I HAVE read the README. Nothing in there. Nor is there anything in the EULA. Next time know what you're talking about before you go jumping down their throat.....
Personally, I don't have a problem with giving up something as inconsequential as my renderer info. Most of your users with enough neurons to form a synapse wouldn't. I can even understand the need and desire to collect it (especially in demo software).
HOWEVER
What I, and others are irate about is that we were not informed of this. Even if it had been one little line in the readme or the EULA. "To facilitate continuing support for this software, we collect certain, minimal data to track problems at a macroscopic level. The data we collect is:
Video Card Type (and accompanying redering engine)
Operating System and Version (where applicable).
Game Version
If you also want to include a method to opt-out of this, it'd be cool, but not necessary.
Being forthright with the user community is always the way to go. Because if something marginal like this comes to light later on, it's ALWAYS blown out of proportion.
Now, even knowing how "horrible and evil" Q3 is because of this, I still plan on buying it when it hits shelves (HURRY UP JOHN!). I have been, albeit through roundabout means, informed that this information is collected. I have no problems with giving it up. So I have no problems buying and supporting the game.
I also figure that the negative publicity (there's no such thing as BAD publicity) will net you enough grief as is, so I won't add any more.
Thanks for taking the time to respond to this issue.
Look at the "3dfx opens up Glide" article again. They opened up a very small portion of the Glide API. Not enough for people to do more than write an interface for Glide. I'd rather take a fully closed source setup to start with and have it opened later than these viral partial disclosures that 3dfx does. What 3dfx does gives them little to no incentive to open up their entire API.
Additionally, 3dfx's most recent products have been, how shall we say.....LACKLUSTER, compared to just about every other product on the market. Even their VSA-100 is "more of same". And I'm bitterly disappointed in them for it.
Even simple 32-bit color. They're going to be adding support for it, finally, over TWO YEARS after everyone else.
The only REAL choices you have is which performance-sapping features you want to use. T-Buffer for motion blur, or FSAA. Using them both on any card, save the $600+ V5-6000, and your're going to get a slide-show.
Thanks for your response. "I" think you happen to be wrong though.
Yeah. E-Commerce is really nice. It could, potentially, take away from meatspace businesses. But why are America's malls STILL burgeoning with people around the holiday season?
In it's simplest form, humans are tactile creatures.
Sure it's nice to be able to plop your butt down and look through pictures of thousands of items. But the impact of it on the buyer isn't the same as being able to pick up, play with, or otherwise handle an item.
E-Commerce is going to, understandably, cannibalize a small portion of meatspace business. New market utilization often does.
Did the old mom'n'pop stores die when mail order came about? Nope.
Did the big stores like Macy's kill mail order? Nope.
Have malls killed big single-building stores like Macy's? Nope.
Will meatspace businesses like malls die out because of e-commerce? HELL NO.
Malls are ingrained into the US culture. More are going up every year.
The policy being adopted by this mall could be viewed as a violation of the lease agreements with it's clients. If so, they're going to be looking at one of two things:
Lawsuits by the client stores.
Loss of lease renewals.
BOTH of which will hit the owners where they live. In the pocket-book.
Contrary to my previous, humorous post, I store my passwords in a plain text file, zipped with a password on the zipfile, then PGP-encrypted and stored on a CD.
The passphrase is something I'm almost unlikely to forget. But just in case, I keep a copy of the passphrase and the zip password in a locked strongbox in my room.
For additional physical security, I also own a set of swords.....
As an Eagle Scout (Class of 1988) I find your narrow view on the situation disheartening. I also find your posting as an AC cowardly. At least post under your own alias.
The Scouts are a private organization. They are also an organization with a clear tie to their religion. These should have given a person the clue. Nobody is forcing anyone to join Scouting. Nor are they excluding anyone from Scouting. But if you do join, you're more or less consenting to live within the structured environment provided by Scouting. To join Scouting, then go "But I don't want to do this, or this, or this, or that." There are other passtimes that are far more worthwhile than trying to make yourself "more equal" than your peers. The Scout Oath: On my honor, I will do my best, To do my duty, To God and my Country To Obey the Scout Law To Help other people at all times To keep myself physically fit, Mentally wake And morally straight.
Since the.vob files are ALREADY compressed, archiving them with something like WinZip or WinRAR wouldn't really condense them any more.
I mean who the (H-E-Double Hockey Sticks) is going to download 550 or so 15MB files to get a single movie?
At the normal rate of transfer on my cablemodem (480 kilobits a second from Xoom is about the best I've ever gotten) I could pull about 20.6MB an hour (about 1-1/3 15MB RAR files). At that rate it would take me over 3 SOLID DAYS to pull down 8GB. Even at MAXIMUM transfer rate of a T1 (1.5Mbps), it'd still take over 12 hours just to pull down this file. How many people have access to their own clear channel T1? Maybe a couple hundred people. How many people have access to their clear channel T3? Maybe Bill Gates. But most likely nobody else.
Not to mention that while storage medium is cheaper than ever, it is NOT THAT cheap!
In addition, I know of NO web hosts that are going to let you get away with 8GB of storage and God-knows-how-many gigs of transfer! Heck, a 50MB file of a game demo on an old server of mine brought sucked down the entire bandwidth on a T1 for 36 hours straight, and through three network reinitializations!
Besides, if I want to copy a DVD, I'll hook it into my SVHS recorder and snag it. Simple as that. Loss of quality? Negligible. Tapes are like $8 for a 3 pack of the high-quality ones. $8 for a 6 pack of the cruddy ones.
The thing is, if I want a DVD quality movie, I'm going to go buy a DVD! PERIOD. I'm not going to go out and spend $100 on a new 8GB HD and rape Blockbuster Video every time I want a new movie.
Let's do the math here:
$25 for a new DVD movie. $50 for a 2 disk boxed set (some of my anime, like Lodoss War, comes this way).
$100 for an 8.4GB WDC Caviar HD. $180 for a 20.4GB IBM HD.
$4000 for a Professional DVD burner and $10-$20 per disk.
Additionally: $300+ a month for a 100Mbps ethernet colocation and a per-meg penalty for everything past 5-10GB a month?
Copying the DVD via the output to TV/SVHS method described above?
What makes the best economic sense here? Only the last is viable. It's also completely irrelevant to reverse engineering of the CSS algorithm. DeCSS and LiViD would only be a threat to the DVD consortium if there was hardware, in common use, able to deal with the sheer quantity of data.
Neither of these discoveries is going to take a SINGLE SOLITARY RED CENT out of the DVD consortium's pockets! Pirates already have cheaper and better means to copy DVD. And let's face it, the majority of us aren't hardened criminals who are going to go out and rape video rental places at the first opportunity.
The sheer quantity of data on a DVD is it's best protection. It's not like Xoom or Geocities is going to let you drop 8 GIGABYTES of file onto their site.
Chas - The one, the only. THANK GOD!!!
Bringin' back memories (Or WHOA! Nostalgia trip!)
on
5 Novels
·
· Score: 1
I came across Mr. Pinkwater in grade-school. I was exposed to his "Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death" and "Lizard Music". What grabbed me was the sheer depth of his descriptions in his books. His style is completely immersive and subtly seductive.
Things that stick out in my mind:
Rat's 50 gigadecibel Hi-Fi Mono (Stereo Sucks!) sound system in an acoustically sealed room.
The park and the oratory wall.
The coffee shop.
As for Lizard Music, I remember the book more for the way it sucked me in, rather than the story itself (IOW the details have dimmed in my mind over the last 15 years simply due to the sheer volume of literature I've absorbed, though ask me about David Eddings, and I can probably rattle it off to you).
I've been waiting for this book for so long now (anything longer than having it in my hand 3 minutes before I actually first desire something is long, so the year or so since I first head rumors about a book have been AGONY)!
Now I can carry my UF fix with me wherever I go. And I no longer need a computer to be able to suffer from UFPV!
Scuse me while I go lock myself in a closet now. MUAHAHAHA!
You're "sure" it'll be supported immediately? When it's taking HOW long for decent V3 drivers to hit? Voodoo Banshee? When the company assembles a dozen or so V2 cards, hacks out some beta drivers and goes, "This is what our next-gen product is going to be like. Only better!" then fails to deliver on time. NOWHERE has there been ANY talk about any GPU in V4. Just massive fill rate and T-buffer, which are conditionally exclusive.
You can supposedly get great image quality, but it sucks down all of the fill rate.
You can play at umpty-bazillion fps. But the image quality is that of the current V2/V3 cards. EWWW.
I prefer the T&L on the GeForce because it's giving you both performance AND a boost in image quality. Not going "If you take the red pill.....If you take the blue pill...."
And for you business users out there. The Quadro card looks like it's going to be the $#!+ on workstations!
My mom still uses WP5.1 for DOS (albeit on a P2 333 that I built her) for medical transcription for just this reason. She has literally hundreds of terminology fragments and common usages (she works for one ultra-workaholic neurosurgeon and has been doing this for nigh on 10 years for him now). She initially started on WP4.2 and when I bought 5.1 she upgraded and took a class to learn it. She absoloutely REFUSES to go Windows-based word processors, even WP for Windows. She claims, rightfully, that she's more productive in DOS than she ever could be mouse-clicking like a nut in Windows. I actually type faster than she does, but she knocks documents out faster than me for two reasons:
I do my formatting AFTER I finish typing up the document (and in Windows, that formatting is a bit slower than 3 keystrokes.
Again, her vast library of macros. She actually had to cut back because she'd overloaded her macro directory (of course she WAS storing entire DOCUMENT SHELLS as macros).
Up until June of this year (she'd been banging away on an old 486/33 with 20MB RAM (16 of which I'd put in) and a 230MB HD. The only reason she upgraded was that I dismantled her machine one day while she was at work and put the new machine in there. Then told her that the old one had fried it's HD (but I'd "luckily" had the new machine laying around (sorta like my uncle just had a 10MB IBM HD "laying around" when I built my first 8088 system) and that the old system wouldn't like the 3GB drive it had in it).
While I rejoice at this ruling as much as anyone else, we still have a ways to go. By itself, this ruling is essentially meaningless. Once we start seeing all the other charges answered, and all the penalties assigned, THEN we can start going ape-shite and comparing it to David and Goliath's big brother Chip. Hell. I'll even buy a round for anyone showing up on my doorstep when it happens!
Well. Surprise surprise! The government actually got something RIGHT for once. Amazink!
Well now, I think Microsoft just hyper-competed themselves into a thick brick wall.....
Now, didn't I read a Linux-centric "history of the future" a year or two back where, the next step after the government finding MS a monopoly, Bill Gates commits suicide and leaves a note to the effect "I only wanted to help..."?
Now can anyone get the government to successfully dismantle their broken, kept alive by life-support, braindead patent oriface? (One miracle at a time Chas! Patience!)
Slashdot Mirror
That's a return of like 9 to 1? GAH!!!!!!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Two options.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Sure. But that cartridge would double or triple the price of the media.
Here's hoping that their at least as resistant as standard CD's.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Of course the artists would play their fingers down to little nubs and scream themselves hoarse trying to fill up these disks.
I did a little math. In MP3 format, it'd contain over 98 DAYS worth of music. In straight CD-Audio format, it'd be about 9-10 days of music.
Imagine only needing 4 disks to get you through a year of solid music! {SHUDDER}
(NOTE: This is using the HD companies' 1000= formula)
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I HAVE read the README. Nothing in there. Nor is there anything in the EULA. Next time know what you're talking about before you go jumping down their throat.....
HAND
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Personally, I don't have a problem with giving up something as inconsequential as my renderer info. Most of your users with enough neurons to form a synapse wouldn't. I can even understand the need and desire to collect it (especially in demo software).
HOWEVER
What I, and others are irate about is that we were not informed of this. Even if it had been one little line in the readme or the EULA.
"To facilitate continuing support for this software, we collect certain, minimal data to track problems at a macroscopic level. The data we collect is:
If you also want to include a method to opt-out of this, it'd be cool, but not necessary.
Being forthright with the user community is always the way to go. Because if something marginal like this comes to light later on, it's ALWAYS blown out of proportion.
Now, even knowing how "horrible and evil" Q3 is because of this, I still plan on buying it when it hits shelves (HURRY UP JOHN!). I have been, albeit through roundabout means, informed that this information is collected. I have no problems with giving it up. So I have no problems buying and supporting the game.
I also figure that the negative publicity (there's no such thing as BAD publicity) will net you enough grief as is, so I won't add any more.
Thanks for taking the time to respond to this issue.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Look at the "3dfx opens up Glide" article again. They opened up a very small portion of the Glide API. Not enough for people to do more than write an interface for Glide. I'd rather take a fully closed source setup to start with and have it opened later than these viral partial disclosures that 3dfx does. What 3dfx does gives them little to no incentive to open up their entire API.
Additionally, 3dfx's most recent products have been, how shall we say.....LACKLUSTER, compared to just about every other product on the market. Even their VSA-100 is "more of same". And I'm bitterly disappointed in them for it.
Even simple 32-bit color. They're going to be adding support for it, finally, over TWO YEARS after everyone else.
The only REAL choices you have is which performance-sapping features you want to use. T-Buffer for motion blur, or FSAA. Using them both on any card, save the $600+ V5-6000, and your're going to get a slide-show.
Thanks for your response. "I" think you happen to be wrong though.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
and provide assorted marketing information...
Sorry, but if I am NOT going to volunteer to violate my own privacy and allow targetted SPAM into my mailbox.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Yeah. E-Commerce is really nice. It could, potentially, take away from meatspace businesses. But why are America's malls STILL burgeoning with people around the holiday season?
In it's simplest form, humans are tactile creatures.
Sure it's nice to be able to plop your butt down and look through pictures of thousands of items. But the impact of it on the buyer isn't the same as being able to pick up, play with, or otherwise handle an item.
E-Commerce is going to, understandably, cannibalize a small portion of meatspace business. New market utilization often does.
Did the old mom'n'pop stores die when mail order came about? Nope.
Did the big stores like Macy's kill mail order? Nope.
Have malls killed big single-building stores like Macy's? Nope.
Will meatspace businesses like malls die out because of e-commerce? HELL NO.
Malls are ingrained into the US culture. More are going up every year.
The policy being adopted by this mall could be viewed as a violation of the lease agreements with it's clients. If so, they're going to be looking at one of two things:
BOTH of which will hit the owners where they live. In the pocket-book.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
nVidia's starting to really deliver for the gamers and the Linux community. Hope they keep it up and don't become another 3dfx.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Man. That sucks!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
No. EvilNET started out as a joke between me and a buddy of mine. Unlike Evilnet.com, I'm not about real evil or whatever they are supposed to be.
When it came time for my friend and I to register a domain name for our server, we took the joke an extra step and wound up with evilnet.net.
We're basically a small IRC and web-hosting server. Nothing more.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Contrary to my previous, humorous post, I store my passwords in a plain text file, zipped with a password on the zipfile, then PGP-encrypted and stored on a CD.
The passphrase is something I'm almost unlikely to forget. But just in case, I keep a copy of the passphrase and the zip password in a locked strongbox in my room.
For additional physical security, I also own a set of swords.....
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Why would I do that? My password is completely secure! I even use it on my luggage!
123456
Whoa! How did that slide in there!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
As an Eagle Scout (Class of 1988) I find your narrow view on the situation disheartening. I also find your posting as an AC cowardly. At least post under your own alias.
The Scouts are a private organization. They are also an organization with a clear tie to their religion. These should have given a person the clue. Nobody is forcing anyone to join Scouting. Nor are they excluding anyone from Scouting. But if you do join, you're more or less consenting to live within the structured environment provided by Scouting. To join Scouting, then go "But I don't want to do this, or this, or this, or that." There are other passtimes that are far more worthwhile than trying to make yourself "more equal" than your peers.
The Scout Oath:
On my honor,
I will do my best,
To do my duty,
To God and my Country
To Obey the Scout Law
To Help other people at all times
To keep myself physically fit,
Mentally wake
And morally straight.
The Scout Law:
A Scout is:
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Whatever is needed to run an addictive console game.
Under Windows, you need DOS+Windows+Solitaire.
Under Linux, you need Linux+X+Same.
=)
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Correction to the above post.
That should be a Day and a half at 480kbps. Not three days.
2+2=22? DUUUUH!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Since the .vob files are ALREADY compressed, archiving them with something like WinZip or WinRAR wouldn't really condense them any more.
I mean who the (H-E-Double Hockey Sticks) is going to download 550 or so 15MB files to get a single movie?
At the normal rate of transfer on my cablemodem (480 kilobits a second from Xoom is about the best I've ever gotten) I could pull about 20.6MB an hour (about 1-1/3 15MB RAR files). At that rate it would take me over 3 SOLID DAYS to pull down 8GB. Even at MAXIMUM transfer rate of a T1 (1.5Mbps), it'd still take over 12 hours just to pull down this file. How many people have access to their own clear channel T1? Maybe a couple hundred people. How many people have access to their clear channel T3? Maybe Bill Gates. But most likely nobody else.
Not to mention that while storage medium is cheaper than ever, it is NOT THAT cheap!
In addition, I know of NO web hosts that are going to let you get away with 8GB of storage and God-knows-how-many gigs of transfer! Heck, a 50MB file of a game demo on an old server of mine brought sucked down the entire bandwidth on a T1 for 36 hours straight, and through three network reinitializations!
Besides, if I want to copy a DVD, I'll hook it into my SVHS recorder and snag it. Simple as that. Loss of quality? Negligible. Tapes are like $8 for a 3 pack of the high-quality ones. $8 for a 6 pack of the cruddy ones.
The thing is, if I want a DVD quality movie, I'm going to go buy a DVD! PERIOD. I'm not going to go out and spend $100 on a new 8GB HD and rape Blockbuster Video every time I want a new movie.
Let's do the math here:
What makes the best economic sense here? Only the last is viable. It's also completely irrelevant to reverse engineering of the CSS algorithm. DeCSS and LiViD would only be a threat to the DVD consortium if there was hardware, in common use, able to deal with the sheer quantity of data.
Neither of these discoveries is going to take a SINGLE SOLITARY RED CENT out of the DVD consortium's pockets! Pirates already have cheaper and better means to copy DVD. And let's face it, the majority of us aren't hardened criminals who are going to go out and rape video rental places at the first opportunity.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The sheer quantity of data on a DVD is it's best protection. It's not like Xoom or Geocities is going to let you drop 8 GIGABYTES of file onto their site.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I came across Mr. Pinkwater in grade-school. I was exposed to his "Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death" and "Lizard Music". What grabbed me was the sheer depth of his descriptions in his books. His style is completely immersive and subtly seductive.
Things that stick out in my mind:
Rat's 50 gigadecibel Hi-Fi Mono (Stereo Sucks!) sound system in an acoustically sealed room.
The park and the oratory wall.
The coffee shop.
As for Lizard Music, I remember the book more for the way it sucked me in, rather than the story itself (IOW the details have dimmed in my mind over the last 15 years simply due to the sheer volume of literature I've absorbed, though ask me about David Eddings, and I can probably rattle it off to you).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I've been waiting for this book for so long now (anything longer than having it in my hand 3 minutes before I actually first desire something is long, so the year or so since I first head rumors about a book have been AGONY)!
Now I can carry my UF fix with me wherever I go. And I no longer need a computer to be able to suffer from UFPV!
Scuse me while I go lock myself in a closet now. MUAHAHAHA!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I prefer the T&L on the GeForce because it's giving you both performance AND a boost in image quality. Not going "If you take the red pill.....If you take the blue pill...."
And for you business users out there. The Quadro card looks like it's going to be the $#!+ on workstations!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Up until June of this year (she'd been banging away on an old 486/33 with 20MB RAM (16 of which I'd put in) and a 230MB HD. The only reason she upgraded was that I dismantled her machine one day while she was at work and put the new machine in there. Then told her that the old one had fried it's HD (but I'd "luckily" had the new machine laying around (sorta like my uncle just had a 10MB IBM HD "laying around" when I built my first 8088 system) and that the old system wouldn't like the 3GB drive it had in it).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
While I rejoice at this ruling as much as anyone else, we still have a ways to go. By itself, this ruling is essentially meaningless. Once we start seeing all the other charges answered, and all the penalties assigned, THEN we can start going ape-shite and comparing it to David and Goliath's big brother Chip. Hell. I'll even buy a round for anyone showing up on my doorstep when it happens!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Well. Surprise surprise! The government actually got something RIGHT for once. Amazink!
Well now, I think Microsoft just hyper-competed themselves into a thick brick wall.....
Now, didn't I read a Linux-centric "history of the future" a year or two back where, the next step after the government finding MS a monopoly, Bill Gates commits suicide and leaves a note to the effect "I only wanted to help..."?
Now can anyone get the government to successfully dismantle their broken, kept alive by life-support, braindead patent oriface? (One miracle at a time Chas! Patience!)
Hmm. A world without a Microsoftopoly.......
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!