I would bet not, so you are just calling them kids' books because that is what you heard.
I initially saw them as children's books as well, but when I did read them I enjoyed them. Sure it's not great literature, but it is amusing, well-written lecture.
It seems *you* are the sheep, for not even judging these books on their own merits.
They may make use of the same medium, but they are NOT CDs as defined by the original standards.
Customers should take care not to buy CDs without the official CD label, and make use of their right to return defective disks that illegally carry this label.
I have returned the last disc I bought, (and got a cash refund I may add) since it was one of those annoying 'protected CDs', was NOT labelled as such, and refused to play on my Pioneer system. I'll have to get the tracks through Kazaa now, and burn them on a disc myself, since the official distribution is incompatible with my sound system.
The problem with the current law is that you cannot win from a company like Marvel -- they can afford the legal costs, but a normal human being cannot. So it does not matter that everyone knows they do not have an argument: you can't win anyway.
Cases like this are a win-win situation for the companies: in almost all cases they scare the poor person they are scre^H^H^H^Hsueing off and the case never has to go to court, and in those few cases where the defendant thinks he stands a chance in court, they still win because the defendant cannot pay the legal costs to keep up with the company, which can keep the case going almost indefinately. No way will the defendant get a pro deo lawyer against Money.
It's as if you're in the debating team, and your opponent pulls a gun -- even if you have the upper hand, he'll still win by default:/
I thought skins were like fan art, in that they fell under 'fair use', as long as no attempt was made to make profit from them. At least, those made completely by the fans themselves -- screencaps from movies or games, or scans from the comics might be different.
Very depressing to see that current 'copyright' law is only being used to prevent the fans from trying to live their fantasies.
Many games have always had good music, just look at the C&C series -- some of those tracks I still have in my playlist.
But real soundtracks for games? Offhand, I can only think of few games where the music so impressed me I bought it: 'The Longest Journey' is the most recent example, but the 'No One Lives Forever' games also had good music which really added to the experience, the original songs were exactly like the 60's songs of the world Kate Archer is supposed to live in.
As for licensing existing music -- how many games really fit with such music? There's only so many GTAs. I'd be willing to bet most movies have an original soundtrack, or at least a number of songs written especially for the movie. Why should another visual medium be more suited for 'recycled' music?
The article mentions 'Enter the Matrix' as an example of a game with a soundtrack, but I can't say the music of movie or game really did something for me.
Games are just like movies: those with great soundtracks are those where the soundtrack has been conceived as an integral part of the product from the start, but most only seem to have had some ambience painted on, perhaps with one good theme at most.
If more games come with complete --and original-- soundtracks, that will finally be a reason to buy the deluxe editions again: all too often I preorder a 'special edition' only to find some cheap addons.
MacIE was the best browser Microsoft ever made: it was nearly 100% CSS1-compatible, and shared none of the WinIE's vulnerabilities.
Not to mention it had far better HTML (standard) support than WinIE, better PNG handling, a good DOM level 1 implementation, and support for ECMA 262, not "Javascript" or "JScript".
Tantek Ãelik and team did a wonderful job, and it's a real bad decision by the Seattle Moloch to axe their one product you cannot complain about in all fairness.
Microsoft should have based WinIE 6 on MacIE5.
I hope the people that worked on MacIE are the ones that will build the next-gen IE, and not those incompetent hacks who made the Windows versions.
A new MIME Type is completely unneccessary for it: PNGCrushed images are normal PNGs -- it simply takes those last steps most PNG creating programs forget.
If I create PNG images, I do so with the Gimp, and only save them as PNG when done editing. Then of course I apply an indexed palette (if necessary), and use maximum compression.
As to why the 'algorithm' isn't built in -- ask Adobe et al. From what I read in this topic Photoshop doesn't even allow you to control the level of compression!
But like PNG (or SVG), MNG seems to be doomed to be a failure: people don't use it because there is no good implementation, and there is no good implementation because people don't use it:(
... if saved as truecolour images. What really killed PNG, imnsho, was that the first graphics programs that implemented it simply did not allow users to create indexed PNG files. An 8-bit PNG image is smaller than an 8-bit GIF.
What many people also seem to forget, is that there is no excuse not to safe your PNG image with maximum compression once you are done editing: there will be no image quality loss.
And of course anyone seriously creating PNG images cannot do without PNGCrush, which can shave off every single bit of bloat. A crushed PNG image will look just as good as the original, but will be only a fraction of its size, and will be a lot smaller than a GIF would (1).
1: But not smaller than the JPEG. Lossless compression cannot compete with JPEG's lossy compression, and JPEG is still the format of choice for photographic images. For everything else you can and should use PNG.
MSIE will begin to die out soon, and all other browsers have PNG support -- Mozilla even has MNG support natively. Do you really think people will 'upgrade' their Windows license just to get a browser update?
Of course MNG has even less support than PNG, but thanks to Jason Summer's MNG plugin anyone using a Netscape-plugin-compatible user agent or IE can see them.
Opera 7 is no longer platform dependant, so an OSX port is not an impossibility.
As for paying for it -- I originally bought it under a student's license, then have upgraded it whenever needed.
I do not consider $39 to be a high prize for quality software -- many games I buy are more expensive, and I use them a lot less. In the case of Opera, I'd say the 40 bucks is all worth it -- no other browser even comes close for me.
"Stop/Reload use the same button, depending on whether or not the page is loaded. Why didn't anyone else think of this?"
Opera has this. Has had it at least since version 4 (and I think since version 2, but I don't have those versions installed). And it is extremely easy to combine more functions into one button with Opera 7.
"Three meg or so download. Remember when Opera could claim this?"
3'341'647b download for Opera 7.11 . Close enough to 'three meg or so'.
"SnapBack makes getting back to search results very easy"
As does Opera 7's 'Rewind'. I do not own a Mac alas, so cannot compare the two functions.
Looks like it does add some good new features, but I think I must agree with your concluding sentence. With the modifying statement 'browsers as we know them today'. After all, who knows what new browsers may arise once we finally get VR workstations? (Other than Gibson;-))
I thought the Unreal Engine was always supposed to be the current engine?
At least the developers made statements of that matter before. But I think DNF is using its own engine, that would explain why it is taking ages to develop.
"Safari for the Mac is one of the fastest and innovative browsers on the market."
I hear this a lot. Not intending to troll, but what is so innovative about Safari? The last time I saw something really new in browsers was Opera 7's 'Fast Forward' to match the likely next link (or work for image galleries), before that maybe Opera's 'Find in page' or Mozillas 'Type ahead find'.
What is so innovative in Safari? From what I've seen so far, it doesn't add anything new that other browsers lack.
The only advantage I see in having a XUL-based browser is that it is quite easy to add extensions to it, such as support for additional standards such as Ruby, or adding support for features left out of the main distribution, such as the 'site navigation' () bar.
Standards support is virtually identical in Gecko and Presto -- Presto does certain things a little better, Gecko has support for SVG and some other things Presto does not yet support. Unless you for some reason need SVG and MathML support, I do not see any reason to move to MF from Opera. But of course that is my opinion;-)
Alas The Browser Formerly Known As Phoenix is still at least twice as slow as Opera 7.11 on my system, so it will remain a secondary browser for me. It is certainly at least the second-best browser around!
But then again, so is every other browser which does not lie about its CSS support, and can render standards-compliant pages.
The main problem with IE is that it accepts garbage, so people keep using garbage, saying 'it works in IE'...
You *had* to mention Myst...
on
Sim-Dud?
·
· Score: 1
Uru, online ages of Myst ( http://uru.ubi.com/ ), is the one Massively Multiplayer Persistent World I am somewhat interested in -- the screenshots show it captures the D'ni feel very well, and they promise it is possible to play it without having to meet all these other people.
That, for me, is why I like singleplayer games much more than multiplayer games (or even singleplayer games with AI comrades) -- I like the singleplayer experience. Still, I'm going to wait for the first independant reviews before buying.
Whoever posted TSO fails because there are no Sims, is exactly right -- I tried the beta, and disliked it. You have to spend hours just levelling up, and I don't go play a game just to sit and wait.
Actually, InterActual has bettered its ways a lot with 2.04 (maybe earlier, haven't seen 2.01 to 2.03 myself) -- it is perfectly clear to anyone with half a brain now that the InterActual player is _only_ for the additional features.
It no longer by default takes over as your standard DVD player, and the uninstall now cleans up all its mess.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't read it unless you already know the book. :/
What else is there to do than play games?
:D
Sex? I get all I need from Leisure Suit Larry
I would bet not, so you are just calling them kids' books because that is what you heard.
I initially saw them as children's books as well, but when I did read them I enjoyed them. Sure it's not great literature, but it is amusing, well-written lecture.
It seems *you* are the sheep, for not even judging these books on their own merits.
They may make use of the same medium, but they are NOT CDs as defined by the original standards.
Customers should take care not to buy CDs without the official CD label, and make use of their right to return defective disks that illegally carry this label.
I have returned the last disc I bought, (and got a cash refund I may add) since it was one of those annoying 'protected CDs', was NOT labelled as such, and refused to play on my Pioneer system. I'll have to get the tracks through Kazaa now, and burn them on a disc myself, since the official distribution is incompatible with my sound system.
Now this is one Slashdot article where it may pay to make the distinction between a 'spellchecker' and 'spelling checker'...
;)
'Abutor recte'... as you might see in Rowling's books
But this isn't surprising. The law and common sense seldom agree anyway.
The problem with the current law is that you cannot win from a company like Marvel -- they can afford the legal costs, but a normal human being cannot. So it does not matter that everyone knows they do not have an argument: you can't win anyway.
:/
Cases like this are a win-win situation for the companies: in almost all cases they scare the poor person they are scre^H^H^H^Hsueing off and the case never has to go to court, and in those few cases where the defendant thinks he stands a chance in court, they still win because the defendant cannot pay the legal costs to keep up with the company, which can keep the case going almost indefinately. No way will the defendant get a pro deo lawyer against Money.
It's as if you're in the debating team, and your opponent pulls a gun -- even if you have the upper hand, he'll still win by default
I thought skins were like fan art, in that they fell under 'fair use', as long as no attempt was made to make profit from them. At least, those made completely by the fans themselves -- screencaps from movies or games, or scans from the comics might be different.
Very depressing to see that current 'copyright' law is only being used to prevent the fans from trying to live their fantasies.
Many games have always had good music, just look at the C&C series -- some of those tracks I still have in my playlist.
But real soundtracks for games? Offhand, I can only think of few games where the music so impressed me I bought it: 'The Longest Journey' is the most recent example, but the 'No One Lives Forever' games also had good music which really added to the experience, the original songs were exactly like the 60's songs of the world Kate Archer is supposed to live in.
As for licensing existing music -- how many games really fit with such music? There's only so many GTAs. I'd be willing to bet most movies have an original soundtrack, or at least a number of songs written especially for the movie. Why should another visual medium be more suited for 'recycled' music?
The article mentions 'Enter the Matrix' as an example of a game with a soundtrack, but I can't say the music of movie or game really did something for me.
Games are just like movies: those with great soundtracks are those where the soundtrack has been conceived as an integral part of the product from the start, but most only seem to have had some ambience painted on, perhaps with one good theme at most.
If more games come with complete --and original-- soundtracks, that will finally be a reason to buy the deluxe editions again: all too often I preorder a 'special edition' only to find some cheap addons.
MacIE was the best browser Microsoft ever made: it was nearly 100% CSS1-compatible, and shared none of the WinIE's vulnerabilities.
Not to mention it had far better HTML (standard) support than WinIE, better PNG handling, a good DOM level 1 implementation, and support for ECMA 262, not "Javascript" or "JScript".
Tantek Ãelik and team did a wonderful job, and it's a real bad decision by the Seattle Moloch to axe their one product you cannot complain about in all fairness.
Microsoft should have based WinIE 6 on MacIE5.
I hope the people that worked on MacIE are the ones that will build the next-gen IE, and not those incompetent hacks who made the Windows versions.
A new MIME Type is completely unneccessary for it: PNGCrushed images are normal PNGs -- it simply takes those last steps most PNG creating programs forget.
If I create PNG images, I do so with the Gimp, and only save them as PNG when done editing. Then of course I apply an indexed palette (if necessary), and use maximum compression.
As to why the 'algorithm' isn't built in -- ask Adobe et al. From what I read in this topic Photoshop doesn't even allow you to control the level of compression!
Good thing Mozilla still has NS plugin support.
:(
But like PNG (or SVG), MNG seems to be doomed to be a failure: people don't use it because there is no good implementation, and there is no good implementation because people don't use it
Read the other comments on this page. PNG Animation exists, and is called MNG.
Any PNG image is a valid MNG object, therefore creating MNG animations is a trivial task.
Alas browser support is non-existant except in certain builds of Mozilla, or by use of a plug-in/ActiveX component.
... if saved as truecolour images. What really killed PNG, imnsho, was that the first graphics programs that implemented it simply did not allow users to create indexed PNG files. An 8-bit PNG image is smaller than an 8-bit GIF.
What many people also seem to forget, is that there is no excuse not to safe your PNG image with maximum compression once you are done editing: there will be no image quality loss.
And of course anyone seriously creating PNG images cannot do without PNGCrush, which can shave off every single bit of bloat. A crushed PNG image will look just as good as the original, but will be only a fraction of its size, and will be a lot smaller than a GIF would (1).
1: But not smaller than the JPEG. Lossless compression cannot compete with JPEG's lossy compression, and JPEG is still the format of choice for photographic images. For everything else you can and should use PNG.
MSIE will begin to die out soon, and all other browsers have PNG support -- Mozilla even has MNG support natively.
Do you really think people will 'upgrade' their Windows license just to get a browser update?
Of course MNG has even less support than PNG, but thanks to Jason Summer's MNG plugin anyone using a Netscape-plugin-compatible user agent or IE can see them.
I actually went ahead and got StrokeIt because I am so addicted to mouse gestures by now, and *need* them in other apps as well ;-)
Opera 7 is no longer platform dependant, so an OSX port is not an impossibility.
As for paying for it -- I originally bought it under a student's license, then have upgraded it whenever needed.
I do not consider $39 to be a high prize for quality software -- many games I buy are more expensive, and I use them a lot less.
In the case of Opera, I'd say the 40 bucks is all worth it -- no other browser even comes close for me.
"Stop/Reload use the same button, depending on whether or not the page is loaded. Why didn't anyone else think of this?"
;-))
Opera has this. Has had it at least since version 4 (and I think since version 2, but I don't have those versions installed). And it is extremely easy to combine more functions into one button with Opera 7.
"Three meg or so download. Remember when Opera could claim this?"
3'341'647b download for Opera 7.11 . Close enough to 'three meg or so'.
"SnapBack makes getting back to search results very easy"
As does Opera 7's 'Rewind'. I do not own a Mac alas, so cannot compare the two functions.
Looks like it does add some good new features, but I think I must agree with your concluding sentence. With the modifying statement 'browsers as we know them today'. After all, who knows what new browsers may arise once we finally get VR workstations? (Other than Gibson
I thought the Unreal Engine was always supposed to be the current engine?
At least the developers made statements of that matter before. But I think DNF is using its own engine, that would explain why it is taking ages to develop.
"Safari for the Mac is one of the fastest and innovative browsers on the market."
I hear this a lot. Not intending to troll, but what is so innovative about Safari? The last time I saw something really new in browsers was Opera 7's 'Fast Forward' to match the likely next link (or work for image galleries), before that maybe Opera's 'Find in page' or Mozillas 'Type ahead find'.
What is so innovative in Safari? From what I've seen so far, it doesn't add anything new that other browsers lack.
The only advantage I see in having a XUL-based browser is that it is quite easy to add extensions to it, such as support for additional standards such as Ruby, or adding support for features left out of the main distribution, such as the 'site navigation' () bar.
;-)
Standards support is virtually identical in Gecko and Presto -- Presto does certain things a little better, Gecko has support for SVG and some other things Presto does not yet support. Unless you for some reason need SVG and MathML support, I do not see any reason to move to MF from Opera. But of course that is my opinion
Alas The Browser Formerly Known As Phoenix is still at least twice as slow as Opera 7.11 on my system, so it will remain a secondary browser for me. It is certainly at least the second-best browser around!
Well, IE6 *is* an improvement over NS 4.x
But then again, so is every other browser which does not lie about its CSS support, and can render standards-compliant pages.
The main problem with IE is that it accepts garbage, so people keep using garbage, saying 'it works in IE'...
Uru, online ages of Myst ( http://uru.ubi.com/ ), is the one Massively Multiplayer Persistent World I am somewhat interested in -- the screenshots show it captures the D'ni feel very well, and they promise it is possible to play it without having to meet all these other people.
That, for me, is why I like singleplayer games much more than multiplayer games (or even singleplayer games with AI comrades) -- I like the singleplayer experience. Still, I'm going to wait for the first independant reviews before buying.
Whoever posted TSO fails because there are no Sims, is exactly right -- I tried the beta, and disliked it. You have to spend hours just levelling up, and I don't go play a game just to sit and wait.
Actually, InterActual has bettered its ways a lot with 2.04 (maybe earlier, haven't seen 2.01 to 2.03 myself) -- it is perfectly clear to anyone with half a brain now that the InterActual player is _only_ for the additional features.
It no longer by default takes over as your standard DVD player, and the uninstall now cleans up all its mess.
A huge step up from IAplayer 2.0 and PC Friendly.