Unreal Tournament 2003 used Ogg Vorbis for its audio, for example. Somewhere in its directory structure of its installation, you will find the audio saved in none other than vorbis format.
I predict that many other games will follow suit becuase vorbis is smaller in size while being comparable in quality to mp3, and with modern computers being extremely fast already, the additional overhead that decoding ogg vorbis creates would not be significant.
If you buy music using iTunes, you get unlimited burns to CD, and then you can rip it and play it on whatever machine/platform you like. I can't believe that people use the reason of having a closed, DRM-infested format for criticizing ITMS when clearly, there is a very easy way out of it: burn to disc.
Moreover, you would be suprised at how clear the 128kbps AAC is. Just for the sake of testing, I own a copy of a song (ATB - Don't Stop) on CD, and I bought another copy on ITMS and burned it onto a CD. I listened to both, and I honestly could not tell which was which.
In the article text it says that for Britain it was 79 pence, which is somewhat better than 99, but still more expensive than if it had been paid for in euros.
There are a number of outstanding loopholes in almost all linux systems, or all *nix systems for that matter. Doing an infinite fork, or making a function recur indefinately will cause the system to mess around with swap memory, slowing it down to the point of inaccessibilty.
For systems where the users can compile and execute their own programs, the users must have some level of trust, where any responsible admin would know their identity, etc. . On public access systems, for example, no compiling or usage of uploaded binaries is allowed (or shouldn't be, for any competent admin) Sure this is a big deal, but it won't cause as many problems as say, the sasser worm for Windows, or any remote exploit.
You have obviously NEVER EVEN been to Austin. This city itself is enormous, with a population of well over a million by now. The UT campus is a mere 500 acres north of downtown (not counting the other properties), with a total population of less than 100,000. Sure, its a huge university, the largest in the world, but it is still just one part of a much larger city.
What you're saying might be true for towns say, Bryan College Station in Texas, where Texas A&M is located.
Mine even had a CDROM drive! It used case caddys (cases that you put CD's in so that they become some sort of cartridge) and operated at CDDA read speed, 1x.
What was more interesting is the fact that it was external, and came with an ISA card that converted IDE into the propietary exterior interface (I think it had 50 pins), while most modern external optical drives can be connected using either 4 (USB) or 6 (Firewire) pins, and can achieve much faster speeds, which shows not only an improvement in optical technology, but also the underlying interface.
Though I think that comparing things to the iPod is a bit overdone as well, I would'nt go as far as to say that nobody cares about looks either. If nobody really cared about looks, then why is it that the iPod is popular? As "crazy" as this sounds, for many people, features and price are not the paramount issues when selecting which product to buy.
This is an excellent device in terms of features, I agree, but on a personal note I would have to agree with the poster of the article and say that IMO, its looks could use some improvement. The control panels on both sides with the screen sandwiched in-between looks somewhat awkward.
I tihnk that the grandparent poster made a bad point by comparing software development to medicine, because in essence, it is completely different. While there is a lot of room to make mistakes in software developement, and the ability to learn though trial and error, the same is not true for mecidine, there is little, if any, margin for error.
However, open source software is created by not just hobbyists and organizations of them, but also by corporations. Take MySQL AB, for example, their software development process is based on an open source model, and their database software is one of, if not the most widely deployed. The same could be true for pharmeceudicals, it just matters if a corporation can find a way to make it work.
Moreover, I cannot help but feel slightly insulted by your commentary on medicine and anatomy takes years of study to understand, as same is true for computer and electrical engineering, or any field for, that matter. Anyone can use a computer, and even begin to develop software for one, but in order to truly understand how computer systems operate and develop effective software, it requires many years of undergraduate and graduate study. To assume that all open source developers are the unwashed masses that don't have any formal education in the field is to make a horrible mistake. You would be suprised at the level of education of the average contributor to the Linux kernel, for example.
Well, it seems that justification of claims is obviously something that nobody takes into consideration on this thread.
Not to be overzealous, but if Linux is such a horribly done clone of UNIX, then why is it the most widespread and most used *NIX-esque operating system around, even more than BSD? No, seriously, please tell me.
Even though Mac OS X does not give the administrator as much control as other *NIX like systems (admin is not root, for example), it is possible to use the "system preferences" to limit the access of other users.
You can prevent them from rearranging the desktop, writing to any folder except their own in the/Users/ directory, and taking off/putting stuff onto the dock. At a lab that I administered for a while, I just put a student and admin account on each computer, and it worked well. The users were able to use applications like InDesign and Photoshop perfectly, and they kept their files on USB flash drives.
With all this propaganda that the RIAA, BSA, and similar organizations trying to indoctrinate us with, I'm finding that the term "piracy" is being thrown around much loosely nowadays.
The term for faking currency is "forgery" with fake currency being "counterfeit". "Piracy" has nothing to do with it.
Both the iPod's processors are embedded within a single IC, produced by PortalPlayer. This unit _is capable_ of encoding MP3 audio in realtime, but its just that Apple did not implement this into their software.
Even though Apple themselves may not support Vorbis audio, ever, the community will implement it if it is possible. Go check out iPodLinux. It has much promise in delivering the things that the Apple stock firmware fails at so miserably.
I notice that with my passwords, which are random alphanumeric sequences, I don't really memorize them either. If I need to write it down or say it out loud, I just can't do it becuase I don't really memorize the password itself, but rather, the movements needed to type it out.
Though this is probably not based on the same principle, as I consciouslly know my passwords, just not in plaintext form, it has the same effect, to where in both cases, I am prevented from revealing the password under everyday circumstances.
Considering the price, size, and battery life, I don't see why someone should get this and not a full laptop, because its obvious that there is no advantage to buying what amounts to essentially a DRM-crppled mobile device capable of playing movies. Some more recent laptops have battery lives of up to 5 hours when doing things like listening to music and such.
I think that the niche market Creative is aiming for here is PVR, except the feautre here is that its portable, and capable of showing video without being connected to a seperate display. That, in itself, is probably a poor choice considering that the price far exceeds that of TiVo, etc.
I remember back when Microsoft touted that these media players running Windows would be the death of the iPod, but it seems less and less likely now. The only people who could possibly use this device as a music player primarily must have deep pockets (in both the physical and metaphorical sense).
The whole purpose of getting this to work was to get an OS capable of taking advantage of the 64 bit processor in the G5. Right now, even the newest version of Mac OS X does not support 64 bit instructions. Applications that were specifically compiled for the G5, like photoshop, claim to be able to be optimized, but even with this, the 64 bit instructions are broken down into 2 32 bit instructions by the operating system.
So, yes, even though OS X has much better functionality on Mac computers than Linux because they are on their home turf, with the hardware specially tailored for the OS and vice versa, this distro of Linux can take advantage of the 64 bit processing, something that the stock OS lacks.
Or I could have gotten it all wrong... Go ahead and flame.
Almost any external hard disk that is either USB or firewire works perfectly under linux. This is because for the most part, these drives follow open standards. I have never had a problem using external storage with my Linux box, and that includes FW drives like the iPod.
I don't know where you're reading that "all the common ones seem to require a slew of hacks to get working properly", but I, for one, have never had to use any hack to get an external drive to work. Just plug it in and mount it.
Though the iPod is popular, and to many, overrated, let's not forget about its actual merits besides its popularity and aesthetic value.
The iPod interface is unquestionably the easiest to use and most intuitive user interface of any portable digital audio player out there, with even the most technologically illerate people able to figure out how to use it in a few minutes with no guidiance.
Moreover, the sound quality of the iPod is excellent. Using completely objective and emperical tests of sound quality, Stereophile Magazine has concluded that the iPod is amongst the best there is in terms of sound quality, beating many high quality CD players in some respects.
There is even better software out there called "StepMania" and it functions almost perfectly, being an exact clone, if not better, of the official DDR interface.
There are both Windows and Linux versions avaliable, as well as source code. Avaliable here.
It dosn't come with any song/step files, however, you can make your own or download ones made by others. Word is, entire official DDR mixes for Stepmania are avaliable out there on the net.
I know that a lot of people from the United States have trained themselves to think opression and censorship whenever something about China turns up, but this time, it is _NOT_ about any of that stuff. Its about a buncha teens who have resorted to extreme measures to get access to the internet.
Now, it is logical to initially think that this is an effort to limit free speech or what have you, but really, its more of a health concern for young people. Internet "cafes" in China are definately not healthy places. They're about the equivalent in seediness to a bar here in the US. From what I have seen, small children were playing computer games for hours on end in a dark, hardly sanitary environment. For children, its almost like an addictive drug, compelling them to lie, cheat, and perform other dishonest activities just so they could get more computer usage time.
I'm suprised this was not brought up yet. Children can still access the internet (or whatever of it that has not been blocked by the great firewall), just not at internet cafes.
Word. I find it to be a perfectly livable place. People can go ahead and lambast China all day for having an opressive government, but what they fail to see is a nation that is becoming more developed even as we speak, with a government that is growing more and more moderate as younger generations take it over.
I agree that they are not polar opposites, and you put what I meant to say in a better way (that's why I mentioned that the political spectrum is more of a loop, where the most radical are pretty much indistingushable)
However, my real problem with the parent poster calling the Chinese government "fascist" is that he/she somehow thinks that fascism is worse than communism, when really, they are just two underlying methods to the same goal: total state control.
You're making it sound like Fascism is somehow worse than Communism, but fail to understand that both "systems" are actually ideologies that are on totally opposite ends of the political spectrum.
Communism is far leftist, radical, while Fascism is far rightist, reactionary. However, one could argue that the political spectrum is more of a circle, as if one goes too far to either end, it loops around.
Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany followed the ideologies of Communism and Fascism respectively, and took seperate paths in both economic and political development. While the Soviets pretty much did away with all private enterprise during the Civil War of 1917-1920, only to reimplemenet it again to a limited extent in Lenin's New Economic Policy out of necessity, Nazi Germany continued with its capitalist economy. The Soviets created an entirely atheist state, while the Fascists, at least on the surface, made good with the Catholic Church, as can be seen in the case of Mussolini. Women were treated as more or less equals in Soviet Russia for purposes of employment, whereas the Fascist nations wanted women to serve a domestic duty.
The term you're probably looking for to describe the Chinese government is "Socialist," as the economy it created is a mixture of free enterprise and state enterprise. Clearly, the CCP is not fascist, because they are too leftist in their approach, totally lacking any conservatism in their ways, often attempting to literally destroy the history of the nation in order to exert control. Although this may sound absurd, women are actually supposed to be seen as equals in the eyes of the government. Is that Fascist? Definately not.
As immoral and utilitarian the following may sound, it was the state of political affairs during the cold war, and continues to be this way.
Both Soviet Russia and the United States had comparable amounts of nuclear weapons, enough to destroy the other several times over by the late 1960's. What was preventing them from simply firing the missiles and ending the war forever was the fact that the other side could, and would retaliate. Even the Soviets were not willing to spend a significant amount of their population concentrated within urban areas for the chance of total victory.
When the Soviets announced development into an ABM (anti ballistic missile) system in the Stragetic Arms Limitatons Talks in 1969, it was not well recieved by the United States. The existance of such a system would mean that there would be no imperiative at hand for one side to annihilate the other and claim victory. The US, at this time, put research into such a technology as well, though notably less advanced than today's (it was called "setinel," and consisted of a pair of missiles designed to intercept), it was scrapped because it could not guarentee that major urban areas could be protected.
Such a situation still exists today. The number of nations that have nuclear weapons is higher than ever, not just the Soviet Union and a handful of other nations outside of the US. To think that the United States would never do such a thing like annihilate an entire population is to be naive. There were such plans during the Cold War to literally wipe Russia off the face of the planet. To other nations, this system poses a greater threat than nuclear proliferation, as it nullifies their political leverage in the world arena.
Though you might not like this idea, I tend to use it a lot because it does not involve actually "reading" the book, but acutally listening to it.
If you have a text file and Mac OS X, there is software than can use those voices (Fred, et. al.) to synthisize speech from plain text (PG). It comes out as AIFF, which can be converted to AAC or MP3. Then, this can be played on any digital audio player with enough capacity. One d isadvantage is that the voices are so monotonous that its impossible to actually enjoy a book. That's why its only useful for "reading" books for an English class, for example.
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I predict that many other games will follow suit becuase vorbis is smaller in size while being comparable in quality to mp3, and with modern computers being extremely fast already, the additional overhead that decoding ogg vorbis creates would not be significant.
Moreover, you would be suprised at how clear the 128kbps AAC is. Just for the sake of testing, I own a copy of a song (ATB - Don't Stop) on CD, and I bought another copy on ITMS and burned it onto a CD. I listened to both, and I honestly could not tell which was which.
In the article text it says that for Britain it was 79 pence, which is somewhat better than 99, but still more expensive than if it had been paid for in euros.
For systems where the users can compile and execute their own programs, the users must have some level of trust, where any responsible admin would know their identity, etc. . On public access systems, for example, no compiling or usage of uploaded binaries is allowed (or shouldn't be, for any competent admin) Sure this is a big deal, but it won't cause as many problems as say, the sasser worm for Windows, or any remote exploit.
What you're saying might be true for towns say, Bryan College Station in Texas, where Texas A&M is located.
What was more interesting is the fact that it was external, and came with an ISA card that converted IDE into the propietary exterior interface (I think it had 50 pins), while most modern external optical drives can be connected using either 4 (USB) or 6 (Firewire) pins, and can achieve much faster speeds, which shows not only an improvement in optical technology, but also the underlying interface.
Though I think that comparing things to the iPod is a bit overdone as well, I would'nt go as far as to say that nobody cares about looks either. If nobody really cared about looks, then why is it that the iPod is popular? As "crazy" as this sounds, for many people, features and price are not the paramount issues when selecting which product to buy.
This is an excellent device in terms of features, I agree, but on a personal note I would have to agree with the poster of the article and say that IMO, its looks could use some improvement. The control panels on both sides with the screen sandwiched in-between looks somewhat awkward.
However, open source software is created by not just hobbyists and organizations of them, but also by corporations. Take MySQL AB, for example, their software development process is based on an open source model, and their database software is one of, if not the most widely deployed. The same could be true for pharmeceudicals, it just matters if a corporation can find a way to make it work.
Moreover, I cannot help but feel slightly insulted by your commentary on medicine and anatomy takes years of study to understand, as same is true for computer and electrical engineering, or any field for, that matter. Anyone can use a computer, and even begin to develop software for one, but in order to truly understand how computer systems operate and develop effective software, it requires many years of undergraduate and graduate study. To assume that all open source developers are the unwashed masses that don't have any formal education in the field is to make a horrible mistake. You would be suprised at the level of education of the average contributor to the Linux kernel, for example.
Not to be overzealous, but if Linux is such a horribly done clone of UNIX, then why is it the most widespread and most used *NIX-esque operating system around, even more than BSD? No, seriously, please tell me.
You can prevent them from rearranging the desktop, writing to any folder except their own in the /Users/ directory, and taking off/putting stuff onto the dock. At a lab that I administered for a while, I just put a student and admin account on each computer, and it worked well. The users were able to use applications like InDesign and Photoshop perfectly, and they kept their files on USB flash drives.
The term for faking currency is "forgery" with fake currency being "counterfeit". "Piracy" has nothing to do with it.
Even though Apple themselves may not support Vorbis audio, ever, the community will implement it if it is possible. Go check out iPodLinux. It has much promise in delivering the things that the Apple stock firmware fails at so miserably.
Though this is probably not based on the same principle, as I consciouslly know my passwords, just not in plaintext form, it has the same effect, to where in both cases, I am prevented from revealing the password under everyday circumstances.
I think that the niche market Creative is aiming for here is PVR, except the feautre here is that its portable, and capable of showing video without being connected to a seperate display. That, in itself, is probably a poor choice considering that the price far exceeds that of TiVo, etc.
I remember back when Microsoft touted that these media players running Windows would be the death of the iPod, but it seems less and less likely now. The only people who could possibly use this device as a music player primarily must have deep pockets (in both the physical and metaphorical sense).
So, yes, even though OS X has much better functionality on Mac computers than Linux because they are on their home turf, with the hardware specially tailored for the OS and vice versa, this distro of Linux can take advantage of the 64 bit processing, something that the stock OS lacks.
Or I could have gotten it all wrong... Go ahead and flame.
I don't know where you're reading that "all the common ones seem to require a slew of hacks to get working properly", but I, for one, have never had to use any hack to get an external drive to work. Just plug it in and mount it.
The iPod interface is unquestionably the easiest to use and most intuitive user interface of any portable digital audio player out there, with even the most technologically illerate people able to figure out how to use it in a few minutes with no guidiance.
Moreover, the sound quality of the iPod is excellent. Using completely objective and emperical tests of sound quality, Stereophile Magazine has concluded that the iPod is amongst the best there is in terms of sound quality, beating many high quality CD players in some respects.
There are both Windows and Linux versions avaliable, as well as source code. Avaliable here.
It dosn't come with any song/step files, however, you can make your own or download ones made by others. Word is, entire official DDR mixes for Stepmania are avaliable out there on the net.
Thus, in the time that you could have been awake because of a $2 can of energy beverage, you could be losing THOUSANDS of dollars doing nothing!
Now, it is logical to initially think that this is an effort to limit free speech or what have you, but really, its more of a health concern for young people. Internet "cafes" in China are definately not healthy places. They're about the equivalent in seediness to a bar here in the US. From what I have seen, small children were playing computer games for hours on end in a dark, hardly sanitary environment. For children, its almost like an addictive drug, compelling them to lie, cheat, and perform other dishonest activities just so they could get more computer usage time.
I'm suprised this was not brought up yet. Children can still access the internet (or whatever of it that has not been blocked by the great firewall), just not at internet cafes.
Word. I find it to be a perfectly livable place. People can go ahead and lambast China all day for having an opressive government, but what they fail to see is a nation that is becoming more developed even as we speak, with a government that is growing more and more moderate as younger generations take it over.
However, my real problem with the parent poster calling the Chinese government "fascist" is that he/she somehow thinks that fascism is worse than communism, when really, they are just two underlying methods to the same goal: total state control.
Communism is far leftist, radical, while Fascism is far rightist, reactionary. However, one could argue that the political spectrum is more of a circle, as if one goes too far to either end, it loops around.
Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany followed the ideologies of Communism and Fascism respectively, and took seperate paths in both economic and political development. While the Soviets pretty much did away with all private enterprise during the Civil War of 1917-1920, only to reimplemenet it again to a limited extent in Lenin's New Economic Policy out of necessity, Nazi Germany continued with its capitalist economy. The Soviets created an entirely atheist state, while the Fascists, at least on the surface, made good with the Catholic Church, as can be seen in the case of Mussolini. Women were treated as more or less equals in Soviet Russia for purposes of employment, whereas the Fascist nations wanted women to serve a domestic duty.
The term you're probably looking for to describe the Chinese government is "Socialist," as the economy it created is a mixture of free enterprise and state enterprise. Clearly, the CCP is not fascist, because they are too leftist in their approach, totally lacking any conservatism in their ways, often attempting to literally destroy the history of the nation in order to exert control. Although this may sound absurd, women are actually supposed to be seen as equals in the eyes of the government. Is that Fascist? Definately not.
Both Soviet Russia and the United States had comparable amounts of nuclear weapons, enough to destroy the other several times over by the late 1960's. What was preventing them from simply firing the missiles and ending the war forever was the fact that the other side could, and would retaliate. Even the Soviets were not willing to spend a significant amount of their population concentrated within urban areas for the chance of total victory.
When the Soviets announced development into an ABM (anti ballistic missile) system in the Stragetic Arms Limitatons Talks in 1969, it was not well recieved by the United States. The existance of such a system would mean that there would be no imperiative at hand for one side to annihilate the other and claim victory. The US, at this time, put research into such a technology as well, though notably less advanced than today's (it was called "setinel," and consisted of a pair of missiles designed to intercept), it was scrapped because it could not guarentee that major urban areas could be protected.
Such a situation still exists today. The number of nations that have nuclear weapons is higher than ever, not just the Soviet Union and a handful of other nations outside of the US. To think that the United States would never do such a thing like annihilate an entire population is to be naive. There were such plans during the Cold War to literally wipe Russia off the face of the planet. To other nations, this system poses a greater threat than nuclear proliferation, as it nullifies their political leverage in the world arena.
If you have a text file and Mac OS X, there is software than can use those voices (Fred, et. al.) to synthisize speech from plain text (PG). It comes out as AIFF, which can be converted to AAC or MP3. Then, this can be played on any digital audio player with enough capacity. One d isadvantage is that the voices are so monotonous that its impossible to actually enjoy a book. That's why its only useful for "reading" books for an English class, for example.