Amusingly enough, even though it has now been stricken from the article, the number is still present in the edit history as the reason why the article was reverted. Curious to see if the MPAA tries to get the edit history wiped clean too...
I'm gonna take the bait and jump on the "Matrix Online sucks" bit.
Maybe I'm just the masochistic type or something, but I picked up Matrix Online on a whim the other day (I mean, it's $20 at Wal-Mart now, what is there to lose?) and I've been playing it for a little over a month now and LOVE IT. More than any other MMO I've played, in fact.
It seems to me like the game sucked right after beta, which was when all the sites were reviewing it. All the reviews said "this game sucks" so people stayed away in droves and nobody's come back to check on it since.
The article mentions that it just changed hands to Sony Online (as part of their deal with WB to get a DC Comics MMO going), but what they don't mention is that Sony didn't buy it just to throw it away. They just released a big patch that added upper level content and revamped one of the trees that needed some attention. They've only had the game for about a month now (most of which was transition time) and thus far they seem to be genuinely making an effort to make this game rock, and they seem to be succeeding. (And for those of you who have played other SOE games like Star Wars Galaxies... yeah... I don't understand either. SOE generally sucks. BIG TIME. But they just bought this thing, so they're going to spend some resources getting it up to spec, I guess.)
The big difference for me between MxO and WoW is storyline. MxO, I care where the storyline goes and it's interesting to me to participate in the live events (*gasp* live actors playing the main roles in an MMO instead of NPCs) that help develop that story line. I got burned out on Orc vs. Human dynamics in 8th grade.
In all the other MMOs I've played, once you've decided what kind of character you want to be and you've gotten relatively high-level in that class, if you want to switch classes you either can't or you have to spend a ton of time re-grinding that new class. In MxO, you can switch your abilities on the fly, which keeps it from getting boring when other MMOs turn into a grind. Sure, I may still be doing missions (every MMO boils down to this at some point), but at least I can toss it up... be sneaky and play spy instead of running in with a shotgun or going Karate or Kung Fu on people, etc.
I won't say it's the perfect game for everybody, because there *is* no perfect game for everybody (obviously, 'cuz I can't freaking STAND WoW) but those of you who haven't checked out Matrix Online since it first came out, go drop $20 on it and play it for a month. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
I expect you to stop buying vinyl when the sampling rates go over 98k and 32-bit float becomes the consumer-grade digital standard. 32-bit float has dynamic response that is far superior to vinyl, and the sampling rate will be the bottleneck at that time.
Actually, the sampling rate wouldn't be your bottleneck at that point unless you have superhuman hearing.
Sampling rate determines the highest frequency in a sound that can be reproduced. If you divide a recording's sampling rate by two, that will give you the highest reproducable frequency. For example, if you've got 44.1K sampling, you can hear up to 22050 Hz on playback.
Since most humans can't hear much beyond 20kHz anyway, the 49kHz frequency ceiling on a 98k-sampled recording wouldn't be a bottleneck at all. Of course, if your dog is an audiophile, you might want to spring for the 98k sample rate... he'd be able to hear a difference up to 120k sample rates! =D
Legality aside, AEDT gives me an error message and won't allow me to decode DRM-protected WMA files, which is what napster uses. So no luck here either.
Well, they let you burn to CD, which is an inherently unprotected format. So you *could* burn to CD and turn right around and rip back to an unprotected format like MP3 (not that I would do something so blatantly illegal as this);)
BUT -- if I *WERE* to do something so blatantly illegal as that, I would consider it a huge waste of CD blanks. Which brings me to my question:
Most of us are familiar with programs like Daemon Tools that tricks your computer into seeing an ISO image as an extra CD drive. Has ANYONE seen a program/driver that does this process in reverse? For example, it could be a program that tricks your computer into seeing an extra CD-R drive which is in reality just an ISO file creator. Nero and several other programs provide this kind of functionality, but only from within their application. Since Napster (and iTunes for that matter) only allows you to burn from their program, I figure such a program would have to work at the ATAPI level, not as a separate application.
I've scoured the net and haven't found any such program yet. I would love to code this sort of thing myself, but unfortunately I'm woefully ignorant of the particular Windows functions one would have to interface with to emulate a drive. I figure there's enough open source gurus that mill around this site that SOMEONE might see this post and take it upon themself to code this sort of tool. Anyone with any thoughts/suggestions/flames can AIM me at SoyFeo408.
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Amusingly enough, even though it has now been stricken from the article, the number is still present in the edit history as the reason why the article was reverted. Curious to see if the MPAA tries to get the edit history wiped clean too...
I'm gonna take the bait and jump on the "Matrix Online sucks" bit.
Maybe I'm just the masochistic type or something, but I picked up Matrix Online on a whim the other day (I mean, it's $20 at Wal-Mart now, what is there to lose?) and I've been playing it for a little over a month now and LOVE IT. More than any other MMO I've played, in fact.
It seems to me like the game sucked right after beta, which was when all the sites were reviewing it. All the reviews said "this game sucks" so people stayed away in droves and nobody's come back to check on it since.
The article mentions that it just changed hands to Sony Online (as part of their deal with WB to get a DC Comics MMO going), but what they don't mention is that Sony didn't buy it just to throw it away. They just released a big patch that added upper level content and revamped one of the trees that needed some attention. They've only had the game for about a month now (most of which was transition time) and thus far they seem to be genuinely making an effort to make this game rock, and they seem to be succeeding. (And for those of you who have played other SOE games like Star Wars Galaxies... yeah... I don't understand either. SOE generally sucks. BIG TIME. But they just bought this thing, so they're going to spend some resources getting it up to spec, I guess.)
The big difference for me between MxO and WoW is storyline. MxO, I care where the storyline goes and it's interesting to me to participate in the live events (*gasp* live actors playing the main roles in an MMO instead of NPCs) that help develop that story line. I got burned out on Orc vs. Human dynamics in 8th grade.
In all the other MMOs I've played, once you've decided what kind of character you want to be and you've gotten relatively high-level in that class, if you want to switch classes you either can't or you have to spend a ton of time re-grinding that new class. In MxO, you can switch your abilities on the fly, which keeps it from getting boring when other MMOs turn into a grind. Sure, I may still be doing missions (every MMO boils down to this at some point), but at least I can toss it up... be sneaky and play spy instead of running in with a shotgun or going Karate or Kung Fu on people, etc.
I won't say it's the perfect game for everybody, because there *is* no perfect game for everybody (obviously, 'cuz I can't freaking STAND WoW) but those of you who haven't checked out Matrix Online since it first came out, go drop $20 on it and play it for a month. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
In the past, when people have asked me if I pirate movies and music online, my response has always been his line as Red from Shawshank Redemption...
"Yeah, I'm known to locate certain things from time to time."
Free Culture is (cc)... don't think any of the others are though.
I expect you to stop buying vinyl when the sampling rates go over 98k and 32-bit float becomes the consumer-grade digital standard. 32-bit float has dynamic response that is far superior to vinyl, and the sampling rate will be the bottleneck at that time.
Actually, the sampling rate wouldn't be your bottleneck at that point unless you have superhuman hearing.
Sampling rate determines the highest frequency in a sound that can be reproduced. If you divide a recording's sampling rate by two, that will give you the highest reproducable frequency. For example, if you've got 44.1K sampling, you can hear up to 22050 Hz on playback.
Since most humans can't hear much beyond 20kHz anyway, the 49kHz frequency ceiling on a 98k-sampled recording wouldn't be a bottleneck at all. Of course, if your dog is an audiophile, you might want to spring for the 98k sample rate... he'd be able to hear a difference up to 120k sample rates! =D
Legality aside, AEDT gives me an error message and won't allow me to decode DRM-protected WMA files, which is what napster uses. So no luck here either.
for those reading, we tried this and it didn't work... doesn't show up in any other software
Well, they let you burn to CD, which is an inherently unprotected format. So you *could* burn to CD and turn right around and rip back to an unprotected format like MP3 (not that I would do something so blatantly illegal as this) ;)
BUT -- if I *WERE* to do something so blatantly illegal as that, I would consider it a huge waste of CD blanks. Which brings me to my question:
Most of us are familiar with programs like Daemon Tools that tricks your computer into seeing an ISO image as an extra CD drive. Has ANYONE seen a program/driver that does this process in reverse?
For example, it could be a program that tricks your computer into seeing an extra CD-R drive which is in reality just an ISO file creator. Nero and several other programs provide this kind of functionality, but only from within their application. Since Napster (and iTunes for that matter) only allows you to burn from their program, I figure such a program would have to work at the ATAPI level, not as a separate application.
I've scoured the net and haven't found any such program yet. I would love to code this sort of thing myself, but unfortunately I'm woefully ignorant of the particular Windows functions one would have to interface with to emulate a drive.
I figure there's enough open source gurus that mill around this site that SOMEONE might see this post and take it upon themself to code this sort of tool. Anyone with any thoughts/suggestions/flames can AIM me at SoyFeo408.