Cringley's predictions are right only because they're too vague/obvious to be wrong. Apple's put out job ads for a developer position involving a video iPod. That's all anyone knows, including Cringely.
As the GPL says, "You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.". If the GPL is declared an invalid license (which I can't imagine), then the code is under no license, so it may not be copied or distributed.
I don't remember the numbers, but MP3 licensing costs are insignificant. It's like less than a dollar per decoder.
Vorbis-decoding can be done using only integers (FLAC too?), which must save some hardware costs.
MP3 decoding can also be done with only integers. Cheap players already do this, so doesn't save you anything.
So you'd be offering a player with no real advantages except a miniscule price decrease, and some major disadvantages (transcoding). As much as I love Vorbis, that wouldn't work.
Yes, but with iTunes you're guarenteed respectable sound quality, good tagging, fast and reliable downloads, and legality. Napster had none of those things.
And no, the iPod is not DRM'd, it will work fine with any MP3 or AIFF files you have. If it plays DRM'd files too, that's a bonus.
But I don't know of any companies that started on the Internet that have a wonderful service or quality reputation where I would shop which would fulfill 2.
Newegg.com (computer components) has an awesome reputation for fast shipping and excellent service, and gets a 9.82 at resellerratings.com. (by comparison, Amazon gets a 5.51).
250GB is a good start. 2500GB, which is what we're talking about, is quite a bit more than that.
I've done my share of editing, and I know it takes loads of space. But I can't imagine anything other than film-quality work needing more than a terabyte.
Yeas, but it's not part of GTA for a reason. Many missions are multipart, so saving during them makes them quite a bit easier (easier, say, than playing as a fat man or having pedestrians-on-crack would, for example). You'll notice that there is no invulnerability cheat in GTA, just health cheats (which are fairly useless if you're in a major gunfight). That's because Rockstar doesn't want the cheats to completely ruin the game, just make it easier.
As for the remote-controlled helicopter, saving during missions wouldn't help if you still had to save at a garage, because that'd take too long. If what you're talking about is a true quicksave, I doubt that's technically feasible in the GTA engine, because of the way it store games data (the cars on the street aren't the same when you resume a game, how could much else be?). It'd be much trickier to program, as well as having a huge effect on gameplay.
You are right, though, that helicopter is a dastardly mission. I spent hours on it before giving up, and going on to beat the rest of the game. I eventually came back, withh more heli experience, and used some strategy (before starting the timer by picking up a bomb, go in first and kill everyone in the building with the heli blades), and beat it.
Even if you don't count KaZaA as HTTP (which it technically is), you can get a huge amount of all of those (except maybe movies) on the web if you know where to look.
Multiplayer is very hard to code correctly on consoles. You have to get it right the first time, or else it'll be a Really Bad Thing(TM)
Fuck consoles. They could at least support PC multiplayer. If the MTA guys can hack it in and have it work, it shouldn't be too hard for Rockstar to do a better implementation.
A better example would be mini-DVD. One could, theoretically, write a mini-DVD using lossless compression with the same quality as DVD-Audio (24bit, 96kHz) and a significantly longer recording time, in a much smaller disk.
2500GB is 187 hours at full DV-quality, or 711 hours at DVD-quality 8Mbps MPEG-2. 4 straight weeks of high-quality video is quite a bit more than a "good start".
Even today we might consider the Wright Flyer a flop - good pilots can barely get the thing to fly and nobody rushed to purchase and deploy their model.
The original Wright Flyer wasn't mass-produced and sold on store shelves. No one expected it to sell, it was only experimental. That's the difference between it and these things.
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Cringley's predictions are right only because they're too vague/obvious to be wrong. Apple's put out job ads for a developer position involving a video iPod. That's all anyone knows, including Cringely.
An iPod with FireWire can transmit 1-2 songs a second. No current proccessor can keep up with that.
They ran "strings" on the binary, and compared the output to "strings" on the mplayer binary. It's fairly obvious the code is the same.
It's there for download, only a click away of the firmware page!
No, that's code for uclinux and busybox. The code for the modified mplayer is not included.
As the GPL says, "You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.". If the GPL is declared an invalid license (which I can't imagine), then the code is under no license, so it may not be copied or distributed.
I don't remember the numbers, but MP3 licensing costs are insignificant. It's like less than a dollar per decoder.
Vorbis-decoding can be done using only integers (FLAC too?), which must save some hardware costs.
MP3 decoding can also be done with only integers. Cheap players already do this, so doesn't save you anything.
So you'd be offering a player with no real advantages except a miniscule price decrease, and some major disadvantages (transcoding). As much as I love Vorbis, that wouldn't work.
And no, the iPod is not DRM'd, it will work fine with any MP3 or AIFF files you have. If it plays DRM'd files too, that's a bonus.
Newegg.com (computer components) has an awesome reputation for fast shipping and excellent service, and gets a 9.82 at resellerratings.com. (by comparison, Amazon gets a 5.51).
I've done my share of editing, and I know it takes loads of space. But I can't imagine anything other than film-quality work needing more than a terabyte.
Yeas, but it's not part of GTA for a reason. Many missions are multipart, so saving during them makes them quite a bit easier (easier, say, than playing as a fat man or having pedestrians-on-crack would, for example). You'll notice that there is no invulnerability cheat in GTA, just health cheats (which are fairly useless if you're in a major gunfight). That's because Rockstar doesn't want the cheats to completely ruin the game, just make it easier.
As for the remote-controlled helicopter, saving during missions wouldn't help if you still had to save at a garage, because that'd take too long. If what you're talking about is a true quicksave, I doubt that's technically feasible in the GTA engine, because of the way it store games data (the cars on the street aren't the same when you resume a game, how could much else be?). It'd be much trickier to program, as well as having a huge effect on gameplay.
You are right, though, that helicopter is a dastardly mission. I spent hours on it before giving up, and going on to beat the rest of the game. I eventually came back, withh more heli experience, and used some strategy (before starting the timer by picking up a bomb, go in first and kill everyone in the building with the heli blades), and beat it.
Yes, that's too much to ask. GTA is designed that way because, otherwise, it's too easy. If you want to be a cheater, there are plenty of other ways.
Why would you think that?
That's what telnet <site> 80 was invented for.
Even if you don't count KaZaA as HTTP (which it technically is), you can get a huge amount of all of those (except maybe movies) on the web if you know where to look.
YHBT. Badly.
Fuck consoles. They could at least support PC multiplayer. If the MTA guys can hack it in and have it work, it shouldn't be too hard for Rockstar to do a better implementation.
A better example would be mini-DVD. One could, theoretically, write a mini-DVD using lossless compression with the same quality as DVD-Audio (24bit, 96kHz) and a significantly longer recording time, in a much smaller disk.
2500GB is 187 hours at full DV-quality, or 711 hours at DVD-quality 8Mbps MPEG-2. 4 straight weeks of high-quality video is quite a bit more than a "good start".
The original Wright Flyer wasn't mass-produced and sold on store shelves. No one expected it to sell, it was only experimental. That's the difference between it and these things.
And, actually, the definition for "incent" is "to incentivize".
And, especially, don't link to dynamically-generated PHPNuke content when you're slashdotting yourself.
"gay" has many meanings unrelated to homosexuality.
So not, for example, any of these sites? There's a lot of "inappropriate" material out there that doesn't require a CC#.
Obviously, that would require the labels totake less than 70 cents (probably 20 or so).
Okay, I see that. Guess it depends on how you interpret the original statement.
90 - 75 != 20