Nobody is going to pay money for a 400x300 photo, but that would probably be more than adequate for wikipedia. Presumably if it's a good photo, and there's a market for such things, such a small thumbnail will only be suitable as advertising.
Or am I mistaken and there's actually a huge market for low resolution photos of celebrities?
Somehow he talked the queen into believing his numbers as opposed to everyone else's.
He was willing to sail around the world based on your confidence in your numbers (which is wrong will likely result in your starving to death at sea). Now, he was wrong, and we have the benefit of hindsight and better information, but without such knowledge, you'd have to agree that the argument is quite compelling.
Trouble is, you need a critical mass of people for a boycott to work and you simply don't have it. People either don't care enough about this, or think that the boycott will just be put down to piracy.
Seems that if I really overcompress a JPEG, the main problems are at the edges of the blocks. This is not really unexpected.
So a simple first pass would be to apply a simple edge detector and look for discontinuities at the edges of the 8x8 blocks. For an example, just try an edge detector in any decent image editing app on an overcompressed JPEG.
DVD prices (In the UK at least) start at £20 or so and rapidly fall to £5 in less than a year. That's not only a 75% drop, but it's cheap enough for an impulse buy, and too cheap for it to be worth selling a used copy, and in considerably less time. Used game sales are as good as they are because the game prices aren't dropping fast enough to prevent it.
Now, maybe it's more profitable that way, but if games remain profitable at that price for that long then publishers have no real right to complain about used game sales.
"Why Game Developers Should Shut Up About Used Games".
I have trouble working out what you're refuting. You seem to be arguing that game developers can charge what they like for a game, which is a fair point but not one that anyone actually disagreed with.
You seem to be completely failing to agree or disagree with the point about used games.
As for the Pepsi Harrier case, I thought there was a slightly happier ending, but I can't find anything online about that part. I could swear that for the sake of PR, they give him something nice. Maybe I'm just remembering it wrong.
Burma Shave once had a problem of offering someone a trip to Mars for 900 jars. They offered the winner a trip to Moers instead, which was accepted, but that was probably because the winner was media savvy enough to fight this out in the press rather than in court. If he'd have tried to get the media on his side, Pepsi would probably have been happy to offer a decent adventure holiday if they could have got some decent PR out of it.
Perhaps. But a million dollars is a reasonable amount to pay for something that's substantially harder than getting a glass of water. The Randi institute offers a million dollars to anyone who can prove the existence of the paranormal. Tom Dwan is offering a million dollars to prove he's the best poker player ever. In the early 80's there were a number of competitions to find treasure worth at least this. It's not a huge amount to gamble to prove a client's innocence.
Is soldering really a good idea at this level? I'd have thought a modular breadboard would be better for learning. It makes correcting mistakes a lot easier.
No... I think the soapbox comes before the ballot box. Otherwise I might have to wait years to have a slight hope of affecting change, and even then I won;t because I need to convince other people that they want the change as well.
Windows XP and Windows 2000 are more or less the same OS. XP has some nice improvements but nothing major. The main change is the UI which, of course, is very noticable.
Perhaps, but version numbers are pretty arbitrary. They could call it version 8.4 and then call a major rewrite 8.5 without any significant knock on effect. All programmers care about is whether the version number is greater than or equal to the one they're compatible with.
I don't know if this is viable in London as I don't live there. But if it's remotely an option, then there are times when jury nullification is called for.
A jury can make whatever determination they agree on, and don't have to justify their judgement so jury nullification is a de-facto power anywhere with a Jury trial system based off English law.
It's not important to think they're beautiful. It's more important that they're not distracting. Making the graphics realistic makes them less distracting. When you don't find it jarring that nothing has shadows or the lighting is wrong or everything looks a little too polygonal you can pay a lot more attention to the game.
It's the same with everything else. You don't notice really good special effects. It didn't occur to most people that there were only a handful of people in the crowd scenes in Forrest Gump. You don't notice really good acting. You only notice it when it's unconvincing.
Don't bother with the show-off funky effects. Make sure they're good enough to tell the story and work out the trade off between time and how convincing graphics are.
Oh yes. Fair point. The game is evidently so severely unbalanced that it can be considered broken, and the hard rules of the game are the ones that NCSoft get to choose. But how to actually play the game is something the players should choose.
But surely this is interesting. At the very least, it shows that in at least some ways, a fantastical game world works as a microcosm of real world society.
MMOs work by social contract. NCSoft can try to tell people how to play, but unless they ban people for playing incorrectly, people are going to play the game in a manner they enjoy. It really isn't going to work if you tell people to enjoy themselves in a certain manner.
The researcher's experiment demonstrated this quite clearly. It's remarkably bad form to harass the guy outside of the game, but I expect this was a small minority. It's perfectly acceptable for a group of them to gang up on the guy and try to defeat him.
Browser developers do care! It's not just a political thing. Website developers and users would prefer h.264 (even if they don't know it) because it provides higher quality or lower bandwidth requirements. Several browser developers prefer Theora because their income is too small for the expense of licensing h.264.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody is going to pay money for a 400x300 photo, but that would probably be more than adequate for wikipedia. Presumably if it's a good photo, and there's a market for such things, such a small thumbnail will only be suitable as advertising.
Or am I mistaken and there's actually a huge market for low resolution photos of celebrities?
Somehow he talked the queen into believing his numbers as opposed to everyone else's.
He was willing to sail around the world based on your confidence in your numbers (which is wrong will likely result in your starving to death at sea). Now, he was wrong, and we have the benefit of hindsight and better information, but without such knowledge, you'd have to agree that the argument is quite compelling.
Trouble is, you need a critical mass of people for a boycott to work and you simply don't have it. People either don't care enough about this, or think that the boycott will just be put down to piracy.
Seems that if I really overcompress a JPEG, the main problems are at the edges of the blocks. This is not really unexpected.
So a simple first pass would be to apply a simple edge detector and look for discontinuities at the edges of the 8x8 blocks. For an example, just try an edge detector in any decent image editing app on an overcompressed JPEG.
DVD prices (In the UK at least) start at £20 or so and rapidly fall to £5 in less than a year. That's not only a 75% drop, but it's cheap enough for an impulse buy, and too cheap for it to be worth selling a used copy, and in considerably less time. Used game sales are as good as they are because the game prices aren't dropping fast enough to prevent it.
Now, maybe it's more profitable that way, but if games remain profitable at that price for that long then publishers have no real right to complain about used game sales.
Did you read the rest of the title of the post?
"Why Game Developers Should Shut Up About Used Games".
I have trouble working out what you're refuting. You seem to be arguing that game developers can charge what they like for a game, which is a fair point but not one that anyone actually disagreed with.
You seem to be completely failing to agree or disagree with the point about used games.
As for the Pepsi Harrier case, I thought there was a slightly happier ending, but I can't find anything online about that part. I could swear that for the sake of PR, they give him something nice. Maybe I'm just remembering it wrong.
Burma Shave once had a problem of offering someone a trip to Mars for 900 jars. They offered the winner a trip to Moers instead, which was accepted, but that was probably because the winner was media savvy enough to fight this out in the press rather than in court. If he'd have tried to get the media on his side, Pepsi would probably have been happy to offer a decent adventure holiday if they could have got some decent PR out of it.
Perhaps. But a million dollars is a reasonable amount to pay for something that's substantially harder than getting a glass of water. The Randi institute offers a million dollars to anyone who can prove the existence of the paranormal. Tom Dwan is offering a million dollars to prove he's the best poker player ever. In the early 80's there were a number of competitions to find treasure worth at least this. It's not a huge amount to gamble to prove a client's innocence.
Is soldering really a good idea at this level? I'd have thought a modular breadboard would be better for learning. It makes correcting mistakes a lot easier.
But that 12 50 seems a little odd. That would be either "[DLE] P", or $46.88 which seems a lot for a packet of cigs.
So after the armed revolution fails, we enact change by lame Christmas gifts? It's an idea, certainly.
No... I think the soapbox comes before the ballot box. Otherwise I might have to wait years to have a slight hope of affecting change, and even then I won;t because I need to convince other people that they want the change as well.
Windows XP and Windows 2000 are more or less the same OS. XP has some nice improvements but nothing major. The main change is the UI which, of course, is very noticable.
Perhaps, but version numbers are pretty arbitrary. They could call it version 8.4 and then call a major rewrite 8.5 without any significant knock on effect. All programmers care about is whether the version number is greater than or equal to the one they're compatible with.
Yes, we know that you can buy more storage then you could possibly need.
As a point of order - I'm not sure this is true. I have over a thousand times the storage that my first PC had and I still need more.
It's not that I'll always want more. Just that experience tells me that I probably will end up wanting a few more orders of magnitude.
QED no crime was committed.
But - if harm is done, and this is a big "if" - the act of infringement does cause harm, the harm is done in the UK, to a body in the UK.
The internet does make this sort of thing kinda complicated.
I don't know if this is viable in London as I don't live there. But if it's remotely an option, then there are times when jury nullification is called for.
A jury can make whatever determination they agree on, and don't have to justify their judgement so jury nullification is a de-facto power anywhere with a Jury trial system based off English law.
But that was just based on the legal opinion of some guy who thought he knew the law.
This is based on an actual judges opinion. Certainly a lot more weight, even if not the final decision.
I'm amazed how far down I had to scroll before someone made this point. Seemed pretty obvious to me.
And of course, once the maps are terribly out of date, you just need new maps. Will be a while before they're cheap enough to want a whole new unit.
It's not important to think they're beautiful. It's more important that they're not distracting. Making the graphics realistic makes them less distracting. When you don't find it jarring that nothing has shadows or the lighting is wrong or everything looks a little too polygonal you can pay a lot more attention to the game.
It's the same with everything else. You don't notice really good special effects. It didn't occur to most people that there were only a handful of people in the crowd scenes in Forrest Gump. You don't notice really good acting. You only notice it when it's unconvincing.
Don't bother with the show-off funky effects. Make sure they're good enough to tell the story and work out the trade off between time and how convincing graphics are.
Oh yes. Fair point. The game is evidently so severely unbalanced that it can be considered broken, and the hard rules of the game are the ones that NCSoft get to choose. But how to actually play the game is something the players should choose.
But surely this is interesting. At the very least, it shows that in at least some ways, a fantastical game world works as a microcosm of real world society.
MMOs work by social contract. NCSoft can try to tell people how to play, but unless they ban people for playing incorrectly, people are going to play the game in a manner they enjoy. It really isn't going to work if you tell people to enjoy themselves in a certain manner.
The researcher's experiment demonstrated this quite clearly. It's remarkably bad form to harass the guy outside of the game, but I expect this was a small minority. It's perfectly acceptable for a group of them to gang up on the guy and try to defeat him.
Browser developers do care! It's not just a political thing. Website developers and users would prefer h.264 (even if they don't know it) because it provides higher quality or lower bandwidth requirements. Several browser developers prefer Theora because their income is too small for the expense of licensing h.264.
Do we use an inferior standard or a closed standard?
Maybe "implementation dependent" is the term we're after.