I'm not sure if you've ever looked at the legalese behind other subscription services, but most of them have that in their agreement.
Offline mode works fine, and the reason some people don't get it to work is because they turned off Offline Mode or one of the features associated with it (you may want to do this if you have a shared computer and don't want to share your account information with other people). If you don't do that, and leave it the way it is when you get it, offline mode works fine.
Don't worry about the 1.6 box, it's a non-issue now. To save some scratch I'd probably go used anyway, but the choice is yours.
The memory card is in a special Xbox filesystem format, so there's a few different ways to access it. I'm pretty sure you could use one of the PC Linux distributions to directly upload using the filesystem, but the easier way is to use one of the utilities. I believe Datel's Action Replay for Xbox software still works to access the memory card; then all you do is drag the zip file with the saved game folder onto the memory card and it copies it up.
May I ask whether your ultimate goal is to install Linux, or just to use emulators? I ask because if all you want to do is use emulators, I'd recommend not going with Xbox Linux and just using the XDK emulators - you'll get better performance since all the drivers work when running as an Xbox, and there's little to no overhead required to run background tasks (as opposed to Xbox Linux, which I believe doesn't have accelerated video drivers as of yet, and you have a full OS running in the background and consuming precious RAM). If you're a true Linux fanatic though, you'll still be able to run emulators in Linux - I'm just uncertain of how quickly they'll run.
I'm fairly certain that all non-Platinum-Hits copies of 007: Agent Under Fire are compatible with the hacked gamesaves that you'll need to mod your Xbox. I'd head down to your local used games retailer and pick up a copy for ~$5. I believe the same is true of Splinter Cell, although that's a game you might actually want to play.:-)
I'm not big on hard-modding personally; once you have the equipment and games you can literally mod an Xbox in about 5 minutes. The materials are about $20-$30 (exploitable game, Xbox Memory Card, Xbox Controller to USB adapter) which is cheaper then most hard-mods, and you can do more then one box. It's worth it just for Xbox Media Center alone (what I use my original Xbox for 99% of the time).
As far as cart dumpers, you're on you're own for that... I don't quite try that hard.:-)
I don't think it's supposed to be appealing to casual gamers, I think it's supposed to be a Wife Acceptance Factor thing - "Look honey, you can play Bejewled on it!"
Maybe once the price comes down, sure, but I think for right now it's the same idea behind releasing Phantom of the Opera as an HD-DVD launch title.
Seems to work as advertised
on
In2TV Goes Public
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I just fired up episodes of Pinky and the Brain and Babylon 5 and they both seemed to go fine (besides me having to switch to my Windows box and fire up IE - if you want to use Firefox on Windows (no Mac/Linux) you have to install an ActiveX plugin, which scares the living bejeezus out of me). It looks like you're watching a 30-second ad before the video; I didn't watch long enough to find out if they're inserting advertising in the middle of shows as well. The quality is actually quite good; at least VHS quality, and you can click a button to make it full screen. Some shows are advertised as having a higher quality version available, but you have to install their client that downloads in the background; it appears to use Kontiki, which I'm reluctant to install (I already have enough upstream being used between Vonage and Bittorrent without another content delivery system gumming up the works). Lastly, they seem to have a limited selection of episodes up - I'm not sure if they're planning on making all epsiodes available on demand or if they're going to rotate through episodes and only have a limited selection available.
Overall it's not going to win any awards for design - but it works, and for free I suppose I can't complain too much.
Yep. I'm not clear on the details, but basically it was released back in 2003, eventually wound up not being stocked in most retailers for a while, then Aspyr got the rights and re-ported it and just released it.
I'm not sure why, when Civ4 is just around the corner, but they did.
Civ 3 is a fluke. It came out several months after the original PC version, but due to some bizarre labyrinthine legal issues wound up not being on store shelves for a while and eventually required re-porting to the Mac by a different Mac game company, which just got released. Civ 4 is also being ported and should be done within a few months.
The iPod just uses a hidden folder called iPod_Control that stores all the MP3s. There's no special "mass storage area" because it's all one big HFS+/FAT32 drive, so anything that cares to look for the folder can scan through it and see all the MP3s. What's more, the hidden iPod database file format is fairly well known at this point, so there's no reason that Microsoft couldn't open the DB file and display all your playlists exactly as the iPod does. Furthermore, it will actually play AAC files - you're correct in saying "not DRMed AAC files from the iTMS), but I'm actually rather impressed they added unencrypted AAC support.
Evidently it is, because every Blizzard game since the original Warcraft has been released on the Mac; and every Blizzard release since Diablo II has been simultaneous release on a hybrid disc. (Even Diablo II was so close as to practically be simultaneous, although Starcraft took a little while...) They've also released Mac OS X versions of Starcraft and Diablo II, which have Mac OS X native installers downloadable from Blizzard's site that actually install the game and its expansion off the original CDs while patching it to a Mac OS X-native version, completely avoiding the use of Classic.
I think that Mac gamers very much appreciate Blizzard's support, and so tend to support Blizzard in kind. I mean, World of Warcraft is the first decent MMORPG to be released for the system (Everquest doesn't count, as it was a shoddy, half-supported port released years after everyone packed up and left for greener worlds). About half the Mac users I personally know own accounts, and one or two don't even play that much, they just keep the account open to show their support (and do the occasional instance run).
I hate pspupdates as much as the next fellow, but I haven't found a really great alternative (I sort of liked psp-news.dcemu.co.uk until the news poster who was blathering on about OMG TEH EMULATOR EETZ MEMORY KARDZ!!! figured out he could reformat it)... any suggestions?
Erm... You think with Kutaragi running around like a madman shouting things like "It's perfect! Nobody would dare criticize it!" and "You'll want to work yourself to death to save up and buy one!" and "It's not a game machine, it's the home entertainment supercomputer!" and "120GB of space isn't enough for gamers!" and "It'll age your content in an online digital vault like fine wine so it'll turn into HD!", that the Xbox 360 will be more of a fiasco then the PS3?
I tend to agree with you - while it is an amazing story, both from the perspective of the penguins and the filmmakers, and it's well worth seeing with children or anyone who happens to like animals, I too felt that it tried way too hard to evoke emotions in me. If I'm going to anthropomorphize cute Emperor penguin chicks, let me do it myself, dammit, rather then having it force-fed down my throat.:-)
One thing to note is that Final Cut Pro can do native HDV editing. It does so by only re-compressing when it absolutely has to, if the frame has been changed. Otherwise it uses the same MPEG-2 source that was captured off the camera. You still have a generational loss in any parts with changed frames, but it does help significantly. There's a PDF available on Final Cut Pro's HDV editing available at Apple's website.
True. Essentially what Apple is saying that you need to be on GCC.
Technically speaking, Metrowerks could incorporate an x86 compiler into Codewarrior... however, seeing as how they sold off all their x86 compiler IP, that seems very unlikely, and Codewarrior has been slowly transitioning from *the* way to code Mac OS apps to more of an embedded/console development platform anyway, that is, when they haven't been running the company into the ground...
He never said that. A few developers with extremely well-written apps have said that, but Steve Jobs pretty specifically stated that Java apps will require nothing, Cocoa apps will require a few days of work before full functionality, and most Carbon apps on Xcode will take up to a few weeks. This all assumes you're using Xcode; if you're using Codewarrior, you must migrate to Xcode before you can even start.
Maybe you're right. After thinking about it, I don't use Dashboard all that much, so maybe the reason it feels so slow to me is whenever I do wind up using it, it's often the first time I've used it since I've logged in. I've been playing around since I posted that and Dashboard certainly doesn't seem to be slow since then. Perhaps if Apple were to pre-load Dashboard widgets on login, rather then the first time you use it, it would alleviate a bit of my aggravation with dashboard.
Still, for the most part, the majority of Dashboard widgets just feel redundant. I keep thinking "Why am I using this feature-limited mini-app that only uses up a tiny portion of my large screen area when I can launch the real thing in about two seconds and get way more functionality?" I don't feel this way about all Dashboard widgets for sure - right now I'm using feedr, which pulls flickr images from my contact list and displays them as a slideshow in Dashboard, the calendar widget is quite useful for those times when you need to know what day the 12th falls on, and the language translator is way more convenient then going to babelfish/google translate. The package tracker and Sysstat also get thumbs up.
Most of Apple's widgets just feel lame to me though... the calculator because quite frankly, I much prefer Quicksilver's full calculating abilities and the way I can access it from the keyboard, the weather widget because it doesn't tell me what I want to know, like the chance of precipitation, and the converter widgets because it feels much easier to my brain to say "12 meters in inches" in google and get the answer there than to set conversion type to length, set the first variable to meters, set the second variable to inches, type it in... I have similar problems with most of Apple's widgets; they just feel redundant and useless compared to the real thing.
I agree with the grandparent - Dashboard is neat, but it's way too slow to be used much of the time. I use Quicksilver and in combination with a few bookmarks it does just about everything I need it to.
Weather w/Quicksilver: Cmd-Space, W-E-A-T, enter, Safari pops up and loads my weatherunderground.com bookmark. Dashboard: F12.... wait... wait... wait... wait... oh, here it is. I need more information... double-click... wait... Safari comes up. I actually often use Meterologist, which is even faster then both Dashboard and my bookmark.
Calculations: Cmd-Space, 4+4, tab, C-A-L-C, enter, result pops up. Or, if I want the kick-ass full Apple calculator, Cmd-Space, C-A-L-C, enter, up it pops. Dashboard: F12... wait... wait... click... wait... type calculation. As an added bonus, I can do as fancy calculations as I want with QS, complete with parenthesis and layered calculations.
Games: Cmd-Space, POP (or BEJ or SCU or...), enter. Dashboard: F12... wait... wait... click... wait... (as an unfortunate bonus, you only get to play in a little window.:-()
I'm not saying Quicksilver is the end-all be all, but even when I don't use it cmd-tabbing to Safari and clicking my Weather bookmark takes less time then Dashboard. My computer isn't horrible either - things should not be this slow on a Dual 1Ghz G4 with 1GB of RAM and a fast Seagate 7200.8 300GB drive.
In Dashboard's defense, some of the widgets are genuinely fantastic, and once I activate it for the session (read: once every few hours) it usually isn't too bad to use... but the few times it is sluggish, it makes me wonder why I use the thing.
Also, all unlocked GSM Treos have had this capability from day one, and Sprint just released a firmware update that officially enables this capability in all Sprint Treos... so how is this news, exactly?
That's a horrifyingly unfair comparison. The QuickTime 7 Preview for Windows is horribly unoptimized. I can take the Serenity trailer from Apple's website, remux it into a.mp4 file-format and play it using Nero's ShowTime (which plays H.264) at speeds much, much closer to 30FPS (might play back smoother if I weren't playing it over Samba from my Mac). In QT7, my Athlon 64 3200+ and my 1Ghz dual-processor G4 play back at about the same framerate. I'll bet anything once OS X for Intel is officially released QT7 will play HD movies back perfectly fine.
I can make another horrifyingly unfair comparison too. Take your G5 and try playing an HD movie from Microsoft's website, encoded in WMVHD, using the Mac version of Windows Media Player. It won't play back smoothly, or anywhere close to it. So does that mean your G5 is horrifyingly slow, or that WMP9 for Mac just sucks?
Slashdot Mirror
You are talking about Sony, right?
I'm not sure if you've ever looked at the legalese behind other subscription services, but most of them have that in their agreement.
Offline mode works fine, and the reason some people don't get it to work is because they turned off Offline Mode or one of the features associated with it (you may want to do this if you have a shared computer and don't want to share your account information with other people). If you don't do that, and leave it the way it is when you get it, offline mode works fine.
Then burn it to a CD. Steam lets you do that, and will even create nice CD/DVD-sized chunks and an installer for you.
Don't worry about the 1.6 box, it's a non-issue now. To save some scratch I'd probably go used anyway, but the choice is yours.
The memory card is in a special Xbox filesystem format, so there's a few different ways to access it. I'm pretty sure you could use one of the PC Linux distributions to directly upload using the filesystem, but the easier way is to use one of the utilities. I believe Datel's Action Replay for Xbox software still works to access the memory card; then all you do is drag the zip file with the saved game folder onto the memory card and it copies it up.
May I ask whether your ultimate goal is to install Linux, or just to use emulators? I ask because if all you want to do is use emulators, I'd recommend not going with Xbox Linux and just using the XDK emulators - you'll get better performance since all the drivers work when running as an Xbox, and there's little to no overhead required to run background tasks (as opposed to Xbox Linux, which I believe doesn't have accelerated video drivers as of yet, and you have a full OS running in the background and consuming precious RAM). If you're a true Linux fanatic though, you'll still be able to run emulators in Linux - I'm just uncertain of how quickly they'll run.
I'm fairly certain that all non-Platinum-Hits copies of 007: Agent Under Fire are compatible with the hacked gamesaves that you'll need to mod your Xbox. I'd head down to your local used games retailer and pick up a copy for ~$5. I believe the same is true of Splinter Cell, although that's a game you might actually want to play. :-)
:-)
I'm not big on hard-modding personally; once you have the equipment and games you can literally mod an Xbox in about 5 minutes. The materials are about $20-$30 (exploitable game, Xbox Memory Card, Xbox Controller to USB adapter) which is cheaper then most hard-mods, and you can do more then one box. It's worth it just for Xbox Media Center alone (what I use my original Xbox for 99% of the time).
As far as cart dumpers, you're on you're own for that... I don't quite try that hard.
I don't think it's supposed to be appealing to casual gamers, I think it's supposed to be a Wife Acceptance Factor thing - "Look honey, you can play Bejewled on it!"
Maybe once the price comes down, sure, but I think for right now it's the same idea behind releasing Phantom of the Opera as an HD-DVD launch title.
I just fired up episodes of Pinky and the Brain and Babylon 5 and they both seemed to go fine (besides me having to switch to my Windows box and fire up IE - if you want to use Firefox on Windows (no Mac/Linux) you have to install an ActiveX plugin, which scares the living bejeezus out of me). It looks like you're watching a 30-second ad before the video; I didn't watch long enough to find out if they're inserting advertising in the middle of shows as well. The quality is actually quite good; at least VHS quality, and you can click a button to make it full screen. Some shows are advertised as having a higher quality version available, but you have to install their client that downloads in the background; it appears to use Kontiki, which I'm reluctant to install (I already have enough upstream being used between Vonage and Bittorrent without another content delivery system gumming up the works). Lastly, they seem to have a limited selection of episodes up - I'm not sure if they're planning on making all epsiodes available on demand or if they're going to rotate through episodes and only have a limited selection available.
Overall it's not going to win any awards for design - but it works, and for free I suppose I can't complain too much.
Yep. I'm not clear on the details, but basically it was released back in 2003, eventually wound up not being stocked in most retailers for a while, then Aspyr got the rights and re-ported it and just released it.
I'm not sure why, when Civ4 is just around the corner, but they did.
Civ 3 is a fluke. It came out several months after the original PC version, but due to some bizarre labyrinthine legal issues wound up not being on store shelves for a while and eventually required re-porting to the Mac by a different Mac game company, which just got released. Civ 4 is also being ported and should be done within a few months.
Science Rules!
The iPod just uses a hidden folder called iPod_Control that stores all the MP3s. There's no special "mass storage area" because it's all one big HFS+/FAT32 drive, so anything that cares to look for the folder can scan through it and see all the MP3s. What's more, the hidden iPod database file format is fairly well known at this point, so there's no reason that Microsoft couldn't open the DB file and display all your playlists exactly as the iPod does. Furthermore, it will actually play AAC files - you're correct in saying "not DRMed AAC files from the iTMS), but I'm actually rather impressed they added unencrypted AAC support.
How is the rest of online gaming any different?
Seriously...
Evidently it is, because every Blizzard game since the original Warcraft has been released on the Mac; and every Blizzard release since Diablo II has been simultaneous release on a hybrid disc. (Even Diablo II was so close as to practically be simultaneous, although Starcraft took a little while...) They've also released Mac OS X versions of Starcraft and Diablo II, which have Mac OS X native installers downloadable from Blizzard's site that actually install the game and its expansion off the original CDs while patching it to a Mac OS X-native version, completely avoiding the use of Classic.
I think that Mac gamers very much appreciate Blizzard's support, and so tend to support Blizzard in kind. I mean, World of Warcraft is the first decent MMORPG to be released for the system (Everquest doesn't count, as it was a shoddy, half-supported port released years after everyone packed up and left for greener worlds). About half the Mac users I personally know own accounts, and one or two don't even play that much, they just keep the account open to show their support (and do the occasional instance run).
I hate pspupdates as much as the next fellow, but I haven't found a really great alternative (I sort of liked psp-news.dcemu.co.uk until the news poster who was blathering on about OMG TEH EMULATOR EETZ MEMORY KARDZ!!! figured out he could reformat it)... any suggestions?
Erm... You think with Kutaragi running around like a madman shouting things like "It's perfect! Nobody would dare criticize it!" and "You'll want to work yourself to death to save up and buy one!" and "It's not a game machine, it's the home entertainment supercomputer!" and "120GB of space isn't enough for gamers!" and "It'll age your content in an online digital vault like fine wine so it'll turn into HD!", that the Xbox 360 will be more of a fiasco then the PS3?
Please, pray tell, how so?
I tend to agree with you - while it is an amazing story, both from the perspective of the penguins and the filmmakers, and it's well worth seeing with children or anyone who happens to like animals, I too felt that it tried way too hard to evoke emotions in me. If I'm going to anthropomorphize cute Emperor penguin chicks, let me do it myself, dammit, rather then having it force-fed down my throat. :-)
Still reccomended, but with some reservations.
It's Google Maps, not Google Images. RTFA. :-)
One thing to note is that Final Cut Pro can do native HDV editing. It does so by only re-compressing when it absolutely has to, if the frame has been changed. Otherwise it uses the same MPEG-2 source that was captured off the camera. You still have a generational loss in any parts with changed frames, but it does help significantly. There's a PDF available on Final Cut Pro's HDV editing available at Apple's website.
True. Essentially what Apple is saying that you need to be on GCC.
Technically speaking, Metrowerks could incorporate an x86 compiler into Codewarrior... however, seeing as how they sold off all their x86 compiler IP, that seems very unlikely, and Codewarrior has been slowly transitioning from *the* way to code Mac OS apps to more of an embedded/console development platform anyway, that is, when they haven't been running the company into the ground...
This MacSlash thread goes into some rather sobering details.
He never said that. A few developers with extremely well-written apps have said that, but Steve Jobs pretty specifically stated that Java apps will require nothing, Cocoa apps will require a few days of work before full functionality, and most Carbon apps on Xcode will take up to a few weeks. This all assumes you're using Xcode; if you're using Codewarrior, you must migrate to Xcode before you can even start.
Maybe you're right. After thinking about it, I don't use Dashboard all that much, so maybe the reason it feels so slow to me is whenever I do wind up using it, it's often the first time I've used it since I've logged in. I've been playing around since I posted that and Dashboard certainly doesn't seem to be slow since then. Perhaps if Apple were to pre-load Dashboard widgets on login, rather then the first time you use it, it would alleviate a bit of my aggravation with dashboard.
Still, for the most part, the majority of Dashboard widgets just feel redundant. I keep thinking "Why am I using this feature-limited mini-app that only uses up a tiny portion of my large screen area when I can launch the real thing in about two seconds and get way more functionality?" I don't feel this way about all Dashboard widgets for sure - right now I'm using feedr, which pulls flickr images from my contact list and displays them as a slideshow in Dashboard, the calendar widget is quite useful for those times when you need to know what day the 12th falls on, and the language translator is way more convenient then going to babelfish/google translate. The package tracker and Sysstat also get thumbs up.
Most of Apple's widgets just feel lame to me though... the calculator because quite frankly, I much prefer Quicksilver's full calculating abilities and the way I can access it from the keyboard, the weather widget because it doesn't tell me what I want to know, like the chance of precipitation, and the converter widgets because it feels much easier to my brain to say "12 meters in inches" in google and get the answer there than to set conversion type to length, set the first variable to meters, set the second variable to inches, type it in... I have similar problems with most of Apple's widgets; they just feel redundant and useless compared to the real thing.
I agree with the grandparent - Dashboard is neat, but it's way too slow to be used much of the time. I use Quicksilver and in combination with a few bookmarks it does just about everything I need it to.
:-()
Weather w/Quicksilver: Cmd-Space, W-E-A-T, enter, Safari pops up and loads my weatherunderground.com bookmark.
Dashboard: F12.... wait... wait... wait... wait... oh, here it is. I need more information... double-click... wait... Safari comes up.
I actually often use Meterologist, which is even faster then both Dashboard and my bookmark.
Calculations: Cmd-Space, 4+4, tab, C-A-L-C, enter, result pops up. Or, if I want the kick-ass full Apple calculator, Cmd-Space, C-A-L-C, enter, up it pops.
Dashboard: F12... wait... wait... click... wait... type calculation.
As an added bonus, I can do as fancy calculations as I want with QS, complete with parenthesis and layered calculations.
Games: Cmd-Space, POP (or BEJ or SCU or...), enter.
Dashboard: F12... wait... wait... click... wait... (as an unfortunate bonus, you only get to play in a little window.
I'm not saying Quicksilver is the end-all be all, but even when I don't use it cmd-tabbing to Safari and clicking my Weather bookmark takes less time then Dashboard. My computer isn't horrible either - things should not be this slow on a Dual 1Ghz G4 with 1GB of RAM and a fast Seagate 7200.8 300GB drive.
In Dashboard's defense, some of the widgets are genuinely fantastic, and once I activate it for the session (read: once every few hours) it usually isn't too bad to use... but the few times it is sluggish, it makes me wonder why I use the thing.
Yes, Shadowmite hacked DUN. About 8 months ago.
Also, all unlocked GSM Treos have had this capability from day one, and Sprint just released a firmware update that officially enables this capability in all Sprint Treos... so how is this news, exactly?
I think you're getting Metal Gear Solid and Halo confused.
That's a horrifyingly unfair comparison. The QuickTime 7 Preview for Windows is horribly unoptimized. I can take the Serenity trailer from Apple's website, remux it into a .mp4 file-format and play it using Nero's ShowTime (which plays H.264) at speeds much, much closer to 30FPS (might play back smoother if I weren't playing it over Samba from my Mac). In QT7, my Athlon 64 3200+ and my 1Ghz dual-processor G4 play back at about the same framerate. I'll bet anything once OS X for Intel is officially released QT7 will play HD movies back perfectly fine.
I can make another horrifyingly unfair comparison too. Take your G5 and try playing an HD movie from Microsoft's website, encoded in WMVHD, using the Mac version of Windows Media Player. It won't play back smoothly, or anywhere close to it. So does that mean your G5 is horrifyingly slow, or that WMP9 for Mac just sucks?