Nah. The fact that "nova" is not the same as "No va!" doesn't really matter. Let's say your surname is Hunt - are you really going to call your son Mike?
Easy - to test markets. Internationalizing a product, even if it is only translation of manuals and text is surprisingly expensive. That doesn't even begin to consider research into cultural differences - know what "nova" in Spanish means? It didn't do Chevrolet any good using that name in South America. Or there's the Coca Cola name in China.
The rest of the world (and you probably mean the USA) is a huge market but what works in Europe or Japan isn't necessarily going to work here, just look at the huge market for video-capable cell phones in Japan and compare the screens we live with. If it is a huge success then you can be sure we'll get the product, when it looks like US sales will show a profit.
The absolute best way to rip hundreds of CDs at one time is to find a laid-off.com business development VP and offer minimum wage to keep changing the CDs.
On the other hand, you might find the cost of training prohibitively expensive...
Let's not forget Visiontek - an American company (Chicago based, and the cards are actually made in the USA) that is producing excellent alternatives to the Taiwanese giants. The 2D quality is great. One other really nice thing is they have actual tech support that you can call. Google "visiontek 6964" for a bunch of reviews of their latest.
I guess you got carried away. I said that floppy drives are not "useless" - nothing about whether or not a Mac should have one. Why take such offence when I don't agree with anything some pro-Mac guy says?
I got rid of my Mac when OS X turned out to be such a yawn. Up until then I used them a lot.
Why? because there is an equally unbalanced community that will support ANY move by Apple, and because these same people are an easy mark for any bored troll.
And a floppy drive being "useless" is debatable. As a tool for updating a BIOS or as an easy R/W boot device it is unequalled. (Of course since Apple are omniescent and infallible, a Mac never needs a BIOS update.) All the rest are just as debatable, but I won't lose any sleep if you don't like the same things as me.
when a goodly amount of the _dedicated_ servers for RTCW will be running on linux platforms
Says who? And who says you've been tossed aside? You've got the ability to run your dedicated server, and you can play multiplayer. The poster to whom you replied is absolutely correct. Id have NO financial reason to be doing a Linux port. They might want your good will, but they already gave you multiplayer for nothing, don't be an ingrate.
I know you won't agree with this, but if ever a game was a reason to install Windows this is it. Single player was excellent - the end boss is easy to defeat once you work out how, and the zombies could be a little tedious, but 90% is tense, fun action. It really is a worthy successor to the original. Excellent, balanced weapons, smart enemies, great maps, sensible side tasks and puzzles. Maybe I'll go start it again on "hurt me plenty" now.
I hope someone does a Linux version too, and I hope they make money doing it. The first is doubtful and the second even more unlikely given the time that must elapse before a Linux version is available. I hope NWN does OK but it's got some tough competition in AD&D RPGs right now.
Surely if you enter into any agreement - be it a tenure, or a program of education - in which the institution's ownership of academic works is clearly stated (it was in my university's guide book) then you accept that when you join, or commence, or whatever you like to call it. In this way I think the title of this/. story is misleading and disingenuous.
I wish you success with being able to release your protocols but I think any "right" is long gone. Hopefully Oxford will recognize the value of good will that comes from allowing distribution of code. The first I ever saw of Carnegie-Mellon University was in a copyright notice on TCP/IP sources.
Here's a list of things quieter than what you chose. At the same time most of them are better quality, better cooling solutions and at least as fast if not faster.
1. Case - a heavy steel rackmount case is far quieter than an aluminum one. The extra mass provides dampening.
2. Fans - bigger, slower fans are quieter than 80mm anything. Panasonic 120mm L1A are perfect, and two will give you all the case cooling you need, one in front and one in back. Use only rounded grilles, no stamped steel or bullshit biohazard stamped stuff.
3. Processor heatsink - Noise Control's "Silverado" is the quietest. It is inaudible when the lid is on the case, and so far below the noise of the hard drives it doesn't matter.
4. Hard drive - Seagate Barracuda IV is the best around. It can't be heard, it is very cool in operation, and in RAID-0 is hard to tell from my old 75GXP drives as far as performance goes. Silent Drive? Why not just wrap your drives in a blanket?
5. Soundcard - Terratec Sixpack+, Hercules GTXP, Philips Acoustic Edge are all way better than that Creative shit. Have you noticed that you can no longer download Live!ware?
6. Mouse - mouseman wireless truly sucks. Don't you want accuracy in gaming? Optical yes, wireless no.
I'll tell you why - there's no money in it. Require more explanation? Look at sales of Linux games. Look at Loki (and their attitude as shown to Don Hopkins). Look at the gaming industry as a whole, and observe the choice of DirectX over OpenGL. Where's the convincing reason to switch?
People who are concerned with making money don't give a rat's ass about Linux because the paying market is not big enough. This is the same reason many games never make it to the Mac. You think the game industry is somehow nobler because it involves programmers? Believe me, the game industry is just as rapacious as Hollywood - and if money is the metric, there's more at stake, too.
The reason for encoding CDs into digital formats are size, archiving, convenience, portability.
Size - some say Ogg is better at smaller sizes, but it's debatable. Storage has never been cheaper and is getting cheaper still. Why would anyone encode at 128k anyway? MP3 with VBR and the right options is about the same size as 192k and without some very high end playback equipment is indistinguishable from CD.
Archiving - there is no real difference in quality if you know how to use Ogg & MP3 encoders properly. Archival encoding means you want to have it forever, so you're not going to be caring much about size differences between formats, minor as they are. Quality matters most here. Can you tell the highest quality encodings in both formats from CD? Day to day use, no. Again you need some very high-end gear to hear the differences, i.e. not your soundcard or your portable.
Convenience - both formats give you the ability to playback what you want without reaching over to the CD rack, just open the player. No difference there.
Portability - MP3 has it all. Ogg has virtually none. Come on, someone reply with a link to some tiny Korean company that promises to make an Ogg player Real Soon Now.
Why would you bother with Ogg? Maybe if you absolutely will not use something that anyone has a patent on, but if that's the case you're going to have a difficult life.
Or you could use a DVIator adapter, or get one that has the DVI connector (the old version). These work really well with GeForce cards like the Hercules Prophet II Ultra or Gainward GeForce 3.
Oh please... you write "security" as if it encompasses everything. Isn't this the same misunderstanding people make when they assume that a C programmer can make them a web site, fix their Excel spreadsheet, upgrade memory in a SparcStation 20 or design a network topology?
It will never truly feel like an authentic arcade controller - not unless you can arrange for two hundred random strangers with sweaty palms to come and play it between the times you're using it.
APIs do have market share, and it's an ever-ascending spiral once one gets entrenched. If I want my game to take advantage of that huge installed base of nvidia and ATI cards then I write for DirectX. If I want my new video card to produce good benchmarks with popular games (and therefore sell) then I work hard on the DirectX support and windows drivers. OpenGL is just an afterthought.
In the ruthlessly Darwinist gamer/graphics market the answer to "who is the market leader" and "who has the best solution" is usually the same, as long as you consider that "best solution" does not mean "most sensible and powerful API". From a developer's point of view OpenGL may very well be better but it just isn't where the money is.
(And BTW, I am not the author of the parent to which you replied. That's a not-even-thinly-disguised recycled anti-BSD troll.)
I think action is called for. We know that this is a digital format - nothing digital is beyond interpretation, modification and if necessary rectification. This is the cause of their paranoia. But like CSS before it, this too will fall to a determined opposition. We owe it to ourselves to shift the point of balance to where it become obvious that there will be NO tolerance of this kind of audio sabotage, and continued patronage of music that we choose, when (and if) we decide we like it.
Why does the music industry see declining profit and falling concert attendance? Well, Destiny's Child, Sisquo, NSync, blah blah blah - manufactured and overproduced pap. You aim at a market with immature taste, you get sales corresponding to a market with zero disposable income. In other words you try and sell us shit not even as good as the Monkees and we're not going to buy it.
We owe it to ourselves to see that every sabotaged CD is distributed, in cleaned-up MP3 form, via every file sharing service we can find. In the long term the whores of the RIAA will be defeated by their own greed. The artists will not suffer because they could scarecely get a worse deal no matter what we do, and because it has been shown countless times that fans buy what they love no matter how many MP3s are available.
Software copy protection has NEVER defeated people determined to copy it in all its history. In addition it has never been shown that copy protection improves sales or denies determined "collectors" their aim. The RIAA is about to learn the lessons that game publishers did all those years ago. Why is Carmack driving a Ferrari? For sure it's not because nobody could play Quake without trying it out first.
Thankfully we can probably stop this while it is in the stage of "protecting" the most populist and profitable of their wares. Happily that's the end of the music industry I like least.
Sales figures released by Sony. Just what is the total market for games consoles? Not everyone will get to buy two or even three systems, a lot of kids will get the choice of only one.
Or if you like to DIY:
http://www.gamersutopia.com/news/playstation2/ps 2_ biiiiig.htm
No there isn't. Get ready for some aggressive discounting, big advertising campaigns and maybe even one failing within the first year a la Dreamcast. I couldn't pick which one that will be, but I don't think I will give up Gran Turismo 3 any time soon.
Slashdot Mirror
Correct your .sig quote - listen to the song again.
I've tried a few products that have SPDIF (TOSlink optical) out.
Terratec Sixpack 5.1+ is an sound card with optical in and out on the card itself as well as a full set of 5.1 analog line outs.
Xitel digital hifi-link is a simple USB box (like this Extigy) with a single SPDIF output.
Alternatively the Soyo Dragon Plus mainboard is a good DDR Athlon mainboard with acceptable onboard sound which includes SPDIF out.
Xitel has a good USB 20-bit DAC box for about $50. stereo-link has one including a headphone amplifier for about $150.
when you play Tiger Woods Golf, you get a hole in one every time
Tiger Woods game: $40
Gameshark: $60
Realizing that you spent $100 to watch a golf game play itself: Priceless.
Nah. The fact that "nova" is not the same as "No va!" doesn't really matter. Let's say your surname is Hunt - are you really going to call your son Mike?
Why do companies play these games?
Easy - to test markets. Internationalizing a product, even if it is only translation of manuals and text is surprisingly expensive. That doesn't even begin to consider research into cultural differences - know what "nova" in Spanish means? It didn't do Chevrolet any good using that name in South America. Or there's the Coca Cola name in China.
The rest of the world (and you probably mean the USA) is a huge market but what works in Europe or Japan isn't necessarily going to work here, just look at the huge market for video-capable cell phones in Japan and compare the screens we live with. If it is a huge success then you can be sure we'll get the product, when it looks like US sales will show a profit.
The absolute best way to rip hundreds of CDs at one time is to find a laid-off .com business development VP and offer minimum wage to keep changing the CDs.
On the other hand, you might find the cost of training prohibitively expensive...
Let's not forget Visiontek - an American company (Chicago based, and the cards are actually made in the USA) that is producing excellent alternatives to the Taiwanese giants. The 2D quality is great. One other really nice thing is they have actual tech support that you can call. Google "visiontek 6964" for a bunch of reviews of their latest.
I guess you got carried away. I said that floppy drives are not "useless" - nothing about whether or not a Mac should have one. Why take such offence when I don't agree with anything some pro-Mac guy says?
I got rid of my Mac when OS X turned out to be such a yawn. Up until then I used them a lot.
Why? because there is an equally unbalanced community that will support ANY move by Apple, and because these same people are an easy mark for any bored troll.
And a floppy drive being "useless" is debatable. As a tool for updating a BIOS or as an easy R/W boot device it is unequalled. (Of course since Apple are omniescent and infallible, a Mac never needs a BIOS update.) All the rest are just as debatable, but I won't lose any sleep if you don't like the same things as me.
when a goodly amount of the _dedicated_ servers for RTCW will be running on linux platforms
Says who? And who says you've been tossed aside? You've got the ability to run your dedicated server, and you can play multiplayer. The poster to whom you replied is absolutely correct. Id have NO financial reason to be doing a Linux port. They might want your good will, but they already gave you multiplayer for nothing, don't be an ingrate.
I know you won't agree with this, but if ever a game was a reason to install Windows this is it. Single player was excellent - the end boss is easy to defeat once you work out how, and the zombies could be a little tedious, but 90% is tense, fun action. It really is a worthy successor to the original. Excellent, balanced weapons, smart enemies, great maps, sensible side tasks and puzzles. Maybe I'll go start it again on "hurt me plenty" now.
I hope someone does a Linux version too, and I hope they make money doing it. The first is doubtful and the second even more unlikely given the time that must elapse before a Linux version is available. I hope NWN does OK but it's got some tough competition in AD&D RPGs right now.
Surely if you enter into any agreement - be it a tenure, or a program of education - in which the institution's ownership of academic works is clearly stated (it was in my university's guide book) then you accept that when you join, or commence, or whatever you like to call it. In this way I think the title of this /. story is misleading and disingenuous.
I wish you success with being able to release your protocols but I think any "right" is long gone. Hopefully Oxford will recognize the value of good will that comes from allowing distribution of code. The first I ever saw of Carnegie-Mellon University was in a copyright notice on TCP/IP sources.
This came out a little while ago but is worth a click:
Harry Potter Sparks Rise in Satanism Among Children"
Yes, and Star Office is a big fat copy of MS Office, and the GIMP is a big fat copy of Photoshop. People like stuff that works; what's your point?
Here's a list of things quieter than what you chose. At the same time most of them are better quality, better cooling solutions and at least as fast if not faster.
1. Case - a heavy steel rackmount case is far quieter than an aluminum one. The extra mass provides dampening.
2. Fans - bigger, slower fans are quieter than 80mm anything. Panasonic 120mm L1A are perfect, and two will give you all the case cooling you need, one in front and one in back. Use only rounded grilles, no stamped steel or bullshit biohazard stamped stuff.
3. Processor heatsink - Noise Control's "Silverado" is the quietest. It is inaudible when the lid is on the case, and so far below the noise of the hard drives it doesn't matter.
4. Hard drive - Seagate Barracuda IV is the best around. It can't be heard, it is very cool in operation, and in RAID-0 is hard to tell from my old 75GXP drives as far as performance goes. Silent Drive? Why not just wrap your drives in a blanket?
5. Soundcard - Terratec Sixpack+, Hercules GTXP, Philips Acoustic Edge are all way better than that Creative shit. Have you noticed that you can no longer download Live!ware?
6. Mouse - mouseman wireless truly sucks. Don't you want accuracy in gaming? Optical yes, wireless no.
I'll tell you why - there's no money in it. Require more explanation? Look at sales of Linux games. Look at Loki (and their attitude as shown to Don Hopkins). Look at the gaming industry as a whole, and observe the choice of DirectX over OpenGL. Where's the convincing reason to switch?
People who are concerned with making money don't give a rat's ass about Linux because the paying market is not big enough. This is the same reason many games never make it to the Mac. You think the game industry is somehow nobler because it involves programmers? Believe me, the game industry is just as rapacious as Hollywood - and if money is the metric, there's more at stake, too.
The reason for encoding CDs into digital formats are size, archiving, convenience, portability.
Size - some say Ogg is better at smaller sizes, but it's debatable. Storage has never been cheaper and is getting cheaper still. Why would anyone encode at 128k anyway? MP3 with VBR and the right options is about the same size as 192k and without some very high end playback equipment is indistinguishable from CD.
Archiving - there is no real difference in quality if you know how to use Ogg & MP3 encoders properly. Archival encoding means you want to have it forever, so you're not going to be caring much about size differences between formats, minor as they are. Quality matters most here. Can you tell the highest quality encodings in both formats from CD? Day to day use, no. Again you need some very high-end gear to hear the differences, i.e. not your soundcard or your portable.
Convenience - both formats give you the ability to playback what you want without reaching over to the CD rack, just open the player. No difference there.
Portability - MP3 has it all. Ogg has virtually none. Come on, someone reply with a link to some tiny Korean company that promises to make an Ogg player Real Soon Now.
Why would you bother with Ogg? Maybe if you absolutely will not use something that anyone has a patent on, but if that's the case you're going to have a difficult life.
Or you could use a DVIator adapter, or get one that has the DVI connector (the old version). These work really well with GeForce cards like the Hercules Prophet II Ultra or Gainward GeForce 3.
"renowned security expert Bruce Schneier"
Oh please... you write "security" as if it encompasses everything. Isn't this the same misunderstanding people make when they assume that a C programmer can make them a web site, fix their Excel spreadsheet, upgrade memory in a SparcStation 20 or design a network topology?
It will never truly feel like an authentic arcade controller - not unless you can arrange for two hundred random strangers with sweaty palms to come and play it between the times you're using it.
APIs do have market share, and it's an ever-ascending spiral once one gets entrenched. If I want my game to take advantage of that huge installed base of nvidia and ATI cards then I write for DirectX. If I want my new video card to produce good benchmarks with popular games (and therefore sell) then I work hard on the DirectX support and windows drivers. OpenGL is just an afterthought.
In the ruthlessly Darwinist gamer/graphics market the answer to "who is the market leader" and "who has the best solution" is usually the same, as long as you consider that "best solution" does not mean "most sensible and powerful API". From a developer's point of view OpenGL may very well be better but it just isn't where the money is.
(And BTW, I am not the author of the parent to which you replied. That's a not-even-thinly-disguised recycled anti-BSD troll.)
This page is still up:
:-)
http://www.dynamix.com/jobs.html
"Just imagine- no traffic, no commute, low crime rate, reasonable cost of living, clean air and best of all, a creative fun place to work."
They forgot "no irritating colleagues"
I think action is called for. We know that this is a digital format - nothing digital is beyond interpretation, modification and if necessary rectification. This is the cause of their paranoia. But like CSS before it, this too will fall to a determined opposition. We owe it to ourselves to shift the point of balance to where it become obvious that there will be NO tolerance of this kind of audio sabotage, and continued patronage of music that we choose, when (and if) we decide we like it.
Why does the music industry see declining profit and falling concert attendance? Well, Destiny's Child, Sisquo, NSync, blah blah blah - manufactured and overproduced pap. You aim at a market with immature taste, you get sales corresponding to a market with zero disposable income. In other words you try and sell us shit not even as good as the Monkees and we're not going to buy it.
We owe it to ourselves to see that every sabotaged CD is distributed, in cleaned-up MP3 form, via every file sharing service we can find. In the long term the whores of the RIAA will be defeated by their own greed. The artists will not suffer because they could scarecely get a worse deal no matter what we do, and because it has been shown countless times that fans buy what they love no matter how many MP3s are available.
Software copy protection has NEVER defeated people determined to copy it in all its history. In addition it has never been shown that copy protection improves sales or denies determined "collectors" their aim. The RIAA is about to learn the lessons that game publishers did all those years ago. Why is Carmack driving a Ferrari? For sure it's not because nobody could play Quake without trying it out first.
Thankfully we can probably stop this while it is in the stage of "protecting" the most populist and profitable of their wares. Happily that's the end of the music industry I like least.
Sales figures released by Sony. Just what is the total market for games consoles? Not everyone will get to buy two or even three systems, a lot of kids will get the choice of only one.
s 2_ biiiiig.htm
Or if you like to DIY:
http://www.gamersutopia.com/news/playstation2/p
No there isn't. Get ready for some aggressive discounting, big advertising campaigns and maybe even one failing within the first year a la Dreamcast. I couldn't pick which one that will be, but I don't think I will give up Gran Turismo 3 any time soon.