Dude, Cingular rapes you for the data plans. See Sprint or T-Mobile - $15 - $20/mo for unlimited data, at ~dialup speeds (Sprint is actually slightly faster then Dialup). Verizon has the same technology as Sprint, but charges $80/mo for it, and doesn't have the present-yet-mostly-unenforced "no laptops" restriction of Sprint.
There's a difference between WebKit and WebCore. WebKit is a very high-level framework that most apps will wind up using (e.g. drag, drop, and WebKit takes care of most of the work). For the finer control that Omni Group requires of the HTML core, they use the WebCore/JavaScriptCore frameworks, which operate at a much lower level and are not public/supposed to be used. My guess is that Omni is using their own custom version though, which means that they can do whatever the heck they want.;)
Beyond the HMO discount, neither does TiVo (unless you count the DirecTiVo units, where there's a flat fee of $5/mo for all TiVo receivers in your household.) That is another pet peeve of mine - if you have multiple TiVos (which they encourage - the remotes have a switch for DVR 1 and DVR 2) you're paying $13/mo per TiVo or $300 for a lifetime for each. That significantly increases the costs, and currently makes it rather impractical to own more then one DVR (unless you have money coming out the wazoo).
What happens if you want to go back and change the way two guaranteed season-pass type things react to each other (e.g., I decide that CSI is less important then ER and drop it down the Season Pass List?) Is there any easy way to do that?
Not that I do that often, but once every three months or so I'll go through and make sure that the Season Pass list is in accordance with the priorities of me and my family... less strife that way.:)
You haven't used a TiVo in a while, or if you have, it's been a Series 1. In the latest TiVo OS, you can have all episodes of a show show up in a folder, so all Simpsons episodes are categorized under one "Simpsons" folder. You can also change sorting options, so you can sort by date recorded or by name.
Automatic Commercial Skip... meh. DVArchive... I admit it would be nice to have something that simple, but I can hack my Series 1 TiVo and add show recording and so much more, so I'm not concerned about it. The 30-second skip isn't really a hack, it's more like a cheat code, and I'm pretty sure that Series 2 does have it.
One thing about ReplayTV I'm unsure of.. On a TiVo you have a complete list of all your Season Passes (shows you want every episode of) and Wishlists (wildcard searches that let you search by name, actor, director, etc.), and can put them in a list according to their priority. You can also go through the entire list of shows it will record (in a list format, not on the TV guide) and see what it will record, as well as get a list of what it won't (and didn't) record and why. If at any point you see something that's not to your taste, you can cancel/enable recording and the TiVo automatically re-adjusts all the recordings. What conflict resolution methods does ReplayTV have? I've heard they're inferior, but I haven't had it explained to me very well.
A few notes: You have to do it fast enough, it's best to do it on a prerecorded program so it doesn't change the channel, and you should hear three dings (thumbs-up sounds) when you're done.
Just thought I'd throw that in there. And yes, TiVo does rock.
I can't remember if Gabe Newell said this outright or if this came out of one of the leaked e-mails from the code heist, but I recall that Steam is/was going to have a P2P system, but they didn't release it with the initial release because it would take too long to implement.
Sony doesn't officially sell TiVos anymore... It's just www.tivo.com, and yes, you can stream shows from one TiVo to another, although it'll cost you at least $150 extra ($99 for the Home Media Option on the first TiVo, $49 on each additional TiVo). You also get the ability to play MP3s and view JPEGs with the HMO, which may or may not be an exciting feature.
One last thing... I realize that this on a bit of a tangent from the main point of your post. I thought it might just be worth pointing out for some reason.;)
I would just like to take a quick moment to point out that iTunes has deals with indie labels. Of the bands you listed, the last two are on the iTMS, and there is one track from Quasi. Of course, that's 2 out of 6... but that ain't too bad.;) Don't know about the other services (I don't have Napster/MusicMatch installed), but since they have roughly the same number of tracks or more, I'd assume they have some indie labels.
Well, as other people have stated, the size is one thing; It's about an inch taller and depending on the model, the same thickness or thinner then a deck of cards. IIRC, the Archos is about the size of a paperback novel. I can put the iPod in my pocket and comfortably carry it around with me, which is more then I can say for the Archos, and I always wear baggy cargo pants.
But for me, it's mainly the interface. My experience with Archos products have been limited to a brief setting-up of a client's Jukebox, but the interface on the thing was absolutely horrible. Two or three very small lines of text, with no real navigation to speak of - just browsing the folders you set up on there. The iPod has a *very* slick navigation interface, and lets you browse your music by artist, album, genre, song name, or playlist. In addition, the scroll wheel lets you scroll though your entire music collection in around 10 seconds, and the screen is large enough that you can navigate easily. I can generally plop an iPod down in front of anybody (even technophobes) and within about 30 seconds have them navigating around it and playing songs, which is more then I can say for the Archos (again, it's rather fuzzy, but it took me a while to figure out how the hell it worked).
Seriously, when I first heard about the iPod when it came out, I was the same way... "why the fuck would I buy this $399 player when I get the same thing for $200 less?", and I'm as big an Apple fanatic as any. Then I got to play with one, and I ran out and bought the 10GB model when it first came out. Between the size and the awesome interface, it's been very much worth it, and I don't regret buying it in the least. Judging from the fact it's been the number 1 MP3 player, it seems I'm not alone.:)
(and yes, I realize that these days pretty much every player has an iPod-clone interface (does the Archos Recorder have one too?), but there's still nothing that can really beat the size and form factor. But, to each his own.:)
No, they don't. It says right on that page to "try logging in as an Administrator" before it says to install the fix.
The reason the games need this is because of the CD copy protection; they need to access the drive directly to be able to see whether the bad sectors/whatever hidden data they're looking for are there. You could try cracking the games and seeing if that helps, as I'm pretty sure that's the only they need Admin access - a good site for cracks is GameCopyWorld. I often use them because I'm a lazy bastard who doesn't want to risk ruining his (original!) CDs by switching them around all the time, and I've never had a problem with any of the cracks I've downloaded from there.
One other possible method.. Isn't there a way to have Windows "run as" a different user (ala +s on UNIX)? So you could have it run as some special Admin-priveleged user, while keeping them in the non-Admin account most of the time.
Have you played Halo? In Halo the soundtrack is fully dynamic depending on what's happening in the game. The cool thing is, all the audio is prerecorded orchestral stuff - but there's enough transitional audio that it can smoothly segue from the more laidback themes up to the advanced themes and vice versa. There's not music all the time, but there is where it counts, and overall the audio in the game is absolutely top-notch.
Most MP3 players can play WMA, which makes it compatible with the new Napster. The iPod, which as of the last time I had heard was the number one MP3 player, plays AAC, which makes it compatible with iTunes. So there's no real way to tell what they're playing on their portable players.
No it's not. There's no scroll wheel. I have 10GB of music on my iPod - I'd probably sooner commit suicide then trying to scroll all the way down to U2 or something low on the alphabet. (Yes, I realize there's probably a page-down feature. The scroll wheel still beats paging down by a mile.)
Also, I must admit, the iPod's auto-sync is a killer feature that no other player that I've heard of does. Plug it in, copies music, leave it plugged in until you're ready to go and just grab it and leave. The iRiver player just shows up as a hard drive, and won't even show artist/album/genre info unless you run a special software program.
Still, it does look fairly cool - if I were in the market for an MP3 player I would have to give it serious thought. One definite downside is that for all the vaunted MP3/WMA/Ogg support, there's no support for Audible.com, which the iPod does (and no other portable HD-based player has). Granted, not everybody wants to use such evil proprietary formats as Audible, but for some people it's kind of a turnoff.
I think he means if you were to think of a game with bullet-time, Max Payne would top the list. Enter The Matrix certainly didn't deliver very well.
And in all fairness to Max Payne, it came out two years after the Matrix was released in theaters (Max Payne was released July 23rd, 2001, The Matrix came out in April/May of '99). You can't really say that it was timed to ride on the buzz, since any buzz from the movie would've fizzled out over a year and a half before. The Matrix's influence certainly had taken hold by then, though, and many of the reviews did compare Bullet-Time to The Matrix (how could they not?) The only question is if they started planning bullet-time before or after The Matrix exploded onto the scene, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Remedy had started implementing it before even a trailer for the Matrix came out. (It also wouldn't surprise me to learn that they started afterwards to try on capitalize on the Buzz - doesn't matter to me, either way Max Payne is still a great game.)
There's licensing issues. Music is often sold through a different company in each country, meaning that Apple has to ink a deal with each one of them. I don't think Apple checks the IP - I was traveling through Canada (no iTMS there, either) and I was able to purchase quite a bit of music. If you happen to have a credit card with a US billing address, or a friend who could send you a gift certificate (it should be noted I don't know if that works), then you could buy music online. Otherwise, you'll have to wait until next year when Apple can support Europe.
Actually, you don't even have to click a mouse. You can set iTunes to rip a CD upon insertion, and eject when finished. The only time you would have to click is if iTunes finds multiple matches from the CDDB library, but that doesn't happen very often.
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On a somewhat unrelated note:
;)
Am I the only one that was thinking of bridge-jumpers (aka, sucide) when reading this post?
Dude, Cingular rapes you for the data plans. See Sprint or T-Mobile - $15 - $20/mo for unlimited data, at ~dialup speeds (Sprint is actually slightly faster then Dialup). Verizon has the same technology as Sprint, but charges $80/mo for it, and doesn't have the present-yet-mostly-unenforced "no laptops" restriction of Sprint.
There's a difference between WebKit and WebCore. WebKit is a very high-level framework that most apps will wind up using (e.g. drag, drop, and WebKit takes care of most of the work). For the finer control that Omni Group requires of the HTML core, they use the WebCore/JavaScriptCore frameworks, which operate at a much lower level and are not public/supposed to be used. My guess is that Omni is using their own custom version though, which means that they can do whatever the heck they want. ;)
Simpsons Hit & Run? ;-)
Beyond the HMO discount, neither does TiVo (unless you count the DirecTiVo units, where there's a flat fee of $5/mo for all TiVo receivers in your household.) That is another pet peeve of mine - if you have multiple TiVos (which they encourage - the remotes have a switch for DVR 1 and DVR 2) you're paying $13/mo per TiVo or $300 for a lifetime for each. That significantly increases the costs, and currently makes it rather impractical to own more then one DVR (unless you have money coming out the wazoo).
What happens if you want to go back and change the way two guaranteed season-pass type things react to each other (e.g., I decide that CSI is less important then ER and drop it down the Season Pass List?) Is there any easy way to do that?
:)
Not that I do that often, but once every three months or so I'll go through and make sure that the Season Pass list is in accordance with the priorities of me and my family... less strife that way.
You haven't used a TiVo in a while, or if you have, it's been a Series 1. In the latest TiVo OS, you can have all episodes of a show show up in a folder, so all Simpsons episodes are categorized under one "Simpsons" folder. You can also change sorting options, so you can sort by date recorded or by name.
Automatic Commercial Skip... meh. DVArchive... I admit it would be nice to have something that simple, but I can hack my Series 1 TiVo and add show recording and so much more, so I'm not concerned about it. The 30-second skip isn't really a hack, it's more like a cheat code, and I'm pretty sure that Series 2 does have it.
One thing about ReplayTV I'm unsure of.. On a TiVo you have a complete list of all your Season Passes (shows you want every episode of) and Wishlists (wildcard searches that let you search by name, actor, director, etc.), and can put them in a list according to their priority. You can also go through the entire list of shows it will record (in a list format, not on the TV guide) and see what it will record, as well as get a list of what it won't (and didn't) record and why. If at any point you see something that's not to your taste, you can cancel/enable recording and the TiVo automatically re-adjusts all the recordings. What conflict resolution methods does ReplayTV have? I've heard they're inferior, but I haven't had it explained to me very well.
A few notes:
You have to do it fast enough, it's best to do it on a prerecorded program so it doesn't change the channel, and you should hear three dings (thumbs-up sounds) when you're done.
Just thought I'd throw that in there. And yes, TiVo does rock.
I can't remember if Gabe Newell said this outright or if this came out of one of the leaked e-mails from the code heist, but I recall that Steam is/was going to have a P2P system, but they didn't release it with the initial release because it would take too long to implement.
Sony doesn't officially sell TiVos anymore... It's just www.tivo.com, and yes, you can stream shows from one TiVo to another, although it'll cost you at least $150 extra ($99 for the Home Media Option on the first TiVo, $49 on each additional TiVo). You also get the ability to play MP3s and view JPEGs with the HMO, which may or may not be an exciting feature.
One last thing... I realize that this on a bit of a tangent from the main point of your post. I thought it might just be worth pointing out for some reason. ;)
I would just like to take a quick moment to point out that iTunes has deals with indie labels. Of the bands you listed, the last two are on the iTMS, and there is one track from Quasi. Of course, that's 2 out of 6... but that ain't too bad. ;) Don't know about the other services (I don't have Napster/MusicMatch installed), but since they have roughly the same number of tracks or more, I'd assume they have some indie labels.
;-)
That, and your taste in music sucks.
Yes, you can back it up. Burn it onto an Audio CD.
:)
Now, was that so difficult?
Well, as other people have stated, the size is one thing; It's about an inch taller and depending on the model, the same thickness or thinner then a deck of cards. IIRC, the Archos is about the size of a paperback novel. I can put the iPod in my pocket and comfortably carry it around with me, which is more then I can say for the Archos, and I always wear baggy cargo pants.
:)
:)
But for me, it's mainly the interface. My experience with Archos products have been limited to a brief setting-up of a client's Jukebox, but the interface on the thing was absolutely horrible. Two or three very small lines of text, with no real navigation to speak of - just browsing the folders you set up on there. The iPod has a *very* slick navigation interface, and lets you browse your music by artist, album, genre, song name, or playlist. In addition, the scroll wheel lets you scroll though your entire music collection in around 10 seconds, and the screen is large enough that you can navigate easily. I can generally plop an iPod down in front of anybody (even technophobes) and within about 30 seconds have them navigating around it and playing songs, which is more then I can say for the Archos (again, it's rather fuzzy, but it took me a while to figure out how the hell it worked).
Seriously, when I first heard about the iPod when it came out, I was the same way... "why the fuck would I buy this $399 player when I get the same thing for $200 less?", and I'm as big an Apple fanatic as any. Then I got to play with one, and I ran out and bought the 10GB model when it first came out. Between the size and the awesome interface, it's been very much worth it, and I don't regret buying it in the least. Judging from the fact it's been the number 1 MP3 player, it seems I'm not alone.
(and yes, I realize that these days pretty much every player has an iPod-clone interface (does the Archos Recorder have one too?), but there's still nothing that can really beat the size and form factor. But, to each his own.
No, they don't. It says right on that page to "try logging in as an Administrator" before it says to install the fix.
The reason the games need this is because of the CD copy protection; they need to access the drive directly to be able to see whether the bad sectors/whatever hidden data they're looking for are there. You could try cracking the games and seeing if that helps, as I'm pretty sure that's the only they need Admin access - a good site for cracks is GameCopyWorld. I often use them because I'm a lazy bastard who doesn't want to risk ruining his (original!) CDs by switching them around all the time, and I've never had a problem with any of the cracks I've downloaded from there.
One other possible method.. Isn't there a way to have Windows "run as" a different user (ala +s on UNIX)? So you could have it run as some special Admin-priveleged user, while keeping them in the non-Admin account most of the time.
Have you played Halo? In Halo the soundtrack is fully dynamic depending on what's happening in the game. The cool thing is, all the audio is prerecorded orchestral stuff - but there's enough transitional audio that it can smoothly segue from the more laidback themes up to the advanced themes and vice versa. There's not music all the time, but there is where it counts, and overall the audio in the game is absolutely top-notch.
Most MP3 players can play WMA, which makes it compatible with the new Napster. The iPod, which as of the last time I had heard was the number one MP3 player, plays AAC, which makes it compatible with iTunes. So there's no real way to tell what they're playing on their portable players.
No it's not. There's no scroll wheel. I have 10GB of music on my iPod - I'd probably sooner commit suicide then trying to scroll all the way down to U2 or something low on the alphabet. (Yes, I realize there's probably a page-down feature. The scroll wheel still beats paging down by a mile.)
Also, I must admit, the iPod's auto-sync is a killer feature that no other player that I've heard of does. Plug it in, copies music, leave it plugged in until you're ready to go and just grab it and leave. The iRiver player just shows up as a hard drive, and won't even show artist/album/genre info unless you run a special software program.
Still, it does look fairly cool - if I were in the market for an MP3 player I would have to give it serious thought. One definite downside is that for all the vaunted MP3/WMA/Ogg support, there's no support for Audible.com, which the iPod does (and no other portable HD-based player has). Granted, not everybody wants to use such evil proprietary formats as Audible, but for some people it's kind of a turnoff.
You do realize that 3D filesystem program actually exists, right?
Hell of a lot better then "Dark Justice". If it had been named that, there would probably be no way in hell it would've been taken seriously.
I think he means if you were to think of a game with bullet-time, Max Payne would top the list. Enter The Matrix certainly didn't deliver very well.
And in all fairness to Max Payne, it came out two years after the Matrix was released in theaters (Max Payne was released July 23rd, 2001, The Matrix came out in April/May of '99). You can't really say that it was timed to ride on the buzz, since any buzz from the movie would've fizzled out over a year and a half before. The Matrix's influence certainly had taken hold by then, though, and many of the reviews did compare Bullet-Time to The Matrix (how could they not?) The only question is if they started planning bullet-time before or after The Matrix exploded onto the scene, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Remedy had started implementing it before even a trailer for the Matrix came out. (It also wouldn't surprise me to learn that they started afterwards to try on capitalize on the Buzz - doesn't matter to me, either way Max Payne is still a great game.)
Why are you listing Prince of Persia? It's a five-system title.
There was a Family Guy episode with some radio making Soviet Russia jokes - I don't remember the details. It's in the first DVD set.
There's licensing issues. Music is often sold through a different company in each country, meaning that Apple has to ink a deal with each one of them. I don't think Apple checks the IP - I was traveling through Canada (no iTMS there, either) and I was able to purchase quite a bit of music. If you happen to have a credit card with a US billing address, or a friend who could send you a gift certificate (it should be noted I don't know if that works), then you could buy music online. Otherwise, you'll have to wait until next year when Apple can support Europe.
Actually, you don't even have to click a mouse. You can set iTunes to rip a CD upon insertion, and eject when finished. The only time you would have to click is if iTunes finds multiple matches from the CDDB library, but that doesn't happen very often.