as I watch my Max Headroom episodes in resolutions they can't even dream of
There's a limit as to how much spatial resolution an analog television signal with a specified bandwidth can carry. (This was suggested by Nyquist and proved by Shannon.) An NTSC color signal can carry about 640x480 pixels at 30 frames per second, tops.
Or do you get HDTV? I didn't know any station was broadcasting Max Headroom in HDTV. Heck, I didn't even know Max Headroom was produced in HDTV resolution.
Or are you using some sort of non-linear filter to add faux detail to the picture?
However, I don't think it knows how to make MPEG-4 audio (either AAC or CELP).
Both AAC (MPEG-2 advanced audio codec) and MP3 (MPEG-1 layer 3 audio codec) worked in MPEG-2; I can't see why MP3 wouldn't work within the MPEG-4 framework.
Except.m3v refers to MPEG-2 Layer 3 audio (sample rate 11 kHz, encoding frequencies to 8 kHz) with high-frequency information in the PlusV encoding based on a mostly-noise model of the frequencies between 8 kHz and 16 kHz.
Both Windows and OS X use 3 character file extensions
Sure, Mac OS X has ".app" extensions on programs (compare Windows's ".exe"), but instead of ".dll" for libraries, Mac OS X uses ".framework", a nine-character extension.
You chose Win98 knowing that it is insecure and buggy.
I chose Windows ME (also called Win98 Third Edition) because my computer vendor didn't have Windows 2000 available at a price I could justify to the purchasing department (i.e. my parents). Not everybody is physically old enough to have graduated from college and found a job yet.
[Because of MPEG audio layer 3], there is not MPEG-3, and we jumped directly to MPEG-4.
Actually, it wasn't because of the naming of the audio codec at all. The MPEG-3 committee actually found that what they wanted to accomplish could be done with MPEG-2.
More than that: I've written GBA games such as Tetanus On Drugs. The GBA's graphics hardware is very similar to the Super NES's, but its sound hardware more closely resembles a Sound Blaster Pro.
I guess it would be like trying to port an application without access to the original source code.
And without access to the graphics and sound for the next 90 years (no thank you Sonny Bono!) unless you petition the publisher to let you do a port.
I'd love to see Nethack for the GB. I'm currently working on a Palm version
Doesn't nethack have more than 256 KB of state? The GBA has only about 288 KB of RAM on the console and 32 KB of RAM on the cartridge (for saved games).
SNES games were written in ASM, GBA games are mostly written in C.
The inner loops of the graphics transformation and sound mixing in most GBA games are written in ARM assembly language and stored in a special fast RAM on the same die as the CPU.
But a devkit would allow you to work on a SNES emulator wouldn't it?
The Super NES has two processors connected by a slow bus: a 3.6 MHz 65C816 and a 2 MHz SPC700 (both relatives of the 6502). The GBA barely manages to emulate the NES with a 1.8 MHz 6502 processor. Besides, most games actually use all 224 scanlines of the display, not the 160 the GBA gives you.
If you want Genesis or Super NES games on GBA, either port them yourself using Devkit Advance (creating new levels and characters to circumvent copyright law) or petition the original publisher.
[GBA has platform games, and] So does a PC [link to Boycott Advance, a GBA emulator].
Yes, but you still have to buy the cartridge reader for $45 from a Visoly dealer such as Lik Sang. A GBA doesn't cost much more than that. And even then, VisualBoyAdvance is a bit more accurate than Boycott Advance (for GBA) and Marat's VGB (for GB/GBC).
[links to Super NES, Genesis, N64, and Game Boy emulators]
For one thing: Do NOT use iNES or NESticle. They have a bug in their VBlank handling that causes some games to skip their delay loops or perform other weird actions.
For another thing, cart readers for Super NES, Sega Genesis, and N64 were extremely hard to come by last time I checked.
[PlayStation emulator]
It's easy to read most PSX games (they're ISO 9660 file systems for Christ's sake), but many PSX games do not work well with a keyboard. If you're going to carry a USB PSX pad (Gravis GamePad Pro) with your laptop, why not just carry a GBA?
RoadRunner (provided by Time Warner in Austin, TX) requires you to purchase basic cable in addition to your cable Internet service.
Windows (provided by Microsoft in Redmond, WA) requires you to purchase a basic media player in addition to your operating system.
I wonder why nobody has yet investigated local cable monopolies for illegal tying under the antitrust laws, especially in areas where the telephone monopoly does not offer DSL. Zathrus agrees with me.
there is no right to privacy as protected in the Constitution.
An argument along the lines "because the word 'privacy' is not mentioned in the Constitution, the Constitution does not protect privacy" is completely bogus. According to the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
In addition, the Fourth Amendment protects "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures".
B+tree was innovative when it was first used in a product. Most codecs designed for lossy compression of signals are innovative. However, I don't think Microsoft's patent on the ASF streaming file format was justified.
If this is true, then couldn't it be argued that [DeCSS] is a valid reverse engineering exercise for purposes of interoperability with the Linux operating system?
The difference in the DVD-file-format case is that DeCSS was first released as a Windows executable, useful for nothing but copying DVDs. The DeCSS developers should have finished the Linux kernel's UDF drivers before publicly releasing the DeCSS application.
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as I watch my Max Headroom episodes in resolutions they can't even dream of
There's a limit as to how much spatial resolution an analog television signal with a specified bandwidth can carry. (This was suggested by Nyquist and proved by Shannon.) An NTSC color signal can carry about 640x480 pixels at 30 frames per second, tops.
Or do you get HDTV? I didn't know any station was broadcasting Max Headroom in HDTV. Heck, I didn't even know Max Headroom was produced in HDTV resolution.
Or are you using some sort of non-linear filter to add faux detail to the picture?
However, I don't think it knows how to make MPEG-4 audio (either AAC or CELP).
Both AAC (MPEG-2 advanced audio codec) and MP3 (MPEG-1 layer 3 audio codec) worked in MPEG-2; I can't see why MP3 wouldn't work within the MPEG-4 framework.
But then, I haven't read the standard.
Except .m3v refers to MPEG-2 Layer 3 audio (sample rate 11 kHz, encoding frequencies to 8 kHz) with high-frequency information in the PlusV encoding based on a mostly-noise model of the frequencies between 8 kHz and 16 kHz.
Both Windows and OS X use 3 character file extensions
Sure, Mac OS X has ".app" extensions on programs (compare Windows's ".exe"), but instead of ".dll" for libraries, Mac OS X uses ".framework", a nine-character extension.
You chose Win98 knowing that it is insecure and buggy.
I chose Windows ME (also called Win98 Third Edition) because my computer vendor didn't have Windows 2000 available at a price I could justify to the purchasing department (i.e. my parents). Not everybody is physically old enough to have graduated from college and found a job yet.
[Because of MPEG audio layer 3], there is not MPEG-3, and we jumped directly to MPEG-4.
Actually, it wasn't because of the naming of the audio codec at all. The MPEG-3 committee actually found that what they wanted to accomplish could be done with MPEG-2.
mp3 is MPEG 1 Layer 3 (audio).
The ".mp3" format can be MPEG-1 audio layer 3 for 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, and 48 kHz sample rates, or MPEG-2 audio layer 3 for lower sample rates.
have you seen the graphics on the GBA?
More than that: I've written GBA games such as Tetanus On Drugs. The GBA's graphics hardware is very similar to the Super NES's, but its sound hardware more closely resembles a Sound Blaster Pro.
I guess it would be like trying to port an application without access to the original source code.
And without access to the graphics and sound for the next 90 years (no thank you Sonny Bono!) unless you petition the publisher to let you do a port.
maybe we should wait to see if a single game even gets created.
Here's such a game: Tetanus On Drugs. It's like playing Nintendo's The New Tetris® on LSD, except without the DEA breathing down your neck.
let's get ogg123 going.
You'd probably have to build the decoder hardware into the cartridge, as the GBA's processor is a 16 MHz ARM7TDMI.
we could somehow make our own port of say "Secret of Mana" (or some other SNES title) for the GBA?
No you couldn't, not at least until after December 31, 2088 (1993 SoM release + 95 year copyright term).
You'd have to make your own RPG, with your own characters and your own story. But if you want that, just go buy Golden Sun.
I'd love to see Nethack for the GB. I'm currently working on a Palm version
Doesn't nethack have more than 256 KB of state? The GBA has only about 288 KB of RAM on the console and 32 KB of RAM on the cartridge (for saved games).
SNES games were written in ASM, GBA games are mostly written in C.
The inner loops of the graphics transformation and sound mixing in most GBA games are written in ARM assembly language and stored in a special fast RAM on the same die as the CPU.
But a devkit would allow you to work on a SNES emulator wouldn't it?
The Super NES has two processors connected by a slow bus: a 3.6 MHz 65C816 and a 2 MHz SPC700 (both relatives of the 6502). The GBA barely manages to emulate the NES with a 1.8 MHz 6502 processor. Besides, most games actually use all 224 scanlines of the display, not the 160 the GBA gives you.
If you want Genesis or Super NES games on GBA, either port them yourself using Devkit Advance (creating new levels and characters to circumvent copyright law) or petition the original publisher.
[GBA has platform games, and] So does a PC [link to Boycott Advance, a GBA emulator].
Yes, but you still have to buy the cartridge reader for $45 from a Visoly dealer such as Lik Sang. A GBA doesn't cost much more than that. And even then, VisualBoyAdvance is a bit more accurate than Boycott Advance (for GBA) and Marat's VGB (for GB/GBC).
[links to Super NES, Genesis, N64, and Game Boy emulators]
For one thing: Do NOT use iNES or NESticle. They have a bug in their VBlank handling that causes some games to skip their delay loops or perform other weird actions.
For another thing, cart readers for Super NES, Sega Genesis, and N64 were extremely hard to come by last time I checked.
[PlayStation emulator]
It's easy to read most PSX games (they're ISO 9660 file systems for Christ's sake), but many PSX games do not work well with a keyboard. If you're going to carry a USB PSX pad (Gravis GamePad Pro) with your laptop, why not just carry a GBA?
That's why I got the GF2Go...screw the gameboy advance :)
The PC doesn't have many side-scrolling or falling-block titles. The GBA has pretty much every 'tris game ever designed.
Pocket PC + NVIDIA's mobile 3D video chipset = XBOY
Forgive me for assuming that you would know that a 'G4" is an Nvidia GeForce 4 Graphics card.
In general, Slashdot users call the PowerPC 7400 processor a "G4" and the NVIDIA GeForce 4 graphics chipset "GF4".
Offtopic is RedundantThere is no need for a web server to be running anything [on an open port] other than Apache.
What about Roxen? What about AOLserver? What about the hypothetical future complete rewrite of IIS? And what about Other?
I wonder how the local last-mile monopolies (the phone company and the cable company) get away with such tying. (Read my other comment.)
RoadRunner (provided by Time Warner in Austin, TX) requires you to purchase basic cable in addition to your cable Internet service.
Windows (provided by Microsoft in Redmond, WA) requires you to purchase a basic media player in addition to your operating system.
I wonder why nobody has yet investigated local cable monopolies for illegal tying under the antitrust laws, especially in areas where the telephone monopoly does not offer DSL. Zathrus agrees with me.
there is no right to privacy as protected in the Constitution.
An argument along the lines "because the word 'privacy' is not mentioned in the Constitution, the Constitution does not protect privacy" is completely bogus. According to the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
In addition, the Fourth Amendment protects "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures".
at the end of the day, a business man, having made his profit, will have no further incentive to lie to the public
Except to make further profit.
Didn't work as a defence for DeCSS.
I addressed that issue.
most file formats aren't exactly innovative.
B+tree was innovative when it was first used in a product. Most codecs designed for lossy compression of signals are innovative. However, I don't think Microsoft's patent on the ASF streaming file format was justified.
If this is true, then couldn't it be argued that [DeCSS] is a valid reverse engineering exercise for purposes of interoperability with the Linux operating system?
The difference in the DVD-file-format case is that DeCSS was first released as a Windows executable, useful for nothing but copying DVDs. The DeCSS developers should have finished the Linux kernel's UDF drivers before publicly releasing the DeCSS application.