There are only 38 minutes until The Great Slashdot Blackout. During all of sunday, nobody should do anything more on Slashdot than load the front page. No submitting news, no commenting on posts, no voting on polls, nothing! Let's show Slashdot that they need to change!
Regards, Guspaz.
Moving back to CD-ROM drives, multiple lasers IS possible. How do I know? Guess what Kenwood used to make their 72X TrueX drive? That's right, multiple lasers, and it only spun the disc at 24X I think.
Regards, Guspaz.
My take is that Mac OS X is not based on Linux, so they can't say "Puts other Linux boxes to/dev/null". Also, people might not understand if they said "Puts other *nix boxes to/dev/null".
I particularly like the images of Saturn.
Though, I wonder what the images look like raw before they've been post-processed...
Regards, Guspaz.
PS: Looks like the page's been slashdotted.
By "daily" update they just mean that Steam will download a fresh copy of the HalfLife EXE every day. So no hack can stay installed for longer than a day.
Regards, Guspaz.
I had the good fortune to be allowed to be a beta tester of Steam. It works quite well.
What happens is you download a small (Was ~1MB) installer program. This installed the Steam client software onto your computer. You then chose which games you were going to "subscribe" to (Yes, you have to pay timed fees by the game, but it was free during the beta).
My largest complaints are probably space and time:p Each game gets a cache folder which is by default 500MB. So, your Half-Life folder is 500MB, your TFC folder is 500MB, your CS folder is 500MB... It adds up.
The other is time... There is no way that anything short of ethernet-based internet access would be able to rivel the speed of a CD. First of all, I really doubt they are getting 4:1 compression on that data. If they were, they'd make more money licensing THAT then they would selling the games! Anyhow, when you first play the game, it takes a while on my 1mbit DSL connection to download everything (Luckily they have good servers, so I get full speed). Maybe 3-5 minutes for the initial data. Then, the other annoying fact is that you have to download the maps before you play them if you've not before. So games usually have a bunch of people spectating in the beginning while everyone downloads and connects (It takes longer even when you do have the map, and it still says "Downloading and initializing" for some reason...)
Nevertheless, I was impressed. While the delays were annoying, it was nothing like having to download an entire 500MB game to play... I myself only had to worry about downloading 1MB.
I'd also like to comment on single-player; I was very impressed by the experience. Unlike multiplayer, single player loads ahead while you're playing. So once you download the initial footprint, and you're playing, you can just keep playing. The only way you'd know that you're not playing it off a CD is that your modem lights are blinking madly... The experience was completely seamless with no pauses for downloading, ever. Even the original CD music was included in MP3 format.
Regards, Adam.
Just submitted a lengthy story about this. Oh well.
On another note, have you signed the futurama petition? Fox is canceling it. http://www.petitiononline.com/futufu/petition.html
PS: First comment? By me? Wow!
I disagree with you. A poorly done DivX 4.12 encode might be blurrier than a properly done SBC DivX 3.11, but a properly done DivX 4.12 encode is quite a bit better than a properly done SBC DivX 3.11 encode.
DivX 4.12 produces higher quality encodes at lower bitrates, has better post-processing, is more immune to audio de-syncing, and finally has two-pass encoding.
I will admit though that there are some isolated instances where 3.11 is usefull, but these are becoming fewer and fewer as DivX 4 progresses.
Regards, Guspaz.
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There are only 38 minutes until The Great Slashdot Blackout. During all of sunday, nobody should do anything more on Slashdot than load the front page. No submitting news, no commenting on posts, no voting on polls, nothing! Let's show Slashdot that they need to change! Regards, Guspaz.
Moving back to CD-ROM drives, multiple lasers IS possible. How do I know? Guess what Kenwood used to make their 72X TrueX drive? That's right, multiple lasers, and it only spun the disc at 24X I think. Regards, Guspaz.
My take is that Mac OS X is not based on Linux, so they can't say "Puts other Linux boxes to /dev/null". Also, people might not understand if they said "Puts other *nix boxes to /dev/null".
Seems to me like they had little choice.
Regards, Adam.
... Mark Twaine wrote Star Wars. It's good because of what it IS, not who WROTE it. Regards, Guspaz.
I particularly like the images of Saturn. Though, I wonder what the images look like raw before they've been post-processed... Regards, Guspaz. PS: Looks like the page's been slashdotted.
By "daily" update they just mean that Steam will download a fresh copy of the HalfLife EXE every day. So no hack can stay installed for longer than a day. Regards, Guspaz.
The beta never asks for a credit card number. How do I know? I'm in the beta. I don't have a credit card number. End of story. Regards. Guspaz.
I had the good fortune to be allowed to be a beta tester of Steam. It works quite well. What happens is you download a small (Was ~1MB) installer program. This installed the Steam client software onto your computer. You then chose which games you were going to "subscribe" to (Yes, you have to pay timed fees by the game, but it was free during the beta). My largest complaints are probably space and time :p Each game gets a cache folder which is by default 500MB. So, your Half-Life folder is 500MB, your TFC folder is 500MB, your CS folder is 500MB... It adds up.
The other is time... There is no way that anything short of ethernet-based internet access would be able to rivel the speed of a CD. First of all, I really doubt they are getting 4:1 compression on that data. If they were, they'd make more money licensing THAT then they would selling the games! Anyhow, when you first play the game, it takes a while on my 1mbit DSL connection to download everything (Luckily they have good servers, so I get full speed). Maybe 3-5 minutes for the initial data. Then, the other annoying fact is that you have to download the maps before you play them if you've not before. So games usually have a bunch of people spectating in the beginning while everyone downloads and connects (It takes longer even when you do have the map, and it still says "Downloading and initializing" for some reason...)
Nevertheless, I was impressed. While the delays were annoying, it was nothing like having to download an entire 500MB game to play... I myself only had to worry about downloading 1MB.
I'd also like to comment on single-player; I was very impressed by the experience. Unlike multiplayer, single player loads ahead while you're playing. So once you download the initial footprint, and you're playing, you can just keep playing. The only way you'd know that you're not playing it off a CD is that your modem lights are blinking madly... The experience was completely seamless with no pauses for downloading, ever. Even the original CD music was included in MP3 format.
Regards, Adam.
I believe that they should let you flash the board's rom with a Mac ROM (Obtained legally from your own Apple PPC of course).
This would let people run Macintosh software on their board.
Regards, Guspaz.
Just submitted a lengthy story about this. Oh well. On another note, have you signed the futurama petition? Fox is canceling it. http://www.petitiononline.com/futufu/petition.html
PS: First comment? By me? Wow!
I disagree with you. A poorly done DivX 4.12 encode might be blurrier than a properly done SBC DivX 3.11, but a properly done DivX 4.12 encode is quite a bit better than a properly done SBC DivX 3.11 encode. DivX 4.12 produces higher quality encodes at lower bitrates, has better post-processing, is more immune to audio de-syncing, and finally has two-pass encoding. I will admit though that there are some isolated instances where 3.11 is usefull, but these are becoming fewer and fewer as DivX 4 progresses. Regards, Guspaz.