Why are people getting so worked up over this?
on
The ESRB Gets An 'F'
·
· Score: 1
I honestly fail to see what the big deal is over this. Can someone explain to me why people are getting worked up? I could understand if everyone here was under 17 and was afraid they wouldn't be able to buy their M rated games, but I am under the impression the audience here is somewhat older.
To me, the ESRB has done a fairly good job of rating games. I would, however, like to see some more distinction made between a game like Half Life 2 and a game like F.E.A.R., both of which I _believe_ are rated M, but are vastly different in the amount of 'adult' content they contain. Heck, I'm an adult and F.E.A.R. disturbed _me_. Maybe ESRB needs an additional rating letter? Like mild adult and extreme adult? hehe...
But as far as this 'grade' by this family group.. I don't see what people are afraid of. So a family group gives the ESRB a failing grade. Why do people seem to feel so thretened by this? I mean, we're all adults here, right? It's not like they are trying to make it impossible for us to buy games... they're just trying to protect their children. And are we their children? I don't think so.
I'm a sexually active adult who doesn't consider himself a prude, and also supports family values. I also would not be at all surprised if many of the members of this organization (NIMF) have no religious affiliation whatsoever and would take exception to your remark.
you have other places in the world that don't have the same hangups as Mormons and have no motivation or obligation to observe US law
I think you will find that most families are against porn, not to mention most women. It's hardly limited to Mormons, or Utahns. As an experiment, try asking your mom how she feels about you looking at porn. Or ask your female significant other..
Funny, I've found a lot of self-happiness looking at porn. To each their own, eh?
I have no problem with you making that statement.
Uhhh... Yeah? I have to choose not to brutally murder every idiot who can't turn their cell phone off in the theatre, too - But I (so far) have managed that just fine, with plain ol' fashioned will power.
Exactly. In order to have the choice not to murder every cell-phone using idiot in the theater, you _have_ to choose not to murder them. If you murdered them, you'd be thrown in prison and thus would no longer have the choice, because you would be in prison and would have no ability to murder theater-goers let alone go to a theater yourself. It's the same with porn.
C'mon, give up the "Little Polly Pretty" naivete. If you don't mean this as a troll, you need to get out more. And I say that as a hard-core introvert.
I'm hardly naive, my friend. I'm married and therefore have sex, which puts me in a better position to understand it than someone who has never had sex and has learned everything they think they know about it by watching porn (which may include a few slashdot readers). The reason I am coming down hard against porn isn't due to my naivety, lack of experience, or my fear of something new. The reason I am coming down hard against porn is _because_ of my experience. Being happy and being sexually active is the opposite of watching porn. It really is, though it may not seem that way at first. In my experience, if you want to happy and sexually active (and I think every male does) then you will avoid porn like the plague and just focus on getting married and serving your wife as best you can. If you watch porn, you will have no sex (women do not appreciate it), not be happy, you will have wasted both time and money, and all you will have to show for it is a closet full of used tissue paper. A dubious trade off...
Comment every conditional branch or loop
on
How to Write Comments
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I once read that a good comment will appear on every conditional branch or loop, and a good comment will also state the INTENTION for doing something, rather than what is actually being done (because the programmer can usually figure out what is being done). For example:// i starts at 1 instead of 0 because we don't want to process the application's name (first argument) for (int i = 1; i argc; i++) {
printf("ARgument is %s\n", argv[i]); }// AND with 0xFF1234 because that is the first set of bytes in the file header if (u & 0xFF1234) {
printf("File is valid.\n"); }// say file not found instead of invalid due to reason blah blah blah... else {
printf("File not found.\n"); }
Did you click on my name to find all my posts, Alsee?:)
In this instance, I was not talking about laws and restrictions (although I can understand why you'd think that since that is the topic of this slashdot submission). I was talking more about the personal freedom we gain or lose based on the choices that we make, that may or may not have any relationship to the laws of the government.
For example, take a hypothetical male who spends countless hours and money looking at porn. After 3 years of doing this, what does he have to show for it? Nothing except lots and lots of used tissue in wastebaskets and a lot of time and money gone. To me, this is not freedom, but captivity. If this sounds like the kind of life you'd like to lead, you are of course free to do so, but I want something more out of my life. I want to look back at the choices I've made and see growth in my life, not a line of full wastebaskets full of used tissues.
Make no mistake, I am not saying that you cannot look at porn. I fully defend your freedom of choice to do so. I am simply saying that there are better things you can be doing with your time, things that will make you and those around you better people, and things that will make you happier. If you disagree, that is your choice and I support your right to disagree.
As to my previous comment... if people want me to rally behind their cause, they need to come up with a cause that leads to personal growth and the growth of society.. something that takes us to a better place. I totally support getting rid of the DMCA because I feel that the DMCA has taken us to a worse place.
I merely want an easy way for a computer program to identify porn so that I can choose to block it from my home. It doesn't have to be on its own tcp port, that is just one idea (which may or may not be feasible).
I have absolutely no problem making "religion" easily identifiable by a computer.
Net Nanny isn't that great of a solution because it relies too much on human's deciding what is porn, which is too inefficient.
I think this Utah proposal is simply a method to make it easier for parents to block porn from their home internet. It does not make it more difficult for those who desire porn to obtain it. Maybe the idea of putting it all on a single tcp port is silly (I'm sure better ideas are out there) but I think the idea of making porn much easier to block for those who wish to block it is a great idea and I definitely support it.
I think this Utah proposal has merit and I support it. If you want to spend your time mocking, that is your choice, but I can tell you that I've found a lot of happiness and self-esteem avoiding porn (and tissues as you call it) and without hesitation I recommend to everyone to avoid porn like they would a deadly disease. I don't look at porn, because I don't want my self-esteem lowered, I don't want to be miserable, I want to know who I am, and at best, I want to spend my time on other things.
If you want to have the choice whether to look at porn, you have to choose not to look at it. Anyone who has become addicted to porn will know what I mean.
I agree. If some of the slashdot submitters want my support for their causes, they will need to pick a cause that leads to freedom and peace, not one which leads to blindness and captivity.
Those who have the most choice in whether they look at porn are those who do not look at it. The same can be said of smoking. Those who have the most choice in whether they smoke are those who do not smoke. Therefore, anyone who wants freedom of choice where porn is concerned, including the freedom to look at it, should be in favor of measures that make it easy to not partake.
I don't know what some people feel they are accomplishing by mocking attempts like this.
In truth, looking at porn only leads to captivity, so I would think that those who love freedom would be more interested in trying to eliminate porn from their lives rather than trying to mock attempts to do so, even if the attempt may have some technological flaws.
Personally, I love freedom, therefore I try to avoid porn as much as possible, and if some law is going to make it that much easier for me to avoid porn by putting it all in a single TCP port, so much the better for me and my family. Why? Because porn is not worth protecting!
And being married, I love sex too, but I love how sacred sex is. For those of you who have never been married and never experienced how wonderful sex is within marriage, with complete fidelity, let me tell you, it is totally worth it. The world tells us so many lies about sex, that it is sad.
Porn is just a big lie. Instead of trying to save it, let's just be rid of it. Sure this guy's attempt may have some technological flaws, but at least he's trying.
I think that saying video games never teach people that violent principles are acceptable is as irresponsible as saying video games always teach people that violent principles are acceptable.
I think video games do present a message, even if it's as something as obvious as "Spending countless hours playing this MMORPG is definitely worth your time!" I think that violent video games present a message that at best says violence may be necessary in certain situations, and at worst says that acting on violent principles produces happiness.
I personally have little sympathy for video game companies who produce games that teach us that "violence makes you happy" and then hide behind the "It's your parents' responsibility to teach you that what we're teaching you is a lie!" Every person is accountable for what they strive to teach other people.
Actually, I believe the MPAA/RIAA and you _agree_ to terms.
I agree with your point, though... having downloadable content expire is quite lame.
I can go to McDonalds and rent a new DVD for $1 for a 24-hour time period. Why would I want to download a movie (which would undoubtedly be lower quality than a DVD) for more than $1 (which is what I assume they'd charge) ? I mean, what is the advantage here? Are they new movies that are out in theaters? Because if you can just get them on DVD, where is the value?
It sounds like you are being sarcastic. You may be surprised to know that I also hold the same view toward cable. I in fact do not have cable because I do not believe that I should have to pay for an _advertised supported service_.
Besides, the new TV can be used to watch regular TV, as well as to play console games on. I can't play WoW on non-blizzard servers, can I?
This is one of my biggest complaints with MMORPG games such as World of Warcraft. They charge the usual $55 for the game but then add on a monthly fee. I am surprised (and dismayed) that this business model has apparently been accepted so readily by the fans. It makes my personal boycotting efforts much less effective:)
is this a new Amiga in name only? Or is it somehow compatible with all the old software from the 80's? Or.. what's the connection with this new Amiga and the classic Amigas?
I too think this is a neat idea and I wouldn't be surprised if other companies pulled stuff like this too.
The one problem is... sometimes I will install a cracked version of a game I own because it becomes extremely inconvenient and/or unfeasible to put the CD in the drive to play. One quick example.. running a dedicated Doom 3 server. Sure, now you don't need the CD in the drive anymore, but when the game first came out, you did.. which was simply ridiculous since no one should have to buy an extra copy of doom 3 just to run a dedicated server, especially since having more dedicated servers actually helps the developer (free resources to allow more people to play online).
So in the end... since legit customers may want to disable the CD check, Valve cannot assume that everyone who is running a copy of their game with the CD check disabled is pirating it.
I find that a good rule of thumb is to upgrade in order to play the latest computer games well (not barely). This usually will cover all your other bases because computer games require lots of RAM, a fast video card, and a fast CPU, which will go far in making everything else on your computer (video editing/encoding, number crunching, database stuff, business apps, etc) run smoothly too.
The only thing gaming doesn't necessarily force on you is a huge hard drive.. for hard drives, I'd say get a bigger one when you have to keep deleting stuff to free up space.
And remember.. if it runs fast enough, you don't need to upgrade.
Sorry, but that doesn't make sense to me. Saying that there is a market for movies that suck seems like a contradiction to me.
If tons of movies are being downloaded it means that, for whatever reason, they are in demand.
and how is this insightful?
on
Java 1.5 vs C#
·
· Score: 1
The thread is hardly over. Visual Studio is one of the few applications Microsoft has released that I actually like. I still use VS6 at home, and I use VS.net at work. As another poster said, the debugging in Visual Studio is awesome. The two debuggers I use are visual studio in windows and gdb in linux. Gdb is powerful but, being text-based, isn't nearly as pleasant to use as visual studio's GUI debugger. Visual Studio's intellisense and auto-formatting also do what I want them to do, and I have yet to find an IDE in linux that "just works" the way visual studio does.
Microsoft IS evil, but Visual Studio is nice, and it is being developed by some very smart people.
As far as I know, id had already released linux ports of Doom, Quake and Quake2 before Sam L. did SDLQuake (which was the first time I had ever heard of SDL myself, so I am not sure how long it was around before that time). At any rate, SDL does have a small overhead and since id had already went ahead and written the sound/glx code for linux, they were already doing what SDL would've done anyway so it would've actually been more work to convert it over to SDL; plus this may have introduced more overhead into the Windows build.
In short, by not using SDL, the game's performance cannot be any worse, and it may be better.
re comb filter: Most of my NTSC capturing is from laserdiscs which are inherently composite.
re 720 vs 640: I came to this conclusion by two methods.. first I captured the same section of video in 640x480 mode and then did it again in 720x480 and took note of what was being displayed on the left/right edges of each frame. I also compared these frames against captures that I've done on other hardware (bt8x8 which can do 720x480 with btwincap driver, for example) and noticed that quite a bit of overscan edge stuff was missing from the "720x480" that the cx23881 claimed to do. DScaler can get into "true" 720x480 mode on the cx23881 but last time I checked it isn't designed to capture to AVI in "raw" mode (without de-interlacing the data).
In theory I could take the dscaler source code and write my own driver for the cx23881 but.. that would involve quite a bit of time and research. *sigh*
My main goal is to preserve as much of the laserdisc video (horizontally in this case) as possible with as little quality loss as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
I honestly fail to see what the big deal is over this. Can someone explain to me why people are getting worked up? I could understand if everyone here was under 17 and was afraid they wouldn't be able to buy their M rated games, but I am under the impression the audience here is somewhat older.
To me, the ESRB has done a fairly good job of rating games. I would, however, like to see some more distinction made between a game like Half Life 2 and a game like F.E.A.R., both of which I _believe_ are rated M, but are vastly different in the amount of 'adult' content they contain. Heck, I'm an adult and F.E.A.R. disturbed _me_. Maybe ESRB needs an additional rating letter? Like mild adult and extreme adult? hehe...
But as far as this 'grade' by this family group.. I don't see what people are afraid of. So a family group gives the ESRB a failing grade. Why do people seem to feel so thretened by this? I mean, we're all adults here, right? It's not like they are trying to make it impossible for us to buy games... they're just trying to protect their children. And are we their children? I don't think so.
I'm a sexually active adult who doesn't consider himself a prude, and also supports family values. I also would not be at all surprised if many of the members of this organization (NIMF) have no religious affiliation whatsoever and would take exception to your remark.
you have other places in the world that don't have the same hangups as Mormons and have no motivation or obligation to observe US law
...
I think you will find that most families are against porn, not to mention most women. It's hardly limited to Mormons, or Utahns. As an experiment, try asking your mom how she feels about you looking at porn. Or ask your female significant other..
Funny, I've found a lot of self-happiness looking at porn. To each their own, eh?
I have no problem with you making that statement.
Uhhh... Yeah? I have to choose not to brutally murder every idiot who can't turn their cell phone off in the theatre, too - But I (so far) have managed that just fine, with plain ol' fashioned will power.
Exactly. In order to have the choice not to murder every cell-phone using idiot in the theater, you _have_ to choose not to murder them. If you murdered them, you'd be thrown in prison and thus would no longer have the choice, because you would be in prison and would have no ability to murder theater-goers let alone go to a theater yourself. It's the same with porn.
C'mon, give up the "Little Polly Pretty" naivete. If you don't mean this as a troll, you need to get out more. And I say that as a hard-core introvert.
I'm hardly naive, my friend. I'm married and therefore have sex, which puts me in a better position to understand it than someone who has never had sex and has learned everything they think they know about it by watching porn (which may include a few slashdot readers). The reason I am coming down hard against porn isn't due to my naivety, lack of experience, or my fear of something new. The reason I am coming down hard against porn is _because_ of my experience. Being happy and being sexually active is the opposite of watching porn. It really is, though it may not seem that way at first. In my experience, if you want to happy and sexually active (and I think every male does) then you will avoid porn like the plague and just focus on getting married and serving your wife as best you can. If you watch porn, you will have no sex (women do not appreciate it), not be happy, you will have wasted both time and money, and all you will have to show for it is a closet full of used tissue paper. A dubious trade off
I once read that a good comment will appear on every conditional branch or loop, and a good comment will also state the INTENTION for doing something, rather than what is actually being done (because the programmer can usually figure out what is being done). For example: // i starts at 1 instead of 0 because we don't want to process the application's name (first argument) // AND with 0xFF1234 because that is the first set of bytes in the file header // say file not found instead of invalid due to reason blah blah blah ...
for (int i = 1; i argc; i++)
{
printf("ARgument is %s\n", argv[i]);
}
if (u & 0xFF1234)
{
printf("File is valid.\n");
}
else
{
printf("File not found.\n");
}
Did you click on my name to find all my posts, Alsee? :)
In this instance, I was not talking about laws and restrictions (although I can understand why you'd think that since that is the topic of this slashdot submission). I was talking more about the personal freedom we gain or lose based on the choices that we make, that may or may not have any relationship to the laws of the government.
For example, take a hypothetical male who spends countless hours and money looking at porn. After 3 years of doing this, what does he have to show for it? Nothing except lots and lots of used tissue in wastebaskets and a lot of time and money gone. To me, this is not freedom, but captivity. If this sounds like the kind of life you'd like to lead, you are of course free to do so, but I want something more out of my life. I want to look back at the choices I've made and see growth in my life, not a line of full wastebaskets full of used tissues.
Make no mistake, I am not saying that you cannot look at porn. I fully defend your freedom of choice to do so. I am simply saying that there are better things you can be doing with your time, things that will make you and those around you better people, and things that will make you happier. If you disagree, that is your choice and I support your right to disagree.
As to my previous comment... if people want me to rally behind their cause, they need to come up with a cause that leads to personal growth and the growth of society.. something that takes us to a better place. I totally support getting rid of the DMCA because I feel that the DMCA has taken us to a worse place.
I merely want an easy way for a computer program to identify porn so that I can choose to block it from my home. It doesn't have to be on its own tcp port, that is just one idea (which may or may not be feasible).
I have absolutely no problem making "religion" easily identifiable by a computer.
Net Nanny isn't that great of a solution because it relies too much on human's deciding what is porn, which is too inefficient.
I think this Utah proposal is simply a method to make it easier for parents to block porn from their home internet. It does not make it more difficult for those who desire porn to obtain it. Maybe the idea of putting it all on a single tcp port is silly (I'm sure better ideas are out there) but I think the idea of making porn much easier to block for those who wish to block it is a great idea and I definitely support it.
What is there to fear here?
I think this Utah proposal has merit and I support it. If you want to spend your time mocking, that is your choice, but I can tell you that I've found a lot of happiness and self-esteem avoiding porn (and tissues as you call it) and without hesitation I recommend to everyone to avoid porn like they would a deadly disease. I don't look at porn, because I don't want my self-esteem lowered, I don't want to be miserable, I want to know who I am, and at best, I want to spend my time on other things.
If you want to have the choice whether to look at porn, you have to choose not to look at it. Anyone who has become addicted to porn will know what I mean.
I agree. If some of the slashdot submitters want my support for their causes, they will need to pick a cause that leads to freedom and peace, not one which leads to blindness and captivity.
Those who have the most choice in whether they look at porn are those who do not look at it. The same can be said of smoking. Those who have the most choice in whether they smoke are those who do not smoke. Therefore, anyone who wants freedom of choice where porn is concerned, including the freedom to look at it, should be in favor of measures that make it easy to not partake.
My comment is not a troll, it is my honest opinion. Moderating me down just because you have a difference of opinion is abuse of moderation.
You know perfectly well that I didn't say any of those things, nor do I believe them.
I don't know what some people feel they are accomplishing by mocking attempts like this.
In truth, looking at porn only leads to captivity, so I would think that those who love freedom would be more interested in trying to eliminate porn from their lives rather than trying to mock attempts to do so, even if the attempt may have some technological flaws.
Personally, I love freedom, therefore I try to avoid porn as much as possible, and if some law is going to make it that much easier for me to avoid porn by putting it all in a single TCP port, so much the better for me and my family. Why? Because porn is not worth protecting!
And being married, I love sex too, but I love how sacred sex is. For those of you who have never been married and never experienced how wonderful sex is within marriage, with complete fidelity, let me tell you, it is totally worth it. The world tells us so many lies about sex, that it is sad.
Porn is just a big lie. Instead of trying to save it, let's just be rid of it. Sure this guy's attempt may have some technological flaws, but at least he's trying.
I think that saying video games never teach people that violent principles are acceptable is as irresponsible as saying video games always teach people that violent principles are acceptable.
I think video games do present a message, even if it's as something as obvious as "Spending countless hours playing this MMORPG is definitely worth your time!" I think that violent video games present a message that at best says violence may be necessary in certain situations, and at worst says that acting on violent principles produces happiness.
I personally have little sympathy for video game companies who produce games that teach us that "violence makes you happy" and then hide behind the "It's your parents' responsibility to teach you that what we're teaching you is a lie!" Every person is accountable for what they strive to teach other people.
Actually, I believe the MPAA/RIAA and you _agree_ to terms.
I agree with your point, though... having downloadable content expire is quite lame.
I can go to McDonalds and rent a new DVD for $1 for a 24-hour time period. Why would I want to download a movie (which would undoubtedly be lower quality than a DVD) for more than $1 (which is what I assume they'd charge) ? I mean, what is the advantage here? Are they new movies that are out in theaters? Because if you can just get them on DVD, where is the value?
It sounds like you are being sarcastic. You may be surprised to know that I also hold the same view toward cable. I in fact do not have cable because I do not believe that I should have to pay for an _advertised supported service_.
Besides, the new TV can be used to watch regular TV, as well as to play console games on. I can't play WoW on non-blizzard servers, can I?
This is one of my biggest complaints with MMORPG games such as World of Warcraft. They charge the usual $55 for the game but then add on a monthly fee. I am surprised (and dismayed) that this business model has apparently been accepted so readily by the fans. It makes my personal boycotting efforts much less effective :)
is this a new Amiga in name only? Or is it somehow compatible with all the old software from the 80's? Or.. what's the connection with this new Amiga and the classic Amigas?
Most likely the passion left the programmer about the same time his wife did.
if not for the possibility that he was using the only hosting company in Pakistan ...
I too think this is a neat idea and I wouldn't be surprised if other companies pulled stuff like this too.
The one problem is... sometimes I will install a cracked version of a game I own because it becomes extremely inconvenient and/or unfeasible to put the CD in the drive to play. One quick example.. running a dedicated Doom 3 server. Sure, now you don't need the CD in the drive anymore, but when the game first came out, you did.. which was simply ridiculous since no one should have to buy an extra copy of doom 3 just to run a dedicated server, especially since having more dedicated servers actually helps the developer (free resources to allow more people to play online).
So in the end... since legit customers may want to disable the CD check, Valve cannot assume that everyone who is running a copy of their game with the CD check disabled is pirating it.
I find that a good rule of thumb is to upgrade in order to play the latest computer games well (not barely). This usually will cover all your other bases because computer games require lots of RAM, a fast video card, and a fast CPU, which will go far in making everything else on your computer (video editing/encoding, number crunching, database stuff, business apps, etc) run smoothly too.
The only thing gaming doesn't necessarily force on you is a huge hard drive.. for hard drives, I'd say get a bigger one when you have to keep deleting stuff to free up space.
And remember.. if it runs fast enough, you don't need to upgrade.
Sorry, but that doesn't make sense to me. Saying that there is a market for movies that suck seems like a contradiction to me.
If tons of movies are being downloaded it means that, for whatever reason, they are in demand.
The thread is hardly over. Visual Studio is one of the few applications Microsoft has released that I actually like. I still use VS6 at home, and I use VS.net at work. As another poster said, the debugging in Visual Studio is awesome. The two debuggers I use are visual studio in windows and gdb in linux. Gdb is powerful but, being text-based, isn't nearly as pleasant to use as visual studio's GUI debugger. Visual Studio's intellisense and auto-formatting also do what I want them to do, and I have yet to find an IDE in linux that "just works" the way visual studio does.
Microsoft IS evil, but Visual Studio is nice, and it is being developed by some very smart people.
As far as I know, id had already released linux ports of Doom, Quake and Quake2 before Sam L. did SDLQuake (which was the first time I had ever heard of SDL myself, so I am not sure how long it was around before that time). At any rate, SDL does have a small overhead and since id had already went ahead and written the sound/glx code for linux, they were already doing what SDL would've done anyway so it would've actually been more work to convert it over to SDL; plus this may have introduced more overhead into the Windows build.
In short, by not using SDL, the game's performance cannot be any worse, and it may be better.
Hi,
re comb filter: Most of my NTSC capturing is from laserdiscs which are inherently composite.
re 720 vs 640: I came to this conclusion by two methods.. first I captured the same section of video in 640x480 mode and then did it again in 720x480 and took note of what was being displayed on the left/right edges of each frame. I also compared these frames against captures that I've done on other hardware (bt8x8 which can do 720x480 with btwincap driver, for example) and noticed that quite a bit of overscan edge stuff was missing from the "720x480" that the cx23881 claimed to do. DScaler can get into "true" 720x480 mode on the cx23881 but last time I checked it isn't designed to capture to AVI in "raw" mode (without de-interlacing the data).
In theory I could take the dscaler source code and write my own driver for the cx23881 but.. that would involve quite a bit of time and research.
*sigh*
My main goal is to preserve as much of the laserdisc video (horizontally in this case) as possible with as little quality loss as possible.