Ha ha, what a useless argument. 'Good' and 'private' are not mutually exclusive qualities. It's a false dichotomy.
You advocate a position of ignorance and mock people who value their privacy. And apparently you think someone cannot lead a good, private life. Why is that? Do you not find that a rather foolish position? (a genuine question)
I really cannot wrap my head around the concept that someone would stop playing a game that they purchased, and enjoyed, just because of in-game ads.
Purchased and enjoyed, past tense. I bought the game when it didn't have adverts; when they were added, I enjoyed the game less so I stopped playing it. Imagine a game element you find annoying and lame. It's been added to a game you already bought: do you enjoy it just as much as before? No. It's a simple thing to relate to.
However a game like Counterstrike where realism is sort of the point, ads can be placed in a realistic fashion, only adding to the realism.
It could be in some of the levels, but it wasn't done that way. Adverts were large and ugly, prominently tacked onto the environment and score overlay without so much as a border. Just imagine: large white and blue adverts for Intel CPUs, complete with some idiotic slogan. In temple ruins. Realism indeed.
If you have the money to pay extra for such a trivial preference, you really don't need to be complaining.
I can afford a hypothetical construct I would prefer, therefore I don't need to complain about the real circumstance in which the option is nonexistent. Not really the best line of argument.
And don't be stubborn just to prove your point, I will know if you are lying.
Honestly, I would buy the more expensive one if it had no adverts, if those were the prices. I really don't like them, and I've avoided games with in-game adverts before and quit playing games I'd bought when they had advertising added (Counterstrike on Steam).
Realistically though, if they did that there'd be a full-price version with adverts and overpriced version without, rather than an actual saving by going with the ads. In that case, I'd probably just pass up the game.
Seems a little fantastic if you haven't been following the performance improvements of CPUs over the last year, but it's an entirely reasonable approximation. Here's two example results. For reference, both CPUs are clocked at 3Ghz and have two cores:
They've also got some problems with maintaining any presence in the top end of the CPU market. This isn't a huge deal for fabrication as almost no one buys those thousand dollar CPUs anyway, but those thousand dollar CPUs are your next generation main stream CPUs so you've got to have them.
Not just the top end. Look at Intel's mainstream C2D E8400: a stock 3Ghz chip with a peak power draw of about 40 watts, equal in performance to a hypothetical 4.2Ghz Athlon X2. That's amazing, but it gets worse for AMD. Intel are so far ahead they can pull their punches right now; the E8400 is routinely overclocked by ~600Mhz without even changing the stock HSF, and can reach well over 4Ghz with some cooling improvements. Intel's manufacturing process is so good, I think they could put out a stock 4Ghz model with little difficulty for a good price, if they actually needed to compete.
If only I went with an Intel-based motherboard instead of my AMD one last year.:(
Just last week I was bitching about having no worthwhile upgrade path from my X2 6000+, but AMD recently announced that they'll be selling 45nm chips in early January. They claim a 35% average increase in performance over current Phenoms, with the same percentage decrease in power consumption. Intel is still ahead with the incredible Core 2 Duo lineup, but if AMD can pull off the 45nm Phenoms at a reasonable price, I think it will be enough to stay competitive for a while.
I just the other day got, a solar cell was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the roof commercially.
So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this solar cell for power and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.
We aren't earning anything by going on that solar cell. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discriminate against those people. The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the solar cell". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time.
They want to deliver vast amounts of power over the solar cell. And again, the solar cell is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.
It's a series of tubes.
And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your power in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of energy, enormous amounts of energy.
There are homebrew programs that can play files using that codec, but it's not as simple as it sounds. I haven't looked into it in-depth, but as far as I know the PSP can't do anything above 480x272 (its screen resolution) without huge slowdown. There are also bitrate limitations: 1024k for video, 96k for audio. In that case you'd have to re-encode most videos anyway, so it may as well be MP4.
What I'd like is a decent transcoder from Sony included with the PSP or something. Red Kawa's PSP Video 9 is dogshit of the highest order, and Handbrake, while utterly brilliant for DVD transcoding, isn't a general-purpose transcoder.
Really now. Backing up games I own is warez? Using the ISO instead of the UMD I own to improve loading times is warez? I bought all of the games. I guess the video and audio file playback functions are purely for pirates too, right? All you've got is a case of good old insufferable douchebag syndrome, buddy.
Warez old games.
Nobody gives a crap about any of those, not even the publishers. They're abandonware. The GBA or PSX games are the only ones that even come close to warez. And gosh darn, I'm such a dirty-dealing pirating bastard that I bought all of those too!
Of course, you're not entirely wrong; it's easy to play pirated games with CFW installed. But since Slashdot as a demographic seems to exclude most of the penniless 14-year-old crowd who actually does that, you're painting the wrong crowd with the wrong brush.
I forgot to mention something: the tool turns batteries back to normal from service mode as well. All you have to do is press a button; it's powered by the battery itself. Handy thing.
If you're worried about bricking, the safest way is with a 'pandora battery' (a service-mode battery, really) and a memory stick. You can get a tool from Amazon that changes batteries from normal to service batteries for about 12 euros; otherwise you need a specialised service battery, or risk hardmodding your own and possibly damaging it.
I opted to use the tool, it's extremely easy and it only takes a few minutes. Check out this thread on SA for very helpful instructions and some homebrew links.
Or will the next release of NFS require you to spend several hours arguing with police, getting repair estimates, and submitting an insurance claim every time you have an accident?
Yeah, seriously. I absolutely love my PSP with CFW, the improvement compared with the stock firmware is dramatic. For those who aren't up to speed, you can do this stuff plus a hell of a lot more:
*Adjust the CPU/GPU clock, with separate settings for games and XMB. This makes a huge difference to the smoothness of a lot of games.
*More brightness levels for the screen while in battery mode.
*Allows you to back up your UMD games over USB to ISO files.
*Allows the use of ISOs without needing the UMD (cures loading time issues with games)
*Emulators! Almost everything up to and including the Playstation is emulated at full speed. SNES, GBA, Mega Drive, Neo-Geo, CPS1, you name it. For me this makes it the best console I've ever had, handheld or otherwise.
*Selectable region for UMD movies.
*Tons of other stuff homebrew developers have made; demoscene stuff, email programs, there's even a port of Cave Story!
It's a big risk if if you're putting your head into the player and resting your eyeball directly over the laser diode. For people who do that, all we can hope for is more powerful lasers, or perhaps blu-ray players with sharks inside to which the laser is attached.
They're not mutually exclusive, and neither perspective is more important than the other, let alone worthy of the arrogant frothing-at-the-mouth tone you took.
I didn't mean to come off as frothing in support of my take on it. My beef is only with SecuROM. Sorry if it seemed like I was giving the parent a doing over. He said:
I didn't get the impression that this was a DRM issue. I took it more as an anti-cheat measure for on-line play.
And I don't agree. We're talking intent here: SecuROM doesn't do any sort of checking for cheats, and they already stated that they detect it solely to trip up crackers. That a dumper/debugger can be used to find methods of cheating is incidental, so I don't see that position as being well supported.
And if you ask a software developer or system admin about the tools, you'll get the equivalent of asking a locksmith about lock picking tools.
Well SecuROM made the lock and they are the software developer. They're bastards, but they're pretty upfront about what the prevention is for, and it's not cheat prevention or detection.
Slashdot Mirror
Ha ha, what a useless argument. 'Good' and 'private' are not mutually exclusive qualities. It's a false dichotomy.
You advocate a position of ignorance and mock people who value their privacy. And apparently you think someone cannot lead a good, private life. Why is that? Do you not find that a rather foolish position? (a genuine question)
Depends. In the original Iphone, it's soldered to the circuit board. The 3G version has a separate battery though.
they already replace batteries as often as they can.
I'm sure they do, since they charge 85 dollars to do it, according to some of the posters above.
I really cannot wrap my head around the concept that someone would stop playing a game that they purchased, and enjoyed, just because of in-game ads.
Purchased and enjoyed, past tense. I bought the game when it didn't have adverts; when they were added, I enjoyed the game less so I stopped playing it. Imagine a game element you find annoying and lame. It's been added to a game you already bought: do you enjoy it just as much as before? No. It's a simple thing to relate to.
However a game like Counterstrike where realism is sort of the point, ads can be placed in a realistic fashion, only adding to the realism.
It could be in some of the levels, but it wasn't done that way. Adverts were large and ugly, prominently tacked onto the environment and score overlay without so much as a border. Just imagine: large white and blue adverts for Intel CPUs, complete with some idiotic slogan. In temple ruins. Realism indeed.
If you have the money to pay extra for such a trivial preference, you really don't need to be complaining.
I can afford a hypothetical construct I would prefer, therefore I don't need to complain about the real circumstance in which the option is nonexistent. Not really the best line of argument.
And don't be stubborn just to prove your point, I will know if you are lying.
Honestly, I would buy the more expensive one if it had no adverts, if those were the prices. I really don't like them, and I've avoided games with in-game adverts before and quit playing games I'd bought when they had advertising added (Counterstrike on Steam).
Realistically though, if they did that there'd be a full-price version with adverts and overpriced version without, rather than an actual saving by going with the ads. In that case, I'd probably just pass up the game.
Nowhere. Just die, or charge more.
Which is the bot? They both look as thick as a ditch.
That has nothing to do with thought. Did you have to think to read it? No. It's automatic shape recognition.
Seems a little fantastic if you haven't been following the performance improvements of CPUs over the last year, but it's an entirely reasonable approximation. Here's two example results. For reference, both CPUs are clocked at 3Ghz and have two cores:
DivX encoding times:
X2 6000+: 727 seconds.
C2D E8400: 401 seconds.
(727/401) = 1.55.
3*1.55 = 4.650Ghz.
Cinebench result:
X2: 5615 points.
C2D: 7192 points.
(7192/5615) = 1.28.
3*1.28 = 3.84Ghz.
My statement represents the average difference from of a bunch of benchmarks, which is about 40%. 3*1.40 = 4.2Ghz equivalent.
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They've also got some problems with maintaining any presence in the top end of the CPU market. This isn't a huge deal for fabrication as almost no one buys those thousand dollar CPUs anyway, but those thousand dollar CPUs are your next generation main stream CPUs so you've got to have them.
Not just the top end. Look at Intel's mainstream C2D E8400: a stock 3Ghz chip with a peak power draw of about 40 watts, equal in performance to a hypothetical 4.2Ghz Athlon X2. That's amazing, but it gets worse for AMD. Intel are so far ahead they can pull their punches right now; the E8400 is routinely overclocked by ~600Mhz without even changing the stock HSF, and can reach well over 4Ghz with some cooling improvements. Intel's manufacturing process is so good, I think they could put out a stock 4Ghz model with little difficulty for a good price, if they actually needed to compete.
:(
If only I went with an Intel-based motherboard instead of my AMD one last year.
Just last week I was bitching about having no worthwhile upgrade path from my X2 6000+, but AMD recently announced that they'll be selling 45nm chips in early January. They claim a 35% average increase in performance over current Phenoms, with the same percentage decrease in power consumption. Intel is still ahead with the incredible Core 2 Duo lineup, but if AMD can pull off the 45nm Phenoms at a reasonable price, I think it will be enough to stay competitive for a while.
I just the other day got, a solar cell was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the roof commercially.
So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this solar cell for power and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.
We aren't earning anything by going on that solar cell. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discriminate against those people. The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the solar cell". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time.
They want to deliver vast amounts of power over the solar cell. And again, the solar cell is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.
It's a series of tubes.
And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your power in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of energy, enormous amounts of energy.
There are homebrew programs that can play files using that codec, but it's not as simple as it sounds. I haven't looked into it in-depth, but as far as I know the PSP can't do anything above 480x272 (its screen resolution) without huge slowdown. There are also bitrate limitations: 1024k for video, 96k for audio. In that case you'd have to re-encode most videos anyway, so it may as well be MP4.
What I'd like is a decent transcoder from Sony included with the PSP or something. Red Kawa's PSP Video 9 is dogshit of the highest order, and Handbrake, while utterly brilliant for DVD transcoding, isn't a general-purpose transcoder.
Nvidia too.
Warez games. [...] I got it now.
Really now. Backing up games I own is warez? Using the ISO instead of the UMD I own to improve loading times is warez? I bought all of the games. I guess the video and audio file playback functions are purely for pirates too, right? All you've got is a case of good old insufferable douchebag syndrome, buddy.
Warez old games.
Nobody gives a crap about any of those, not even the publishers. They're abandonware. The GBA or PSX games are the only ones that even come close to warez. And gosh darn, I'm such a dirty-dealing pirating bastard that I bought all of those too!
Of course, you're not entirely wrong; it's easy to play pirated games with CFW installed. But since Slashdot as a demographic seems to exclude most of the penniless 14-year-old crowd who actually does that, you're painting the wrong crowd with the wrong brush.
I forgot to mention something: the tool turns batteries back to normal from service mode as well. All you have to do is press a button; it's powered by the battery itself. Handy thing.
If you're worried about bricking, the safest way is with a 'pandora battery' (a service-mode battery, really) and a memory stick. You can get a tool from Amazon that changes batteries from normal to service batteries for about 12 euros; otherwise you need a specialised service battery, or risk hardmodding your own and possibly damaging it.
I opted to use the tool, it's extremely easy and it only takes a few minutes. Check out this thread on SA for very helpful instructions and some homebrew links.
Or will the next release of NFS require you to spend several hours arguing with police, getting repair estimates, and submitting an insurance claim every time you have an accident?
Nah. SecuROM handles that part.
Yeah, seriously. I absolutely love my PSP with CFW, the improvement compared with the stock firmware is dramatic. For those who aren't up to speed, you can do this stuff plus a hell of a lot more:
*Adjust the CPU/GPU clock, with separate settings for games and XMB. This makes a huge difference to the smoothness of a lot of games.
*More brightness levels for the screen while in battery mode.
*Allows you to back up your UMD games over USB to ISO files.
*Allows the use of ISOs without needing the UMD (cures loading time issues with games)
*Emulators! Almost everything up to and including the Playstation is emulated at full speed. SNES, GBA, Mega Drive, Neo-Geo, CPS1, you name it. For me this makes it the best console I've ever had, handheld or otherwise.
*Selectable region for UMD movies.
*Tons of other stuff homebrew developers have made; demoscene stuff, email programs, there's even a port of Cave Story!
DNS resolved google-analytics.com to 127.0.0.1
Oh darn. Now how did that happen?
Offhand, the read speed for 1x in bluray is 36Mbit/s. So we get 432Mbit/s.
For comparison, 1x DVD is 10Mbit/s.
A class 3b laser, I think (less than 500mW).
It's a big risk if if you're putting your head into the player and resting your eyeball directly over the laser diode. For people who do that, all we can hope for is more powerful lasers, or perhaps blu-ray players with sharks inside to which the laser is attached.
Yes, perfect... There's nothing like some insanity sauce to go with a stupidity special.
They're not mutually exclusive, and neither perspective is more important than the other, let alone worthy of the arrogant frothing-at-the-mouth tone you took.
I didn't mean to come off as frothing in support of my take on it. My beef is only with SecuROM. Sorry if it seemed like I was giving the parent a doing over. He said:
I didn't get the impression that this was a DRM issue. I took it more as an anti-cheat measure for on-line play.
And I don't agree. We're talking intent here: SecuROM doesn't do any sort of checking for cheats, and they already stated that they detect it solely to trip up crackers. That a dumper/debugger can be used to find methods of cheating is incidental, so I don't see that position as being well supported.
And if you ask a software developer or system admin about the tools, you'll get the equivalent of asking a locksmith about lock picking tools.
Well SecuROM made the lock and they are the software developer. They're bastards, but they're pretty upfront about what the prevention is for, and it's not cheat prevention or detection.