Do none of these people stop to think that by there being an outlet to sell used games, a significant number of people buy more games, because they know they can unload them for a bit when they are tired of them, thus reducing the perceived cost by as much as $10-$20, which entices them to buy more games?
No, of course not. They don't care that half the new PS2 games I've bought I wouldn't have bought if I couldn't have sold them a few months later to someone who would never pay full price for that game.
The day I have to pay subscription costs to buy a video game is the day I stop buying video games.
It's like the fact gathering is being done by high school kids, and the editing is being done in Mumbai or Dehli. Wouldn't suprise me if this was true, though I've never looked into it.
At last! My local newspaper was ahead of the curve on something!
Welcome to the world of news I've been living in for years. Although to be fair, I find local high school newspapers better written than the 'real' news paper...
Having your page allow people to enter whether they are using your "tested" browser or not is trivial though. IMO it's just plain rude to lock out access to your page based on what browser is being used, especially as most pages that do this work perfectly in Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, or other browsers.
Isn't Surround Sound the technique of encoding 4 channels of audio (left, right, front, rear ("surround")) in 2 discrete channels, such as used by a lot of movies on TV? Since only 2 real channels are used, this was already possible using MP3.
Maybe "multichannel" would be a more appropriate description.
Surround sound is the technique of placing speakers around you so sound comes from all directions.
While it is true that some encoding schemes (i.e. Dolby) work by combining the various channels into just 2 channels, it does not have to be encoded like this to be Surround Sound.
Unless the media is protected by encryption or similar copy protection of any kind. The american DMCA prevents circumvention of copy protection, even if you have a legitimate right to make copies, you have no right to bypass copy protection.
As previously reported here on slashdot, there were a few exemptions granted for the DMCA, one of which was to allow backing up of cartridge based games/software.
wouldn't it be easier for the HD manufacturer to make a bunch of the same drive, then sell them as 80gb, 100gb, 120gb, etc, with only a simple configuration change?
Or they could manufacture the drives as a set of platers, and to set the size of the drive they only include as many platers as are required to hold that much data. Then not only would they have smaller drives to put on the market, but they'd save money on materials and production too!
I hope you realize that for most home computers that only have a power button, holding the power button down for 5-10 secs is the equivalent to hitting a reset button.
It's possible for this to have been disabled in the BIOS, however the only PCs I've ever seen with no support for this at all are some old low spec Compaqs.
Id be worried if this hack allows pirated games to be played. What Sony did in releasing the PS2 Linux kit was a wonderful move and instilled in me a greater respect for them as a company.
TGE has nothing to do with running pirated games and is not some random hack to allow running software. It is a replacement for the RTE that is distributed with the PS2 Linux kit.
The RTE is a layer which sits between the linux kernel and the PS2 that allowed Sony to port the Linux kernel to the PS2 without making modifications to the Linux kernel that would have forced them to release their proprietary code.
They've made mouses with no mouse click noise, and no scroll mouse noise.
But people liked the tactile feedback so the noiseless mouse never caught on.
And as for the comment that a mouse is one of the noisest parts of a computer.... dream on. My mouse doesn't make near as much noise as my keyboard, or even just a single case fan or HDD spinning.
If you are that concerned with having the "quietest" PC, then go modify a "normal" mouse to be silent. There are a million easy ways to do it, and if you are that obsessed with a silent PC the small amount of work needed would be nothing to you.
So... How the hell am I supposed to reinstall windows on the PCs I have that came with windows pre-installed, but did not contain the windows setup CDs?
Digital tuners are actually quite cheap to make, far cheaper than analog tuners.
Both from a logical standpoint and from information I've heard from industry insiders, I'd be very surprised if you didn't see digital -> analog tuners (i.e. a cheap cable box like deal) to allow viewing digital broadcasts on analog TV around the same time analog signals begin shutting off.
Of course, it doesn't matter if the FCC wants digital by 2007 if the majority of broadcasters decline to participate the FCC won't be able to enforce it.
...but so is a regular telephone line. sure, it's analog "data," as opposed to digital for VOIP. If we follow that argument, then we shouldn't have to pay for telephone usage, either.
Actually in most systems phone lines are only analog for a short distance. Once they get to the closest node they are converted into digital signals transmitted across fiber. In some old systems it's still analog more of the way, but before it gets to any other systems it has to be converted to digital.
And in the case of cell phones, most of them now are converted to digital signals immediately, and the few analog cell phones left are being phased out rapidly.
...and a duplicate set of tracks in the Windows Media format. These can be downloaded from the CD to a computer and then transferred to portable devices or recorded to home CDs.
Portable device? Goodie. I can easily copy things from my portable back to a PC.
This is assuming the music is worth copying in the first place, and judgeing from the quality of music lately that's highly unlikely.
Re:What you don't look at the page first?
on
Knoppix 3.3 Is Out
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
What you don't look at the page first?
Amazingly enough, the story isn't an article to go see, it's an iso to download. So should everyone go hit knoppix's server to slashdot it for a while? Or should the smart ones of us realize there are torrents available, and click one of them so as to not slashdot the website?
[Role playing games], for example, got to where they had to have a book ship with the game.'
Modern games have more documents included? Riiight...
Although not the first (video game) RPG, Final Fantasy for NES is definately among the early home video game RPG games. For those that didn't have that game or don't remember, it came with a rather thick manual, a couple of large poster charts with all of the weapons/armor/etc. listed on them, and IIRC a map.
Move on to the SNES era and you have game manuals which may have a short reference in the back, occasionally a short walk through of the first little adventure, and if you are lucky a map is included.
Now we are in the era of PS2 and XBOX.. All the RPGs I've played come with a small manual which explains the basic controls in a few pages (ten at most). The only exceptions are when they decide to pack the stradegy guide with the game (usually a while after the release as a marketing ploy..)
If you ask me it looks like RPG's are getting simpler and coming with less documents.
The problem is how RPGs used to be played by "RPG nerds" but are now being played by the "mainstream idiot" who can't figure out how to play a game without a stradegy guide which gives him step by step instructions for beating the game.
There are a lot of us who aren't caring about running linux on their PS2, but instead are interested in playing around with writing our own games and demos for the PS2 without spending ungodly amounts of cash for a dev kit or installing a mod chip.
And NO, the PS2 linux kit is NOT a dev kit. And with the PS2 linux kit you are NOT making PS2 games, you are writing software for a linux computer with a mips processor. If that's what I wanted to do then I wouldn't bother with the PS2, I'd just write linux software for an x86 processor. But that's not what I want to do. I want to write games and demos for the PS2.
You forget that modchips have been around for quite a while. There are numerous demos and a few ports available for the PS2.. Not sure about full blown indy games though..
Yes, the ps2 will read CDR's.. The only thing stopping it is the bios check that makes sure you aren't trying to boot a cdr;)
HP will send you CD's as well. Unfortunately that doesn't always help.
My sister and I bought identical HP computers a while back, and after some troubles we needed the rescue CDs, and HP was more than happy to send rescue CDs to us, just not the right ones. Long story short, I have 6 sets of rescue CDs in my office that do me no good, and a company I'll never buy computer parts from again.
The other problem is that with the model of HP I had (and assumably most other models as well) you had to buy a special copy of windows directly from HP (presumably with a huge markup on an already over priced product..) in order to get most versions of windows to work at all.
Moral of the story is, plans like these hurt the consumers and help create/maintain monopolies. It's too bad THESE situations wouldn't get taken to court...
I know it's nonesense, but I think that RIAA's actions have artificially inflated the value of music files.
It's not just nonesense... The RIAA has monoplistic type control over pricing (although technically I think they would be classified as a cartel and not a monopoly...) so the price of CD's rising or falling is a direct consequence of the RIAA's decisions.
However... As for the real "value" of music... IMHO the value of music (i.e. how much you would be willing to pay for the crap) is dropping substantially and we are working our way to a new business model for the music industry where acquiring music is free/near free and the money is made through other things (concerts, merchandice, etc.) and having a piece of crap song that goes top 10 won't cause a band to become instantly rich.
IIRC EAX is environmental type effects. Things such as echo (and doppler?) effects to cause sound to appear to have occurred in a specific environment.
A pretty common demo I've seen take a single wav of footsteps, and then uses EAX to make them sound as though the happend on hard wood floor, a long hallway, a small tile bathroom, etc...
Then again... I might have my TLAs mixed up so don't quote me on that;)
Slashdot Mirror
Forgot to make it clicky clickyable
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/nukeanyt hing
You mean like that?
No, of course not. They don't care that half the new PS2 games I've bought I wouldn't have bought if I couldn't have sold them a few months later to someone who would never pay full price for that game.
The day I have to pay subscription costs to buy a video game is the day I stop buying video games.
At last! My local newspaper was ahead of the curve on something!
Welcome to the world of news I've been living in for years. Although to be fair, I find local high school newspapers better written than the 'real' news paper...
Having your page allow people to enter whether they are using your "tested" browser or not is trivial though. IMO it's just plain rude to lock out access to your page based on what browser is being used, especially as most pages that do this work perfectly in Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, or other browsers.
Maybe "multichannel" would be a more appropriate description.
Surround sound is the technique of placing speakers around you so sound comes from all directions.
While it is true that some encoding schemes (i.e. Dolby) work by combining the various channels into just 2 channels, it does not have to be encoded like this to be Surround Sound.
As previously reported here on slashdot, there were a few exemptions granted for the DMCA, one of which was to allow backing up of cartridge based games/software.
Or they could manufacture the drives as a set of platers, and to set the size of the drive they only include as many platers as are required to hold that much data. Then not only would they have smaller drives to put on the market, but they'd save money on materials and production too!
...Oh wait! They DO do that!
So THIS is why conspiracy theorists never seem to have money.
It's possible for this to have been disabled in the BIOS, however the only PCs I've ever seen with no support for this at all are some old low spec Compaqs.
TGE has nothing to do with running pirated games and is not some random hack to allow running software. It is a replacement for the RTE that is distributed with the PS2 Linux kit.
The RTE is a layer which sits between the linux kernel and the PS2 that allowed Sony to port the Linux kernel to the PS2 without making modifications to the Linux kernel that would have forced them to release their proprietary code.
But people liked the tactile feedback so the noiseless mouse never caught on.
And as for the comment that a mouse is one of the noisest parts of a computer.... dream on. My mouse doesn't make near as much noise as my keyboard, or even just a single case fan or HDD spinning.
If you are that concerned with having the "quietest" PC, then go modify a "normal" mouse to be silent. There are a million easy ways to do it, and if you are that obsessed with a silent PC the small amount of work needed would be nothing to you.
So... How the hell am I supposed to reinstall windows on the PCs I have that came with windows pre-installed, but did not contain the windows setup CDs?
Both from a logical standpoint and from information I've heard from industry insiders, I'd be very surprised if you didn't see digital -> analog tuners (i.e. a cheap cable box like deal) to allow viewing digital broadcasts on analog TV around the same time analog signals begin shutting off.
Of course, it doesn't matter if the FCC wants digital by 2007 if the majority of broadcasters decline to participate the FCC won't be able to enforce it.
Actually in most systems phone lines are only analog for a short distance. Once they get to the closest node they are converted into digital signals transmitted across fiber. In some old systems it's still analog more of the way, but before it gets to any other systems it has to be converted to digital.
And in the case of cell phones, most of them now are converted to digital signals immediately, and the few analog cell phones left are being phased out rapidly.
Portable device? Goodie. I can easily copy things from my portable back to a PC.
This is assuming the music is worth copying in the first place, and judgeing from the quality of music lately that's highly unlikely.
Amazingly enough, the story isn't an article to go see, it's an iso to download. So should everyone go hit knoppix's server to slashdot it for a while? Or should the smart ones of us realize there are torrents available, and click one of them so as to not slashdot the website?
Modern games have more documents included? Riiight...
Although not the first (video game) RPG, Final Fantasy for NES is definately among the early home video game RPG games. For those that didn't have that game or don't remember, it came with a rather thick manual, a couple of large poster charts with all of the weapons/armor/etc. listed on them, and IIRC a map.
Move on to the SNES era and you have game manuals which may have a short reference in the back, occasionally a short walk through of the first little adventure, and if you are lucky a map is included.
Now we are in the era of PS2 and XBOX.. All the RPGs I've played come with a small manual which explains the basic controls in a few pages (ten at most). The only exceptions are when they decide to pack the stradegy guide with the game (usually a while after the release as a marketing ploy..)
If you ask me it looks like RPG's are getting simpler and coming with less documents.
The problem is how RPGs used to be played by "RPG nerds" but are now being played by the "mainstream idiot" who can't figure out how to play a game without a stradegy guide which gives him step by step instructions for beating the game.
And NO, the PS2 linux kit is NOT a dev kit. And with the PS2 linux kit you are NOT making PS2 games, you are writing software for a linux computer with a mips processor. If that's what I wanted to do then I wouldn't bother with the PS2, I'd just write linux software for an x86 processor. But that's not what I want to do. I want to write games and demos for the PS2.
Yes, the ps2 will read CDR's.. The only thing stopping it is the bios check that makes sure you aren't trying to boot a cdr ;)
Give people a few days/weeks/months and you'll see this exploit used to boot naplink without the need for modchips or a knife.
If I can figure out a way to convert nport files to sharkport files I'll be spending the next couple days working on this very idea...
That's the problem with the DMCA, it's vague terms allow it to be used for just about anything if you put the right spin on it.
My sister and I bought identical HP computers a while back, and after some troubles we needed the rescue CDs, and HP was more than happy to send rescue CDs to us, just not the right ones. Long story short, I have 6 sets of rescue CDs in my office that do me no good, and a company I'll never buy computer parts from again.
The other problem is that with the model of HP I had (and assumably most other models as well) you had to buy a special copy of windows directly from HP (presumably with a huge markup on an already over priced product..) in order to get most versions of windows to work at all.
Moral of the story is, plans like these hurt the consumers and help create/maintain monopolies. It's too bad THESE situations wouldn't get taken to court...
It's not just nonesense... The RIAA has monoplistic type control over pricing (although technically I think they would be classified as a cartel and not a monopoly...) so the price of CD's rising or falling is a direct consequence of the RIAA's decisions.
However... As for the real "value" of music... IMHO the value of music (i.e. how much you would be willing to pay for the crap) is dropping substantially and we are working our way to a new business model for the music industry where acquiring music is free/near free and the money is made through other things (concerts, merchandice, etc.) and having a piece of crap song that goes top 10 won't cause a band to become instantly rich.
A pretty common demo I've seen take a single wav of footsteps, and then uses EAX to make them sound as though the happend on hard wood floor, a long hallway, a small tile bathroom, etc...
Then again... I might have my TLAs mixed up so don't quote me on that ;)