Usually when I run into problems playing DivX files, it's because I'm playing back a 5.11 file when I have 5.05 installed. It tries real hard to play it, so what I get is blocky/all-green gabage. It doesn't give me a "You have the wrong codec" message. Other than that, I can't say I've had problems with playing back various media files, and I download porn like mad.
"But there in lies the problem with subscription services, you don't own this music, you loose the music when you are away from the internet, you can't download it to a player."
Yes, I mentioned that as a con. The price is low enough I'm not worried about it ATM.
"Futhermore, ff you don't have broadband it must take a long time to get that 1 gig cache, which means you spend a significant amount of time twiddling your thumbs waiting for your music to begin playing."
That problem doesn't go away with any other service. You really need broadband if you're interested in that.
"Plus, if Rhapsody fails you're doomed. Basically, this is a renters solution."
Doomed? No. There are other services out there. I doubt this type of service will suddenly disappear. As for the renter's solution, yeah I agree with that. It's not perfect, but it really isn't bad either. I remember being miffed about the cons until I used it for the free week. Now it's part of my daily routine.
"Smart guys. If you can play it, you can copy it. Either someone breaks the copy protection (Jon J) or you plug a digital out into a digital in."
Even if the copy protection were perfect, there's nothing stopping a home-brew garage band from re-playing the song sans copy restriction. True, it'd be a different flavor of the song, but we've all heard good remixes before. Not sure how likely that is to happen, but it would be an interesting turn of events.
" Why not offer something for $20/month that lets you download all the music you want"
I'm doing that more or less right now. It's called Rhapsody. I'm paying $10 a month and I can play any of their 300,000 songs whenever I want. For $1, I can burn a song to disc.
There are a few cons to it, though: - I can't keep the music I download. If I unsubscribe, I cannot play the music anymore.
- It uses a custom client. Linux users need not apply.
- Not every song is available for purchase, but on the plus side at least I can listen to it.
- I *must* be on-line to listen to the music.
- No uploading to your music player, unless ya burn the CD and re-encode it. Ouch.
Those negatives sound bad, right? So why do I do it?
- $10 a month is less than one-album a month. No more CD purchases for me.
- The search engine's great. I'm able to find just about any song that intrigues me, and have it playing within moments. It's pretty good at helping me find other music I might like as well. It has everything neatly cross-referenced. "If you like Prodigy, you might like Chemical Brothers", etc.
- The internet thing kind of sucks (no taking my music on the road), but most of my 16 waking hours are nearby a net connection. I have wireless set up at home so it is not often that I find myself unable to listen to the music.
- Fast fast fast. It's not streaming in the RealPlayer sense. It starts downloading into a cache, and once a few blocks are down it starts playing. Rhapsody, by default, sets up a 1 gig cache to store the music in. So unless you have a LOT of songs on your playlist, they don't disappear. So it's not like you have to have broadband to listen to the music. (Though it helps for the initial download.)
It sounds like this might be the service you're looking for. I can tell you I'm happy with it. If I unsubscribe, I'm really going to miss it. You may find yourself in the same situation. If you go to www.listen.com you can try it free for a week.
Not really on topic, but... On a local radio station here in Portland, Oregon, the DJ's discovered that the president cannot be censored on the radio. If Bush were to say 'fuck', they can't bleep it out. He has immunity. So they played back a recording of a former president (whose name escapes me) having a conversation with his tailor. He wanted extra room in the crotch because he didn't want to get his 'nuts' bunched up. No s or f words there, but it was funny listening to this guy talk like just about anybody else. Guess they only use polite language during press coferences and speeches.
"quick, tell me why my launch PS2 runs perfectly fine, even though i've spent countless thousands of gaming hours on it, and i've never sent it back to sony for anything. not to mention the fact that none of my Friends have had any problems with any of their PS2s. the Problem really isn't as big as the media likes to hype it up to be"
You got lucky. If your machine broke down, Sony'd find a way to tell you it was your fault, and charge you for them to fix it.
Piece of advice: When people start saying a machine is commonly defective, the lamest thing to do would be to go defending them. People don't just get up and say "I hate Sony!" and then start spreading stories that their machine broke down. If the machines are breaking down, then you should be paying very careful attention. Why? Because you need to think about what could happen when you buy your next system from them. I can't speak for the PS2, but the original PS1s were crummy pieces of garbage, and Sony treated their customers like shit over it. They just refused to admit they built faulty machines. Do you really want to gamble $300 of your hard earned money with a company that behaves like that? I won't, and I didn't. I'm personaly boycotting Sony over it. I'm not telling you to go do the same. Far from it. What I am telling you, though, is to not ignore people's complaints. Caveat emptor.
"f Sony wants this thing to be a big success they should put all their focus on making it developer-friendly. The easier it is to develop for = more games = more sales = more money... "
The cost of the system is more important. If the system retails for $300'ish, then game developers are going to have a 'wait and see' approach. The rules of making a portable system are quite specific. It doesn't help that Nintendo has a de-facto monopoly in this area. However, if Sony gets the machine down to $150, then yes I agree, the developer support would be a big win.
"Show me a new pc for 170.00, that can run games as high end as my ps2 "
Apples to oranges. A PC needs components your PS2 doesn't. Moving a little closer towards equality, there are plenty of video cards well under that price that would blow the doors off the PS2. It ain't all that powerful. It doesn't help that Sony arrogantly installed bottlenecks in the system that keep the graphics nice and blurry.
"Do we want to know how they made it, or if it's running linux?"
Yeah, Linux would make this article soOOoo much more interesting.
Re:I DON'T CARE -- I BUY MUSIC LATELY
on
Kazaa-lite Shut Down
·
· Score: 3, Funny
"I've found that the time it takes to get good (192kbps+) versions of songs off of a complete album is much longer and expensive than simply shelling out 10 bucks for the CD at a music store."
So you spent $15 for 2 good songs and supported an organization who'll claim you are a thief when you rip that CD to your iPod. Yeah you found a brilliant solution there.
"Yes, but that's Nintendo's *only* source of income. Unless they have a Plan B somewhere in headquarters, they are hanging by a thread."
When did this myth that Nintendo is dying start to proliferate out there? Is it because Nintendo's not in the lead anymore? If so, why's it so difficult to believe that you can be quite successful even though you don't have your game machine in every household?
Nintendo is making money hand over fist. They're surviving quite nicely. Are they vulnerable? Sure. If thye fail to keep innovating, they'll be forgotten. I've got news for you, though: Sony and Microsoft are in the same boat. They're completely vulnerable to anybody who comes along with whizzbang hardware. Niether company makes their own games, and has NOTHING to maintain brand loyalty. The closest thing they have is the backwards compatbiliity.
In what sense is this off-topic? I could see it being redudant, although I personally found this humorous. Though I'm not sure this story qualifies, every time there's a minor update to Mozilla, it's front page news. 'Momentous'. Heh.
I had a science test once that asked what a wetting agent was. I had this image in my mind of the car salesman from True Lies. So I wrote down "incompetant". I thought the teacher'd enjoy a little humor. Didn't pass the test, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Usually when I run into problems playing DivX files, it's because I'm playing back a 5.11 file when I have 5.05 installed. It tries real hard to play it, so what I get is blocky/all-green gabage. It doesn't give me a "You have the wrong codec" message. Other than that, I can't say I've had problems with playing back various media files, and I download porn like mad.
So my comment not being funny is responsible for you responding to the wrong post? ooookay.
"Sounds great....do you work for the company?? Seems like it"
Ah yes, the rarely used "you like something, therefore you must work for that company" debate form.
Grow up.
"Continental and Missile, as in Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile . . . Why, what did you think they stood for?"
Pay attention to who you reply to.
"No, then they'd arrest you for building a weapon of math destruction."
We're such fun loving people. How come none of us have girlfriends?
"What do you think the C and M in ICBM stand for?"
I
Cant
Build a
Missile?
"But there in lies the problem with subscription services, you don't own this music, you loose the music when you are away from the internet, you can't download it to a player."
Yes, I mentioned that as a con. The price is low enough I'm not worried about it ATM.
"Futhermore, ff you don't have broadband it must take a long time to get that 1 gig cache, which means you spend a significant amount of time twiddling your thumbs waiting for your music to begin playing."
That problem doesn't go away with any other service. You really need broadband if you're interested in that.
"Plus, if Rhapsody fails you're doomed. Basically, this is a renters solution."
Doomed? No. There are other services out there. I doubt this type of service will suddenly disappear. As for the renter's solution, yeah I agree with that. It's not perfect, but it really isn't bad either. I remember being miffed about the cons until I used it for the free week. Now it's part of my daily routine.
Actually, I stopped using Kazaa when I got this service. Kazaa is so sluggish and hit-or-miss compared to this service.
"Smart guys. If you can play it, you can copy it. Either someone breaks the copy protection (Jon J) or you plug a digital out into a digital in."
Even if the copy protection were perfect, there's nothing stopping a home-brew garage band from re-playing the song sans copy restriction. True, it'd be a different flavor of the song, but we've all heard good remixes before. Not sure how likely that is to happen, but it would be an interesting turn of events.
" Why not offer something for $20/month that lets you download all the music you want"
I'm doing that more or less right now. It's called Rhapsody. I'm paying $10 a month and I can play any of their 300,000 songs whenever I want. For $1, I can burn a song to disc.
There are a few cons to it, though:
- I can't keep the music I download. If I unsubscribe, I cannot play the music anymore.
- It uses a custom client. Linux users need not apply.
- Not every song is available for purchase, but on the plus side at least I can listen to it.
- I *must* be on-line to listen to the music.
- No uploading to your music player, unless ya burn the CD and re-encode it. Ouch.
Those negatives sound bad, right? So why do I do it?
- $10 a month is less than one-album a month. No more CD purchases for me.
- The search engine's great. I'm able to find just about any song that intrigues me, and have it playing within moments. It's pretty good at helping me find other music I might like as well. It has everything neatly cross-referenced. "If you like Prodigy, you might like Chemical Brothers", etc.
- The internet thing kind of sucks (no taking my music on the road), but most of my 16 waking hours are nearby a net connection. I have wireless set up at home so it is not often that I find myself unable to listen to the music.
- Fast fast fast. It's not streaming in the RealPlayer sense. It starts downloading into a cache, and once a few blocks are down it starts playing. Rhapsody, by default, sets up a 1 gig cache to store the music in. So unless you have a LOT of songs on your playlist, they don't disappear. So it's not like you have to have broadband to listen to the music. (Though it helps for the initial download.)
It sounds like this might be the service you're looking for. I can tell you I'm happy with it. If I unsubscribe, I'm really going to miss it. You may find yourself in the same situation. If you go to www.listen.com you can try it free for a week.
Cheers
Hheeehe.
Not really on topic, but... On a local radio station here in Portland, Oregon, the DJ's discovered that the president cannot be censored on the radio. If Bush were to say 'fuck', they can't bleep it out. He has immunity. So they played back a recording of a former president (whose name escapes me) having a conversation with his tailor. He wanted extra room in the crotch because he didn't want to get his 'nuts' bunched up. No s or f words there, but it was funny listening to this guy talk like just about anybody else. Guess they only use polite language during press coferences and speeches.
"Get real. Violence leads to more violence, even if it starts with fantasy violence. "
How often do baseball players take a swing at people with their bat?
"quick, tell me why my launch PS2 runs perfectly fine, even though i've spent countless thousands of gaming hours on it, and i've never sent it back to sony for anything. not to mention the fact that none of my Friends have had any problems with any of their PS2s. the Problem really isn't as big as the media likes to hype it up to be"
You got lucky. If your machine broke down, Sony'd find a way to tell you it was your fault, and charge you for them to fix it.
Piece of advice: When people start saying a machine is commonly defective, the lamest thing to do would be to go defending them. People don't just get up and say "I hate Sony!" and then start spreading stories that their machine broke down. If the machines are breaking down, then you should be paying very careful attention. Why? Because you need to think about what could happen when you buy your next system from them. I can't speak for the PS2, but the original PS1s were crummy pieces of garbage, and Sony treated their customers like shit over it. They just refused to admit they built faulty machines. Do you really want to gamble $300 of your hard earned money with a company that behaves like that? I won't, and I didn't. I'm personaly boycotting Sony over it. I'm not telling you to go do the same. Far from it. What I am telling you, though, is to not ignore people's complaints. Caveat emptor.
"What I'm intrigued by is PSP's hardware based support for Nurbs."
Don't get too excited. This system doesn't push enough polys for NURBS to be interesting.
" (Hell - Mario Advance 1 and 4 are ports of 8-bit nes games!)"
:)
No, they were ports of 16-bit games. 1 and 4 were remade on the SNES using it's 16-bit capabilities , and the GBA version was a port of those.
Not that it defeats your point or anything, just felt the need to nitpick.
"f Sony wants this thing to be a big success they should put all their focus on making it developer-friendly. The easier it is to develop for = more games = more sales = more money... "
The cost of the system is more important. If the system retails for $300'ish, then game developers are going to have a 'wait and see' approach. The rules of making a portable system are quite specific. It doesn't help that Nintendo has a de-facto monopoly in this area. However, if Sony gets the machine down to $150, then yes I agree, the developer support would be a big win.
"Or did anyone else wonder why Sony was concerned about Program Segment Prefixes? "
Well I wasn't concerned until this was marked as funny. Thanks a lot! Now explain it.
"Show me a new pc for 170.00, that can run games as high end as my ps2 "
Apples to oranges. A PC needs components your PS2 doesn't. Moving a little closer towards equality, there are plenty of video cards well under that price that would blow the doors off the PS2. It ain't all that powerful. It doesn't help that Sony arrogantly installed bottlenecks in the system that keep the graphics nice and blurry.
"Do we want to know how they made it, or if it's running linux?"
Yeah, Linux would make this article soOOoo much more interesting.
"I've found that the time it takes to get good (192kbps+) versions of songs off of a complete album is much longer and expensive than simply shelling out 10 bucks for the CD at a music store."
So you spent $15 for 2 good songs and supported an organization who'll claim you are a thief when you rip that CD to your iPod. Yeah you found a brilliant solution there.
"Yes, but that's Nintendo's *only* source of income. Unless they have a Plan B somewhere in headquarters, they are hanging by a thread."
When did this myth that Nintendo is dying start to proliferate out there? Is it because Nintendo's not in the lead anymore? If so, why's it so difficult to believe that you can be quite successful even though you don't have your game machine in every household?
Nintendo is making money hand over fist. They're surviving quite nicely. Are they vulnerable? Sure. If thye fail to keep innovating, they'll be forgotten. I've got news for you, though: Sony and Microsoft are in the same boat. They're completely vulnerable to anybody who comes along with whizzbang hardware. Niether company makes their own games, and has NOTHING to maintain brand loyalty. The closest thing they have is the backwards compatbiliity.
In what sense is this off-topic? I could see it being redudant, although I personally found this humorous. Though I'm not sure this story qualifies, every time there's a minor update to Mozilla, it's front page news. 'Momentous'. Heh.
"There is no proof, there is nothing but bluster and lies."
Today, you don't know that for a fact. Even if you end up being right, it's still a reckless way to live.
Yep. Sorry. I get a little dyslexic sometimes. I always get really confused when Slashdot has an article about the ISS.
I had a science test once that asked what a wetting agent was. I had this image in my mind of the car salesman from True Lies. So I wrote down "incompetant". I thought the teacher'd enjoy a little humor. Didn't pass the test, though.