If you've seen his episode about deepfrying, you'd know that if you fry properly, there won't be that much fat in the food you fried.
This isn't to say that everything he makes would be considered health food - take his cheesecake episode where he points out "hey, I said it was easy...not healthy." His book also contains a blurb defending his use of salt in almost all of his dishes.
Of course balance is the secret to any diet. If you're eating lots of fruit and veggies, an ocassional piece of cheesecake, or slab of deepfried mac&cheese isn't going to kill you...
If the MPAA gets their way, you won't be able to do that either (at least, not with "legitimate" equipment.)
The MPAA wants full control over the signal and whether or not it's able to be displayed (or even routed!) through your devices.
In their dream world, they could designate certain programs as "view only" meaning no recorder or convertor would accept the signal.
Yes, it's stupid. Yes, it'll add unneccessary cost to the products. And yes, you're darn straight in thinking there'll be a whole cottage industry that'll spring up around producing devices which will get around whatever stupidity the MPAA imposes. (just look at the number of places which will happily sell you a modified DVD player which allows you to play discs from any region as an indicator.)
The stand-alone Tivo does not make "perfect copies" since it's doing on-the-fly compression of an analog signal.
The Direct TV Tivo does make perfect copies, since it just dumps the bits from dish to its disk.
However since most people are using VHS tapes to record said content, it's still not a perfect copy.
Yes, I'm aware you can hack your Tivo and dump the data to your computer where it can be burned as a (S)VCD, but do you think most consumers are going to be capable of doing this (much less willing to even open their Tivo?)
...and if the HD standard the US ends up adopting makes your $1500 set useless...? Remember, one of the things the MPAA wants to do is only allow "authorized" devices decode the signals. Such authorization hardware is certainly not going to be in today's TVs. This means at the very least being forced to buy an external decoder for your already "HD ready" TV.
I agree with the parent. Even though I could see myself spending ~$2k on a TV, it's still too early to really consider so-called "HD ready" sets.
In the meantime, no one has said how they intend to deal with the millions of consumers who already have a non-HD set and are not willing (due to finances or stubborness) to buy a new set.
If, say, on 1/1/2006 all analog TV signals stopped, there'd be a HUGE outcry.
Assuming the US can get this HDTV thing figured out, you can either:
1: Buy a new set. 2: Buy a signal adapter.
#1 isn't going to be as bad as it sounds. You can be sure once a HDTV standard is cleared by all involved parties (including the MPAA, unfortunatly) you'll see manufacturers dropping prices on HD-sets in an effort to push adoption. After all, it'd be more expensive for them to essentially have two assembly lines - one for HD stuff, one for non-HD stuff.
Frankly, waiting for the HD thing to settle makes sense to me. I bought a new set in 2000 and am going to do my darndest not to buy a new one unless it's a HD-ready set.
The same thing goes for Tivo. I knew going in that Tivo would not be able to support a HDTV signal, but figured by the time HDTV was commonplace, I'd be able to buy a new Tivo unit which would make my current one look like a Model T car. In the meantime I expect my Tivo to happily function until then, giving me roughly 5+ years of use.
Re:Spam will be gone, in 100 years.
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Mapping the Spam
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Eew...why'd you want to do that?
I'd rather they be stored deep underground along with those barrels of radioactive waste.
A PS2 emulator? What, does it need a dual 2Ghz system to run?
I've fiddled around with emulators for older systems, but I've yet to find one that would play 100% the same way it would on actual hardware. They might make nice alternatives when the hardware and software is unavailable otherwise, but both the Playstation one and two are alive and kicking.
Also, unlike PCs, consoles are not about hardware. They're about games, and only games. Do I care that my PSX has only 4MB of memory and a 2x CD drive? No. All I care is that I can play PSX games on it.
Do you care what processor your microwave uses? I doubt it. All you care is that it can make popcorn and heat up your leftovers.
There's been many usenet posts about people having problems with their Ultimate TV needing to be rebooted once or twice a week, losing settings and recorded programs, among other issues...
Certainly doesn't sound like it's very stable or robust to me.
How many times does it have to be said - technology means next to nothing in the console world.
It's all about the games. If the XBox has the games you like - great. If not, having more gigamoxel-vector memory or whatever technobabble is popular nowadays, means squat.
It's like buying your microwave because its processor is 10Mhz faster than its competitors.
What happens when you're in the middle of a game and your XBox decides it wants to record a program for you?
I guess it would be OK if Microsoft provides separate hardware to deal with the TV tuner and mpeg decoder - or if this is a satellite only system (in which case, all you do is write the incoming TV stream to disk.)
If Microsoft doesn't do this in their new box, then I foresee subpar performance of this device as a game machine and PVR...
Except that Xbox's internal security has already been compromised (it was story here awhile go, I'm just too lazy to go searching for it.)
The idea dumping the image onto a computer, hacking a cheat into it, then dumping the new image onto a disc for your XBox is probably too much work. Much better to put the cheat onto the XBox's HD, and somehow load it into the XBox's memory, overwriting the instructions from the game disc.
Also, don't XBox games copy themselves to the HD? That'd make things *really* easy.
Well, there's some sort of bootloader which figures out what the PS2 needs to do with whatever disc is in the drive, and there's also the configuration/memory card manager applications...
As for getting your PS2 "owned", I don't see how that's possible. You'd have to place malicious code into non-volatile memory on the system. It's not like you're going to be able to overwrite the ROMs or even the firmware. About the best you could do would be to somehow gain access to the memory card system. You could then muck up the card, or overwrite a savefile, but it's not like the save files themselves are executeable binaries.
Dreamcast owners who played PSO will recall a problem with a "virus" in which an infected player could overwrite others' save file with the same worthless and infected player - but that's a game specific problem. The original article talks about hordes of consoles being used for DDOS attacks - which is just stupid.
I don't know about you, but I don't leave my game consoles running unless I'm actually using them...
My PC, on the other hand, is another matter. Of course, even if I'm not sitting in front of the monitor, there's always Seti or some other distributed computing program running.
I'm by no means a heavy music listener, however I just recentally ripped my modest CD collection to 192bit MP3. It's just about 30GB, and I have at most 100 CDs.
That's not to say that a portable 5GB mp3 player is nothing to sneeze at... I have a portable player that uses a laptop drive, and so is quite a bit larger and heavier than the iPod or Toshiba's model, but since it uses any laptop drive, the sky's the limit...well at least until you start getting 120+ GB laptop drives.
Must be a *real* slow news day if Slashdot has to resort to picking up stories from ~4 years ago... Didn't Slashdot cover this when it *was* news?
Bah. At this rate Slashdot's becoming nothing more than one of those horribly outdated joke sites which contains nothing but the same old tired jokes you got forwarded in email when the internet was this "new thing."
So the guy doesn't like WC3 - at least it's on-topic.
That said, I'm not that excited about WC3 myself.
I picked up Warlords Battlecry 2 a few weeks back, and it seems to have everything that WC3 has - only most of it was implemented back in the first Warlords Battlecry.
Next Worker button? Yep, it's got one. You've also got formations, waypoints, order-stacking, etc.
You don't need to waste time building armies of peasants to harvest. Once you use your hero or a general to convert a mine, it's yours and you start collecting income immediatly. Some races can, however, build peasants to put inside the mines to speed up their income. You should defend your mines, lest an enemy hero shows up and converts your mines to HIS side...
The only place that the game falls short is on story. The Campaign is a pretty sparse affair of conquer the map - much like in Dune2. You can choose which area you want to invade next. Some areas have special rules (like "No Dragons") or will give your armies a bonus in future skirmishes (like "+1 range for archers.")
All said, I'll probably pick up WC3 - just not right away. I'm sure Blizzard will release an add-on 6-9 months later, quickly followed by the WC3 bargin bundle - THAT's when I'll pick it up.
Actually, machine translation works best with technical documents. Granted, it's not as easy as feed it a document in one language, and it spits out the finished translation...
However, you can create document specific glossaries for things like jargon or commonly used phrases in the document. A good glossary file will give you a document that's roughly 60-80% translated. The only thing left is for a technical translator who speaks the target language natively to check the document for readability and any bizzare translation that didn't get caught by the glossary.
Again, it takes both a good glossary and a native technical translator to get a good translation. Otherwise, the results can be less than spectacular...
I once did a bit of translation of a document which was for a interface spec. At one point, the document must been translated into Japanese by someone who was non-technical, because at one point the spec literally said the product could accept up to 50 "twisted pear" connections.
At the same time, I'd feel better about buying this specialized controller if there were other games that could use it...
Flight sims, for instance, seem like a no-brainer, but the throttle is too far away, and lacks a HOTAS(*) (from the picture I saw.)
Come to think of it...*why* did they invent their own controller when all they had to do was liscense someone making USB HOTAS controllers for the PC market? Yeah, they'd still cost ~$100, but at the same time, they'd be usable for different games, and even on different platforms. Thurstmaster makes a combo that comes with dozens of buttons and several "hats" - should be more than enough even for this monster mech game.
(* HOTAS = Hands On Throttle And Stick - you shouldn't have to take your hands off the stick or throttle to perform most of the basic functions while flying the plane - like radar, navigation, weapon selection, target acquisition, even wingman communication.)
Slashdot Mirror
If you've seen his episode about deepfrying, you'd know that if you fry properly, there won't be that much fat in the food you fried.
This isn't to say that everything he makes would be considered health food - take his cheesecake episode where he points out "hey, I said it was easy...not healthy." His book also contains a blurb defending his use of salt in almost all of his dishes.
Of course balance is the secret to any diet. If you're eating lots of fruit and veggies, an ocassional piece of cheesecake, or slab of deepfried mac&cheese isn't going to kill you...
Doesn't TVLand also run A-Team?
Somehow I don't think BA would be amused at being shown "squished."
It makes everyone look pudgy.
What does TNN show that's worth watching anyways?
Star Trek:TNG? On DVD now.
Star Trek movies? On DVD.
Wrestling? No comment.
Robot Wars USA? Why bother when Battle Bots is 100x better?
What else does TNN show? Seems everytime I flip to their station, they're showing one of the above, or some other movie that's been on DVD for years.
If the MPAA gets their way, you won't be able to do that either (at least, not with "legitimate" equipment.)
The MPAA wants full control over the signal and whether or not it's able to be displayed (or even routed!) through your devices.
In their dream world, they could designate certain programs as "view only" meaning no recorder or convertor would accept the signal.
Yes, it's stupid. Yes, it'll add unneccessary cost to the products. And yes, you're darn straight in thinking there'll be a whole cottage industry that'll spring up around producing devices which will get around whatever stupidity the MPAA imposes. (just look at the number of places which will happily sell you a modified DVD player which allows you to play discs from any region as an indicator.)
The stand-alone Tivo does not make "perfect copies" since it's doing on-the-fly compression of an analog signal.
The Direct TV Tivo does make perfect copies, since it just dumps the bits from dish to its disk.
However since most people are using VHS tapes to record said content, it's still not a perfect copy.
Yes, I'm aware you can hack your Tivo and dump the data to your computer where it can be burned as a (S)VCD, but do you think most consumers are going to be capable of doing this (much less willing to even open their Tivo?)
...and if the HD standard the US ends up adopting makes your $1500 set useless...? Remember, one of the things the MPAA wants to do is only allow "authorized" devices decode the signals. Such authorization hardware is certainly not going to be in today's TVs. This means at the very least being forced to buy an external decoder for your already "HD ready" TV.
I agree with the parent. Even though I could see myself spending ~$2k on a TV, it's still too early to really consider so-called "HD ready" sets.
In the meantime, no one has said how they intend to deal with the millions of consumers who already have a non-HD set and are not willing (due to finances or stubborness) to buy a new set.
If, say, on 1/1/2006 all analog TV signals stopped, there'd be a HUGE outcry.
Assuming the US can get this HDTV thing figured out, you can either:
1: Buy a new set.
2: Buy a signal adapter.
#1 isn't going to be as bad as it sounds. You can be sure once a HDTV standard is cleared by all involved parties (including the MPAA, unfortunatly) you'll see manufacturers dropping prices on HD-sets in an effort to push adoption. After all, it'd be more expensive for them to essentially have two assembly lines - one for HD stuff, one for non-HD stuff.
Frankly, waiting for the HD thing to settle makes sense to me. I bought a new set in 2000 and am going to do my darndest not to buy a new one unless it's a HD-ready set.
The same thing goes for Tivo. I knew going in that Tivo would not be able to support a HDTV signal, but figured by the time HDTV was commonplace, I'd be able to buy a new Tivo unit which would make my current one look like a Model T car. In the meantime I expect my Tivo to happily function until then, giving me roughly 5+ years of use.
Eew...why'd you want to do that?
I'd rather they be stored deep underground along with those barrels of radioactive waste.
Bleem never worked right.
A PS2 emulator? What, does it need a dual 2Ghz system to run?
I've fiddled around with emulators for older systems, but I've yet to find one that would play 100% the same way it would on actual hardware. They might make nice alternatives when the hardware and software is unavailable otherwise, but both the Playstation one and two are alive and kicking.
Also, unlike PCs, consoles are not about hardware. They're about games, and only games. Do I care that my PSX has only 4MB of memory and a 2x CD drive? No. All I care is that I can play PSX games on it.
Do you care what processor your microwave uses? I doubt it. All you care is that it can make popcorn and heat up your leftovers.
There's been many usenet posts about people having problems with their Ultimate TV needing to be rebooted once or twice a week, losing settings and recorded programs, among other issues...
Certainly doesn't sound like it's very stable or robust to me.
How many times does it have to be said - technology means next to nothing in the console world.
It's all about the games. If the XBox has the games you like - great. If not, having more gigamoxel-vector memory or whatever technobabble is popular nowadays, means squat.
It's like buying your microwave because its processor is 10Mhz faster than its competitors.
The price isn't that bad, considering a standalone Tivo costs $300 + $250 for the lifetime service.
Does Ultimate TV have a service fee as well?
Actually, it doesn't sound so fantastic to me....
What happens when you're in the middle of a game and your XBox decides it wants to record a program for you?
I guess it would be OK if Microsoft provides separate hardware to deal with the TV tuner and mpeg decoder - or if this is a satellite only system (in which case, all you do is write the incoming TV stream to disk.)
If Microsoft doesn't do this in their new box, then I foresee subpar performance of this device as a game machine and PVR...
Except that Xbox's internal security has already been compromised (it was story here awhile go, I'm just too lazy to go searching for it.)
The idea dumping the image onto a computer, hacking a cheat into it, then dumping the new image onto a disc for your XBox is probably too much work. Much better to put the cheat onto the XBox's HD, and somehow load it into the XBox's memory, overwriting the instructions from the game disc.
Also, don't XBox games copy themselves to the HD? That'd make things *really* easy.
Well, there's some sort of bootloader which figures out what the PS2 needs to do with whatever disc is in the drive, and there's also the configuration/memory card manager applications...
As for getting your PS2 "owned", I don't see how that's possible. You'd have to place malicious code into non-volatile memory on the system. It's not like you're going to be able to overwrite the ROMs or even the firmware. About the best you could do would be to somehow gain access to the memory card system. You could then muck up the card, or overwrite a savefile, but it's not like the save files themselves are executeable binaries.
Dreamcast owners who played PSO will recall a problem with a "virus" in which an infected player could overwrite others' save file with the same worthless and infected player - but that's a game specific problem. The original article talks about hordes of consoles being used for DDOS attacks - which is just stupid.
I don't know about you, but I don't leave my game consoles running unless I'm actually using them...
My PC, on the other hand, is another matter. Of course, even if I'm not sitting in front of the monitor, there's always Seti or some other distributed computing program running.
Probably just release an update CD you stick into your system and it'll load any new software you need.
For an example, look at the Sony PS2 DVD remote, which comes with a CD containing the new drivers if you have an earlier model.
Unless Sony has changed their minds again, the network "kit" will only contain the network adapter.
There has been no mention of when (if ever) the HD will be released.
The only network game that's been announced for the PS2 is Final Fantasy 11, which doesn't need the HD anyways.
Tony Hawk 3 will be able to use the adapter, but can also use a couple different USB ethernet adapters as well.
I'm by no means a heavy music listener, however I just recentally ripped my modest CD collection to 192bit MP3. It's just about 30GB, and I have at most 100 CDs.
That's not to say that a portable 5GB mp3 player is nothing to sneeze at... I have a portable player that uses a laptop drive, and so is quite a bit larger and heavier than the iPod or Toshiba's model, but since it uses any laptop drive, the sky's the limit...well at least until you start getting 120+ GB laptop drives.
Must be a *real* slow news day if Slashdot has to resort to picking up stories from ~4 years ago... Didn't Slashdot cover this when it *was* news?
Bah. At this rate Slashdot's becoming nothing more than one of those horribly outdated joke sites which contains nothing but the same old tired jokes you got forwarded in email when the internet was this "new thing."
I don't know why thi swas marked as a troll...
So the guy doesn't like WC3 - at least it's on-topic.
That said, I'm not that excited about WC3 myself.
I picked up Warlords Battlecry 2 a few weeks back, and it seems to have everything that WC3 has - only most of it was implemented back in the first Warlords Battlecry.
Next Worker button? Yep, it's got one. You've also got formations, waypoints, order-stacking, etc.
You don't need to waste time building armies of peasants to harvest. Once you use your hero or a general to convert a mine, it's yours and you start collecting income immediatly. Some races can, however, build peasants to put inside the mines to speed up their income. You should defend your mines, lest an enemy hero shows up and converts your mines to HIS side...
The only place that the game falls short is on story. The Campaign is a pretty sparse affair of conquer the map - much like in Dune2. You can choose which area you want to invade next. Some areas have special rules (like "No Dragons") or will give your armies a bonus in future skirmishes (like "+1 range for archers.")
All said, I'll probably pick up WC3 - just not right away. I'm sure Blizzard will release an add-on 6-9 months later, quickly followed by the WC3 bargin bundle - THAT's when I'll pick it up.
The manual for Fallout was very well done as well. Matched the style of game very well while being informative.
Actually, machine translation works best with technical documents. Granted, it's not as easy as feed it a document in one language, and it spits out the finished translation...
However, you can create document specific glossaries for things like jargon or commonly used phrases in the document. A good glossary file will give you a document that's roughly 60-80% translated. The only thing left is for a technical translator who speaks the target language natively to check the document for readability and any bizzare translation that didn't get caught by the glossary.
Again, it takes both a good glossary and a native technical translator to get a good translation. Otherwise, the results can be less than spectacular...
I once did a bit of translation of a document which was for a interface spec. At one point, the document must been translated into Japanese by someone who was non-technical, because at one point the spec literally said the product could accept up to 50 "twisted pear" connections.
At the same time, I'd feel better about buying this specialized controller if there were other games that could use it...
Flight sims, for instance, seem like a no-brainer, but the throttle is too far away, and lacks a HOTAS(*) (from the picture I saw.)
Come to think of it...*why* did they invent their own controller when all they had to do was liscense someone making USB HOTAS controllers for the PC market? Yeah, they'd still cost ~$100, but at the same time, they'd be usable for different games, and even on different platforms. Thurstmaster makes a combo that comes with dozens of buttons and several "hats" - should be more than enough even for this monster mech game.
(* HOTAS = Hands On Throttle And Stick - you shouldn't have to take your hands off the stick or throttle to perform most of the basic functions while flying the plane - like radar, navigation, weapon selection, target acquisition, even wingman communication.)
$150 for the package is sort of the high end...
Otherwise, you'll be paying more for this one game than you will for the XBox itself.
Heck, that might be a great promo: Buy Steel Battalion and get XBox for free!