This is a great idea. I'd be more than happy to pay modest fees per download, as opposed to searching Kazza etc and fending off spyware in the meantime.
90% of the music I listen to is from free artists on Mp3.com. I'd never have heard about them otherwise, and I pass the songs on to my friends. And for the really good ones I run across, I actually do download with the intent to buying CD's when they're a decent price.
Oh, and just a funny point, why would a well-spoken/educated individual such as Janis be using AOL?
(quote)
Times AOL shut my account down for spamming, because I was trying to answer 40-50 emails at a time quickly and efficiently: 2
(end-quote)
So equip the legs with razor-sharp protrusions or blades then? Suddenly spider-tank just becomes a lot meaner, and I would think twice about jumping on it to attack the operator then too.
I wonder if they could make something akin to those funky bots in either Matrix or Minority Report.
A bunch of big ugly sqidbots would be scary. A hundred or so tiny little metallic spiders would equally strike fear into enemy hearts
Yes, unrealistic, but an amusing thought...
---------
Beware, the anal probe!
That would be because MS Software is already a virus...
Oh... and don't forget the easter eggs, they don't cause harm (just bloat) but they're somewhat like trojans in idea.
I seem to remember problems wherein Netscape would start crapping out upon installing MS Office or IE updates... no trojans you say? Hmmm
Ok, so they can control my toaster. How about my bathroom... something that hooks to my toilet allowing a remote courtesy flush, and perhaps an emissions detector that turns on the fan?
And what happens when a REAL hacker tricks them into nuking innocent servers all over the place. I'll wait for them to attack microsoft.com, or perhaps themselves?
In that case... why not just set ourselves up with anti-DOS software. Once the first few megapings (or whatever form the hits/attacks take), quickly trace down the server, forward it's IP onto a couple thousand or so people on a custom PHP addon... and go down with guns blazing.
As long as it's not triggered too readily, we could claim protection of our own systems?
Oh, and of course... what does DoS do to the internet providers. If RIAA goes out and ping-floods the crap out of 100 customers on a provider... don't we think that perhaps they'll start feeling it to? There IS something in between transferring all that data.
(yes, this assumes they'll use a ping flood and not some weird bug, backdoor, etc etc)
This one seems to have a rather simple answer. Which came first, the word "Canadian" (in some popularity) or the Beer? Hmmm... maybe we were just called Canucks before the beer came around?
This was a stupid ruling... while Molson is a good ol' Canadian beer (eh), it certainly doesn't give them a right to everything with "Canadian" in the name. After all, what about "Canadian Airlines" or "The Great Canadian Bagel"... perhaps "Canadian 2-for-1 Pizza?".
By the standards of the original ICANN ruling, wouldn't this also give "American Airlines" (or perhaps *shudder* America online) first rights to america.biz or american.biz?
Wouldn't this be just a tad expensive? I mean, RAM is at more or less a low lately... but 700MB just for a CD-ROM cache would be a bit extreme. Not to mention DVD-ROM's... 7000MB of cache anyone?
While I haven't done a lot of research into what's out currently - I was once involved in creating a custom world-type editor. Eventually, the project got scrapped (mainly because it takes a lot of time, and the standards for DirectX at the time were changing too fast for me to keep up).
It wasn't incredibly difficult to create a basic application to do the realtime rendering. If you can get ahold of something that decompiles a.MAX or.3DS type file into simple objects (vertex/face/texture data?), you could probably make your own file-format and just make a converter. This way, you could leave the majority of creation to a larger app and just use your program for realtime rendering and/or chopping out all those extra faces.
With the speed that graphic cards are pushing out nowadays, I'm surprised at the lack of good realtime-rendered engines. Games like AVP2 etc use realtime rendered scenes... which the characters are still a bit blocky, I expect that eventually we'll all be able to make scenes near the quality of Final Fantasy the movie (something equivilent in graphics, hopefully better plot) one of these days.
Of course, one day I also expect we'll have hologram projects, but who knows when that will be...
Seems to me that if ATI is going to be making a new video card, perhaps first they should make some drivers for their old cards that actually work. I switched awhile back from a Voodoo3 3500TV to a Radeon AIW. It's a really nice card, it's got lots of features, it's fast...
it's a nice card... but the drivers are such crap that it almost never works like it's supposed to.
The win98 drivers are swell... but in XP it doesn't run anything that runs fullscreen (that used to run on the 3500... XP was a fresh install so it's not a residual driver issue) and 90% of the directX stuff doesn't work (including Warcraft III or other new games).
Note to ATI: If you make a good card, make drivers that make it work!
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This is a great idea. I'd be more than happy to pay modest fees per download, as opposed to searching Kazza etc and fending off spyware in the meantime. 90% of the music I listen to is from free artists on Mp3.com. I'd never have heard about them otherwise, and I pass the songs on to my friends. And for the really good ones I run across, I actually do download with the intent to buying CD's when they're a decent price. Oh, and just a funny point, why would a well-spoken/educated individual such as Janis be using AOL? (quote) Times AOL shut my account down for spamming, because I was trying to answer 40-50 emails at a time quickly and efficiently: 2 (end-quote)
So equip the legs with razor-sharp protrusions or blades then? Suddenly spider-tank just becomes a lot meaner, and I would think twice about jumping on it to attack the operator then too.
I wonder if they could make something akin to those funky bots in either Matrix or Minority Report. A bunch of big ugly sqidbots would be scary. A hundred or so tiny little metallic spiders would equally strike fear into enemy hearts Yes, unrealistic, but an amusing thought... --------- Beware, the anal probe!
That would be because MS Software is already a virus... Oh... and don't forget the easter eggs, they don't cause harm (just bloat) but they're somewhat like trojans in idea. I seem to remember problems wherein Netscape would start crapping out upon installing MS Office or IE updates... no trojans you say? Hmmm
Ok, so they can control my toaster. How about my bathroom... something that hooks to my toilet allowing a remote courtesy flush, and perhaps an emissions detector that turns on the fan?
And what happens when a REAL hacker tricks them into nuking innocent servers all over the place. I'll wait for them to attack microsoft.com, or perhaps themselves?
In that case... why not just set ourselves up with anti-DOS software. Once the first few megapings (or whatever form the hits/attacks take), quickly trace down the server, forward it's IP onto a couple thousand or so people on a custom PHP addon... and go down with guns blazing. As long as it's not triggered too readily, we could claim protection of our own systems? Oh, and of course... what does DoS do to the internet providers. If RIAA goes out and ping-floods the crap out of 100 customers on a provider... don't we think that perhaps they'll start feeling it to? There IS something in between transferring all that data. (yes, this assumes they'll use a ping flood and not some weird bug, backdoor, etc etc)
This one seems to have a rather simple answer. Which came first, the word "Canadian" (in some popularity) or the Beer? Hmmm... maybe we were just called Canucks before the beer came around? This was a stupid ruling... while Molson is a good ol' Canadian beer (eh), it certainly doesn't give them a right to everything with "Canadian" in the name. After all, what about "Canadian Airlines" or "The Great Canadian Bagel"... perhaps "Canadian 2-for-1 Pizza?". By the standards of the original ICANN ruling, wouldn't this also give "American Airlines" (or perhaps *shudder* America online) first rights to america.biz or american.biz?
Wouldn't this be just a tad expensive? I mean, RAM is at more or less a low lately... but 700MB just for a CD-ROM cache would be a bit extreme. Not to mention DVD-ROM's... 7000MB of cache anyone?
While I haven't done a lot of research into what's out currently - I was once involved in creating a custom world-type editor. Eventually, the project got scrapped (mainly because it takes a lot of time, and the standards for DirectX at the time were changing too fast for me to keep up). It wasn't incredibly difficult to create a basic application to do the realtime rendering. If you can get ahold of something that decompiles a .MAX or .3DS type file into simple objects (vertex/face/texture data?), you could probably make your own file-format and just make a converter. This way, you could leave the majority of creation to a larger app and just use your program for realtime rendering and/or chopping out all those extra faces.
With the speed that graphic cards are pushing out nowadays, I'm surprised at the lack of good realtime-rendered engines. Games like AVP2 etc use realtime rendered scenes... which the characters are still a bit blocky, I expect that eventually we'll all be able to make scenes near the quality of Final Fantasy the movie (something equivilent in graphics, hopefully better plot) one of these days.
Of course, one day I also expect we'll have hologram projects, but who knows when that will be...
Seems to me that if ATI is going to be making a new video card, perhaps first they should make some drivers for their old cards that actually work. I switched awhile back from a Voodoo3 3500TV to a Radeon AIW. It's a really nice card, it's got lots of features, it's fast... it's a nice card... but the drivers are such crap that it almost never works like it's supposed to. The win98 drivers are swell... but in XP it doesn't run anything that runs fullscreen (that used to run on the 3500... XP was a fresh install so it's not a residual driver issue) and 90% of the directX stuff doesn't work (including Warcraft III or other new games). Note to ATI: If you make a good card, make drivers that make it work!