Seems to me he lifted it straight out of GTA:SA. See this screenshot. Notice the chicken being choked?
Re:best codec is one I can use in a $60 DVD player
on
Comparing Codecs for 2004
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I bought one of these after hearing so many people rave about how great they are. It's true, it does have very strong support for many PC file formats. However, there are some very serious drawbacks.
The file system browser only shows the first 11 characters of the filename. To be able to accuately differentiate one file from another in the browser, you need to abbreviate the file names when you burn them to a disc. Even worse when playing MP3s which usually have long filenames.
When viewing Divx files, it streches the picture outside of the frame of the TV on all four sides, with no way to adjust this. For me this is a major problem because I watch a lot of fansubbed anime, and the result is that the subtitles are outside of the screen, thus making the player useless for watching fansubs (unless the show is widescreen).
It crashes sometimes. I've never had a DVD player crash on me before.
It doesn't show the title number or chapter number when you skip to the next, nor does it show the title or chapter on the player's display. You have to press the Display button on the remote to see where you are.
When changing titles, it switches the language setting back to the disc default. Again, annoying for us anime fans.
All and all, I haven't been very happy with this player, compared to my old, old, incredibly old school Toshiba player. The Divx playback feature is nice, but needs some of the kinks worked out. Maybe the next generation will be better.
Pay for long distance service? I have SBC as my long distance provider and before them AT&T. With both companies, I didn't have to pay a monthly fee to have long distance. I only was billed when I actually made a long distance call. I thought that you only paid a monthly fee if you were on a calling plan, and even then it was nominal.
Doesn't anyone remember the Oakland "Nutcase Gang" from a couple years ago, a group of kids who killed 6 people and allegidly mugged over 100. When apprehended, they said that they were trying to live out Grand Theft Auto.
I can't believe that never got mentioned on Slashdot, but some graffiti did.
I'm pretty sure ALL cable is exempt from FCC censorship rules, since all cable channels are subscription, and are transmitted over private infrastructure. Case in point being uncensored movies they show on Comedy Central late at night. Most of the networks just censor themselves instead, for fear of scaring off advertisers. Since HBO doesn't have any advertisers to appease, they can say whatever the fuck they want, goddammit.
What makes you think they're going to charge for it? Microsoft has taken a hit on OS utilities before. They spent millions developing IE, which they then gave away. IIS is included with Windows for free. Tools like SFU can be downloaded for free. They included a disk defragmenter in W2K and newer. My guess is they'll include it in the next release of the OS, or maybe next XP service pack.
Some games work near perfect. Some games don't work worth a crap. Check out the ePSXe Compatibility List. Bear in mind that you may have to tweak plugin settings to get various games to run right. But there's lots of help available on their message boards.
emulators aren't as good as the real thing, even if they are cheaper.
I disagree. Emulators are often better than the real thing. Most emulators offer features like screen snaps, sound capture, save states, importing other peoples save ram, higher fidelity audio, higher resolution video, speed up/slow down functions, movie recoding, and a slew of other things that the original console did not have. It's true that ePSXe is rather hit or miss, and requires a lot of tweaking. Many games work great, a few work like crap. FFVII happens to be one that works like crap. Rememberer PSX is a lot more sophisticated than something like the NES:) The fact that it's 8 years old is irrelevant. As for the controller problem, I just bought me one of those PSX controller to USB adapters. Works perfectly.
Using Client Access (iSeries Access)? Just do what my company's IT department does. Never upgrade it. No service packs, and no version upgrades unless you get a new machine/re-imaged.
Not that I agree with that, as CA service packs fix a lot of problems, but I think their mentality is that CA is little more than an overglorified Telnet program, and as long as you can get a green screen there is no need to upgrade. We still have machines using CA V3R4! My machine has V5R1, which is still 2 releases out of date.
I had a dialup ISP, years ago, who had their own Quakeworld server that members could connect to. It was pretty awesome, except that it was a very small local ISP, so most of the time it was me wandering around an empty deathmatch map by myself.
I guess I can understand. I've paid high sums on ebay for rare games before (not $127 mind you). Since Nippon Ichi games seem to be so prized, I hope Disgaea and La Pucelle are worth something someday:)
Of course I'd be willing to pay just about anything for the PS version of Umihara Kawase Shun.
Ragnarok Online is Korean (the graph says it's Japanese, but it isn't). The graph also says it has 300,000 members, which is no small number (though pales in comparison to Lineage).
Which is why you can use any number of other softwares to manage it.
You can, but they are unsupported hacks mostly. I think what he means is a player where you can just mount the filesystem and copy the files onto the unit.
Are you being forced to use the music store? Last I checked i wasn't.
You're not forced, but iTMS is about the only place online where you can buy music compatable with their player. Almost everyone else sells WMAs which Apple wont support (not that they can't. They wont). The only music service I know of that sells mp3s is eMusic, and their selection is limited.
How is it bloated?
I dunno. Let's see.
Memory usage: foobar 6232 KB vs. iTunes 38756 KB + 3844 for iTunesHelper.
Download: foobar 1.26 MB vs. iTunes 20.7 MB
Speed: foobar - fast vs. iTunes - slow
Perhaps. But at least when you go to a store and buy a CD you get:
Something physical. You get a disc with the data on it, a case to keep it in, and liner notes which often include pictures and lyrics. With iTunes all you get is 1s and 0s.
Higher quality audio. Lossy compression maybe almost as good, but it still isn't "as good".
Open format (most of the time). Regular audio CDs let you do what you will with them. You can record them to a tape, you can rip them to your computer in any format you like, you can play it in just about anything, you can copy it as many times as you need. With iTMS you can play your purchased music two ways: iTunes, and iPod. Quite limiting. Sure you can burn iTMS purchased music onto CDs, but then it's back to issue number 2.
Not that I purchase CDs still. I'm a vinyl fan myself:p I'm just saying you pay less because you get less.
FYI, the Winamp "Minibrowser" basically just used IE to display web pages in a Winamp window. It's not like they coded a whole browser from scratch. Lots of software piggybacks on IE like this. Also, Winamp 5 does not include the minibrowser, because you're right, it was a stupid idea.
There are plenty of reasons to still use Winamp which have already been mentioned in other posts, but one of the main reasons I still use Winamp: Scroll Wheel Support. I can adjust the volume and fast forward/rewind using the scroll wheel on my mouse. It may not sound like such a big deal, but once you use it, it's hard to go without.
Why hasn't anyone else implemented this feature? As far as I know Winamp is the only one.
I dunno. Many newer car mp3/cd players support WMA. I'm not sure if that includes DRMed WMA files from online music stores. My first generation Pioneer MP3/CD player (7400) doesn't support them, so I've never tried.
But also, Alpine makes an iPod adapter for their decks that let you control the iPod using the deck controls and stash the iPod in the glovebox, similar to the system BMW has be touting. Most newer Alpine decks support mp3 cds too, so you get the best of both worlds.
It's unfortunate that there is going to be no further development of my favorite software product, but my real concern is what's going to happen to the Shoutcast website. The website is little more than a tracker for Shoutcast audio streams, but it's a very nice resource and I have found plenty of wonderful webcasts using it. The consolidation of hundreds of streams onto one site, plus searching features, made it invaluable. Without the site, finding a stream is going to be very difficult unless you know exactly what you are looking for.
Has there been any word on this, or are we just going to have to hope for someone else to take over stream tracking?
I've always just used my filesystem to organize my MP3s. It creates a nice hiearchy structure the way I wanted: Genre->Artist->Album. So Winamp's lack of media library support never bothered me. Even when they added it I never used it.
I somehow doubt it. I'll keep buying books, even if I can get a PDF for free. A book is one of those things where the cost seems justified, if for nothing but the convienence factor. I'm more than happy to pay $10 for a bound paperback than:
a) Reading a 200+ page PDF on an eye burning, radiation emmiting CRT
or
b) Priting out said 200+ page PDF and reading it on 200+ sheets of letter paper
Slashdot Mirror
Seems to me he lifted it straight out of GTA:SA. See this screenshot. Notice the chicken being choked?
- The file system browser only shows the first 11 characters of the filename. To be able to accuately differentiate one file from another in the browser, you need to abbreviate the file names when you burn them to a disc. Even worse when playing MP3s which usually have long filenames.
- When viewing Divx files, it streches the picture outside of the frame of the TV on all four sides, with no way to adjust this. For me this is a major problem because I watch a lot of fansubbed anime, and the result is that the subtitles are outside of the screen, thus making the player useless for watching fansubs (unless the show is widescreen).
- It crashes sometimes. I've never had a DVD player crash on me before.
- It doesn't show the title number or chapter number when you skip to the next, nor does it show the title or chapter on the player's display. You have to press the Display button on the remote to see where you are.
- When changing titles, it switches the language setting back to the disc default. Again, annoying for us anime fans.
All and all, I haven't been very happy with this player, compared to my old, old, incredibly old school Toshiba player. The Divx playback feature is nice, but needs some of the kinks worked out. Maybe the next generation will be better.Pay for long distance service? I have SBC as my long distance provider and before them AT&T. With both companies, I didn't have to pay a monthly fee to have long distance. I only was billed when I actually made a long distance call. I thought that you only paid a monthly fee if you were on a calling plan, and even then it was nominal.
I can't believe that never got mentioned on Slashdot, but some graffiti did.
Plus now you can play over the internet! Check out zbattle.
I'm pretty sure ALL cable is exempt from FCC censorship rules, since all cable channels are subscription, and are transmitted over private infrastructure. Case in point being uncensored movies they show on Comedy Central late at night. Most of the networks just censor themselves instead, for fear of scaring off advertisers. Since HBO doesn't have any advertisers to appease, they can say whatever the fuck they want, goddammit.
What makes you think they're going to charge for it? Microsoft has taken a hit on OS utilities before. They spent millions developing IE, which they then gave away. IIS is included with Windows for free. Tools like SFU can be downloaded for free. They included a disk defragmenter in W2K and newer. My guess is they'll include it in the next release of the OS, or maybe next XP service pack.
Some games work near perfect. Some games don't work worth a crap. Check out the ePSXe Compatibility List. Bear in mind that you may have to tweak plugin settings to get various games to run right. But there's lots of help available on their message boards.
I disagree. Emulators are often better than the real thing. Most emulators offer features like screen snaps, sound capture, save states, importing other peoples save ram, higher fidelity audio, higher resolution video, speed up/slow down functions, movie recoding, and a slew of other things that the original console did not have. It's true that ePSXe is rather hit or miss, and requires a lot of tweaking. Many games work great, a few work like crap. FFVII happens to be one that works like crap. Rememberer PSX is a lot more sophisticated than something like the NES :) The fact that it's 8 years old is irrelevant. As for the controller problem, I just bought me one of those PSX controller to USB adapters. Works perfectly.
Not that I agree with that, as CA service packs fix a lot of problems, but I think their mentality is that CA is little more than an overglorified Telnet program, and as long as you can get a green screen there is no need to upgrade. We still have machines using CA V3R4! My machine has V5R1, which is still 2 releases out of date.
Or Tony Hawk Pro Skater for that matter :)
I had a dialup ISP, years ago, who had their own Quakeworld server that members could connect to. It was pretty awesome, except that it was a very small local ISP, so most of the time it was me wandering around an empty deathmatch map by myself.
Wasn't that the "Quad damage" cheat? i.e. four more years
Of course I'd be willing to pay just about anything for the PS version of Umihara Kawase Shun.
People would actually pay $90 for Rhapsody? Mind-boggling.
Ragnarok Online is Korean (the graph says it's Japanese, but it isn't). The graph also says it has 300,000 members, which is no small number (though pales in comparison to Lineage).
You can, but they are unsupported hacks mostly. I think what he means is a player where you can just mount the filesystem and copy the files onto the unit.
Are you being forced to use the music store? Last I checked i wasn't.
You're not forced, but iTMS is about the only place online where you can buy music compatable with their player. Almost everyone else sells WMAs which Apple wont support (not that they can't. They wont). The only music service I know of that sells mp3s is eMusic, and their selection is limited.
How is it bloated?
I dunno. Let's see.
Memory usage: foobar 6232 KB vs. iTunes 38756 KB + 3844 for iTunesHelper.
Download: foobar 1.26 MB vs. iTunes 20.7 MB
Speed: foobar - fast vs. iTunes - slow
Not that I purchase CDs still. I'm a vinyl fan myself :p I'm just saying you pay less because you get less.
FYI, the Winamp "Minibrowser" basically just used IE to display web pages in a Winamp window. It's not like they coded a whole browser from scratch. Lots of software piggybacks on IE like this. Also, Winamp 5 does not include the minibrowser, because you're right, it was a stupid idea.
Why hasn't anyone else implemented this feature? As far as I know Winamp is the only one.
But also, Alpine makes an iPod adapter for their decks that let you control the iPod using the deck controls and stash the iPod in the glovebox, similar to the system BMW has be touting. Most newer Alpine decks support mp3 cds too, so you get the best of both worlds.
It's unfortunate that there is going to be no further development of my favorite software product, but my real concern is what's going to happen to the Shoutcast website. The website is little more than a tracker for Shoutcast audio streams, but it's a very nice resource and I have found plenty of wonderful webcasts using it. The consolidation of hundreds of streams onto one site, plus searching features, made it invaluable. Without the site, finding a stream is going to be very difficult unless you know exactly what you are looking for. Has there been any word on this, or are we just going to have to hope for someone else to take over stream tracking?
I've always just used my filesystem to organize my MP3s. It creates a nice hiearchy structure the way I wanted: Genre->Artist->Album. So Winamp's lack of media library support never bothered me. Even when they added it I never used it.
Check out GreenCine. $19.99 a month, and they carry mainstream, indie, anime, and porn! Everything you need, nothing you don't.
I somehow doubt it. I'll keep buying books, even if I can get a PDF for free. A book is one of those things where the cost seems justified, if for nothing but the convienence factor. I'm more than happy to pay $10 for a bound paperback than:
a) Reading a 200+ page PDF on an eye burning, radiation emmiting CRT
or
b) Priting out said 200+ page PDF and reading it on 200+ sheets of letter paper