I agree with the general tone of your post: playing games is consuming entertainment, not so different from consuming TV, films or music. If you are on a creative mood, then better try and create something.
However, I've actually found a positive correlation between the mental stimulations provided by work and leisure. In the worst case, my day work has been so mind-numbing that I haven't found any creative juices left in the evening. Thinking begets thinking, but it's best to do something different in your spare time. One summer I found myself designing and prorotyping electronics both at work and in the evenings, which was not as fun as I'd expected.
Well, I need a gaming 'monster' mostly because I prefer to render the video in OpenGL and do the processing on it as a textured plane, with things like OSD and subtitles as another texture, that can have an independent "resolution".
This means that I can use triliniar + anisinotropic filtering for scaling, and the hardware definitely can do that quickly (and it's not codec/container specific)... and even with a 320x420 video, I can have native resolution subtitles.
It also means I can easily get vsync working.
(i use mplayer, btw. not sure if other players can do this, commonly)
Interesting, I also use MPlayer, but I had not though about those possibilities. This seems to work fine on my GMA950, except for the scaling/filtering options.
Thus I admit that you could get a somewhat better picture with more hardware:) But there's also the tradeoff with noise, size and power consumption.
OS X to Windows is not an easy comparison. Apple has a relatively limited range of machines that run OS X, so the integrated experience is pretty good. Whereas you can buy a random piece of shit that barely runs Windows, for a lot less money.
On the other hand, this article is about a Linux-based OS. Linux is arguably superior to Windows as well, and it hasn't changed the Windows mindset either, so it's hard to see why yet another distro would magically change it.
The problem with h264 "benchmarks" is that every h264 file can be different and
the fact that you managed to get one particular sort of high res file to play on
a particular system doesn't necessarily mean anything. Playing BBC or Apple web
content is a bit different than playing and HD-PVR captures or BD rips.
Actually, my 60% CPU is surprisingly consistent over a wide range of different 720p H.264 sources, using MPlayer.
However, I do have some experience on the graphics card limitations. On my somewhat older Intel laptop (Pentium M 1.6 GHz, 855GM chipset), 720p H.264 does not play smoothly using default settings. But it does with software downscaling, even though it increases the CPU load. Actually, this limitation went away with recent Xorg drivers, but at the time it was an interesting point to note.
In my experience, watching video on Linux is hardly limited by the graphics card, and you certainly don't need a gaming monster to get get good video. I'm only interested in a good Xv implementation for hardware scaling, since the video formats are evolving anyway.
My current media machine has a Mini-ITX motherboard with integrated Intel graphics and a Core Duo T2300 at 1.66 GHz. When I watch 720p H.264 (that's the most my monitor is capable of), only one CPU is used at 60%, and of course everything is smooth. The machine has only one fan, rated at 24 dBA, but it's running at 7 V instead of 12, so it's even quieter. The power supply is a passively cooled one (like PicoPSU) rated at 80 W.
I've also been using Arora on and off for some time, and I can't help feeling it's just like Phoenix again. You know, the light and fast browser that was built out of Mozilla's codebase, that was supposed to be just a browser, nothing more.
I thought the embedded PS2 hardware was just a temporary solution, and they would eventually provide the same compatibility via software emulation. Anyone know what the current status of this is?
BTW, blowing your nose is a really nasty practice, because is pushes the goo further into your sinuses. Of course, in some social situations it's the only acceptable way:-/
Hard is good though: It keeps you coming back. Not hard as in 'stuck at one particular point and can't go further', which seems to be a problem with modern games (eg. GTA4, there's one mission I can't get past, so I've just stopped playing), but hard as in 'try again, and again, and again, and gradually get better'
My thoughts exactly. I think Llamatron has a very nice learning curve, it seems like the progression of levels is very carefully tuned. I've played it up to about level 80 without any assist, and at that point I feel like some kind of a cyborg, because of the particular reflexes and strategies you develop on the way. I also like having the occasional easy levels in between.
I recall a documentary where a woman had lost her sense of touch, but she still responded to stroking. The explanation was two different systems of nerves. A particularly interesting bit was that the sense of stroking was much slower, as if the signals only travelled around one meter per second. Given the fine line between stroking and tickling, this seems like the same phenomenon as in the article.
Most window managers will let you move a window around if you press Alt and then click anywhere in the window.
This is how it should work according to the desktop metaphor: you have these documents on your desk, and you can move them around by grabbing them at any point. Of course, if your desk is made in Redmond, you can only grab a paper by the top edge.
The three options are available to those who use the binary -- i.e. those bound by the GPL to this particular software. Thus my earlier understanding is quite valid, I was leaving out the details on purpose.
I've understood the GPL so that anyone who gets the binary has access to the source. So you can sell binaries and only give the source to the paying customers. However, this won't work for long, because the customers have a right to distribute the binaries and sources as they wish.
I think the GP AC is trying to say that the pronunciation of 'ö' in Germanic languages is approximately like 'er' in English. So a possible transliteration could be 'Grerning', but nobody seems to use that logic in practice.
Seconded. I believe the original spelling of this name has been 'Gröning', though even modern Germans sometimes use 'oe' for the o-umlaut. Similarly, 'Koenig' is originally 'König'.
Of course, many families seem to adapt the pronunciation and/or spelling of their names to the local language.
Drivers breaking the rules to get out of traffic jams reduces the number of cars in traffic jams.
In other news... passengers jumping out of airplanes leaves more room for other passengers.
That analogy would work fine if everyone, including the jumpers, got to their destination safely.
Seriously, I love when big companies start recycle product names / numbers fifteen years later.
My phone is a Nokia 6110, which must be a rather ancient model, since their new 6110 Communicator has been out for a couple of years. Another stupidity is with Nokia 3110, from around the same time as my 6110, as they have a relatively new model called 3110 Classic. So the new version is the classic one.
Well, CD's upper limit is 22khz, vinyl used a 44khz carrier to encode the rear channels of quadrophonic. The closer you get to the 22khz Nyquist limit imposed by CD's 44khz sample rate, the greater the aliasing. A 15khz tone has only three samples per trough, how can you possibly reconstruct a complex waveform with three samples?
I'm afraid there is something missing in your knowledge of the Nyquist limit. It is not some approximate rule, the frequencies are preserved perfectly up to the limit. Aliasing only happens when you go above the limit. The explanation is actually quite simple if you are familiar with Fourier transforms.
A 'frequency' in this technical meaning is a pure sinusoidal wave. A 15 kHz tone means a sine wave, and it can be reconstructed exactly from the samples. If it is a more complex wave, it means there are overtones of 30 kHz, 45 kHz, and so on. Extra frequencies, that is. In this case, they are above the 22-kHz limit and must be filtered out. These are probably the supersonic waves that you refer to below.
Plus, audible frequencies are colored by supersonic waveforms. You don't have them with CD. However, you would have to have a higher sampling rate with your digital master for the vinyl to sound better.
You would also need superhuman ears. Since humans cannot hear much above 20 kHz, we cannot hear the different coloring/overtones of high frequencies.
Since if you mix analog with digital you get the worst of both worlds and the best of neither, the best thing would be for the music to be recorded in analog if you were going to publish it in vinyl.
When CDs first came out they were superior to vinyl, because they had been recording digitally for a few years already, so the LPs really had none of the advantages of vinyl, while the CDs had the advantages of digital.
I don't have much measured evidence on this, but there are good reasons to believe that the bandwidth of vinyl records degrades in use. High-frequency wiggles wear out more than deep basses, which makes the record sound 'rounded' over time.
2.5'' drives are smaller, quieter and less power-hungry than 3.5'' ones, so this one should be nice for a stationary machine as well. Oh, but the headline says 'mobile', so I guess it is impossible to install in a desktop/server.
Seconded. Cursive or otherwise, I hate ballpoints for the force they require, they make me feel like an ape carving out block letters. For short everyday notes I use rollerball or fine felt-tip pens, and for longer handwritten work (which mostly means working out math) I use a fountain pen.
I also like it that fountain pens last for a long time, and you only need to buy the actual ink you consume. Throwing away pieces of plastic after just using the ink, feels like an awful waste.
Unfortunately, most of my friends don't appreciate the differences between different kinds of pens. They think any pen is a cheap, expendable object. So I cannot generally lend out my pens out of my sight.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with the general tone of your post: playing games is consuming entertainment, not so different from consuming TV, films or music. If you are on a creative mood, then better try and create something.
However, I've actually found a positive correlation between the mental stimulations provided by work and leisure. In the worst case, my day work has been so mind-numbing that I haven't found any creative juices left in the evening. Thinking begets thinking, but it's best to do something different in your spare time. One summer I found myself designing and prorotyping electronics both at work and in the evenings, which was not as fun as I'd expected.
Another example of CMX in music is the Finnish band.
(Not an acronym though, since you cannot pronounce it as a single word.)
Well, I need a gaming 'monster' mostly because I prefer to render the video in OpenGL and do the processing on it as a textured plane, with things like OSD and subtitles as another texture, that can have an independent "resolution".
This means that I can use triliniar + anisinotropic filtering for scaling, and the hardware definitely can do that quickly (and it's not codec/container specific)... and even with a 320x420 video, I can have native resolution subtitles.
It also means I can easily get vsync working.
(i use mplayer, btw. not sure if other players can do this, commonly)
Interesting, I also use MPlayer, but I had not though about those possibilities. This seems to work fine on my GMA950, except for the scaling/filtering options.
Thus I admit that you could get a somewhat better picture with more hardware :) But there's also the tradeoff with noise, size and power consumption.
OS X to Windows is not an easy comparison. Apple has a relatively limited range of machines that run OS X, so the integrated experience is pretty good. Whereas you can buy a random piece of shit that barely runs Windows, for a lot less money.
On the other hand, this article is about a Linux-based OS. Linux is arguably superior to Windows as well, and it hasn't changed the Windows mindset either, so it's hard to see why yet another distro would magically change it.
The problem with h264 "benchmarks" is that every h264 file can be different and the fact that you managed to get one particular sort of high res file to play on a particular system doesn't necessarily mean anything. Playing BBC or Apple web content is a bit different than playing and HD-PVR captures or BD rips.
Actually, my 60% CPU is surprisingly consistent over a wide range of different 720p H.264 sources, using MPlayer.
However, I do have some experience on the graphics card limitations. On my somewhat older Intel laptop (Pentium M 1.6 GHz, 855GM chipset), 720p H.264 does not play smoothly using default settings. But it does with software downscaling, even though it increases the CPU load. Actually, this limitation went away with recent Xorg drivers, but at the time it was an interesting point to note.
In my experience, watching video on Linux is hardly limited by the graphics card, and you certainly don't need a gaming monster to get get good video. I'm only interested in a good Xv implementation for hardware scaling, since the video formats are evolving anyway.
My current media machine has a Mini-ITX motherboard with integrated Intel graphics and a Core Duo T2300 at 1.66 GHz. When I watch 720p H.264 (that's the most my monitor is capable of), only one CPU is used at 60%, and of course everything is smooth. The machine has only one fan, rated at 24 dBA, but it's running at 7 V instead of 12, so it's even quieter. The power supply is a passively cooled one (like PicoPSU) rated at 80 W.
10) Don't learn how to appear professional from someone who spells 'you' as 'u'.
I've also been using Arora on and off for some time, and I can't help feeling it's just like Phoenix again. You know, the light and fast browser that was built out of Mozilla's codebase, that was supposed to be just a browser, nothing more.
I thought the embedded PS2 hardware was just a temporary solution, and they would eventually provide the same compatibility via software emulation. Anyone know what the current status of this is?
And for some extra nasal bandwidth, try neti.
BTW, blowing your nose is a really nasty practice, because is pushes the goo further into your sinuses. Of course, in some social situations it's the only acceptable way :-/
Hard is good though: It keeps you coming back. Not hard as in 'stuck at one particular point and can't go further', which seems to be a problem with modern games (eg. GTA4, there's one mission I can't get past, so I've just stopped playing), but hard as in 'try again, and again, and again, and gradually get better'
My thoughts exactly. I think Llamatron has a very nice learning curve, it seems like the progression of levels is very carefully tuned. I've played it up to about level 80 without any assist, and at that point I feel like some kind of a cyborg, because of the particular reflexes and strategies you develop on the way. I also like having the occasional easy levels in between.
I recall a documentary where a woman had lost her sense of touch, but she still responded to stroking. The explanation was two different systems of nerves. A particularly interesting bit was that the sense of stroking was much slower, as if the signals only travelled around one meter per second. Given the fine line between stroking and tickling, this seems like the same phenomenon as in the article.
Me too, I've done multitrack stuff on Linux since 2003.
Most window managers will let you move a window around if you press Alt and then click anywhere in the window.
This is how it should work according to the desktop metaphor: you have these documents on your desk, and you can move them around by grabbing them at any point. Of course, if your desk is made in Redmond, you can only grab a paper by the top edge.
The three options are available to those who use the binary -- i.e. those bound by the GPL to this particular software. Thus my earlier understanding is quite valid, I was leaving out the details on purpose.
I've understood the GPL so that anyone who gets the binary has access to the source. So you can sell binaries and only give the source to the paying customers. However, this won't work for long, because the customers have a right to distribute the binaries and sources as they wish.
I think the GP AC is trying to say that the pronunciation of 'ö' in Germanic languages is approximately like 'er' in English. So a possible transliteration could be 'Grerning', but nobody seems to use that logic in practice.
Seconded. I believe the original spelling of this name has been 'Gröning', though even modern Germans sometimes use 'oe' for the o-umlaut. Similarly, 'Koenig' is originally 'König'.
Of course, many families seem to adapt the pronunciation and/or spelling of their names to the local language.
Drivers breaking the rules to get out of traffic jams reduces the number of cars in traffic jams. In other news... passengers jumping out of airplanes leaves more room for other passengers.
That analogy would work fine if everyone, including the jumpers, got to their destination safely.
Seriously, I love when big companies start recycle product names / numbers fifteen years later.
My phone is a Nokia 6110, which must be a rather ancient model, since their new 6110 Communicator has been out for a couple of years. Another stupidity is with Nokia 3110, from around the same time as my 6110, as they have a relatively new model called 3110 Classic. So the new version is the classic one.
Please hand in your geek card on your way out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_Transfer_Mode
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_(unit)
Well, CD's upper limit is 22khz, vinyl used a 44khz carrier to encode the rear channels of quadrophonic. The closer you get to the 22khz Nyquist limit imposed by CD's 44khz sample rate, the greater the aliasing. A 15khz tone has only three samples per trough, how can you possibly reconstruct a complex waveform with three samples?
I'm afraid there is something missing in your knowledge of the Nyquist limit. It is not some approximate rule, the frequencies are preserved perfectly up to the limit. Aliasing only happens when you go above the limit. The explanation is actually quite simple if you are familiar with Fourier transforms.
A 'frequency' in this technical meaning is a pure sinusoidal wave. A 15 kHz tone means a sine wave, and it can be reconstructed exactly from the samples. If it is a more complex wave, it means there are overtones of 30 kHz, 45 kHz, and so on. Extra frequencies, that is. In this case, they are above the 22-kHz limit and must be filtered out. These are probably the supersonic waves that you refer to below.
Plus, audible frequencies are colored by supersonic waveforms. You don't have them with CD. However, you would have to have a higher sampling rate with your digital master for the vinyl to sound better.
You would also need superhuman ears. Since humans cannot hear much above 20 kHz, we cannot hear the different coloring/overtones of high frequencies.
Since if you mix analog with digital you get the worst of both worlds and the best of neither, the best thing would be for the music to be recorded in analog if you were going to publish it in vinyl.
When CDs first came out they were superior to vinyl, because they had been recording digitally for a few years already, so the LPs really had none of the advantages of vinyl, while the CDs had the advantages of digital.
I don't have much measured evidence on this, but there are good reasons to believe that the bandwidth of vinyl records degrades in use. High-frequency wiggles wear out more than deep basses, which makes the record sound 'rounded' over time.
2.5'' drives are smaller, quieter and less power-hungry than 3.5'' ones, so this one should be nice for a stationary machine as well. Oh, but the headline says 'mobile', so I guess it is impossible to install in a desktop/server.
Seconded. Cursive or otherwise, I hate ballpoints for the force they require, they make me feel like an ape carving out block letters. For short everyday notes I use rollerball or fine felt-tip pens, and for longer handwritten work (which mostly means working out math) I use a fountain pen.
I also like it that fountain pens last for a long time, and you only need to buy the actual ink you consume. Throwing away pieces of plastic after just using the ink, feels like an awful waste.
Unfortunately, most of my friends don't appreciate the differences between different kinds of pens. They think any pen is a cheap, expendable object. So I cannot generally lend out my pens out of my sight.
True, but fusion in the sun is made possible by gravitational containment :)