety, that others may be convinced and try to follow their example. I wish more would act like they do; the evangelicals in particular seem to have forgotten in particular the humility part completely. Most of the teachers were pretty nice (except for one weird guy who said any non-Catholic denomination was Satanic. He didn't last all that long). It was the students I couldn't stand, but really that was more the problem that high school kids are generally dicks.
How can a bunch of factual quotes be considered trolling?
For one, it has nothing to do with the story.
The only reason it has gotten as big as it has is because of standard church policy to assume that ALL men of god are above the law of men.
I don't think that was the defining attitude, there were two other attitudes that just compounded the problem:
1) That those who seem truly repentant must be forgiven.
2) That prayer and belief is all that's necessary to overcome social behaviors that psychologists believe are mental disorders or are internally wired (like pedophilia). Which also explains the various ex-gay organizations who believe religious faith and prayer overcome homosexuality, since God wouldn't possibly wire a person to be gay.
Maybe we will get real volunteer politicians in office
Volunteer politicians would be even more beholden to corporate interests than they are now; they would be focused on one thing -- securing a cushy job after they leave the public sector. At least at the moment they can maintain the charade that they'd care about the job itself.
that actually give a damn about anything other than ways they can screw the average American for their own benefit
As long as the job allows for and rewards the screwing over of the average American, it will attract those with ambition and willingness to do just that.
Shoes? Human feet weren't designed for those.
No, but shoes are designed according to how human feet work. Poorly made shoes can be far more damaging to the feet than not wearing shoes at all.
Driving a car? I bet evolution never had that in mind.
I think that's apples and oranges. It's really an extension of what we've been doing for millions of years -- using our senses in the natural world. Hitting things with our feet, grasping things with our hands, looking around to see and adjust to our surroundings.
Sitting all day? Ok that has been proven to be bad for you.
Typing on a keyboard? Using a mouse? w00t!
That can also be bad for you! Especially if you position your hands improperly! You can do a lot of permanent damage if you're not careful.
There may well be reasons why staring at 3DTV for hours on end is bad for us (by which I mean worse than staring at regular TV for hours on end), but "evolution never designed us for that" isn't really an explanation.
"It's not natural" is never a good explanation by itself, but there are certainly reasons why throwing images that confuse the optics of the eye and the brain can cause problems. As the blog post mentioned, we -can- adjust to it of course, otherwise 3d movies wouldn't work at all. But the convergence/focus issue causes the visual processing centers of the brain to work much harder than it normally would to make sense of those discrepancies, thus causing headaches for some people (the movie industry spin, as the slashdot linked article points out, is that this extra work causes the brain to be more attentive, causing a more pleasurable experience). This is probably why whenever I've watched 3d movies, I have a hard time making visual sense of the first half-hour, but then afterwards it just feels "easier."
For myself, I've never gotten headaches or motion sickness, but the 3d never quite worked for me. It was never as clear or coherent as the 2d image, and my mind always got tripped up when I tried to focus on something that wasn't in focus.
No, that's not the worst issue. Walter Murch describes in an entry on Roger Ebert's blog, the convergence/focus issue, where the eye is expected to work in a way that millions of years of evolution never designed it to, where your eyes are asked to focus on an image very close, yet converge very far away. A quote from the article:
"But the deeper problem is that the audience must focus their eyes at the plane of the screen -- say it is 80 feet away. This is constant no matter what.
But their eyes must converge at perhaps 10 feet away, then 60 feet, then 120 feet, and so on, depending on what the illusion is. So 3D films require us to focus at one distance and converge at another. And 600 million years of evolution has never presented this problem before. All living things with eyes have always focussed and converged at the same point. ...
Consequently, the editing of 3D films cannot be as rapid as for 2D films, because of this shifting of convergence: it takes a number of milliseconds for the brain/eye to "get" what the space of each shot is and adjust."
The latter part being bad news now that quick cuts are all the rage.
What about xu4? http://xu4.sf.net/
Grey area. I've never used it, but from the readme, it sounds like an open-source engine to play the original game. That is, you need the original game and it uses the original game files. "The actual data files from Ultima 4 are loaded at runtime, which means that a copy of Ultima 4 for DOS must be present at runtime."
It then follows that up with: "Fortunately, Ultima IV is available as closed-source freeware on the internet (legally). A copy is mirrored at xu4.sourceforge.net." That at least is incorrect (it is no longer freeware), and xu4 is merely currently under the radar.
Why do people keep spending money on EA Games? They treat the gaming community like utter crap at every opportunity, yet people continue to keep eating it up constantly. I refuse to spend a dime on any EA product, and I have no doubt many /.'ers share my sentiments.
It's probably because most people don't pay attention to the publisher of a title, only the title itself. I don't think "oh hey, another shitty EA game," much like I don't think "Oh, that movie was made by Paramount? They can't make anything right," or even "that artist signed with MCA. PASS." (Well, if I still bought music, anyway...)
There are a few rare exceptions where publisher loyalty really comes into play (like Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks for movies, Bioware, Valve, and Blizzard for games), but the more that the creative people aren't direct, permanent employees of that publisher, the more people disassociate the publisher from the product.