Bah, I'm out of work at the moment.. maybe I should get into the business of building large faraday cages around people's homes:P
Re:WMA is about 2x as compact as MP3....
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
·
· Score: 1
I stand corrected.
Linux support would be a major help to this wma format. Although, WMA has the same problem as every other alternative audio compression format..
The mp3 format is extremely popular and there are quite a number of products and programs which use it. There are not very many products and programs which are compatible with other audio formats.
Then again, this is Microsoft's stuff.. You know they're going to market it to death.
Re:WMA is about 2x as compact as MP3....
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
May I point out that they don't need to mess with the player to make everyone switch over to the encrypted only files..
In fact, I believe that they make WiMP only encode encrypted files with DRM built in. I seem to recall an associate of mine complaining about ripping all his music into wma with WiMP. Then he lost a specific file, and had to rip all his music over again.. Even though, it was still taking up space on his hard drive.. the files on it were useless.
The only utilities that can encode wma files without the encryption are command line based utilities, right? I know average joe sixpack or Mr Aol Lamer Jr. won't know what to do with those. When was the last time you saw either of those kind of people use a command line and still have a working OS afterword? They're going to use the gui based utilities. Look at all the non-technical people use the gui-based mp3 all-in-one ripping utilities.
No, I do not see wma as an option until someone releases a 3rd party gui for the command line utility.
It's actually a Geforce 3 with an extra Vertex Pipeline tacked on. There are ppl who will try to tell you differently, like it's somewhere halfway between a geforce 3 and a geforce 4. If that's true, then I'm very disappointed in the GF4 already.
BTW, before the first actual dev kits shipped, there were shipping instructions and software to use on a normal computer with a GF3... So the developers could start making the games.
Don't try to tell me or anyone else here that it's impossible to run Xbox games on a computer:P By the time games come out that use the extra vertex pipeline, we'll have GF4's.
Bah, people seem to forget things very quickly. One minute they're spouting off about how stupid it is to buy an Xbox since it's just a $300 pc.. The next they are spouting off about how impossible it will be to emulate one.
Hello McFly! You don't have to emulate anything if the architecture is already there!
Since the Xbox is mostly pc architecture anyways, I'm not surprised in the least that something like this is already out. The only thing you have to do is software.
Jesus, Xbox being hard to emulate? Please, that's similar to saying that it would be hard to emulate a Linux x86 environment on a Windows x86 setup.
Incidentally, I wonder if this emulator is Windows only.. it wouldn't surprise me.
I remember reading a few months back that the GC's protection has already been broken.. I can't remember where though. I wouldn't be surprised to find people selling some pressed copies in HK.
Not like it's impossible for you to use recordable media in the console.. see here:
http://www.cdmedia-dvd.com/shopping/cdmedia/dvdr .h tm
The only thing stopping you is that I've heard that Nintendo uses a different way of writing the data to the cd.. some kind of abnormal recording.. and you haven't cracked the protection..
This is all speaking theoretically, of course.
Besides, dvd-r drives are really expensive right now.. has anyone found them for less than $500-$600?
(btw, sorry about not linking that above, I'm not quite sure how to do that on here..)
The only reason why other consoles, well I'm not sure how Sony does it with the ps2, but I'm positive this is how it works with the xbox... When you buy an xbox, it doesn't play dvd's out of the box. This is for people who already have a dvd player.. You do not have to pay the dvd license fees just to get an extra dvd player that you aren't going to use! Now, if you buy the remote kit for it.. then you're paying the dvd license fees and you'll be able to watch dvd's on the console with that remote.
I don't know about Sony, but don't they make you buy the remote there too? If so, it might be very similar to the way M$ does it then..
The GC saves some money by not having dvd playback.. that's a given. But also, the Panasonic unit is a little more expensive than it otherwise would be, because it has dvd playback. Then again, what would the point be.. if you got a panasonic unit without dvd playback?
Heh.. that's not needed, You can already buy 3" cd-r's at many retailers and online. BUT I'd like to see you try to fit a GC game on them.
3" cd-r's are only capable of holding 180-220mb each. Now what you really want are 3" dvd-r's.. I haven't seen them out though, but if they are.. they should hold the 1.5gb that the GC's 3" dvd's do.
I love on my own, in an apartment.. and the lowest my phone bill has ever been was $25.. Before I moved out of my parents' house.. I had my own phone line there, and it was ~$20/mo (I don't make many long distance calls, if at all)
Prices vary widely between regions.. unfortunately:/
No. The required bandwidth for a full res HDTV signal is the exact same as 1 analog signal. What you may have read (and it is true) is that using HDTV, broadcasters can show 4 or 5 SDTV res streams in one HDTV signal.
This works because the standard allows for multiple streams in one signal.
Each SDTV stream is a quarter of the size of an eqiv. analog broadcast. But a full HDTV res, or 4 SDTV res streams in a signal is the same size.
I wish I had mod points, because you hit the nail right on the head..
In all actuality though, price or widerange acceptance for HDTV isn't the biggest threat to it. The biggest threat to HDTV is this: Broadcasters can use the channel for one, full res broadcast, or many smaller res ones.
Which do you think they're going to use? If they can have 4 or 5 channels of advertising.. rather than just 1 channel. I have no doubt which they'd rather do. Though, I bet they would have full res broadcasts for shows like the super bowl and such..
Such a multi-stream approch is fully possible according to the standard.
Of course, there's also the news about tv networks wanting to also keep their old analog frequencies for use for other things, rather than give them up.. I never found out how that turned out.
Oh? You obviously didn't see the video that was taken a bit before win98 came out (RTM) where someone was demo'ing it in front of a LOT of people (including press..) where they were showing off the usb support.. plugged in a scanner, and win98 bluescreened.
Yeah I trust a company that misspells Plug-N-Play on their front page..
(it's "Pulg-N-Play" on there.
.
Re:What about people with multiple players?
on
Sony vs Modchips
·
· Score: 1
Actually.. www.cd-recordable.com has DVD-R media for $2.95/disc, or 9.4gb dvd-r for $4.95/disc. Offbrand of course, but still.. I'm just waiting for the day that I can get a dvd-r burner for around $200 (maybe even 250...)
(Not for movies or games though.. I have alot of other data to store.. big enough that cdr's are inconvenient)
I about shit when I saw those prices. If someone finds them lower, I will be impressed.
Hrm? What about that norweigen (damn my spelling, don't kill me) kid that we arrested.. He didn't even leave his country for christsakes!
Re:EULAs for console games are printed ON the box
on
Sony vs Modchips
·
· Score: 1
Hah, I can see them trying that too!
This (red) paper is encrypted and licensed only for use with appropriate viewers..
Err, I dunno where I'm going with this. Where's that guy with the "This post has been ROT-26 encoded. Do not reverse engineer it under the DMCA. If you are reading this, you are breaking the law" (you get the point) signature?
.
Straight from stupidlaws.com:
There is a law on the books of TENNESSEE that says a man must run in front of a vehicle that a woman is driving, and, that the car may not go faster than five miles an hour!
So, if you are a woman, and you go drive through Tennessee.. then you most likely BROKE THE LAW!
How could you know about this law? It's not obvious, it's not 'common' knowledge.
Britains *know* that we drive on the right side of the road, just as we know that they drive on the left. It's common knowledge.
Are you telling me that the DMCA is common knowledge where this guy came from?
Now, I know that you don't need to know about a law for it to affect you. In otherwords, ignorance isn't an excuse.. But, did he know and decide to come anyways? Did his boss know and not tell him? Did anyone know?
Personally I loved Ehrgeiz.. I'm a big sucker for fighting games, and it was just fun to play it.
Unfortunately I traded it for someone to let me copy a paper so I could pass my last year of high school. I kinda miss that game!:)
I wish that square could work something out so they could put a true Final Fantasy game on the GBA. But it looks like we'll have to wait for Sony to come out with a portable system before that will happen. It doesn't looks like that's going to happen for awhile either.:( (I mean a true portable system. That you can hold in your hand and put in your pocket. Not a psone that costs $300 by the time you've made it portable..)
If cable modem service goes out for my area, I fully intend on switching to DSL.
www.dslreports.com shows a dsl connection in my area that is about the same speed as my cable. Of course, if I switch to dsl, then I'll probably get rid of my cable tv as well.
I'm curious how many others will do something similar to this?
And that is precisely the problem with much of the anime which is dubbed into english for N.American release. Fortunately, most if not all dvd releases have both dubbed and subbed versions. If you ever compare the dubbed audio with the original, there is a huge difference between the quality of the voice acting. Seems to me that the japanese voice actors actually provide a convincing voice to the video. Thanks to the misconceptions of english VA's, however, the dubbed audio sounds fake, and very cartoonish. How many people actually sound like that IRL?
That has to account for some of the people that are turned off of anime by the dubbed audio. I know I have some friends who absolutely hate subtitles, since they don't read that fast anyways.
I'll be happy when dubbed anime conveys the same emotion that a live action show or movie does.
I'm saying all this because I believe that what is happening now, with completely drawn and animated shows, will carry over to the rendered and animated shows.
Perhaps when CG actors are commonplace in 'serious' shows, we will see a better attitude toward other things.
This is *not* a worm, nor is it a virus. That is, it doesn't try to spread to other computers over a network, nor through infecting files (remember, its goal is to *avoid* changing anything on the target system, to preserve the integrity of the evidence), so there's no risk of collateral damage.
Ahh, that's where you're wrong. This is virii. Common knowledge defines ANY trojan horses as virii.
On top of that, how do we know that Microsoft hasn't been leaving intentional backdoors in their OS code of late.. for FED use, of course.
I will leave my own interests out of the discussion. I don't doubt someone will come up with their own 'virus scanner'. Though, the elusive nature of this might make that hard.
Don't listen to these people.. It is not XP, nor is it 9x..
The operating system on the xbox is a highly modified, and stripped down, version of windows 2000. All programs run in Ring 0 (root) mode. There is DirectX, but I'm not sure if it's 8 or if they got 8.1 on there.
As far as loading it.. there has been research into this and they have a small bootstrap on a rom on the mobo, and it loads the operating system off of a small spot on the hard drive. Also, all developers are required to included the latest version on their game discs, and the xbox will auto-update whenever a disc with a new version is inserted. IIRC. Also that servs to restore the os if the copy on the xbox becomes corrupt, just insert a game disc and it'll be okay.
If you get that, try to get an anonymous news client and cross post it in all the playstation binaries' newsgroups.. give it a good description and it would be spread like it should be:)
Slashdot Mirror
Bah, I'm out of work at the moment.. maybe I should get into the business of building large faraday cages around people's homes :P
I stand corrected.
Linux support would be a major help to this wma format. Although, WMA has the same problem as every other alternative audio compression format..
The mp3 format is extremely popular and there are quite a number of products and programs which use it. There are not very many products and programs which are compatible with other audio formats.
Then again, this is Microsoft's stuff.. You know they're going to market it to death.
May I point out that they don't need to mess with the player to make everyone switch over to the encrypted only files..
In fact, I believe that they make WiMP only encode encrypted files with DRM built in. I seem to recall an associate of mine complaining about ripping all his music into wma with WiMP. Then he lost a specific file, and had to rip all his music over again.. Even though, it was still taking up space on his hard drive.. the files on it were useless.
The only utilities that can encode wma files without the encryption are command line based utilities, right? I know average joe sixpack or Mr Aol Lamer Jr. won't know what to do with those. When was the last time you saw either of those kind of people use a command line and still have a working OS afterword? They're going to use the gui based utilities. Look at all the non-technical people use the gui-based mp3 all-in-one ripping utilities.
No, I do not see wma as an option until someone releases a 3rd party gui for the command line utility.
Are you crazy? I've seen a box with Unreal 1 and Unreal Tourny for $20!
it was sitting right next to the box of Quake 1-3 for $30...
It's actually a Geforce 3 with an extra Vertex Pipeline tacked on. There are ppl who will try to tell you differently, like it's somewhere halfway between a geforce 3 and a geforce 4. If that's true, then I'm very disappointed in the GF4 already.
:P By the time games come out that use the extra vertex pipeline, we'll have GF4's.
BTW, before the first actual dev kits shipped, there were shipping instructions and software to use on a normal computer with a GF3... So the developers could start making the games.
Don't try to tell me or anyone else here that it's impossible to run Xbox games on a computer
Bah, people seem to forget things very quickly. One minute they're spouting off about how stupid it is to buy an Xbox since it's just a $300 pc.. The next they are spouting off about how impossible it will be to emulate one.
Hello McFly! You don't have to emulate anything if the architecture is already there!
Since the Xbox is mostly pc architecture anyways, I'm not surprised in the least that something like this is already out. The only thing you have to do is software.
Jesus, Xbox being hard to emulate? Please, that's similar to saying that it would be hard to emulate a Linux x86 environment on a Windows x86 setup.
Incidentally, I wonder if this emulator is Windows only.. it wouldn't surprise me.
I remember reading a few months back that the GC's protection has already been broken.. I can't remember where though. I wouldn't be surprised to find people selling some pressed copies in HK.
r .h tm
Not like it's impossible for you to use recordable media in the console.. see here:
http://www.cdmedia-dvd.com/shopping/cdmedia/dvd
The only thing stopping you is that I've heard that Nintendo uses a different way of writing the data to the cd.. some kind of abnormal recording.. and you haven't cracked the protection..
This is all speaking theoretically, of course.
Besides, dvd-r drives are really expensive right now.. has anyone found them for less than $500-$600?
(btw, sorry about not linking that above, I'm not quite sure how to do that on here..)
The only reason why other consoles, well I'm not sure how Sony does it with the ps2, but I'm positive this is how it works with the xbox... When you buy an xbox, it doesn't play dvd's out of the box. This is for people who already have a dvd player.. You do not have to pay the dvd license fees just to get an extra dvd player that you aren't going to use! Now, if you buy the remote kit for it.. then you're paying the dvd license fees and you'll be able to watch dvd's on the console with that remote.
I don't know about Sony, but don't they make you buy the remote there too? If so, it might be very similar to the way M$ does it then..
The GC saves some money by not having dvd playback.. that's a given. But also, the Panasonic unit is a little more expensive than it otherwise would be, because it has dvd playback. Then again, what would the point be.. if you got a panasonic unit without dvd playback?
.
Heh.. that's not needed, You can already buy 3" cd-r's at many retailers and online. BUT I'd like to see you try to fit a GC game on them.
3" cd-r's are only capable of holding 180-220mb each. Now what you really want are 3" dvd-r's.. I haven't seen them out though, but if they are.. they should hold the 1.5gb that the GC's 3" dvd's do.
I love on my own, in an apartment.. and the lowest my phone bill has ever been was $25.. Before I moved out of my parents' house.. I had my own phone line there, and it was ~$20/mo (I don't make many long distance calls, if at all)
:/
Prices vary widely between regions.. unfortunately
No. The required bandwidth for a full res HDTV signal is the exact same as 1 analog signal. What you may have read (and it is true) is that using HDTV, broadcasters can show 4 or 5 SDTV res streams in one HDTV signal.
This works because the standard allows for multiple streams in one signal.
Each SDTV stream is a quarter of the size of an eqiv. analog broadcast. But a full HDTV res, or 4 SDTV res streams in a signal is the same size.
.
I wish I had mod points, because you hit the nail right on the head..
In all actuality though, price or widerange acceptance for HDTV isn't the biggest threat to it. The biggest threat to HDTV is this: Broadcasters can use the channel for one, full res broadcast, or many smaller res ones.
Which do you think they're going to use? If they can have 4 or 5 channels of advertising.. rather than just 1 channel. I have no doubt which they'd rather do. Though, I bet they would have full res broadcasts for shows like the super bowl and such..
Such a multi-stream approch is fully possible according to the standard.
Of course, there's also the news about tv networks wanting to also keep their old analog frequencies for use for other things, rather than give them up.. I never found out how that turned out.
.
Oh? You obviously didn't see the video that was taken a bit before win98 came out (RTM) where someone was demo'ing it in front of a LOT of people (including press..) where they were showing off the usb support.. plugged in a scanner, and win98 bluescreened.
That was not Win98SE.
.
Yeah I trust a company that misspells Plug-N-Play on their front page..
(it's "Pulg-N-Play" on there.
.
Actually.. www.cd-recordable.com has DVD-R media for $2.95/disc, or 9.4gb dvd-r for $4.95/disc. Offbrand of course, but still.. I'm just waiting for the day that I can get a dvd-r burner for around $200 (maybe even 250...)
(Not for movies or games though.. I have alot of other data to store.. big enough that cdr's are inconvenient)
I about shit when I saw those prices. If someone finds them lower, I will be impressed.
.
Hrm? What about that norweigen (damn my spelling, don't kill me) kid that we arrested.. He didn't even leave his country for christsakes!
Hah, I can see them trying that too!
This (red) paper is encrypted and licensed only for use with appropriate viewers..
Err, I dunno where I'm going with this. Where's that guy with the "This post has been ROT-26 encoded. Do not reverse engineer it under the DMCA. If you are reading this, you are breaking the law" (you get the point) signature?
.
Straight from stupidlaws.com:
There is a law on the books of TENNESSEE that says a man must run in front of a vehicle that a woman is driving, and, that the car may not go faster than five miles an hour!
So, if you are a woman, and you go drive through Tennessee.. then you most likely BROKE THE LAW!
How could you know about this law? It's not obvious, it's not 'common' knowledge.
Britains *know* that we drive on the right side of the road, just as we know that they drive on the left. It's common knowledge.
Are you telling me that the DMCA is common knowledge where this guy came from?
Now, I know that you don't need to know about a law for it to affect you. In otherwords, ignorance isn't an excuse.. But, did he know and decide to come anyways? Did his boss know and not tell him? Did anyone know?
Personally I loved Ehrgeiz.. I'm a big sucker for fighting games, and it was just fun to play it. :)
:( (I mean a true portable system. That you can hold in your hand and put in your pocket. Not a psone that costs $300 by the time you've made it portable..)
Unfortunately I traded it for someone to let me copy a paper so I could pass my last year of high school. I kinda miss that game!
I wish that square could work something out so they could put a true Final Fantasy game on the GBA. But it looks like we'll have to wait for Sony to come out with a portable system before that will happen. It doesn't looks like that's going to happen for awhile either.
If cable modem service goes out for my area, I fully intend on switching to DSL. www.dslreports.com shows a dsl connection in my area that is about the same speed as my cable. Of course, if I switch to dsl, then I'll probably get rid of my cable tv as well. I'm curious how many others will do something similar to this?
And that is precisely the problem with much of the anime which is dubbed into english for N.American release. Fortunately, most if not all dvd releases have both dubbed and subbed versions. If you ever compare the dubbed audio with the original, there is a huge difference between the quality of the voice acting. Seems to me that the japanese voice actors actually provide a convincing voice to the video. Thanks to the misconceptions of english VA's, however, the dubbed audio sounds fake, and very cartoonish. How many people actually sound like that IRL?
That has to account for some of the people that are turned off of anime by the dubbed audio. I know I have some friends who absolutely hate subtitles, since they don't read that fast anyways.
I'll be happy when dubbed anime conveys the same emotion that a live action show or movie does.
I'm saying all this because I believe that what is happening now, with completely drawn and animated shows, will carry over to the rendered and animated shows.
Perhaps when CG actors are commonplace in 'serious' shows, we will see a better attitude toward other things.
This is *not* a worm, nor is it a virus. That is, it doesn't try to spread to other computers over a network, nor through infecting files (remember, its goal is to *avoid* changing anything on the target system, to preserve the integrity of the evidence), so there's no risk of collateral damage.
Ahh, that's where you're wrong. This is virii. Common knowledge defines ANY trojan horses as virii.
On top of that, how do we know that Microsoft hasn't been leaving intentional backdoors in their OS code of late.. for FED use, of course.
I will leave my own interests out of the discussion. I don't doubt someone will come up with their own 'virus scanner'. Though, the elusive nature of this might make that hard.
ppl using insight@home shouldn't be too bad off..
http://www.insight-com.com/net/UPDATES/
Don't listen to these people.. It is not XP, nor is it 9x..
The operating system on the xbox is a highly modified, and stripped down, version of windows 2000. All programs run in Ring 0 (root) mode. There is DirectX, but I'm not sure if it's 8 or if they got 8.1 on there.
As far as loading it.. there has been research into this and they have a small bootstrap on a rom on the mobo, and it loads the operating system off of a small spot on the hard drive. Also, all developers are required to included the latest version on their game discs, and the xbox will auto-update whenever a disc with a new version is inserted. IIRC. Also that servs to restore the os if the copy on the xbox becomes corrupt, just insert a game disc and it'll be okay.
If you get that, try to get an anonymous news client and cross post it in all the playstation binaries' newsgroups.. give it a good description and it would be spread like it should be :)