"have you also waived the rights to sit around and bitch about the company with co-workers or friends?"
If the company believes that our clients would be likely to hear our bitching I doubt they would look favorably, which is the analogy of what has happened here...
Explained away it might have been, but the kid still has a police record because his teacher has no clue. This then leads to a second issue where telling us which teacher is missing the clue can get him suspended.
I'm also from the UK, but I presume this is because you waive your rights to criticise when you sign up to go to the school. Similiarly, I've waived my rights to speak to my company's competitors about our trade secrets, but this isn't a freedom of speech violation either.
It would be quite cool to have PS2 emulation, but while I don't doubt the ingenuity of the Connectix people, the PS2 works in quite a different way to PC architecture; the whole thing is one big fat memory pipe to the RAMBUS main memory, with very small quantities of memory for the video display, rather than the small (but low latency) pipes and big caches of PC architectures.
Which is to say that PS2 emulation on a current PC will probably be rather slow, but also getting a PS2 to emulate a PC wouldn't be the wonderful thing that some of the more easily excited fanboys suggested back in the days of vapour.
"I think that would make sense if there wernt any PS2 Emulators."
Really? Care to give a URL? All the ones I've heard about turn out to be fakes. Certainly, there's nothing on www.vintagegaming.com about one that will run games yet.
"Unique" presumably means that no-one other than the PowerVR series, which this new card, the Dreamcast's chip and the original PowerVR card all belong to, are the only ones to go down the tile-based route.
This is because its a phenomenally quick render method when designed for, but
(a) it takes a big hit to do stuff the way every other 3d card on the market does things (and guess which method is going to get used by a developer writing for a platform where either might be in place), and
(b) if you are used to doing things the 'normal' way its a pain in the rear to try and re-jig your code into a tile-based format. You might as well rewrite the engine from the ground up.
Of course, if (as with the Dreamcast) you're writing explicitly for a tile-based platform then it kicks arse for the money.
With PS2s (I know, I know, the console not the IBM one) now coming through at a rate that can supply demand, the PSOne is less important to Sony - certainly less prestigious. So basically Sony's lawyers have managed to stall Connectix long enough for the product to have reached near the end of its life in any case.
Besides, Sony still make money off every Playstation title sold, no matter how the consumers play it.
one small difference you didn't note; the Edge is roughly twice as fast. Not much call for extra processing power on your average diary app, but it might come in useful on some things.
Oh, and in my experience the IR port is much better on the Visor - the little learning remote app is really useful on basic Visor, while testing it with a Vx was a disaster.
I'm sure that the PalmOS license is at a sensible level for them both, and if you are going to have competition for handheld devices its better that a larger overall market share is running your OS.
Do you think Microsoft would have been better off if Windows 3 only worked on Microsoft hardware, or would OS/2 (or an early Linux, or SCO Unix, or whatever) have turned them into Apple?
Anyway, I'm sure that they thought it was some sort of wacky promotional thing to make people wait for the site to open, unless they didn't want the world DDOSing the front page with refresh requests until the news was up.
This looks really cool, as it solves my main complaint about my Visor. With a complete lack of springboard plugins that I'd want to buy I don't like having a thick bulky box when compared to my mates Palm Vx ones. People will pay good money to have the slightly smaller, cooler looking model - just look at mobile phone sales.
This is an important freedom, but if you have a bad law we should fight it by stopping the introduction of persecution, rather than stopping the police from being able to enforce it. Besides, if your hypothetical British Taliban came along, I doubt they could be persuaded to go "well, we never had overuse of surveillance before, we better not start now".
"Or, just imagine that you get filmed, where being with your girl/boy friend - maybe you will not like to be looked by the police"
Fundamentally, this comes down to this. If you don't want anyone seeing you, don't do it in public. These cameras shouldn't be watching your own home (and in one event where a camera was accidentally set up in such a way that it could see in someones bedroom window at its full rotation the camera was subsequently altered to stop this being possible), so if you don't want the police watching you getting jiggy outside the nightclub wait until you're back to hers.
"The argument "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" is pointless, with the same reasoning you could be required to leave a copy of all your keys, send a copy of all your (e-)mail, notify about visitors and leave a DNA sample to the authorities. Looks like George Orwell was absolutely right to set 1984 in Britain."
Err, the UK cameras are only watching you when you're out in public places like shopping centres etc, not in your own home. So its actually like being required to accept the idea of a bunch of policemen being able to see you walk down the street. BIG scare, huh? Ooh, that cop's video camera saw that I didn't break into someones car when I was walking past it. I feel so invaded...
Actually, reducing the fear of crime is a useful thing; the levels of fear of crime in this country bear little relation to where the actual risk of crime is. There is also a reduction of the level of crime, but the main thing is that people were so worried about going where these cameras are put they are staying home / going to that big mall on the outskirts of town rather than supporting businesses / generally doing things that affect their quality of life through fear.
This internet spoofing wouldn't be impossible for a game that is only wanting to speak to the world to check its not a copy, but if, as I imagine is the case, its aimed at checking for games that go online anyway, then life got difficult.
How are you going to amazingly spoof the license checker when it needs to speak to the same IP to hit the game server for an online game?
I've nothing against copy protection - I never chipped any of my consoles (DVD is a different matter, but thats not copy protection, thats region enforcement). I've no interest in pirating my games, but I do object to having an unwieldy licensing system for a simple product like a console game.
This appears to be either
a) something blown out of proportion that will only be used with online games (that have to connect anyway). If this is the case, then its no different really than Half-Life or Quake 3 on the PC. Or possibly
b) something that will require me to hook up a phone line to a console so it can run up phone bill checking I've paid for the game, and no other reason. This is sufficiently awkward that I wouldn't buy the game, and would destroy rentals and the second user market for games, something I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Sony would be in favour of.
In order to actually implement this, Sony are finally going to have to get off their lazy arses and implement an online solution at last. So while its an evil, stupid idea to authenticate games that don't have to go online otherwise, we might get some movement to avoid a repeat of the laughable situation where PS2 Unreal Tournament can't be played online.
Yep, telling the difference is easy on decent equipment. Not that this is really to the point here; I would imagine the main reason for putting 5 hours of music on a disc that small is for walkman type devices.
While I can easily tell the difference at home on a hifi (and even CD is noticibly worse than SA-CD or a sufficiently expensive record deck), I doubt many people can notice MP3's shortcomings on a tiny pair of headphones in a busy shopping precinct - this should be fine for music on the move where little vocal crunches and the type are drowned out by background noise.
So thats why the guy has FTP in his sig. Thanks; I just assumed he was big on promoting the use of the File Transfer Protocol rather than mindlessly sending people large files through email, which is a serious bandwidth killer.
A good argument, which is why I think that the code should be available to circumvent these access controls (though don't let the MPAA hear this!). What this appears to be is a more complete support for the (admittedly annoying) tags in the format. I appreciate the idea of the GPL, but if you're an admin you might not want to let all your users play with the source in a live program. This is simply doing the same with pdf files; unless you're in a position to play with the proper authoring software you can't change the files.
Slashdot Mirror
"have you also waived the rights to sit around and bitch about the company with co-workers or friends?"
If the company believes that our clients would be likely to hear our bitching I doubt they would look favorably, which is the analogy of what has happened here...
Explained away it might have been, but the kid still has a police record because his teacher has no clue. This then leads to a second issue where telling us which teacher is missing the clue can get him suspended.
I'm also from the UK, but I presume this is because you waive your rights to criticise when you sign up to go to the school. Similiarly, I've waived my rights to speak to my company's competitors about our trade secrets, but this isn't a freedom of speech violation either.
Yes, there is - FPSE has a linux as well as a windows port, according to the site. My Linux partition is still down however, so I haven't tested it.
Aah, I understand now. :)
It would be quite cool to have PS2 emulation, but while I don't doubt the ingenuity of the Connectix people, the PS2 works in quite a different way to PC architecture; the whole thing is one big fat memory pipe to the RAMBUS main memory, with very small quantities of memory for the video display, rather than the small (but low latency) pipes and big caches of PC architectures.
Which is to say that PS2 emulation on a current PC will probably be rather slow, but also getting a PS2 to emulate a PC wouldn't be the wonderful thing that some of the more easily excited fanboys suggested back in the days of vapour.
"I think that would make sense if there wernt any PS2 Emulators."
Really? Care to give a URL? All the ones I've heard about turn out to be fakes. Certainly, there's nothing on www.vintagegaming.com about one that will run games yet.
"Unique" presumably means that no-one other than the PowerVR series, which this new card, the Dreamcast's chip and the original PowerVR card all belong to, are the only ones to go down the tile-based route.
This is because its a phenomenally quick render method when designed for, but
(a) it takes a big hit to do stuff the way every other 3d card on the market does things (and guess which method is going to get used by a developer writing for a platform where either might be in place), and
(b) if you are used to doing things the 'normal' way its a pain in the rear to try and re-jig your code into a tile-based format. You might as well rewrite the engine from the ground up.
Of course, if (as with the Dreamcast) you're writing explicitly for a tile-based platform then it kicks arse for the money.
With PS2s (I know, I know, the console not the IBM one) now coming through at a rate that can supply demand, the PSOne is less important to Sony - certainly less prestigious. So basically Sony's lawyers have managed to stall Connectix long enough for the product to have reached near the end of its life in any case.
Besides, Sony still make money off every Playstation title sold, no matter how the consumers play it.
one small difference you didn't note; the Edge is roughly twice as fast. Not much call for extra processing power on your average diary app, but it might come in useful on some things.
Oh, and in my experience the IR port is much better on the Visor - the little learning remote app is really useful on basic Visor, while testing it with a Vx was a disaster.
I'm sure that the PalmOS license is at a sensible level for them both, and if you are going to have competition for handheld devices its better that a larger overall market share is running your OS.
Do you think Microsoft would have been better off if Windows 3 only worked on Microsoft hardware, or would OS/2 (or an early Linux, or SCO Unix, or whatever) have turned them into Apple?
Sorry, I just couldn't resist the bad joke.
Anyway, I'm sure that they thought it was some sort of wacky promotional thing to make people wait for the site to open, unless they didn't want the world DDOSing the front page with refresh requests until the news was up.
This looks really cool, as it solves my main complaint about my Visor. With a complete lack of springboard plugins that I'd want to buy I don't like having a thick bulky box when compared to my mates Palm Vx ones. People will pay good money to have the slightly smaller, cooler looking model - just look at mobile phone sales.
"how about the freedom from persecution?"
This is an important freedom, but if you have a bad law we should fight it by stopping the introduction of persecution, rather than stopping the police from being able to enforce it. Besides, if your hypothetical British Taliban came along, I doubt they could be persuaded to go "well, we never had overuse of surveillance before, we better not start now".
"Or, just imagine that you get filmed, where being with your girl/boy friend - maybe you will not like to be looked by the police"
Fundamentally, this comes down to this. If you don't want anyone seeing you, don't do it in public. These cameras shouldn't be watching your own home (and in one event where a camera was accidentally set up in such a way that it could see in someones bedroom window at its full rotation the camera was subsequently altered to stop this being possible), so if you don't want the police watching you getting jiggy outside the nightclub wait until you're back to hers.
"The argument "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" is pointless, with the same reasoning you could be required to leave a copy of all your keys, send a copy of all your (e-)mail, notify about visitors and leave a DNA sample to the authorities. Looks like George Orwell was absolutely right to set 1984 in Britain."
Err, the UK cameras are only watching you when you're out in public places like shopping centres etc, not in your own home. So its actually like being required to accept the idea of a bunch of policemen being able to see you walk down the street. BIG scare, huh? Ooh, that cop's video camera saw that I didn't break into someones car when I was walking past it. I feel so invaded...
Actually, reducing the fear of crime is a useful thing; the levels of fear of crime in this country bear little relation to where the actual risk of crime is. There is also a reduction of the level of crime, but the main thing is that people were so worried about going where these cameras are put they are staying home / going to that big mall on the outskirts of town rather than supporting businesses / generally doing things that affect their quality of life through fear.
True, many of them can't, but at least they stand a chance when the text is in their own language.
This internet spoofing wouldn't be impossible for a game that is only wanting to speak to the world to check its not a copy, but if, as I imagine is the case, its aimed at checking for games that go online anyway, then life got difficult.
How are you going to amazingly spoof the license checker when it needs to speak to the same IP to hit the game server for an online game?
I've nothing against copy protection - I never chipped any of my consoles (DVD is a different matter, but thats not copy protection, thats region enforcement). I've no interest in pirating my games, but I do object to having an unwieldy licensing system for a simple product like a console game.
This appears to be either
a) something blown out of proportion that will only be used with online games (that have to connect anyway). If this is the case, then its no different really than Half-Life or Quake 3 on the PC. Or possibly
b) something that will require me to hook up a phone line to a console so it can run up phone bill checking I've paid for the game, and no other reason. This is sufficiently awkward that I wouldn't buy the game, and would destroy rentals and the second user market for games, something I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Sony would be in favour of.
"Why is this such a big deal?"
Because I don't want to pay a internet connect phonecall charge every time I boot a game up?
In order to actually implement this, Sony are finally going to have to get off their lazy arses and implement an online solution at last. So while its an evil, stupid idea to authenticate games that don't have to go online otherwise, we might get some movement to avoid a repeat of the laughable situation where PS2 Unreal Tournament can't be played online.
"Second, AOL en Compuserve CD's made such nice coasters for my all my cups of coffee. Does smaller CD's also mean smaller cups of coffee?"
I say great! I'm in need of some matching espresso coasters for my nice latte ones.
Yep, telling the difference is easy on decent equipment. Not that this is really to the point here; I would imagine the main reason for putting 5 hours of music on a disc that small is for walkman type devices.
While I can easily tell the difference at home on a hifi (and even CD is noticibly worse than SA-CD or a sufficiently expensive record deck), I doubt many people can notice MP3's shortcomings on a tiny pair of headphones in a busy shopping precinct - this should be fine for music on the move where little vocal crunches and the type are drowned out by background noise.
So thats why the guy has FTP in his sig. Thanks; I just assumed he was big on promoting the use of the File Transfer Protocol rather than mindlessly sending people large files through email, which is a serious bandwidth killer.
A good argument, which is why I think that the code should be available to circumvent these access controls (though don't let the MPAA hear this!). What this appears to be is a more complete support for the (admittedly annoying) tags in the format. I appreciate the idea of the GPL, but if you're an admin you might not want to let all your users play with the source in a live program. This is simply doing the same with pdf files; unless you're in a position to play with the proper authoring software you can't change the files.