Why would anyone do such a silly thing, when they could have gotten almost exactly the same quality by downloading an SVCD satellite rip from news://alt.binaries.multimedia.buffy-v-slayer.repo st? Yep, because few but us geeks know about the utility of USENET.:-)
The old PowerMacs *ARE* PPC Macs, so please stop having a cow about things of which you clearly are ignorant. They had PowerPC processors; they did not, however, use the PCI bus, they used a weird bus architechture called NuBus. And what is a "860xx CPU"? Oh, you mean "680xx CPU," which again is not what we're discussing here. 6100s and other low-end PowerMacs used PPC processors.
Well, I think it's clear that "Hentai" is a subgenre of "Anime," though some really snooty anime fans wouldn't admit it. I think it's especially true given the "acceptability" of Hentai anime in its home country, where jokes about it are sometimes found in less explicit anime, where less explicit anime is still often more explicit than U.S. custom would dictate, and where sexuality itself is viewed in a better light.
While I don't watch Hentai anime, I have to admit being a fan of the quality games in the Hentai subgenre as well. Most Hentai games are thin excuses for looking at dirty manga/anime, but several of them are worthy RPGs or interactive fiction in themselves, like *Divi Dead*, *Eve Burst Error* (sexually explicit scenes were cut for non-Japanese versions), *True Love*, *Season of the Sakura*, *3 Sisters' Story*, etc.
I just wish more of the Japanese greats in the Hentai game category would be translated into English, since unlike with anime you can't really keep up with what's going on, or even play the game passably, unless you can read the dialogue. Most of the Hentai games translated into English have been the low-quality ones, with a few exceptions like the ones I listed above. But unfortunately the market for such games in English is relatively small, meaning the greats in Japan would often be too expensive to license for American transklation and sales.
At any rate, any anime fans interested in the good Hentai video games out there could take a look at these links:
Reviews:
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?name=Divi+ De ad
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=2218
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?name=True+ Lo ve
I have no idea how one would measure temperatures through some sort of joystick port dongle; however, it put me in mind of the coolest hack I've ever seen for a joystick port, very cool. It may even be vaguely on topic since he mentions the "all sorts of fun to be had" with the joystick port... Take a look:
What a cool joystick port hack--it uses all the original electronics from a circa 1984 Star Wars or RotJ controller, except for a change of POTS. Better than any cheesy gaming steering wheel.:-)
Indeed. I think it's incumbent on PC fans--people who don't want some Palladium-enabled hardware to dominate and affect both performance and what software we're able to run--to lobby especially AMD and VIA, and secondarily Intel and others. I put AMD and VIA first because as long as they push non-Palladium-DRM-scheme components, Intel would weel presure to do so as well.
We don't want our PCs to become closed Xboxes in the future, do we?
> This once again demonstrates how little we know about biodiversity
I know all I need to know about biodiversity: if I can eat it (animal) or fuck it (human animal) or keep it as a housepet, great. If it ain't useful for any of that, I can't say it matters much...
You're absolutely right. My apologies for not including Japan, a fine old culture with many accomplishments--not the least of which is the genre of Hentai video games--in the list of nations which have actually contributed to the world.
As for Australia and New Zealand, their aboriginal peoples never accomplished anything more noteworthy than figuring out how to build tools out of sticks, so they don't count. Their current European inhabitants haven't acomplished much, either...
Sorry, I just assume anyone with such a snooty attitude who makes dumb American jokes must be European. Probably French, if they're extra-snooty...;-)
> There is more to the World than just Europe and the US.
Sorry, I only take note of people and places with accomplishments.:-) Only the U.S. and Europe therefore matter. The rest of the world is just chaff, only good at soccer and getting AIDS. Sorry, but it's the truth...;-)
> if you really need more than a gigabyte a month then you're stealing.
I hit my 6 GB limit every 4-6 days. What does that mean I'm doing?:-)
Seriously, I've taken to using my USENET feed instead of a VCR or TiVo for shows I know will get capped and posted in high quality. Since they don't come out on purchasable media or purchasable downloads from the netweork's website, and since I've never ever bought a single thing I've seen on a commercial, at least not since I was a kid, I'm not stealing *anything*. You can call it stealing, but it isn't--I haven't deprived anyone of any property, real or intellectual.
Seriously, go with Easynews. There are several reasons:
1) Article retention is about 15 days in binaries on NNTP, and completion of multi-part binaries is in my experience 100% except when people post from really really poor servers which don't propagate well at all. Non-binaries retention is of course several months.
2) NNTP access is uncensored. Many providers won't offer uncensored NNTP access at all, "banning" groups with controversial content from their servers. While I don't, for example, download illegal binaries from naughty groups like alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pre-teen and alt.binaries.pictures.erotia.underage-admirers , I have read and posted text to those groups when I was researching the types of people involved in kinderporn for a writing project, and made a few friends in those parts. (Nice guys...they just have different taste in pr0n than most of us...) I also am against censorship in all forms; arresting people for posting illegal things is fine, but don't try to censor the speech pre-emptively. I wouldn't support an NNTP provider who chose to censor their feed.
3) They *do* have a download limit, but it's $9.95 for every 6 GB and you can purchase another 6 GB for another $9.95 at any time. That's reasonable, and while you'll find "uncapped" access, it's always at a premium rate and the service just isn't as good as Easynews--I can pull an NNTP feed from Easynews at my cable's full speed, unlike when I've tried other services, and the completion is phenomenal.
4) Easynews also offers an interesting twist--in addition to standard NNTP access with 15 day retention in binaries, you also get Web-based access with a whopping 38-42 day retention in binaries. I actually find it easier to use the Web interface if I'm looking for something specific in a group I don't typically read. And the 40 day retention is amazing.
Google also tends to succeed where others have failed--take for instance Google Groups, formerly DejaNews. What motivated that purchase? Google also seemed very interested in augmenting the USENET archive with missing data, by hunting down CDs and other media that were published years before DejaNews started its archive--that seems like a genuine desire to preserve USENET for the ages, so what inspired that? Lastly as a corollary, Google Groups is missing one feature that DejaNews used to implement, but eliminated a year or so before it went down: Deja had been keeping archives of the text posts in alt.binaries.* groups, which can be valuable since many groups have active text discussion; will Google ever re-introduce the ability to search the text messages in the alt.binaries.* hierarchy that Deja used to offer, even if it's limited to the old archive Deja had?
> The only thing to consider is where to get the monitor from, > since it is so heavy, so shipping costs are high.
Yeah, I was thinking of going with a local vendor myself when I built my PC year before last. But I scoured eBay and found several places who specialize in monitors who list them there, and who have very high feedback ratings in the thousands. I looked around for a good buy and good return terms in case the monitor had defects after shipping, and ended up bidding on a big beautiful used 20-inch Apple ColorSync, an oldie but goodie from the days before candy-colored plastic that I remembered liking a lot back in college when we had one connected to a 7200 in the computer lab. They use those Mac connectors but come with VGA adapters. And of course hey have a Sony Trinitron tube instead of a shadow mask--don't buy cheap shadow mask CRTs, especially used...
So, I lay in wait and slipped in a bid of $251.55 right at the last minute, which is a good thing because a bid sniper tried to take it but his max bid was $250. Added $40 dollars shipping which was advertised by the vendor, and I got a nice pretty 20-incher for just under $300. Not bad considering how hard it is to find a real 20-incher even today compared to all the 19-inchers out there. And yes, you can see and enjoy the difference...
When I opened that huge box--those old 20-inch trinitrons have HUGE and heavy tubes--I carefully perched it onto my sturdy desk, hooked it up, and turned it on. There was a little red discoloration in one bottom corner--not good, so I e-mailed them and they said that monitors sometimes need a few days after being shipped to get back into perfect shape, since they've been jostled a bit; but there was a 30-day period in which I could send it back. I waited a week and the reddish area just went away, and for nearly 2 years this monitor has been running perfectly and impressing all my friends with their puny 19-inchers and 17-inchers.
So, I say at least look on eBay for some monitors you might want because of special features and such. If you can find a good price once the shipping is factored in on a monitor you can't get locally so cheaply, and the vendor has good return policies and a lot of positive feedback, it's worth a try.
It's a good suggestion to look into whoever you're considering buying from, but I've used Pricewatch quite a bit and never had a problem at all, from at least half a dozen different vendors. Of course, I've made it a point to pay a few extra dollars here and there to not buy from someone with a really cheesy looking website--if they *look* professional and well-set-up, they probably are. If they look poorly set up and cheaply designed, well...
> with the PS2 version I can sit on my couch, in my living room.
Nothing says you can't do that with PC games. I have a video card with TV-Out and have my PC situated in the same room as the TV, so... Add in a wireless keyboard, and you're set.
> well, this end the arguement on whether PCs or consoles are more practical for gaming. > A $299 Playstation 2 sounds quite better if you're just in it for gaming.
Add to that the cost of a PSX (not all PS games play perfectly on PS2), a Gamecube and N64, an Xbox, thousands of arcade machines, etc. because the PC is a unified gaming platform and the rest aren't. I can play almost any PC game from 1996 on my PC today, yet the same isn't true about playing every Nintendo game from 1996 (N64 era) on a Gamecube today--can't be done.
In addition, the generalized hardware of the PC allows for all consoles to eventually be emulated as PC processing power increases; every console prior to the N64 and PSX is emulated with near-100% accuracy, so that all of those consoles' games can be played on a PC with ease. Not to mention the over 1600 arcade games emulated at the moment by MAME, upping the ante significantly. Oh, and add to that all of the classic 68k Mac games, which can be played on a PC perfectly using Basilisk ][.
In other words, maintaining a PC gaming platform allows access to literally tens of thousands more games than a PS2 or a Gamcube will ever be able to play. It also offers near-complete backwards compatability, great future compatability due to easy and inexpensive (if nothing radical is done except every couple years) upgrade paths, and compatability with most of the console systems through their eventual emulation.
In addition, the hardware specs you listed for FFXI on the PC aren't very grat--I have a system superior to the requirements in every way, and I built it a year and a half ago.
A quick look on my favorite "Abandonware" sites shows no copy of the first Falcon game. Probably due to their method of intentional floppy corruption as copy protection...
However, take solace in your free copy of the third version of the series, Falcon 3.0:
> So tell me why the government wants to see through my clothes?
Interestingly enough, people can already see through your clothes--at least, if you're wearing something fairly diaphanous or skintight already, like a swimsuit, or very light-colored clothing. And all they need is an older Sony video camera with NightShot before they put special filters on to prevent the trick from working, or a newer model with modifications...
Does anyone else recall the breif hysteria when Sony video camera owners realized that using NightShot during the day allowed them to record an image that saw partly through swimsuits and light clothes, and that became public? News broadcasts were definitely playing it up. Sony immediately announced that future video cameras would ship with filters to prevent such imagery...
IIRC, the problem (or "bonus") was that the IR light emitted by NightShot would travel through thin or light-colored clothing before being either reflected or re-emitted (can't recall exactly how it works...), so that when captured by the lens during daylight capturing, it let one "see" through some clothing.
There is in fact a whole genre of Internet pr0n dedicated to capturing unsuspecting females in swimsuits or thin white clothing with such cameras. The films have a greenish tinge, like looking through some Night Vision goggles, but do indeed show body outlines, nipples, pubic hair, etc.
Now, if that can be done with a HandyCam for a few hundred dollars, you know the government with its budget can get a lot more sophisticated and see a lot more clearly...
It especially annoys me since I collect games, and eventually hope to be able to afford to build a home arcade machine containing a PC running all the games I've collected. Now, in that case I can't be inserting discs all the time; I'd want to run everything with no hassles from a nice custom interface for selecting games.
[Incidentally, anyone interested in building home arcade PCs should check this site out, if they haven't already: http://www.arcadecontrols.speedhost.com/arcade.htm ]
That means, of course, that I have to either make images for Daemon Tools of each CD and have them on the hard drive along with the installed game, effectively doubling the amount of hard drive space needed per game; or, find "cracks" for the game which let them run without the CD, from sites like GameCopyWorld, and crack each game the same way a pirate would.
Which, of course, highlights a big flaw in the game copy protection scheme: it just doesn't work. People who want to pirate a game can simply upload a CD image, and then anyone can download and play it with Daemon Tools. Or, people who want to pirate a game can "crack" the game executable to not check for the CD, or just download a pre-made crack from one of the big sites, and then upload the installed game along with the crack and a registry file to transfer the needed registry settings, or make a simple custom installer for it before uploading.
So, the game protection is effectively useless. People often say that the goal of copy protection is to prevent "casual" copying, like copying for a friend. In the case of a game, though, that's not going to be a big problem; the only thing it solves is people installing on multiple computers, but of course kids smart enough to be installing and sharing computer games are probably smart enough to find the cracks anyway.
And of course, having to go out and find cracks for games I actually own has introduced me to all the best ways of getting games I don't own. So copy protection may actually *promote piracy* in the long run. I'll admit I've downloaded games I don't own. However, I never would have done so if I hadn't been introduced to piracy by the need to crack games I already owned.
In the long run, the best thing is just to leave content unprotected--because anyone who wants to pirate it, will. Trying to prevent copying is a waste of resources, and in fact just pisses buyers off.
That was true four or five years ago, but not today. There are many copy-protection mechanisms in place on contemporary CD-ROM games which really do require the CD to be inserted, such as SafeDisc, SafeDisc 2, LaserLok, and Securom.
Fortunately, Daemon Tools defeats most forms of such CD-check copy protection, and new fixes are being incorporated all the time.
http://www.daemon-tools.net/main.htm is the place to get Daemon Tools. It's a virtual CD-ROM drive which not only mounts CD images, it will also emulate the proper security mechanism that the origional CD would have.
Anyone who wants to copy a copy-protected CD, or host CD images for a virtual CD-ROM drive, should read the tutorials on that site I referenced.
As has been said before, for those who have no objections about using Windows, the best package on the market right now both in terms of hardware and software is the ATI All-in-Wonder 8500 or All-in-Wonder 7500 line of products. It includes an integrated Guide+ functionality not unlike the Guide+ program guide integrated into many newer TV's, it includes an excellent and full-featured remote control that runs on RF and so has no line-of-sight issues, and its Multimedia Center software runs very well and stably atop Windows 2k/XP and provides simple but well-made functionality. The DVD playback performance of its tweaked and hardware-iDCT-accelerated Cinemaster engine is the best I've seen, and that includes my hardware DVD decoder card, the REALmagic Hollywood+. In fact, ATI cards are a favorite in the AVSforum home theatre website in part because of their DVD quality, despite a recent gamma issue which has been fixed.
I know the question was about Linux functionality, but for anyone who just wants the best set-top solution he can put together himself, without concern of what OS it runs, the ATI A-i-W 7500 or 8500 is the answer. The A-i-W 7500 is even available at Best Buy for around $179-$199, and includes all the relevant features of the 8500DV, just with the 7500 core and without the integrated Firewire port, and with a conventional tuner instead of a silicon tuner.
It won't help the original questioner, but maybe it will be of use to someone...
> what worries me (judging from good and bad reviews of the book) is the action they want to take. > Instead of saying, "Yo, parents, quit repressing your kids!" they want to use the public > school system to force sexual knowledge on young peope.
The book makes some suggestions, but makes no pretense of claiming that they're the only ones that would solve the problem. But, like it or not, the school systems in all but the most underdeveloped Bible Belt backwaters already teach young people about the basics of sex. The problem is, it's taught as something they're not supposed to do, which naturally makes some really want to do it, and the rest develop unnatural sexual inhibitions which can sometimes become full-blown dysfunctions in later life. All bcause sexuality is taught as something to never do until you'e married, or vaguely old.
What's more troubling though is that when young people do choose to engage in sexuality, thwey often get severely punished for normal sexual behavior. For example, the 15 year old boy in Michigan who's on the sex offender registryu for the rest of his life for having had consensual sex with his girlfriend who was one grade below him and a year and a half younger. They're peers. Playing together is normal, dating is normal, but sex is a felony. That's a fucked-up system. That's the system we have today.
That's the system Judith Levine's book is trying to change. So, I support this book fully and without reservation. Despite some reviews, it's an excellent book which exposes this nation's horrible Puritanism and the evils which it imposes.
> Comparing satellite radio to terrestrial radio is like comparing DirecTV to local broadcast > channels.. There is no comparison.
I have to disagree here. Broadcast radio isn't the same as broadcst TV because there are so many stations in any given market that there's at least as much choice of content as you get with satellite radio. The only difference is commercials and commentary, and while the commercials aren't very welcome, the commentary by local or national radio personalities typically is. So, the only advantage satellite radio offers is that it's commercial-free--don't mention the quality issue, because for most people, the quality of terrestrial radio is "good enough," and we're talking about the masses not the technophiles. Terrestrial radio in most places does, however, offer about as much choice of content as satellite radio does.
So, is being commercial-free enough to get enough average people to pay a monthly fee to keep supporting the network, including tech upkeep and royalty payments that a terrestrial broadcast system doesn't have to pay due to the commercials? I have to seriously doubt it. In addition, believe it or not, there are a lot of people who like hearing the commentary by local DJs, which would be lacking in pure-music service. Pure music with no commercials you can get by either buying CDs, or by downloading songs off WinMX, Gnutella, etc., and either playing them back on a regular CD, or burning them as MP3's and having an MP3 CD player. Even my local Best Buy has a car MP3 CD player in stock.
So, I may be wrong, but I don't see satellite radio surviving. It's strictly a niche product, but it's being marketed as a mainstream product--meaning too much cash is being burned through too quickly.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would anyone do such a silly thing, when they could have gotten almost exactly the same quality by downloading an SVCD satellite rip from news://alt.binaries.multimedia.buffy-v-slayer.repo st? Yep, because few but us geeks know about the utility of USENET. :-)
The old PowerMacs *ARE* PPC Macs, so please stop having a cow about things of which you clearly are ignorant. They had PowerPC processors; they did not, however, use the PCI bus, they used a weird bus architechture called NuBus. And what is a "860xx CPU"? Oh, you mean "680xx CPU," which again is not what we're discussing here. 6100s and other low-end PowerMacs used PPC processors.
It's called cut-and-paste. Use it.
Well, I think it's clear that "Hentai" is a subgenre of "Anime," though some really snooty anime fans wouldn't admit it. I think it's especially true given the "acceptability" of Hentai anime in its home country, where jokes about it are sometimes found in less explicit anime, where less explicit anime is still often more explicit than U.S. custom would dictate, and where sexuality itself is viewed in a better light.
+ De ad
+ Lo ve
u lt _win_us.html
While I don't watch Hentai anime, I have to admit being a fan of the quality games in the Hentai subgenre as well. Most Hentai games are thin excuses for looking at dirty manga/anime, but several of them are worthy RPGs or interactive fiction in themselves, like *Divi Dead*, *Eve Burst Error* (sexually explicit scenes were cut for non-Japanese versions), *True Love*, *Season of the Sakura*, *3 Sisters' Story*, etc.
I just wish more of the Japanese greats in the Hentai game category would be translated into English, since unlike with anime you can't really keep up with what's going on, or even play the game passably, unless you can read the dialogue. Most of the Hentai games translated into English have been the low-quality ones, with a few exceptions like the ones I listed above. But unfortunately the market for such games in English is relatively small, meaning the greats in Japan would often be too expensive to license for American transklation and sales.
At any rate, any anime fans interested in the good Hentai video games out there could take a look at these links:
Reviews:
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?name=Divi
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=2218
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?name=True
Sales:
http://www.jastusa.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv
http://www.peachprincess.com/Merchant2/pp.mv
http://shop.himeya.com/products/adult_win_us/ad
I have no idea how one would measure temperatures through some sort of joystick port dongle; however, it put me in mind of the coolest hack I've ever seen for a joystick port, very cool. It may even be vaguely on topic since he mentions the "all sorts of fun to be had" with the joystick port... Take a look:
:-)
Hooking an Arcade Star Wars Flight Yoke to a PC
What a cool joystick port hack--it uses all the original electronics from a circa 1984 Star Wars or RotJ controller, except for a change of POTS. Better than any cheesy gaming steering wheel.
Indeed. I think it's incumbent on PC fans--people who don't want some Palladium-enabled hardware to dominate and affect both performance and what software we're able to run--to lobby especially AMD and VIA, and secondarily Intel and others. I put AMD and VIA first because as long as they push non-Palladium-DRM-scheme components, Intel would weel presure to do so as well.
We don't want our PCs to become closed Xboxes in the future, do we?
> This once again demonstrates how little we know about biodiversity
I know all I need to know about biodiversity: if I can eat it (animal) or fuck it (human animal) or keep it as a housepet, great. If it ain't useful for any of that, I can't say it matters much...
> Never been to Japan? Australia? New Zealand?
You're absolutely right. My apologies for not including Japan, a fine old culture with many accomplishments--not the least of which is the genre of Hentai video games--in the list of nations which have actually contributed to the world.
As for Australia and New Zealand, their aboriginal peoples never accomplished anything more noteworthy than figuring out how to build tools out of sticks, so they don't count. Their current European inhabitants haven't acomplished much, either...
> I'm not from Europe you dickhead.
;-)
:-) Only the U.S. and Europe therefore matter. The rest of the world is just chaff, only good at soccer and getting AIDS. Sorry, but it's the truth... ;-)
Sorry, I just assume anyone with such a snooty attitude who makes dumb American jokes must be European. Probably French, if they're extra-snooty...
> There is more to the World than just Europe and the US.
Sorry, I only take note of people and places with accomplishments.
> if you really need more than a gigabyte a month then you're stealing.
:-)
I hit my 6 GB limit every 4-6 days. What does that mean I'm doing?
Seriously, I've taken to using my USENET feed instead of a VCR or TiVo for shows I know will get capped and posted in high quality. Since they don't come out on purchasable media or purchasable downloads from the netweork's website, and since I've never ever bought a single thing I've seen on a commercial, at least not since I was a kid, I'm not stealing *anything*. You can call it stealing, but it isn't--I haven't deprived anyone of any property, real or intellectual.
> We use ISO A4 here.
;-)
Yes, leave it to the Europeans to have to have an ISO standard to tell them what to write letters on...
Seriously, go with Easynews. There are several reasons:
1) Article retention is about 15 days in binaries on NNTP, and completion of multi-part binaries is in my experience 100% except when people post from really really poor servers which don't propagate well at all. Non-binaries retention is of course several months.
2) NNTP access is uncensored. Many providers won't offer uncensored NNTP access at all, "banning" groups with controversial content from their servers. While I don't, for example, download illegal binaries from naughty groups like alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pre-teen and alt.binaries.pictures.erotia.underage-admirers , I have read and posted text to those groups when I was researching the types of people involved in kinderporn for a writing project, and made a few friends in those parts. (Nice guys...they just have different taste in pr0n than most of us...) I also am against censorship in all forms; arresting people for posting illegal things is fine, but don't try to censor the speech pre-emptively. I wouldn't support an NNTP provider who chose to censor their feed.
3) They *do* have a download limit, but it's $9.95 for every 6 GB and you can purchase another 6 GB for another $9.95 at any time. That's reasonable, and while you'll find "uncapped" access, it's always at a premium rate and the service just isn't as good as Easynews--I can pull an NNTP feed from Easynews at my cable's full speed, unlike when I've tried other services, and the completion is phenomenal.
4) Easynews also offers an interesting twist--in addition to standard NNTP access with 15 day retention in binaries, you also get Web-based access with a whopping 38-42 day retention in binaries. I actually find it easier to use the Web interface if I'm looking for something specific in a group I don't typically read. And the 40 day retention is amazing.
Google also tends to succeed where others have failed--take for instance Google Groups, formerly DejaNews. What motivated that purchase? Google also seemed very interested in augmenting the USENET archive with missing data, by hunting down CDs and other media that were published years before DejaNews started its archive--that seems like a genuine desire to preserve USENET for the ages, so what inspired that? Lastly as a corollary, Google Groups is missing one feature that DejaNews used to implement, but eliminated a year or so before it went down: Deja had been keeping archives of the text posts in alt.binaries.* groups, which can be valuable since many groups have active text discussion; will Google ever re-introduce the ability to search the text messages in the alt.binaries.* hierarchy that Deja used to offer, even if it's limited to the old archive Deja had?
> The only thing to consider is where to get the monitor from,
> since it is so heavy, so shipping costs are high.
Yeah, I was thinking of going with a local vendor myself when I built my PC year before last. But I scoured eBay and found several places who specialize in monitors who list them there, and who have very high feedback ratings in the thousands. I looked around for a good buy and good return terms in case the monitor had defects after shipping, and ended up bidding on a big beautiful used 20-inch Apple ColorSync, an oldie but goodie from the days before candy-colored plastic that I remembered liking a lot back in college when we had one connected to a 7200 in the computer lab. They use those Mac connectors but come with VGA adapters. And of course hey have a Sony Trinitron tube instead of a shadow mask--don't buy cheap shadow mask CRTs, especially used...
So, I lay in wait and slipped in a bid of $251.55 right at the last minute, which is a good thing because a bid sniper tried to take it but his max bid was $250. Added $40 dollars shipping which was advertised by the vendor, and I got a nice pretty 20-incher for just under $300. Not bad considering how hard it is to find a real 20-incher even today compared to all the 19-inchers out there. And yes, you can see and enjoy the difference...
When I opened that huge box--those old 20-inch trinitrons have HUGE and heavy tubes--I carefully perched it onto my sturdy desk, hooked it up, and turned it on. There was a little red discoloration in one bottom corner--not good, so I e-mailed them and they said that monitors sometimes need a few days after being shipped to get back into perfect shape, since they've been jostled a bit; but there was a 30-day period in which I could send it back. I waited a week and the reddish area just went away, and for nearly 2 years this monitor has been running perfectly and impressing all my friends with their puny 19-inchers and 17-inchers.
So, I say at least look on eBay for some monitors you might want because of special features and such. If you can find a good price once the shipping is factored in on a monitor you can't get locally so cheaply, and the vendor has good return policies and a lot of positive feedback, it's worth a try.
It's a good suggestion to look into whoever you're considering buying from, but I've used Pricewatch quite a bit and never had a problem at all, from at least half a dozen different vendors. Of course, I've made it a point to pay a few extra dollars here and there to not buy from someone with a really cheesy looking website--if they *look* professional and well-set-up, they probably are. If they look poorly set up and cheaply designed, well...
> with the PS2 version I can sit on my couch, in my living room.
Nothing says you can't do that with PC games. I have a video card with TV-Out and have my PC situated in the same room as the TV, so... Add in a wireless keyboard, and you're set.
> well, this end the arguement on whether PCs or consoles are more practical for gaming.
> A $299 Playstation 2 sounds quite better if you're just in it for gaming.
Add to that the cost of a PSX (not all PS games play perfectly on PS2), a Gamecube and N64, an Xbox, thousands of arcade machines, etc. because the PC is a unified gaming platform and the rest aren't. I can play almost any PC game from 1996 on my PC today, yet the same isn't true about playing every Nintendo game from 1996 (N64 era) on a Gamecube today--can't be done.
In addition, the generalized hardware of the PC allows for all consoles to eventually be emulated as PC processing power increases; every console prior to the N64 and PSX is emulated with near-100% accuracy, so that all of those consoles' games can be played on a PC with ease. Not to mention the over 1600 arcade games emulated at the moment by MAME, upping the ante significantly. Oh, and add to that all of the classic 68k Mac games, which can be played on a PC perfectly using Basilisk ][.
In other words, maintaining a PC gaming platform allows access to literally tens of thousands more games than a PS2 or a Gamcube will ever be able to play. It also offers near-complete backwards compatability, great future compatability due to easy and inexpensive (if nothing radical is done except every couple years) upgrade paths, and compatability with most of the console systems through their eventual emulation.
In addition, the hardware specs you listed for FFXI on the PC aren't very grat--I have a system superior to the requirements in every way, and I built it a year and a half ago.
A quick look on my favorite "Abandonware" sites shows no copy of the first Falcon game. Probably due to their method of intentional floppy corruption as copy protection...
However, take solace in your free copy of the third version of the series, Falcon 3.0:
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=2128
> So tell me why the government wants to see through my clothes?
Interestingly enough, people can already see through your clothes--at least, if you're wearing something fairly diaphanous or skintight already, like a swimsuit, or very light-colored clothing. And all they need is an older Sony video camera with NightShot before they put special filters on to prevent the trick from working, or a newer model with modifications...
Does anyone else recall the breif hysteria when Sony video camera owners realized that using NightShot during the day allowed them to record an image that saw partly through swimsuits and light clothes, and that became public? News broadcasts were definitely playing it up. Sony immediately announced that future video cameras would ship with filters to prevent such imagery...
IIRC, the problem (or "bonus") was that the IR light emitted by NightShot would travel through thin or light-colored clothing before being either reflected or re-emitted (can't recall exactly how it works...), so that when captured by the lens during daylight capturing, it let one "see" through some clothing.
There is in fact a whole genre of Internet pr0n dedicated to capturing unsuspecting females in swimsuits or thin white clothing with such cameras. The films have a greenish tinge, like looking through some Night Vision goggles, but do indeed show body outlines, nipples, pubic hair, etc.
Now, if that can be done with a HandyCam for a few hundred dollars, you know the government with its budget can get a lot more sophisticated and see a lot more clearly...
> Well, that's particularly nasty.
m ]
It especially annoys me since I collect games, and eventually hope to be able to afford to build a home arcade machine containing a PC running all the games I've collected. Now, in that case I can't be inserting discs all the time; I'd want to run everything with no hassles from a nice custom interface for selecting games.
[Incidentally, anyone interested in building home arcade PCs should check this site out, if they haven't already: http://www.arcadecontrols.speedhost.com/arcade.ht
That means, of course, that I have to either make images for Daemon Tools of each CD and have them on the hard drive along with the installed game, effectively doubling the amount of hard drive space needed per game; or, find "cracks" for the game which let them run without the CD, from sites like GameCopyWorld, and crack each game the same way a pirate would.
Which, of course, highlights a big flaw in the game copy protection scheme: it just doesn't work. People who want to pirate a game can simply upload a CD image, and then anyone can download and play it with Daemon Tools. Or, people who want to pirate a game can "crack" the game executable to not check for the CD, or just download a pre-made crack from one of the big sites, and then upload the installed game along with the crack and a registry file to transfer the needed registry settings, or make a simple custom installer for it before uploading.
So, the game protection is effectively useless. People often say that the goal of copy protection is to prevent "casual" copying, like copying for a friend. In the case of a game, though, that's not going to be a big problem; the only thing it solves is people installing on multiple computers, but of course kids smart enough to be installing and sharing computer games are probably smart enough to find the cracks anyway.
And of course, having to go out and find cracks for games I actually own has introduced me to all the best ways of getting games I don't own. So copy protection may actually *promote piracy* in the long run. I'll admit I've downloaded games I don't own. However, I never would have done so if I hadn't been introduced to piracy by the need to crack games I already owned.
In the long run, the best thing is just to leave content unprotected--because anyone who wants to pirate it, will. Trying to prevent copying is a waste of resources, and in fact just pisses buyers off.
Just my opinion...
That was true four or five years ago, but not today. There are many copy-protection mechanisms in place on contemporary CD-ROM games which really do require the CD to be inserted, such as SafeDisc, SafeDisc 2, LaserLok, and Securom.
Fortunately, Daemon Tools defeats most forms of such CD-check copy protection, and new fixes are being incorporated all the time.
http://www.daemon-tools.net/main.htm is the place to get Daemon Tools. It's a virtual CD-ROM drive which not only mounts CD images, it will also emulate the proper security mechanism that the origional CD would have.
Anyone who wants to copy a copy-protected CD, or host CD images for a virtual CD-ROM drive, should read the tutorials on that site I referenced.
> Just don't try this under XP.
I run MMC under XP every day. No problems. You must not have followed installation instructions, or your system is fux0red.
As has been said before, for those who have no objections about using Windows, the best package on the market right now both in terms of hardware and software is the ATI All-in-Wonder 8500 or All-in-Wonder 7500 line of products. It includes an integrated Guide+ functionality not unlike the Guide+ program guide integrated into many newer TV's, it includes an excellent and full-featured remote control that runs on RF and so has no line-of-sight issues, and its Multimedia Center software runs very well and stably atop Windows 2k/XP and provides simple but well-made functionality. The DVD playback performance of its tweaked and hardware-iDCT-accelerated Cinemaster engine is the best I've seen, and that includes my hardware DVD decoder card, the REALmagic Hollywood+. In fact, ATI cards are a favorite in the AVSforum home theatre website in part because of their DVD quality, despite a recent gamma issue which has been fixed.
1 4
Read about it here, compared against other cards:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1609&p=
I know the question was about Linux functionality, but for anyone who just wants the best set-top solution he can put together himself, without concern of what OS it runs, the ATI A-i-W 7500 or 8500 is the answer. The A-i-W 7500 is even available at Best Buy for around $179-$199, and includes all the relevant features of the 8500DV, just with the 7500 core and without the integrated Firewire port, and with a conventional tuner instead of a silicon tuner.
It won't help the original questioner, but maybe it will be of use to someone...
> what worries me (judging from good and bad reviews of the book) is the action they want to take.
> Instead of saying, "Yo, parents, quit repressing your kids!" they want to use the public
> school system to force sexual knowledge on young peope.
The book makes some suggestions, but makes no pretense of claiming that they're the only ones that would solve the problem. But, like it or not, the school systems in all but the most underdeveloped Bible Belt backwaters already teach young people about the basics of sex. The problem is, it's taught as something they're not supposed to do, which naturally makes some really want to do it, and the rest develop unnatural sexual inhibitions which can sometimes become full-blown dysfunctions in later life. All bcause sexuality is taught as something to never do until you'e married, or vaguely old.
What's more troubling though is that when young people do choose to engage in sexuality, thwey often get severely punished for normal sexual behavior. For example, the 15 year old boy in Michigan who's on the sex offender registryu for the rest of his life for having had consensual sex with his girlfriend who was one grade below him and a year and a half younger. They're peers. Playing together is normal, dating is normal, but sex is a felony. That's a fucked-up system. That's the system we have today.
That's the system Judith Levine's book is trying to change. So, I support this book fully and without reservation. Despite some reviews, it's an excellent book which exposes this nation's horrible Puritanism and the evils which it imposes.
> Comparing satellite radio to terrestrial radio is like comparing DirecTV to local broadcast
> channels.. There is no comparison.
I have to disagree here. Broadcast radio isn't the same as broadcst TV because there are so many stations in any given market that there's at least as much choice of content as you get with satellite radio. The only difference is commercials and commentary, and while the commercials aren't very welcome, the commentary by local or national radio personalities typically is. So, the only advantage satellite radio offers is that it's commercial-free--don't mention the quality issue, because for most people, the quality of terrestrial radio is "good enough," and we're talking about the masses not the technophiles. Terrestrial radio in most places does, however, offer about as much choice of content as satellite radio does.
So, is being commercial-free enough to get enough average people to pay a monthly fee to keep supporting the network, including tech upkeep and royalty payments that a terrestrial broadcast system doesn't have to pay due to the commercials? I have to seriously doubt it. In addition, believe it or not, there are a lot of people who like hearing the commentary by local DJs, which would be lacking in pure-music service. Pure music with no commercials you can get by either buying CDs, or by downloading songs off WinMX, Gnutella, etc., and either playing them back on a regular CD, or burning them as MP3's and having an MP3 CD player. Even my local Best Buy has a car MP3 CD player in stock.
So, I may be wrong, but I don't see satellite radio surviving. It's strictly a niche product, but it's being marketed as a mainstream product--meaning too much cash is being burned through too quickly.