Those screwy mini-disc players they had a bunch of years for example. Very few people bought them. Only Sony supported them. They weren't compatible with anything else. I think they even used a proprietary format as I recall.
Congratulations, 3 incorrect statements in 5 sentences.
Lots of people bought MiniDisc--in Japan. Lots of vendors supported MiniDisc, including Sharp, JVC, Denon, Kenwood, Marantz, Pioneer, Teac, and Technics. They were compatible with other audio systems via digital optical audio out, or via analog audio (of course).
Yes, the format was proprietary. So is MP3, in that you need to license the patents to make a commercial product, but that hasn't stopped it or made Ogg take over, much as I wish otherwise.
The reason I'm skeptical about "scientific evidence" that violent games makes kids and adults violent, is it runs completely counter to my personal experience.
I grew up playing video games, starting with the 2600 and a TRS-80 and going through Doom, Wolfenstein, and all the other favored punching bags of the "games cause violence!" people. I enjoy GTA, I bought all three PS2 GTA games and play them regularly. I also enjoy the Splinter Cell series, sneaking around and murdering people. I love Burnout, driving dangerously and causing accidents.
So, why haven't I conditioned myself? Why am I still a pacifist liberal vegetarian, who doesn't even like competitive online games, and hasn't lost his temper in years? Why don't I own a gun? Why am I a careful driver who doesn't tailgate? Why do stories of American torture greatly upset me?
I'm sure there are plenty of other Slashdot readers in the same situation. We've dosed ourselves on so much video game violence we're practically lab rats for the cause, yet it hasn't affected us. So it's clear to us that there has to be more to the issue than "video games -> violence".
Perhaps only some people are affected by video game violence. In which case, sucks for them, but I'll keep playing games. More plausibly, perhaps the causality is backwards--perhaps people who are violent by nature are more likely to find violent games appealing, and fail to remain detached from them, and get affected. In which case, again, let's work out how to identify and help those people.
See, I was just thinking that the bacteria which are involved in the production of cheese are pretty damn dangerous, when you consider the state of the average American's arteries...
Umm, the point is to put the "censored" information everywhere so that Chinese browsers will run into it all over the place, and Google will have to block off ever larger sections of Internet to avoid directing them there. Whether Google actually sees the forbidden information while crawling the web is completely irrelevant. In fact, it might be funnier to put up pages that look innocent to the Googlebot and have keywords for things Chinese people search for, but contain anti-PRC information.
The same companies have gotten away with region coding for years, and that's a pretty clear violation of international trade laws, specifically the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade section 2.2.
The first thing I do is try to browse the documentation. If there isn't any, or it's no good, I eliminate the framework right there and then. (That kills SWT/Eclipse.)
Next I take a look at the amount of functionality offered, compared to the pain of learning the framework, and the risk of tying my code to someone else's code that may break or not work on some platforms. Another important thing to consider is how easy it would be to write your own equivalents of the bits of framework you need. If the benefit to pain/risk ratio is too low, I eliminate it from consideration. (That's always been enough to keep me away from Struts--it doesn't seem to do anything that's hard to do anyway, so it's not worth the pain and risk.)
After that, it might be time to look at specifics like how clean the API is, how mature it is, and so on.
"Blog" software is often more than just that. For example, typo (a Rails application) also has pages without comments that you can edit and publish. Blosxom is almost better as a general CMS than it is for 'blogging'.
As long as I'm doing interesting stuff, I don't care if there are people richer, better in combat and higher in prestige than me. Just like life.
If a 1st level character is coming up against 50th level anything, that's just plain bad game design.
If you're so mismatched against your brother, I'd suggest finding someone else to play with. Just like I wouldn't bring a new 1st level character into a D&D game where everyone else was 10th level, even if the new player was just as good as the others.
Whether I like skill being the #1 factor depends critically on what the skill in question is. If I want to test my reflexes, I'll play WipeOut; what I look for in most other games is exploration, puzzle solving, learning my way around new places, and being part of an interesting story.
It has HDMI, but I don't know about HDCP. I do know it works with my TV that has HDMI, plays DVDs from all regions and all standards on it once you enter a code on the remote (yes, PAL and NTSC), and also plays MPEG-1 and MPEG-4 TV shows I've downloaded.
True, but for the exact same reasons as TFA, I don't feel very entertained by the values in WOW. I've avoided MMOGs like the plague because I so thouroughly dislike the fact that someone who spends more time on the game can whip my butt even though we both have the same skill.
Well, maybe the game wasn't aimed at you. Personally, I've avoided online games because I'm not interested in brutally competitive play, and I'm not interested in games where some bored teenager with twitch reflexes can repeatedly kill my character because I'm just trying to relax and explore.
If Unreal Tournament is your idea of a good time, go play it. The very idea of UT bores me to tears.
I did my own tests comparing MP3 and AAC. While it's true that iTunes-encoded AAC is better than iTunes-encoded AAC, LAME encoded MP3 is better than both.
DVD is not good enough for those people. You're talking the difference between 720x480 (and that's assuming the disc is anamorphic, otherwise it's more like 480x360) and 1920x1080. That's a huge difference, and it's the entire reason these people bought HDTV's in the first place. If they didn't want that extra resolution, they would have just stuck with standard-def.
As someone with a DVD player with HDMI and a Faroudja upscaler, and an HDTV with HDMI, I think you're wrong.
I wanted my TV to do DVD resolution or better and have a digital tuner, be widescreen for movies, and be flat. I ended up with an HDTV because that's what you have to get to get those things. I didn't particularly care about the ability to watch TV in HD, because the quality of US TV is low enough that the resolution is the least of its problems.
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.
Slashdot Mirror
Congratulations, 3 incorrect statements in 5 sentences.
Lots of people bought MiniDisc--in Japan. Lots of vendors supported MiniDisc, including Sharp, JVC, Denon, Kenwood, Marantz, Pioneer, Teac, and Technics. They were compatible with other audio systems via digital optical audio out, or via analog audio (of course).
Yes, the format was proprietary. So is MP3, in that you need to license the patents to make a commercial product, but that hasn't stopped it or made Ogg take over, much as I wish otherwise.
Yes, well, let's keep your sexual paraphilias out of the conversation, shall we?
The reason I'm skeptical about "scientific evidence" that violent games makes kids and adults violent, is it runs completely counter to my personal experience.
I grew up playing video games, starting with the 2600 and a TRS-80 and going through Doom, Wolfenstein, and all the other favored punching bags of the "games cause violence!" people. I enjoy GTA, I bought all three PS2 GTA games and play them regularly. I also enjoy the Splinter Cell series, sneaking around and murdering people. I love Burnout, driving dangerously and causing accidents.
So, why haven't I conditioned myself? Why am I still a pacifist liberal vegetarian, who doesn't even like competitive online games, and hasn't lost his temper in years? Why don't I own a gun? Why am I a careful driver who doesn't tailgate? Why do stories of American torture greatly upset me?
I'm sure there are plenty of other Slashdot readers in the same situation. We've dosed ourselves on so much video game violence we're practically lab rats for the cause, yet it hasn't affected us. So it's clear to us that there has to be more to the issue than "video games -> violence".
Perhaps only some people are affected by video game violence. In which case, sucks for them, but I'll keep playing games. More plausibly, perhaps the causality is backwards--perhaps people who are violent by nature are more likely to find violent games appealing, and fail to remain detached from them, and get affected. In which case, again, let's work out how to identify and help those people.
The actual scientific study is available fromt racts/2000-2004/01AB.pdf
http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/abs
And newer research suggests it's no danger.
See, I was just thinking that the bacteria which are involved in the production of cheese are pretty damn dangerous, when you consider the state of the average American's arteries...
Umm, the point is to put the "censored" information everywhere so that Chinese browsers will run into it all over the place, and Google will have to block off ever larger sections of Internet to avoid directing them there. Whether Google actually sees the forbidden information while crawling the web is completely irrelevant. In fact, it might be funnier to put up pages that look innocent to the Googlebot and have keywords for things Chinese people search for, but contain anti-PRC information.
Wow you obviously didn't read much, did you?
Led down a bogus path? The guy said right up front that he had problems with the company.
Report spam sites to Google and they'll (eventually) ban them.
Like many Mac users, I think it sucks. Go troll elsewhere.
Keep the aliases in a file in your home directory. After login, source ~me/aliases
That way you don't need to worry about flaky cut/paste buffers.
(If you don't have a home directory because you're logging in straight to the root ID, then the sysadmins are clearly a bunch of idiots.)
What, like that's some kind of new development? Do you not read the news?
No idea, I'm afraid. I connect it to the TV via HDMI.
The same companies have gotten away with region coding for years, and that's a pretty clear violation of international trade laws, specifically the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade section 2.2.
e .htm
http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/17-tbt_
I'm kinda surprised the EFF hasn't shown any interest in pursuing this.
The first thing I do is try to browse the documentation. If there isn't any, or it's no good, I eliminate the framework right there and then. (That kills SWT/Eclipse.)
Next I take a look at the amount of functionality offered, compared to the pain of learning the framework, and the risk of tying my code to someone else's code that may break or not work on some platforms. Another important thing to consider is how easy it would be to write your own equivalents of the bits of framework you need. If the benefit to pain/risk ratio is too low, I eliminate it from consideration. (That's always been enough to keep me away from Struts--it doesn't seem to do anything that's hard to do anyway, so it's not worth the pain and risk.)
After that, it might be time to look at specifics like how clean the API is, how mature it is, and so on.
"Blog" software is often more than just that. For example, typo (a Rails application) also has pages without comments that you can edit and publish. Blosxom is almost better as a general CMS than it is for 'blogging'.
As long as I'm doing interesting stuff, I don't care if there are people richer, better in combat and higher in prestige than me. Just like life.
If a 1st level character is coming up against 50th level anything, that's just plain bad game design.
If you're so mismatched against your brother, I'd suggest finding someone else to play with. Just like I wouldn't bring a new 1st level character into a D&D game where everyone else was 10th level, even if the new player was just as good as the others.
Whether I like skill being the #1 factor depends critically on what the skill in question is. If I want to test my reflexes, I'll play WipeOut; what I look for in most other games is exploration, puzzle solving, learning my way around new places, and being part of an interesting story.
It has HDMI, but I don't know about HDCP. I do know it works with my TV that has HDMI, plays DVDs from all regions and all standards on it once you enter a code on the remote (yes, PAL and NTSC), and also plays MPEG-1 and MPEG-4 TV shows I've downloaded.
Well, maybe the game wasn't aimed at you. Personally, I've avoided online games because I'm not interested in brutally competitive play, and I'm not interested in games where some bored teenager with twitch reflexes can repeatedly kill my character because I'm just trying to relax and explore.
If Unreal Tournament is your idea of a good time, go play it. The very idea of UT bores me to tears.
I reckon the Oppo DV971H should be on every Slashdot reader's wish list.
e r-review-oppo-opdv971h
http://meta.ath0.com/articles/2006/01/09/dvd-play
Flickr already has a mobile phone interface, what's the point of building another?
I meant "iTunes-encoded AAC is better than iTunes-encoded MP3", obviously.
I did my own tests comparing MP3 and AAC. While it's true that iTunes-encoded AAC is better than iTunes-encoded AAC, LAME encoded MP3 is better than both.
Yes, LAME-encoded MP3 is better than iTunes Music Store AAC, at the same bitrates. http://www.xciv.org/~meta/audio-shootout/
As someone with a DVD player with HDMI and a Faroudja upscaler, and an HDTV with HDMI, I think you're wrong.
I wanted my TV to do DVD resolution or better and have a digital tuner, be widescreen for movies, and be flat. I ended up with an HDTV because that's what you have to get to get those things. I didn't particularly care about the ability to watch TV in HD, because the quality of US TV is low enough that the resolution is the least of its problems.
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.