The first two releases are so people can rent it from places like Blockbuster. The four-disc release is for purchase by collectors.
They probably knew it was going to take a bit extra time to put together the longer cut, so they'll put out the shorter cut now to whet the public's appetite. (And cash in on the collectibility, of course.)
Dude, Final Fantasy X is about blitzball. If that doesn't sound like a sport, I dunno what does!
(Yeah it's turn-based, but it's still a sport. : P )
Incidentally, I think a lot of people are overlooking a rather interesting relative newcomer to our shores; Dance Dance Revolution. You wouldn't believe the number of kids who're into that these days.. (and it's a pretty even split on who's playing, gender-wise.)
Re:Additional measures...
on
Spy v. Spy
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes, but then they could decide to do something else, totally different. The spyware could change the pointer to the source of the files to download, and *bam*! Suddenly you've installed whatever piece of software they want you to. (Maybe just a neutered version of the anti-spyware.. but it could also be a trojan of some sort..)
The problem, as I see it, is one of who has control of the local computer. If everyone and anyone who can get in front of the keyboard has the ability to install an executable.. bam. It's Windows' insecure nature that allows spyware like this to exist.
Solution? If you're running Win2k, make sure that your default user login doesn't have the ability to install files. (A friend of mine set his computer up like this because he considers his firewall insecure.) This way, not just anyone'll be able to install spyware on your machine unless you've given them the password.
Still.. probably pretty easy for someone with experience to get around.. but.. *shrug* Set your boot drive to C first and only, put a BIOS password on it, and that's probably as close as you'll get to secure. : /
Studies have shown that only about 2% of the general population are vulnerable to cult recruitment & indoctrination. It's only sensible to filter out the other 98% as efficiently as possible.
(There is another 1-2% who are basically psychotic and will do nasty things just for the asking, but you want to filter them out as well, since they won't follow orders later on.)
I heard that on top of that, I heard from a reliable resource that there's roughly about another 10-20% who can't do basic math. Percentages, in particular. Can't remember who I heard that from, though.. might've been one of them marketing people?
I agree. That was the ugliest website I've ever seen. Even Microsoft knows that if you can express something with just text, use text! Every frickin' word in the menu system was a graphic. Nasty! Not only did it take forever to load, but the required bandwidth to support a bunch of people all grabbing each and every one of those useless little graphics was insane. And that background graphic..?! It all added up to the website constantly being slower than... (And it didn't help that all the pages were dynamic, too. Talk about shooting yourself in both feet.)
Anyone who's consdering web design, take the Blender site as a case and point example of what NOT to do. (Another good example of poor web design, where the site would've been cool if the creator hadn't gone little graphic happy, is OJuice.net, but at least they have a "Light" version..)
The $350,000 in question was split between credit card debt and his back pay. It was not exclusively from the credit card.
That having been said, if you really want to know how you can obtain a debt of $350,000 on your credit card, simply max out a $3000 high interest rate credit card, and wait a year. It ain't as hard as you might think.
Ah. Bugger, I dunno then.. : / Where do the hard interrupt lines go on that card? I mean, which slots share an IRQ with the video slot? And which share with the ethernet? (Should be in your manual.)
I think the problem is more one of religious beliefs. "If I get revenge, I may not live, but God will accept me with open arms." Or maybe it's more of a "If I get revenge, I may not live, but people will remember my sacrifice forever."
Either way, bleh; this seems mildly OT for a thread about Square and Nintendo. Unless you're implying that Nintendo and Square deciding to work together's like Isreal & co. reconciling their differences..
If your SBLive and ethernet are dying, then maybe you're drawing too much power? What type of video card do you have? What's the power rating on your power supply?
I think a better analogy would be a man who knows how to use tools, a man who knows how to clear land, and a man who knows how to plant seeds all collaborating so that they can sell us the food they make. And then making sure to knock any food out of our hands that may have been made by anyone else.
There's a huge difference between physical tools and knowledge. These companies have pooled their knowledge of making products, not the tools used to make the products. Your analogy isn't very good.
I realize this, which is why I listed a method for taking the picture a more "normal" way, and then converting it to a hologram in the lab.
Btw, what's the deal with the monochromatic light? I realize you have to use one colour or else you get a blurred resultant image, but is there any way to sort of do a component hologram and then put the parts back together? Sort of like how video has RGB..?
I have an idea, but I'm not sure if it applies to this article or not.
Why are there no holographic cameras? How about a personal photographic system that could take a 2D picture, along with depth information. Couldn't the lab then use that information to extract some semi-3D models as a basis for a hologram? (You know; one of those thin colour-banded holograms they put on CDs and credit cards..?) Or is the cost of making those holograms prohibitively high..?
I was talking about the PS2; that's what your last few sentences were about, after all.
My point was that Linux is already ported to the PS2 as much as it ever will be without want of a drastic soldering job. My comments followed along that train of thought.
As for the DC DivX player, I doubt it will ever be optimized enough to be able to play any of today's bitrates. As a matter of fact, I suspect it's impossible; if an optimized codec is required to play it on a 400MHz 3DNow!-based Windows PC, (a K6-3, my frame of reference here) then what hope is there for a 200Mhz SH-4 CPU? Both are relatively evenly matched with YUV->RGB conversion and SIMD instructions.. the 3DNow! codec relies on all of these to pump out the frames it does, and yet it still chokes at higher bitrates. How does that bode for a Dreamcast codec?
The current codec for Dreamcast can barely pump out 5-10 frames per second, last time I checked. So to me, at least, a DivX player for Dreamcast with full framerate would seem highly unlikely.
*ahem* Did you not read the article? You can't use CD-Rs in the Linux PS2; piracy, and all that. Although you may be able to stream 'em off another computer in your house, over the ethernet adapter..?
Psst. If he wasn't exactly silent about how bad Episode I was, then what makes you think he hasn't been chastisized by Lucas & co., and is just making it up to them by praising this film?
No they're not; you on crack, boy? The GLX driver's only available as a binary. Only the NVdriver has the source code available for it, and that's a simple pass-thru driver that hands stuff back and forth to the GLX portion. Look for yourself. Open Source my ass..
I personally won't develop for anything but DirectX until OpenGL comes up with a standard for using pixel and vertex shaders. And I'm not the only one.
If you want people to develop for your platform, it'd better have an up-to-date API to program for. Until the OpenGL ARB sorts out this whole legality issue that nVidia keeps bringing up, DirectX is going to keep being the supported API, and thus Microsoft Windows is going to be the only platform people target.
Yes, pixel and vertex shaders are supported in OpenGL by nVidia and ATi, but they both use different calls and different shader compilers. I don't want to have to duplicate my work for two different implementations of the exact same thing. (Not that ATi even has an implementation under Linux. But just because there's no implementation under Linux doesn't mean I should only target nVidia hardware.) When the ARB comes up with a spec for how it should be done, then I'll pay attention, but until then I'll just keep plodding along under DirectX.
Incidentally, when it comes to graphics, Linux really bites. It's an old song I'm singing, but XFree86 should not have the drivers compiled directly into it; they should be a seperate module. It's been said that the performance hit for networking is negligeable, but splitting the driver from X itself would be a disaster, speed-wise; this sounds like a double-standard to me.
Upgrading the video driver should not require a complete X upgrade. Someone point them in the direction of BeOS; now there's a nice setup.. from a programming and end-user POV.
..unless, of course, you play games, develop software for windows, do video editing, have a consumer-grade webcam, scanner, etc., or are learning to use a computer and will have to know the OS for work. In which case, carry on..
Btw, nowadays Windows surpasses Linux in the desktop scene for three technical reasons:
1) video drivers with a standardized interface to the kernel. The X/Gtk/KDE thing is outdated; we need a more Windowsish approach where we drop files in, set up a few symlinks and it's using those drivers instead. We should not be forced to recompile our kernel or replace X!
2) a graphics SDK that's modern (OpenGL 2.0 and it's standardized pixel and vertex shader calls won't be out for another two or three quarters at least, according to the last meeting of the ARB, which means that without a doubt, DirectX will be the new standard for game development. This is fact. Live with it.)
3) a monolithic kernel.
Number 3's what's holding us back. I predict that once (if) the GNU hurd catches on, we'll start to see some open source developers moving in this direction. Maybe even the X people'll head that way. But until then.. Linux and BSD may be free, but they ain't the best. Sorry.
Perhaps your system's good enough for today, but I wouldn't be so sure about the coming few years. Sure you may not be an FPS fan, but Warcraft 3's going to have some steep 3D accelerator requirements. Ditto any of the new RPGs like Neverwinter Nights. Sports games are already all 3D. We're reaching the end of the days when a decent 2D card could cut it for low end games.
Remember, I'm not talking about games that are out there now; those are the obvious ones. I'm talking about the games coming out over the next year or two. My prediction for the coming year is that we're all going to be saying bye bye to 2D gaming.
Now Civilization 4, on the other hand, should they choose to make one---see, now that'd be a different story..
Slashdot Mirror
The first two releases are so people can rent it from places like Blockbuster. The four-disc release is for purchase by collectors.
They probably knew it was going to take a bit extra time to put together the longer cut, so they'll put out the shorter cut now to whet the public's appetite. (And cash in on the collectibility, of course.)
Pfff.. 73% of people accept that as a lie!
I'm kinda amused no one's pointed out my word repetition/stuttering up there. : )
Dude, Final Fantasy X is about blitzball. If that doesn't sound like a sport, I dunno what does!
(Yeah it's turn-based, but it's still a sport. : P )
Incidentally, I think a lot of people are overlooking a rather interesting relative newcomer to our shores; Dance Dance Revolution. You wouldn't believe the number of kids who're into that these days.. (and it's a pretty even split on who's playing, gender-wise.)
Yes, but then they could decide to do something else, totally different. The spyware could change the pointer to the source of the files to download, and *bam*! Suddenly you've installed whatever piece of software they want you to. (Maybe just a neutered version of the anti-spyware.. but it could also be a trojan of some sort..)
The problem, as I see it, is one of who has control of the local computer. If everyone and anyone who can get in front of the keyboard has the ability to install an executable.. bam. It's Windows' insecure nature that allows spyware like this to exist.
Solution? If you're running Win2k, make sure that your default user login doesn't have the ability to install files. (A friend of mine set his computer up like this because he considers his firewall insecure.) This way, not just anyone'll be able to install spyware on your machine unless you've given them the password.
Still.. probably pretty easy for someone with experience to get around.. but.. *shrug* Set your boot drive to C first and only, put a BIOS password on it, and that's probably as close as you'll get to secure. : /
Studies have shown that only about 2% of the general population are vulnerable to cult recruitment & indoctrination. It's only sensible to filter out the other 98% as efficiently as possible.
(There is another 1-2% who are basically psychotic and will do nasty things just for the asking, but you want to filter them out as well, since they won't follow orders later on.)
I heard that on top of that, I heard from a reliable resource that there's roughly about another 10-20% who can't do basic math. Percentages, in particular. Can't remember who I heard that from, though.. might've been one of them marketing people?
I agree. That was the ugliest website I've ever seen. Even Microsoft knows that if you can express something with just text, use text! Every frickin' word in the menu system was a graphic. Nasty! Not only did it take forever to load, but the required bandwidth to support a bunch of people all grabbing each and every one of those useless little graphics was insane. And that background graphic..?! It all added up to the website constantly being slower than ... (And it didn't help that all the pages were dynamic, too. Talk about shooting yourself in both feet.)
Anyone who's consdering web design, take the Blender site as a case and point example of what NOT to do. (Another good example of poor web design, where the site would've been cool if the creator hadn't gone little graphic happy, is OJuice.net, but at least they have a "Light" version..)
No it isn't, Edison.
The $350,000 in question was split between credit card debt and his back pay. It was not exclusively from the credit card.
That having been said, if you really want to know how you can obtain a debt of $350,000 on your credit card, simply max out a $3000 high interest rate credit card, and wait a year. It ain't as hard as you might think.
Hear hear, well said.
Ah. Bugger, I dunno then.. : / Where do the hard interrupt lines go on that card? I mean, which slots share an IRQ with the video slot? And which share with the ethernet? (Should be in your manual.)
I think the problem is more one of religious beliefs. "If I get revenge, I may not live, but God will accept me with open arms." Or maybe it's more of a "If I get revenge, I may not live, but people will remember my sacrifice forever."
Either way, bleh; this seems mildly OT for a thread about Square and Nintendo. Unless you're implying that Nintendo and Square deciding to work together's like Isreal & co. reconciling their differences..
Dude, Square != Squaresoft.
If your SBLive and ethernet are dying, then maybe you're drawing too much power? What type of video card do you have? What's the power rating on your power supply?
Anyone have any idea what the sales figures were like on their Linux division products?
I think a better analogy would be a man who knows how to use tools, a man who knows how to clear land, and a man who knows how to plant seeds all collaborating so that they can sell us the food they make. And then making sure to knock any food out of our hands that may have been made by anyone else.
There's a huge difference between physical tools and knowledge. These companies have pooled their knowledge of making products, not the tools used to make the products. Your analogy isn't very good.
I realize this, which is why I listed a method for taking the picture a more "normal" way, and then converting it to a hologram in the lab.
Btw, what's the deal with the monochromatic light? I realize you have to use one colour or else you get a blurred resultant image, but is there any way to sort of do a component hologram and then put the parts back together? Sort of like how video has RGB..?
I have an idea, but I'm not sure if it applies to this article or not.
Why are there no holographic cameras? How about a personal photographic system that could take a 2D picture, along with depth information. Couldn't the lab then use that information to extract some semi-3D models as a basis for a hologram? (You know; one of those thin colour-banded holograms they put on CDs and credit cards..?) Or is the cost of making those holograms prohibitively high..?
I was talking about the PS2; that's what your last few sentences were about, after all.
My point was that Linux is already ported to the PS2 as much as it ever will be without want of a drastic soldering job. My comments followed along that train of thought.
As for the DC DivX player, I doubt it will ever be optimized enough to be able to play any of today's bitrates. As a matter of fact, I suspect it's impossible; if an optimized codec is required to play it on a 400MHz 3DNow!-based Windows PC, (a K6-3, my frame of reference here) then what hope is there for a 200Mhz SH-4 CPU? Both are relatively evenly matched with YUV->RGB conversion and SIMD instructions.. the 3DNow! codec relies on all of these to pump out the frames it does, and yet it still chokes at higher bitrates. How does that bode for a Dreamcast codec?
The current codec for Dreamcast can barely pump out 5-10 frames per second, last time I checked. So to me, at least, a DivX player for Dreamcast with full framerate would seem highly unlikely.
Feel free to prove me wrong, of course... ; )
*ahem* Did you not read the article? You can't use CD-Rs in the Linux PS2; piracy, and all that. Although you may be able to stream 'em off another computer in your house, over the ethernet adapter..?
Psst. If he wasn't exactly silent about how bad Episode I was, then what makes you think he hasn't been chastisized by Lucas & co., and is just making it up to them by praising this film?
No they're not; you on crack, boy? The GLX driver's only available as a binary. Only the NVdriver has the source code available for it, and that's a simple pass-thru driver that hands stuff back and forth to the GLX portion. Look for yourself. Open Source my ass..
I personally won't develop for anything but DirectX until OpenGL comes up with a standard for using pixel and vertex shaders. And I'm not the only one.
If you want people to develop for your platform, it'd better have an up-to-date API to program for. Until the OpenGL ARB sorts out this whole legality issue that nVidia keeps bringing up, DirectX is going to keep being the supported API, and thus Microsoft Windows is going to be the only platform people target.
Yes, pixel and vertex shaders are supported in OpenGL by nVidia and ATi, but they both use different calls and different shader compilers. I don't want to have to duplicate my work for two different implementations of the exact same thing. (Not that ATi even has an implementation under Linux. But just because there's no implementation under Linux doesn't mean I should only target nVidia hardware.) When the ARB comes up with a spec for how it should be done, then I'll pay attention, but until then I'll just keep plodding along under DirectX.
Incidentally, when it comes to graphics, Linux really bites. It's an old song I'm singing, but XFree86 should not have the drivers compiled directly into it; they should be a seperate module. It's been said that the performance hit for networking is negligeable, but splitting the driver from X itself would be a disaster, speed-wise; this sounds like a double-standard to me.
Upgrading the video driver should not require a complete X upgrade. Someone point them in the direction of BeOS; now there's a nice setup.. from a programming and end-user POV.
I don't know about the idiot part, but I concur with the incompetent accusation.
Someone mod this guy up.
..unless, of course, you play games, develop software for windows, do video editing, have a consumer-grade webcam, scanner, etc., or are learning to use a computer and will have to know the OS for work. In which case, carry on..
Btw, nowadays Windows surpasses Linux in the desktop scene for three technical reasons:
1) video drivers with a standardized interface to the kernel. The X/Gtk/KDE thing is outdated; we need a more Windowsish approach where we drop files in, set up a few symlinks and it's using those drivers instead. We should not be forced to recompile our kernel or replace X!
2) a graphics SDK that's modern (OpenGL 2.0 and it's standardized pixel and vertex shader calls won't be out for another two or three quarters at least, according to the last meeting of the ARB, which means that without a doubt, DirectX will be the new standard for game development. This is fact. Live with it.)
3) a monolithic kernel.
Number 3's what's holding us back. I predict that once (if) the GNU hurd catches on, we'll start to see some open source developers moving in this direction. Maybe even the X people'll head that way. But until then.. Linux and BSD may be free, but they ain't the best. Sorry.
Perhaps your system's good enough for today, but I wouldn't be so sure about the coming few years. Sure you may not be an FPS fan, but Warcraft 3's going to have some steep 3D accelerator requirements. Ditto any of the new RPGs like Neverwinter Nights. Sports games are already all 3D. We're reaching the end of the days when a decent 2D card could cut it for low end games.
Remember, I'm not talking about games that are out there now; those are the obvious ones. I'm talking about the games coming out over the next year or two. My prediction for the coming year is that we're all going to be saying bye bye to 2D gaming.
Now Civilization 4, on the other hand, should they choose to make one---see, now that'd be a different story..