As for the real live macaw that inspired the original bags, it never lived to see its name in lights, Mr. Thomson says: "I came in one day, and he was dead."
He was going to publish a paper on the weaknesses of the SDMI schemes. The SDMI people threatened to prosecute under the DMCA and only backed down when Felten went to the Supreme Court about the whole deal.
Whether or not part 4 applies, you have to go through the courts to exonerate yourself- and you might not be able to easily do it, having to go through the entire judicial system to do it.
Re:Isn't there something missing from this "review
on
Video Codec Comparison
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· Score: 1
I would gladly encode material from the digital master tapes but my chances of getting access to those are pretty slim:/
...to none, and slim just took a powder...
Point taken. But, you might also, as someone else that responded to me pointed out, use other sources than just DVD's. Satellite, captured NTSC, etc. would also be very good comparisons. What you're checking is something useful- which does the best job under the conditions provided by DVD's. I want more info than that (yeah, I know, do it yourself- if I had time, I might...:-)
1) How many of these "hiring startups" layed off more people in the last year than they plan to hire? 2) How many of these startups would it take to cover for the Lucents out there?
1) A lot more than the "big boys". The telecom, etc companies bled a LOT of people- people that they needed but "couldn't afford", and in a move to appease the investors they let them go. The small players didn't have Wall Street/NASDAQ as an excuse to sacrifice jobs on the altar of stock price so a lot of the small companies didn't actually do layoffs.
2) Covering would be nice. And if there is enough startups, they actually might. However, startups hiring people steadily or rapidly is definitely not the sign of a dead industry- it's more of a sign of the end of a downturn beginning.
Isn't there something missing from this "review"?
on
Video Codec Comparison
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· Score: 4, Insightful
To be sure, he's comparing the performance of the codecs against content that is popular (and typically difficult to compress...)- but he's pulling it from a lossy format, namely the MPEG2 stream off of a DVD.
There's a reason why you're really supposed to re-encode from the CD when you're producing.OGG's or something like them instead of pulling them from MP3's as source. With a lossy format, you're deliberately losing content, introducing hopefully un-noticable distortions into the reproduction of the sound. Unfortunately, the varying formats use different assumptions, which produce differing kinds of distortions into the result. Because of this, re-encoding from MP3's, your sound files end up with distortions on top of distortions- the quality and compression suffers as a result.
The same applies to video files.
This is not to say that what Doom9's doing isn't important or relevant- it is if you're using the codecs to space shift (i.e. Put several movies on your laptop so you're not carrying the DVD's on your business trip...) or pirating movies. The reality is that the codecs he's reviewing are largely designed for previously untouched video feeds- someone ought to test that as well.
Anything else is not really a proper review- unless you're only caring about ripping and re-encoding DVDs. To me, that's something useful to know about, but I'm as or more interested in the intended usages of this stuff as well.
Now, I'm not a lawyer, but the way you put this sounded a bit off from my understanding of things, so I did a little research...
From Rob Goldman Legal Services' website (Found with a quick Google search...):
Are there debts that I cannot discharge?
Yes. The scope of the discharge varies in each chapter: in Chapter 7, debts incurred by fraud, intentionally harmful actions, dishonesty, as well as priority taxes, unfiled taxes, family support, student loans and criminal fines and restitution cannot be discharged.
In Chapter 13, only family support, student loans, drunk driving judgments, and criminal restitution are non dischargeable.
(The bold emphasis on criminal in the above quote is mine...)
Since this is a civil restitution, that would concievably (I am not a lawyer, so I can't be sure about it...) put it outside of the exemption it appears you're thinking of.
Furthermore a Chapter 13 can extend the period of time and lower the payments if it were excluded- the exclusion merely covers the ability to discharge the debt in question. For example, IRS back taxes can be lumped into a Chapter 13 filing with 0% interest owed on the money in question.
Strictly speaking, a lot of college students would do well to afford $17k by their lonesome, even if it's over a three year period. They HAVE to pay the settlement or other nasty things can be done to them. Facing that, one might well give consideration to a Chapter 7 or 13 filing against the debts in question. Furthermore, the severity of the credit ding is dependant on what you do after the bankruptcy is completed. It will not preclude purchases of things like a car or a house after a year or so after the bankruptcy is concluded. (And in at least some of the cases, you get really good interest- because they know you can't cut-and-run with another filing for 7 years afterwards...)
I'm not a lawyer, but I do know something about this. (Consult a lawyer before giving any thought to a Chapter 7 or 13 filing...)
A bankruptcy filing has the option of including or excluding specific debts in the filing- whether or not it's a Chapter 7 or 13. It's called re-affirming a debt; you're telling a specific debtor that you're able and interested in continuing with that debt as agreed upon. In this case, I could see them being able to re-affirm the debts of the student loans because they are students and the loans are liable to be smaller than the debt of the settlement. It may make it a little harder for them at the hearing of the creditors, because of the reaffirmations- leaves it open for a RIAA lawyer to challenge a discharge of the debt by the court handling the filing.
If your thermal grease is applied correctly, it will come off of the CPU with little problem.
The cheap stuff (including the stuff AMD's reccomending) contains oils that tend to dry out in a year or two, leaving this gummy mess that won't come off with isopropyl. (This is the main reason for my using Arctic Silver- it doesn't dry out like Shin Etsu, etc.) For that, you've got to use something like acetone, WD-40, Goof-Off, or Goo-Gone- even if you've applied it correctly.
It DOES work- and well. But I've found that "Goof Off" and "Goo Gone" do an equally adequate job and don't have anywhere near the flash point acetone does...
It's adequate to cool it down- with a room at precisely 75 degrees, a fully and properly designed case, and a VERY noisy fan. If any of those criteria aren't met, you start running at temperatures, that while within AMD's specs, will definitely shorten the life of the CPU and the motherboard it's sitting on and lower it's overall stability. For some, this stuff is so that they can have the performance without the noise. For some, it's to have an extended range of temperatures that are adequate for their machine's good operation.
While I didn't do any of the porting work (I'm working on Ballistics from Grin right at the moment...), I did do a little side project for them to see if the blitters were an issue for performance on the PPC version. By the way, thanks for the cool game.
Considering that LGP ported the game and not Cyberlore, I doubt that you'll be able to get an "upgrade". They have to pay for the privilege to port the game in most cases and pay royalties usually for each unit sold. $10 to just convert might work out okay for someone like Id (though they're offering that service for free with their games...) who ported the code themselves. It cost them nothing more than the effort to port and to provide a means to obtain the Linux version. In LGP's case, they have to recoup all of the royalties involved, cover the costs of producing the version in a retail box, and paying the employees something. I seriously doubt $10 would cover royalties, pay, and the framework to provide it to you.
A pretty devastating combo. I use it a lot in my play when they're available- Priestesses generate a LOT of animated skeletons and the Cultists charm all the roaming nature monsters (such as bears, etc.)- you end up with a much larger army than you'd have otherwise. Good against things like Dragons, etc.
Good questions- unfortunately, there's only approximate answers for you. I can give my personal advice on the subject, but your mileage may vary.
Which display card?
A previous poster said ATI. Not a bad choice. ATI's cards have DRI drivers for them and full-featured (but somewhat twitchy still) binary only drivers from ATI. The medium to the top of the line Radeons will be a good purchase.
However, NVidia's also a very good option to consider. A GeForce2, GeForce3, or GeForce4 will work well under Linux- with some caveats. NVidia's drivers perform at the same basic level as the Windows counterparts and have packages for all the popular distribution versions. Because it's a closed source binary, most distributions do not include or install the drivers for you- you have to do a few manual steps on your own (they're really easy). However, if you use the boxed version of Mandrake (there are liable to be others doing this- so ask around...) you will get a stable version of the drivers installed for you at installation time. Having said this, not everything is rosy with using NVidia cards. The drivers have been known to have lockup issues in the past, there's some bad rendering errors that crop up with some games (such as Chromium and BZFlag...) that do not show with DRI or ATI drivers, and there's at least one known instance of the sleep mode selection killing two KDS 19" monitors (My friend's machine...).
Which would I choose? Depends. If you're looking for maximum game playability right now, go with an NVidia card (I recommend a GeForce4 MX series for those on a budget and the Ti series for those with money to burn...). If you want absolute peak performance and can afford to take a chance and wait a bit for the drivers to gel, ATI's 9700 is the way to go (The 9700 series currently trounces most of NVidia's offerings at fairly good prices...). If you're looking for all open-sourced support, a middle of the line ATI is the way to go, but don't expect playability with everything out of the box- they're still working hard on working correctly at peak speeds with UT2k3, NWN, etc.
Which sound card?
Somewhat tougher question. Many popular and obscure sound cards work. For most stuff under Linux, they all work equally well. Having said this, hardware OpenAL support's largely not present. The framework's there, but there's pretty much nobody there. Creative supports OpenAL under Windows. So does NVidia with their NForce2 motherboards. Rumor has it that UT2k3 uses OpenAL pretty extensively. So, why doesn't Linux have the support? Your guess is as good as mine. If you're dual booting or are willing to wait for the support to arrive an NForce2 motherboard or an Audigy card may be a good choice. Otherwise, stick with something cheaper, like a SoundBlaster 16PCI. Cheaper, no-name cards may work well, but it's a crapshoot on stability- just like it is in Windows.
Which distro?
This is something more of a personal taste issue. For ease of installation, lack of tweaking, Red Hat 9.0 and Mandrake 9.1 come immediately to mind. Both do a good job of detecting what you have (Keep in mind that closed source drivers will not be installed with the GPL downloadable distributions...) and setting it up. With the boxed edition of Mandrake, it will detect at least the NVidia card (personal experience...) and install a stable version of the driver. I don't know what Red Hat 9.0 does from the boxed edition since I've not bought it in recent times.
Having said this, I've heard that SuSE does a really good job at this stuff as well. (I, however, can't reccomend it since I've not used it in ages...)
Because I see two different media servers available for Linux- one costs money out the wazoo, the other costs nothing.
Darwin Streaming Server which supports QuickTime, MPEG4, and MP3 streaming. RealNetworks Server which has supported Linux for some time, supports all Real media formats, MPEG4, etc.
In the case of the RealNetworks server, they have a free version that's crippled to 1Mbit bandwidth.
Now, it depends on when you tried this. If it was within the past few years, Darwin's streaming server has been available during that time. If it was before that, I can't understand as RealNetworks HAD a streaming server. Oh, I've figured it out, you wanted something that was "free". Sorry, the only free, uncrippled stuff as in "free beer" stuff has only shown up on the scene fairly recently.
If you did this in fairly recent times, all I can say is that you didn't try very hard. If you did this a while back, I will say that you pay for bandwidth capacity (and proportionately the same) in the case of RealNetworks' server and Microsoft's- and that there's really only players for Microsoft's on Windows. If you use the MS streaming server, forget supporting MacOS and Linux machines.
Didn't know Hyperion was going to be doing the porting- I'd assumed that Michael was going to do the same thing he's doing with Ballistics, etc. To be honest, the LGP people were split down the middle on it and it just didn't look like as much of a game compared to Disiples or Majesty. And, I'll make the observation that LGP not publishing it isn't the killer for this game- Hyperion could still produce it with a different publisher. One should note that I don't see a burning demand (Though I suspect there will be one shortly) for this sort of thing. People are whining for things like DooM 3, Unreal 2, EA's Sports games, etc.
As for Ballistics, it's no different than the other game. "It's not even started yet, so does it really count?" I think you already know the answer to that question.
It's a change from what you all had been doing. Not a bad change, mind, just that it's completely different. Midnight Racer, if priced right, might well be a good alternative to TuxRacer. There's a few other games (Paintball Hero's not one of them, though...:-) that might fall under that category (Something like that Soccer game might be nice...:-)
Anyhow, it's GREAT to see you back in the Linux game market- let's hope it's better for you this time around than last time around.
Slashdot Mirror
I got the main page just a moment ago and couldn't get anything past it. Now, I can't even pull up the main page.
Stick a fork in it folks- it's done.
(Sorry, had to be said...
He was going to publish a paper on the weaknesses of the SDMI schemes. The SDMI people threatened to prosecute under the DMCA and only backed down when Felten went to the Supreme Court about the whole deal.
Whether or not part 4 applies, you have to go through the courts to exonerate yourself- and you might not be able to easily do it, having to go through the entire judicial system to do it.
Which could use the speed.
Point taken. But, you might also, as someone else that responded to me pointed out, use other sources than just DVD's. Satellite, captured NTSC, etc. would also be very good comparisons. What you're checking is something useful- which does the best job under the conditions provided by DVD's. I want more info than that (yeah, I know, do it yourself- if I had time, I might...
1) A lot more than the "big boys". The telecom, etc companies bled a LOT of people- people that they needed but "couldn't afford", and in a move to appease the investors they let them go. The small players didn't have Wall Street/NASDAQ as an excuse to sacrifice jobs on the altar of stock price so a lot of the small companies didn't actually do layoffs.
2) Covering would be nice. And if there is enough startups, they actually might. However, startups hiring people steadily or rapidly is definitely not the sign of a dead industry- it's more of a sign of the end of a downturn beginning.
To be sure, he's comparing the performance of the codecs against content that is popular (and typically difficult to compress...)- but he's pulling it from a lossy format, namely the MPEG2 stream off of a DVD.
.OGG's or something like them instead of pulling them from MP3's as source. With a lossy format, you're deliberately losing content, introducing hopefully un-noticable distortions into the reproduction of the sound. Unfortunately, the varying formats use different assumptions, which produce differing kinds of distortions into the result. Because of this, re-encoding from MP3's, your sound files end up with distortions on top of distortions- the quality and compression suffers as a result.
There's a reason why you're really supposed to re-encode from the CD when you're producing
The same applies to video files.
This is not to say that what Doom9's doing isn't important or relevant- it is if you're using the codecs to space shift (i.e. Put several movies on your laptop so you're not carrying the DVD's on your business trip...) or pirating movies. The reality is that the codecs he's reviewing are largely designed for previously untouched video feeds- someone ought to test that as well.
Anything else is not really a proper review- unless you're only caring about ripping and re-encoding DVDs. To me, that's something useful to know about, but I'm as or more interested in the intended usages of this stuff as well.
Considering that they own both domains and the .com flips people to the .org, your credibility just dropped by at least a little bit.
From Rob Goldman Legal Services' website (Found with a quick Google search...):
(The bold emphasis on criminal in the above quote is mine...)
Since this is a civil restitution, that would concievably (I am not a lawyer, so I can't be sure about it...) put it outside of the exemption it appears you're thinking of.
Furthermore a Chapter 13 can extend the period of time and lower the payments if it were excluded- the exclusion merely covers the ability to discharge the debt in question. For example, IRS back taxes can be lumped into a Chapter 13 filing with 0% interest owed on the money in question.
I thought it was a settlement, which is a different beast altogether.
Strictly speaking, a lot of college students would do well to afford $17k by their lonesome, even if it's over a three year period. They HAVE to pay the settlement or other nasty things can be done to them. Facing that, one might well give consideration to a Chapter 7 or 13 filing against the debts in question. Furthermore, the severity of the credit ding is dependant on what you do after the bankruptcy is completed. It will not preclude purchases of things like a car or a house after a year or so after the bankruptcy is concluded. (And in at least some of the cases, you get really good interest- because they know you can't cut-and-run with another filing for 7 years afterwards...)
I'm not a lawyer, but I do know something about this. (Consult a lawyer before giving any thought to a Chapter 7 or 13 filing...)
A bankruptcy filing has the option of including or excluding specific debts in the filing- whether or not it's a Chapter 7 or 13. It's called re-affirming a debt; you're telling a specific debtor that you're able and interested in continuing with that debt as agreed upon. In this case, I could see them being able to re-affirm the debts of the student loans because they are students and the loans are liable to be smaller than the debt of the settlement. It may make it a little harder for them at the hearing of the creditors, because of the reaffirmations- leaves it open for a RIAA lawyer to challenge a discharge of the debt by the court handling the filing.
The cheap stuff (including the stuff AMD's reccomending) contains oils that tend to dry out in a year or two, leaving this gummy mess that won't come off with isopropyl. (This is the main reason for my using Arctic Silver- it doesn't dry out like Shin Etsu, etc.) For that, you've got to use something like acetone, WD-40, Goof-Off, or Goo-Gone- even if you've applied it correctly.
It DOES work- and well. But I've found that "Goof Off" and "Goo Gone" do an equally adequate job and don't have anywhere near the flash point acetone does...
Oh well, seems it's already been moderated down. Oh my, what will it do to my Karma?
Only the moderators can tell...
That's news to me and about everyone else using it.
This is the Arctic Silver AMD's talking about.
It's adequate to cool it down- with a room at precisely 75 degrees, a fully and properly designed case, and a VERY noisy fan. If any of those criteria aren't met, you start running at temperatures, that while within AMD's specs, will definitely shorten the life of the CPU and the motherboard it's sitting on and lower it's overall stability. For some, this stuff is so that they can have the performance without the noise. For some, it's to have an extended range of temperatures that are adequate for their machine's good operation.
(I know this is not up on the main area, but I'm posting it as an aside, just in case you're following your posts)
To my knowlege, I don't think anyone is complaining about Candy Cruncher- or really even commenting about it. Surprising, really.
Yes, they did get the Mac-n-Trans codebase.
While I didn't do any of the porting work (I'm working on Ballistics from Grin right at the moment...), I did do a little side project for them to see if the blitters were an issue for performance on the PPC version. By the way, thanks for the cool game.
Considering that LGP ported the game and not Cyberlore, I doubt that you'll be able to get an "upgrade". They have to pay for the privilege to port the game in most cases and pay royalties usually for each unit sold. $10 to just convert might work out okay for someone like Id (though they're offering that service for free with their games...) who ported the code themselves. It cost them nothing more than the effort to port and to provide a means to obtain the Linux version. In LGP's case, they have to recoup all of the royalties involved, cover the costs of producing the version in a retail box, and paying the employees something. I seriously doubt $10 would cover royalties, pay, and the framework to provide it to you.
A pretty devastating combo. I use it a lot in my play when they're available- Priestesses generate a LOT of animated skeletons and the Cultists charm all the roaming nature monsters (such as bears, etc.)- you end up with a much larger army than you'd have otherwise. Good against things like Dragons, etc.
Good questions- unfortunately, there's only approximate answers for you. I can give my personal advice on the subject, but your mileage may vary.
Which display card?
A previous poster said ATI. Not a bad choice. ATI's cards have DRI drivers for them and full-featured (but somewhat twitchy still) binary only drivers from ATI. The medium to the top of the line Radeons will be a good purchase.
However, NVidia's also a very good option to consider. A GeForce2, GeForce3, or GeForce4 will work well under Linux- with some caveats. NVidia's drivers perform at the same basic level as the Windows counterparts and have packages for all the popular distribution versions. Because it's a closed source binary, most distributions do not include or install the drivers for you- you have to do a few manual steps on your own (they're really easy). However, if you use the boxed version of Mandrake (there are liable to be others doing this- so ask around...) you will get a stable version of the drivers installed for you at installation time. Having said this, not everything is rosy with using NVidia cards. The drivers have been known to have lockup issues in the past, there's some bad rendering errors that crop up with some games (such as Chromium and BZFlag...) that do not show with DRI or ATI drivers, and there's at least one known instance of the sleep mode selection killing two KDS 19" monitors (My friend's machine...).
Which would I choose? Depends. If you're looking for maximum game playability right now, go with an NVidia card (I recommend a GeForce4 MX series for those on a budget and the Ti series for those with money to burn...). If you want absolute peak performance and can afford to take a chance and wait a bit for the drivers to gel, ATI's 9700 is the way to go (The 9700 series currently trounces most of NVidia's offerings at fairly good prices...). If you're looking for all open-sourced support, a middle of the line ATI is the way to go, but don't expect playability with everything out of the box- they're still working hard on working correctly at peak speeds with UT2k3, NWN, etc.
Which sound card?
Somewhat tougher question. Many popular and obscure sound cards work. For most stuff under Linux, they all work equally well. Having said this, hardware OpenAL support's largely not present. The framework's there, but there's pretty much nobody there. Creative supports OpenAL under Windows. So does NVidia with their NForce2 motherboards. Rumor has it that UT2k3 uses OpenAL pretty extensively. So, why doesn't Linux have the support? Your guess is as good as mine. If you're dual booting or are willing to wait for the support to arrive an NForce2 motherboard or an Audigy card may be a good choice. Otherwise, stick with something cheaper, like a SoundBlaster 16PCI. Cheaper, no-name cards may work well, but it's a crapshoot on stability- just like it is in Windows.
Which distro?
This is something more of a personal taste issue. For ease of installation, lack of tweaking, Red Hat 9.0 and Mandrake 9.1 come immediately to mind. Both do a good job of detecting what you have (Keep in mind that closed source drivers will not be installed with the GPL downloadable distributions...) and setting it up. With the boxed edition of Mandrake, it will detect at least the NVidia card (personal experience...) and install a stable version of the driver. I don't know what Red Hat 9.0 does from the boxed edition since I've not bought it in recent times.
Having said this, I've heard that SuSE does a really good job at this stuff as well. (I, however, can't reccomend it since I've not used it in ages...)
Because I see two different media servers available for Linux- one costs money out the wazoo, the other costs nothing.
Darwin Streaming Server which supports QuickTime, MPEG4, and MP3 streaming.
RealNetworks Server which has supported Linux for some time, supports all Real media formats, MPEG4, etc.
In the case of the RealNetworks server, they have a free version that's crippled to 1Mbit bandwidth.
Now, it depends on when you tried this. If it was within the past few years, Darwin's streaming server has been available during that time. If it was before that, I can't understand as RealNetworks HAD a streaming server. Oh, I've figured it out, you wanted something that was "free". Sorry, the only free, uncrippled stuff as in "free beer" stuff has only shown up on the scene fairly recently.
If you did this in fairly recent times, all I can say is that you didn't try very hard. If you did this a while back, I will say that you pay for bandwidth capacity (and proportionately the same) in the case of RealNetworks' server and Microsoft's- and that there's really only players for Microsoft's on Windows. If you use the MS streaming server, forget supporting MacOS and Linux machines.
Didn't know Hyperion was going to be doing the porting- I'd assumed that Michael was going to do the same thing he's doing with Ballistics, etc. To be honest, the LGP people were split down the middle on it and it just didn't look like as much of a game compared to Disiples or Majesty. And, I'll make the observation that LGP not publishing it isn't the killer for this game- Hyperion could still produce it with a different publisher. One should note that I don't see a burning demand (Though I suspect there will be one shortly) for this sort of thing. People are whining for things like DooM 3, Unreal 2, EA's Sports games, etc.
As for Ballistics, it's no different than the other game. "It's not even started yet, so does it really count?" I think you already know the answer to that question.
It's a change from what you all had been doing. Not a bad change, mind, just that it's completely different. Midnight Racer, if priced right, might well be a good alternative to TuxRacer. There's a few other games (Paintball Hero's not one of them, though... :-) that might fall under that category (Something like that Soccer game might be nice... :-)
Anyhow, it's GREAT to see you back in the Linux game market- let's hope it's better for you this time around than last time around.