"....and they say a Microsoft monopoly doesn't stifle innovation? at least the PS2 has a Linux kit which will allow some development to take place. "
The PS2 Linux kit it almost the equivalent of write-only memory. You can fiddle with it at home all you want, but the only way you can get your software running on anybody else's PS2 is if they have the $200 Linux Kit as well. Meanwhile, by getting the PS2 classified as a 'computer', they enjoy less taxes/tariffs in Europe.
"1: One less reason to run a Windows platform. 2: No more annoying "don't you want to buy this" ad when you're trying to watch a new trailer. "... until Sorenson 4 comes out.
"Thanks for the reply and information - however this guy is in the UK, not the USA.:"
Ah, you're right, that does make a difference. The USA is much larger and much more diverse than most places. It's hard to pass one law to help everybody.
"In the UK it is an offence to drive and use a cellphone at the same time specifically because of such accidents... still not an offence to fumble around and change radio stations (although it SHOULD be!) "
Do you know of any dramatic change in the number of accidents? Just curious. If it's been implemented, I'm all for learning from it even if I'm absolutely wrong. I'm concerned with people staying alive, not with being able to talk on the phone.
"...but DAMN! I agree with you:) - anybody driving without due attention needs to be stopped. I didn't actually say anything should be banned but that's a fine idea:)"
Yeah, you're right you didn't say that. I'm sorry. I was flashing back to other debates I've gotten into on this topic. My bad. Thanks for being tactfula bout it.:)
"It's not the cellphone that causes the crashes, it's the fucking idiots trying to dial/sms/talk/drive at the same time. Radios are 'directly responsible' for more crashes? Show me some proof."
No, it's the 'fucking idiots' who aren't paying full attention to the road. Doesn't matter if it's a cell phone, candy bar, or a change of radio station. But you want proof, here it is.
And I quote:
The study found that drivers were most often distracted by something outside their vehicle (29.4 percent) followed by
adjusting a radio or CD player (11.4 percent). Other specific distractions included talking with other occupants (10.9 percent), adjusting vehicle or climate controls (2.8 percent), eating or drinking (1.7 percent), cell-phone use (1.5 percent) and smoking (0.9 percent).
I've seen this quoted a few times in various articles. I realize you're reading this in doubt. Consider this, though: half of everybody in the USA has a cell phone. This growth happened in the last few years. Despite that, traffic accidents haven't grown exponentially. It's really not clear that it's risen much at all.
I have no doubt people are stupid with their cell phones. However, if you're going to want phones to be banned for saftey reasons, then radios and CD Players should go first since they cause a lot more accidents.
"My cousin had a in car DVD player in his Audi A4, and he greatly regrets this purchase."
I'm sorry to be insensitive, but he should have gone to jail for it. What he did was illegal and wreckless. He could have killed somebody for the sake of watching a video while driving. The reason to have something like this is for the passengers in the back seat.
Like I said, it's not my intention to be an ass. I'm glad he's recovering and that no lives were lost as a result of it.
"when they give it away for free without ads... I'll think about it. why pay for something you can get for free?..why fuck over the home user? "
Who says the user's being 'fucked over'? I've been using Opera since 6 came out. I thought the Ad support would bother me. It doesn't. It just sits up there unobtrusively. The only time it ever bothered me was when they had an audio ad. When people complained it, it disappeared. There are no popups etc.
Asking people to pay for software is not ridiculous. Yeah, it's okay that Mozilla's free and may end up in perpetual development. But what we've seen so far is a slow evolution with new features popping up here and there. That's a far cry from a team of people with profit as a motive working their hardest to come up with something new and interesting. Take a look at the difference from Opera 6 to 7. It's a HUGE facelife. Mozilla doesn't have the incentive to do anything like that until they find themselves behind.
I'm glad that Opera found a way to do not charge the customer and remain profitable. None of this PBS style pledge drives to get money to keep it going. (note: that comment wasn't directed specifically at Mozilla, just remembering a lot of discussion over the last coupla years about keeping free-software alive)
So no, I don't see it as the customer getting 'fucked over'. If Opera were using Kazaa style 'pop up all over the place' ads, then yes I'd agree that's a doomed product.
Fair enough. However, source code availability is not everybody's big concern. A lot of us just want a browser with a good interface, and Opera provides just that. It's certainly better than IE and arguably better than Mozilla.
The big Pro for Opera here on Slashdot is that they've ported it to portable devices such as the Zaurus. They've done a lot of respectable work in that area. They may not be 'Open Source', but they are kicking Microsoft's butt in both UI and usefulness outside of PCs.
Ignoring Opera is heartbreaking. It's taken a number of steps in the right direction, it deserves more credit than it has now. I can't believe I got modded down for my earlier comment about it. "You must love Mozilla to enter".
"Okay.. so a minor version upgrade for Mozilla. Why exactly is this front page news? I wouldn't mind but the release notes don't exactly show anything particularly mind-blowing. Am I underestimating NTLM?
Pardon my cynicism, but Slashdot's love-affair with Mozilla is quite overrated. It's as if Opera doesn't even exist. "
I like how some Jackass can mod me down because I didn't sing the praises of Mozilla, but he can't answer my questions. Makes me think that there isn't a strong answer to my questions. Am I wrong?
Okay.. so a minor version upgrade for Mozilla. Why exactly is this front page news? I wouldn't mind but the release notes don't exactly show anything particularly mind-blowing. Am I underestimating NTLM?
Pardon my cynicism, but Slashdot's love-affair with Mozilla is quite overrated. It's as if Opera doesn't even exist.
"Nothing was called "Open Source" on the webpage for Linux. It's all called "freely shared", as in illegal music files."
I'm glad I got a chance to meta-moderate this comment. It did *not* deserve it's +5 moderations. The article was written by Brier Dudly of the Seattle Times, not Microsoft. If this was MS's press release, I'd think you'd have a point. However, it's plainly clear that the reporter was implying that there are free/easy to get alternatives to MS that they'd have to compete with.
So yes, you are being paranoid. "Freely shared" is not an offensive term.
"And that means what exactly? Could it be that she is smart enough to leave her originals at home where they are safe? That's what I do. If my car CD-R's get damaged by sun or careless handling, I just burn a new one from my original. I'm sure a lot of people do this for exactly the same reason. "
According to Jack Valenti, it's perfectly reasonable to just buy new CDs/DVD's. (Note: Valenti makes at least 6 figures...)
" Matrix Reloaded is the first to use true, 3D cinematography and computer generated actors (that look real, not computer generated). The "Big Brawl" scene is the one that is some commonly refernced. I believe that whole fight scene occured within a computer."
Um no, movies have been doing the 3D cinema for a couple of years at least now. Blade II, for example, had entirely CG people during fight scenes. As for 'not looking computer generated', that's BS too. It's obvious that the 'Big Brawl' scene is computer generated simply because they made a bad shading choice. If they had darkened the image a bit so that the black clothes were actually black (as opposed to gray) it would have looked more like a blue-screen gag. (For the record, I brought that scene into AE and did the color correction. I'm not just speculating here.) Even so, if it looks like blue-screen, then there's still something seriously wrong with it.
"My opinion, as to why this situation exists, is that Hollywood (collectively being the movie industry) are more interested in the "assembly-line" approach to movie making. The same plot, different story sort of approach. "
You're close. The movie making format is quite formulaic. There are a few reasons for this:
1.) They're after the mass market audience, and few things can satisfy everybody. Ever try to order one big pizza for four people? Ferget it.
2.) The point of making the money is profit, so a lot of studios are run like corporations. So there's lotsa decisions made about raising income n percent.
3.) Movies are more of a commodity than they are an art-form. Lots of creativity lost in that process to.
I think the internet could really change this. Your audience can find you at any time. Personally, I'd LOVE to release a movie on the internet. Then I could make it fun for a handful of people instead of trying to dilute it out to a gaggle of people.
"(at the cost of having to push one more button..."
The added benefit here is that you can keep the audio going on one machine while switching to the other. If you're listening to MP3s this is nice. Or, if you're waiting for a really long process to finish and it has a sound queue, then you can leave that audio channel open.
I agree with parent poster, this'd likely be a better option for ya.
" Im guessing its only a matter of time before M$ notices and sets their lawyer bloodhounds to Ceace and Decist this information off the net. Get it while you can i guess, unless it becomes widely mirrored."
Until somebody comes up with a killer reason to mod the XBOX (i.e. a DivX player? I dunno, I think it'll need to be stronger than that...), there'll be little legal defense against MS's lawyers.
Simply put, the best defense they'll have is that they have legit reasons to use the XBOX in a less-than-originally0designed way. However, since this type of mod could potentially mean piracy of XBOX games, MS's argument will be that piracy's the motivation for this project. If there's not a strong rebuttal (like VCRs had about time-shifting...) then there's very weak legal ground to stop MS in its, that is assuming that the DMCA doesn't immediately obliterate its legality.
This whole business about hacking the XBOX to run Linux is irresponsible. I mean seriously, why doesn't the people running it just paint "SUE ME!" on their asses and moon Redmond?
My point isn't to poo poo the project, but rather encourage development of the 'killer app that really works best on the XBOX' before developing the crippling blow to their protection that'll unlease MS lawyers against them. There isn't a whole lot that's particularly special to the XBOX here. At least with the PS2, one could make the argument that the Emotion Engine is a unique chip to play with.
I did a quick Google Search and found this site that seems to answer your question.
I haveta admit though, if this answers your question, I'll be a little surprised you could't find it within Google. This was the first search term I tried.
"if anyone had RTFA, they are banning bags of less then 30 *MICRONS* thickness. (The current bags are 17)"
Makes you wonder why Slashdot Submitters feel the need to sensationalize their stories. There must be aspirations to work for CNN. "Hi Mom. My description of a story is in print!"
"A torrent of the.wmv, which not everyone (certainly not Mac users) can get to. (Windows Media Player 9 never made it.)
Hell, even if they could, why would they want to? "
You mean besides them wanting to watch the video?
Couple of things to consider:
1.) The WMV8 codec isn't half bad. Maybe not as good as DivX, but it's still very much watchable.
2.) The WM Player may be a little on the 'blech' side, but arguably most players are. Real Media? Yuck. Quicktime? Yuck. DivX Playa? Yuck. Heck, just fire up MS's v6 Media Player. It's a great little player and it still plays WM9 formats if you have the codecs.
I don't see what you're complaining about. I can understand Mac users or Linux users being annoyed, but then again intelligent gamers mainly run Windows anyway.
"I just hope that they introduce something new that can be ripped off by like a million cart games:) Remeber after they released Super Mario Kart? That's right there were like a gazillion games using the same gameplay but Mario Kart will always be the best:) "
Why was this marked 'Off-topic' when the topic's about Mario Kart?
Slashdot Mirror
" ....and they say a Microsoft monopoly doesn't stifle innovation? at least the PS2 has a Linux kit which will allow some development to take place. "
The PS2 Linux kit it almost the equivalent of write-only memory. You can fiddle with it at home all you want, but the only way you can get your software running on anybody else's PS2 is if they have the $200 Linux Kit as well. Meanwhile, by getting the PS2 classified as a 'computer', they enjoy less taxes/tariffs in Europe.
"1: One less reason to run a Windows platform. 2: No more annoying "don't you want to buy this" ad when you're trying to watch a new trailer. " ... until Sorenson 4 comes out.
"Thanks for the reply and information - however this guy is in the UK, not the USA.:"
:) - anybody driving without due attention needs to be stopped. I didn't actually say anything should be banned but that's a fine idea :)"
:)
Ah, you're right, that does make a difference. The USA is much larger and much more diverse than most places. It's hard to pass one law to help everybody.
"In the UK it is an offence to drive and use a cellphone at the same time specifically because of such accidents... still not an offence to fumble around and change radio stations (although it SHOULD be!) "
Do you know of any dramatic change in the number of accidents? Just curious. If it's been implemented, I'm all for learning from it even if I'm absolutely wrong. I'm concerned with people staying alive, not with being able to talk on the phone.
"...but DAMN! I agree with you
Yeah, you're right you didn't say that. I'm sorry. I was flashing back to other debates I've gotten into on this topic. My bad. Thanks for being tactfula bout it.
Cheers.
No, it's the 'fucking idiots' who aren't paying full attention to the road. Doesn't matter if it's a cell phone, candy bar, or a change of radio station. But you want proof, here it is.
And I quote:
I've seen this quoted a few times in various articles. I realize you're reading this in doubt. Consider this, though: half of everybody in the USA has a cell phone. This growth happened in the last few years. Despite that, traffic accidents haven't grown exponentially. It's really not clear that it's risen much at all.
I have no doubt people are stupid with their cell phones. However, if you're going to want phones to be banned for saftey reasons, then radios and CD Players should go first since they cause a lot more accidents.
"My cousin had a in car DVD player in his Audi A4, and he greatly regrets this purchase."
I'm sorry to be insensitive, but he should have gone to jail for it. What he did was illegal and wreckless. He could have killed somebody for the sake of watching a video while driving. The reason to have something like this is for the passengers in the back seat.
Like I said, it's not my intention to be an ass. I'm glad he's recovering and that no lives were lost as a result of it.
".. a way to use his car's steering wheel for racing games, and a way to make his windshield the TV/monitor screen."
The nice thing about this configuration is that you have a surprisingly realistic rumble pack.
"How the hell did you mod the steering wheel to the passenger's side... details man details!!!"
His wife probably had it installed.
"And we thought cell phones were bad. Just wait 'till we all have full multimedia systems in our cars. "
Actually, radios are directly responsible for FAR more car crashes than cell phones. Cell phones are a small sliver of the pie.
"Anything not in 'perpetual development' is in 'decay.'"
Oooooooooookay. Choose between 'in decay' and 'slow to adopt'.
"And your problem with this is?"
What's wrong with a broswer that's perpetually behind the times?
"when they give it away for free without ads... I'll think about it. why pay for something you can get for free?..why fuck over the home user? "
Who says the user's being 'fucked over'? I've been using Opera since 6 came out. I thought the Ad support would bother me. It doesn't. It just sits up there unobtrusively. The only time it ever bothered me was when they had an audio ad. When people complained it, it disappeared. There are no popups etc.
Asking people to pay for software is not ridiculous. Yeah, it's okay that Mozilla's free and may end up in perpetual development. But what we've seen so far is a slow evolution with new features popping up here and there. That's a far cry from a team of people with profit as a motive working their hardest to come up with something new and interesting. Take a look at the difference from Opera 6 to 7. It's a HUGE facelife. Mozilla doesn't have the incentive to do anything like that until they find themselves behind.
I'm glad that Opera found a way to do not charge the customer and remain profitable. None of this PBS style pledge drives to get money to keep it going. (note: that comment wasn't directed specifically at Mozilla, just remembering a lot of discussion over the last coupla years about keeping free-software alive)
So no, I don't see it as the customer getting 'fucked over'. If Opera were using Kazaa style 'pop up all over the place' ads, then yes I'd agree that's a doomed product.
"So, you like Opera. Big fucking deal. Keep using it and stop bitching about shit on Slashdot. No one cares."
Gee, so you're not a big fan of zealousy. Suddenly my point comes into focus.
"Mozilla is something much bigger. "
Ah! I see it all now! Mozilla will free us from the Matrix. May the prophets light our path!
"source availability?"
Fair enough. However, source code availability is not everybody's big concern. A lot of us just want a browser with a good interface, and Opera provides just that. It's certainly better than IE and arguably better than Mozilla.
The big Pro for Opera here on Slashdot is that they've ported it to portable devices such as the Zaurus. They've done a lot of respectable work in that area. They may not be 'Open Source', but they are kicking Microsoft's butt in both UI and usefulness outside of PCs.
Ignoring Opera is heartbreaking. It's taken a number of steps in the right direction, it deserves more credit than it has now. I can't believe I got modded down for my earlier comment about it. "You must love Mozilla to enter".
"Okay.. so a minor version upgrade for Mozilla. Why exactly is this front page news? I wouldn't mind but the release notes don't exactly show anything particularly mind-blowing. Am I underestimating NTLM?
Pardon my cynicism, but Slashdot's love-affair with Mozilla is quite overrated. It's as if Opera doesn't even exist. "
I like how some Jackass can mod me down because I didn't sing the praises of Mozilla, but he can't answer my questions. Makes me think that there isn't a strong answer to my questions. Am I wrong?
"Opera costs money. Mozilla is free. Nuff said. "
Opera's ad supported. No out of money support, and they sometimes show comics in there.
Nuff said.
Okay.. so a minor version upgrade for Mozilla. Why exactly is this front page news? I wouldn't mind but the release notes don't exactly show anything particularly mind-blowing. Am I underestimating NTLM?
Pardon my cynicism, but Slashdot's love-affair with Mozilla is quite overrated. It's as if Opera doesn't even exist.
"Nothing was called "Open Source" on the webpage for Linux. It's all called "freely shared", as in illegal music files."
I'm glad I got a chance to meta-moderate this comment. It did *not* deserve it's +5 moderations. The article was written by Brier Dudly of the Seattle Times, not Microsoft. If this was MS's press release, I'd think you'd have a point. However, it's plainly clear that the reporter was implying that there are free/easy to get alternatives to MS that they'd have to compete with.
So yes, you are being paranoid. "Freely shared" is not an offensive term.
"And that means what exactly? Could it be that she is smart enough to leave her originals at home where they are safe? That's what I do. If my car CD-R's get damaged by sun or careless handling, I just burn a new one from my original. I'm sure a lot of people do this for exactly the same reason. "
According to Jack Valenti, it's perfectly reasonable to just buy new CDs/DVD's. (Note: Valenti makes at least 6 figures...)
" Matrix Reloaded is the first to use true, 3D cinematography and computer generated actors (that look real, not computer generated). The "Big Brawl" scene is the one that is some commonly refernced. I believe that whole fight scene occured within a computer."
Um no, movies have been doing the 3D cinema for a couple of years at least now. Blade II, for example, had entirely CG people during fight scenes. As for 'not looking computer generated', that's BS too. It's obvious that the 'Big Brawl' scene is computer generated simply because they made a bad shading choice. If they had darkened the image a bit so that the black clothes were actually black (as opposed to gray) it would have looked more like a blue-screen gag. (For the record, I brought that scene into AE and did the color correction. I'm not just speculating here.) Even so, if it looks like blue-screen, then there's still something seriously wrong with it.
"My opinion, as to why this situation exists, is that Hollywood (collectively being the movie industry) are more interested in the "assembly-line" approach to movie making. The same plot, different story sort of approach. "
You're close. The movie making format is quite formulaic. There are a few reasons for this:
1.) They're after the mass market audience, and few things can satisfy everybody. Ever try to order one big pizza for four people? Ferget it.
2.) The point of making the money is profit, so a lot of studios are run like corporations. So there's lotsa decisions made about raising income n percent.
3.) Movies are more of a commodity than they are an art-form. Lots of creativity lost in that process to.
I think the internet could really change this. Your audience can find you at any time. Personally, I'd LOVE to release a movie on the internet. Then I could make it fun for a handful of people instead of trying to dilute it out to a gaggle of people.
"(at the cost of having to push one more button..."
The added benefit here is that you can keep the audio going on one machine while switching to the other. If you're listening to MP3s this is nice. Or, if you're waiting for a really long process to finish and it has a sound queue, then you can leave that audio channel open.
I agree with parent poster, this'd likely be a better option for ya.
" Im guessing its only a matter of time before M$ notices and sets their lawyer bloodhounds to Ceace and Decist this information off the net. Get it while you can i guess, unless it becomes widely mirrored."
Until somebody comes up with a killer reason to mod the XBOX (i.e. a DivX player? I dunno, I think it'll need to be stronger than that...), there'll be little legal defense against MS's lawyers.
Simply put, the best defense they'll have is that they have legit reasons to use the XBOX in a less-than-originally0designed way. However, since this type of mod could potentially mean piracy of XBOX games, MS's argument will be that piracy's the motivation for this project. If there's not a strong rebuttal (like VCRs had about time-shifting...) then there's very weak legal ground to stop MS in its, that is assuming that the DMCA doesn't immediately obliterate its legality.
This whole business about hacking the XBOX to run Linux is irresponsible. I mean seriously, why doesn't the people running it just paint "SUE ME!" on their asses and moon Redmond?
My point isn't to poo poo the project, but rather encourage development of the 'killer app that really works best on the XBOX' before developing the crippling blow to their protection that'll unlease MS lawyers against them. There isn't a whole lot that's particularly special to the XBOX here. At least with the PS2, one could make the argument that the Emotion Engine is a unique chip to play with.
I did a quick Google Search and found this site that seems to answer your question.
I haveta admit though, if this answers your question, I'll be a little surprised you could't find it within Google. This was the first search term I tried.
"if anyone had RTFA, they are banning bags of less then 30 *MICRONS* thickness. (The current bags are 17)"
Makes you wonder why Slashdot Submitters feel the need to sensationalize their stories. There must be aspirations to work for CNN. "Hi Mom. My description of a story is in print!"
"A torrent of the .wmv, which not everyone (certainly not Mac users) can get to. (Windows Media Player 9 never made it.)
Hell, even if they could, why would they want to? "
You mean besides them wanting to watch the video?
Couple of things to consider:
1.) The WMV8 codec isn't half bad. Maybe not as good as DivX, but it's still very much watchable.
2.) The WM Player may be a little on the 'blech' side, but arguably most players are. Real Media? Yuck. Quicktime? Yuck. DivX Playa? Yuck. Heck, just fire up MS's v6 Media Player. It's a great little player and it still plays WM9 formats if you have the codecs.
I don't see what you're complaining about. I can understand Mac users or Linux users being annoyed, but then again intelligent gamers mainly run Windows anyway.
"I just hope that they introduce something new that can be ripped off by like a million cart games :) Remeber after they released Super Mario Kart? That's right there were like a gazillion games using the same gameplay but Mario Kart will always be the best :) "
Why was this marked 'Off-topic' when the topic's about Mario Kart?