I guess what this means is that the problems aren't so much technical, as you suggest. Instead, I believe it has to do more with suspension of disbelief. In a realistic, or "serious" setting (the
world is at peril! you must rescue it! hurry!) this is much harder to achieve. Also,most dialogue in games (as well as in B-movies) sucks anyway, so there's no way for someone to make it
convincing
Hmm yeah, very well put. That`s about as much as I wanted to say. The genre of the game may very well have his influence in how voice acting is perceived, regardless of the effort.. still I played various types of games and especially quests like the Monkey Islands have allways hugely entertained me. Possibly because the c&c voices are quite repetitive and action games are person centric, leaving little room to let your character actually be involved in interesting discussions about various subjects, other than the usual yelling of commands and describing features and hints and tips. On the other hand I seriously enjoyed homeworld and the great effort they put in making the voices non intrusive. So it`s definately possible but you have to understand your medium and setting. So yes, out-of-this-world scenery probably lends itself better to accept voice overs than real life settings, like you mentioned.
On my Amiga, to speak you have to write in a Shell :
SYS:> echo "hello happy few!" >SPEAK:
But, you can change accents (klingon anyone ?) stress or any parameters you need.
The voices from WipeOut ARE voices from SPEAK: copied on the Amiga sound system.
I don`t think you read my post at all.. It`s not about how voice works, that`s usually taped anyway. It`s about the combination with computer graphics that makes voice acting look unnatural or 'unbelievable'.
..and so do some of their bosses. They actually say
In some ways, casinos are more mindful of privacy than other companies
right after putting on a discourse about saving 6TB of onion data about their customers. I`m sorry but I don`t want Casino`s to take care of my privacy. I want to have control of that myself, I don`t care how mindfull thoughtfull or nice these 160Million dollar companies may be. I remember altavista giving me a lifetime pop3 box, for which I was paying only3 years later.
Yielding control over your data over to an IT firm is usually a risk, but if their is malpractice from one of their employees abusing your data, chances are you can get them sued. On the other hand companies as big as these are much tougher to attack because they you know their laws and rights inside out and you probably somehow agreed to be in their system and surrender your private data. They are big brother, and they didn`t tell you. After all, you came to them. It`s your choice. Proving they misuse your data is so much more difficult. Besides they don`t really store 'you', they store profiles. 'You' is not important to them. It`s what makes you appealing to them that is important.
Actually I don`t mind them correlating the data with other data. It`s their right. I would mind them selling and getting rich on data of my life. It`s like they do not own a 'copyright' on my actions I undertake, and thus have no right to make money off of it. Obviously, they get '3rd party' data from elsewhere, so this is really going on. I didn`t think they were this far ahead, but apparently everything is possible.
I`m wondering what the Casino industry, which is collecting so much data about thier customers, is going to do with all that 'knowledge', as it also means power, a power the government might in the long run have to negotiate with. Hmm.. Maybe I read too much 'SnowCrash' by Stephenson.
Yes, I would really like to know what he meant by "voice acting doesn`t work in computer games."
Voice acting is just telling a tale and using enough intonation and emotion in you voice, adding a mindset to the graphical context, building a plot in the viewer`s mind. What CAN go wrong is the synching with the digital actors, and I`m sure back in the days there wasn`t much room for synching or modelling phonemes on a mouth. If you look at Final Fantasy, voice acting can definately be made realistic. What gets in the way is plastic skin.. maybe.. look at the 'The Banana Queen' video by Zita Swoon.. some great art there.
Maybe what he meant is that the character and the guy impersonating the character`s voice do not have the same featureset, that somehow his voice doesn`t sound convincing because the kind of stress he puts in his voice doesn`t exactly match the character`s movement. But I think this stems from the fact that cartoon or computer graphics generated models are generally animated without much regard to the emotional content they might or should or must contain. Or they are overemphasised to make them look very Disney. Something in our mind says that synthetic being is not real, and the voice therefore is not real either. On the other hand, Homer Simpson has a great voice, so it`s definately possible to give a cartoon the voice he needs. But then again The Simpsons are so absurdly normal that their absurdly normal voices stick good with them. Usually, toons are animated like this or that, because the moves look realistic or hot, and because usually there isn`t much room for including 'slips and defects of the skin' or movements that are non functional but preserve the integrity of the character, or 'believability', to use an obscene word.
Atleast I believe that lipsynching and facial animation based on naration and voice can be convincing. It just takes a tremendous amount of effort to make it realistic. Between the lines you can see Tom saying that when a production is to be finished, the voicepacks are usually the last thing studio`s do, and in order to get the game out of the door, things get rushed. But that doesn`t mean things can`t be done better.
Well some people are really into the.NET cloning idea, but for starters I don't think.NET will actually work for the desktop market, because of one very simple reason: bandwidth. The internet is simply not ready for service based applications. And certainly not for dbase intense applications that store the contents of your letters or documents.
.Net is all shiny and beautifull technology, and the concept of downloading the equivalent of dlls instead of jars must sound like Stravinski to Gates, but the hard cold truth is that it will atleast take 4 to 5 years before the world is done with struggling over bandwidth (if at all).
There's also another reason why I wouldn't recommend cloning.NET on linux. Many people allready suggested that keeping a clone up to date with microsoft's original is firstly a sign of weekness in the creative department, but more importantly it is sensitive to changes in the core, so that a clone will never be trustworthy (and thus market degraded). Businesses will never ever want a linux platform for running.NET. Thirdly, if MS should on the contrary decide to let linux clones thrive and florish, who will benefit from that ? The company that sells the services, because they have a cheapo.NET client and everything works as expected. Right. Now remember the Kodak story from a few posts back and you'll know that MS is not going to let this happen.
In short, I think if MS manages to get control over 3rd party services in some way, linux should not design.NET because it will be like a poisoned apple, a virus, allowing only more desktops to run native MS code (that gets things done, no hard feelings). If MS doesn't manage that level of control, then obviously they will break the clones by changing the platform specs, rendering linux desktops unusable in the business world.
Quite a dilemma. Ofcours the OpenSource movement could try to write it's own alternative platform now, in fact, it should be doable with such fine examples like c# and java, not to mention other languages which may be even more runtime-optimizeable and memorymanageable. On the other hand it is also worth noting that SUN has developed Jiro, Jxta and ofcourse Jini and JavaSpaces, which all focus on making J2EE a reality as a service solution. So in fact.NET, which is not funcitonal right now, allready exists, only under a few different API names. Maybe it's not a stuned as you would like, but hey, don't expect.NET being perfectly tuned and ready for another 2 years minimum.
Anyway, I've never really understood why the linux community would rather bash MS and run w2K alongside instead of opening their eyes and see SUN really doing a tremendous effort to take away a bit of the MS heat. Sure, Java may not be as sexy as your python, perl or c, but it the Grand Scheme of Things(tm), it is the best alternative anyone can imagine. They have bug submission, they have structures set-up to work swith large userbases, and they do deliver, allthough not OpenSource. I don't see anybody developing what SUN has done AND succeeding to outrun MS with OpenSource initiatives just yet. It's a painfull truth, but we should not kid ourselves and make sensible choices nonetheless.
a. Linux (the kernel) was originally formulated to be UNIX-like, conform to POSIX, and be a MINIX workalike (plus features, of course, and optimized for the 386).
b. The GNU part of GNU\Linux is all about taking existing commerical tools and implementing them in an open-source\free way.
c. XFree86 is a free implementation of the X-Server design.
d. OpenOffice is a massive attempt to compete with MS-Office and be an Office-workalike.
e. Mozilla is an attempt to movie what was Navigator into the modern, spec-compliant age and wrest control back from IE.
f. SAMBA is a major project to attempt to imitate to the point of compatibility SMB sharing in Windows.
..you forgot about gnutella! Swift, fast, open source, and the protocol was written pretty much from scratch!
Smaller RAMBUS latencies? It was my understanding that RAMBUS had masive latencies, but really good
bandwidth. Did I miss something here?
No you're quite right, the latencies stay. What I should have said was that the technology is less dependant on them because of the relatively fewer cache misses, since the pipelines can stay at 20 stages. So overall, the chip can take better advantage of RAMBUS. Sorry for the quirk there.
it's due to the fact that Pentium will flush the entire pipelines during branch-misprediction/pipelines stall. As a result
Pentium III would out-perform Pentium 4 in some occasion, as the latter tends to lose more instructions when
branch-misprediction rate is too high.
Rumours have it that PentiumIV will have Simultaneous Multithreading(SMT) enabled, which let's the processoor run any instruction from any thread on any unit at any time. Supposedly this feature was allready included in current processor designs but not enabled because the P6-4 is not ready for SMP yet.
AMD uses On-chip Multiprocessing(CMP) in Sledgehammer, which is basicly the sames as subdividing the resources of the cpu (registers & units) between the threads. The benefit of this technique is that the design can be kept simpeler and the clock can go faster than a similar monolithic chip with the same resources. On the other hand, a lot of resources are wasted if only one thread is operational in this setup.
Needless to say, SMT has some problems too, for example, CMP lends it self much better for branch prediction through Slipstreaming than SMT does. You can find some good reading in this previous slashpost about how intel and amd deal with multithreading on their single/multiprocessor designs. To be taken with a bit of salt of course, but very sharp.
My point is that if branch prediction in the form of Slipstreaming is implemented (and Jackson Technology seems to be that kind of SMT), the P6-4 problems with the excessive cache flushing are completely over, and SMT can take full advantage of the smaller RAMBUS latencies, easily outperforming a similar CMP setup like AMD has.
Actually, a lot of the best digital art is genuinely breaking new ground. [..] Of course in many cases they include much more than just the
computer and program to the point that they can't just be reproduced at will, which would probably make them classify as valuable artworks under the ease of reproduction viewpoint.
You`re abslutely right. I didn`t mean to imply digital art to be limited to 2d, far from it:)
Whether something is valuable art, because it cannot be reproduced easily, is debateable. Economically seen there is no question about it. Scarce products are worth more than others. However if I make a painting, chances are no one is going to be interested in it because I can`t paint, but it`s still very much unique and impossible to clone. In the same way I don`t think technology has impact on the value of digital art as well, alltough people may very well spend lots of money on it to own it. But that doesn`t make something more art than anything else. Digital art is essentially disconnected from it`s medium. To use a metafor, it`s like having drops of paint in a bottle, and only if you throw the bottle at the right type/size of canvas, the picture comes out right. The canvas is replaceable by other canvasses, but only some types will be able to display the image correctly. Ofcourse this doesn`t work in the real world, but it works in cyberspace. Technology is replaceable, disconnectable from the data. If there was any bond with the art itself, it will be lost in such a process. If technology had impact on the value of art, the artvalue is subject to changes unrelated to the data that represents the art. This is paradoxal, so the technological medium should therefore not be seen as part of the digital art.
Well, the medium carries it`s own personality really, it`s own soul and history if you like. The artist molds the medium into what he likes it to be, into his message or his expression. The same goes for paper and inc. It`s still very much an analog process to print photos. Airwaves are analog, and are subject to interference, heat, moisture, etc. There is allways an interpretion stage where the viewer has to correct his senses.
This is not to say that 2d screens or soundcards or whatever are not subject to the same principle, a randomness factor, as small as it probably is, is still there. But the raw data behind the art is a pure functional discretized nondeficiant set of 1`s and 0`s, which do not carry meaning, soul, expression or history. Only when interpreted by the right set of software do you get to experience the actual art. In a sense, this extra level of interpretation, this dependancy on digital technology, is what makes digital art different from classical analog art.
Usually, the medium also embodies history. A painting is painted upon with paint in a certain way. Clay is molded and baked redhot in ovens above 2000 degrees, sculptures took years to work on. They represent hisotry, a bondage with the artist. You can hardly say that massmanufactured Sony screens carry the artist`s message, or have any relatinship to the art that is expressed.
Digital art also paradoxically represents art that you will never see the original of. The analog actions the artist uses to mold his medium into his favourite shape, is digitized entirely, only to be reconverted to analog output that will try to reproduce the original analog artwork. What the artist makes is never exactly the same as what the world will see. The soul in art is usually extremely fragile and easily damaged, so maybe digital art does not exist i this sense.
If you disregard the level of digital means that have to interprete the art-data for you, then digital art becomes essentially the same as any art out there. The queation whether something is art or not is the very personal question whether something touches and moves the senses, soul, emotions and feelings of the observer. The television screen becomes the (imperfect) looking glass which you use to observe a digitized version of analog actions, which may very well contain pure art, or pure garbage, aside from any (mis)interpretation. Since digital artificats belong to the medium, it is therefore highly dangerous to say it belongs to the art as wel, as the artifacts are sensitive to changes in the technology behind video screens, which may very well change, whereas the art should not.
So it`s a personal thing mainly. Everybody decides for himself whether something is art or not. Digital art prompts problems for the mainstream art critiques out there because it isn`t clear why something can be art or not. Digital art asks for a very personal form of appreciation. You like it or you don`t. Everybody sees the same thing, and there`s little history to hold on to, which is what critiques usually use to judge artwork.
If you ar interested in knowing what people do or have done with digital art n the past, have a look at scene.org and hornet.org which feature most of the 1987-2001 period of digital art produced in a underground movement called the demoscene. The democene itself has discussed the topic of demoscene material being art multiple times in the past, and the general consensus is that the actual question what art is, remains. The modalities and reasons why people create digital art rather than classical art may be important to understand what digital art is, too. In fact, digital art is open to everybody, requires talent, skill, exercise, just like any other art. It is however much more accessible and easier to put into practice, and tools are much more diverse and in ambundance.
In the end, art is a personal feeling, a whimp of the hart, something that cannot be explained, and that takes everyday life into a metalevel. Those who define fine art probably did without digital art in mind, but the concept that led to the fine-art definition probably remain the same.
In napster, most people saw not an opportunity to partake in
the debate about free vs. non-free, but rather a chance to download the latest singles (and in some cases, albums) from
their favorite artists, gratis.
1) Ofcourse, but since everybody LIKED Napster because of the 'gratis', they became aware of what was going on when Metallica and subsequently all of the RIAA went to court. Most people kept leaching while the debate was going on. They may not have understood the whole thing but they sure like leeching, and I'm sure some people started developping an interest in keeping things free.
Napster was never an exercise in free(dom) to begin with. It was another case of an immensely risky loss leader for a
company that was hoping to later cash in on its brand. Not that we're seeing this now of course...
2) Right again, it would be silly to think Napster was not meant to make money. People just don't start companies for nothing. But Joe Sixpack isn't going to care about what companies might be doing in the future, no, the guy is probably leeching right now, grinning at his ever growing collection of his organized one-and-zero chaos. And by god, he loves doing this.
My point is that most people are aware of a thing called free music distribution in the form of mp3, and that it's causing legal people a lot of headaches to wringe the system back in control. They will come to understand that free speech, free music, and eventually free data/software is their RIGHT, not a licensed patent agreement they didn't pay for.
Right,.wma is seldomly used, as mp3 has the obvious advantage of playing everywhere AND carrying the main trade sticker people are looking for. So all Fraunhofer institute could do (and what MS couldn't do) is to change the cargo under the label and hope everyone will update their codecs. This way, they are now getting the attention of RIAA etc. back, which means they're in business. Maybe. Atleast it gives them an edge again.
If someone writes a decent OggVorbis codec for windows' MP and others start dealing.ogg's I think Ogg Vorbis might stand a chance. If people get better compression for equal quality, they won't have to wonder why the hell they should swithc to a new format. In a sense because they won't switch alltogether, mp3 is just fine, but some people might very well be open to the notion of patent free software and music formats. After the Napster thing(tm), everybody is a bit educated in what free software and free music is all about, and Ogg Vorbis could very well cash in on that, but then I'm afraid it needs to deliver much faster, while people are making choicesin the post-Napster thing(tm). Anyway, that's a lot of IF's for Ogg Vorbis.
I just realised I should add something in important. In the lights of concepts like Extreme programming, UML, reafcotring and pattern design concept, Java really does perform a lot better than C++. In fact, Java is itself build on these concepts. It's allready IN the language, whereas C++ just allows for these concepts to happen. This gives Java a much more high level entry point than C++ does. It might be interesting to teach students the high level concepts first and work from there but I think it defeats insights in the historical growth of languages allttogether if Java is the first language people get to get their hands dirty on. Furthermore, I think it's too abstract. You don't feel your registers ticking. Experience on that level IS important, as it aknowledges the theory in practise. You can allmost touch the evidence, whereas a Virtual machine is something you'd have to live with. In that regard, C++ also connects with other courses that deal with how the metal side of the picture works.
We have had the same question discussed. Normally in the first year of the course, we teach students about OO programming concepts using The Oberon language, a wirthian language much like Pascal and Modula-2. The benefit of starting with this language, is that practically no one knows about this one when they start. This levels the field for everybody starting the course. The second benefit is tthat it is fairly similar to Pascal and Modula-2 syntaxes, but allows for concepts like pointers and garbage collection to be explained. Basicly, it as good as any other OO language, but we have satisfactory results in teaching OO with this language. The incredible downside to this language, is that students will never ever use it again. That's the first year, in the second they are taught C++ in a strict Stroustrup way.
Our question has been whether Java would be better. Certainly, as an assistant, I would have said Java all the way 2 years ago, because I just like Java much more than Oberon (and incidently the students do too), but Java really misses out on a lot of key concepts that C++ do have. If Java would ever be taught on our university in C.S., it would replace Oberon, not C++. We consider C++ a difficult but necessary level of experience students should have endured, simply because when they will work in a company 3 years later, the majority will be either in Java or C++. BUT. In the Mathematics and Physics classes, we HAVE switched to Java. To these people, a language is more a tool than a subject on it's own. In fact, we didn't just teach them Java, we gave them a Java environment that allows for allmost functional linear programming, an interpreter which simply translates their code (which looks just like Java code, only everything is purely functional) into 'real' Java. So far, the results are promising. They actually get the concepts of recursion, which, for a mathematics and physics 1s't year class may be easy to get down on paper but harder to get done in reality. This is the first year we're doing this, so we have to consider the end results in a few weeks when exams are over. We have also taught Java to Physics PhD students, with very good results. Most of the programming in Physics labs is now in Java because it delivers faster than C++ and is simply easier to maintain and update.
From personal experience, I think C++ has a few benefits on it's own. First it is a valuable leach that leads into the UNIX world, something most people have never had the chance to experience before. You will simply have to get the UNIX concepts and commands and syntax and phylosophy right before you can say you're able to pull a C++ thing off on a server compiler. Second, I think C++ is obviously valuable once you are done studying. This should not be the major issue here, and we dislike the idea of studying C.S. because it makes good money, but it's a reality nonetheless. Thirdly, C++ has influenced more languages in the 10+ years it exists, and thus makes transition to these languages, including the Java language, easy. Fourth, c++ allmost offers every concept that an OO language should offer, so in the world of paradigma's it's a fantastic example of OO programming. Fifth, the syntax and semantics makes people think mechanically, and the ancient C subset allows for making the distinction between lowlevel and high level programming. Learning how to debug is one of the key elements that C++ offers and needs, and students will benefit from that knowledge. And finally, transitions form C++ to Java are easy, but the opposit transition is incredibly tough, even if you DO know C++. I've made the transitions about 4 times in the last few years, and I can tell you every time I had to switch back to C++ all hell breaks loose again. You simply forget the hard parts because that's what Java is, the 'nice' version without the pitfalls that C++ experienced in it's more or less uncertain growth.
Actually such recommendation systems allready exist, but they are called 'datamining' and e-commerce. It's allready implemented at amazon.com where certain top-authors or top-buyers can suggest a list of 10 books for a certain genre. There are dozens of other sites on the net, typically all about buying and selling and commercial activity, so here are a few non-commercial ones you might want to check out, which were all created with enthusiasm and volunteers, not cash: ojuice.org, which is a fully customizeable database containing 'member information' of a specific underground culture movement. The movement in question, the demoscene, is not important in my point here. What is important is that these kind of member websites allow you to search the most respected people and query their tastes and preferences in the demoscene. Maybe that's not as instant single-click-away as Jamie has put it, but it's practically the same. Here's another example, or try this one, both examples based on "home and hobby electronic musicians" preferences.
I could easily give a dozen more, my point is that "cool" is inherently related to subcultures, rahter than 'big pictures'. The very fact that cool exists, means that you are different and have specific cultural 'features' people envy you for. Hence, cool doesn't work for 'big picture 20$ websites'.. it only works for small obscure and underground submovements you are not very likely to ever discover on your own.
Well a lot of people actually DO want their music for free, and much more to go with that. You could find them in Central City Napster at one time, now they are tagged with ip numbers in the wide cyberdesert called Gnutella. And if free music means free speech, free software, free ideas, free art experience, free source codes, free dvd codecs, then yes I think I want it too.
Whether I support an artist or not should in the end be MY choice, not the coice of some record exec who thinks he`s the king of the world. If things were "free", only one thing changes: the level of control. And quite frankly, many artists, supposedly "protected" by that kind of "control" in reality don`t have a choice either. They are used, often pushed and abused, and in the end simply forgotten. There is no 'art' here.
So why do we need to be able to fly from New York city to Tokyo in 2 hours anyway? Why can't people just learn
to be hapy where they are?
Well it's less expensive because you don't need to bring liquid oxygen up with you. Normal jets burn fuel together with oxygen which needs to be compressed in order to be injected in the burning chamber. Because speeds are so high, the scramjet can simply take oxygen from outside because the pressure is allready high enough. The engine also doesn't need any rotors or moving parts because the need for a compressor is gone. On top of that, it's also faster. Wasn't technology supposed to increase comfort value?
Think again: Why would nasa rather not have spacetourists on THE (not "it's") international spacestation in the fist place? Because it's annoying and hinders work. If you were a space agency and someone is coming onboard, against your own will, someone who will probably fuck up anything if not your schedule, what would you do? Do you think it's possible to pretend he's not even there and just work onwards? Probably not. How would that look to the outside world, not just taxpaying america? It's obvious Nasa can't afford any bad PR, because in the long run that would mean it doesn't get the required budgets from the American government. I understand as a taxpayer that you'd be upset about the little vacation trip some idiots are allowed to afford these days, and I don't approve it either, but I think Nasa had little choice but to eat the cookie and play nice. Regardless whether you agree with the budgets it gets or not. So no, I don't think they were lying.
20M$ for Nasa is peanuts. For the russians who were on the brink of losing their spaceprogram completely, it was a much appreciated guesture (though they still need a lot more of these kind of gestures) which saved the day for a while anyway, and probably the Russian space era, so that it might assist (read: relief) other nations involved in the ISS project...
On a sidenote I wonder why my previous post was nailed down as flamebait, but I don't care. Basicly what I said was Nasa is doing a good job and Tito's statements don't make any sense, but maybe./geeks spell the whitespaces wrong or something..
yep, tourist traps are to be avoided. I`ve never ever been there myself actually:) but then again I couldn`t possibly make daytrips to southern europe from where I live:) ah well..
Tito is just a stupid tourist. Ofcourse the pictures will be great, but to know that the food ain`t been that great either.. 8-).. that`s like.. so ordinarily normal..
While Tito was happily flying and floating in his unquestionably trendy and snobby vacation resort, NASA ordered other astronauts to reschedule planned experiments and research so that they could take care of Tito and make sure his journey was a complete success (read: NASA BUDGET-PR). This statement he's made is like a tourist on the costa del sol saying "damn there's a lot of hotels here". It's totally fucked up and he need to get his head checked for sure. Space research is important not just because of the research up there, but because of the innovations on earth they bring, regardless whether even the tiniest bit of craft was launched or not.
well yes, obviously they want to protect the freedom of (payed for) speech (which THEY produced), you just need to read everyhing, including the fud between the lines.
By recording all your internet communications for 7 years. With helpful "guidance" from the US, the EU is going to propose its "cybercrime" treaty. Soon if you are in the US, you will
hear the rhetoric "Well the EU is doing it, so should we".
Read the docs at cryptome.org, it makes somber reading.
Do you seiously think EU law is going to stop anyone ? We allready have cybercrime laws in place in this fucked country as we speak, but that hasn`t stopped the people in it before. Of course they can allways sue 10 million people instead of just the latest 100 lucky ones (yes they actually did sue) but hey.. we`re Belgium where normal crime is easily seponnated (read: lack of personel in courthouses). Ofcourse they can also block outgoing and incoming routers to the rest of the world and log all traffic, but that`s just as practical as tryinng to impersonate a fishstick.
But it seems to me there is a bit of misconception on various points: There are no crimes in cyberspace. There is only incorrect law and ideology fools in meatspace. Hacking and cracking can be substituted by loging-in and reprogramming, and there is nothing intriniscally wrong about this. The _value_ of cyberspace and anything going on it (that means anything discretized in a digital form) is that what you estimate it to be, otherwise it is just the cost of current and telephony. Therefore, you can only loose money by spending that cost or seeing other people`s estimates drop. Harshly put, an economy based onsuch pure estimates is a gambling show, however, luckily this is a bit too harsh, as people add creative content to cyberspace. But by doing so they produce. The act of the production (=discretization of ideas) itself contains the risk of being ripped off. Tryig to prevent being ripped off is an understandable but week strategy, which depends on the mutual agreements between parties. Any one party can give up such an agreement anytime (and afterwards be sued for it of course). So people want to believe and forget about being paranoid, including the RIAA, because it fills pockets. As soon as parties turned out to not respect the superimposed 'agreement' in the form of a copyright, Napter came in, which has now given them a chance to sue, and possibly get even more money. The alternative would have been to sue everybody on this planet holding an ethernet link. Basicly the RIAA and MPAA are content providers that produce something which is non degenerate once digitized. They can`t possibly win this battle beause idiot A will allways be willing to give idiot B a sampled version of item C, which is not perfect but good enough for idiot B to pass it on to his idiotic friend D etc.. unfortunately the world is full of idiots, and there is only one RIAA and MPAA. How unfair, of course.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess what this means is that the problems aren't so much technical, as you suggest. Instead, I believe it has to do more with suspension of disbelief. In a realistic, or "serious" setting (the world is at peril! you must rescue it! hurry!) this is much harder to achieve. Also,most dialogue in games (as well as in B-movies) sucks anyway, so there's no way for someone to make it convincing
Hmm yeah, very well put. That`s about as much as I wanted to say. The genre of the game may very well have his influence in how voice acting is perceived, regardless of the effort.. still I played various types of games and especially quests like the Monkey Islands have allways hugely entertained me. Possibly because the c&c voices are quite repetitive and action games are person centric, leaving little room to let your character actually be involved in interesting discussions about various subjects, other than the usual yelling of commands and describing features and hints and tips. On the other hand I seriously enjoyed homeworld and the great effort they put in making the voices non intrusive. So it`s definately possible but you have to understand your medium and setting. So yes, out-of-this-world scenery probably lends itself better to accept voice overs than real life settings, like you mentioned.
ignace
On my Amiga, to speak you have to write in a Shell :
SYS:> echo "hello happy few!" >SPEAK:
But, you can change accents (klingon anyone ?) stress or any parameters you need. The voices from WipeOut ARE voices from SPEAK: copied on the Amiga sound system.
I don`t think you read my post at all.. It`s not about how voice works, that`s usually taped anyway. It`s about the combination with computer graphics that makes voice acting look unnatural or 'unbelievable'.
ignace.
In some ways, casinos are more mindful of privacy than other companies
right after putting on a discourse about saving 6TB of onion data about their customers. I`m sorry but I don`t want Casino`s to take care of my privacy. I want to have control of that myself, I don`t care how mindfull thoughtfull or nice these 160Million dollar companies may be. I remember altavista giving me a lifetime pop3 box, for which I was paying only3 years later.
Yielding control over your data over to an IT firm is usually a risk, but if their is malpractice from one of their employees abusing your data, chances are you can get them sued. On the other hand companies as big as these are much tougher to attack because they you know their laws and rights inside out and you probably somehow agreed to be in their system and surrender your private data. They are big brother, and they didn`t tell you. After all, you came to them. It`s your choice. Proving they misuse your data is so much more difficult. Besides they don`t really store 'you', they store profiles. 'You' is not important to them. It`s what makes you appealing to them that is important.
Actually I don`t mind them correlating the data with other data. It`s their right. I would mind them selling and getting rich on data of my life. It`s like they do not own a 'copyright' on my actions I undertake, and thus have no right to make money off of it. Obviously, they get '3rd party' data from elsewhere, so this is really going on. I didn`t think they were this far ahead, but apparently everything is possible.
I`m wondering what the Casino industry, which is collecting so much data about thier customers, is going to do with all that 'knowledge', as it also means power, a power the government might in the long run have to negotiate with. Hmm.. Maybe I read too much 'SnowCrash' by Stephenson.
ignace.
Yes, I would really like to know what he meant by "voice acting doesn`t work in computer games."
Voice acting is just telling a tale and using enough intonation and emotion in you voice, adding a mindset to the graphical context, building a plot in the viewer`s mind. What CAN go wrong is the synching with the digital actors, and I`m sure back in the days there wasn`t much room for synching or modelling phonemes on a mouth. If you look at Final Fantasy, voice acting can definately be made realistic. What gets in the way is plastic skin.. maybe.. look at the 'The Banana Queen' video by Zita Swoon.. some great art there.
Maybe what he meant is that the character and the guy impersonating the character`s voice do not have the same featureset, that somehow his voice doesn`t sound convincing because the kind of stress he puts in his voice doesn`t exactly match the character`s movement. But I think this stems from the fact that cartoon or computer graphics generated models are generally animated without much regard to the emotional content they might or should or must contain. Or they are overemphasised to make them look very Disney. Something in our mind says that synthetic being is not real, and the voice therefore is not real either. On the other hand, Homer Simpson has a great voice, so it`s definately possible to give a cartoon the voice he needs. But then again The Simpsons are so absurdly normal that their absurdly normal voices stick good with them. Usually, toons are animated like this or that, because the moves look realistic or hot, and because usually there isn`t much room for including 'slips and defects of the skin' or movements that are non functional but preserve the integrity of the character, or 'believability', to use an obscene word.
Atleast I believe that lipsynching and facial animation based on naration and voice can be convincing. It just takes a tremendous amount of effort to make it realistic. Between the lines you can see Tom saying that when a production is to be finished, the voicepacks are usually the last thing studio`s do, and in order to get the game out of the door, things get rushed. But that doesn`t mean things can`t be done better.
At least, that`s what I think..
cheers,
ignace
Well some people are really into the
There's also another reason why I wouldn't recommend cloning
In short, I think if MS manages to get control over 3rd party services in some way, linux should not design
Quite a dilemma. Ofcours the OpenSource movement could try to write it's own alternative platform now, in fact, it should be doable with such fine examples like c# and java, not to mention other languages which may be even more runtime-optimizeable and memorymanageable. On the other hand it is also worth noting that SUN has developed Jiro, Jxta and ofcourse Jini and JavaSpaces, which all focus on making J2EE a reality as a service solution. So in fact
Anyway, I've never really understood why the linux community would rather bash MS and run w2K alongside instead of opening their eyes and see SUN really doing a tremendous effort to take away a bit of the MS heat. Sure, Java may not be as sexy as your python, perl or c, but it the Grand Scheme of Things(tm), it is the best alternative anyone can imagine. They have bug submission, they have structures set-up to work swith large userbases, and they do deliver, allthough not OpenSource. I don't see anybody developing what SUN has done AND succeeding to outrun MS with OpenSource initiatives just yet. It's a painfull truth, but we should not kid ourselves and make sensible choices nonetheless.
Cheers,
Ignace
a. Linux (the kernel) was originally formulated to be UNIX-like, conform to POSIX, and be a MINIX workalike (plus features, of course, and optimized for the 386). b. The GNU part of GNU\Linux is all about taking existing commerical tools and implementing them in an open-source\free way. c. XFree86 is a free implementation of the X-Server design. d. OpenOffice is a massive attempt to compete with MS-Office and be an Office-workalike. e. Mozilla is an attempt to movie what was Navigator into the modern, spec-compliant age and wrest control back from IE. f. SAMBA is a major project to attempt to imitate to the point of compatibility SMB sharing in Windows.
..you forgot about gnutella! Swift, fast, open source, and the protocol was written pretty much from scratch!
Yep, it's a slip of the mind, sorry It should be the other way around of course.
Smaller RAMBUS latencies? It was my understanding that RAMBUS had masive latencies, but really good bandwidth. Did I miss something here?
No you're quite right, the latencies stay. What I should have said was that the technology is less dependant on them because of the relatively fewer cache misses, since the pipelines can stay at 20 stages. So overall, the chip can take better advantage of RAMBUS. Sorry for the quirk there.
it's due to the fact that Pentium will flush the entire pipelines during branch-misprediction/pipelines stall. As a result Pentium III would out-perform Pentium 4 in some occasion, as the latter tends to lose more instructions when branch-misprediction rate is too high.
Rumours have it that PentiumIV will have Simultaneous Multithreading(SMT) enabled, which let's the processoor run any instruction from any thread on any unit at any time. Supposedly this feature was allready included in current processor designs but not enabled because the P6-4 is not ready for SMP yet.
AMD uses On-chip Multiprocessing(CMP) in Sledgehammer, which is basicly the sames as subdividing the resources of the cpu (registers & units) between the threads. The benefit of this technique is that the design can be kept simpeler and the clock can go faster than a similar monolithic chip with the same resources. On the other hand, a lot of resources are wasted if only one thread is operational in this setup.
Needless to say, SMT has some problems too, for example, CMP lends it self much better for branch prediction through Slipstreaming than SMT does. You can find some good reading in this previous slashpost about how intel and amd deal with multithreading on their single/multiprocessor designs. To be taken with a bit of salt of course, but very sharp.
My point is that if branch prediction in the form of Slipstreaming is implemented (and Jackson Technology seems to be that kind of SMT), the P6-4 problems with the excessive cache flushing are completely over, and SMT can take full advantage of the smaller RAMBUS latencies, easily outperforming a similar CMP setup like AMD has.
Actually, a lot of the best digital art is genuinely breaking new ground. [..] Of course in many cases they include much more than just the computer and program to the point that they can't just be reproduced at will, which would probably make them classify as valuable artworks under the ease of reproduction viewpoint.
:)
You`re abslutely right. I didn`t mean to imply digital art to be limited to 2d, far from it
Whether something is valuable art, because it cannot be reproduced easily, is debateable. Economically seen there is no question about it. Scarce products are worth more than others. However if I make a painting, chances are no one is going to be interested in it because I can`t paint, but it`s still very much unique and impossible to clone. In the same way I don`t think technology has impact on the value of digital art as well, alltough people may very well spend lots of money on it to own it. But that doesn`t make something more art than anything else. Digital art is essentially disconnected from it`s medium. To use a metafor, it`s like having drops of paint in a bottle, and only if you throw the bottle at the right type/size of canvas, the picture comes out right. The canvas is replaceable by other canvasses, but only some types will be able to display the image correctly. Ofcourse this doesn`t work in the real world, but it works in cyberspace. Technology is replaceable, disconnectable from the data. If there was any bond with the art itself, it will be lost in such a process. If technology had impact on the value of art, the artvalue is subject to changes unrelated to the data that represents the art. This is paradoxal, so the technological medium should therefore not be seen as part of the digital art.
cheers,
ignace
Well, the medium carries it`s own personality really, it`s own soul and history if you like. The artist molds the medium into what he likes it to be, into his message or his expression. The same goes for paper and inc. It`s still very much an analog process to print photos. Airwaves are analog, and are subject to interference, heat, moisture, etc. There is allways an interpretion stage where the viewer has to correct his senses.
This is not to say that 2d screens or soundcards or whatever are not subject to the same principle, a randomness factor, as small as it probably is, is still there. But the raw data behind the art is a pure functional discretized nondeficiant set of 1`s and 0`s, which do not carry meaning, soul, expression or history. Only when interpreted by the right set of software do you get to experience the actual art. In a sense, this extra level of interpretation, this dependancy on digital technology, is what makes digital art different from classical analog art.
Usually, the medium also embodies history. A painting is painted upon with paint in a certain way. Clay is molded and baked redhot in ovens above 2000 degrees, sculptures took years to work on. They represent hisotry, a bondage with the artist. You can hardly say that massmanufactured Sony screens carry the artist`s message, or have any relatinship to the art that is expressed.
Digital art also paradoxically represents art that you will never see the original of. The analog actions the artist uses to mold his medium into his favourite shape, is digitized entirely, only to be reconverted to analog output that will try to reproduce the original analog artwork. What the artist makes is never exactly the same as what the world will see. The soul in art is usually extremely fragile and easily damaged, so maybe digital art does not exist i this sense.
If you disregard the level of digital means that have to interprete the art-data for you, then digital art becomes essentially the same as any art out there. The queation whether something is art or not is the very personal question whether something touches and moves the senses, soul, emotions and feelings of the observer. The television screen becomes the (imperfect) looking glass which you use to observe a digitized version of analog actions, which may very well contain pure art, or pure garbage, aside from any (mis)interpretation. Since digital artificats belong to the medium, it is therefore highly dangerous to say it belongs to the art as wel, as the artifacts are sensitive to changes in the technology behind video screens, which may very well change, whereas the art should not.
So it`s a personal thing mainly. Everybody decides for himself whether something is art or not. Digital art prompts problems for the mainstream art critiques out there because it isn`t clear why something can be art or not. Digital art asks for a very personal form of appreciation. You like it or you don`t. Everybody sees the same thing, and there`s little history to hold on to, which is what critiques usually use to judge artwork.
If you ar interested in knowing what people do or have done with digital art n the past, have a look at scene.org and hornet.org which feature most of the 1987-2001 period of digital art produced in a underground movement called the demoscene. The democene itself has discussed the topic of demoscene material being art multiple times in the past, and the general consensus is that the actual question what art is, remains. The modalities and reasons why people create digital art rather than classical art may be important to understand what digital art is, too. In fact, digital art is open to everybody, requires talent, skill, exercise, just like any other art. It is however much more accessible and easier to put into practice, and tools are much more diverse and in ambundance.
In the end, art is a personal feeling, a whimp of the hart, something that cannot be explained, and that takes everyday life into a metalevel. Those who define fine art probably did without digital art in mind, but the concept that led to the fine-art definition probably remain the same.
ignace
In napster, most people saw not an opportunity to partake in the debate about free vs. non-free, but rather a chance to download the latest singles (and in some cases, albums) from their favorite artists, gratis.
1) Ofcourse, but since everybody LIKED Napster because of the 'gratis', they became aware of what was going on when Metallica and subsequently all of the RIAA went to court. Most people kept leaching while the debate was going on. They may not have understood the whole thing but they sure like leeching, and I'm sure some people started developping an interest in keeping things free.
Napster was never an exercise in free(dom) to begin with. It was another case of an immensely risky loss leader for a company that was hoping to later cash in on its brand. Not that we're seeing this now of course...
2) Right again, it would be silly to think Napster was not meant to make money. People just don't start companies for nothing. But Joe Sixpack isn't going to care about what companies might be doing in the future, no, the guy is probably leeching right now, grinning at his ever growing collection of his organized one-and-zero chaos. And by god, he loves doing this.
My point is that most people are aware of a thing called free music distribution in the form of mp3, and that it's causing legal people a lot of headaches to wringe the system back in control. They will come to understand that free speech, free music, and eventually free data/software is their RIGHT, not a licensed patent agreement they didn't pay for.
Thanks I didn't know this one existed. But ehm.. activity: 0%, and only 3 developers.. not good.
like CoolEdit Pro perhaps
One of the funniest named programs ever written must be DeluxePaint Pro or AutodeskAnimator Pro. Nowadays we have Omnipage Pro and PaintShop Pro.
Funny maybe it's a coincidence but all these have to do with multimedia of sorts.
cheers,
Ignace
Right,
If someone writes a decent OggVorbis codec for windows' MP and others start dealing
Cheers,
Ignace
I just realised I should add something in important. In the lights of concepts like Extreme programming, UML, reafcotring and pattern design concept, Java really does perform a lot better than C++. In fact, Java is itself build on these concepts. It's allready IN the language, whereas C++ just allows for these concepts to happen. This gives Java a much more high level entry point than C++ does. It might be interesting to teach students the high level concepts first and work from there but I think it defeats insights in the historical growth of languages allttogether if Java is the first language people get to get their hands dirty on. Furthermore, I think it's too abstract. You don't feel your registers ticking. Experience on that level IS important, as it aknowledges the theory in practise. You can allmost touch the evidence, whereas a Virtual machine is something you'd have to live with. In that regard, C++ also connects with other courses that deal with how the metal side of the picture works.
Best regards,
Ignace
We have had the same question discussed. Normally in the first year of the course, we teach students about OO programming concepts using The Oberon language, a wirthian language much like Pascal and Modula-2. The benefit of starting with this language, is that practically no one knows about this one when they start. This levels the field for everybody starting the course. The second benefit is tthat it is fairly similar to Pascal and Modula-2 syntaxes, but allows for concepts like pointers and garbage collection to be explained. Basicly, it as good as any other OO language, but we have satisfactory results in teaching OO with this language. The incredible downside to this language, is that students will never ever use it again. That's the first year, in the second they are taught C++ in a strict Stroustrup way.
Our question has been whether Java would be better. Certainly, as an assistant, I would have said Java all the way 2 years ago, because I just like Java much more than Oberon (and incidently the students do too), but Java really misses out on a lot of key concepts that C++ do have. If Java would ever be taught on our university in C.S., it would replace Oberon, not C++. We consider C++ a difficult but necessary level of experience students should have endured, simply because when they will work in a company 3 years later, the majority will be either in Java or C++. BUT. In the Mathematics and Physics classes, we HAVE switched to Java. To these people, a language is more a tool than a subject on it's own. In fact, we didn't just teach them Java, we gave them a Java environment that allows for allmost functional linear programming, an interpreter which simply translates their code (which looks just like Java code, only everything is purely functional) into 'real' Java. So far, the results are promising. They actually get the concepts of recursion, which, for a mathematics and physics 1s't year class may be easy to get down on paper but harder to get done in reality. This is the first year we're doing this, so we have to consider the end results in a few weeks when exams are over. We have also taught Java to Physics PhD students, with very good results. Most of the programming in Physics labs is now in Java because it delivers faster than C++ and is simply easier to maintain and update.
From personal experience, I think C++ has a few benefits on it's own. First it is a valuable leach that leads into the UNIX world, something most people have never had the chance to experience before. You will simply have to get the UNIX concepts and commands and syntax and phylosophy right before you can say you're able to pull a C++ thing off on a server compiler. Second, I think C++ is obviously valuable once you are done studying. This should not be the major issue here, and we dislike the idea of studying C.S. because it makes good money, but it's a reality nonetheless. Thirdly, C++ has influenced more languages in the 10+ years it exists, and thus makes transition to these languages, including the Java language, easy. Fourth, c++ allmost offers every concept that an OO language should offer, so in the world of paradigma's it's a fantastic example of OO programming. Fifth, the syntax and semantics makes people think mechanically, and the ancient C subset allows for making the distinction between lowlevel and high level programming. Learning how to debug is one of the key elements that C++ offers and needs, and students will benefit from that knowledge. And finally, transitions form C++ to Java are easy, but the opposit transition is incredibly tough, even if you DO know C++. I've made the transitions about 4 times in the last few years, and I can tell you every time I had to switch back to C++ all hell breaks loose again. You simply forget the hard parts because that's what Java is, the 'nice' version without the pitfalls that C++ experienced in it's more or less uncertain growth.
I hope this has some valuable insights for you.
Actually such recommendation systems allready exist, but they are called 'datamining' and e-commerce. It's allready implemented at amazon.com where certain top-authors or top-buyers can suggest a list of 10 books for a certain genre. There are dozens of other sites on the net, typically all about buying and selling and commercial activity, so here are a few non-commercial ones you might want to check out, which were all created with enthusiasm and volunteers, not cash: ojuice.org, which is a fully customizeable database containing 'member information' of a specific underground culture movement. The movement in question, the demoscene, is not important in my point here. What is important is that these kind of member websites allow you to search the most respected people and query their tastes and preferences in the demoscene. Maybe that's not as instant single-click-away as Jamie has put it, but it's practically the same. Here's another example, or try this one, both examples based on "home and hobby electronic musicians" preferences.
I could easily give a dozen more, my point is that "cool" is inherently related to subcultures, rahter than 'big pictures'. The very fact that cool exists, means that you are different and have specific cultural 'features' people envy you for. Hence, cool doesn't work for 'big picture 20$ websites'.. it only works for small obscure and underground submovements you are not very likely to ever discover on your own.
Well a lot of people actually DO want their music for free, and much more to go with that. You could find them in Central City Napster at one time, now they are tagged with ip numbers in the wide cyberdesert called Gnutella. And if free music means free speech, free software, free ideas, free art experience, free source codes, free dvd codecs, then yes I think I want it too.
Whether I support an artist or not should in the end be MY choice, not the coice of some record exec who thinks he`s the king of the world. If things were "free", only one thing changes: the level of control. And quite frankly, many artists, supposedly "protected" by that kind of "control" in reality don`t have a choice either. They are used, often pushed and abused, and in the end simply forgotten. There is no 'art' here.
So why do we need to be able to fly from New York city to Tokyo in 2 hours anyway? Why can't people just learn to be hapy where they are?
Well it's less expensive because you don't need to bring liquid oxygen up with you. Normal jets burn fuel together with oxygen which needs to be compressed in order to be injected in the burning chamber. Because speeds are so high, the scramjet can simply take oxygen from outside because the pressure is allready high enough. The engine also doesn't need any rotors or moving parts because the need for a compressor is gone. On top of that, it's also faster. Wasn't technology supposed to increase comfort value?
See this scramjet tech explanation for more info.
Think again: Why would nasa rather not have spacetourists on THE (not "it's") international spacestation in the fist place? Because it's annoying and hinders work. If you were a space agency and someone is coming onboard, against your own will, someone who will probably fuck up anything if not your schedule, what would you do? Do you think it's possible to pretend he's not even there and just work onwards? Probably not. How would that look to the outside world, not just taxpaying america? It's obvious Nasa can't afford any bad PR, because in the long run that would mean it doesn't get the required budgets from the American government. I understand as a taxpayer that you'd be upset about the little vacation trip some idiots are allowed to afford these days, and I don't approve it either, but I think Nasa had little choice but to eat the cookie and play nice. Regardless whether you agree with the budgets it gets or not. So no, I don't think they were lying.
20M$ for Nasa is peanuts. For the russians who were on the brink of losing their spaceprogram completely, it was a much appreciated guesture (though they still need a lot more of these kind of gestures) which saved the day for a while anyway, and probably the Russian space era, so that it might assist (read: relief) other nations involved in the ISS project...
On a sidenote I wonder why my previous post was nailed down as flamebait, but I don't care. Basicly what I said was Nasa is doing a good job and Tito's statements don't make any sense, but maybe
yep, tourist traps are to be avoided. I`ve never ever been there myself actually :) but then again I couldn`t possibly make daytrips to southern europe from where I live :) ah well..
Tito is just a stupid tourist. Ofcourse the pictures will be great, but to know that the food ain`t been that great either.. 8-).. that`s like.. so ordinarily normal..
While Tito was happily flying and floating in his unquestionably trendy and snobby vacation resort, NASA ordered other astronauts to reschedule planned experiments and research so that they could take care of Tito and make sure his journey was a complete success (read: NASA BUDGET-PR). This statement he's made is like a tourist on the costa del sol saying "damn there's a lot of hotels here". It's totally fucked up and he need to get his head checked for sure. Space research is important not just because of the research up there, but because of the innovations on earth they bring, regardless whether even the tiniest bit of craft was launched or not.
well yes, obviously they want to protect the freedom of (payed for) speech (which THEY produced), you just need to read everyhing, including the fud between the lines.
By recording all your internet communications for 7 years. With helpful "guidance" from the US, the EU is going to propose its "cybercrime" treaty. Soon if you are in the US, you will hear the rhetoric "Well the EU is doing it, so should we". Read the docs at cryptome.org, it makes somber reading.
Do you seiously think EU law is going to stop anyone ? We allready have cybercrime laws in place in this fucked country as we speak, but that hasn`t stopped the people in it before. Of course they can allways sue 10 million people instead of just the latest 100 lucky ones (yes they actually did sue) but hey.. we`re Belgium where normal crime is easily seponnated (read: lack of personel in courthouses). Ofcourse they can also block outgoing and incoming routers to the rest of the world and log all traffic, but that`s just as practical as tryinng to impersonate a fishstick.
But it seems to me there is a bit of misconception on various points: There are no crimes in cyberspace. There is only incorrect law and ideology fools in meatspace. Hacking and cracking can be substituted by loging-in and reprogramming, and there is nothing intriniscally wrong about this. The _value_ of cyberspace and anything going on it (that means anything discretized in a digital form) is that what you estimate it to be, otherwise it is just the cost of current and telephony. Therefore, you can only loose money by spending that cost or seeing other people`s estimates drop. Harshly put, an economy based onsuch pure estimates is a gambling show, however, luckily this is a bit too harsh, as people add creative content to cyberspace. But by doing so they produce. The act of the production (=discretization of ideas) itself contains the risk of being ripped off. Tryig to prevent being ripped off is an understandable but week strategy, which depends on the mutual agreements between parties. Any one party can give up such an agreement anytime (and afterwards be sued for it of course). So people want to believe and forget about being paranoid, including the RIAA, because it fills pockets. As soon as parties turned out to not respect the superimposed 'agreement' in the form of a copyright, Napter came in, which has now given them a chance to sue, and possibly get even more money. The alternative would have been to sue everybody on this planet holding an ethernet link. Basicly the RIAA and MPAA are content providers that produce something which is non degenerate once digitized. They can`t possibly win this battle beause idiot A will allways be willing to give idiot B a sampled version of item C, which is not perfect but good enough for idiot B to pass it on to his idiotic friend D etc.. unfortunately the world is full of idiots, and there is only one RIAA and MPAA. How unfair, of course.