If the dictionary app was rejected on the basis that it proved access to dirty words, does this mean that Safari is the next to go? After all, it only provides access to the entire Internet, where I'm sure a few dirty words and even porn could be found.
This is a rather unusual case involving a MAJOR case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing...
But in my case, as a deaf guy who depends on closed captioning or subtitles in movies, the "upgrade" to high resolutions screwed up one thing: Everyone forgot about closed captioning.
Bottom line: If I get a DVD that does not (for whatever reason) include subtitles, but instead only offers CC, then I must watch it in 480i in order to view the captioning.
I can't tell you how annoying it is to pop in a movie, see no subtitles, then fumble around with the PS3/TV settings until it works (and even then I end up watching the movie on my laptop because it's just easier that way).
The next part after your bolded part is nonsense too:
Xonar D2X is introducing an innovative technology ÂDirectSound 3D Game Extensions v1.0 (DS3D GX 1.0)- to restore DirectSound 3D Hardware acceleration mode and its subsidiary EAX effects on Windows Vista for 3D games. Unlike some proprietary API like OpenAL, DS3D GX doesn't require games to support OpenAL API. All existing games compatible with Microsoft DirectX and DirectSound 2D/3D will be supported with DS3D GX technology. Before you start EAX and DS3D HW games, please enable DS3D GX on the Xonar D2X audio center, and disable the function after the games.
Huh. I didn't realize that by using the OpenAL API, I was forced to use the OpenAL API.
Hmm... I'm not a lawyer or anything like that, nor should I even pretend to understand the justice system...
But doesn't this essentially prove that (ugh can't believe I'm saying this) the RIAA actually have a valid case against this guy?
I mean if that's supposed to be his "mother's" site, then it's probably obvious what's going on in that household... Teen decides to set up a pirate website. He doesn't believe that anyone would go after him... I mean there's so many other pirate sites out there... why pick on HIM? He's too small a fry for the RIAA.
So he sneaks into his mother's purse, finds her credit card, and uses it to license a domain address for p2pnet.net, and well... you know the rest.
What strikes me as a little odd is that if the parents (after knowing this... I assume?) are basically helping this teen with his claims of RIAA conspiracy... or are they really THAT naive and trusting of their son?
Except that it will still work in "offline" mode. You can play any games you want; you just can't go online.
If you called Nintendo customer service, they essentially give you one of two choices:
1) Give them your credit card number over the phone. They send a replacement Wii along with a postage-paid box to you, you put your old Wii in the box and ship it back. You won't have to spend a day without the Wii.
2) If you want to keep your original Wii, you can ship it back, they fix it, and overnight it back to you. In this case you WOULD be without your Wii for a few days.
My bet is most would go for Option 1. Option 2 is for if you have a lot of stuff on internal storage they can't live without (which is fairly unlikely this soon after launch).
How can HD-DVD compete with that kind of a headstart?
Easily. HD-DVD has the letters "DVD" in it. That has an immediate meaning in the average consumer's head: It's like DVD, but now it's in HD! Just like how a HD-TV is like a TV but in HD!
HD-DVD, regardless of how well it actually performs, has an immediate name recognition. The name "Blu-ray" really doesn't convey any meaning to the average Joe Blow -- unless s/he already did the homework. It doesn't exactly scream, "This is better than DVD!"
You have to admit that Sony's been doing a pretty good job of shooting themselves in the foot lately, and the lack of positive news about the PS3 reflect this. It's not as if there's a mass media conspiracy to muzzle pro-PS3 news; it's just that the PS3 really is doing that badly.
He's right -- the video does indeed show the police covering up the cameras with garbage bags. Until the cameras were covered, the video doesn't show much: A bunch of guys standing around looking at the servers, chatting on a cellphone, a guy pointing around at the cameras(!), etc.
I was immediately suspicious once the cameras were covered -- I'd have thought the police (of all people) would welcome the cameras since it'd be hard proof that everything they did was on the up and up, they have video backup for when they testify in court, the defendant(s) can't claim they planted evidence, etc, etc.
When the police covers up cameras to hide their actions, that shows very clearly they know they're planning to do something questionable (if not outright illegal). In my books, that's not flamebait, that's worth investigating.
The fact they took a whole bunch of servers rather than just TPB is hardly flamebait-worthy either. It's a serious issue. Especially for the (more) legit businesses involved.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'll give you DOA4, and maybe GRAW, but there is no way Tomb Raider or Oblivion made the launch window. The 360 came out last year, the launch window ended December 31, 2005.
But considering that Microsoft is relaunching the XBox360, one might argue that the launch window is still open.;)
Pretty much, yep. When people in robotics are trying to make robots more human, they either end up creeping themselves out, or realize that the general population wouldn't stand for it, so they scale back on everything before they hit the general populace...
Remember how many sci-fic books dealt with how humanity would react to life-like androids? Well... that's pretty much what's starting now -- the general populace is now seeing life-like bots in video games and CGI movies that we're now struggling to figure out just what make humans "human" in the video games industry (and in render farms for Hollywood).
It's all the billions of "small things" -- slight squaring of the eyes, a certain facial tic in response to something insulting, etc. Stuff like that are still missing in today's "androids" yet would take far more resources and time to create and animate models, so it's easier to go the less realistic way to solve the "creepiness" problem.
Not to sound like a troll (although I'm sure I'll be modded as such by someone) but... I'm going to rant a bit:
I mean, 40 person raids? It really does seem like Blizzard is running out of design ideas for epic raids where it's now "more people == more uber!"
Don't get me wrong, I loved WoW, levelled up to 60, explored everywhere (even the unopened zones like Hyjal and Caverns of Time), and finally got so sick of gathering up 15 people to do instance runs that I grew bored and quit.
Now they're upping it to 40 people for a raid? Yeah that'll make you REALLY feel you mattered in a fight. I can't think of 40-man raids as being anything other than a zerg-fest.
I really wish they'd try to come up with new design ideas for boss/epic encounters rather than just upping the mob's HP, DPS, etc. Take the Gnomeregan boss for example -- bombs are dropping from pipes and blowing up all over the place, and people would have to run around pressing buttons to shut off the bomb vents WHILE fighting the boss... and you can do this with 6 people!
I've heard all the counter-arguments (Join an uber guild! It's not JUST a zerg rush, you still have to... bla bla). Whatever, I don't care. 40 people is still too many. It's not really casual-friendly, which was what WoW was originally supposed to be.... wasn't it?
...what you are doing is taking away their legal right to profit from the work they own the rights to
Careful there. You do not have the right to profit. You do have the right to attempt to profit.
That may seem like a minor distinction, but it's actually a huge one. Confusing the two will only muddy the copyright water even further, which nobody needs.
Who gives a fuck about advertising in online games? Particularly when the game is free for you to play. MMOGs, in case you hadn't read the giant writing on the wall, are expensive to run. They need to make up for that cost. That's called advertising. It's easy, generates steady income, and can be targeted.
I personally couldn't care less whether a game runs an ad or not... except for this one point the article brought up:
G4 TV, however, is the gaming press and this in-game advertising, new revenues for games, and marketing through them, is news... So, I'm sure we can expect some news coverage of this. Will they actually endorse the game, or publicize this? Would that be a conflict of interest for G4?
I found this to be a valid and worrisome point. Remember DRIV3R? Atari basically bought reviews from the gaming press to give the game an inflated review score so it'd sell more copies.
When review scores are "bought", this hurts me, the consumer. In such incentives became commonplace, how am I supposed to trust reviews to tell me which games are good and which aren't, so I know how to spend my hard earned cash?
PC Gamers need to be a bit more tech savvy then their console brothers and sisters to get games to work
I can't agree with this enough. When you want to play a game on the console, all you have to do is walk into a store, buy the game, unwrap the box, pop a bottle of beer, pop the disc into the console, and you're playing.
This is not the case with the PC. You've got to have the latest drivers, make sure the drive is clutter-free, no background apps hogging all CPU resources, etc. before you finally pop in the disc to begin "installing" the game (and experience all the joys that goes with installing any game - CD shuffling, failed installs, etc.) I'm not even going to touch the Steam issue...
Why can't PC games just allow you to pop in a disc and begin playing? These days pretty much everyone should have a high-speed CD reader at the very least, if not a DVD drive, so the "games run faster on the HDD" excuse isn't a valid reason these days.
I consider myself a hardcore gamer -- heck I write game software for a living -- but these days I find myself buying console games specifically to avoid the hassles of PC gaming installation issues. After a long day of staring at code on a monitor, the last thing I want to do is tinker around with computers when I get home.
What do you think about the screen? Is it a big problem for you that it's vertical and not horizontal like in most devices?
It depends. For some types of games, it's horrible, and for other types of games, it's perfect.
If you want to play a FPS (at single-digit frame rates... heh), then the screen gets in the way. It's also bad for side-scrolling action games (Sonic the Hedgehog just isn't the same...)
However, there are games where vertical screens are great. Pinball games. Vertical scrolling shoot-em-ups. Tiger Woods golf. Even Tony Hawk is pretty damn playable. Also, remember that a lot of old arcade games used vertical screens. I'm dying to be able to put MAME on the sucker...
As a game player, I actually prefer the old NGage (ya know the side-talking one) because it's bigger, and the buttons are larger and more accessible. With the QD, the phone is smaller, and the buttons are sorta mashed together, and sometimes feel uncomfortable to use. Look at the left/right selection keys.. they're slivers for crying out loud!
When I first saw it, I already knew how to turn on the QD, but that was only because I used the old NGage and knew the approximate location of the power button, so that was the first place I looked. However, what surprised me was how hard it is to push and hold the button in to turn it on! The button is really stiff, and on top of that, it's covered by the rubber band that goes around the QD. Your finger knuckle usually turns white before the phone turns on.
Speaking of stiff buttons, this is another reason why I prefer the old NGage (for playing games) - the bigger buttons push down quite easily, and have a nice "click" to it. The new buttons are a bit stiffer... you get used to it, but I still like the old layout better.
Mind you, the old one still had stupid annoyances such as opening it up and popping out the battery to change games... plus the fact it can't go faster than 22fps... well... sucks.
As a cellphone... the QD is better, and the fact it's running on the Symbian OS is sweet - tons of ready-to-download Symbian apps are out there!
There's actually a pretty good technical reason why co-op mode is almost never supported on PC games, but can be done in split-screen mode on consoles.
In split-screen mode, you only need to keep one copy of everything, and therefore you have no need to keep two sets of data in sync. Plus you don't have to deal with latency issues.
For networked PC users, once you split it up so you have to maintain two, three, four, X number of copies of data (one for each client), then the complexity increases exponentially. It's already hard enough keeping deathmatch games in sync, and even then you still see warping players due to low latency.
Now throw in monster AI, mission states, flags, etc. and you're dealing with a lot more data to keep in sync, which means using up more bandwidth, ensuring packets are handled in the proper order (Did I fire then reload? Or reload then fire?)
All of that is a non-issue on a single platform running in split-screen mode using shared data, and therefore easier to support.
Of course, as a player, I'd *love* to see more networked co-op games, but I just wanted to clear up it's not simply because designers are out to screw PC users.
Kutaragi acknowledged that the button is less responsive than the others, in part because it's so close to the PSP's 480x272 screen.
Now, that's about as close as he's allowed to admitting that there's a problem with the PSP. After all, he can't come out and directly say, "The PSP has a design flaw", especially since it hasn't been released anywhere else other than Japan yet.
He's not stupid. He knows there's an issue with that button, but the best he can do at the moment is put such a spin on it so that it's not "really" a problem. He waves it off by saying we shouldn't focus on any flaws because it's so "beautiful". It's just something we'll have to "adapt" to. Spin, spin, spin.
Exactly. How else do you propose to play the game?
If you KNOW the switch is not directly in the middle, just damn push the outer part of it, where you know the button's pressure sensor (switch) is !
Which is quite easy to keep in mind while playing those fast 'n' furious button-mashing action games, no doubt.
Or, if you're so unhappy, take it apart, move the "hole" in which the button is a few milimeters and be happy about it (and have a funny-looking handheld, but, hey, that's the trade).
OK... that's taking the fanboy thing a bit too far... Sony should've been the one who did that (after all, the top guy himself agrees it is a design flaw), so it certainly shouldn't have to be up to me to fix their flaw.
What's next? "The UMD drive isn't an issue, just duct tape it shut between game sessions, and don't whine about the sticky residue"? Or: "Just get a freaking hamster if you really care about batteries that much!"
I passed this quote around the office, and one guy mentioned that it reminded him of the Falling Waters building, which is apparently the most gorgeous building in the world but has so many issues that pretty much nobody wants it.
Slashdot Mirror
If the dictionary app was rejected on the basis that it proved access to dirty words, does this mean that Safari is the next to go? After all, it only provides access to the entire Internet, where I'm sure a few dirty words and even porn could be found.
This is a rather unusual case involving a MAJOR case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing...
But in my case, as a deaf guy who depends on closed captioning or subtitles in movies, the "upgrade" to high resolutions screwed up one thing: Everyone forgot about closed captioning.
This thread does a much better job of explaining it than I ever could: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=699933
Bottom line: If I get a DVD that does not (for whatever reason) include subtitles, but instead only offers CC, then I must watch it in 480i in order to view the captioning.
I can't tell you how annoying it is to pop in a movie, see no subtitles, then fumble around with the PS3/TV settings until it works (and even then I end up watching the movie on my laptop because it's just easier that way).
Huh. I didn't realize that by using the OpenAL API, I was forced to use the OpenAL API.
Hmm... I'm not a lawyer or anything like that, nor should I even pretend to understand the justice system...
But doesn't this essentially prove that (ugh can't believe I'm saying this) the RIAA actually have a valid case against this guy?
I mean if that's supposed to be his "mother's" site, then it's probably obvious what's going on in that household... Teen decides to set up a pirate website. He doesn't believe that anyone would go after him... I mean there's so many other pirate sites out there... why pick on HIM? He's too small a fry for the RIAA.
So he sneaks into his mother's purse, finds her credit card, and uses it to license a domain address for p2pnet.net, and well... you know the rest.
What strikes me as a little odd is that if the parents (after knowing this... I assume?) are basically helping this teen with his claims of RIAA conspiracy... or are they really THAT naive and trusting of their son?
Except that it will still work in "offline" mode. You can play any games you want; you just can't go online.
If you called Nintendo customer service, they essentially give you one of two choices:
1) Give them your credit card number over the phone. They send a replacement Wii along with a postage-paid box to you, you put your old Wii in the box and ship it back. You won't have to spend a day without the Wii.
2) If you want to keep your original Wii, you can ship it back, they fix it, and overnight it back to you. In this case you WOULD be without your Wii for a few days.
My bet is most would go for Option 1. Option 2 is for if you have a lot of stuff on internal storage they can't live without (which is fairly unlikely this soon after launch).
Easily. HD-DVD has the letters "DVD" in it. That has an immediate meaning in the average consumer's head: It's like DVD, but now it's in HD! Just like how a HD-TV is like a TV but in HD!
HD-DVD, regardless of how well it actually performs, has an immediate name recognition. The name "Blu-ray" really doesn't convey any meaning to the average Joe Blow -- unless s/he already did the homework. It doesn't exactly scream, "This is better than DVD!"
So submit some pro-PS3 news then.
You have to admit that Sony's been doing a pretty good job of shooting themselves in the foot lately, and the lack of positive news about the PS3 reflect this. It's not as if there's a mass media conspiracy to muzzle pro-PS3 news; it's just that the PS3 really is doing that badly.
Why was the parent modded as Flamebait?
He's right -- the video does indeed show the police covering up the cameras with garbage bags. Until the cameras were covered, the video doesn't show much: A bunch of guys standing around looking at the servers, chatting on a cellphone, a guy pointing around at the cameras(!), etc.
I was immediately suspicious once the cameras were covered -- I'd have thought the police (of all people) would welcome the cameras since it'd be hard proof that everything they did was on the up and up, they have video backup for when they testify in court, the defendant(s) can't claim they planted evidence, etc, etc.
When the police covers up cameras to hide their actions, that shows very clearly they know they're planning to do something questionable (if not outright illegal). In my books, that's not flamebait, that's worth investigating.
The fact they took a whole bunch of servers rather than just TPB is hardly flamebait-worthy either. It's a serious issue. Especially for the (more) legit businesses involved.
But considering that Microsoft is relaunching the XBox360, one might argue that the launch window is still open.
Pretty much, yep. When people in robotics are trying to make robots more human, they either end up creeping themselves out, or realize that the general population wouldn't stand for it, so they scale back on everything before they hit the general populace...
Remember how many sci-fic books dealt with how humanity would react to life-like androids? Well... that's pretty much what's starting now -- the general populace is now seeing life-like bots in video games and CGI movies that we're now struggling to figure out just what make humans "human" in the video games industry (and in render farms for Hollywood).
It's all the billions of "small things" -- slight squaring of the eyes, a certain facial tic in response to something insulting, etc. Stuff like that are still missing in today's "androids" yet would take far more resources and time to create and animate models, so it's easier to go the less realistic way to solve the "creepiness" problem.
Not to sound like a troll (although I'm sure I'll be modded as such by someone) but... I'm going to rant a bit:
:)
I mean, 40 person raids? It really does seem like Blizzard is running out of design ideas for epic raids where it's now "more people == more uber!"
Don't get me wrong, I loved WoW, levelled up to 60, explored everywhere (even the unopened zones like Hyjal and Caverns of Time), and finally got so sick of gathering up 15 people to do instance runs that I grew bored and quit.
Now they're upping it to 40 people for a raid? Yeah that'll make you REALLY feel you mattered in a fight. I can't think of 40-man raids as being anything other than a zerg-fest.
I really wish they'd try to come up with new design ideas for boss/epic encounters rather than just upping the mob's HP, DPS, etc. Take the Gnomeregan boss for example -- bombs are dropping from pipes and blowing up all over the place, and people would have to run around pressing buttons to shut off the bomb vents WHILE fighting the boss... and you can do this with 6 people!
I've heard all the counter-arguments (Join an uber guild! It's not JUST a zerg rush, you still have to... bla bla). Whatever, I don't care. 40 people is still too many. It's not really casual-friendly, which was what WoW was originally supposed to be.... wasn't it?
OK, there. End of rant
...what you are doing is taking away their legal right to profit from the work they own the rights to
Careful there. You do not have the right to profit. You do have the right to attempt to profit.
That may seem like a minor distinction, but it's actually a huge one. Confusing the two will only muddy the copyright water even further, which nobody needs.
At last... after more than 20 years' work, one of my lightsynths is going to reach a decent sized audience. Millions and millions...
:)
Maybe it's just me, but this sounded like something Dr. Evil would say (with a pinkie finger to his mouth)
I personally couldn't care less whether a game runs an ad or not... except for this one point the article brought up:
I found this to be a valid and worrisome point. Remember DRIV3R? Atari basically bought reviews from the gaming press to give the game an inflated review score so it'd sell more copies.
When review scores are "bought", this hurts me, the consumer. In such incentives became commonplace, how am I supposed to trust reviews to tell me which games are good and which aren't, so I know how to spend my hard earned cash?
PC Gamers need to be a bit more tech savvy then their console brothers and sisters to get games to work
I can't agree with this enough. When you want to play a game on the console, all you have to do is walk into a store, buy the game, unwrap the box, pop a bottle of beer, pop the disc into the console, and you're playing.
This is not the case with the PC. You've got to have the latest drivers, make sure the drive is clutter-free, no background apps hogging all CPU resources, etc. before you finally pop in the disc to begin "installing" the game (and experience all the joys that goes with installing any game - CD shuffling, failed installs, etc.) I'm not even going to touch the Steam issue...
Why can't PC games just allow you to pop in a disc and begin playing? These days pretty much everyone should have a high-speed CD reader at the very least, if not a DVD drive, so the "games run faster on the HDD" excuse isn't a valid reason these days.
I consider myself a hardcore gamer -- heck I write game software for a living -- but these days I find myself buying console games specifically to avoid the hassles of PC gaming installation issues. After a long day of staring at code on a monitor, the last thing I want to do is tinker around with computers when I get home.
What do you think about the screen? Is it a big problem for you that it's vertical and not horizontal like in most devices?
It depends. For some types of games, it's horrible, and for other types of games, it's perfect.
If you want to play a FPS (at single-digit frame rates... heh), then the screen gets in the way. It's also bad for side-scrolling action games (Sonic the Hedgehog just isn't the same...)
However, there are games where vertical screens are great. Pinball games. Vertical scrolling shoot-em-ups. Tiger Woods golf. Even Tony Hawk is pretty damn playable. Also, remember that a lot of old arcade games used vertical screens. I'm dying to be able to put MAME on the sucker...
As a game player, I actually prefer the old NGage (ya know the side-talking one) because it's bigger, and the buttons are larger and more accessible. With the QD, the phone is smaller, and the buttons are sorta mashed together, and sometimes feel uncomfortable to use. Look at the left/right selection keys.. they're slivers for crying out loud!
When I first saw it, I already knew how to turn on the QD, but that was only because I used the old NGage and knew the approximate location of the power button, so that was the first place I looked. However, what surprised me was how hard it is to push and hold the button in to turn it on! The button is really stiff, and on top of that, it's covered by the rubber band that goes around the QD. Your finger knuckle usually turns white before the phone turns on.
Speaking of stiff buttons, this is another reason why I prefer the old NGage (for playing games) - the bigger buttons push down quite easily, and have a nice "click" to it. The new buttons are a bit stiffer... you get used to it, but I still like the old layout better.
Mind you, the old one still had stupid annoyances such as opening it up and popping out the battery to change games... plus the fact it can't go faster than 22fps... well... sucks.
As a cellphone... the QD is better, and the fact it's running on the Symbian OS is sweet - tons of ready-to-download Symbian apps are out there!
...and would probably have a hard time being with someone who didn't understand my passion for electronic entertainment...
/one ticket to hell, please.
Depends on what kind of electronic entertainment you mean...
I don't know about you, but I know I'd sorely miss the rumble feature in Rez.
and even then you still see warping players due to low latency.
I know it's bad form to reply to my own posts... but that should've read HIGH latency.
Sigh... I really should proofread my posts before hitting that 'Submit' button...
There's actually a pretty good technical reason why co-op mode is almost never supported on PC games, but can be done in split-screen mode on consoles.
In split-screen mode, you only need to keep one copy of everything, and therefore you have no need to keep two sets of data in sync. Plus you don't have to deal with latency issues.
For networked PC users, once you split it up so you have to maintain two, three, four, X number of copies of data (one for each client), then the complexity increases exponentially. It's already hard enough keeping deathmatch games in sync, and even then you still see warping players due to low latency.
Now throw in monster AI, mission states, flags, etc. and you're dealing with a lot more data to keep in sync, which means using up more bandwidth, ensuring packets are handled in the proper order (Did I fire then reload? Or reload then fire?)
All of that is a non-issue on a single platform running in split-screen mode using shared data, and therefore easier to support.
Of course, as a player, I'd *love* to see more networked co-op games, but I just wanted to clear up it's not simply because designers are out to screw PC users.
Did no one RTFA?
How about this part? Quoth the article:
Kutaragi acknowledged that the button is less responsive than the others, in part because it's so close to the PSP's 480x272 screen.
Now, that's about as close as he's allowed to admitting that there's a problem with the PSP. After all, he can't come out and directly say, "The PSP has a design flaw", especially since it hasn't been released anywhere else other than Japan yet.
He's not stupid. He knows there's an issue with that button, but the best he can do at the moment is put such a spin on it so that it's not "really" a problem. He waves it off by saying we shouldn't focus on any flaws because it's so "beautiful". It's just something we'll have to "adapt" to. Spin, spin, spin.
Analogies apart... for god's sake, it's a BUTTON.
Exactly. How else do you propose to play the game?
If you KNOW the switch is not directly in the middle, just damn push the outer part of it, where you know the button's pressure sensor (switch) is !
Which is quite easy to keep in mind while playing those fast 'n' furious button-mashing action games, no doubt.
Or, if you're so unhappy, take it apart, move the "hole" in which the button is a few milimeters and be happy about it (and have a funny-looking handheld, but, hey, that's the trade).
OK... that's taking the fanboy thing a bit too far... Sony should've been the one who did that (after all, the top guy himself agrees it is a design flaw), so it certainly shouldn't have to be up to me to fix their flaw.
What's next? "The UMD drive isn't an issue, just duct tape it shut between game sessions, and don't whine about the sticky residue"? Or: "Just get a freaking hamster if you really care about batteries that much!"
I passed this quote around the office, and one guy mentioned that it reminded him of the Falling Waters building, which is apparently the most gorgeous building in the world but has so many issues that pretty much nobody wants it.
I'll sacrifice my mod points because I just had to respond to this...
It's one thing to admit that there's a problem. It's another thing to refuse to fix the problem.