For all intents and purposes, the DSi in Europe and the DSi in America are the same unit. They use the same hardware, the same software. The programs that run on them are compiled from the same code.
Nintendo put extra money and time into R&D for region locking. The sole purpose of region locking is the prevention interoperability between devices sold in different regions. One of the effects of this is that I can't sell a used game to someone in Europe.
See, I'm not asking for Nintendo to go to extra effort to include interoperability. I'm asking that they not explicitly deny it by adding in code which makes it impossible. By their taking an action that prevents my sale, they are impeding first sale rights.
It's kind of naive the way you blame pirates for the excesses of the industry.
Excesses of the industry? We're talking about Nintendo handhelds here. You're probably the only one in history who has considered that market "excessive". (Whatever that's supposed to mean.)
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/excesses He's referring to the fourth definition. The implication is that Nintendo is greedy and trying to make as much money as possible at the expense of its customers.
Did you miss the part where we were talking about a handheld console? Right of first sale is NOT impeded by encryption of DS game cards any more than the NES lockout chip impeded the right of first sale.
But first sale rights are impeded by region locking. In this global market, I ought to be able to sell my DSi cartridge to someone in Europe. Unfortunately, they won't be able to play it.
Normally they don't. But in this case, they do. Nintendo has produced seven generations or so of handheld game consoles. Not a single one supported region codes until the DSi. It stands to reason that if Nintendo wasn't trying to lock out pirates with new protection technology, there's a good chance the region codes never would have made it into this system.
Why does this stand to reason? You're begging the question here--presupposing the conclusion as its own explanation. Critically thinking, what on earth does region coding have to do with piracy? Why have others in the industry embraced region coding? Did it have to do with piracy then?
By your phrasing, you didn't seem too sure about the container.
Let me guess--you're a scener who feels like he has some sort of reputation to uphold, and instead of continuing with civil discourse, you resort to chest-thumping.
A better response might have been:
Yeah, I knew that. I've actually been involved in video-encoding for a long time.
Or maybe just not feeling the need to respond at all.
Help make the Internet a better place--try not to be a dick when using it.
Most of the things that ripping groups do with AVI is non-standard. You can't use variable-bitrate audio in an AVI without breaking the standard. That means no mp3.
I don't know why it's currently a favorite, but like ZFS, the goal for Matroska is for it to be the end-all be-all of container formats. They eventually want to be able to have DVD-like menu systems, for example. How sweet would it be to be able to rip your DVD (including menus and special features?)
Matroska also supports an unlimited number of tracks. That's pretty neat, though I don't know if anyone's doing much with that.
As I noted in another post, it even allows for variable frame-rate (VFR) encodings, meaning that the frame-rate can change in the middle of the video stream. This addresses a common problem with encoding DVD rips from sources with mixed content.
Most modern television is filmed at 24fps (really 23.976). The film is then sometimes telecined to 30fps (really 29.97) to display on interlaced NTSC TVs. A goal for encoding is to reduce filesize--so if you can recover the 24fps video from the 30fps "source" (from a capture card or from a telecined DVD) then you can encode only 24fps instead of 30fps. In addition, you don't have interlacing in your output. The recovery process is called inverse telecine (IVTC.)
The problem comes when producers draw on the video. Special effects may be created at a different frame rate than the filmed scenes. IVTC will be unable to recover if the animation is at 30fps. You'll get awful-looking animated shots. Alternatively, you can try deinterlacing instead of IVTC, but then you get awful-looking motion in the non-animated segments.
Enter Matroska. Now you can IVTC when appropriate, deinterlace when appropriate, and simply keep the source frame-rate when appropriate. You get the best of all worlds, and all because you can store VFR video streams.
I'll probably get modded down for this, but I happened to glance at his username when he used the argumet about protecting children. It's very appropriate.
And suppose you're not farming, and just playing. Is all that gold still considered income because you *could* have sold it?
Well, you're not really selling it. See, it's all owned by the MMO owner. There's even something in the EULA about that. So if the IRS comes knocking on my door, I'll just pull out the EULA and explain that they should go talk to Blizzard.
(Not that I play WoW anymore, but you get the idea.)
Every single person I know that uses Chrome switched away from Firefox.
I know that's only a few data points in the pool, but you can't deny that people who don't "get" alternate browsers will probably never change away from IE.
When I zoom in, it's because the page itself is too small. Usually it's some Flash widget. Occasionally it's text.
When I zoom out (from default), it's because I want to see more text. Rarely, if ever, is it because I think that an image is too large.
Zooming one or the other, though, can disrupt the layout of the page, so in general, I think that the best policy is to zoom everything. I guess that optional text-only zoom would be nice, though.
I must have completely overlooked that, then. Damn:)
Not like the Treo is an acceptable smartphone these days. Software-wise, they're just ancient.:( It's really a shame, because I liked PalmOS about 10 years ago.
Please see this post. The fact that they cannot require ID to complete the transaction is part of the Visa requirements.
In fact, if the card isn't signed, it's not valid to be used. The merchant can (and should) choose not to complete the transaction on those grounds.
Most merchants skirt that rule if they see ID, because it's good enough for them and they don't want to lose the sale. That doesn't mean that it's within the rules to require ID, though.
That's fair, but in uncharted waters, that's a difficult decision to make. Does "making available" constitute infringement on copyright? Perhaps one of the rights associated with copyright is "the right to make available?"
In this particular case, I just don't think that it would be reasonable for a judge to outright dismiss it.
From page 29 of the Rules for Visa Merchants (currently the first hit on Google for the words "visa", "merchant", and "agreement".)
Requesting Cardholder ID When should you ask a cardholder for an official government ID? Although Visa rules do not preclude merchants from asking for cardholder ID, merchants cannot make an ID a condition of acceptance . Therefore, merchants cannot refuse to complete a purchase transaction because a cardholder refuses to provide ID . Visa believes merchants should not ask for ID as part of their regular card acceptance procedures . Laws in several states also make it illegal for merchants to write a cardholderâ(TM)s personal information, such as an address or phone number, on a sales receipt.
Although the notice states it is "without prejudice", under the federal rules a second voluntary dismissal operates as an adjudication on the merits.
This would constitute the second voluntary dismissal, the first being in the "John Doe" case in which it obtained the defendant's name and address.
I'm no lawyer, so I don't know what the limits of this are, but the site is making it sound like this second dismissal can be used by defense lawyers in other cases in a similar way that a defense win could have been used.
This sort of thing does happen, though. It happens during pre-trial, and with grand juries. The problem is that for justice to be served, you can only strike the most extreme cases. It seems as though it's rarely done in civil trials for that very reason--a preponderance of the evidence is a fairly low burden of proof, and as such, it's extremely hard to determine the frivolity of a case before all of the evidence is presented.
In criminal cases, DAs try to avoid cases where they can't win. As such, if a case is brought to trial, there's probably enough evidence to proceed. Of course, we must still use the grand jury to ensure this; furthermore, we cannot assume that just because the DA has brought a case, that there is enough evidence for a trial. All this does is explain why there are so few cases that go before a grand jury and do not have a full trial.
The device has a keyboard. It isn't a good keyboard, but even so it's a whole lot better than the keyboard on the iPhone - and the lack of a keyboard is a significant part of the reason I don't have an iPhone.
I've used several smartphones extensively, both with and without keyboards. I've had the most direct experience with a Treo 650, an HTC Apache, and an iPhone.
When I first started using each device, the hardware keyboards were without a doubt, much easier to use. After getting used to the iPhone keyboard, though, I have to say that it's perfectly adequate for text entry. One of the keys is to let it autocorrect for you. 90% of the time, it corrects to what I meant to type. Most of the failures are due to the use of acronyms that I haven't bothered to capitalize (and it will learn those.)
The contacts management software which was demo'ed is way better than the iPhone's.
That's not hard to imagine. Nevertheless, the iPhone was one of the first smartphones (and definitely the first one I encountered) to have a "favorites" list. This let me really cut back on the cruft while still having everyone in the corp and their dog in my phone.
But the iPhone, despite being very pretty, isn't actually a very good telephone
reception is poor
There were problems with reception on 3G at first. Those were fixed in an update. I now never have problems getting a full 3G signal, and I don't get dropouts anymore. This is in the US.
battery life isn't good
It's quite on par with other recent smartphones.
sound quality is so-so
What do you mean by this, exactly?
It's a great phone for people who don't use a mobile phone for their work - but most people do.
When the iPhone first came out, they definitely weren't targeting business people who use their cell phones constantly for work. They were targeting the every-person. With the 2.0 software release, they started targeting business users more heavily, and they've got a little ways to go to be sure. I think it's an overall well-balanced device, though.
Of course, the iPhone's killer app is the iTunes store. For non-technical users it is quite simply the easiest way to locate, buy and install software to the phone. Palm (and Google and RIM and Microsoft) have to equal that, and it will not be easy.
I don't think that they'll be able to equal the App Store for a long, long while. Apple's got a rather large portion of the "smarter than a normal cellphone" market. The same thing that keeps people writing apps for Windows will keep people writing apps for the iPhone.
All that said, I picked the iPhone for two reasons. One is the browser, and the other is the mail client. At the time, no other phone came close to Safari on the iPhone for rendering quickly and correctly. As it is, I've only seen one other browser come close--the 9.x release of Opera Mobile. It also uses a viewport with smooth zooming and Opera's fantastic rendering engine. It's quite a bit slower, though, and uses quite a bit of memory.
Slashdot Mirror
Meh. XKCD did it first.
http://xkcd.com/527/
Let me try this tack.
For all intents and purposes, the DSi in Europe and the DSi in America are the same unit. They use the same hardware, the same software. The programs that run on them are compiled from the same code.
Nintendo put extra money and time into R&D for region locking. The sole purpose of region locking is the prevention interoperability between devices sold in different regions. One of the effects of this is that I can't sell a used game to someone in Europe.
See, I'm not asking for Nintendo to go to extra effort to include interoperability. I'm asking that they not explicitly deny it by adding in code which makes it impossible. By their taking an action that prevents my sale, they are impeding first sale rights.
That's not an artificial control placed by the company, so no.
It's kind of naive the way you blame pirates for the excesses of the industry.
Excesses of the industry? We're talking about Nintendo handhelds here. You're probably the only one in history who has considered that market "excessive". (Whatever that's supposed to mean.)
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/excesses
He's referring to the fourth definition. The implication is that Nintendo is greedy and trying to make as much money as possible at the expense of its customers.
Did you miss the part where we were talking about a handheld console? Right of first sale is NOT impeded by encryption of DS game cards any more than the NES lockout chip impeded the right of first sale.
But first sale rights are impeded by region locking. In this global market, I ought to be able to sell my DSi cartridge to someone in Europe. Unfortunately, they won't be able to play it.
Normally they don't. But in this case, they do. Nintendo has produced seven generations or so of handheld game consoles. Not a single one supported region codes until the DSi. It stands to reason that if Nintendo wasn't trying to lock out pirates with new protection technology, there's a good chance the region codes never would have made it into this system.
Why does this stand to reason? You're begging the question here--presupposing the conclusion as its own explanation. Critically thinking, what on earth does region coding have to do with piracy? Why have others in the industry embraced region coding? Did it have to do with piracy then?
They'll continue to push the issue. People don't change their opinions based upon facts.
Like I said--the way you phrased it sounded like you weren't sure. I think my post was perfectly reasonable, in context.
Probably wasn't very standards compliant, though.
By your phrasing, you didn't seem too sure about the container.
Let me guess--you're a scener who feels like he has some sort of reputation to uphold, and instead of continuing with civil discourse, you resort to chest-thumping.
A better response might have been:
Yeah, I knew that. I've actually been involved in video-encoding for a long time.
Or maybe just not feeling the need to respond at all.
Help make the Internet a better place--try not to be a dick when using it.
Most of the things that ripping groups do with AVI is non-standard. You can't use variable-bitrate audio in an AVI without breaking the standard. That means no mp3.
I don't know why it's currently a favorite, but like ZFS, the goal for Matroska is for it to be the end-all be-all of container formats. They eventually want to be able to have DVD-like menu systems, for example. How sweet would it be to be able to rip your DVD (including menus and special features?)
Matroska also supports an unlimited number of tracks. That's pretty neat, though I don't know if anyone's doing much with that.
As I noted in another post, it even allows for variable frame-rate (VFR) encodings, meaning that the frame-rate can change in the middle of the video stream. This addresses a common problem with encoding DVD rips from sources with mixed content.
Most modern television is filmed at 24fps (really 23.976). The film is then sometimes telecined to 30fps (really 29.97) to display on interlaced NTSC TVs. A goal for encoding is to reduce filesize--so if you can recover the 24fps video from the 30fps "source" (from a capture card or from a telecined DVD) then you can encode only 24fps instead of 30fps. In addition, you don't have interlacing in your output. The recovery process is called inverse telecine (IVTC.)
The problem comes when producers draw on the video. Special effects may be created at a different frame rate than the filmed scenes. IVTC will be unable to recover if the animation is at 30fps. You'll get awful-looking animated shots. Alternatively, you can try deinterlacing instead of IVTC, but then you get awful-looking motion in the non-animated segments.
Enter Matroska. Now you can IVTC when appropriate, deinterlace when appropriate, and simply keep the source frame-rate when appropriate. You get the best of all worlds, and all because you can store VFR video streams.
MKV also supports variable frame rate encodings, which is very useful for encoding animation.
I'll probably get modded down for this, but I happened to glance at his username when he used the argumet about protecting children. It's very appropriate.
And suppose you're not farming, and just playing. Is all that gold still considered income because you *could* have sold it?
Well, you're not really selling it. See, it's all owned by the MMO owner. There's even something in the EULA about that. So if the IRS comes knocking on my door, I'll just pull out the EULA and explain that they should go talk to Blizzard.
(Not that I play WoW anymore, but you get the idea.)
Every single person I know that uses Chrome switched away from Firefox.
I know that's only a few data points in the pool, but you can't deny that people who don't "get" alternate browsers will probably never change away from IE.
I'll throw in my two cents.
When I zoom in, it's because the page itself is too small. Usually it's some Flash widget. Occasionally it's text.
When I zoom out (from default), it's because I want to see more text. Rarely, if ever, is it because I think that an image is too large.
Zooming one or the other, though, can disrupt the layout of the page, so in general, I think that the best policy is to zoom everything. I guess that optional text-only zoom would be nice, though.
I must have completely overlooked that, then. Damn :)
Not like the Treo is an acceptable smartphone these days. Software-wise, they're just ancient. :( It's really a shame, because I liked PalmOS about 10 years ago.
Please see this post. The fact that they cannot require ID to complete the transaction is part of the Visa requirements.
In fact, if the card isn't signed, it's not valid to be used. The merchant can (and should) choose not to complete the transaction on those grounds.
Most merchants skirt that rule if they see ID, because it's good enough for them and they don't want to lose the sale. That doesn't mean that it's within the rules to require ID, though.
I don't know how other credit cards are handled.
That's fair, but in uncharted waters, that's a difficult decision to make. Does "making available" constitute infringement on copyright? Perhaps one of the rights associated with copyright is "the right to make available?"
In this particular case, I just don't think that it would be reasonable for a judge to outright dismiss it.
Read my post in context with the one to which I replied. He was talking about battery life. I'll quote the relevant portions:
Yep, battery life on the iPhone is awful...
iPhone standby - 300 hours, talk - 5 hours 3G or 10 2G
Blackberry storm standby Ã" 300 hours, talk - 5.5 hours 3G or 6 2G
Nokia n96 standby 200 hours, talk - 2.7 hours 3G, 4 hours 2G
G1 standby Ã" 200 hours, talk - 5.5 hours 3G or 6 2G
Looks like the iPhone wins on every count.
Only the poster missed the part where the iPhone did not win on battery life while using 3G (when compared to the Storm or G1.)
I have an iPhone, and I love it. But we've got to be fair when comparing things.
The article implies that precedent is set, as this is the second voluntary dismissal on the part of the plaintiff.
From page 29 of the Rules for Visa Merchants (currently the first hit on Google for the words "visa", "merchant", and "agreement".)
Requesting Cardholder ID
When should you ask a cardholder for an official government ID?
Although Visa rules do not preclude merchants from asking for cardholder ID, merchants cannot make an ID a condition of acceptance . Therefore, merchants cannot refuse to complete a purchase transaction because a cardholder refuses to provide ID . Visa believes merchants should not ask for ID as part of their regular card acceptance procedures . Laws in several states also make it illegal for merchants to write a cardholderâ(TM)s personal information, such as an address or phone number, on a sales receipt.
The longest I've ever had the battery last was about 2.5 days, and that was with almost no use whatsoever.
When I'm on holiday or sick and not taking calls, my iPhone 3G will last for almost a week before getting tired and asking for food.
But I was going solely on the stats provided by the poster to whom I replied. Stats were posted, and an erroneous conclusion was drawn.
Ah! But from the article:
Although the notice states it is "without prejudice", under the federal rules a second voluntary dismissal operates as an adjudication on the merits.
This would constitute the second voluntary dismissal, the first being in the "John Doe" case in which it obtained the defendant's name and address.
I'm no lawyer, so I don't know what the limits of this are, but the site is making it sound like this second dismissal can be used by defense lawyers in other cases in a similar way that a defense win could have been used.
This sort of thing does happen, though. It happens during pre-trial, and with grand juries. The problem is that for justice to be served, you can only strike the most extreme cases. It seems as though it's rarely done in civil trials for that very reason--a preponderance of the evidence is a fairly low burden of proof, and as such, it's extremely hard to determine the frivolity of a case before all of the evidence is presented.
In criminal cases, DAs try to avoid cases where they can't win. As such, if a case is brought to trial, there's probably enough evidence to proceed. Of course, we must still use the grand jury to ensure this; furthermore, we cannot assume that just because the DA has brought a case, that there is enough evidence for a trial. All this does is explain why there are so few cases that go before a grand jury and do not have a full trial.
The device has a keyboard. It isn't a good keyboard, but even so it's a whole lot better than the keyboard on the iPhone - and the lack of a keyboard is a significant part of the reason I don't have an iPhone.
I've used several smartphones extensively, both with and without keyboards. I've had the most direct experience with a Treo 650, an HTC Apache, and an iPhone.
When I first started using each device, the hardware keyboards were without a doubt, much easier to use. After getting used to the iPhone keyboard, though, I have to say that it's perfectly adequate for text entry. One of the keys is to let it autocorrect for you. 90% of the time, it corrects to what I meant to type. Most of the failures are due to the use of acronyms that I haven't bothered to capitalize (and it will learn those.)
The contacts management software which was demo'ed is way better than the iPhone's.
That's not hard to imagine. Nevertheless, the iPhone was one of the first smartphones (and definitely the first one I encountered) to have a "favorites" list. This let me really cut back on the cruft while still having everyone in the corp and their dog in my phone.
But the iPhone, despite being very pretty, isn't actually a very good telephone
reception is poor
There were problems with reception on 3G at first. Those were fixed in an update. I now never have problems getting a full 3G signal, and I don't get dropouts anymore. This is in the US.
battery life isn't good
It's quite on par with other recent smartphones.
sound quality is so-so
What do you mean by this, exactly?
It's a great phone for people who don't use a mobile phone for their work - but most people do.
When the iPhone first came out, they definitely weren't targeting business people who use their cell phones constantly for work. They were targeting the every-person. With the 2.0 software release, they started targeting business users more heavily, and they've got a little ways to go to be sure. I think it's an overall well-balanced device, though.
Of course, the iPhone's killer app is the iTunes store. For non-technical users it is quite simply the easiest way to locate, buy and install software to the phone. Palm (and Google and RIM and Microsoft) have to equal that, and it will not be easy.
I don't think that they'll be able to equal the App Store for a long, long while. Apple's got a rather large portion of the "smarter than a normal cellphone" market. The same thing that keeps people writing apps for Windows will keep people writing apps for the iPhone.
All that said, I picked the iPhone for two reasons. One is the browser, and the other is the mail client. At the time, no other phone came close to Safari on the iPhone for rendering quickly and correctly. As it is, I've only seen one other browser come close--the 9.x release of Opera Mobile. It also uses a viewport with smooth zooming and Opera's fantastic rendering engine. It's quite a bit slower, though, and uses quite a bit of memory.
Erm, except for 3G usage, where the G1 and the Storm beat it, apparently.
And frankly, that's all I use my iPhone for.