I am looking for a video capture solution with a 2D comb filter that can capture 'true' 720x480 with the overscan area included. I have a cx23881-based card that claims to do 720x480 but from what I have observed, its 720x480 is actually 640x480 stretched to 720x480 which is useless at best...
After reading the article, I see that this USB thing uses ATI's Theater 200. Who has info about this?
I think that's the reason more companies don't do something destructive like this: because they fear legal consequences. It's kind of like that news story about the robber who got injured during his robbery attempt and sued the owner of the house lol.
Another reason not to destroy user's stuff is that there will probably be at least some legitimate users who tried to circumvent the copy protection because something about it was either annoying or didn't work properly. You can't assume that everyone who cracks your software is stealing it.. people lose registration codes sometimes, and some copy protection does not work on all hardware, especially newer hardware that comes out after the copy protection was written.
That being said... this could be amusing. "Sure, I stole your software, but that gave you no right to erase my home directory!" "What gave you the right to steal my software? I guess since you didn't need the right to do that, I didn't need the right either." "Err... uh..."
Once I got my hands on the Quake 2 source code, I started tinkering around with it and quickly realized how easy it would be to modify the executable to auto-aim for me ("aimbot"). Then I began thinking of how hard it would be to detect a hacked client on a legitimate server.
Admittedly, most of the quake2 cheats used some kind of proxy that modified the network packets as they came from the client, before they got to the server.. but this method required time to reverse engineer as well as the uncertainty from the cheat author as to whether the server really didn't detect his cheat or merely ACTED as if it didn't detect the cheat.
I know that security through obscurity is frowned upon, but having totally open source code for games makes cheating that much easier.
Doom and Quake both came out well before Half Life (and thus, before Counterstrike). Therefore, the doom and quake mods you are envisioning are not counterstrike clones. If any similarities exist, it can only mean that counterstrike is a clone of the earlier mods.
I can't get to the site to read what's really on myself, but it sounds like he is simply charging for the service of building a windows binary which, as I understand it, is completely allowed under the GPL. The GPL requires you to provide source code for any binaries you distribute, but it does allow you to sell the binaries. Therefore, the code is free, this guy's services of compiling the windows build are not.
Keeping the gameplay the same as the original is one of the cool things that Valve does that most companies don't do. For example, if you look at Team Fortress Classic (their remake of Quake's Team Fortress) you'll note that they _attempted_ to keep the gameplay (physics, movement speed, damage, etc) authentic.
I definitely think that there is demand for upgraded graphics while keeping the gameplay the same. I can only imagine how cool a revamped Quake 2 would be:)
Most remakes of classic games that fail... fail because they changed the gameplay.
If you like it, you pay for it, if you don't like it, you steal it?
The MPAA is accusing people of stealing their movies. We _don't_ want to prove them right. That only gives them leverage to take our freedoms away with absurd legislation like the DMCA!
I am pretty sure that quake2 wasn't just a quake1 mission pack. Remember, it introduced colored lighting which quake1 did not support. It also changed the server timing frequency to 10 Hz.
I'm not sure which DOS apps you are thinking about, but I can think of many, many DOS apps that don't work in WinXP, and, as the insightful readers out there have already guessed, I am talking about DOS games!
A few quick examples: - Star Control 2 - Ultima 7 - Wing Commander 3 (basically anything that Origin ever made was always broken on the next OS upgrade hehe...)
Maybe the simple text DOS apps can still be run in WinXP, but you'll be hard pressed to find many games that still run. DOOM _might_ still run, I'm not even sure about that one. (I know it ran in Win9x)
If DOS compatibility wasn't an issue, then projects like http://dosbox.sf.net wouldn't exist...
I have been messing around with warcraft 3 in WineX since the Reign of Chaos BETA and it has NEVER worked "properly" for me.
Oh sure, I can play the game... but I have to do the following steps: a) delete my ~/.transgaming directory each time I want to play b) log out of Gnome 2.4/Sawfish and start a barebones window manager (otherwise the startup splash logo stays in the middle of the screen permanently making the game unplayable) c) forcefully kill the winex process after warcraft 3 is finished (because it won't return to the command prompt otherwise)
(and incidently, hard drive access in war3 under winex is significantly slower than windows... it is pretty hard to micro when every time you click a unit it takes 1 second to cache in the audio for that unit! maybe instead of adding new games, some time should be spent optimizing?)
I subscribed to winex for 6 consecutive months once, not to mention 3 other non-consecutive months and I feel like their support was utter crap. Sure, warcraft 3 is playable, but having to quit my window manager is almost as bad as having to reboot to windows in the first place. Also, the fact that alt-tabbing doesn't seem to ever work is ridiculous (I don't care what software limitations there are... with the source code to X available, it should be possible to make this work, dangit).
Admittedly, the last version I have tried was an early version of 3.x... that was the last time I was a subscriber. I gave them so many chances and I was disappointed beyond belief that I had to jump through so many hoops to use a commercial product.
If someone had evil intentions, someone could really exploit free anonymous wireless access on a lonely freeway road. For example, say a person has control over a number of zombie machines on the internet; that person simply drives to one of these free wifi zones and begins launching DoS attacks. When/if these attacks are traced, they will be traced to an anonymous wireless network along some highway.
Also consider someone who is exchanging illegal files. You can trace their IP address, but what good is it if the only info in the logs available is a MAC address from a Linksys wireless NIC for a laptop?
Worst yet, consider how easy this will make spamming. Just take your laptop to one of these "rest stops" and send out 1,000,000 emails to unsuspecting users. Then when law enforcement examines the email headers, they see that the spammer was some guy who stopped to use the restroom and was gone.
I see what you're saying, my friend; this may set a dangerous precedent. But if you're running an ISP and one of your customers is serving child porn, what are you going to do about it? If censoring it is apalling to you, what steps will you take?
Archaic by whose standards? If a larger number of people decide to swim in filth, does that make the filth less dirty?
What's happening here is a larger number of people are saying, "Ya we know what we're looking at is dirty, but we want to look at it anyway." It doesn't make it any less obscene.
Ya, the ACLU and me are definitely on opposite sides of many of their high profile lawsuits, so it's a little hard for me to shed tears over this. I appreciate that they are trying to protect freedom and rights, I just don't agree with their philosophies or their methods.
Fine, when your family member commits suicide, and the act gets posted all over the web, we'll remember that you said that no censorship was far more important than privacy.
But don't make decisions like that for the rest of us.
As far as generic FPS games such as Quake3, FFA (free-for all) servers are huge newb magnets and you will find the easiest competition on these. This is a great place to get your feet wet. In Quake3 specifically, the rail-gun only instagib servers attract newbs like moths to a flame. Good players hate FFA servers and quickly move onto hardcore teamplay servers and/or 1v1 duel servers. The 1v1 servers are where the top players are to be found.
As far as team-based games, look for servers that have a ton of people on them all the time. The more people there are on a server, the more likely it is that there are a lot of newbs on there, and top players dislike playing with newbs on their team. Therefore, you will have easier competition on a server with tons of people. Avoid servers that have people with the same "tags" in their name (either a prefix or suffix that is the same). This implies a clan or a team and they probably are more serious and won't take kindly to newbies.
As for RTS games (Warcraft 3), the 'random team' type game always has the biggest newbs in it (for pretty obvious reasons--the newbies like to get on a team with an experienced player to give them a better chance to win). Arranged team and 1v1 are where the more experienced players are to be found.
What is wrong with migrating to a replacement for SMTP? What is wrong with developing better challenge/response systems?
If email gets a postage fee applied to it, people will stop using it. If I have to pay to send mail to someone at yahoo or hotmail, I would tell that person to get a different email address. No one is going to use email if it has a mandatory fee attached to it. Then again, maybe that's what needs to happen to give people a reason to stop using SMTP...
A well designed challenge/response system won't challenge those people to whom the user has already sent email out to. I think nuisances like you have mentioned are temporary and will be refined in the future as spam becomes a greater problem (and it will).
I use a challenge/response system myself for my email and it certainly has nothing to do with me thinking I am really important or that my time is worth more than yours. It is all about me being totally sick of spam and being willing to take extreme measures to stop it.
All of my friends are already on my whitelist (or get on it quickly enough) and have forgotten that I ever had a challenge/response system in place. It really is not a nuisance at all to anyone who communicates with me on a regular basis.
I happen to live in Salt Lake City (and this is the first time I've heard about anything like this so I am both excited and a little skeptical) and the situation here right now is that we have two main sources of high speed internet: DSL from qwest and cable from comcast (formerly AT&T, formerly TCI). There are also various other odd solutions like high-latency wireless in certain areas, satellite, etc...
Now, if you want to use your own ISP (like I do) you cannot use cable. If you want cable you have to use comcast as your ISP, which is absurd. Even qwest deliberately tries to steer all of their customers toward MSN as an ISP (because they have some deal worked out with Microsoft). When ordering DSL you have to specifically say you don't want to use MSN and then tell them which local ISP of your choice you want to use.
So ya.. this deception and these private networks are nonsense. If my tax dollars are going to go toward anything, I want them to go toward a high speed PUBLIC network that can be used to hook into any ISP that I so choose. After all, isn't that what government is supposed to be for? To serve the people?
$28 a month... heck I am paying that right now just for my DSL line and I get 640kbps down and 256kbps up (yes, that is about 65kilobytes/s download). So this would only benefit me... I say go for it and why haven't they done this already?:)
And who cares if not everyone in Salt Lake would use it? hehe... not everyone in Salt Lake uses light rail but they installed that, didn't they?
As dangerous as blind, broad, sweeping censorship is, I think that people may err when they immediately assume all censorship in all forms is bad. Surely there may be situations where some censorship may be considered appropriate by the majority.
I agree with the poster that you called a moron. The mom's statement about the legality of the downloads seems pretty absurd. I dislike the RIAA too, but it's mighty hard to fight against them when their victims make statements like "It's not like we were doing anything illegal!"
I kind of thought that everyone was taking for granted that those being sued are probably guilty and that their antics have finally caught up with them. But this post of yours sounds as if you geniunely believe that these people are innocent. Do you believe that they are innocent and that the RIAA has unfairly targeted them? Or do you believe that they are guilty but that the RIAA is a greater offender and therefore should be thwarted at every turn?
Some have speculated that the reason ATI caught up with (and surpassed) nvidia in the overall speed category was because nvidia took time off from their R&D to do the xbox. I think even John Carmack may have referenced this in one of his.plan updates. At any rate, nvidia no doubt realized that they couldn't do xbox2 _and_ regain the speed crown. I predict that this move may benefit ATI in the short run but they will allow nvidia to catch up again and overall I think this benefits nvidia.
In the real world, rare items are rare because they cannot be made anymore, or are not being made anymore. Item rarity increases if the item tends to deteriorate over time, thus making the collection of "mint" items rarer.
In these MMORPG's or in stuff like Diablo 2, rare items are artificially created. Literally, they are just bytes on a server hard drive that can be edited at any time by the admins. The way I see it, there is absolutely no value in these "rare" items because their rare status can be nullified at any time by hackers, server admins, etc.
Therefore, out of love and concern for our fellow beings, we should try to discourage anyone from paying real money for articifially rare stuff in games.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I am looking for a video capture solution with a 2D comb filter that can capture 'true' 720x480 with the overscan area included. I have a cx23881-based card that claims to do 720x480 but from what I have observed, its 720x480 is actually 640x480 stretched to 720x480 which is useless at best...
After reading the article, I see that this USB thing uses ATI's Theater 200. Who has info about this?
I think that's the reason more companies don't do something destructive like this: because they fear legal consequences. It's kind of like that news story about the robber who got injured during his robbery attempt and sued the owner of the house lol.
Another reason not to destroy user's stuff is that there will probably be at least some legitimate users who tried to circumvent the copy protection because something about it was either annoying or didn't work properly. You can't assume that everyone who cracks your software is stealing it.. people lose registration codes sometimes, and some copy protection does not work on all hardware, especially newer hardware that comes out after the copy protection was written.
That being said... this could be amusing. "Sure, I stole your software, but that gave you no right to erase my home directory!" "What gave you the right to steal my software? I guess since you didn't need the right to do that, I didn't need the right either." "Err... uh..."
Once I got my hands on the Quake 2 source code, I started tinkering around with it and quickly realized how easy it would be to modify the executable to auto-aim for me ("aimbot"). Then I began thinking of how hard it would be to detect a hacked client on a legitimate server.
Admittedly, most of the quake2 cheats used some kind of proxy that modified the network packets as they came from the client, before they got to the server.. but this method required time to reverse engineer as well as the uncertainty from the cheat author as to whether the server really didn't detect his cheat or merely ACTED as if it didn't detect the cheat.
I know that security through obscurity is frowned upon, but having totally open source code for games makes cheating that much easier.
Doom and Quake both came out well before Half Life (and thus, before Counterstrike). Therefore, the doom and quake mods you are envisioning are not counterstrike clones. If any similarities exist, it can only mean that counterstrike is a clone of the earlier mods.
I can't get to the site to read what's really on myself, but it sounds like he is simply charging for the service of building a windows binary which, as I understand it, is completely allowed under the GPL. The GPL requires you to provide source code for any binaries you distribute, but it does allow you to sell the binaries. Therefore, the code is free, this guy's services of compiling the windows build are not.
That is legal as I understand the GPL.
Keeping the gameplay the same as the original is one of the cool things that Valve does that most companies don't do. For example, if you look at Team Fortress Classic (their remake of Quake's Team Fortress) you'll note that they _attempted_ to keep the gameplay (physics, movement speed, damage, etc) authentic.
:)
I definitely think that there is demand for upgraded graphics while keeping the gameplay the same. I can only imagine how cool a revamped Quake 2 would be
Most remakes of classic games that fail... fail because they changed the gameplay.
If you like it, you pay for it, if you don't like it, you steal it?
The MPAA is accusing people of stealing their movies. We _don't_ want to prove them right. That only gives them leverage to take our freedoms away with absurd legislation like the DMCA!
I am pretty sure that quake2 wasn't just a quake1 mission pack. Remember, it introduced colored lighting which quake1 did not support. It also changed the server timing frequency to 10 Hz.
I'm not sure which DOS apps you are thinking about, but I can think of many, many DOS apps that don't work in WinXP, and, as the insightful readers out there have already guessed, I am talking about DOS games!
A few quick examples:
- Star Control 2
- Ultima 7
- Wing Commander 3
(basically anything that Origin ever made was always broken on the next OS upgrade hehe...)
Maybe the simple text DOS apps can still be run in WinXP, but you'll be hard pressed to find many games that still run. DOOM _might_ still run, I'm not even sure about that one. (I know it ran in Win9x)
If DOS compatibility wasn't an issue, then projects like http://dosbox.sf.net wouldn't exist...
I have been messing around with warcraft 3 in WineX since the Reign of Chaos BETA and it has NEVER worked "properly" for me.
... that was the last time I was a subscriber. I gave them so many chances and I was disappointed beyond belief that I had to jump through so many hoops to use a commercial product.
Oh sure, I can play the game... but I have to do the following steps:
a) delete my ~/.transgaming directory each time I want to play
b) log out of Gnome 2.4/Sawfish and start a barebones window manager (otherwise the startup splash logo stays in the middle of the screen permanently making the game unplayable)
c) forcefully kill the winex process after warcraft 3 is finished (because it won't return to the command prompt otherwise)
(and incidently, hard drive access in war3 under winex is significantly slower than windows... it is pretty hard to micro when every time you click a unit it takes 1 second to cache in the audio for that unit! maybe instead of adding new games, some time should be spent optimizing?)
I subscribed to winex for 6 consecutive months once, not to mention 3 other non-consecutive months and I feel like their support was utter crap. Sure, warcraft 3 is playable, but having to quit my window manager is almost as bad as having to reboot to windows in the first place. Also, the fact that alt-tabbing doesn't seem to ever work is ridiculous (I don't care what software limitations there are... with the source code to X available, it should be possible to make this work, dangit).
Admittedly, the last version I have tried was an early version of 3.x
Big thumbs down for WineX.
If someone had evil intentions, someone could really exploit free anonymous wireless access on a lonely freeway road. For example, say a person has control over a number of zombie machines on the internet; that person simply drives to one of these free wifi zones and begins launching DoS attacks. When/if these attacks are traced, they will be traced to an anonymous wireless network along some highway.
Also consider someone who is exchanging illegal files. You can trace their IP address, but what good is it if the only info in the logs available is a MAC address from a Linksys wireless NIC for a laptop?
Worst yet, consider how easy this will make spamming. Just take your laptop to one of these "rest stops" and send out 1,000,000 emails to unsuspecting users. Then when law enforcement examines the email headers, they see that the spammer was some guy who stopped to use the restroom and was gone.
I see what you're saying, my friend; this may set a dangerous precedent. But if you're running an ISP and one of your customers is serving child porn, what are you going to do about it? If censoring it is apalling to you, what steps will you take?
Archaic by whose standards? If a larger number of people decide to swim in filth, does that make the filth less dirty?
What's happening here is a larger number of people are saying, "Ya we know what we're looking at is dirty, but we want to look at it anyway." It doesn't make it any less obscene.
Ya, the ACLU and me are definitely on opposite sides of many of their high profile lawsuits, so it's a little hard for me to shed tears over this. I appreciate that they are trying to protect freedom and rights, I just don't agree with their philosophies or their methods.
Fine, when your family member commits suicide, and the act gets posted all over the web, we'll remember that you said that no censorship was far more important than privacy.
But don't make decisions like that for the rest of us.
As far as generic FPS games such as Quake3, FFA (free-for all) servers are huge newb magnets and you will find the easiest competition on these. This is a great place to get your feet wet. In Quake3 specifically, the rail-gun only instagib servers attract newbs like moths to a flame. Good players hate FFA servers and quickly move onto hardcore teamplay servers and/or 1v1 duel servers. The 1v1 servers are where the top players are to be found.
As far as team-based games, look for servers that have a ton of people on them all the time. The more people there are on a server, the more likely it is that there are a lot of newbs on there, and top players dislike playing with newbs on their team. Therefore, you will have easier competition on a server with tons of people. Avoid servers that have people with the same "tags" in their name (either a prefix or suffix that is the same). This implies a clan or a team and they probably are more serious and won't take kindly to newbies.
As for RTS games (Warcraft 3), the 'random team' type game always has the biggest newbs in it (for pretty obvious reasons--the newbies like to get on a team with an experienced player to give them a better chance to win). Arranged team and 1v1 are where the more experienced players are to be found.
Firefox!
:)
The large crowd of laserdisc arcade collectors will surely be confused over a browser named after this famous game
What is wrong with migrating to a replacement for SMTP? What is wrong with developing better challenge/response systems?
...
If email gets a postage fee applied to it, people will stop using it. If I have to pay to send mail to someone at yahoo or hotmail, I would tell that person to get a different email address. No one is going to use email if it has a mandatory fee attached to it. Then again, maybe that's what needs to happen to give people a reason to stop using SMTP
A well designed challenge/response system won't challenge those people to whom the user has already sent email out to. I think nuisances like you have mentioned are temporary and will be refined in the future as spam becomes a greater problem (and it will).
I use a challenge/response system myself for my email and it certainly has nothing to do with me thinking I am really important or that my time is worth more than yours. It is all about me being totally sick of spam and being willing to take extreme measures to stop it.
All of my friends are already on my whitelist (or get on it quickly enough) and have forgotten that I ever had a challenge/response system in place. It really is not a nuisance at all to anyone who communicates with me on a regular basis.
I happen to live in Salt Lake City (and this is the first time I've heard about anything like this so I am both excited and a little skeptical) and the situation here right now is that we have two main sources of high speed internet: DSL from qwest and cable from comcast (formerly AT&T, formerly TCI). There are also various other odd solutions like high-latency wireless in certain areas, satellite, etc...
:)
Now, if you want to use your own ISP (like I do) you cannot use cable. If you want cable you have to use comcast as your ISP, which is absurd. Even qwest deliberately tries to steer all of their customers toward MSN as an ISP (because they have some deal worked out with Microsoft). When ordering DSL you have to specifically say you don't want to use MSN and then tell them which local ISP of your choice you want to use.
So ya.. this deception and these private networks are nonsense. If my tax dollars are going to go toward anything, I want them to go toward a high speed PUBLIC network that can be used to hook into any ISP that I so choose. After all, isn't that what government is supposed to be for? To serve the people?
$28 a month... heck I am paying that right now just for my DSL line and I get 640kbps down and 256kbps up (yes, that is about 65kilobytes/s download). So this would only benefit me... I say go for it and why haven't they done this already?
And who cares if not everyone in Salt Lake would use it? hehe... not everyone in Salt Lake uses light rail but they installed that, didn't they?
As dangerous as blind, broad, sweeping censorship is, I think that people may err when they immediately assume all censorship in all forms is bad.
Surely there may be situations where some censorship may be considered appropriate by the majority.
I agree with the poster that you called a moron. The mom's statement about the legality of the downloads seems pretty absurd. I dislike the RIAA too, but it's mighty hard to fight against them when their victims make statements like "It's not like we were doing anything illegal!"
I kind of thought that everyone was taking for granted that those being sued are probably guilty and that their antics have finally caught up with them. But this post of yours sounds as if you geniunely believe that these people are innocent. Do you believe that they are innocent and that the RIAA has unfairly targeted them? Or do you believe that they are guilty but that the RIAA is a greater offender and therefore should be thwarted at every turn?
Some have speculated that the reason ATI caught up with (and surpassed) nvidia in the overall speed category was because nvidia took time off from their R&D to do the xbox. I think even John Carmack may have referenced this in one of his .plan updates. At any rate, nvidia no doubt realized that they couldn't do xbox2 _and_ regain the speed crown. I predict that this move may benefit ATI in the short run but they will allow nvidia to catch up again and overall I think this benefits nvidia.
In the real world, rare items are rare because they cannot be made anymore, or are not being made anymore. Item rarity increases if the item tends to deteriorate over time, thus making the collection of "mint" items rarer.
:)
In these MMORPG's or in stuff like Diablo 2, rare items are artificially created. Literally, they are just bytes on a server hard drive that can be edited at any time by the admins. The way I see it, there is absolutely no value in these "rare" items because their rare status can be nullified at any time by hackers, server admins, etc.
Therefore, out of love and concern for our fellow beings, we should try to discourage anyone from paying real money for articifially rare stuff in games.