I'd be glad to, but I've never been able to find out how to make them. I could at least find a how-to on creating RPMs, even if I couldn't do it so well...
As I understand it, the Half-Life folks started out with the Quake (1) engine as a base, but then hacked and extended it to the point where it has little code in common with Quake anymore.
How much sway the MPAA has? Well, given all the cheap ripoff DVDs and CDs that flow out of Taiwan already, I would be inclined to say, "Uhm...probably not very much at all, Bren."
The real truth, from section 1.20 of Jim Taylor's official DVD FAQ, which I'd trust a lot more than a random Slashdotter's commentary, is as follows:
[1.20] What about animation on DVD? Doesn't it compress poorly?
Some people claim that animation, especially hand-drawn cell animation such as cartoons and anime, does not compress well with MPEG-2 or even ends up larger than the original. Other people claim that animation is simple so it compresses better. Neither is true.
Supposedly the "jitter" between frames caused by differences in the drawings or in their alignment causes problems. An animation expert at Disney pointed out that this doesn't happen with modern animation techniques. And even if it did, the motion estimation feature of MPEG-2 would compensate for it.
Because of the way MPEG-2 breaks a picture into blocks and transforms them into frequency information it can have a problem with the sharp edges common in animation. This loss of high-frequency information can show up as "ringing" or blurry spots along edges (called the Gibbs effect). However, at the data rates commonly used for DVD this problem does not occur.
So, animation compresses about the same as any other video.
According to today's Morning Edition article on it, Tezuka was inspired partly by seeing some stills from Lang's movie--there's no indication whether he actually saw the movie itself, but he did write his story based on similar themes.
Note that there is a trailer for the anime Metropolis in the trailers section of the first disc of the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within DVD. It looks pretty impressive to me.
Recently, I picked up the roleplaying game De Profundis, which is a game that involves roleplay by exchanging actual physical letters. And as I was writing one of these, I got to think about it, and realized that after eight years of writing e-mail, it seemed to me there was something rather neat about the idea of an actual hand-written letter--the idea that, in a few days, the other person would be holding in his hands the very sheet of paper you are writing the words on, instead of simply seeing a representation of those words on a computer screen.
It's kind of funny, when you think about it. All these years of using the 'net have instilled in me a different concept of what is "normal". Whereas eight years ago e-mail seemed amazingly out of the ordinary, now I have a similar feeling about snail mail.
Or maybe I'm just nuts.:)
Re:Use operating systems for what they're good for
on
Loki Games Closing?
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· Score: 1
What do you use to watch divx movies? I can't seem to get much to work very well on my Linux box.
These people do exist, though. There's one fellow who comes to the Kmart where I work occasionally who is rather indignant about the bigscreen TV behind the service desk that shows continuous advertisements and things; he says it makes him sick, and he has to make a wide loop around it when he comes in or out.
The human body is an amazing and wonderful thing, and our medicine isn't even close to understanding it fully. If we can be sickened by large doses of radiation, who's to say some among us can't be sickened by smaller ones?
Well, the link didn't say anything about connection to the Internet as a whole, it seemed to focus more on creating a "humongous LAN".
Of course, they'll probably get Internet access somehow, whether it's buying a line legitimately or piggybacking on the broadband connections of the few people on it who still buy them.
No, it's a quite clearly-written sentence. There are no dangling or misplaced modifiers; it quite clearly conveys a message. I read it over several times before I posted; there can be no mistaking. (Whether she misspoke and meant to say that Star Wars was directed to children, I'm not qualified to say--but the experience that I have had, as an anime fan, with the "anime is kiddie stuff" prejudice leads me to believe that she meant every word she said.)
The article says (emphases mine) "a pornographic use of someone else's intellectual property, especially when that use is directed to children." The word "use" is used only once in the sentence prior to "that use," thus, "that use" modifies "a pornographic use".
If she'd said "when that property is directed to children," she could have been referring to Lucas's IP, which is to say, Star Wars. But it is grammatically quite clear that she is referring to the pornographic use--the Star Ballz anime--as having been directed to children. That is to say, made with children as a target audience.
Which is clearly quite stupid, but apparently there are still people out there who believe that anything animated is meant for kids. And unfortunately, some of them are even judges.
Keep in mind that this is just the opening round. There hasn't even been a trial yet; the judge has just said that, on the face of it, she doesn't see any reason to stop the sales of the film until the thing has been hashed out. It could still turn into a Lucasfilm victory in court.
So it doesn't open the door to anything yet. And it may not, in fact.
What gets me is the "directed to children" bit. Um, what? Where does it say that the parody is directed to children? On the Star Ballz website, where there's a clear "this website contains material unsuitable for those under 18" disclaimer? By watching the thing? (Oh, wait, no, they didn't, did they?)
I know! It's because it's animated, and as everybody knows, animated vids are only for kids, regardless of content! Ha ha, right, all those Mangle Video animes with people getting naked (and peoples' brains getting shot out) that they release instead of getting around to Giant Robo are all to keep the little kiddies entertained!
AOL discs could be useful for something other than a coffee cup trivet or a pretty microwave oven light show.
"AOL disc? Heh heh. That's a Red Hat Linux install disc in disguise. And they sent it to you free, you lucky bastard! You didn't even have to pay the Cheapbytes cost!"
It's worth noting, again, that giFT, the open-source FastTrack clone, is now undergoing network testing. Slashdot over to there, get their client, try it and see if you can't help them out. giFT, if it takes off, shouldn't have any of the advertising, authenticating, or other such problems of the commercial FT clients, right?
There was an article in the New York Times about that this very day. (registration, yadda, blah blah, if someone wants to post the 'registration-free' link, please do; I don't remember how to construct them) Quite interesting.
BTW, I didn't even know there was a KaZaa client for Linux. Where can I find it?:)
I honestly can't think of anything that a PocketPC does that I'd want enough to spend two to three times the cost of a PalmOS for. I mean, so it plays MP3s, including audiobooks. So? Big deal. I listen to audiobooks on the Rio 600 that I got for saving up Pepsi bottlecaps. So it reads Microsoft Reader e-books. So? Big deal. Anything that I would want to read in MSR form is more than likely also available in some other form that doesn't have the hassle of DRM.
Playing movies? Oh, puh-leeze. If I want to play movies on a pocket device, and have that kind of money to toss around, then I'll buy a portable DVD player.
Work with Word or Excel files? Can't see why I'd want to. Even if I did, there are perfectly serviceable Word file editors for the Palm.
Color? Don't need it, and if I did, it would still be cheaper on a Palm machine.
Don't get me wrong--the PowerPC boxes look like nifty toys, and if someone gave me one, sure, I'd be happy to play around with it. But for my money...no way.
Look at the various new Palm compatibles (Palmables?) that are coming out from various companies. They mostly aren't just faster, or even faster and slimmer. Or even with color. They all have gimmicks now. Like the HandEra330, which has a voice recorder and slots for two different kinds of memory expansions, or the Sony CLIEs with the high-res screens and hyped-up IR port which will also serve as universal remote controls.
The Visor Deluxe that I bought back when it was $250 is still adequate for me--or would be if the screen hadn't developed a slight short in it. There's nothing that I want to do with it that I can't already--except maybe wireless, but that's not yet mature enough to warrant consideration. As it is, now that CLIE is looking mighty good...but after I buy that, I don't think I'll need another PalmOS device for a good long while.
It's worth noting that giFT/OpenFT just entered its first stage of network testing--and with that in mind, they need as many people as possible to download and run the client so they can test the network. Complete instructions for so doing are given on the website.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahh. Well, in that case, Sid (Unstable) is still giving me Mozilla 0.9.7-6. So that's not working either.
I'd be glad to, but I've never been able to find out how to make them. I could at least find a how-to on creating RPMs, even if I couldn't do it so well...
Er...what is sid, other than a Final Fantasy character?
Geez, I wish it didn't take so long between the release of the new version and the .deb package update.
As I understand it, the Half-Life folks started out with the Quake (1) engine as a base, but then hacked and extended it to the point where it has little code in common with Quake anymore.
How much sway the MPAA has? Well, given all the cheap ripoff DVDs and CDs that flow out of Taiwan already, I would be inclined to say, "Uhm...probably not very much at all, Bren."
~/AGSatellite0520> ./AGSatellite &
[4] 19664
~/AGSatellite0520> Files scanned: 2663 NewFiles: 1
http://www.audiogalaxy.com/betatest to login
So sorry, what's all the fuss about again?
According to today's Morning Edition article on it, Tezuka was inspired partly by seeing some stills from Lang's movie--there's no indication whether he actually saw the movie itself, but he did write his story based on similar themes.
Note that there is a trailer for the anime Metropolis in the trailers section of the first disc of the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within DVD. It looks pretty impressive to me.
Recently, I picked up the roleplaying game De Profundis, which is a game that involves roleplay by exchanging actual physical letters. And as I was writing one of these, I got to think about it, and realized that after eight years of writing e-mail, it seemed to me there was something rather neat about the idea of an actual hand-written letter--the idea that, in a few days, the other person would be holding in his hands the very sheet of paper you are writing the words on, instead of simply seeing a representation of those words on a computer screen.
:)
It's kind of funny, when you think about it. All these years of using the 'net have instilled in me a different concept of what is "normal". Whereas eight years ago e-mail seemed amazingly out of the ordinary, now I have a similar feeling about snail mail.
Or maybe I'm just nuts.
What do you use to watch divx movies? I can't seem to get much to work very well on my Linux box.
I just can't help thinking of this quote from Carl Sagan as I read about this story:
"They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at Newton. Of course, they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
These people do exist, though. There's one fellow who comes to the Kmart where I work occasionally who is rather indignant about the bigscreen TV behind the service desk that shows continuous advertisements and things; he says it makes him sick, and he has to make a wide loop around it when he comes in or out.
The human body is an amazing and wonderful thing, and our medicine isn't even close to understanding it fully. If we can be sickened by large doses of radiation, who's to say some among us can't be sickened by smaller ones?
Well, the link didn't say anything about connection to the Internet as a whole, it seemed to focus more on creating a "humongous LAN".
Of course, they'll probably get Internet access somehow, whether it's buying a line legitimately or piggybacking on the broadband connections of the few people on it who still buy them.
No, it's a quite clearly-written sentence. There are no dangling or misplaced modifiers; it quite clearly conveys a message. I read it over several times before I posted; there can be no mistaking. (Whether she misspoke and meant to say that Star Wars was directed to children, I'm not qualified to say--but the experience that I have had, as an anime fan, with the "anime is kiddie stuff" prejudice leads me to believe that she meant every word she said.)
The article says (emphases mine) "a pornographic use of someone else's intellectual property, especially when that use is directed to children." The word "use" is used only once in the sentence prior to "that use," thus, "that use" modifies "a pornographic use".
If she'd said "when that property is directed to children," she could have been referring to Lucas's IP, which is to say, Star Wars. But it is grammatically quite clear that she is referring to the pornographic use--the Star Ballz anime--as having been directed to children. That is to say, made with children as a target audience.
Which is clearly quite stupid, but apparently there are still people out there who believe that anything animated is meant for kids. And unfortunately, some of them are even judges.
Keep in mind that this is just the opening round. There hasn't even been a trial yet; the judge has just said that, on the face of it, she doesn't see any reason to stop the sales of the film until the thing has been hashed out. It could still turn into a Lucasfilm victory in court.
So it doesn't open the door to anything yet. And it may not, in fact.
What gets me is the "directed to children" bit. Um, what? Where does it say that the parody is directed to children? On the Star Ballz website, where there's a clear "this website contains material unsuitable for those under 18" disclaimer? By watching the thing? (Oh, wait, no, they didn't, did they?)
I know! It's because it's animated, and as everybody knows, animated vids are only for kids, regardless of content! Ha ha, right, all those Mangle Video animes with people getting naked (and peoples' brains getting shot out) that they release instead of getting around to Giant Robo are all to keep the little kiddies entertained!
Bleah. That mindset makes me sick.
Not only that--but get this...
AOL discs could be useful for something other than a coffee cup trivet or a pretty microwave oven light show.
"AOL disc? Heh heh. That's a Red Hat Linux install disc in disguise. And they sent it to you free, you lucky bastard! You didn't even have to pay the Cheapbytes cost!"
It's worth noting, again, that giFT, the open-source FastTrack clone, is now undergoing network testing. Slashdot over to there, get their client, try it and see if you can't help them out. giFT, if it takes off, shouldn't have any of the advertising, authenticating, or other such problems of the commercial FT clients, right?
There was an article in the New York Times about that this very day. (registration, yadda, blah blah, if someone wants to post the 'registration-free' link, please do; I don't remember how to construct them) Quite interesting.
:)
BTW, I didn't even know there was a KaZaa client for Linux. Where can I find it?
As for the e-book issue, none of the e-books I've ever used have even been available in MS-Reader, as far as I've noticed at the time.
- Alexlit
- Mind's Eye
- Peanut Press/Palm Digital Literature
- Fictionwise
- MemoWare
- Baen Webscriptions/Free Library
I'm not even sure where I'd get an MS-Reader book even if I wanted one.As for the price issue, I suppose they've gotten better. All the WinCE boxes were in the $500-800 range last time I looked.
I honestly can't think of anything that a PocketPC does that I'd want enough to spend two to three times the cost of a PalmOS for. I mean, so it plays MP3s, including audiobooks. So? Big deal. I listen to audiobooks on the Rio 600 that I got for saving up Pepsi bottlecaps. So it reads Microsoft Reader e-books. So? Big deal. Anything that I would want to read in MSR form is more than likely also available in some other form that doesn't have the hassle of DRM.
Playing movies? Oh, puh-leeze. If I want to play movies on a pocket device, and have that kind of money to toss around, then I'll buy a portable DVD player.
Work with Word or Excel files? Can't see why I'd want to. Even if I did, there are perfectly serviceable Word file editors for the Palm.
Color? Don't need it, and if I did, it would still be cheaper on a Palm machine.
Don't get me wrong--the PowerPC boxes look like nifty toys, and if someone gave me one, sure, I'd be happy to play around with it. But for my money...no way.
I think there may be something to this.
Look at the various new Palm compatibles (Palmables?) that are coming out from various companies. They mostly aren't just faster, or even faster and slimmer. Or even with color. They all have gimmicks now. Like the HandEra330, which has a voice recorder and slots for two different kinds of memory expansions, or the Sony CLIEs with the high-res screens and hyped-up IR port which will also serve as universal remote controls.
The Visor Deluxe that I bought back when it was $250 is still adequate for me--or would be if the screen hadn't developed a slight short in it. There's nothing that I want to do with it that I can't already--except maybe wireless, but that's not yet mature enough to warrant consideration. As it is, now that CLIE is looking mighty good...but after I buy that, I don't think I'll need another PalmOS device for a good long while.
Don't look at me, I always make my coupla gigs of stuff available for upload on the services I use.
Problem is, though, the cable company caps me to a 128 kilobit per sec upstream, so there's an imbalance there that I can't do anything about.
But I do what I can!
It's worth noting that giFT/OpenFT just entered its first stage of network testing--and with that in mind, they need as many people as possible to download and run the client so they can test the network. Complete instructions for so doing are given on the website.