Sorry, but I've just got this absurd urge to have a sig of "Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Dirac, Faraday, Planck, Kelvin, Maxwell and Einstein liked cute kittens - so do I". But that would be too cruel...
Sybase are listed in the BSA database as the owners of Watcom. The BSA, however, are interested in generating statistics that billions of dollars worth of software is being pirated - they don't have time to actually bother asking Sybase themselves if they care about it.
There are innumerable examples of them doing similiarly stupid things, so you're hardly alone.
So does the author have the right to say "I don't want my work released, ever, so any old copies out there can degrade until they are unuseable but no one can make any new copies."????
Aaaah, someone hitting the nail on the head. While I fully respect the right of an author to say "I don't want my work released", I do have some problems with authors who, having released a work that millions of people have enjoyed for years, decides that they don't want people to see it any more.
I could come up with more 'intelligent' examples if I tried (Kubrick and Coppola both insisting that DVD releases of some of their films be reframed from the cinema, perhaps) but Lucas is the prime culprit. I have the Trilogy as I remember them on Laserdisc, but I know many that don't, and I also know that one day my player and discs will expire. Is the historical revisionism of these films really The Right Thing?
I don't know if the Grandparent poster had one of the few data laserdiscs (the most famous by far being the Domesday Project disc for the BBC from the 80s), but if it is just plain-ol' laserdisc video, then it will record to VHS/PVR/DVD/whatever without any real technical headaches or even DMCA quibbles, as laserdisc employed no form of encryption, not even Macrovision.
I've backed up a Certain Sci-Fi Trilogy myself, because the copyright holder chooses not to release them any more in their original form, if you know what I mean.
And no - since someone always asks for it when I mention this fact, I'm not going to illegally distribute a copy to anyone.
I'm not sure if AMIX can run UAE (though I'd imagine that a port wouldn't be impossible), but I do remember there being a port of UAE for the standard AmigaOS A4000. Because there are several games that UAE makes a better job of pretending to be a basic A500 than the 4000's compatibility mode does.
To this day, I have to play a disk image of Spindizzy Worlds on my PC because the A1200 won't run the real thing.:(
Edge is indeed similiar to the way Next Generation was - NexGen quite regularly licensed articles from Edge, and occasionally vice-versa too.
Edge itself will never get a US release, as some mag of weird stuff owns the US rights to use that mag title, by the way. Its worth every penny an international subscription costs, however.
I'd generally agree with you, as for the most part Edge is the one games magazine that treats its audience as anything other than teenage boys. But the last 4 or so issues in a row have had at least partial nudity in them.
"it kills me to think of the time we've put into this, to know that it will probably end up on the.ru site also as soon as it's live"
Go on, you just know that you want to add a rule to the webserver that ensures their IP gets redirected to Tubgirl instead of being served the new site.
One thing is for sure, though - any mysterious voodoo reason for vinyl being superior than CD is promptly lost if you're then converting the thing to MP3 as the original poster was suggesting.
Personally, I do really like vinyl still, but it is a case of liking the smoothly rolled-off top-end (most new CD mixes these days sound slightly too tinny to my vinyl-accustomed ears) and all the faff of putting a needle on the deck, rather than anything technical.
I didn't mean that _you_ were sexist, only that I was half tempted to post an admittedly sexist, obvious gag about designing a car that needs you to park with tons of space on either side, and claiming its 'for women'. I know that gullwing doors are a nightmare; a relative once tried out a car with them, and still recoils in horror at being forced to crawl in the bottom when a big 4x4 parked right next to him.
Here, try the stick's other end, its much more comfortable to grab.
Tubular Bells was great; never really got on with the 'sequels', though, apart from the Orb remixes of Sentinel. Much prefer The Songs Of Distant Earth, myself.
Well, you could give up on all that fancy over-the-shoulder thing, and use the perfectly playable GTA1 or 2, both of which supported multiplayer in their PC incarnations.
"Soul Calibur is an excellent example of this. Designed for a Dreamcast / PS controller type with four buttons in diamond, it relies on hitting 2 buttons simultaneously to do many moves."
I see what you're saying, but SC was actually designed for a four-button arcade stick setup. I can't possibly recommend purchasing the Hori SC2 stick from your regular Japanese Import place enough. Its far, far better than using either a Gamecube or PS2 pad for the game.
Alternatively, get used to using L as the block button, and you don't need to move your right thumb from the AXY triangle - rapid blocking is essential to get far at Soul Calibur II.
Personally, I did this perfectly legally. Microsoft Europe, in some bizarre moment of benevolence, shipped me a free "Second Edition Upgrade" disk that turned 98 into 98SE in return for the proof of purchase bit off the retail 98 box.
Of course, I then proceeded to do a fresh install with an OEM copy of SE rather than use the upgrade disc, as I then had fewer random bits of cruft lying around. But thats another story.
Really? Microsoft shipped me a free upgrade CD with all the stuff on, having bought a retail box copy of 98 (upgrade). After a couple of months they did renege on the idea and start asking about 10 for it, ostensibly to cover the cost of making it and shipping (all the UK ones were being shipped from Microsoft Ireland for some perverse reason).
For a start, nearly all XBox games exploit the fact that there are three 750Mb cache partitions used for temporary storage, in order to both minimise load times and act as swap space for programs that find the 64Mb total (i.e. including graphics) memory too much of a bind.
So unless they wish to add a hell of a lot more memory (this stuff doesn't actually need to be flash, however) then backwards compatibility is broken.
However, an XBox 2 with 2Gb of real memory would be fun to work with, I guess.
Wow, Tony Cox, well I never. Great porting job you did; its the version that I still play occasionally, rather than the BBC one. Didn't you work on Syndicate Wars, as well?
As far as I'm concerned, it was Better Than Elite. Brilliant, brilliant game, though viciously difficult in places, and prone to leaving you stuck in ways that required starting again from scratch.
It did the whole 'sandbox' thing wonderfully well, too, thanks to its amazing physics.
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Sorry, but I've just got this absurd urge to have a sig of "Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Dirac, Faraday, Planck, Kelvin, Maxwell and Einstein liked cute kittens - so do I". But that would be too cruel...
"If it appeals and they win the appeal later then this will be reversed"
Really? I can't see how that would work; are they going to suddenly make people not know what the API looks like again?
I strongly suspect Microsoft will get out of this one, through one method or another. For their business they have to.
Sybase are listed in the BSA database as the owners of Watcom. The BSA, however, are interested in generating statistics that billions of dollars worth of software is being pirated - they don't have time to actually bother asking Sybase themselves if they care about it.
There are innumerable examples of them doing similiarly stupid things, so you're hardly alone.
So does the author have the right to say "I don't want my work released, ever, so any old copies out there can degrade until they are unuseable but no one can make any new copies."????
Aaaah, someone hitting the nail on the head. While I fully respect the right of an author to say "I don't want my work released", I do have some problems with authors who, having released a work that millions of people have enjoyed for years, decides that they don't want people to see it any more.
I could come up with more 'intelligent' examples if I tried (Kubrick and Coppola both insisting that DVD releases of some of their films be reframed from the cinema, perhaps) but Lucas is the prime culprit. I have the Trilogy as I remember them on Laserdisc, but I know many that don't, and I also know that one day my player and discs will expire. Is the historical revisionism of these films really The Right Thing?
I don't know if the Grandparent poster had one of the few data laserdiscs (the most famous by far being the Domesday Project disc for the BBC from the 80s), but if it is just plain-ol' laserdisc video, then it will record to VHS/PVR/DVD/whatever without any real technical headaches or even DMCA quibbles, as laserdisc employed no form of encryption, not even Macrovision.
I've backed up a Certain Sci-Fi Trilogy myself, because the copyright holder chooses not to release them any more in their original form, if you know what I mean.
And no - since someone always asks for it when I mention this fact, I'm not going to illegally distribute a copy to anyone.
I'm not sure if AMIX can run UAE (though I'd imagine that a port wouldn't be impossible), but I do remember there being a port of UAE for the standard AmigaOS A4000. Because there are several games that UAE makes a better job of pretending to be a basic A500 than the 4000's compatibility mode does.
:(
To this day, I have to play a disk image of Spindizzy Worlds on my PC because the A1200 won't run the real thing.
Edge is indeed similiar to the way Next Generation was - NexGen quite regularly licensed articles from Edge, and occasionally vice-versa too.
Edge itself will never get a US release, as some mag of weird stuff owns the US rights to use that mag title, by the way. Its worth every penny an international subscription costs, however.
I'd generally agree with you, as for the most part Edge is the one games magazine that treats its audience as anything other than teenage boys. But the last 4 or so issues in a row have had at least partial nudity in them.
True generally, but you can't get $20,000 from EA because you broke the high score table.
This isn't about cheating just to prove what an immature idiot you are, but an attempt to defraud the arcade maker.
"it kills me to think of the time we've put into this, to know that it will probably end up on the .ru site also as soon as it's live"
Go on, you just know that you want to add a rule to the webserver that ensures their IP gets redirected to Tubgirl instead of being served the new site.
One thing is for sure, though - any mysterious voodoo reason for vinyl being superior than CD is promptly lost if you're then converting the thing to MP3 as the original poster was suggesting.
Personally, I do really like vinyl still, but it is a case of liking the smoothly rolled-off top-end (most new CD mixes these days sound slightly too tinny to my vinyl-accustomed ears) and all the faff of putting a needle on the deck, rather than anything technical.
If its that thin and light, I'd happily just mount it as the side of my case; how convenient would that be?
Oops.
I didn't mean that _you_ were sexist, only that I was half tempted to post an admittedly sexist, obvious gag about designing a car that needs you to park with tons of space on either side, and claiming its 'for women'. I know that gullwing doors are a nightmare; a relative once tried out a car with them, and still recoils in horror at being forced to crawl in the bottom when a big 4x4 parked right next to him.
Here, try the stick's other end, its much more comfortable to grab.
Comedy usernames are great. Personally, I use "a reasonable man". Partly for the Radiohead reference, but mainly because you then get
Player was blown away by a reasonable man
a reasonable man plays 'catch the thermal detonator' with Player
and so on.
D'oh! And the clue is in the username, too.
Tubular Bells was great; never really got on with the 'sequels', though, apart from the Orb remixes of Sentinel. Much prefer The Songs Of Distant Earth, myself.
"This stereo record can not be played on old tin boxes no matter what they are fitted with."
I recognise this, but can't place it. Brian Eno?
I'm sure there is a very sexist parking/women drivers gag in there somewhere, but I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader...
Well, you could give up on all that fancy over-the-shoulder thing, and use the perfectly playable GTA1 or 2, both of which supported multiplayer in their PC incarnations.
"Soul Calibur is an excellent example of this. Designed for a Dreamcast / PS controller type with four buttons in diamond, it relies on hitting 2 buttons simultaneously to do many moves."
I see what you're saying, but SC was actually designed for a four-button arcade stick setup. I can't possibly recommend purchasing the Hori SC2 stick from your regular Japanese Import place enough. Its far, far better than using either a Gamecube or PS2 pad for the game.
Alternatively, get used to using L as the block button, and you don't need to move your right thumb from the AXY triangle - rapid blocking is essential to get far at Soul Calibur II.
"Shouldn't that be running out about now? IIRC, patents only last 17 years, and the NES came out in 1985"
Its 20 years, but 20 from the first Game & Watch. So either way it will have run out in time for the PS3 launch.
Personally, I did this perfectly legally. Microsoft Europe, in some bizarre moment of benevolence, shipped me a free "Second Edition Upgrade" disk that turned 98 into 98SE in return for the proof of purchase bit off the retail 98 box.
Of course, I then proceeded to do a fresh install with an OEM copy of SE rather than use the upgrade disc, as I then had fewer random bits of cruft lying around. But thats another story.
Really? Microsoft shipped me a free upgrade CD with all the stuff on, having bought a retail box copy of 98 (upgrade). After a couple of months they did renege on the idea and start asking about 10 for it, ostensibly to cover the cost of making it and shipping (all the UK ones were being shipped from Microsoft Ireland for some perverse reason).
For a start, nearly all XBox games exploit the fact that there are three 750Mb cache partitions used for temporary storage, in order to both minimise load times and act as swap space for programs that find the 64Mb total (i.e. including graphics) memory too much of a bind.
So unless they wish to add a hell of a lot more memory (this stuff doesn't actually need to be flash, however) then backwards compatibility is broken.
However, an XBox 2 with 2Gb of real memory would be fun to work with, I guess.
Wow, Tony Cox, well I never. Great porting job you did; its the version that I still play occasionally, rather than the BBC one. Didn't you work on Syndicate Wars, as well?
As far as I'm concerned, it was Better Than Elite. Brilliant, brilliant game, though viciously difficult in places, and prone to leaving you stuck in ways that required starting again from scratch.
It did the whole 'sandbox' thing wonderfully well, too, thanks to its amazing physics.