Was that lightly promoted thing a joke? I have seen commercials for this movie hundreds of times for weeks before it was even released. And it looked stupid. Even Star Wars episode 1, the most overhyped movie ever, didn't have this many commercials.
I had a pretty cool little gadget once called a JAM! that let you hook up any S-Video device to a PC monitor. It was designed with consoles in mind but worked with anything. It also had a passthru for your PCs video card and RCA sound inputs and a headphone jack style output so you could pass the sound thru your sound cards line in (which was dumb because your computer had to be on for that feature to work, otherwise you would get no sound).
I was a little disapointed with the JAM! though. One of the features it boasted was that it let you see the games on a high resolution monitor rather than a low res TV, but the game systems were designed for TVs. Because a TV has scanlines, it cleverly disguises the fact that games graphics are actually very low resolution and grainy. Since a PC monitor has no scanlines, you got to see how horrible the graphics actually were.
I don't know about you, but I can never find what I am looking for on Morpheus, or I get very limited results. With Napster, I could always find anything, no matter how obsure. From the sound track to my favorite cult movies, to rare live recordings from... whoever, to the Brown and Williamson tobacco theme song. I could get absolutely anything. On Morpheus, if I try and search for a pouplar song from a well known band, I get almost nothing back, or a bunch of incomplete files, or downloads so slow I can't tollerate it (i.e. less than 2 k/sec). When I look for something more obscure, I'm lucky if I get any results back. If Morpheus has so many friggin users why can't I find any of the songs I want?
Not true, really. The PS1 had good 3D hardware for it's time, but you have to admit the 3D looks like crap by today's standards. And even for the time, full 3D games on PS1 were slow and grainy compared to N64. For that reason there were a LOT of pure 2D games or 2D with 3D sprites. In fact there were a lot more of those than pure 3D games. The PS1 was way more of a 2D system that had some 3D capibility.
Finding another bank probably wont help. I use Wells Fargo, and both Mozilla, Netscape 6 (which I don't use) and IE 6 are incompatable with their online banking. It tells me I need Netscape or IE 4.0 or better. I had to download Commnicator just so I could check my ballance.
May I ask where you are getting broadband for the same cost as "28.8 service"? I'm just curious. I get dialup for $21/mo from Earthlink, and that is more expensive than most. All the DSL and Cable providers in my area charge $50/mo (Pacbell, Earthlink, DirecTV, AT&T). Where do you live that cable/dsl only costs $20/mo? Or are you talking about ISDN?
HR Puke: Have you seen Star Wars?
Me: Of course!
HR Puke: If you could be any character from Star Wars, who would you be and why?
Now, I said "Obi-Wan Kenobi, because he is wise and all knowing and a mentor etc", but I was really thinking "Obi-Wan because he can control people's minds. Now, you want to give me this job, don't you?"
I think this is the sucessor to the old MyNapster client. Not a bad piece of software. I like it more than Napster. It connects to about 7 Opennap networks at once, giving you access to about 70 terrabytes of files and can be used to exchange more than just MP3s. Download it from MyNapster's Website (Win32 only).
I doubt if any of you ever used a General Magic operating system. I believe their OS was called Magic Cap. It was the OS of early, pre-Pilot PDAs such as the Sony MagicLink and I believe the Motorola Envoy. Very similar to Bob, you would have a picture of a desk with various common desktop items on it like a memo pad, clock, diary, and even a Magic 8-ball. If you wanted you could go out of the "office" and into the "hall" where there were different doors leading to rooms like the "Utility Closet" where you could set up the unit, or the "Game Room". There were even pictures and plants in the "hall". From the hall you could go "outside" to "Downtown" where you would see little buildings, each representing a different piece of software. The whole thing was very graphical and actually fun to use. The social UI deal worked better on a PDA than it did on a desktop. Still, I prefer the simplicity of the PalmOS. Does anyone else remember Magic Cap?
Are you sure the N64 is a failure? It seems to stil be popular, being bought from people who grew up on the 8-bit NES. I'd almost say the Super Nintendo was a failure compared do the Sega Genesis.
Compared to Nintendo's previous flagship systems (NES and SNES), N64 was a failure. Both NES and SNES were the number one selling consoles for their generation. Nothing else came even close to breaking the NES's dominance during the 8-bit era. Genesis' arrival put a dent in NES sales, but NES sales were still strong. And as soon as the SNES was released it quickly became the number one 16 bit system. (I don't see how you can say SNES was a failure seeing as it was number one). Gameboy, despite it's primitive hardware, has ruled portable gaming for 11 years.
Considering this success in the past, N64 is a failure. Even though the Playstation's hardware is nowhere near as good as the N64's, PSX sales are vastly higher and the PSX has hundreds of more games. N64 has failed to get a market share majority, or even come close. Nintendo has failed to rule this generation's video game market. I'd call that a failure.
Is Final Fantasy Evil?
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D&D Trailer
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I tried D&D once when I was younger, but I've never really been into D&D or other similar Role Playing Games. However I had a related question for our holy friend, NathanielPRobbins. I've been playing video game RPGs for about 9 years now, since I was 10 years old. They are pretty much the only type of video games I play anymore. My mom was always disaproving of the fact that I was playing an "RPG" as she is an avid Bible Banger. Now we all know that D&D is evil and all who play worship satan, but are Final Fantasy games and similar video game RPGs also tools of the devil? These video games don't let you "role play" in the same way D&D does, but it is a well known fact that video games like Quake and other first person shooters cause all who play to go on killing rampages, so I'd like to know your stance on video game RPGs? Will selecting the "Fight" command from a menu turn me into a killer? Is the use of magic in these games going to lead me into the black arts and devil worshiping? I need to know before it is too late!
This is very true. I do quite a bit of phone support at my job (mostly Windows 9x support) and sometimes you have to be creative in simplfying your explainations. People seem to understand better when you tell them to click on the "spider-looking-thingie" rather than telling them to open the TCP/IP properties. But a lot of people who call can't even understand directions as simple as the ones Macka described. A lot of people don't know what an "icon" or the "desktop" is. You would be surprised at the number of callers who can't tell me what version of Windows they are using. I've had to explain to quite a few people what "right-clicking" the mouse means. A couple people needed an explanation of a double-click. An amazing ammount of people do not know what the Start Menu or Start Button is. Most people don't know the difference between a backslash and a forward slash. And I have had to explain to more than one person how to turn their computer on.
I try to remain patient, but it is very hard sometimes. Some users require me to repeat explainations over and over and over and they still don't get it. Often users start yelling when they don't understand. And sometimes you get to the point where there is no way to dumb it down any further. Also when people have trouble speaking and understanding English it becomes even more difficult for me to explain to them what needs to be done. I really don't think I could do Linux software support. There are just too many things for the user to not know (i.e. distro, Window Manager, Desktop Enviroment, version numbers). Each Linux installation is so unique that supporting software would require too many questions that the users simply wouldn't be able to answer.
Your patent would cover the concept of first posting. Would first post related materials be covered in your patent? For example, would this patent cover the pouring of hot grits down ones pants? Would the consumption of pancakes by ninjas be protected by your patent? Also would this impose a copyright upon naked and petrified teenage girls? One must protect ones intellectual property.
1. Just because Apple developed desktop video first doesn't mean that we still have to use it. NCSC Mosaic, the first graphical web browser, was in existance well before the internet was popular. Frankly, I think that the NCSC was pretty bold to develop an application that was easily five years ahead of the current tech trends. Who the hell still uses NCSC Mosaic though? Why should we be force fed Quicktime just because it has been around longer? Better technology than QT has been developed. It should be used.
2. If Apple had a Quicktime codec available for UNIX before, why discontine it? Considering Linux's large user base, they are missing out on annoying millions of people with their "Upgrade to QT Pro" banners. I would think any way to increase market share would help further their goal of market domiance. But then again, going for market share has never been Apple's style.
3. I don't hate Quicktime because it is closed source. I hate it because it sucks, it's antiquated, it's nagware, and is not available for non-Windows/Mac platforms. And I don't need to develop open source codecs. They are already available and should be used. It would not take a lot of effort on anyone's behalf to encode all their video with MPEG.
And because the FF film will be animated, it will be regelated to a kids movie, but probably, knowing the FF series, a PG rating, which means NO ONE besides diehard nerds will probably see it.
The original FF games were raped by Nintendo of America, and received extremely watered down translations, you spoony bard! Nintendo is a "family company". Sony seemed more open to allowing a little more liberal translations. Words like "shit" and "goddamnit" and "what the hell" are common in FF7 and FF8. The newer Square games also include quite a bit of sexual inuendo (Xenogears especially). The Parasite Eve games both received M rating from the ESRB. The point I'm trying to make is that the story writers and script writers for Square games aren't targeting kids, aren't affraid of being mature, and aren't affraid of making their characters act and speak like real people. I don't see why their movie writers would be. This isn't gonna be a kiddie movie. I think Titan AEs biggest fallback was the fact that they watered it down so much so it would have more "family appeal", but still tried to be mature. I doubt Square is going to do that.
I completely agree. I cannot understand how Quicktime became the standard for Internet video. The software is terribly bloated. The codec is overly proprietary. And you must use Apple's software to view movies, which is only available for Mac and Windows, with apparently no plans for supporting more platforms. The absolute worst part about it is that Nagware viewer. Every time I want to view a QT movie, I gotta see that goddamn nag banner, unless I want to pay to "Upgrade" to QT Pro. The Pro version, by the way, is a total ripoff as it simply adds a few features that Microsoft includes for free in WMP, and it still sucks.
I cannot understand how something as open as the internet has adopted, with wide open arms, something as closed as QT. Maybe one of you could enlighten me because I can't figure it out. Does QT offer better picture quality? Not as far as I can tell. It looks no better than MPEG1. In fact Mpeg movies run significantly smoother on my system. Is the sound quality better? Maybe, but I can't tell. Better compression ratio? Not by a long shot. Divx;) offers nearly DVD quality video, much better video quality than QT, in a much smaller file. RealVideo offers very high compression ratio, and the picture quality is still fairly good. I know RealVideo very proprietary too, but at least their player doesn't constantly nag you to upgrade, supports more than Mac and Windows, and is actually good.
If anyone cares to explain to me how Apple keeps their stronghold over internet video, please feel free. I would really like to know. I pray for the day when webmasters see the errors of their ways and start using Mpeg.
You don't put two engines in the car. You take out the Volkswagon engine and replace it with a Porche engine. Oh yeah, huh? This is possible because I have seen a Volkswagon like this. Why anyone would want to waste their time/money on this is total mystery though.
I've seen a couple people on Slashdot who use a link to DeCSS as their sig. According to this ruling, who is breaking the law in this case? Slashdot, or the author of the comment?
I've been wondering about this for a long time. I used IRC to trade (read: leech) MP3s for years before Napster was invented. It amazes me that the RIAA have apparently no knowlege of IRC mp3 trading. I've never seen an article, heard a news report, read a Slashdot headline, or anything about IRC mp3 trading, but I see something about someone suing Napster or Gnutella almost every day. I would think that the RIAA would demand DALnet and other IRC networks shut down if they knew of the stuff that happened on these networks, but nothing like that has happened. However, it seems so unlikely that they have no knowlege of IRC mp3 trading. Even if no one on their staff was internet savy, I would think some lamer would email their piracy department and report it. What's going on?!?
Dot-matrix nearly forgotton? Not quite. It may not be used too much on the desktop anymore but dot-matrix printers are still very widely used for largescale print jobs. The company I work for has several very large Printek and IBM dot-matrix printers used for printing invoices, house bills, and ton's of other stuff off our AS/400. Nothing else can match their speed or flexability. Nothing can top them when it comes to printing on forms. It just pumps out hundreds of them out nonstop for hours. Many of them have multiple tractors allowing different types of forms to be printed on a single printer without changing paper. Printek's new printers are capable of doing barcoding on dot-matrix. Dot-matrix technology is developing, not disapearing.
The only problem I can see with this is that it wont stop Myst from sucking. I don't know why everyone liked Myst so much. It was so boring. And don't say I didn't give it a chance. I gave it more chances than it deserved. The puzzles were impossible, the plot was stupid, and the game was boring. Now the Manhole on the other hand, even though it was built on the Myst engine, that was a fun game!
A talk show that I listen to sometimes, the Tom Leykis show uses Metallica's Enter Sandman and their themesong. But since Tom is a hardcore Napster fan, he decided to do a sort of protest against Metallica by replacing Metallica's version of the song with a variety of different covers, downloaded from Napster of course:) Quite clever I think. He sarcasticly advises listeners that they should "Definatly not go to www.napster.com, thats n-a-p-s-t-e-r.com. And even if you do go there, you definatly should not download their free, easy to use software. And if you were to do that, you certainly should not use Napster to download any Metallica songs. That would be copyright infringment and would be illegal."
On another point, it is really good to see that some bands like the Offspring are supporting the MP3 revolution, want people to enjoy their art, not have to dish out for it like it's some kind of commodity:), and realize that MP3s really don't hurt sales in the slightest. Hopefully more bands will get a frickin clue.
So you can keep calling it MPEG-4, but to most people it'll be MP4. And for some reason it'll show up in the Windows property sheet as "Windows Media File."
Actually I think most people will call it "Divx;)" (which have AVI extensions for some reason). But seriously. Why would you call it MP4? It isn't an "MP4", its an MPEG-4. No one calls MPEG-2 movies MP2s. MP2 is something completly different:) It's easier to remember cuz it has three letters? MPEG-4 and MP4 have the same number of sylabils, so I really don't see how that will work. That's a really silly argument.
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Was that lightly promoted thing a joke? I have seen commercials for this movie hundreds of times for weeks before it was even released. And it looked stupid. Even Star Wars episode 1, the most overhyped movie ever, didn't have this many commercials.
I was a little disapointed with the JAM! though. One of the features it boasted was that it let you see the games on a high resolution monitor rather than a low res TV, but the game systems were designed for TVs. Because a TV has scanlines, it cleverly disguises the fact that games graphics are actually very low resolution and grainy. Since a PC monitor has no scanlines, you got to see how horrible the graphics actually were.
I don't know about you, but I can never find what I am looking for on Morpheus, or I get very limited results. With Napster, I could always find anything, no matter how obsure. From the sound track to my favorite cult movies, to rare live recordings from... whoever, to the Brown and Williamson tobacco theme song. I could get absolutely anything. On Morpheus, if I try and search for a pouplar song from a well known band, I get almost nothing back, or a bunch of incomplete files, or downloads so slow I can't tollerate it (i.e. less than 2 k/sec). When I look for something more obscure, I'm lucky if I get any results back. If Morpheus has so many friggin users why can't I find any of the songs I want?
Not true, really. The PS1 had good 3D hardware for it's time, but you have to admit the 3D looks like crap by today's standards. And even for the time, full 3D games on PS1 were slow and grainy compared to N64. For that reason there were a LOT of pure 2D games or 2D with 3D sprites. In fact there were a lot more of those than pure 3D games. The PS1 was way more of a 2D system that had some 3D capibility.
Finding another bank probably wont help. I use Wells Fargo, and both Mozilla, Netscape 6 (which I don't use) and IE 6 are incompatable with their online banking. It tells me I need Netscape or IE 4.0 or better. I had to download Commnicator just so I could check my ballance.
May I ask where you are getting broadband for the same cost as "28.8 service"? I'm just curious. I get dialup for $21/mo from Earthlink, and that is more expensive than most. All the DSL and Cable providers in my area charge $50/mo (Pacbell, Earthlink, DirecTV, AT&T). Where do you live that cable/dsl only costs $20/mo? Or are you talking about ISDN?
HR Puke: Have you seen Star Wars?
Me: Of course!
HR Puke: If you could be any character from Star Wars, who would you be and why?
Now, I said "Obi-Wan Kenobi, because he is wise and all knowing and a mentor etc", but I was really thinking "Obi-Wan because he can control people's minds. Now, you want to give me this job, don't you?"
I was a little tempted to say Princess Leia.
Can you really call that nasty dirt water you get at work coffee? Even Denny's coffee is better than that.
I think this is the sucessor to the old MyNapster client. Not a bad piece of software. I like it more than Napster. It connects to about 7 Opennap networks at once, giving you access to about 70 terrabytes of files and can be used to exchange more than just MP3s. Download it from MyNapster's Website (Win32 only).
When did DVDs ever cost $2000? Even when they first came out, the high end ones cost about $1000.
I doubt if any of you ever used a General Magic operating system. I believe their OS was called Magic Cap. It was the OS of early, pre-Pilot PDAs such as the Sony MagicLink and I believe the Motorola Envoy. Very similar to Bob, you would have a picture of a desk with various common desktop items on it like a memo pad, clock, diary, and even a Magic 8-ball. If you wanted you could go out of the "office" and into the "hall" where there were different doors leading to rooms like the "Utility Closet" where you could set up the unit, or the "Game Room". There were even pictures and plants in the "hall". From the hall you could go "outside" to "Downtown" where you would see little buildings, each representing a different piece of software. The whole thing was very graphical and actually fun to use. The social UI deal worked better on a PDA than it did on a desktop. Still, I prefer the simplicity of the PalmOS. Does anyone else remember Magic Cap?
Compared to Nintendo's previous flagship systems (NES and SNES), N64 was a failure. Both NES and SNES were the number one selling consoles for their generation. Nothing else came even close to breaking the NES's dominance during the 8-bit era. Genesis' arrival put a dent in NES sales, but NES sales were still strong. And as soon as the SNES was released it quickly became the number one 16 bit system. (I don't see how you can say SNES was a failure seeing as it was number one). Gameboy, despite it's primitive hardware, has ruled portable gaming for 11 years.
Considering this success in the past, N64 is a failure. Even though the Playstation's hardware is nowhere near as good as the N64's, PSX sales are vastly higher and the PSX has hundreds of more games. N64 has failed to get a market share majority, or even come close. Nintendo has failed to rule this generation's video game market. I'd call that a failure.
I tried D&D once when I was younger, but I've never really been into D&D or other similar Role Playing Games. However I had a related question for our holy friend, NathanielPRobbins. I've been playing video game RPGs for about 9 years now, since I was 10 years old. They are pretty much the only type of video games I play anymore. My mom was always disaproving of the fact that I was playing an "RPG" as she is an avid Bible Banger. Now we all know that D&D is evil and all who play worship satan, but are Final Fantasy games and similar video game RPGs also tools of the devil? These video games don't let you "role play" in the same way D&D does, but it is a well known fact that video games like Quake and other first person shooters cause all who play to go on killing rampages, so I'd like to know your stance on video game RPGs? Will selecting the "Fight" command from a menu turn me into a killer? Is the use of magic in these games going to lead me into the black arts and devil worshiping? I need to know before it is too late!
I try to remain patient, but it is very hard sometimes. Some users require me to repeat explainations over and over and over and they still don't get it. Often users start yelling when they don't understand. And sometimes you get to the point where there is no way to dumb it down any further. Also when people have trouble speaking and understanding English it becomes even more difficult for me to explain to them what needs to be done. I really don't think I could do Linux software support. There are just too many things for the user to not know (i.e. distro, Window Manager, Desktop Enviroment, version numbers). Each Linux installation is so unique that supporting software would require too many questions that the users simply wouldn't be able to answer.
Your patent would cover the concept of first posting. Would first post related materials be covered in your patent? For example, would this patent cover the pouring of hot grits down ones pants? Would the consumption of pancakes by ninjas be protected by your patent? Also would this impose a copyright upon naked and petrified teenage girls? One must protect ones intellectual property.
2. If Apple had a Quicktime codec available for UNIX before, why discontine it? Considering Linux's large user base, they are missing out on annoying millions of people with their "Upgrade to QT Pro" banners. I would think any way to increase market share would help further their goal of market domiance. But then again, going for market share has never been Apple's style.
3. I don't hate Quicktime because it is closed source. I hate it because it sucks, it's antiquated, it's nagware, and is not available for non-Windows/Mac platforms. And I don't need to develop open source codecs. They are already available and should be used. It would not take a lot of effort on anyone's behalf to encode all their video with MPEG.
The original FF games were raped by Nintendo of America, and received extremely watered down translations, you spoony bard! Nintendo is a "family company". Sony seemed more open to allowing a little more liberal translations. Words like "shit" and "goddamnit" and "what the hell" are common in FF7 and FF8. The newer Square games also include quite a bit of sexual inuendo (Xenogears especially). The Parasite Eve games both received M rating from the ESRB. The point I'm trying to make is that the story writers and script writers for Square games aren't targeting kids, aren't affraid of being mature, and aren't affraid of making their characters act and speak like real people. I don't see why their movie writers would be. This isn't gonna be a kiddie movie. I think Titan AEs biggest fallback was the fact that they watered it down so much so it would have more "family appeal", but still tried to be mature. I doubt Square is going to do that.
I cannot understand how something as open as the internet has adopted, with wide open arms, something as closed as QT. Maybe one of you could enlighten me because I can't figure it out. Does QT offer better picture quality? Not as far as I can tell. It looks no better than MPEG1. In fact Mpeg movies run significantly smoother on my system. Is the sound quality better? Maybe, but I can't tell. Better compression ratio? Not by a long shot. Divx;) offers nearly DVD quality video, much better video quality than QT, in a much smaller file. RealVideo offers very high compression ratio, and the picture quality is still fairly good. I know RealVideo very proprietary too, but at least their player doesn't constantly nag you to upgrade, supports more than Mac and Windows, and is actually good.
If anyone cares to explain to me how Apple keeps their stronghold over internet video, please feel free. I would really like to know. I pray for the day when webmasters see the errors of their ways and start using Mpeg.
You don't put two engines in the car. You take out the Volkswagon engine and replace it with a Porche engine. Oh yeah, huh? This is possible because I have seen a Volkswagon like this. Why anyone would want to waste their time/money on this is total mystery though.
I've seen a couple people on Slashdot who use a link to DeCSS as their sig. According to this ruling, who is breaking the law in this case? Slashdot, or the author of the comment?
I've been wondering about this for a long time. I used IRC to trade (read: leech) MP3s for years before Napster was invented. It amazes me that the RIAA have apparently no knowlege of IRC mp3 trading. I've never seen an article, heard a news report, read a Slashdot headline, or anything about IRC mp3 trading, but I see something about someone suing Napster or Gnutella almost every day. I would think that the RIAA would demand DALnet and other IRC networks shut down if they knew of the stuff that happened on these networks, but nothing like that has happened. However, it seems so unlikely that they have no knowlege of IRC mp3 trading. Even if no one on their staff was internet savy, I would think some lamer would email their piracy department and report it. What's going on?!?
Dot-matrix nearly forgotton? Not quite. It may not be used too much on the desktop anymore but dot-matrix printers are still very widely used for largescale print jobs. The company I work for has several very large Printek and IBM dot-matrix printers used for printing invoices, house bills, and ton's of other stuff off our AS/400. Nothing else can match their speed or flexability. Nothing can top them when it comes to printing on forms. It just pumps out hundreds of them out nonstop for hours. Many of them have multiple tractors allowing different types of forms to be printed on a single printer without changing paper. Printek's new printers are capable of doing barcoding on dot-matrix. Dot-matrix technology is developing, not disapearing.
The only problem I can see with this is that it wont stop Myst from sucking. I don't know why everyone liked Myst so much. It was so boring. And don't say I didn't give it a chance. I gave it more chances than it deserved. The puzzles were impossible, the plot was stupid, and the game was boring. Now the Manhole on the other hand, even though it was built on the Myst engine, that was a fun game!
On another point, it is really good to see that some bands like the Offspring are supporting the MP3 revolution, want people to enjoy their art, not have to dish out for it like it's some kind of commodity :), and realize that MP3s really don't hurt sales in the slightest. Hopefully more bands will get a frickin clue.
Actually I think most people will call it "Divx ;)" (which have AVI extensions for some reason). But seriously. Why would you call it MP4? It isn't an "MP4", its an MPEG-4. No one calls MPEG-2 movies MP2s. MP2 is something completly different :) It's easier to remember cuz it has three letters? MPEG-4 and MP4 have the same number of sylabils, so I really don't see how that will work. That's a really silly argument.