There are two types of engineers. Those who can get the job done, and those who will try to use the buzzwords of the day to get the job done. The former tends to be a better engineer, while the latter tends to look better at the beginning of the development process.
XML will come full circle when true binary XML is a w3c standard. People will be using high-level GUIs to generate text-based XML files, which will be converted into binary XML. On the other end, somebody will receive binary XML, convert it to text-based XML, open it in their application that presents the data in a high-level graphical format.
Only then and only maybe, will everyone begin to realize what a farce XML really is. Its selling point was that it was easily human readable, as well as machine processable unlike other more simple formats. Everyone will realize that XML was never very readable (unless you were blind to angled brackets) nor was it easy to efficiently parse compared to existing formats. Everyone will realize how inefficient XML is, and with the roundabout nature of using GUIs to generate XML and then another tool to convert it to binary and then another for binary to text again and then a final GUI......it is like running in circles. The buzzword engineers need to put in their place. Let the real guys lead again, please.
Again, I think that you meant to say that player support is dodgy on Windows. Also, this article is about a format for non-Windows, non-Mac platforms. Xvid, Divx, MP3, and AAC all work fine and are easy to install on Linux (via apt, yum, or emerge) and in fact, all of these codecs are typically installed automatically when you install mplayer. For example with Fedora and synaptic, one-click installs the video player and every codec I would want. The only problem is that WMV playback sometimes doesn't work, and I always find myself wondering why people use that format when other good free formats exist.
Yeah, install apt for rpm from FreshRPMs and then apt-get install mplayer. That is how "hard" it is to install a fully functional video player with all codecs under Fedora.
But the author seems to want to keep using WMV, but also provide a Linux friendly version of each video. In my opinion, that would be Xvid, as under Fedora installing mplayer along with the Xvid codec is something next to trivial. It might be even easier on other Linux distros.
How hard is it to install Divx and Xvid codecs under Windows, really? Under Linux it is easy. If you install mplayer with your package manager, you will have Divx and Xvid installed by default.
Xvid is easy to install on Linux, even if it doesn't come preinstalled by the OS. Typically all you have to do is use your package manager (apt, yum, or emerge) to install Mplayer. This takes all of 5 seconds of user work, plus an automatic download and install. Remember, the question is about non-Windows users.
That would definitely convince the gamer crowd, but then again, this same group of people are really good at figuring out ways to circumvent copy protection schemes, etc... so they would probably have some pirated version of DirectX that could be installed on pirated versions of Windows.
Yeah, your average Joe really understands that regular security patching is a must. Give me a break! They will just keep using Windows, unaware that their computer is wide open. Those that are smart enough to understand that they must get patched will be smart enough to choose an alternative course of action that leads to Windows, Linux, or a Mac.
How good is it at harvesting binary groups? For example, I want to download every binary in a specific list of groups. Does Pan require you to click on each file and manually "save as" or can it be directed to automatically save all binaries into a local directory?
I didn't mean to say that the aforementioned religions were evil, but that they contain both good and evil elements. Hell, some of the best mathematicians were anti-semitic Nazis. They contributed to the world with their math, and they hurt the world with their hate. I just don't like people painting Christians as good and Muslims as bad or similarly for their respective religions, or even the other extreme, both are good. We must be critical of the bad where ever it is found... ESPECIALLY if it is our own.
In summary, you are justifying xenophobia, racism, and other forms of systematic prejudice because they are "inter-woven".
Other religions are evil? Sounds like specious reasoning if you ask me. The 3 big religious books (Torah, Bible, and Koran) all contain hate and intolerence. It is a fact. You can try to justify it with the age old claim of "out of context", but it is right explicit in each book and actually requires intense re-explanation and reinterpretation in order to make it disappear.
With regards to the Torah/Old Testament, in the New Testament we have stories detailing the intolerance and hate espoused by the Jewish religion. Take for example the good samaritan, where samaritans were an ethnic minority despised by the mainstream Jews. The moral of the story was that prejudice, xenophobia, racism, etc is bad, your ally, your friend, your neighbor is the person that is good towards you.
Which brings me to another point. The 3 books also contain love, happiness, and other good stuff. They are each a mixed bag, just like people themselves.
So explain away that the sky is blue, but I still have eyes of my own.
Do Americans speak "American"? Why not say that the Iranians speak "Iranian"? All of the Iranians I know say they speak "Farsi". While it is important to remind your average John Doe that Iran and Persia are the same thing, I have only heard John Doe's call Farsi "Persian". Hell, I have seen Indian resteraunts claim that they "Persian". Then when you actually ask for an atypical Persian dish, they don't have it... they only have Indian food.
Changing their country's name to Iran was a really bad marketting decision, with regards to Western perception. "Persia" sounds like a fairy tale land of flying carpets, palaces, and beautiful women. However, to your average boob, "Iran" sounds allot like "Iraq", and many Joes think that Iranians are the same as Arabs. Though while most Iranians are not "pure" Persian, i.e. Aryan, and many have some Arab blood (as well as Mongolian, Russian, Indian, etc), Iranians tend to be more Aryan than Semitic. Now "Aryan" is an entire other ball of worms... by I am ranting now.
The Old testament and the Torah advocate killing and enslaving of non-Jews. Furthermore, they also state that it is a sin for a Jew to marry a non-Jew. Forgot homosexual marriage. Interracial or interethnic marriage is sinful!
The top loading NES and Famicom are not rare at all. The A/V Famicom could be purchased new, mint in box off of Ebay up until a couple years ago. The tray loading NES systems must occassionally be opened and have a connecting pin component cleaned and the pins must be bent slightly to restore the pressure they exert on the cartridges. So as would be expected from a component that has manual force applied to it every time a cartridge is inserted or removed from the system, it must be maintenanced every half decade or so. It is pretty simple work... my car requires more work than that every half decade.
Also, sometimes the carts themselves need to be cleaned. Blowing will actually worsen the problem in the long run.
The clones are far younger than the tray loading NES. Furthermore, all Famicoms were top loading, which requires a far simpler ping slot component that doesn't need as much maintenance. So there is a chance that you could play an original 1983 Famicom without any cleaning or bending of pins.
What about the resolution issues on the GBA which require the emulator to either crop the top and bottom off of the image or to remove every other column from the image? The PocketFami looks like it supports the Famicom and NES's native resolution. Also, what about all of the games that do not run on pocketnes? What about all of the games that do not run correctly on the pocketnes? Just look at the compatibility list on the pocketnes site for plenty of reasons (games!) why somebody would prefer the PocketFami.
How is $80 close to $200? Do those emulators run at full speed and support every game? How accurate are the emulators compared to the PocketFami, etc... there are many things to consider with regards to this kind of thing.
How have 3rd party NES systems lasted longer? Because they are still manufactured? I own 3 NES systems and one A/V Famicom, all of which still work great! The cheap Hong Kong clones are fun and all, but most don't accurately clone the picture processing and sound processing units inside an official Famicom/NES. So most are subpar compared to the official real thing.
The Zire 31 (160x160) can not even handle the resolution that the Famicom and NES put out (256x240), so if you do emulate on it, you would have to either crop the screen (bad) or somehow down scale the resolution by throwing away rows and columns of pixels in order to fit the Zire 31's screen (also bad). Of course, the Pocket NES or the Gameboy Advance (with resolution 240x160) does this, but only for horizontal rows of pixels... which still looks terrible compared to a real NES.
So the fact that the PocketFami is built with the Famicom/NES's resolution in mind is another reason to go with the PocketFami.
Oh, I left out one thing. The NES and highend Palms have different resolutions, so on the Palm you are either wasting part of the screen or you are scaling up to the Palm's native resolution which will look really crappy because of aliasing. So you should measure the size of the image displayed on your Palm when emulating the NES, not the size of the entire LCD.
You have got to be kidding me, right? Playing NES games without a D-pad is an absolutely horrible experience! Secondly, the emulators for the Palm don't run every Famicom or NES game accurately and some games do not even run at all! Third, there is a "geek factor" to owning somewhat obscure grey market hardware. There is more. Many people have only played their NES emulator within the past 5 or so years, so they have forgotten what a real NES is like, but your Palm emulator's sound isn't all that accurate. Other people also claim that the best NES emulator for the Palm, NESem, is still choppy and doesn't already run at full speed.
Furthermore, in order to have a Palm that has a resolution high enough to properly display the NES graphics, you are looking at spending $200, and the best NES emulator for the Palm isn't free and costs $20. So if you still own allot of NES and/or Famicom games, the PocketFami looks like a far more practical option.
The D-pad and the support for Famicom and NES carts is enough difference for most. All the other crap mentioned above just cements the deal.
Well, the difference between the PocketFami and the other two systems that you mention is that there is a really good chance that the PocketFami does not suck. All of the previous portable Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment Systems sucked in some major way. But rumor has it that the PocketFami is finally a portable worth owning. So in a way, it could be something new.
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There are two types of engineers. Those who can get the job done, and those who will try to use the buzzwords of the day to get the job done. The former tends to be a better engineer, while the latter tends to look better at the beginning of the development process.
...it is like running in circles. The buzzword engineers need to put in their place. Let the real guys lead again, please.
XML will come full circle when true binary XML is a w3c standard. People will be using high-level GUIs to generate text-based XML files, which will be converted into binary XML. On the other end, somebody will receive binary XML, convert it to text-based XML, open it in their application that presents the data in a high-level graphical format.
Only then and only maybe, will everyone begin to realize what a farce XML really is. Its selling point was that it was easily human readable, as well as machine processable unlike other more simple formats. Everyone will realize that XML was never very readable (unless you were blind to angled brackets) nor was it easy to efficiently parse compared to existing formats. Everyone will realize how inefficient XML is, and with the roundabout nature of using GUIs to generate XML and then another tool to convert it to binary and then another for binary to text again and then a final GUI...
Again, I think that you meant to say that player support is dodgy on Windows. Also, this article is about a format for non-Windows, non-Mac platforms. Xvid, Divx, MP3, and AAC all work fine and are easy to install on Linux (via apt, yum, or emerge) and in fact, all of these codecs are typically installed automatically when you install mplayer. For example with Fedora and synaptic, one-click installs the video player and every codec I would want. The only problem is that WMV playback sometimes doesn't work, and I always find myself wondering why people use that format when other good free formats exist.
Yeah, install apt for rpm from FreshRPMs and then apt-get install mplayer. That is how "hard" it is to install a fully functional video player with all codecs under Fedora.
But the author seems to want to keep using WMV, but also provide a Linux friendly version of each video. In my opinion, that would be Xvid, as under Fedora installing mplayer along with the Xvid codec is something next to trivial. It might be even easier on other Linux distros.
How hard is it to install Divx and Xvid codecs under Windows, really? Under Linux it is easy. If you install mplayer with your package manager, you will have Divx and Xvid installed by default.
Player support is dodgy for MPEG4? Divx and Xvid both work great on the main Linux video players. Is it not so under Windows?
Xvid is easy to install on Linux, even if it doesn't come preinstalled by the OS. Typically all you have to do is use your package manager (apt, yum, or emerge) to install Mplayer. This takes all of 5 seconds of user work, plus an automatic download and install. Remember, the question is about non-Windows users.
That would definitely convince the gamer crowd, but then again, this same group of people are really good at figuring out ways to circumvent copy protection schemes, etc... so they would probably have some pirated version of DirectX that could be installed on pirated versions of Windows.
Yeah, your average Joe really understands that regular security patching is a must. Give me a break! They will just keep using Windows, unaware that their computer is wide open. Those that are smart enough to understand that they must get patched will be smart enough to choose an alternative course of action that leads to Windows, Linux, or a Mac.
How good is it at harvesting binary groups? For example, I want to download every binary in a specific list of groups. Does Pan require you to click on each file and manually "save as" or can it be directed to automatically save all binaries into a local directory?
I didn't mean to say that the aforementioned religions were evil, but that they contain both good and evil elements. Hell, some of the best mathematicians were anti-semitic Nazis. They contributed to the world with their math, and they hurt the world with their hate. I just don't like people painting Christians as good and Muslims as bad or similarly for their respective religions, or even the other extreme, both are good. We must be critical of the bad where ever it is found... ESPECIALLY if it is our own.
If it doesn't run on Wine, then it is of no use to me.
What is a good Linux USENET client that supports decoding/downloading binaries, especially yyenc binaries?
In summary, you are justifying xenophobia, racism, and other forms of systematic prejudice because they are "inter-woven".
Other religions are evil? Sounds like specious reasoning if you ask me. The 3 big religious books (Torah, Bible, and Koran) all contain hate and intolerence. It is a fact. You can try to justify it with the age old claim of "out of context", but it is right explicit in each book and actually requires intense re-explanation and reinterpretation in order to make it disappear.
With regards to the Torah/Old Testament, in the New Testament we have stories detailing the intolerance and hate espoused by the Jewish religion. Take for example the good samaritan, where samaritans were an ethnic minority despised by the mainstream Jews. The moral of the story was that prejudice, xenophobia, racism, etc is bad, your ally, your friend, your neighbor is the person that is good towards you.
Which brings me to another point. The 3 books also contain love, happiness, and other good stuff. They are each a mixed bag, just like people themselves.
So explain away that the sky is blue, but I still have eyes of my own.
Do Americans speak "American"? Why not say that the Iranians speak "Iranian"? All of the Iranians I know say they speak "Farsi". While it is important to remind your average John Doe that Iran and Persia are the same thing, I have only heard John Doe's call Farsi "Persian". Hell, I have seen Indian resteraunts claim that they "Persian". Then when you actually ask for an atypical Persian dish, they don't have it... they only have Indian food.
Changing their country's name to Iran was a really bad marketting decision, with regards to Western perception. "Persia" sounds like a fairy tale land of flying carpets, palaces, and beautiful women. However, to your average boob, "Iran" sounds allot like "Iraq", and many Joes think that Iranians are the same as Arabs. Though while most Iranians are not "pure" Persian, i.e. Aryan, and many have some Arab blood (as well as Mongolian, Russian, Indian, etc), Iranians tend to be more Aryan than Semitic. Now "Aryan" is an entire other ball of worms... by I am ranting now.
The Old testament and the Torah advocate killing and enslaving of non-Jews. Furthermore, they also state that it is a sin for a Jew to marry a non-Jew. Forgot homosexual marriage. Interracial or interethnic marriage is sinful!
I think you mean "Farsi" instead of "Persian", and yes Farsi is not the same language as Arabic. Knowing one does not help you understand the other.
The top loading NES and Famicom are not rare at all. The A/V Famicom could be purchased new, mint in box off of Ebay up until a couple years ago. The tray loading NES systems must occassionally be opened and have a connecting pin component cleaned and the pins must be bent slightly to restore the pressure they exert on the cartridges. So as would be expected from a component that has manual force applied to it every time a cartridge is inserted or removed from the system, it must be maintenanced every half decade or so. It is pretty simple work... my car requires more work than that every half decade.
Also, sometimes the carts themselves need to be cleaned. Blowing will actually worsen the problem in the long run.
The clones are far younger than the tray loading NES. Furthermore, all Famicoms were top loading, which requires a far simpler ping slot component that doesn't need as much maintenance. So there is a chance that you could play an original 1983 Famicom without any cleaning or bending of pins.
What about the resolution issues on the GBA which require the emulator to either crop the top and bottom off of the image or to remove every other column from the image? The PocketFami looks like it supports the Famicom and NES's native resolution. Also, what about all of the games that do not run on pocketnes? What about all of the games that do not run correctly on the pocketnes? Just look at the compatibility list on the pocketnes site for plenty of reasons (games!) why somebody would prefer the PocketFami.
How is $80 close to $200? Do those emulators run at full speed and support every game? How accurate are the emulators compared to the PocketFami, etc... there are many things to consider with regards to this kind of thing.
How have 3rd party NES systems lasted longer? Because they are still manufactured? I own 3 NES systems and one A/V Famicom, all of which still work great! The cheap Hong Kong clones are fun and all, but most don't accurately clone the picture processing and sound processing units inside an official Famicom/NES. So most are subpar compared to the official real thing.
The Zire 31 (160x160) can not even handle the resolution that the Famicom and NES put out (256x240), so if you do emulate on it, you would have to either crop the screen (bad) or somehow down scale the resolution by throwing away rows and columns of pixels in order to fit the Zire 31's screen (also bad). Of course, the Pocket NES or the Gameboy Advance (with resolution 240x160) does this, but only for horizontal rows of pixels... which still looks terrible compared to a real NES.
So the fact that the PocketFami is built with the Famicom/NES's resolution in mind is another reason to go with the PocketFami.
Oh, I left out one thing. The NES and highend Palms have different resolutions, so on the Palm you are either wasting part of the screen or you are scaling up to the Palm's native resolution which will look really crappy because of aliasing. So you should measure the size of the image displayed on your Palm when emulating the NES, not the size of the entire LCD.
You have got to be kidding me, right? Playing NES games without a D-pad is an absolutely horrible experience! Secondly, the emulators for the Palm don't run every Famicom or NES game accurately and some games do not even run at all! Third, there is a "geek factor" to owning somewhat obscure grey market hardware. There is more. Many people have only played their NES emulator within the past 5 or so years, so they have forgotten what a real NES is like, but your Palm emulator's sound isn't all that accurate. Other people also claim that the best NES emulator for the Palm, NESem, is still choppy and doesn't already run at full speed.
Furthermore, in order to have a Palm that has a resolution high enough to properly display the NES graphics, you are looking at spending $200, and the best NES emulator for the Palm isn't free and costs $20. So if you still own allot of NES and/or Famicom games, the PocketFami looks like a far more practical option.
The D-pad and the support for Famicom and NES carts is enough difference for most. All the other crap mentioned above just cements the deal.
Well, the difference between the PocketFami and the other two systems that you mention is that there is a really good chance that the PocketFami does not suck. All of the previous portable Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment Systems sucked in some major way. But rumor has it that the PocketFami is finally a portable worth owning. So in a way, it could be something new.