Let's face it, if you're blocking any of the content, you're not viewing the content in the form it's intended.
It's unfortunate that some content production (eg newspaper sites and blogs) try to shove as many ads down the readers throat, it's a down right evil when they intercept the reader from the content.
How this needs to be solved: 1) Ads need to be served inside sandboxed iframes that has no access to the parent page save for knowing what page it is on. 2) Ads need to be prevented from "chaining" ads via document.write, exec, and innerHTML. They should only chain to another ad via another iframe. 3) Ad "depth" on ad chains need to be shallow before returning back to the content. eg website -> website's ad server ->Third party ad server ->website's end of chain ad placeholder. The current environment is a lot like the mortgage-backed securities, in which bundles of good and toxic ads are being sent to websites, eroding the trust of the website, and thus making more people block all ads.
How the web browser can help: 1) Hold iframes and XHR when the content does not originate from the same subdomain. If the web browser is to query a blocking plugin, it must have a fallback solution to tell the user that content is missing from the website. When some scripts are blocked, sometimes the functionality is missing, which the user is quick to blame on the browser or website, and not the fact that they haven modified the website. 2) The default operation of the web browser should be to not block anything, and the user should be reminded to whitelist sites before blacklisting content, and sites that have blocked content need an indication that objects have been blocked (see Ghostery as a good example.) 3) The web browser should suggest what content to block based on what scripts and content (eg video ads) are interrupted by the user with the stop/reload button and closing/navigating away.
On mobile devices we should go one step further and have mobile devices by default block all third-party scripts and content when not connected over WiFi and plugged into the mains.
Ads were never an issue before bandwidth limits started being imposed by ISP's. The last "ad crisis" was due to pop-ups/pop-unders which was an abuse of the "new window" function, and popup blocking continues to this day because of that. Some pop-ups were endless chains. This is the problem we are seeing under some circumstances with the iframe chains and document.write/innerHTML/exec chains. The web browser should add "chained iframes" to popup blocking, whereby an iframe is loaded by another iframe from a third party domain. It should never be the case where an ad chain continues for more than 3 seconds before dropping to the end-of-chain.
I have seen video ads constantly loop, as in not just go back to the beginning of the video, but reload the video entirely. I've seen websites that had "refresh" set to as short as 5 seconds on their ads. This kind of garbage should be blocked because it wastes the user's bandwidth.
I've played ME/ME2 on both the PC and the Xbox and I can tell you that the PC was easier. Mainly the sniper rifle in ME was a pain to aim on the Xbox version, in ME2 it wasn't so much of a problem. (I played ME on the PC the first time as a character that couldn't use it. But the same character type on ME2 on both versions.)
However the aiming precision in other games is equally as bad (eg GTA IV), if not tedious (Final Fantasy XIV) to use a controller with, regardless of it being on a console or PC (I use a wired Xbox 360 controller on both the xbox 360 and the PC when the option exists if the keyboard/mouse is too much of a pain.)
I think what is generally missing from the "Keyboard and Mouse" in console games is the lack of being able to use two hands independently. The Wii's controllers and even the Kinect force you to use one hand for doing everything, and the optional second hand is given a highly inflexible input.
Consider for a moment if the Wiimotes were wireless pairs/triplets instead of cabled together. One hand controls aiming, while the second hand should also have a 3-way accelerometer to tell which direction you want to move, or pivot/strafe. But it should also have buttons.
So FPS game might simply have two "nunchuck" types with two buttons on each (left having physical movement, and turning/tilting/rotating the controller controlling the camera plus weapon/power cycle up/down, while the right nunchuck would actually aim the weapon (holding both nunchucks together would make the game react like if you were holding a single weapon with two hands), firing/reload.) To play other games, you'd then attach the button pad to the left/right part of the controller and you get the additional 6-8 buttons like on xbox/snes pad. Combine all three to have all the buttons. The only reason I see for this design not to happen is the weight/batteries would be a pain. A work-around for that would be to run the power packs of the three components in parallel when hooked together, so they run down equally. Thus charging them could be done the same way.
The sandbox issue is what makes it a pain in the behind, but trying to do professional photo work on a iPad is a joke, since the device itself is little more than a underpowered stripped down PC with a ARM processor.
That said, proper tool for the right job, the MacBook Pro is the correct tool. The sandbox method on the iPad is designed for consumer cameras, as the consumer is unlikely to do anything fancy with the photo except crop it before sending it off to others.
What the professional photographer and videographer want to do with an iPad, requires a 1920x1080 or better display first, and direct access to the device in question, or the device's storage second (eg via Thunderbolt.) You can't simply install drivers on the iPad, which is part of it's simplicity.
I could see plugging an iPad into a Canon Rebel T3i, or something and expanding the camera's user interface out onto the iPad for it to be remotely controlled, previewed, cropped and adjusted at the photo stage instead of doing extra post-processing work. Or same, but with video. But I think we're overestimating Apple here.
Apple, has NEVER been bleeding edge, just like Nintendo. They always pick the parts and technology that they can make a profit on. You can see this with the upgrade cycle Apple and Nintendo uses.
What might be interesting is for the iPad3 to be an iPad3D and introduce a retina display that can do 3D depth in landscape mode and take stereographic photos. (Everyone remember their Viewmaster's? )
The Patent in question (OCT 6 1987): http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser? Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='4,698,672'.WKU.&OS=PN/4,698,672& RS=PN/4,698,672
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION
Title: A COMBINED INTRAFRAME AND INTERFRAME TRANSFORM CODING SYSTEM
Ser. No.: 479,766 Filed: 83/03/28 (now abandoned)
"The patent describes a single-pass digital video compression system which implements a two-dimensional cosine transform with intraframe block-to-block comparisons of transform coefficients without need for preliminary statistical matching or preprocessing. "
There's the DCT part that both JPEG and MPEG use, and likewise a whack of other video compression technologies.
"Each frame of the video image is divided into a predetermined matrix of spatial subframes or blocks. The system performs a spatial domain to transform domain transformation of the picture elements of each block to provide transform coefficients for each block. The system adaptively normalizes the transform coefficients so that the system generates data at a rate determined adaptively as a function of the fullness of a transmitter buffer. The transform coefficient data thus produced is encoded in accordance with amplitude Huffman codes and zero-coefficient runlength Huffman codes which are stored asynchronously in the transmitter buffer. The encoded data is output from the buffer at a synchronous rate for transmission through a limited-bandwidth medium. The system determines the buffer fullness and adaptively controls the rate at which data is generated so that the buffer is never completely emptied and never completely filled."
The similarity is the use of "DCT"/"iDCT" technology , Discrete Cosine Transform.
The basic similarity between MPEG and JPEG is on MPEG I-frames where the DCT is used which is essentially the same use as JPEG, however...
MPEG is not "A series of JPEG" files because of the other frame types, I-frames are complete data frames, the other two frames rely on data in the I frame. MJPEG is a series of Jpeg files, which is about equal to an MPEG of all I frames.
"When are we going to start shipping games on hard drives?"
Let's see, it costs 120$ for a 30GB hard drive, or 90$ for a game... I think hard drives have to drop a litte more...
I could so see games moving to removable DRM'ed hard drives where it would cost a lot of money and be near-impossible to copy. Think about the access time and capacity, 120GB and no installation. Can even save the games to the same thing and take them to your friends house. And when you don't like the game any more, just format it and put your next version of linux on it.
Better yet, put a full distro of linux on the drive, make take advantage of the computer like it were on a console and just tell people to "plug and play" literally. Reboot and no more crashes while you play your game.
Oh and for that to work, everyone needs a removable hotswap hard drive bay.
Several different resolutions of textures for the OpenGL/D3D texture sizes, different engines for each type of card, even software.
bah, won't happen untill the actual hardware becomes cheaper than the cost of games. Or untill games cost more than hard drives.
Here in BC they are planning on putting up some wind power, and the consensus with the people who will be stuck looking at them is like:
"We would rather not have it, but since it's between this[wind] or the gas-burning plant, I'd prefer the wind."
The thing is that any form of energy generation takes up land and is has a NIMBY(not-in-my-backyard) factor. With wind you see the generators. With these diesel systems, at least they can be moved if enough people complained or someone just hijacked it(how many people know how to operate a diesel train engine?)
An interesting point has been made, would you seriously pay money to get virtual cards that can be redeemed for real cards, and potential play experience rivalling a high school fight?
I think only hardcore magic fans would want to play this, seriously. Anyone who doesn't play the game in real life has no incentive to play it online, since the hardcore players will be spending so much time trying to screw over the system and other players to get those uber-rare cards and redeem them so fast that nobody else has a chance at them.
Multiplayer Online games have fatal flaws 1. Any form of RL value ("ebay") - Fine rare item, sell it on ebay, play for 6 months sell your character on ebay, etc.
2. Any form of in-game currency or inventory/items that doesn't work on market-based principals. (IE, no license to duplicate items, each item in the world is unique and can only have one owner.) - No generation or re-spawn should be required to keep sufficient inventory in the game. All existing games as far as I know need to "replenish" stores, or the stores are unlimited, which let's people hoard certain items. 3. Inventory period. - Can a real person hold 300 dead rabbits? Didn't think so. The reason people can hoard anything in these games is because their inventory is so deep that it allows them to. One certain game I was playing during betatest would have 60 players surround this one shop keepers respawn point, then when the server rebooted they would quickly login and buy everything the shopkeeper had and turn around and sell the items for 100000X the price. If there was a realistic limit(like in weight/room-in-backpack) on inventory, one person should not be able to buy out 20,000 units of any item and be able to fit all that in their inventory. 4. Any form of client-side storage Diablo I/II has this problem, as the game stores data on the client side, it's easy to make whatever item you want, even make your character have any stats you want. This is also the same problem in peer-to-peer server-less games, where the client data can be "bot"-ed. The client should only recieve game state and send actions, not do any calcuation and not send what isn't requested. "Attack player X" and server does the calculation. FPS games present a further problem since to shoot, a aiming point has to be sent, and since the client also receives the location of everyone, it makes it easy to just auto-track.
In short, why would you pay money to be part of a fictional world where you get screwed over, and over and over? This is why many RPG games don't attract the right kind of people (usually the hack and slash FPS/Diablo crowd) since the people who are used to kill everything that moves ruin the game for everyone else. (Some games have a notoriety feature that makes it so pk'ers are highlighted when they are in the area.)
Well unlike cheatable games, you get no benefit from cheating DDR.
Certain mixes have high score systems or internet ranking, but overall you are supposed to have fun on the machine.
Obviously if you got bored of it by cheating, then it's not worth your money to play, let someone who wants to have fun play it instead!
My only gripe with the DDR games is that the home US versions don't have any of the good songs on them, almost like Konami is dilibertly trying to sabotague the US market for the games by releasing mixes with just the songs they could license cheap enough.
I would rather see the Japanese mixes inferfaces translated and then sent to the US verbatium.
The same can be said about the arcade machine, Japan has seven primary arcade versions and a disney one, the US has... ONE and a disney one.
Hell, the none of the arcades have the US version, the two local arcades (about two blocks apart from each other) have 5th mix in one, and 3rd mix asian in the other (but this place also has two korean Pump It Up machines.)
It seems to me that if Konami wants to make a mint on these machines, sell special versions to schools where they can be all linked together to syncronize the music and steps. That way the students can play against each other and there is no noise distortion between machines.
If one of the machines was actually 5 minutes away instead of 40 minute drive away I would play there every day. It's fun dammit!
How about a 7.5hour trip(4100KM/550kph) from North America to Asia? (Of course this is assuming the shortest distance being between Canada and Japan taking the sea route.) This currently costs about 2000$ Canadian by air and takes 12 hours, not including airport waiting time and other hassle.
Some not-well-serviced by flight or existing rail is the ideal places to build one of these...
Add one engineering fact, air-friction. Build a vacuum tube from North America to Japan and the efficiency of the maglev will increase... and be free from conventional terrorist threats (what are you going to do, highjack a train and play "speed" with it to see if you can blow a hole in the train station?)
Seriously, I want something that can: 1. High resolution screen, I don't want to see pixels, I want text to appear clear, not pixelated 2. Color, color is important, how else am I going to read my sunday funnies in the middle of nowhere? 3. Console-ish buttons + stylus input. I want my nintendo patented + shaped navigation, maybe a wheel for scrolling vertical, and at least two buttons, one for "OK/CONFIRM/YES" and one for "NO/CANCEL/GO BACK STUPID!" The stylus should not feel like a big plastic toothpick, nor should it feel like a chunk of lead. 4. Expandable , 2MB, 4MB, 8MB, give me 1GB, hehe. No seriously, I want to be able to plug into a firewire hard drive or wireless to a remote computer. 5. Real Video/Sound system. Maybe a mobile radeon is too much, but the video system should be able to pump out full-screen video at 60hz if I were streaming it from somewhere that could keep up. Sound systems have been nothing short of pitiful on handheld's, including handheld game systems. Onboard stereo DAC/DSP to play mp3/ogg's 6. Waterproof, damage-proof, bullet-proof, oven-proof. Hey when I goto pick up a pen, I don't want it falling out of my pocket and smashing into many pieces. Should be waterproof so one doesn't have to put it in the oven to dry off (^_^) 7. Thin-client to winXP-RDP/Linux-VNC things, hey, if it's not on the PDA, It's probably on PC/MAC in the next room. 8. IR/RF remote output, not only should it communicate via IRDA... but it should also be able to act as a universal remote for every single IR/RF device out there so I can get rid of that box of remotes on the coffee table.
9. While we are at it, why not let it interface with the car and have it drive while playing your ogg/mp3's in the stereo.
VHS/SVHS(Analog): Stretches, tears, wrinkles, demagnetizes with every play stored in an complex mechanical box. 8/Hi8(Analog): Stretches, tears, wrinkles, demagnetizes with every play stored in an complex mechanical box. D8/DV/MV(Digital):Stretches, tears, wrinkles, demagnetizes with every play stored in an complex mechanical box. VHSC/SVHSC(Analog):Stretches, tears, wrinkles, demagnetizes with every play stored in an complex mechanical box. DVHS(Digital): Stretches, tears, wrinkles, demagetizes with every place
CD(Digital): Scratches, but is just sheet of plastic LD(Analog): Scratches, Laser-rot, but is just a sheet of plastic VCD/SVCD(Digital):Scratches, but is just a sheet of plastic. DVD(Digital): Scratches, but is just a sheet of plastic
The cost to make, copy and distribute a CD/LD/DVD extremely cheap. However the cost to make, copy and distribute a VHS/DVHS tape or any of it's relatives (8/Hi8/D8, VHSC/SVHSC, DV/MV) is considerable more expensive, as you require copying equipment, where as with CD's you only need copying equipment if writing to CD-R discs.
There is a serious risk of destruction of your tapes by just using them. Discs you can pull the power on and use the emergency eject (or take the player apart.)
Seriously, VHS is a horrid ancient technology and needs to die. All it's siblings never took off except in camcorders and people who "must have" the latest thing. How long has SVHS been around? How many people own a SVHS VCR? Do you think people are going to drop 2K on a device that won't let you record anything to it? I can goto costco and get a 49$ VHS recorder and tape whatever I want from TV on it, the quality may suck, but it's better than shelling out money for something that won't let you record anything you want.
People buy VCR's so they can tape their soap operas, sitcoms and movies from cable so they can watch them later. Not so they can be at the mercy of the scheduling the tv networks decide on. They also double as cheap entertainment for children, you can let them wear out a copy of their favorite movie instead of wearing out the original you spent money on.
DVD as a playback system is ideal, but it doesn't let you record anything, period. So while your kids may not be able to wear out their favorite movies on DVD, you also don't need to make a copy.
Children, especially small children are harsh on everything. Parents and daycare operators can not afford to let their children play with the "good copy" of anything or risk having it destroyed.
So if for some reason people actually bought into this D-VHS dead technology, they could not make a backup of the tape to let the kids play over and over and over 30 times a day. So once that tape is destroyed, another one is needed.
See where I'm going here?
If it costs 35$ for 1 DVHS tape, but you can get 3 copies of the same movie on DVD, just get 2 copies on DVD and save 10$. Plus you get all the extras.
I see no demand for D-VHS except for preserving the digital signal when recording from Digital Cable or Sattelite TV, and even then, there is no reason a TiVo or similar device can't be designed to do it. Hell, with a TiVo-like device you can actually eliminate the wear concept completely. (Hard drives will last about 17 years.)
In fact, the only reason we need expensive physical media is because nobody can agree on how to distribute it online.
Wouldn't an ethernet cable plugged into the back of your TV be more convientent than having a DVD, CD, Radio, Cassete Tape, VHS, surround system and mess of cables? Wouldn't it be much nicer to just have ONE box and ONE cable? (Assume wireless sattelite speakers for this concept.) I'm sure more people would buy expensive high-end stuff if they didn't have to get tangled up in the rats nest of wires behind most peoples systems.
Alas, if we moved to a medialess design, people wouldn't be able to retain backup's... thus accomplishing what the content providers want.
Anyways, D-VHS is just a step backwards, I'm saying right now that it will fail because it will be too expensive to produce and distribute, too expensive to buy and the players will be also too expensive.
When I see a D-VHS player/recorder at the 49$ level that lets me record digitally from the sattelite or digital cable, give me a call, till them, I'm not buying this.
Re: End "work-for-hire"
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Fair IP Laws?
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· Score: 1
I think what the person wanted is the "work-for-hire" BS stripped away, it's the thing that lets the Record company own you.
So if you were to want to sing the song that you wrote at at your neighbours little girls birthday party, you couldn't without paying the record label royalties, DISPITE THE FACT YOU WROTE AND SANG IT.
The "work-for-hire" BS is what lets companies own every little bit of programming you do while you work for them, even if you wrote code on your home computer on your free time.
The "work-for-hire" has to go, it's an excuse to not give any copyright or credit to the person who wrote the thing in the first place.
I'm all in favor of individuals retaining the copyright to their works for lenght of their lifetime or X years, which ever comes first. But it should not be transferable, not to the spouse, children, grandchildren,adopted children, neices,nephews, aunts, uncles, pet dogs. If someone licenses something to a corperation, there should be a ceiling to how long a contract can be made, say 3 or 5 years, so if that company screws over that person, they can go somewhere else. This is also so we don't wind up with corperations hoarding all the IP they can.
I've give you an example in the game industry: Richard Garriot, creator of Ultima, originally started the company "Origin systems", Which was later "bought-out" by EA. So now EA owns the rights to Ultima, and Richard Garriot, dispite creating the Ultima series, doesn't own it. So he can not make another sequal, not without buying back the rights to Ultima from EA, and I don't think EA would give it to him since they are making money off of Ultima Online.
It's these kinds of events that need to stop, because it prevents the creator from making derivative works, deprives them of future revenue should they ever leave the company who bought the rights to their material, and it makes content creators very bitchy people during interviews. You know Richard Garriot had a "non-competitive" clause or something in his contract that forbade him from producing/being involved in anything that would complete with EA?
I like EA, I really do, but when I look at Origin Systems being eaten by EA I keep going "If I ever made a game, I'm not selling the rights to anyone."
So how am I going to get linux on it? ^^
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Sony PCG-U1
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· Score: 1
Looks like cd-rom/dvd-rom and floppy are optional, unless you can boot from the ethernet, better hope you don't nuke the OS.
Us working or volunteering to do tech support for companies who publish their e-mail address in the open are getting klez viruses in the customer support e-mail, making it a pain in the royal ass to get any work done when 1 in 5 e-mails is a klez virus (the other 4 are "legit e-mail", "help me I'm an idiot" and the rest "SPAM!")
And because Klez spoofs the from header... some look like it's coming from spammers.
Telling people to scan for viruses proves futile, as the people it's "aparently" from aren't the ones sending it.
Snuff out spam
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Wireless Spam?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I do hope that the telcos realize that they are impairing adoption of wireless e-mail as long as two things still happen:
1. Billing for messages recieved (when most of them are going to be spam) 2. Not billing the e-mail sender.
What needs to happen is that the telcos, maybe even the postal system needs to create an unique GUID-like system that generates e-mail addresses in the format like FFFFFFFF-FFFFFFFF-FFFFFFFF-FFFF Of which the last two bytes can be used for identification/area, kinda like area-codes, but not base-10.
Then charge money for access to the directory service that resolves the GUID to something like mynameissombody@exchange.city.state.country.planet
So in order for spammers to mass-gather and send spam it would cost a fortune. Bulk-mail to specific target groups is made easier as well, since someone could pay a few thousand dollars and lookup an entire cities worth of e-mails. Instead of the stupid "10 billion e-mails on CD for 449$" type of crap seen in spam, which is neither targeted, nor regionally correct (Canadians, Austrailians, and Europeans get so much spam for junk from the USA isn't not funny.)
Then there is also a magic flag that we add called "disable bulk mail" and whenever a bulk query is called to the directory, e-mails with the flag set are not returned.
Also allow for opting-out of reciving e-mail from entire countries, finally, get rid of all that american spam.
Then opt-in your friends (the "only directly recieve e-mail from those on your list" feature.) so they can contact you directly.
It could be done, but I doubt the telcos want to pony up the money to do it. They are in the market for making money, and making money means billing the reciever for all the spam they recieve.
Aparently the problem is that emulating an PPC on an x86 is an incredable headache. While emulating a x86 on a PPC is a piece of cake.
Though in theory, not matter how embarassingly slow the emulator is, it should be possible to make one.
In general you need a host processor 50 times faster, Mhz for Mhz than the one you want to emulate to get any decent performance on a first-generation emulator.
Emulating a 68K Amiga or Mac (at like 8Mhz) only takes a 400Mhz processor to perform decently. A 100Mhz PPC would require a something like a 5Ghz Host processor to get about the same performance. Take into account all the other hardware while you are at it.
Second generation emulators (Optimized, dynamic recompilation, all other buzz words, etc) require something in the rage of 10 times more powerful.
No GameCube emulation till we are in double-diget Ghz processors, or someone gets the brilliant idea of not emulating the CPU/Graphics Hardware.
People like simplicity and low cost. Two things that copy protections ruin.
If I were to buy a CD or DVD of something and then have to register it to play it, have to have to buy all expensive DRM compliant hardware (let's say it adds 20$ to each piece of hardware)
Ethernet adaptor Motherboard CPU RAM Video Card Sound Card Hard drive Speakers Monitor
So that's 180$ added to the price of the entire computer, because I'd have to buy a new computer to support all this DRM junk, I could have bought 3 DVD or CD's for that price.
Now when I pop in the DVD and it goes to check against the MPAA's Database of registered DVD's it should play it.
However if the MPAA's site is down, the DVD won't play.
So why would I want to deal with all this crap when I can save myself a few thousand dollars in replacement hardware and just get something that disables the protection on the disc itself?
I had to go though this crap once before with actual DVD's. I had to get device to strip off the macrovision so it would run through the VCR so it would run to the TV that didn't have composite or s-video connectors. It was either pay 50$ for the image stabilizer or pay 800$ for a new TV.
Now I have the intelligence to figure out what the problem was. However people who go out and buy DVD players, computers, and whatnot don't know how to hook anything up (A lot of people still use the RF connectors AKA "channel 3 or 4" because they don't know how to hook up the other cables.)
So let's say some kind of legislation is passed that makes it a requirement to DRM-enable all hardware. How many people with current computers or older machines are going to buy something and play it in their computer only to phone their tech support person at 50$ an hour to tell them that they need to buy a new 2000$ computer to play their 50$ DVD.
Legislation is not the answer. The MPAA and RIAA are whining babies, having not taken the inititative to develop proper protections and distribute on the internet BEFORE the pirates did.
The MPAA and RIAA will fade out of existance from their arrogance. The game companies are a much larger business and make more money than movies and recording artists do. Even if their protections on their software are rather lax!
If the MPAA and RIAA want to get back in the game, they need to stop telling the government what to do and spend that money on distributing their content ONLINE and make it convienent as possible. No registration, no tracking, just one-click purchase with the ability to write it to a disc once. People will be more inclined to pay 1$-100$ to see a movie online NOW than pay a similar amount for the DVD or Theatre ticket that they may have to wait weeks to see.
I would honestly purchase "content" online if I could have it NOW and not have to jump through any hoops to get it.
Blanket fees are also a bad idea. The internet radio tax is absurd, radio stations would be paying royalties on music that the companies recieving the royalties never even heard of. A lot of the internet radio that I listen to is either foreign(as in not in english) or original/remixs of music. Nothing that I can buy in a store here. If I could download the songs straight from the record company at CD quality I would gladly pay that. But IMO it won't happen anytime soon because they are too scared of people taking the downloaded files and redistributing it. People would much rather have full quality audio from the official source than second-hand files that may not even be full quality. A way to do this is to have "higher-than-cd-quality" files that are higher quality than the CD's with an unique serial number and datestamp (and alternatively encoded purchasing number) This way it's impossible for people to rip music from CD that is better than the official source.
Some kind of lossless audio format would be required.
And if you want to simplify it for those people who don't understand. Simply store all the downloaded data in a solid file on the hard drive that only the DRM enabled players can open and burning it to CD erases the version in the datastore. So the DRM enabled burner would set the "is a copy" flag on the CD, once it's on CD, someone could obviously rerip it into an mp3. So the solution there is to simply not allow for burning to audio-cd, back-up to CD that the DRM player can play but won't re-rip from. Non-DRM players would see garbage.
See all this can be done without leglistation, it doesn't even require hardware replacement (though halting production of CD/CD-R/CD-RW drives would eliminate one piracy area, instead having DVD burning drives that respect the copy/no-copy flags.) People could stick hack it if they wanted to, but because hacking it is far more complex, most computer users won't bother.
Certain games need a level of "realism" in order to be fun, but how much realism is actually required is subjective.
Take SMB, the only realism in most of the games is the concept of gravity and mass (falling onto solid platforms, not through them.) Mario 64 added some more environmental realism (lighting, fog, water) but the game was still fun, because the realism didn't get in the way.
RPG games are one of the areas where there is never enough realism. You can have a game like Ultima, which let's you do practically everything to Final Fantasy which you can't do anything but follow the story.
I prefer more realism in RPG's, though sometimes it just get's in the way (how is leveling up realistic?) Like in MMORPG's the concept of dieing is non-realistic. Oops, I died, I'll just come back and try attacking that thing again. If the player had to start from scratch everytime he/she died, it wouldn't be very fun.
On the other end of things, graphical realism. Sure something may look real enough, but our 3D hardware in PC's have only now just got to the point where radiosity might be possible. Untill low-end hardware can do radiosity and ultra-high-poly models(or maybe just flat out directly render nurbs or something better) most 3D games hardly look realistic. A lot of imagination is required to make a sims model look realistic, same with anything that appears in a FPS game. Sure, the person being torn into by your weapon of choice may look like a bloody pulp, but I don't think you'll be seeing gorefest's anytime soon. Many players prefer a higher framerate and turn off the visual realism for more framerate.
Overall, some games benefit greatly from higher realism in game mechanics (open box, dump junk out from box, look through junk and find pouch of money, take pouch of money, have owner of pouch of money beat the tar out of you because you STOLE it.) Others just focus too much on eye candy and gameplay just takes a backseat or is non-existant (and you are watching a realtime-rendered or pre-rendered movie for most of the game.)
What's rather nasty IMO is when a game doesn't focus on the gameplay, but makes more of the game's "playtime" just sitting there watching the game, and yet that isn't even interesting.
Now stepping away from games for a minute... Anyone see those useless "talking, crying, and peeing" type of dolls on television? Seriously, these one-purpose dolls are useless. The companies attempt to add realism to it, and ultimately fail when the parents will not buy any more because THEY are sick of hearing the things, or the child is sick of hearing it. The ones that don't do anything are far better, leaves more to the imagination, plus they don't make any noise.
With games, it's like having having an annoying "voice-over" for every character and not giving them the choice to turn it off. Or the person who is doing the speech can't sync up with the character talking. After a while, you would have preferred that there was no voices, just because they are too annoying.(A common complaint about some "english dubbed" games.) Some people would be more content with subtitles on the original language if it sounded better than to have a couple of bad voices spoil the game.
Today, you can't return used games to the store, so if you buy something and the gameplay is terrible, you can't return it. So you have to either play it and suffer through it, or sell it to someone else at a loss.
There is a local company somewhere in BC that makes pure plexiglass chasis. They are designed for "showing off" the inside of the machine. I would imagine the EM fields from plexiglass lack of shielding would be a trade-off. No using the computer for a chair now...
We'll see the rise of the 200$ junk-PC's from Taiwan then. No copy protection and cheap... there is no way that a 500$ IBM or Compaq prefab with the exact same parts can compete, because everything built in the USA has this "requirement" to be copyproof.
Hell just goto canada and get the same hardware. I don't belive ATI is under any obligation to add copy controls outside what's already supported since their cards are "not" mpeg-2 decoders. Most of the motherboards produced with VIA/ALi/SiS chipsets are also produced outside the USA. The motherboards come with all the other parts (audio, ethernet, modem, ATA133).
Good luck adding something to the processor, Intel/AMD would have an absolute fit since it would increase the die size and make the chips more expensive.
Let's see, I had Ultima 1-3 Ultima 1 worked fine on everything... but the 8088 ate it one day Ultima 2 wouldn't work on anything but the 8088 Ultima 3 wouldn't work on anything but the 8088
Then I had Ultima 7 on 5.25" floppies, but it was buggy and couldn't be finished. I then got Ultima Underworld I and II, played and finished on a 386. I then got Ultima 7 again on a "compilation disc" that someone gave me that came with their sound card. I then got Ultima 8 on a "compilation disc" someone else gave me that came with their sound card. Had to download a patch for it to work properly. This disc also had "savage empire" based on the U6 engine. I then got Ultima 7 and 7.5 re-relase on CD, Finally able to play it (since the CD version was patched already) and finished it Then I upgraded to a Pentium 120 and was running win95, none of the games worked under windows, but through my knowledge of config.sys and autoexec.bat I made them work. Then I upgraded to a Pentium 450, and downloaded Ultima 1-6 from abandonware sites, but was hard pressed to find martain dreams(another U6-engine game) Then Origin re-released all the Ultima games except the underworlds and U6-engine games, so I bought that.
So over this course of time I bought Ultima 7 three times, and had it given to me once.
But only Ultima 1 actually works under Windows XP properly. U7 can be played with the free ultima 7 engine project, U8 can be hacked to work on the VDM, and have sound with VDMsound. Ultima 2, has the same problem it always did (it was coded in assembler) Ultima 4&5 would work, but the Apple/Commodore versions were better because they had music. Ultima6, Savage empire and Martian dreams (once I found it) all required the L1 and L2 cache to be disabled for the sound to work.
So for me, it was worth buying Ultima 7 three times just to have it work, I still have the cloth map from the original package, and the manuals it came with.
Wing Commander on the other hand. *sigh*, I lost the CD to the I & II deluxe version and now I'm screwed, because I can't play it, and nobody has it.
I still have a 5.25" floppy drive in a box that I'm keeping if I ever decided to burn all my 5.25" 'decoration' discs to a CD... yes A CD, I figured out that at 360KB a disc, and about 400 discs... there's only about 100MB to burn.
Reason it's not in my computer?... cd-burner has that spot. I even have the proper cable to run it as B drive.
IIRC some computers don't support a 5.25" drive anymore... I somehow doubt Windows XP would realize what it is if I were to plug it in.
Bochs is annoying as hell to set-up... I've yet to get it set-up AND do something useful. Mainly any attempt run something releases crash after crash after crash. Yes I was trying to run Ultima 7...
A fixed PC emulator that you can choose between 8088, 80286, 80386 and 80486(with or without FPU), Pentium (With FPU), and the maximum amount of RAM that the processor could handle (640K for the 8088, 16MB for the 80286/386sx) Sound Blaster/Adlib, SB Pro, SB 16(check out VDMsound for a SB sb emulator for WinNT, free (http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~vromas/vdmsound/)) and Video (Monochrome, CGA, EGA, VGA, Tandy-16color(yes because some games had a 16color mode if you had a Tandy) and hopefully VESA modes of the late DOS games.)
Hey if we can emulate a 68020 Mac on a PC, we should be able to emulate a 386 full-speed with sound and VGA.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's face it, if you're blocking any of the content, you're not viewing the content in the form it's intended.
It's unfortunate that some content production (eg newspaper sites and blogs) try to shove as many ads down the readers throat, it's a down right evil when they intercept the reader from the content.
How this needs to be solved:
1) Ads need to be served inside sandboxed iframes that has no access to the parent page save for knowing what page it is on.
2) Ads need to be prevented from "chaining" ads via document.write, exec, and innerHTML. They should only chain to another ad via another iframe.
3) Ad "depth" on ad chains need to be shallow before returning back to the content. eg website -> website's ad server ->Third party ad server ->website's end of chain ad placeholder. The current environment is a lot like the mortgage-backed securities, in which bundles of good and toxic ads are being sent to websites, eroding the trust of the website, and thus making more people block all ads.
How the web browser can help:
1) Hold iframes and XHR when the content does not originate from the same subdomain. If the web browser is to query a blocking plugin, it must have a fallback solution to tell the user that content is missing from the website. When some scripts are blocked, sometimes the functionality is missing, which the user is quick to blame on the browser or website, and not the fact that they haven modified the website.
2) The default operation of the web browser should be to not block anything, and the user should be reminded to whitelist sites before blacklisting content, and sites that have blocked content need an indication that objects have been blocked (see Ghostery as a good example.)
3) The web browser should suggest what content to block based on what scripts and content (eg video ads) are interrupted by the user with the stop/reload button and closing/navigating away.
On mobile devices we should go one step further and have mobile devices by default block all third-party scripts and content when not connected over WiFi and plugged into the mains.
Ads were never an issue before bandwidth limits started being imposed by ISP's. The last "ad crisis" was due to pop-ups/pop-unders which was an abuse of the "new window" function, and popup blocking continues to this day because of that. Some pop-ups were endless chains. This is the problem we are seeing under some circumstances with the iframe chains and document.write/innerHTML/exec chains. The web browser should add "chained iframes" to popup blocking, whereby an iframe is loaded by another iframe from a third party domain. It should never be the case where an ad chain continues for more than 3 seconds before dropping to the end-of-chain.
I have seen video ads constantly loop, as in not just go back to the beginning of the video, but reload the video entirely. I've seen websites that had "refresh" set to as short as 5 seconds on their ads. This kind of garbage should be blocked because it wastes the user's bandwidth.
Quantum Computers already exist...
http://www.dwavesys.com/d-wave-two-system
Perhaps TFA could be more specific on what aspect this changes.
My original username still seems to work fine. :)
So does mine.
I've played ME/ME2 on both the PC and the Xbox and I can tell you that the PC was easier. Mainly the sniper rifle in ME was a pain to aim on the Xbox version, in ME2 it wasn't so much of a problem. (I played ME on the PC the first time as a character that couldn't use it. But the same character type on ME2 on both versions.)
However the aiming precision in other games is equally as bad (eg GTA IV), if not tedious (Final Fantasy XIV) to use a controller with, regardless of it being on a console or PC (I use a wired Xbox 360 controller on both the xbox 360 and the PC when the option exists if the keyboard/mouse is too much of a pain.)
I think what is generally missing from the "Keyboard and Mouse" in console games is the lack of being able to use two hands independently. The Wii's controllers and even the Kinect force you to use one hand for doing everything, and the optional second hand is given a highly inflexible input.
Consider for a moment if the Wiimotes were wireless pairs/triplets instead of cabled together. One hand controls aiming, while the second hand should also have a 3-way accelerometer to tell which direction you want to move, or pivot/strafe. But it should also have buttons.
So FPS game might simply have two "nunchuck" types with two buttons on each (left having physical movement, and turning/tilting/rotating the controller controlling the camera plus weapon/power cycle up/down, while the right nunchuck would actually aim the weapon (holding both nunchucks together would make the game react like if you were holding a single weapon with two hands), firing/reload.) To play other games, you'd then attach the button pad to the left/right part of the controller and you get the additional 6-8 buttons like on xbox/snes pad. Combine all three to have all the buttons. The only reason I see for this design not to happen is the weight/batteries would be a pain. A work-around for that would be to run the power packs of the three components in parallel when hooked together, so they run down equally. Thus charging them could be done the same way.
The sandbox issue is what makes it a pain in the behind, but trying to do professional photo work on a iPad is a joke, since the device itself is little more than a underpowered stripped down PC with a ARM processor.
That said, proper tool for the right job, the MacBook Pro is the correct tool. The sandbox method on the iPad is designed for consumer cameras, as the consumer is unlikely to do anything fancy with the photo except crop it before sending it off to others.
What the professional photographer and videographer want to do with an iPad, requires a 1920x1080 or better display first, and direct access to the device in question, or the device's storage second (eg via Thunderbolt.) You can't simply install drivers on the iPad, which is part of it's simplicity.
I could see plugging an iPad into a Canon Rebel T3i, or something and expanding the camera's user interface out onto the iPad for it to be remotely controlled, previewed, cropped and adjusted at the photo stage instead of doing extra post-processing work. Or same, but with video. But I think we're overestimating Apple here.
Apple, has NEVER been bleeding edge, just like Nintendo. They always pick the parts and technology that they can make a profit on. You can see this with the upgrade cycle Apple and Nintendo uses.
What might be interesting is for the iPad3 to be an iPad3D and introduce a retina display that can do 3D depth in landscape mode and take stereographic photos. (Everyone remember their Viewmaster's? )
The Patent in question (OCT 6 1987):? Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='4,698,672'.WKU.&OS=PN/4,698,672& RS=PN/4,698,672
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION
Title: A COMBINED INTRAFRAME AND INTERFRAME TRANSFORM CODING SYSTEM
Ser. No.: 479,766 Filed: 83/03/28 (now abandoned)
"The patent describes a single-pass digital video compression system which implements a two-dimensional cosine transform with intraframe block-to-block comparisons of transform coefficients without need for preliminary statistical matching or preprocessing.
"
There's the DCT part that both JPEG and MPEG use, and likewise a whack of other video compression technologies.
"Each frame of the video image is divided into a predetermined matrix of spatial subframes or blocks. The system performs a spatial domain to transform domain transformation of the picture elements of each block to provide transform coefficients for each block. The system adaptively normalizes the transform coefficients so that the system generates data at a rate determined adaptively as a function of the fullness of a transmitter buffer. The transform coefficient data thus produced is encoded in accordance with amplitude Huffman codes and zero-coefficient runlength Huffman codes which are stored asynchronously in the transmitter buffer. The encoded data is output from the buffer at a synchronous rate for transmission through a limited-bandwidth medium. The system determines the buffer fullness and adaptively controls the rate at which data is generated so that the buffer is never completely emptied and never completely filled."
Yes, this sounds exactly like JPEG.
The similarity is the use of "DCT"/"iDCT" technology , Discrete Cosine Transform.
The basic similarity between MPEG and JPEG is on MPEG I-frames where the DCT is used which is essentially the same use as JPEG, however...
MPEG is not "A series of JPEG" files because of the other frame types, I-frames are complete data frames, the other two frames rely on data in the I frame. MJPEG is a series of Jpeg files, which is about equal to an MPEG of all I frames.
Time to resurrect an idea from Sierra's past
"When are we going to start shipping games on hard drives?"
Let's see, it costs 120$ for a 30GB hard drive, or 90$ for a game... I think hard drives have to drop a litte more...
I could so see games moving to removable DRM'ed hard drives where it would cost a lot of money and be near-impossible to copy. Think about the access time and capacity, 120GB and no installation. Can even save the games to the same thing and take them to your friends house. And when you don't like the game any more, just format it and put your next version of linux on it.
Better yet, put a full distro of linux on the drive, make take advantage of the computer like it were on a console and just tell people to "plug and play" literally. Reboot and no more crashes while you play your game.
Oh and for that to work, everyone needs a removable hotswap hard drive bay.
Several different resolutions of textures for the OpenGL/D3D texture sizes, different engines for each type of card, even software.
bah, won't happen untill the actual hardware becomes cheaper than the cost of games. Or untill games cost more than hard drives.
Not exactly,
Here in BC they are planning on putting up some wind power, and the consensus with the people who will be stuck looking at them is like:
"We would rather not have it, but since it's between this[wind] or the gas-burning plant, I'd prefer the wind."
The thing is that any form of energy generation takes up land and is has a NIMBY(not-in-my-backyard) factor. With wind you see the generators. With these diesel systems, at least they can be moved if enough people complained or someone just hijacked it(how many people know how to operate a diesel train engine?)
An interesting point has been made, would you seriously pay money to get virtual cards that can be redeemed for real cards, and potential play experience rivalling a high school fight?
I think only hardcore magic fans would want to play this, seriously. Anyone who doesn't play the game in real life has no incentive to play it online, since the hardcore players will be spending so much time trying to screw over the system and other players to get those uber-rare cards and redeem them so fast that nobody else has a chance at them.
Multiplayer Online games have fatal flaws
1. Any form of RL value ("ebay")
- Fine rare item, sell it on ebay, play for 6 months sell your character on ebay, etc.
2. Any form of in-game currency or inventory/items that doesn't work on market-based principals. (IE, no license to duplicate items, each item in the world is unique and can only have one owner.)
- No generation or re-spawn should be required to keep sufficient inventory in the game. All existing games as far as I know need to "replenish" stores, or the stores are unlimited, which let's people hoard certain items.
3. Inventory period.
- Can a real person hold 300 dead rabbits? Didn't think so. The reason people can hoard anything in these games is because their inventory is so deep that it allows them to. One certain game I was playing during betatest would have 60 players surround this one shop keepers respawn point, then when the server rebooted they would quickly login and buy everything the shopkeeper had and turn around and sell the items for 100000X the price. If there was a realistic limit(like in weight/room-in-backpack) on inventory, one person should not be able to buy out 20,000 units of any item and be able to fit all that in their inventory.
4. Any form of client-side storage
Diablo I/II has this problem, as the game stores data on the client side, it's easy to make whatever item you want, even make your character have any stats you want. This is also the same problem in peer-to-peer server-less games, where the client data can be "bot"-ed. The client should only recieve game state and send actions, not do any calcuation and not send what isn't requested. "Attack player X" and server does the calculation. FPS games present a further problem since to shoot, a aiming point has to be sent, and since the client also receives the location of everyone, it makes it easy to just auto-track.
In short, why would you pay money to be part of a fictional world where you get screwed over, and over and over? This is why many RPG games don't attract the right kind of people (usually the hack and slash FPS/Diablo crowd) since the people who are used to kill everything that moves ruin the game for everyone else. (Some games have a notoriety feature that makes it so pk'ers are highlighted when they are in the area.)
Well unlike cheatable games, you get no benefit from cheating DDR.
... ONE and a disney one.
Certain mixes have high score systems or internet ranking, but overall you are supposed to have fun on the machine.
Obviously if you got bored of it by cheating, then it's not worth your money to play, let someone who wants to have fun play it instead!
My only gripe with the DDR games is that the home US versions don't have any of the good songs on them, almost like Konami is dilibertly trying to sabotague the US market for the games by releasing mixes with just the songs they could license cheap enough.
I would rather see the Japanese mixes inferfaces translated and then sent to the US verbatium.
The same can be said about the arcade machine, Japan has seven primary arcade versions and a disney one, the US has
Hell, the none of the arcades have the US version, the two local arcades (about two blocks apart from each other) have 5th mix in one, and 3rd mix asian in the other (but this place also has two korean Pump It Up machines.)
It seems to me that if Konami wants to make a mint on these machines, sell special versions to schools where they can be all linked together to syncronize the music and steps. That way the students can play against each other and there is no noise distortion between machines.
If one of the machines was actually 5 minutes away instead of 40 minute drive away I would play there every day. It's fun dammit!
How about a 7.5hour trip(4100KM/550kph) from North America to Asia? (Of course this is assuming the shortest distance being between Canada and Japan taking the sea route.) This currently costs about 2000$ Canadian by air and takes 12 hours, not including airport waiting time and other hassle.
Some not-well-serviced by flight or existing rail is the ideal places to build one of these...
Add one engineering fact, air-friction. Build a vacuum tube from North America to Japan and the efficiency of the maglev will increase... and be free from conventional terrorist threats (what are you going to do, highjack a train and play "speed" with it to see if you can blow a hole in the train station?)
Seriously, I want something that can:
1. High resolution screen, I don't want to see pixels, I want text to appear clear, not pixelated
2. Color, color is important, how else am I going to read my sunday funnies in the middle of nowhere?
3. Console-ish buttons + stylus input. I want my nintendo patented + shaped navigation, maybe a wheel for scrolling vertical, and at least two buttons, one for "OK/CONFIRM/YES" and one for "NO/CANCEL/GO BACK STUPID!" The stylus should not feel like a big plastic toothpick, nor should it feel like a chunk of lead.
4. Expandable , 2MB, 4MB, 8MB, give me 1GB, hehe. No seriously, I want to be able to plug into a firewire hard drive or wireless to a remote computer.
5. Real Video/Sound system. Maybe a mobile radeon is too much, but the video system should be able to pump out full-screen video at 60hz if I were streaming it from somewhere that could keep up. Sound systems have been nothing short of pitiful on handheld's, including handheld game systems. Onboard stereo DAC/DSP to play mp3/ogg's
6. Waterproof, damage-proof, bullet-proof, oven-proof. Hey when I goto pick up a pen, I don't want it falling out of my pocket and smashing into many pieces. Should be waterproof so one doesn't have to put it in the oven to dry off (^_^)
7. Thin-client to winXP-RDP/Linux-VNC things, hey, if it's not on the PDA, It's probably on PC/MAC in the next room.
8. IR/RF remote output, not only should it communicate via IRDA... but it should also be able to act as a universal remote for every single IR/RF device out there so I can get rid of that box of remotes on the coffee table.
9. While we are at it, why not let it interface with the car and have it drive while playing your ogg/mp3's in the stereo.
Peh
... thus accomplishing what the content providers want.
VHS/SVHS(Analog): Stretches, tears, wrinkles, demagnetizes with every play stored in an complex mechanical box.
8/Hi8(Analog): Stretches, tears, wrinkles, demagnetizes with every play stored in an complex mechanical box.
D8/DV/MV(Digital):Stretches, tears, wrinkles, demagnetizes with every play stored in an complex mechanical box.
VHSC/SVHSC(Analog):Stretches, tears, wrinkles, demagnetizes with every play stored in an complex mechanical box.
DVHS(Digital): Stretches, tears, wrinkles, demagetizes with every place
CD(Digital): Scratches, but is just sheet of plastic
LD(Analog): Scratches, Laser-rot, but is just a sheet of plastic
VCD/SVCD(Digital):Scratches, but is just a sheet of plastic.
DVD(Digital): Scratches, but is just a sheet of plastic
The cost to make, copy and distribute a CD/LD/DVD extremely cheap. However the cost to make, copy and distribute a VHS/DVHS tape or any of it's relatives (8/Hi8/D8, VHSC/SVHSC, DV/MV) is considerable more expensive, as you require copying equipment, where as with CD's you only need copying equipment if writing to CD-R discs.
There is a serious risk of destruction of your tapes by just using them. Discs you can pull the power on and use the emergency eject (or take the player apart.)
Seriously, VHS is a horrid ancient technology and needs to die. All it's siblings never took off except in camcorders and people who "must have" the latest thing. How long has SVHS been around? How many people own a SVHS VCR? Do you think people are going to drop 2K on a device that won't let you record anything to it? I can goto costco and get a 49$ VHS recorder and tape whatever I want from TV on it, the quality may suck, but it's better than shelling out money for something that won't let you record anything you want.
People buy VCR's so they can tape their soap operas, sitcoms and movies from cable so they can watch them later. Not so they can be at the mercy of the scheduling the tv networks decide on. They also double as cheap entertainment for children, you can let them wear out a copy of their favorite movie instead of wearing out the original you spent money on.
DVD as a playback system is ideal, but it doesn't let you record anything, period. So while your kids may not be able to wear out their favorite movies on DVD, you also don't need to make a copy.
Children, especially small children are harsh on everything. Parents and daycare operators can not afford to let their children play with the "good copy" of anything or risk having it destroyed.
So if for some reason people actually bought into this D-VHS dead technology, they could not make a backup of the tape to let the kids play over and over and over 30 times a day. So once that tape is destroyed, another one is needed.
See where I'm going here?
If it costs 35$ for 1 DVHS tape, but you can get 3 copies of the same movie on DVD, just get 2 copies on DVD and save 10$. Plus you get all the extras.
I see no demand for D-VHS except for preserving the digital signal when recording from Digital Cable or Sattelite TV, and even then, there is no reason a TiVo or similar device can't be designed to do it. Hell, with a TiVo-like device you can actually eliminate the wear concept completely.
(Hard drives will last about 17 years.)
In fact, the only reason we need expensive physical media is because nobody can agree on how to distribute it online.
Wouldn't an ethernet cable plugged into the back of your TV be more convientent than having a DVD, CD, Radio, Cassete Tape, VHS, surround system and mess of cables? Wouldn't it be much nicer to just have ONE box and ONE cable? (Assume wireless sattelite speakers for this concept.) I'm sure more people would buy expensive high-end stuff if they didn't have to get tangled up in the rats nest of wires behind most peoples systems.
Alas, if we moved to a medialess design, people wouldn't be able to retain backup's
Anyways, D-VHS is just a step backwards, I'm saying right now that it will fail because it will be too expensive to produce and distribute, too expensive to buy and the players will be also too expensive.
When I see a D-VHS player/recorder at the 49$ level that lets me record digitally from the sattelite or digital cable, give me a call, till them, I'm not buying this.
I think what the person wanted is the "work-for-hire" BS stripped away, it's the thing that lets the Record company own you.
So if you were to want to sing the song that you wrote at at your neighbours little girls birthday party, you couldn't without paying the record label royalties, DISPITE THE FACT YOU WROTE AND SANG IT.
The "work-for-hire" BS is what lets companies own every little bit of programming you do while you work for them, even if you wrote code on your home computer on your free time.
The "work-for-hire" has to go, it's an excuse to not give any copyright or credit to the person who wrote the thing in the first place.
I'm all in favor of individuals retaining the copyright to their works for lenght of their lifetime or X years, which ever comes first. But it should not be transferable, not to the spouse, children, grandchildren,adopted children, neices,nephews, aunts, uncles, pet dogs. If someone licenses something to a corperation, there should be a ceiling to how long a contract can be made, say 3 or 5 years, so if that company screws over that person, they can go somewhere else. This is also so we don't wind up with corperations hoarding all the IP they can.
I've give you an example in the game industry:
Richard Garriot, creator of Ultima, originally started the company "Origin systems", Which was later "bought-out" by EA. So now EA owns the rights to Ultima, and Richard Garriot, dispite creating the Ultima series, doesn't own it. So he can not make another sequal, not without buying back the rights to Ultima from EA, and I don't think EA would give it to him since they are making money off of Ultima Online.
It's these kinds of events that need to stop, because it prevents the creator from making derivative works, deprives them of future revenue should they ever leave the company who bought the rights to their material, and it makes content creators very bitchy people during interviews. You know Richard Garriot had a "non-competitive" clause or something in his contract that forbade him from producing/being involved in anything that would complete with EA?
I like EA, I really do, but when I look at Origin Systems being eaten by EA I keep going "If I ever made a game, I'm not selling the rights to anyone."
Looks like cd-rom/dvd-rom and floppy are optional, unless you can boot from the ethernet, better hope you don't nuke the OS.
(Other than taking the hard drive out)
Us working or volunteering to do tech support for companies who publish their e-mail address in the open are getting klez viruses in the customer support e-mail, making it a pain in the royal ass to get any work done when 1 in 5 e-mails is a klez virus (the other 4 are "legit e-mail", "help me I'm an idiot" and the rest "SPAM!")
And because Klez spoofs the from header... some look like it's coming from spammers.
Telling people to scan for viruses proves futile, as the people it's "aparently" from aren't the ones sending it.
I do hope that the telcos realize that they are impairing adoption of wireless e-mail as long as two things still happen:
t
1. Billing for messages recieved (when most of them are going to be spam)
2. Not billing the e-mail sender.
What needs to happen is that the telcos, maybe even the postal system needs to create an unique GUID-like system that generates e-mail addresses in the format like FFFFFFFF-FFFFFFFF-FFFFFFFF-FFFF
Of which the last two bytes can be used for identification/area, kinda like area-codes, but not base-10.
Then charge money for access to the directory service that resolves the GUID to something like mynameissombody@exchange.city.state.country.plane
So in order for spammers to mass-gather and send spam it would cost a fortune. Bulk-mail to specific target groups is made easier as well, since someone could pay a few thousand dollars and lookup an entire cities worth of e-mails. Instead of the stupid "10 billion e-mails on CD for 449$" type of crap seen in spam, which is neither targeted, nor regionally correct (Canadians, Austrailians, and Europeans get so much spam for junk from the USA isn't not funny.)
Then there is also a magic flag that we add called "disable bulk mail" and whenever a bulk query is called to the directory, e-mails with the flag set are not returned.
Also allow for opting-out of reciving e-mail from entire countries, finally, get rid of all that american spam.
Then opt-in your friends (the "only directly recieve e-mail from those on your list" feature.) so they can contact you directly.
It could be done, but I doubt the telcos want to pony up the money to do it. They are in the market for making money, and making money means billing the reciever for all the spam they recieve.
Aparently the problem is that emulating an PPC on an x86 is an incredable headache. While emulating a x86 on a PPC is a piece of cake.
Though in theory, not matter how embarassingly slow the emulator is, it should be possible to make one.
In general you need a host processor 50 times faster, Mhz for Mhz than the one you want to emulate to get any decent performance on a first-generation emulator.
Emulating a 68K Amiga or Mac (at like 8Mhz) only takes a 400Mhz processor to perform decently. A 100Mhz PPC would require a something like a 5Ghz Host processor to get about the same performance. Take into account all the other hardware while you are at it.
Second generation emulators (Optimized, dynamic recompilation, all other buzz words, etc) require something in the rage of 10 times more powerful.
No GameCube emulation till we are in double-diget Ghz processors, or someone gets the brilliant idea of not emulating the CPU/Graphics Hardware.
People like simplicity and low cost. Two things that copy protections ruin.
If I were to buy a CD or DVD of something and then have to register it to play it, have to have to buy all expensive DRM compliant hardware (let's say it adds 20$ to each piece of hardware)
Ethernet adaptor
Motherboard
CPU
RAM
Video Card
Sound Card
Hard drive
Speakers
Monitor
So that's 180$ added to the price of the entire computer, because I'd have to buy a new computer to support all this DRM junk, I could have bought 3 DVD or CD's for that price.
Now when I pop in the DVD and it goes to check against the MPAA's Database of registered DVD's it should play it.
However if the MPAA's site is down, the DVD won't play.
So why would I want to deal with all this crap when I can save myself a few thousand dollars in replacement hardware and just get something that disables the protection on the disc itself?
I had to go though this crap once before with actual DVD's. I had to get device to strip off the macrovision so it would run through the VCR so it would run to the TV that didn't have composite or s-video connectors. It was either pay 50$ for the image stabilizer or pay 800$ for a new TV.
Now I have the intelligence to figure out what the problem was. However people who go out and buy DVD players, computers, and whatnot don't know how to hook anything up (A lot of people still use the RF connectors AKA "channel 3 or 4" because they don't know how to hook up the other cables.)
So let's say some kind of legislation is passed that makes it a requirement to DRM-enable all hardware. How many people with current computers or older machines are going to buy something and play it in their computer only to phone their tech support person at 50$ an hour to tell them that they need to buy a new 2000$ computer to play their 50$ DVD.
Legislation is not the answer. The MPAA and RIAA are whining babies, having not taken the inititative to develop proper protections and distribute on the internet BEFORE the pirates did.
The MPAA and RIAA will fade out of existance from their arrogance. The game companies are a much larger business and make more money than movies and recording artists do. Even if their protections on their software are rather lax!
If the MPAA and RIAA want to get back in the game, they need to stop telling the government what to do and spend that money on distributing their content ONLINE and make it convienent as possible. No registration, no tracking, just one-click purchase with the ability to write it to a disc once. People will be more inclined to pay 1$-100$ to see a movie online NOW than pay a similar amount for the DVD or Theatre ticket that they may have to wait weeks to see.
I would honestly purchase "content" online if I could have it NOW and not have to jump through any hoops to get it.
Blanket fees are also a bad idea. The internet radio tax is absurd, radio stations would be paying royalties on music that the companies recieving the royalties never even heard of. A lot of the internet radio that I listen to is either foreign(as in not in english) or original/remixs of music. Nothing that I can buy in a store here. If I could download the songs straight from the record company at CD quality I would gladly pay that. But IMO it won't happen anytime soon because they are too scared of people taking the downloaded files and redistributing it. People would much rather have full quality audio from the official source than second-hand files that may not even be full quality. A way to do this is to have "higher-than-cd-quality" files that are higher quality than the CD's with an unique serial number and datestamp (and alternatively encoded purchasing number) This way it's impossible for people to rip music from CD that is better than the official source.
Some kind of lossless audio format would be required.
And if you want to simplify it for those people who don't understand. Simply store all the downloaded data in a solid file on the hard drive that only the DRM enabled players can open and burning it to CD erases the version in the datastore. So the DRM enabled burner would set the "is a copy" flag on the CD, once it's on CD, someone could obviously rerip it into an mp3. So the solution there is to simply not allow for burning to audio-cd, back-up to CD that the DRM player can play but won't re-rip from. Non-DRM players would see garbage.
See all this can be done without leglistation, it doesn't even require hardware replacement (though halting production of CD/CD-R/CD-RW drives would eliminate one piracy area, instead having DVD burning drives that respect the copy/no-copy flags.) People could stick hack it if they wanted to, but because hacking it is far more complex, most computer users won't bother.
Certain games need a level of "realism" in order to be fun, but how much realism is actually required is subjective.
Take SMB, the only realism in most of the games is the concept of gravity and mass (falling onto solid platforms, not through them.) Mario 64 added some more environmental realism (lighting, fog, water) but the game was still fun, because the realism didn't get in the way.
RPG games are one of the areas where there is never enough realism. You can have a game like Ultima, which let's you do practically everything to Final Fantasy which you can't do anything but follow the story.
I prefer more realism in RPG's, though sometimes it just get's in the way (how is leveling up realistic?) Like in MMORPG's the concept of dieing is non-realistic. Oops, I died, I'll just come back and try attacking that thing again. If the player had to start from scratch everytime he/she died, it wouldn't be very fun.
On the other end of things, graphical realism. Sure something may look real enough, but our 3D hardware in PC's have only now just got to the point where radiosity might be possible. Untill low-end hardware can do radiosity and ultra-high-poly models(or maybe just flat out directly render nurbs or something better) most 3D games hardly look realistic. A lot of imagination is required to make a sims model look realistic, same with anything that appears in a FPS game. Sure, the person being torn into by your weapon of choice may look like a bloody pulp, but I don't think you'll be seeing gorefest's anytime soon. Many players prefer a higher framerate and turn off the visual realism for more framerate.
Overall, some games benefit greatly from higher realism in game mechanics (open box, dump junk out from box, look through junk and find pouch of money, take pouch of money, have owner of pouch of money beat the tar out of you because you STOLE it.) Others just focus too much on eye candy and gameplay just takes a backseat or is non-existant (and you are watching a realtime-rendered or pre-rendered movie for most of the game.)
What's rather nasty IMO is when a game doesn't focus on the gameplay, but makes more of the game's "playtime" just sitting there watching the game, and yet that isn't even interesting.
Now stepping away from games for a minute...
Anyone see those useless "talking, crying, and peeing" type of dolls on television? Seriously, these one-purpose dolls are useless. The companies attempt to add realism to it, and ultimately fail when the parents will not buy any more because THEY are sick of hearing the things, or the child is sick of hearing it. The ones that don't do anything are far better, leaves more to the imagination, plus they don't make any noise.
With games, it's like having having an annoying "voice-over" for every character and not giving them the choice to turn it off. Or the person who is doing the speech can't sync up with the character talking. After a while, you would have preferred that there was no voices, just because they are too annoying.(A common complaint about some "english dubbed" games.) Some people would be more content with subtitles on the original language if it sounded better than to have a couple of bad voices spoil the game.
Today, you can't return used games to the store, so if you buy something and the gameplay is terrible, you can't return it. So you have to either play it and suffer through it, or sell it to someone else at a loss.
There is a local company somewhere in BC that makes pure plexiglass chasis. They are designed for "showing off" the inside of the machine. I would imagine the EM fields from plexiglass lack of shielding would be a trade-off. No using the computer for a chair now...
We'll see the rise of the 200$ junk-PC's from Taiwan then. No copy protection and cheap... there is no way that a 500$ IBM or Compaq prefab with the exact same parts can compete, because everything built in the USA has this "requirement" to be copyproof.
Hell just goto canada and get the same hardware. I don't belive ATI is under any obligation to add copy controls outside what's already supported since their cards are "not" mpeg-2 decoders. Most of the motherboards produced with VIA/ALi/SiS chipsets are also produced outside the USA. The motherboards come with all the other parts (audio, ethernet, modem, ATA133).
Good luck adding something to the processor, Intel/AMD would have an absolute fit since it would increase the die size and make the chips more expensive.
Let's see, I had Ultima 1-3
Ultima 1 worked fine on everything... but the 8088 ate it one day
Ultima 2 wouldn't work on anything but the 8088
Ultima 3 wouldn't work on anything but the 8088
Then I had Ultima 7 on 5.25" floppies, but it was buggy and couldn't be finished.
I then got Ultima Underworld I and II, played and finished on a 386.
I then got Ultima 7 again on a "compilation disc" that someone gave me that came with their sound card.
I then got Ultima 8 on a "compilation disc" someone else gave me that came with their sound card. Had to download a patch for it to work properly. This disc also had "savage empire" based on the U6 engine.
I then got Ultima 7 and 7.5 re-relase on CD,
Finally able to play it (since the CD version was patched already) and finished it
Then I upgraded to a Pentium 120 and was running win95, none of the games worked under windows, but through my knowledge of config.sys and autoexec.bat I made them work.
Then I upgraded to a Pentium 450, and downloaded Ultima 1-6 from abandonware sites, but was hard pressed to find martain dreams(another U6-engine game)
Then Origin re-released all the Ultima games except the underworlds and U6-engine games, so I bought that.
So over this course of time I bought Ultima 7 three times, and had it given to me once.
But only Ultima 1 actually works under Windows XP properly. U7 can be played with the free ultima 7 engine project, U8 can be hacked to work on the VDM, and have sound with VDMsound.
Ultima 2, has the same problem it always did (it was coded in assembler)
Ultima 4&5 would work, but the Apple/Commodore versions were better because they had music.
Ultima6, Savage empire and Martian dreams (once I found it) all required the L1 and L2 cache to be disabled for the sound to work.
So for me, it was worth buying Ultima 7 three times just to have it work, I still have the cloth map from the original package, and the manuals it came with.
Wing Commander on the other hand. *sigh*, I lost the CD to the I & II deluxe version and now I'm screwed, because I can't play it, and nobody has it.
Speaking of floppy drives...
... cd-burner has that spot. I even have the proper cable to run it as B drive.
I still have a 5.25" floppy drive in a box that I'm keeping if I ever decided to burn all my 5.25" 'decoration' discs to a CD... yes A CD, I figured out that at 360KB a disc, and about 400 discs... there's only about 100MB to burn.
Reason it's not in my computer?
IIRC some computers don't support a 5.25" drive anymore... I somehow doubt Windows XP would realize what it is if I were to plug it in.
Bochs is annoying as hell to set-up... I've yet to get it set-up AND do something useful. Mainly any attempt run something releases crash after crash after crash. Yes I was trying to run Ultima 7...
A fixed PC emulator that you can choose between 8088, 80286, 80386 and 80486(with or without FPU), Pentium (With FPU), and the maximum amount of RAM that the processor could handle (640K for the 8088, 16MB for the 80286/386sx) Sound Blaster/Adlib, SB Pro, SB 16(check out VDMsound for a SB sb emulator for WinNT, free (http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~vromas/vdmsound/)) and Video (Monochrome, CGA, EGA, VGA, Tandy-16color(yes because some games had a 16color mode if you had a Tandy) and hopefully VESA modes of the late DOS games.)
Hey if we can emulate a 68020 Mac on a PC, we should be able to emulate a 386 full-speed with sound and VGA.