Um. The english closed caption would TRANSCRIBE the horrible dubbing, not the actual subtitles.
You do realize that an American TV signal can carry up to four caption channels, don't you? Put English dubtitles on caption 1 and the real English subtitles on caption 2, and then put Japanese audio on SAP, and you've satisfied most viewers.
shelves... Doom, or CnC, or Unreal... commercial product
You said "highgrade professional games", not "games whose copies are sold through retail outlets" or "first-person shooters or real-time tactical simulations". (I took "highgrade" to mean "B+ and A as opposed to C- and D" and "professional" to mean "the programmers got paid".) I agree that Java technology is not right for 3D games where frame-rate is Job 1, but it does have its uses in interactive simulation based entertainment.
For the $1,000 that the cheapest Macintosh computer costs, I could buy at least 70 CDs, with full recording quality and full liner notes and no digital restrictions management.
Think about it: a bootable CD that has the Linux kernel, drivers, support libraries and your game code.
The two CONs you mention below are show-stoppers:
Game developers may start developing drivers again. (**shudder**)
Will it have drivers for video cards, sound cards, and network cards released two years after the game is published? I don't think so.
No downloading or listening to MP3's in the background
Consumers expect to be able to print, download, etc. in the background while playing a game, or to pause the game and "change the channel" so to speak.
M$ wants.NET to be the term, then they can copyright the interfaces
Really? For example, copyrighting Webster's dictionary does not give Merriam any monopoly over the English language. Languages are an idea, not an expression, and any copyrightable expression they do have would likely be swallowed up in fair use. Precedents include Lotus v. Borland for menu structure and Sega v. Accolade for program headers. APIs can be patented, but Sun's Java technology is prior art for most of what Microsoft's been doing with the.NET framework.
How many highgrade professional games are written in Java currently?
Do you claim that Java platform games such as Cubis and Bookworm available at Yahoo! Games either earn low marks, or are not written by professionals, or both?
printer manufacturers are already under investigation for anticompetitive practices by the EU. If they have any sense, they'll back off fast.
Then they'll just make two kinds of printers: printers that work but only in Europe, and crippled printers that can work anywhere. Using a voltage transformer to circumvent region lockout of the EU printer in the US is a violation of the DMCA, as the printer's firmware is copyrighted.
There are a few other non-evil printer manufacturers, I'm sure, but Canon seems to be the best as far as I've heard.
One problem: Canon USA refuses to port its printer drivers to operating systems not published by Microsoft or Apple and refuses to disclose the language that the printer understands to developers of free software because its standard NDA prohibits a driver developer from disclosing the driver's source code.
I personally think that if the movie studios didn't tie everything down with their endless squabbling about DRM, we could and would have been enjoying VOD right now for a few years.
Then why didn't North America get the NES disk drive ("Famicom Disk System") or the N64 disk drive ("64DD") that came out in Japan? Simple: after Nintendo test-marketed those formats in Japan, the company decided that they were too easy to pirate.
With IP multicast, this could be even made more efficent.
Except that few ISPs implement multicast because they don't know of a fair revenue model.
in turn, making it more difficult to pirate high quality movies.
It's difficult to pirate high-quality movies because it's difficult to find high-quality movies. Even the best transfer from a film or digital master to a high-definition digital consumer format can't rescue a crappy script or crappy acting.
Even then, as long as players continue to provide a 480p component video output (which they will have to provide for compatibility with current available TV sets throughout the next decade or so), the analog hole will remain open.
Can you give an example of a byte being something other than 8 bits?
In the upper physical layer of many serial communications protocols, a byte is 10 bits (2 framing and 8 data). But because that's still 8-bit bytes in a sense, here are more examples: 9-bit bytes6-bit bytes
Why is the American Hot Rod Association collecting money for the RIAA?
You're just as bad as those who confuse the Business Software Alliance with Scouting in every single story about the BSA. In U.S. copyright law, AHRA refers to the Audio Home Recording Act, codified as 17 USC chapter 10.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, section 27.2: "Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author."
Why should we be forced to use DOS (nothing against MS here) when I am sure that an OSS project could be implemented and go on to become as popular as DOS boot disks.
How are "DOS" and "an OSS project" mutually exclusive in light of FreeDOS (which several others have mentioned) and the DJGPP compiler suite?
a flimsy one at best as MNG is "PNG+animation", in the same way GIF89a is "GIF87+animation".
There's a big difference: Out of the box, the most recent released version of Microsoft Internet Explorer can display GIF89a animations. Out of the box, the most recent released version of Microsoft Internet Explorer cannot display MNG animations.
people who wanted other languages in gimp, and did write their own
There is a difference between kernel space and user space. Perl is OK in user space, but I find Scheme in the kernel less objectionable than Perl in the kernel because Scheme is so much smaller than Perl.
Slashdot Mirror
I heard that they were considering subtitled stuff LATE AT NIGHT, which doesn't do me good since I'm asleep
TiVo.
Um. The english closed caption would TRANSCRIBE the horrible dubbing, not the actual subtitles.
You do realize that an American TV signal can carry up to four caption channels, don't you? Put English dubtitles on caption 1 and the real English subtitles on caption 2, and then put Japanese audio on SAP, and you've satisfied most viewers.
I think the main reason people don't write games in java is because they can be decompiled.
What does the fact that a binary format can be decompiled have to do with anything? Even x86 binaries can be decompiled.
I just don't know what the hell MS was thinking, OO Basic?
"I just don't know what the hell Bjarne Stroustrup was thinking, OO C?" I don't see anything wrong with adding object-oriented constructions to Basic.
shelves ... Doom, or CnC, or Unreal ... commercial product
You said "highgrade professional games", not "games whose copies are sold through retail outlets" or "first-person shooters or real-time tactical simulations". (I took "highgrade" to mean "B+ and A as opposed to C- and D" and "professional" to mean "the programmers got paid".) I agree that Java technology is not right for 3D games where frame-rate is Job 1, but it does have its uses in interactive simulation based entertainment.
Another argument: "I can't afford a Mac because I'm a broke college student and my PC is 30 months old and has no resale value."
I say "Buy a Mac."
For the $1,000 that the cheapest Macintosh computer costs, I could buy at least 70 CDs, with full recording quality and full liner notes and no digital restrictions management.
It's $1.00 a song - easy impulse buy.
It's $1,000 to get started - not an impulse buy for a recent college graduate who's looking for a job.
Fuck that, they need to charge a more reasonable price, like $0.05 a song or $1 an album.
That's not financially possible. Under U.S. copyright law, the songwriter's publisher gets about 8 cents per copy in addition to what the label gets.
How about buying a printer from a different manufacturer?
If all four national manufacturers of inkjet printers with suggested retail prices under $200 do this, then where can an informed home user turn?
Think about it: a bootable CD that has the Linux kernel, drivers, support libraries and your game code.
The two CONs you mention below are show-stoppers:
Game developers may start developing drivers again. (**shudder**)
Will it have drivers for video cards, sound cards, and network cards released two years after the game is published? I don't think so.
No downloading or listening to MP3's in the background
Consumers expect to be able to print, download, etc. in the background while playing a game, or to pause the game and "change the channel" so to speak.
M$ wants .NET to be the term, then they can copyright the interfaces
Really? For example, copyrighting Webster's dictionary does not give Merriam any monopoly over the English language. Languages are an idea, not an expression, and any copyrightable expression they do have would likely be swallowed up in fair use. Precedents include Lotus v. Borland for menu structure and Sega v. Accolade for program headers. APIs can be patented, but Sun's Java technology is prior art for most of what Microsoft's been doing with the .NET framework.
How many highgrade professional games are written in Java currently?
Do you claim that Java platform games such as Cubis and Bookworm available at Yahoo! Games either earn low marks, or are not written by professionals, or both?
printer manufacturers are already under investigation for anticompetitive practices by the EU. If they have any sense, they'll back off fast.
Then they'll just make two kinds of printers: printers that work but only in Europe, and crippled printers that can work anywhere. Using a voltage transformer to circumvent region lockout of the EU printer in the US is a violation of the DMCA, as the printer's firmware is copyrighted.
There are a few other non-evil printer manufacturers, I'm sure, but Canon seems to be the best as far as I've heard.
One problem: Canon USA refuses to port its printer drivers to operating systems not published by Microsoft or Apple and refuses to disclose the language that the printer understands to developers of free software because its standard NDA prohibits a driver developer from disclosing the driver's source code.
Nintendo Troll wrote:
I personally think that if the movie studios didn't tie everything down with their endless squabbling about DRM, we could and would have been enjoying VOD right now for a few years.
Then why didn't North America get the NES disk drive ("Famicom Disk System") or the N64 disk drive ("64DD") that came out in Japan? Simple: after Nintendo test-marketed those formats in Japan, the company decided that they were too easy to pirate.
With IP multicast, this could be even made more efficent.
Except that few ISPs implement multicast because they don't know of a fair revenue model.
in turn, making it more difficult to pirate high quality movies.
It's difficult to pirate high-quality movies because it's difficult to find high-quality movies. Even the best transfer from a film or digital master to a high-definition digital consumer format can't rescue a crappy script or crappy acting.
Even then, as long as players continue to provide a 480p component video output (which they will have to provide for compatibility with current available TV sets throughout the next decade or so), the analog hole will remain open.
Can you give an example of a byte being something other than 8 bits?
In the upper physical layer of many serial communications protocols, a byte is 10 bits (2 framing and 8 data). But because that's still 8-bit bytes in a sense, here are more examples: 9-bit bytes 6-bit bytes
Why is the American Hot Rod Association collecting money for the RIAA?
You're just as bad as those who confuse the Business Software Alliance with Scouting in every single story about the BSA. In U.S. copyright law, AHRA refers to the Audio Home Recording Act, codified as 17 USC chapter 10.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, section 27.2: "Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author."
Why should we be forced to use DOS (nothing against MS here) when I am sure that an OSS project could be implemented and go on to become as popular as DOS boot disks.
How are "DOS" and "an OSS project" mutually exclusive in light of FreeDOS (which several others have mentioned) and the DJGPP compiler suite?
The GIF patent expires on June 30, 2003
Not if Unisys bands together with Fraunhofer, Charlie Northrup, and big pharmaceutical manufacturers and demands that the U.S. Congress enact a Cher Patent Term Harmonization Act.
that's only a month away
Try two months, which is more than enough for intense lobbying. How long did it take to get USAPATRIOT passed?
PNG is pronounced like the duck.
a flimsy one at best as MNG is "PNG+animation", in the same way GIF89a is "GIF87+animation".
There's a big difference: Out of the box, the most recent released version of Microsoft Internet Explorer can display GIF89a animations. Out of the box, the most recent released version of Microsoft Internet Explorer cannot display MNG animations.
How did you solve the halting problem?
Some cases of the halting problem are straightforward to accept or reject.
people who wanted other languages in gimp, and did write their own
There is a difference between kernel space and user space. Perl is OK in user space, but I find Scheme in the kernel less objectionable than Perl in the kernel because Scheme is so much smaller than Perl.