Baseball is a spectator sport with tense drama for those who can appreciate it.
Chess is a nuanced game in which those who know the major strategies can perceive the structure of what players are doing, look several moves ahead, and evaluate the game.
IMHO, Golf is pretty freakin' boring to watch, but the body mechanics of a great golf swing (and the billiards-like precision of a long putt) are at least interesting to witness. Also, there's the psychological aspect. A two-stroke leader in a golf match is only a couple of tiny mistakes away from losing the lead, and being a good golfer requires being able to handle the fact that a tiny hitch in just one of your swings could cost you half your income for the year.
Poker on TV is considerable less popular, mainly because most people don't understand the game. The best professional poker players "grind" out their living in straight-up games, but tournament play is what you usually see on TV because it presents the chance of dramatic upsets and "home run" plays.
Video games, on the other hand, are carefully crafted to amuse the people playing them, with no thought given at all to spectator value. If you are wondering why so many of us are scoffing at the idea of televised gaming, go to your local arcade and watch over somebody's shoulder for a half hour. The mind-numbing dullness of what you are doing will tell you everything you need to know about why gaming on TV is doomed.
Don't be so patronising. I admit my spelling isn't perfect and my grammar sucks, but it doesn't mean you have to generalise and infer that Australia is a country of illiterate idiots. Where you Mr Perfect at 17? (Please say no or you will ruin my point or simply look arrogant)
Of course I "where" not!
My post wasn't meant to be "patronising", it was meant to be mocking and condescending. I'm making fun of you, you see. I thought it would be a funny dig at you to "generalise" about your home country like that.
17 is old enough to know how to use spell-check software if you need it (Clue: you really really do! All those words I repeated in bold? Wrong.), and it is certainly old enough to know how to say "debacle" correctly.
Stop browsing slashdot and do your homework for once. You might even learn to spell, or at least how to speak properly.;)
Make one of your own. Share with your friend. C'mon, folks, the time is now to be juvenile!
Like the old saying goes: "The Internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it." Well, dammit, that might be true, but I'm tired of people damaging the Internet! Let's do what we can to make them unhappy.
JSRF was a "rollerblade & grafitti" arcade-style game, which was actually pretty darn fun. The city was huge, and just exploring all the places you could get to via tricks (such as grinding along power lines, skating along inside walls of pipelines, stunt-jumping off fire escapes, etc.) was kind of neat. There were missions, but there were also lots of opportunities for open-ended goofing around. It's sort of like Grand Theft Auto, except all your crimes are petty misdemeanors, and the soundtrack is mostly hip-hop.
It wasn't a huge seller until the cheaper re-release, when it was put in most of the "X-Box plus two free games" bundles out there. It was never a "buy a console just for this game" kind of game, and not terribly challenging, but it's one of those games that turns out to be a lot more fun than you would expect just from looking at the demo.
The original Soul Calibur (on the Dreamcast) was pretty good for it's time, but 2 and 3 are a huge let-down, IMHO. If you think the DOA series are "button masher" games, then you clearly never learned the best holds and counter-moves. For multi-player fighting, it's a hell of a lot deeper than SC. I will acknowldge that the SC series offers better solo play, but if I want to play a game solo I'll play a game on my computer. I keep the console around for gaming with friends, and for that purpose, DOA owns.
As for HALO & HALO 2, they don't do much for me. They are a lot more interesting than most of the FPS games out there, but I just can't get used to playing one without a keyboard & mouse.
Turismo vs. Gotham? No opinion... Racing games just don't thrill me the way they did in 1986. All that's really changed in that time is a little more detail on the road, which is blurring by too fast to see it anyway.
I agree with the grandparent post that Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City are the best two games on either console. The chance of a half-as-good-as-those GTA title eventually coming out for the PS3 is the single biggest factor holding me back from jumping on the 360 bandwagon this Winter.
I know alot of people who say dee-bark-ull... That is how i have always heard it
Yeah, but you thought you heard it on that.wav file when it wasn't there, too.
So what if I say it differently to you ? I mean, go have a cry.
I just noticed the "au" in your e-mail address, and suddenly it all makes sense.
You see, in the English-speaking world, we don't automatically add an R when pronouncing that particular vowel sound. Those of you "down under" are known for having a teensy-weensy bit of an accent.
"Debacle" is neither spelled nor pronounced with an R in it anywhere. Were you from England or America, I would take your odd pronunciation of it as a shocking display of illiterate ignorance, but as you are from Australia, I understand completely. You were raised in special circumstances, so exceptions must be made.
Heck, I'll even give you a pass on using "spelt" as if it were the past tense form of "spell." Nor will I make a fuss about the fact that you wrote "a lot" as if it were one word. You're from Australia, and not likely to know any better.
Now that we've cleared that up, to say farewell in the language of your people: G'day to ya, Bruce!
But in the predictable future, you can kiss you hard-drive-video-archive solution goodbye.
I predict a future where fast computer storage media is even cheaper, and all corporate efforts to prevent duplication via technical solutions will still be circumvented with great ease.
Look at what has happened with audio DVDs. Yes, they sound better than CDs do. Even some people who are not "golden ear" types can tell the difference, especially in cases of recordings that use 5.1 surround to full advantage, yet pretty much NOBODY is buying them.
Why? Because the CD's we have now are regarded as "good enough." For most pop recordings, there's not much to be gained in a format change the way there was going from cassette to CD. Also, nobody wants to buy music in a format they can't rip to their MP3 player, because that's how they spend most of their time listening to it.
With DVD, they've painted themselves into the same corner. The DVD is cheap, looks almost as good as LD on old sets, and looks almost as good as HDTV on new sets. Nobody is going to buy a new copy of "The Fabulous Baker Boys" on a new format, no matter how much more details you can see the fibers of Michelle Pfeiffer's red dress while she crawls across the piano.
A few years from now, it won't just be geeks like me who see value in archiving their movies on computer storage. People are getting used to the concept thanks to PVR tech which lets them build libraries of their favorite shows. As storage continues to plummet in price, one can easilly forsee a time when most middle-class homes will have vast libraries of movies and TV shows, all a button-click on the remote control away.
Also, if the new format which requires you to replace everything in your living room just to use it, there's no way in hell anybody's going to bother with it, and the industry will be left flailing around for some other "next big thing" in multimedia.
GTA is over. Nothing new or innovative is going to come out of Rockstar, not least because of corporate screwups.
I really hope you're wrong about that. GTA III is still one of my favorite games, and I'd cheerfully line up at midnight with the other rubes for a new PS3 if it had a game that measures up to it available on launch day.
In other words, more per day than Cable TV, phone service, broadband Internet access in most cities, a "full" NetFlix account, PBS membership, a good company health plan, a daily frou-frou coffee drink at Starbucks, or the life-saving donation you made to that big-eyed little starving kid on the late-night infomercials.
Last time I checked PS2's were still outselling XBox 360's
Pfft!
Of course it's outselling the 360 so far! There have been probably more PS2s shoplifted than the total number X-Box 360s manufactured! Last time I checked, they've shipped something like a total of eight of them, and two of those went to Japan (where they did not sell.)
Also, previous-generation consoles in general are selling well, because the consoles are under a hundred bucks, and the games cost "$10 or trade for rifle."
Heck, I own a current X-Box, and I'm tempted to pick up a PS2 myself, using the change lodged in the cushions of my couch.
The longer the delay, the more time the XBox 360 will have on the shelves as the lone next-gen console...
Not to be a Microsoft basher, but the 360 has mostly been spending its time not on the shelves, hasn't it?
All these hardware delays are making it very obvious why Apple dropped IBM in favor of Intel. The previous (Intel-based) X-Box didn't have these sorts of massive shortages to deal with.
A Spring launch of the PS3, even if it's in a completely different market, would be good news for those of us considering the X-Box 360, but have been waiting to see how Sony's new console stacks up against it.
I'm especially interested in what the next console iteration of GTA looks like. Here's hoping Rockstar does away with pedalling little bikes through the "hood", and "playing" weight training simulators, and gets back to making games that are actually... you know... fun.
Well, enough for today. Good day my friend, and sleep well with your doors unlocked.
You can feel free to sleep well with a locked handle on a paper-thin door securing your house.
I'll stick with a deadbolt on a proper door when I need security, and the welcoming presence of an unlocked door for my friends and neighbors when I'm home and awake, thanks anyway.
Your experiment requires that I watch "Episode 2" more than once, something which I would not wish upon my worst enemy, let alone something I would ever subject myself to.
The rippers which defeat Ripguard out of the gate (so far) are PC-based, but the next revision (r13) of Mac the Ripper 3.0 (beta) will do it, and expected to be released within the next couple of weeks.
(You need to donate to the Mac the Ripper product to use their beta. Once it is released as the replacement for 2.6.6, it will be free.)
Go to the ripdifferent.com forums for the details.
Is a screen door locked more or less secure than a screen door not locked? Of course it is more secure, even if by a tiny amount.
THAT is my point, door wide open or unlocked aside. Point still stands.
More secure against what, exactly?
It won't stop criminals. Non-criminals won't walk into your home without permission.
So, what exactly does a lock on a screen door protect against?
That was my point. It's not much of an added layer of security, but it is an added layer of inconvenience FOR YOU. Our lives are full of way too much of that kind of "security."
It will be just like someone at Ars Technica wrote: your HD player sometimes won't play your legal HD content on your computer or HDTV. But it will always play illegaly downloaded HD content from the Internet -- talk about shooting yourself in a foot.
I'm having that exact problem now with a conventional DVD that uses Macrovision's new "Ripguard" technology.
My DVD of "Cowboy Beebop Remix, Volume 4" will not even play on my Mac DVD player, however there are severall good rip programs out there which will completely bypass Ripguard and create a perfect copy of my DVD which plays perfectly on my Mac, and allows me to burn a DL DVD which will play on pretty much everything.
That said, a good DVD upscaled by a good upscaler is indistinguishable from the quality of a real 720p HDTV signal on my set. Maybe my 32" set is too small, or I don't sit close enough to it. When I can see film grain and fingerprints on set props on movie DVDs, I have to ask myself whether I really want more resolution.
I have a 119" 720p projector, and you will be pleased to hear that the difference between HDTV (including broadcasts in native 720p) vs. well-upscaled anamorphic DVD is very, very subtle.
To be honest, I notice the "grain" of the reflective coating on my projection screen more than the pixilation of the DVD image, and I gotta be pretty damn close to the screen while looking at a nearly-all-white image (such as the backgrounds for my March of the Penguins DVD) to even preceive that.
DVD, with good upscale logic, looks DAMN GOOD on an HDTV set. Archiving it on a hard drive fills 5-8 GB without any further compression, and it was within my means to archive pretty much my entire DVD collection that way. With the emerging high-def DVD formats, that will no longer be practical, so I don't even care what protection they employ against ripping & copying, because I probably won't bother to buy them in the first place.
Damn, I should have closed that tag properly. Now the neighbor's dog is probably going to walk in and pee all over my post, and he doesn't even need to know how to work the latch!
So, your neighbor's dog knows how to work the latch on your screen door, but can't manage to bust through the screen? Okay, then I guess it does make sense to lock it after all. All those feeble dogs with opposable thumbs can be a very challenging situation.
Remember, there is no absolutes. Security is about making it difficult for others to break in. How difficult is your definition of an 'acceptable security'.
Which is why locking a screen door is utterly pointless. Anybody who is willing to get in against your wishes is presented with almost no additional difficulty in doing so. If there's any chance at all of an unwelcome visitor entering your home, you should close the actual door and lock it.
Locking a screen door is a terrific example of a security measure which does not offer much, if any, added security, yet makes your life a little bit more of a hassle.
Slashdot Mirror
Baseball is a spectator sport with tense drama for those who can appreciate it.
Chess is a nuanced game in which those who know the major strategies can perceive the structure of what players are doing, look several moves ahead, and evaluate the game.
IMHO, Golf is pretty freakin' boring to watch, but the body mechanics of a great golf swing (and the billiards-like precision of a long putt) are at least interesting to witness. Also, there's the psychological aspect. A two-stroke leader in a golf match is only a couple of tiny mistakes away from losing the lead, and being a good golfer requires being able to handle the fact that a tiny hitch in just one of your swings could cost you half your income for the year.
Poker on TV is considerable less popular, mainly because most people don't understand the game. The best professional poker players "grind" out their living in straight-up games, but tournament play is what you usually see on TV because it presents the chance of dramatic upsets and "home run" plays.
Video games, on the other hand, are carefully crafted to amuse the people playing them, with no thought given at all to spectator value. If you are wondering why so many of us are scoffing at the idea of televised gaming, go to your local arcade and watch over somebody's shoulder for a half hour. The mind-numbing dullness of what you are doing will tell you everything you need to know about why gaming on TV is doomed.
So, is it true that you can only watch old people playing computer games in South Korea?
Who gives a flying fuck about that?
A flying fuck... Isn't that one of Kasumi's finishing moves?
Don't be so patronising. I admit my spelling isn't perfect and my grammar sucks, but it doesn't mean you have to generalise and infer that Australia is a country of illiterate idiots.
;)
Where you Mr Perfect at 17? (Please say no or you will ruin my point or simply look arrogant)
Of course I "where" not!
My post wasn't meant to be "patronising", it was meant to be mocking and condescending. I'm making fun of you, you see. I thought it would be a funny dig at you to "generalise" about your home country like that.
17 is old enough to know how to use spell-check software if you need it (Clue: you really really do! All those words I repeated in bold? Wrong.), and it is certainly old enough to know how to say "debacle" correctly.
Stop browsing slashdot and do your homework for once. You might even learn to spell, or at least how to speak properly.
G'day!
My response to people who are too easily "offended" by funny pictures, disrespectful online names, etc.:
My very own Mohammed cartoon
Make one of your own. Share with your friend. C'mon, folks, the time is now to be juvenile!
Like the old saying goes: "The Internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it." Well, dammit, that might be true, but I'm tired of people damaging the Internet! Let's do what we can to make them unhappy.
JSRF (dunno what that is but nobody bought it)
JSRF was a "rollerblade & grafitti" arcade-style game, which was actually pretty darn fun. The city was huge, and just exploring all the places you could get to via tricks (such as grinding along power lines, skating along inside walls of pipelines, stunt-jumping off fire escapes, etc.) was kind of neat. There were missions, but there were also lots of opportunities for open-ended goofing around. It's sort of like Grand Theft Auto, except all your crimes are petty misdemeanors, and the soundtrack is mostly hip-hop.
It wasn't a huge seller until the cheaper re-release, when it was put in most of the "X-Box plus two free games" bundles out there. It was never a "buy a console just for this game" kind of game, and not terribly challenging, but it's one of those games that turns out to be a lot more fun than you would expect just from looking at the demo.
The original Soul Calibur (on the Dreamcast) was pretty good for it's time, but 2 and 3 are a huge let-down, IMHO. If you think the DOA series are "button masher" games, then you clearly never learned the best holds and counter-moves. For multi-player fighting, it's a hell of a lot deeper than SC. I will acknowldge that the SC series offers better solo play, but if I want to play a game solo I'll play a game on my computer. I keep the console around for gaming with friends, and for that purpose, DOA owns.
As for HALO & HALO 2, they don't do much for me. They are a lot more interesting than most of the FPS games out there, but I just can't get used to playing one without a keyboard & mouse.
Turismo vs. Gotham? No opinion... Racing games just don't thrill me the way they did in 1986. All that's really changed in that time is a little more detail on the road, which is blurring by too fast to see it anyway.
I agree with the grandparent post that Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City are the best two games on either console. The chance of a half-as-good-as-those GTA title eventually coming out for the PS3 is the single biggest factor holding me back from jumping on the 360 bandwagon this Winter.
I know alot of people who say dee-bark-ull ... That is how i have always heard it
.wav file when it wasn't there, too.
Yeah, but you thought you heard it on that
So what if I say it differently to you ? I mean, go have a cry.
I just noticed the "au" in your e-mail address, and suddenly it all makes sense.
You see, in the English-speaking world, we don't automatically add an R when pronouncing that particular vowel sound. Those of you "down under" are known for having a teensy-weensy bit of an accent.
"Debacle" is neither spelled nor pronounced with an R in it anywhere. Were you from England or America, I would take your odd pronunciation of it as a shocking display of illiterate ignorance, but as you are from Australia, I understand completely. You were raised in special circumstances, so exceptions must be made.
Heck, I'll even give you a pass on using "spelt" as if it were the past tense form of "spell." Nor will I make a fuss about the fact that you wrote "a lot" as if it were one word. You're from Australia, and not likely to know any better.
Now that we've cleared that up, to say farewell in the language of your people: G'day to ya, Bruce!
But in the predictable future, you can kiss you hard-drive-video-archive solution goodbye.
I predict a future where fast computer storage media is even cheaper, and all corporate efforts to prevent duplication via technical solutions will still be circumvented with great ease.
Look at what has happened with audio DVDs. Yes, they sound better than CDs do. Even some people who are not "golden ear" types can tell the difference, especially in cases of recordings that use 5.1 surround to full advantage, yet pretty much NOBODY is buying them.
Why? Because the CD's we have now are regarded as "good enough." For most pop recordings, there's not much to be gained in a format change the way there was going from cassette to CD. Also, nobody wants to buy music in a format they can't rip to their MP3 player, because that's how they spend most of their time listening to it.
With DVD, they've painted themselves into the same corner. The DVD is cheap, looks almost as good as LD on old sets, and looks almost as good as HDTV on new sets. Nobody is going to buy a new copy of "The Fabulous Baker Boys" on a new format, no matter how much more details you can see the fibers of Michelle Pfeiffer's red dress while she crawls across the piano.
A few years from now, it won't just be geeks like me who see value in archiving their movies on computer storage. People are getting used to the concept thanks to PVR tech which lets them build libraries of their favorite shows. As storage continues to plummet in price, one can easilly forsee a time when most middle-class homes will have vast libraries of movies and TV shows, all a button-click on the remote control away.
Also, if the new format which requires you to replace everything in your living room just to use it, there's no way in hell anybody's going to bother with it, and the industry will be left flailing around for some other "next big thing" in multimedia.
GTA is over. Nothing new or innovative is going to come out of Rockstar, not least because of corporate screwups.
I really hope you're wrong about that. GTA III is still one of my favorite games, and I'd cheerfully line up at midnight with the other rubes for a new PS3 if it had a game that measures up to it available on launch day.
$2300 / 1825 = $1.26 / day
In other words, more per day than Cable TV, phone service, broadband Internet access in most cities, a "full" NetFlix account, PBS membership, a good company health plan, a daily frou-frou coffee drink at Starbucks, or the life-saving donation you made to that big-eyed little starving kid on the late-night infomercials.
Last time I checked PS2's were still outselling XBox 360's
Pfft!
Of course it's outselling the 360 so far! There have been probably more PS2s shoplifted than the total number X-Box 360s manufactured! Last time I checked, they've shipped something like a total of eight of them, and two of those went to Japan (where they did not sell.)
Also, previous-generation consoles in general are selling well, because the consoles are under a hundred bucks, and the games cost "$10 or trade for rifle."
Heck, I own a current X-Box, and I'm tempted to pick up a PS2 myself, using the change lodged in the cushions of my couch.
The longer the delay, the more time the XBox 360 will have on the shelves as the lone next-gen console...
Not to be a Microsoft basher, but the 360 has mostly been spending its time not on the shelves, hasn't it?
All these hardware delays are making it very obvious why Apple dropped IBM in favor of Intel. The previous (Intel-based) X-Box didn't have these sorts of massive shortages to deal with.
A Spring launch of the PS3, even if it's in a completely different market, would be good news for those of us considering the X-Box 360, but have been waiting to see how Sony's new console stacks up against it.
I'm especially interested in what the next console iteration of GTA looks like. Here's hoping Rockstar does away with pedalling little bikes through the "hood", and "playing" weight training simulators, and gets back to making games that are actually... you know... fun.
Well, enough for today. Good day my friend, and sleep well with your doors unlocked.
You can feel free to sleep well with a locked handle on a paper-thin door securing your house.
I'll stick with a deadbolt on a proper door when I need security, and the welcoming presence of an unlocked door for my friends and neighbors when I'm home and awake, thanks anyway.
Your experiment requires that I watch "Episode 2" more than once, something which I would not wish upon my worst enemy, let alone something I would ever subject myself to.
So you don't think there is anything in between outright criminals and non-criminals.
I don't think there is anything between trespassers and non-tresspassers, no. Care to tell me what they are, oh enlightened and nuanced one?
The rippers which defeat Ripguard out of the gate (so far) are PC-based, but the next revision (r13) of Mac the Ripper 3.0 (beta) will do it, and expected to be released within the next couple of weeks.
(You need to donate to the Mac the Ripper product to use their beta. Once it is released as the replacement for 2.6.6, it will be free.)
Go to the ripdifferent.com forums for the details.
Is a screen door locked more or less secure than a screen door not locked? Of course it is more secure, even if by a tiny amount.
THAT is my point, door wide open or unlocked aside. Point still stands.
More secure against what, exactly?
It won't stop criminals.
Non-criminals won't walk into your home without permission.
So, what exactly does a lock on a screen door protect against?
That was my point. It's not much of an added layer of security, but it is an added layer of inconvenience FOR YOU. Our lives are full of way too much of that kind of "security."
It will be just like someone at Ars Technica wrote: your HD player sometimes won't play your legal HD content on your computer or HDTV. But it will always play illegaly downloaded HD content from the Internet -- talk about shooting yourself in a foot.
I'm having that exact problem now with a conventional DVD that uses Macrovision's new "Ripguard" technology.
My DVD of "Cowboy Beebop Remix, Volume 4" will not even play on my Mac DVD player, however there are severall good rip programs out there which will completely bypass Ripguard and create a perfect copy of my DVD which plays perfectly on my Mac, and allows me to burn a DL DVD which will play on pretty much everything.
That said, a good DVD upscaled by a good upscaler is indistinguishable from the quality of a real 720p HDTV signal on my set. Maybe my 32" set is too small, or I don't sit close enough to it. When I can see film grain and fingerprints on set props on movie DVDs, I have to ask myself whether I really want more resolution.
I have a 119" 720p projector, and you will be pleased to hear that the difference between HDTV (including broadcasts in native 720p) vs. well-upscaled anamorphic DVD is very, very subtle.
To be honest, I notice the "grain" of the reflective coating on my projection screen more than the pixilation of the DVD image, and I gotta be pretty damn close to the screen while looking at a nearly-all-white image (such as the backgrounds for my March of the Penguins DVD) to even preceive that.
DVD, with good upscale logic, looks DAMN GOOD on an HDTV set. Archiving it on a hard drive fills 5-8 GB without any further compression, and it was within my means to archive pretty much my entire DVD collection that way. With the emerging high-def DVD formats, that will no longer be practical, so I don't even care what protection they employ against ripping & copying, because I probably won't bother to buy them in the first place.
and locking it./i>
Damn, I should have closed that tag properly. Now the neighbor's dog is probably going to walk in and pee all over my post, and he doesn't even need to know how to work the latch!
If your door is wide open, that's just likely to happen. Door closed it is more difficult.
Actually, now that I look at your post again, I can see where you are confused.
This is not a thread about propping your door open vs. closing it. It's about the merits of simply closing it vs. closing and locking it./i>
The point you are debating against is that LOCKING the latch is pointless. "Wide open" doors have nothing to do with the discussion.
So, your neighbor's dog knows how to work the latch on your screen door, but can't manage to bust through the screen? Okay, then I guess it does make sense to lock it after all. All those feeble dogs with opposable thumbs can be a very challenging situation.
Remember, there is no absolutes. Security is about making it difficult for others to break in. How difficult is your definition of an 'acceptable security'.
Which is why locking a screen door is utterly pointless. Anybody who is willing to get in against your wishes is presented with almost no additional difficulty in doing so. If there's any chance at all of an unwelcome visitor entering your home, you should close the actual door and lock it.
Locking a screen door is a terrific example of a security measure which does not offer much, if any, added security, yet makes your life a little bit more of a hassle.
So your neighbors check to make sure your doors are locked out before bothering to knock? What sort of freaky town do you live in???
Normal people knock on the door to somebody else's house, unless it was verbally made emphatically clear to them that they are welcome to stroll in.
Locking a screen door is about as useful as wearing a parachute while tree-climbing.