While I agree with you that a gamepad is nice for multiple players on one machine - but I can count the number of games that both support USB and multiplayer on one machine on one hand.
Er, ALL Windows games support USB/anything-else pads/sticks/anything-else just fine. If your Controller (USB or otherwise) appears in the "Game Controllers" Control Panel, then it'll work in your game. DirectX doesn't care how you connect things, or even what the things are. "Axis and Buttons" are "Axis and Buttons", whether you're using a Handlebar controller, an Aircraft Yoke, or an N64 Joypad.
No, and people who use computers ought not to have to fuss about with building their own firewalls in order to have a modicum of security. Firewalls and other security-related code ought to be buried deep inside any consumer OS marketed for use on the Internet and their configuration ought to be done at a level of abstraction that requires no techncal knowledge.
You mean exactly like Windows XP ? Firewall is enabled by ticking a "Firewall this connection" box, and the wizard asks you if you want to do it, when you setup the connection. It makes it clear this is a good idea, for security reasons.
By default, the Automatic Updates feature is set to "Notify the user before downloading any updates, and notify again before downloading em" - this means that everytime a security fix is released, XP will automagically download and install it, hence keeping your computer secure.
All you need to couple this with, is a decent AntiVirus program (and even ultra-newbies know they need one !) and your computer is pretty secure.
We've now got Palomino, Thoroughbread A, Thoroughbread B and Barton under the Athlon XP name. To make things worse, some of the chips are using a 133 MHz FSB (Front Side Bus), and some 166.
Due to this and AMD's PR ratings you have to be real careful of what you buy, if you're aming for a specific core. Expecially since AMD doesn't plan to replace all Athlon XPs with the new core.
You're right. A much better idea is Intel's method, where everytime the CPU is updated, they change the pin-count/function so it becomes incompatible with every existing Motherboard. Er, no. That's rubbish:)
The Athlon's universal compatibility is one of it's great features - buy a brand new Motherboard today, and it will run ANY variation of Athlon, from the early 700MHz jobbies, to the latest 3000+, and all variants in between, and all the Durons. Obviously you can't always run a newer chip in an older board, for obvious reasons:)
"It gets worse, too; games are distributed on postage-stamp sized MMC memory cards, which is a bad choice in itself as MMC memory is flimsy and expensive (expect to have to store your games in plastic cases for protection outside the unit, a far cry from the near-indestructible robustness of GBA cartridges), but worse again than this is the fact that the act of slipping in a new game involves removing the back of the unit, taking out the battery and sliding the game home into a SIM card style slot. This, needless to say, is a stunningly bad piece of design and the need to juggle about five separate bits of kit in order to play a new game isn't going to win the unit any fans."
3D Tetris (U) Croach, The (PD) Galactic Pinball (JU) Golf (U) Insane Mouse Mansion (J) Jack Bros (J) Jack Bros (U) Mario Clash (JU) Mario's Tennis (JU) Nester's Funky Bowling (U) Panic Bomber (J) Panic Bomber (U) Reality Boy Demo 1 (PD) Reality Boy Demo 2 (PD) Red Alarm (J) Red Alarm (U) Space Squash (J) T&E Virtual Golf (J) Teleroboxer (JU) V Tetris (J) Vertical Force (J) Vertical Force (U) Virtual Boy Wario Land (JU) Virtual Fishing (J) Virtual Golf (J) Virtual League Baseball (U) Virtual League Baseball (U) Virtual Pong (PD) Virtual Pro Yakyuu '95 (J) Virtual-E Cursor Demo (PD) Waterworld (U)
(J) is Jap, (U) is USA, and (JU) means the same cart was released in both countries. You need an Emulator/EEPROM device to play the (PD) games, as they were never released as carts.
There was a Konami console I seem to remember that never made it past prototype. but was hyped beyond all belief with a power chair, foot controls etc.
It's long been know that laptop theives are often more interested in the data than the computer.
Some computers sold on eBay are sold for the data [ebay.com].
And if you look at the auction, you'll see it has zero bids.
It's been relisted with a much lower price - and it ended with zero bids.
You've just proved that data, to be worth almost nothing:)
Modern burners already ARE using UDMA. That's a theoretical maximum of 33MB/second. Heck, even my ooooooooold Toshiba DVD-ROM is UDMA 33, and that's only a reader !
Re:Please, enough already: Check out the link!
on
Ogg/Vorbis on Palm OS
·
· Score: 1
The older Palms had shitty sound hardware, but it is possible to play at least WAV files on them. The quality sucks major, but it works nevertheless.
Disk space is also not a problem. Standard Vorbis will get down to 8kbps, which put quite a bit of files in 8M. I have written prototypes of new Vorbis encoders that will go down to 4kbps mono with pretty acceptable quality. This gets you a full album in 2M. Three albums at least on a 8M Palm.
The big issue is the CPU. Old Palms have a 33Mhz 68k processor. All that I have seen could be overclocked without risk to at least 45Mhz, and since we're pushing the limits of the hardware anyway, let that make us our target.
The question is if a 45Mhz 68k can decode a 6-8khz sample rate mono Vorbis 1.0 file. We're not looking for full Vorbis 1.0 compatibility remember, we just want to play those files, which have significantly less hardware demands than for example an 128k stereo 44khz Ogg. Since we're not going to need 16bits output either, you can make compromises in the decoder trading quality for speed.
£50 says the result will sound like a Rhino farting contest.
It's just really too bad you can't take a phone for a test drive...I would really like to take a phone into my apartment, on the drive to work, and on the drive to my parents before purchasing it. I hate locking myself into a contract that can't provide what I need.
Here in the UK, you can.
When you sign up for a contract, (Mobile Phone or whatever) you have 14 days to change your mind. This is the law - it's not optional ! Get your new phone, and drive around and test it. If the coverage is pants, then take it back for a refund (providing it's in immaculate condition) - it's that simple.
3) Clearly defined download limits. Recently an Emusic user was banned for downloading 200 albums in 3 days as an "unlimited" subscriber. No hard cap was set in the TOS agreement, and if I were hypothetically using a service like this, I would want to be very clear on just how "unlimited" my downloading abilities were.
I hope you aren't on the side of the subscriber here. There's no way he could have possibly listened to those 200 albums in 3 days (at ~1 hour per album, that's 8 solid days of music !) so they were right to ban him.
Media ownership is of course the most desired for the consumer. It allows them to experience themusic/movie/etc whenever they want, trade or sell it to friends, etc. Of course it's the least profitable for the industry.
Surely they're all pretty much equally profitable ?
If you can afford to spend £100 a month on Music/DVDs, then you can still only afford £100 a month if they change the distro model. Result is that the Entertainment companies get £100 a month from you, no matter HOW they distribute the stuff !
How long.........until someone gets sued for allowing the packaging of such discs to be punctured, thus prematurely invalidating the promotional DVD value. I can see the advertiser being FURIOUS if they paid a few million dollars to imprint, say, the newest BMW ad on the James Bond soundtrack, only to find that no consumers can view it because the plastic shrinkwrap failed to keep out enough air.
Pretty-much an infinite amount of time. Don't you think the manufacturers will have though of this ? They're obviously not gonna come wrapped like todays "normal" discs !
If a bunch ever did get "punctured", then they'd just, duh, make some more ! What do you think currently happens when a load of rejects turn up ? They certainly don't just say "Aw, sorry. All your discs are screwed".
Audiophiles have gone for this sort of thing. These people don't play CDs with just a high end CD player, you'll find they use what is called a CD "transport" which is a CD player with a digital out. For a nice one, a few grand at least, ranging up to five figures for these things. Then you need to feed this wonderfully accurate string of 0's and 1's into a DAC.
They seem to be missing the point of the digital output. Somebody should tell them that the SP-DIF on my PC's £10 CD-ROM drive, outputs the EXACT same string of 0's and 1's !
Granted, the error correction algorithms may be better on the "CD Transport", but this is a non-issue if you treat your CDs correctly.
How about a TV that pukes when it sees the 524-line (as opposed to 525-line) image that many consoles output?
Huh ? There's no such thing. Your TV doesn't care what the resolution of the input is, as long as the Horizontal and Vertical frequencies are correct. (60Hz Vertical, and I forget the Horizontal)
How about a TV that reacts poorly to Macrovision encoded signal?
Um, games consoles don't output Macrovision when they're playing games ! In any case - such a TV also wouldn't work with a VCR/DVD/etc.
How about a TV with only RF input as opposed to composite video input (yeah, I still see those)?
How about a TV that cuts too much off the sides and corners of the image?
Ridiculous. If you can't afford a decent TV, then you sure as hell can't afford a $200 Games Console, with $40 each games !!
Re:LCDs are fine for gamers
on
LCD Round-up
·
· Score: 1
Just to set the record straight, many people, myself included, have found that update times less than 30 ms are plenty good for even the fastest games (UT2003 springs to mind). My 15" KDS is excellent for gaming -- I can't imagine ever going back to a CRT.
60Hz is 60 times per second. That's 0.017 seconds per frame, or 17ms. Your LCD isn't capable of displaying a game a 60fps, or even a 'laced TV image - also 60Hz. A good CRT can update the screen at 100Hz (10ms), in the same resolution your TFT is running. Your screen is certainly not "plenty good" - it's not even close !
Slashdot Mirror
Er, ALL Windows games support USB/anything-else pads/sticks/anything-else just fine. If your Controller (USB or otherwise) appears in the "Game Controllers" Control Panel, then it'll work in your game. DirectX doesn't care how you connect things, or even what the things are. "Axis and Buttons" are "Axis and Buttons", whether you're using a Handlebar controller, an Aircraft Yoke, or an N64 Joypad.
Squillion-Connectors System Interface
Ad infinitum - there are MANY more :D
You mean exactly like Windows XP ? Firewall is enabled by ticking a "Firewall this connection" box, and the wizard asks you if you want to do it, when you setup the connection. It makes it clear this is a good idea, for security reasons.
By default, the Automatic Updates feature is set to "Notify the user before downloading any updates, and notify again before downloading em" - this means that everytime a security fix is released, XP will automagically download and install it, hence keeping your computer secure.
All you need to couple this with, is a decent AntiVirus program (and even ultra-newbies know they need one !) and your computer is pretty secure.
Due to this and AMD's PR ratings you have to be real careful of what you buy, if you're aming for a specific core. Expecially since AMD doesn't plan to replace all Athlon XPs with the new core.
You're right. A much better idea is Intel's method, where everytime the CPU is updated, they change the pin-count/function so it becomes incompatible with every existing Motherboard. Er, no. That's rubbish :)
The Athlon's universal compatibility is one of it's great features - buy a brand new Motherboard today, and it will run ANY variation of Athlon, from the early 700MHz jobbies, to the latest 3000+, and all variants in between, and all the Durons. Obviously you can't always run a newer chip in an older board, for obvious reasons :)
"It gets worse, too; games are distributed on postage-stamp sized MMC memory cards, which is a bad choice in itself as MMC memory is flimsy and expensive (expect to have to store your games in plastic cases for protection outside the unit, a far cry from the near-indestructible robustness of GBA cartridges), but worse again than this is the fact that the act of slipping in a new game involves removing the back of the unit, taking out the battery and sliding the game home into a SIM card style slot. This, needless to say, is a stunningly bad piece of design and the need to juggle about five separate bits of kit in order to play a new game isn't going to win the unit any fans."
Here's a more complete list :
3D Tetris (U)
Croach, The (PD)
Galactic Pinball (JU)
Golf (U)
Insane Mouse Mansion (J)
Jack Bros (J)
Jack Bros (U)
Mario Clash (JU)
Mario's Tennis (JU)
Nester's Funky Bowling (U)
Panic Bomber (J)
Panic Bomber (U)
Reality Boy Demo 1 (PD)
Reality Boy Demo 2 (PD)
Red Alarm (J)
Red Alarm (U)
Space Squash (J)
T&E Virtual Golf (J)
Teleroboxer (JU)
V Tetris (J)
Vertical Force (J)
Vertical Force (U)
Virtual Boy Wario Land (JU)
Virtual Fishing (J)
Virtual Golf (J)
Virtual League Baseball (U)
Virtual League Baseball (U)
Virtual Pong (PD)
Virtual Pro Yakyuu '95 (J)
Virtual-E Cursor Demo (PD)
Waterworld (U)
(J) is Jap, (U) is USA, and (JU) means the same cart was released in both countries.
You need an Emulator/EEPROM device to play the (PD) games, as they were never released as carts.
You are remembering the Konix Multisystem
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=konix+multisystem
Some computers sold on eBay are sold for the data [ebay.com].
And if you look at the auction, you'll see it has zero bids.
It's been relisted with a much lower price - and it ended with zero bids.
You've just proved that data, to be worth almost nothing :)
In which case, why didn't you buy the Lifetime Subscription, in with the box ? Only a fool would pay the $12.95 a month and whine about it !
No RGB or Component ? How is anyone supposed to get a decent picture out of it ? Composite is a joke, and SVideo isn't exactly good !
Only £10 including postage, for UK folks !
http://poves.com/mindcandy/order.html
Modern burners already ARE using UDMA. That's a theoretical maximum of 33MB/second. Heck, even my ooooooooold Toshiba DVD-ROM is UDMA 33, and that's only a reader !
Disk space is also not a problem. Standard Vorbis will get down to 8kbps, which put quite a bit of files in 8M. I have written prototypes of new Vorbis encoders that will go down to 4kbps mono with pretty acceptable quality. This gets you a full album in 2M. Three albums at least on a 8M Palm.
The big issue is the CPU. Old Palms have a 33Mhz 68k processor. All that I have seen could be overclocked without risk to at least 45Mhz, and since we're pushing the limits of the hardware anyway, let that make us our target.
The question is if a 45Mhz 68k can decode a 6-8khz sample rate mono Vorbis 1.0 file. We're not looking for full Vorbis 1.0 compatibility remember, we just want to play those files, which have significantly less hardware demands than for example an 128k stereo 44khz Ogg. Since we're not going to need 16bits output either, you can make compromises in the decoder trading quality for speed.
£50 says the result will sound like a Rhino farting contest.
Here in the UK, you can.
When you sign up for a contract, (Mobile Phone or whatever) you have 14 days to change your mind. This is the law - it's not optional ! Get your new phone, and drive around and test it. If the coverage is pants, then take it back for a refund (providing it's in immaculate condition) - it's that simple.
Er, yes you can.
100+ in stock at time of posting, and if we have them here in the UK, you've sure as hell got em in the US !
http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?action=info&p=2 8635&t=845&l=2&AvdID=1&CatID=10&GrpID=5&s= pl
I hope you aren't on the side of the subscriber here. There's no way he could have possibly listened to those 200 albums in 3 days (at ~1 hour per album, that's 8 solid days of music !) so they were right to ban him.
Surely they're all pretty much equally profitable ?
If you can afford to spend £100 a month on Music/DVDs, then you can still only afford £100 a month if they change the distro model. Result is that the Entertainment companies get £100 a month from you, no matter HOW they distribute the stuff !
Pretty-much an infinite amount of time. Don't you think the manufacturers will have though of this ? They're obviously not gonna come wrapped like todays "normal" discs ! If a bunch ever did get "punctured", then they'd just, duh, make some more ! What do you think currently happens when a load of rejects turn up ? They certainly don't just say "Aw, sorry. All your discs are screwed".
Score:5 ? Yeah, right...
I was assuming the 100Mb line was your own personal connection - if so, it would indeed cost a jillion dollars a month !
You don't have a 100Mb net connection. At ~12MB per second, it would cost you a jillion dollars a month !
You're forgiven, however, because you own the film "Kids" on DVD - one of my faves :)
They seem to be missing the point of the digital output. Somebody should tell them that the SP-DIF on my PC's £10 CD-ROM drive, outputs the EXACT same string of 0's and 1's !
Granted, the error correction algorithms may be better on the "CD Transport", but this is a non-issue if you treat your CDs correctly.
Score:4, Interesting ??? The post is 100% WRONG !
Er, yes it does. You can't hold a conversation with "lag" !
The data needs to get there now, or not at all.
Precisely. This is a completely opposite viewpoint to the first statement you just made !!!!
It's okay to have a quarter-second drop in a phone call.
No it's not ! Imagine two people trying to hold a conversation. Both their voices randomly go silent for 1/4 second periods....
Huh ? There's no such thing. Your TV doesn't care what the resolution of the input is, as long as the Horizontal and Vertical frequencies are correct. (60Hz Vertical, and I forget the Horizontal)
How about a TV that reacts poorly to Macrovision encoded signal?
Um, games consoles don't output Macrovision when they're playing games ! In any case - such a TV also wouldn't work with a VCR/DVD/etc.
How about a TV with only RF input as opposed to composite video input (yeah, I still see those)?
How about a TV that cuts too much off the sides and corners of the image?
Ridiculous. If you can't afford a decent TV, then you sure as hell can't afford a $200 Games Console, with $40 each games !!
60Hz is 60 times per second. That's 0.017 seconds per frame, or 17ms. Your LCD isn't capable of displaying a game a 60fps, or even a 'laced TV image - also 60Hz. A good CRT can update the screen at 100Hz (10ms), in the same resolution your TFT is running. Your screen is certainly not "plenty good" - it's not even close !