I tried MPlayer a year or two ago for Windows. I'm sure it's much improved since then. I've been sticking with BSplayer though since it has so much functionality and usable skins. It has easy aspect ratio correction, low CPU usage, and key re-mapping, among it's many useful features. The key controls is what converted me from the other players I tried.
On new installations of WinXP, does IE still open with msn.com as the home page? It used to, and that's exactly the same type of thing going on with the search bar defaulting to msn.
And it's worth it for keeping customers from feeling like they got gouged since the alternative is a $600 or $800 console that drops to $400 in price a year later. Same way automakers with a popular vehicle don't raise the MSRP just because they can't crank out enough cars. Customers would consciously or otherwise start to sour on the company over the next few years as they started to feel taken advantage of, while their car depreciates even more rapidly.
How much stuff loads up with XP? Norton bloat-ware? Antec makes quiet fans and noisy ones that move more air. If the case fans are actually that loud, they can be replaced. If the noise is also from the fans on your 6800, CPU and power supply, then the problem is you didn't build your system from the ground up with low-noise in mind.
Check out Half Life: The Lost Coast demo with High Dynamic Range lighting. The demo includes a vertical split-screen that renders the left half without HDR and the right half with it. The difference is quite impressive and is making a huge impact. It's not so much about duplicating the look of movies or TV cameras, as making the lighting look real.
On bright days the sky turns white as you look towards the sun, shadows change in intensity with the lighting. HDR does this and it looks like we see the world.
Doom 3 has an Ultra Quality setting that requires a 512MB card. When the game was released there were no 512MB cards for it. The actual difference between High and Ultra was negligible, but my point is that Oblivion could have shipped with enough eye-candy extras that when turned on, would limit a 7800 to 40fps at 1600x1200. As I remember F.E.A.R. was also pretty debilitating even to the high-end cards when it came out. I wouldn't get ticked off, just keep in mind that when you eventually upgrade the games will look even better.
Good thing your bank does the compound interest for you. I'll do the big example first. If paying $150 got you a card twice as powerful as the $100 card, you wouldn't have to upgrade to a new card for twice as long. That saves you money because you got more bang, and more use out of the card, for your buck.
And where the heck did the $200 come from? I'm talking about a $135 card. Pay the extra $35, and the card will play your games for 50% longer than the $100 card.
Not to mention that with the extra 50% performance, you'll be able to play Civ4 and other games at a higher resolution, letting you take in more information, and making the experience more enjoyable.
People DID say this with the first generation of dedicated 3d hardware chips, which is effectively why 3dfx went out of business. There wasn't enough installed base to make the developer cost worthwhile balanced with the benefit of reaching such a small installed base.
No. 3dfx went out of business because the Voodoo4 shipped way behind schedule and wasn't optimized for 32-bit rendering. It did 16-bit rendering fast, but only about on par with nVidia's chip, which could do 32-bit and make everything look much nicer.
Now I do totally agree that Ageia is quite wrong to require their physics engine. It reminds me of 3dfx's GL-Glide-only games. The difference will be that Ageia won't have 50% of the ppu marketshare for very long, and at $300 will never get much of the total marketshare before nVidia stomps. It'll be like how the GeForce added T&L support to the TNT 2 Ultra. The origianl GeForce didn't render polygons much faster than the TNT 2 Ultra, but a year later when T&L supporting games came out, the GeForce rendered much prettier frames.
If paying $150 gave you twice the performance of the $100 dollar card, it is you who is losing out.
To give you a real example. $100 will buy a Geforce 6600GT 128MB. $135 will buy a Geforce 7600GS 256MB. The extra 35% in price buys more like a 50% increase in performance.
Good. Plenty of flip phones are too small to hold comfortably anyway for those of us who aren't teenagers, smaller women, or just smaller than the average guy. Looks like when folded the N93 is shorter and narrower than a Treo 650, though a bit thicker.
Gosh, 6.3oz or 180g must weigh you down like a brick. My Canon A510 camera happens to also weigh 180g with the 2 AA batteries removed. I just tried it out seeing how it felt and you know what? It's NOT that heavy. Especially if I kept the phone on a belt holster or in a bag. Oh, and very funny about using up the battery in 10 minutes. Actual life is probably closer to an hour of mp3 playback and an hour of talk time. So just get an extra charger to keep at your office and you'll be fine.
The N93 has a second hinge for clamshell orientation instead of flip phone. Want to watch the video you just took, read e-mail or browse the internet on a landscape-oriented screen? You can with the N93. Want to take a picture or video with the camera up high above the crowd and be able to tilt the screen down and see what it sees? The N93 can. Want to use it as a camera and hold it in the more stable thin-edge-towards-you orientation while still seeing the screen? The N93 can. Yeah I sound like Nokia is paying me for this, but I really like this phone.
Except that the drivers get startled enough that they don't go into road rage for a few seconds, during which they realize they could've killed someone. I don't expect them to all feel sorry, but probably the rest of them think about the trial and possible jail time they just avoided.
Until HD-videocameras are a popular consumer purchase, 500GB will be enough for ~98% of the population. mp3s almost never take up more than 100GB. That leaves video and games for the rest. Even full installs of games are only 8GB or less. People presently having fun with DV-cams burn their finished clips to DVD to keep space free on the HD for future editing. So 500GB really is enough for quite a while.
Driving sounds like it's really challenging for you. You watch for kids running out into the street don't you? You don't have to slow down around bikes. You're supposed to maintain your speed and move to the left, into the next lane if possible.
If yours wasn't, get a bike with mountain-bike handlebars so you're more visible, can see better, and have more agility. Then duct tape an air-horn-in-a-can to your handlebars to surprise the fuck out of the bitches in their SUVs.
And don't get me started on those analog thumb sticks. I have no idea how anyone manages to control anything with those.
Much better, thanks, because the stick doesn't have to travel as far in any direction. Consequently I can change directions faster than with a regular joystick. It's only for fine degrees of movement that larger joysticks are far superior.
It seems like the biggest problem with SDTV on HDTV is that very few people buy a quality upscaler and deinterlacer to dramatically improve the picture quality. I still don't have an HDTV, but from all the reviews of nVidias Pure Video compared to $2000+ Farouja boxes, my computer will eventually become the intermediary for my SDTV signal. When I finally can afford an HDTV, it will have a resolution of 1920x1080 at 30p or perhaps 60p.
The point is that many people are abstaining from the current MMOs because they're too similar and not trying new systems of gameplay. The leveling treadmill is a big turnoff to many potential players. Tabula Rasa is claimed to not have one so I'm interested in seeing what it has.
WoW is based around leveling. Pirates! is not. Give me a way to test my swashbuckling skills against other people based on reflexes and strategy, not how many points I've put in minute skills and techniques.
If I don't want my child to be a game programmer because the industry abuses them, is that any different from not wanting that child to be a porn star because of the abusive aspects of the industry? Am I then obligated to stop buying video games and viewing porn?
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Dang it. The free version does come with adware now, but only since February 16th. I haven't upgraded since November (version 1.36) so I was unaware.
I tried MPlayer a year or two ago for Windows. I'm sure it's much improved since then. I've been sticking with BSplayer though since it has so much functionality and usable skins. It has easy aspect ratio correction, low CPU usage, and key re-mapping, among it's many useful features. The key controls is what converted me from the other players I tried.
Anyone tried both more recently?
On new installations of WinXP, does IE still open with msn.com as the home page? It used to, and that's exactly the same type of thing going on with the search bar defaulting to msn.
And it's worth it for keeping customers from feeling like they got gouged since the alternative is a $600 or $800 console that drops to $400 in price a year later. Same way automakers with a popular vehicle don't raise the MSRP just because they can't crank out enough cars. Customers would consciously or otherwise start to sour on the company over the next few years as they started to feel taken advantage of, while their car depreciates even more rapidly.
How much stuff loads up with XP? Norton bloat-ware? Antec makes quiet fans and noisy ones that move more air. If the case fans are actually that loud, they can be replaced. If the noise is also from the fans on your 6800, CPU and power supply, then the problem is you didn't build your system from the ground up with low-noise in mind.
Check out Half Life: The Lost Coast demo with High Dynamic Range lighting. The demo includes a vertical split-screen that renders the left half without HDR and the right half with it. The difference is quite impressive and is making a huge impact. It's not so much about duplicating the look of movies or TV cameras, as making the lighting look real.
On bright days the sky turns white as you look towards the sun, shadows change in intensity with the lighting. HDR does this and it looks like we see the world.
Doom 3 has an Ultra Quality setting that requires a 512MB card. When the game was released there were no 512MB cards for it. The actual difference between High and Ultra was negligible, but my point is that Oblivion could have shipped with enough eye-candy extras that when turned on, would limit a 7800 to 40fps at 1600x1200. As I remember F.E.A.R. was also pretty debilitating even to the high-end cards when it came out. I wouldn't get ticked off, just keep in mind that when you eventually upgrade the games will look even better.
Good thing your bank does the compound interest for you. I'll do the big example first. If paying $150 got you a card twice as powerful as the $100 card, you wouldn't have to upgrade to a new card for twice as long. That saves you money because you got more bang, and more use out of the card, for your buck.
And where the heck did the $200 come from? I'm talking about a $135 card. Pay the extra $35, and the card will play your games for 50% longer than the $100 card.
Not to mention that with the extra 50% performance, you'll be able to play Civ4 and other games at a higher resolution, letting you take in more information, and making the experience more enjoyable.
People DID say this with the first generation of dedicated 3d hardware chips, which is effectively why 3dfx went out of business. There wasn't enough installed base to make the developer cost worthwhile balanced with the benefit of reaching such a small installed base.
No. 3dfx went out of business because the Voodoo4 shipped way behind schedule and wasn't optimized for 32-bit rendering. It did 16-bit rendering fast, but only about on par with nVidia's chip, which could do 32-bit and make everything look much nicer.
Now I do totally agree that Ageia is quite wrong to require their physics engine. It reminds me of 3dfx's GL-Glide-only games. The difference will be that Ageia won't have 50% of the ppu marketshare for very long, and at $300 will never get much of the total marketshare before nVidia stomps. It'll be like how the GeForce added T&L support to the TNT 2 Ultra. The origianl GeForce didn't render polygons much faster than the TNT 2 Ultra, but a year later when T&L supporting games came out, the GeForce rendered much prettier frames.
If paying $150 gave you twice the performance of the $100 dollar card, it is you who is losing out.
To give you a real example. $100 will buy a Geforce 6600GT 128MB. $135 will buy a Geforce 7600GS 256MB. The extra 35% in price buys more like a 50% increase in performance.
Does your set do true 1080i? Or is it one of those 1280x720 models that uprezes half of the 1080 signal so you're actually getting 1280x540?
Good. Plenty of flip phones are too small to hold comfortably anyway for those of us who aren't teenagers, smaller women, or just smaller than the average guy. Looks like when folded the N93 is shorter and narrower than a Treo 650, though a bit thicker.
Gosh, 6.3oz or 180g must weigh you down like a brick. My Canon A510 camera happens to also weigh 180g with the 2 AA batteries removed. I just tried it out seeing how it felt and you know what? It's NOT that heavy. Especially if I kept the phone on a belt holster or in a bag. Oh, and very funny about using up the battery in 10 minutes. Actual life is probably closer to an hour of mp3 playback and an hour of talk time. So just get an extra charger to keep at your office and you'll be fine.
The N93 has a second hinge for clamshell orientation instead of flip phone. Want to watch the video you just took, read e-mail or browse the internet on a landscape-oriented screen? You can with the N93. Want to take a picture or video with the camera up high above the crowd and be able to tilt the screen down and see what it sees? The N93 can. Want to use it as a camera and hold it in the more stable thin-edge-towards-you orientation while still seeing the screen? The N93 can. Yeah I sound like Nokia is paying me for this, but I really like this phone.
Except that the drivers get startled enough that they don't go into road rage for a few seconds, during which they realize they could've killed someone. I don't expect them to all feel sorry, but probably the rest of them think about the trial and possible jail time they just avoided.
I've heard the A's have some of the cheapest ticket prices in both leagues.
Let's go Oakland!
Yeah. Compared to 500GB, it is "only" 8GB. Ten years ago I never thought I'd have a use for 500GB, but I do.
Until HD-videocameras are a popular consumer purchase, 500GB will be enough for ~98% of the population. mp3s almost never take up more than 100GB. That leaves video and games for the rest. Even full installs of games are only 8GB or less. People presently having fun with DV-cams burn their finished clips to DVD to keep space free on the HD for future editing. So 500GB really is enough for quite a while.
Driving sounds like it's really challenging for you. You watch for kids running out into the street don't you? You don't have to slow down around bikes. You're supposed to maintain your speed and move to the left, into the next lane if possible.
If yours wasn't, get a bike with mountain-bike handlebars so you're more visible, can see better, and have more agility. Then duct tape an air-horn-in-a-can to your handlebars to surprise the fuck out of the bitches in their SUVs.
And don't get me started on those analog thumb sticks. I have no idea how anyone manages to control anything with those.
Much better, thanks, because the stick doesn't have to travel as far in any direction. Consequently I can change directions faster than with a regular joystick. It's only for fine degrees of movement that larger joysticks are far superior.
It seems like the biggest problem with SDTV on HDTV is that very few people buy a quality upscaler and deinterlacer to dramatically improve the picture quality. I still don't have an HDTV, but from all the reviews of nVidias Pure Video compared to $2000+ Farouja boxes, my computer will eventually become the intermediary for my SDTV signal. When I finally can afford an HDTV, it will have a resolution of 1920x1080 at 30p or perhaps 60p.
The point is that many people are abstaining from the current MMOs because they're too similar and not trying new systems of gameplay. The leveling treadmill is a big turnoff to many potential players. Tabula Rasa is claimed to not have one so I'm interested in seeing what it has.
WoW is based around leveling. Pirates! is not. Give me a way to test my swashbuckling skills against other people based on reflexes and strategy, not how many points I've put in minute skills and techniques.
If I don't want my child to be a game programmer because the industry abuses them, is that any different from not wanting that child to be a porn star because of the abusive aspects of the industry? Am I then obligated to stop buying video games and viewing porn?