Last I heard the only things actually broadcast in HD are the World series and the Super Bowl, so yeah, I'd say that if you're watching a lot of broadcast TV but not much sports, you're just as well off getting a 720p anyway.
The reason I suggested an HD LCD might be better for standard TV was because it tends to involve less fast-motion video, and more digital elements on-screen (text, logos, etc) which can look excellent on an LCD and sometimes look a little less sharp than people like on a plasma.
Here in Australia we have an increasing amount of HD content, albeit mostly 720p. Some of it looks phenomenal.
Sure the top end flat-screen TVs might be ahead of the best CRTs, but I think the average CRT is still ahead of the majority of flat-screens that seem to be being snapped up by budget concious consumers. A digital signal makes a big difference, after that, not so much.
I waited until this was consistently, noticeably no longer the case before buying a plasma. I still would not by an LCD, although the higher end Sony 1080p models are starting to look pretty amazing when set up with optimal source material.
I also had a decent Sony CRT, which I gave to my parents when I got a Panasonic plasma. Although I thought after a while that maybe the plasma wasn't *that* much better, I have since been and re-watched the Sony, and frankly the plasma blows it back into last century, where it belongs. You just cannot beat the clarity (not to mention size and response time) of plasmas IMHO.
Just to be clear, I'm talking about SD digital versus HD digital, not analogue versus digital.
I am not saying I (or my gf) could not tell the difference. I am saying that from the point of view of whether she finds SD noticeably worse, the answer must be "no" because she doesn't necessarily notice when she is on SD not HD (I do, but I'm a tech obsessive).
- type of screen - plasma vs LCD, SD would be more noticeable on the latter IMHO.
- 720p, 1080i or 1080p? All are technically "HD".
- distance from screen - it is well established that HD only improves your experience if you are close enough to overcome your eyes' limited ability to resolve that level of detail.
- quality of signal - I have seen "HD" signals which were so compressed and crappy they looked worse than well-encoded SD signals. Similarly, many "HD" broadcasts are just re-encoded from non-HD content.
My gf routinely has the SD, rather than HD, version of various TV channels on because evidently from her point of view there is no discernable difference. This is a 42" plasma from about 4 metres away.
In any event, this just highlights that, as with all audio-visual products, how it actually looks/sounds to you is far more important than its specs. IMHO you are much better off with a good 720p plasma (Pana or Pioneer) than a mediocre 1080p LCD, for example - you will get better colour, much less ghosting, and (if set up correctly) a more faithful reproduction of the source material rather than a sharpened, cartoon-y looking version like many LCDs produce.
In addition, your expected use is critical - movies and sport tend to suggest a plasma will suit your needs, whereas lots of normal broadcast TV/desktop-type computer use might be better suited to an LCD.
I can't wait to DL this DLC onto my SKU via XBLA FTW.
Seriously, is it really too hard to write "downloadable content" in the headline? A few of us don't spend our days reading Playstation Marketeer Magazine.
It has HDMI. However, my understanding of the implementation of HDCP on HDMI is that it is not mandatory. If neither the output nor input device require it then unprotected content can still be transmitted via HDMI. So in that sense it does have a form of DRM built into it, but I don't think that it is ever used.
The goal is to see how two spiders will interact in micro-gravity.
And people say that NASA is over-funded! Without essential research like this, the Chinese and Indians will soon dominate the microgravity spider-interation field, and yet again the USA will be left behind.
I am reminded, of course, of the Simpsons:
The lion's share of this flight will be devoted to the study of the effects of weightlessness on tiny screws.
Unbelievable, and just imagine the logistics of weightlessness. And of course, this could have literally millions of applications here on Earth - everything from watchmaking to... watch repair.
Some people are so arachnophobic that they will actually kill any spiders they see. It's a very ugly thing to see someone quite viciously slam down a shoe or newspaper on a spider as it tries to scurry to safety. There is no reason to it. At least people who stand on chairs aren't taking it out on the spider. Apparently a cure for a phobia is gentle exposure. A friend of mine went to a spider museum in Prague and apparently lost all apprehension around spider entirely. I'm not sure I'd recommend this for your wife though.
Actually, in Australia at least there are plenty of good reasons to be extremely arachnophobic. We have numerous potentially deadly spiders, many of which can be found in and around ordinary homes, and some of which display aggressive behaviour. Amongst the catalogue are those that just really, really hurt, those that kill you quite rapidly, and those that induce nice things like necrotised (sp?) flesh.
Although the rate of deaths from bites is very low, I would suggest that is because most people in Australia are smart enough to know that some spiders are quite dangerous and to either kill them, remove them, or stay the hell away from them. Personally I remove things like huntsmen spiders (which can bite, but won't kill you), and kill things that look like redbacks and other dangerous breeds.
And I disagree about the fear not being innate - my personal experience is that there is something hard-coded into me which induces an irrational burst of fear when I see a spider. I don't get the same thing from animals I know to be at least as dangerous, such as snakes (which are also very poisonous and very dangerous in Australia before you start on that topic).
Truth doesn't matter in a court of law. Only what you can convince the judge and jury is truth is what matters, whether your "truths" are actually true or not.
IAAL, and I call BS. Truth matters plenty in court. What also matters is how skilfully you are able to demonstrate the truth to a court, and (probably most importantly) how well you are able to argue for your preferred application of the law to the 'truth' (i.e. facts).
I worked for a judge here in Australia for a year, and I do not believe he ever accepted a piece of evidence that was untrue. On the whole, I'd say we usually had a very strong understanding of the actual facts in each trial by the end of the evidence.
Incidentally, this will be a civil claim in Australia and will be heard by a judge, not a jury.
Actually, I disagree somewhat - I stopped playing C&C when Generals came out precisely because they abandoned the aspects of the series which I really enjoyed.
In particular, moving from the isometric perspective and highly detailed sprites to a 3D camera and mediocre polygon-based units really ruined it. For reasons I have never fully understood, they decided to stop you from zooming out enough to even see your own base in its entirety, let alone a decent chunk of the battlefield.
And game designers don't seem to realise that even a quite detailed 3D model looks crap in comparison to a well made sprite unless you very carefully control the way it's rendered - but Generals and the following games seem to just use unmodified Direct3D output, so the units look poor and are often hard to distinguish from one another or the terrain.
But I agree, not all games would benefit from being updated.
It's only a matter of time. Slashdotters are just the amphibians of the DRM-world, we are more sensitive to small changes in the climate than the average organism. The levels of idiocy imposed by hardware and software manufacturers has not yet reached its zenith.
"Normal" people will start getting angry pretty soon, when they can't hook together ordinary AV hardware and have it just work, and when their seemingly physical media of various kinds mysteriously stops working under certain circumstances. The market for DRM-free gear will also grow, I predict (it already exists, and is a touted feature on some hardware and software).
With this victory, Democrat Mark Begich (the mayor of Anchorage) has defeated one of the giants in the US Senate by a 3,724-vote margin, a stunning end to a 40-year Senate career
what would have been "stunning" would have been if Stevens survived. In fact the pre-election polls suggested he was a goner, and the fact that he nearly won was very surprising.
What this really means is that (a) the Repugs won't have to vote to sack one of their own from the senate and (b) Palin won't get a run at this senate seat.
Agree, and why are people so scared of fixed perspective isometric graphics? That was a key part of the game, and made the turn-based concept work properly because it allowed you to fully understand what was happening on the battlefield without worrying about perspective, rotation and unneeded graphical embellishments.
1280x1024??? If you're doing a remake at least update it so it can run on modern resolutions including widescreen. LCDs in general suck at any non-native resolution, so it's even more important than before.
Wow! Brilliant insight!! Although it's almost as if I picked an arbitrary high-resolution example which happens to fit my own LCD monitor when I obviously meant "high resolution"!!!
I used to play it all the time on my Compaq Portable III. I highly doubt that any sequel will recapture that early 90s spirit.
This MUST be possible. I have never understood why companies don't release what amount to identical games under the hood with heavily updated graphics which remain true to the original art style of the previous game. Keep all of the game logic, but replace the graphics and make it run stably on an XP/Vista system.
Case in point: Sid Meier's Pirates!, which was in many respects totally identical to the old 2D version, and which looks great and is awesomely fun to play.
My dream is for someone to finally, FINALLY do this to XCom/UFO - keep the EXACT game mechanics of the original game, but make it run in 1280x1024 with photorealistic (but still manga-esque) graphics. They could keep the original music but re-record it. It would be stunning.
Other candidates for this treatment would be Syndicate/Syndicate Wars, and Theme Park.
For those who must say that God does not exist, try this: your position is just as unprovable as theirs, and yet raising your voice to argue your point is just as pointless as theirs.
Some of us prefer to assume that where no evidence whatsoever for the existence of a thing can be shown, then the thing itself does not exist. On a biological/animal level, I almost guarantee that this is the approach you take, too.
Although this can never definitively disprove God, it is a demonstrably effective way to operate in reality. Caveman Grok says there are mammoth to the West, which seems to contain an empty desert, although he can offer no evidence for this claim and no-one has ever seen a mammoth in the desert. Caveman Dirk says there are deer to the East, and points to deer tracks leading that way and forest in the East. On average, those who follow cavemen like Grok may find mammoth, or they may use large amounts of energy and find no food at all. Those who follow Dirk are more likely to find food. So on balance for our cavemen, it makes sense to disbelieve propositions for which there is no evidence.
In the context of this hypothetical, your position amounts to saying "those who are saying there are no mammoth to the West must accept that their position is just as unprovable as Grok's, yet raising your voice to argue your point is just as pointless as theirs." With respect, I do not think that is right.
If we permit ourselves to move away from philosophical absolutes, then I think it amounts to a strong argument that there is a better basis for atheism than theism. Instead of hunting mammoth in an empty desert, we run the risk of wasting our lives hunting for meaning in a spiritual void.
Another way of looking at this is to say "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." That truism is not provably correct (I might see the Loch Ness Monster) but it still has great practical value.
It's called rectification. If your employer can prove that it was the common intention of the parties that the contract actually just be $XX per hour (or whatever it was supposed to be), and that the mistake was the result of a typographical error or similar, then a Court will give effect to the intention not the words of the contract.
Even if they're not liable in contract they may well have breached the Trade Practices Act, which prohibits misleading or deceptive conduct in Trade or Commerce.
The most popular game of all time is going to get written about. I don't care either, but I'm not bitching that the news isn't exactly tailored to my interests.
By that logic we should see a lot more stories about The Sims, which contrary to your suggestion is actually more popular than WoW...
This story would be fairly pointless no matter which game it was about. "Game player beats expansion pack for game" is not exactly news no matter how you look at it.
What if it's never interested me? There have been a vast, vast number of articles about WoW. I want to read about other game-related news, so I can't filter it out, either.
You're kidding, but why do stories have to use lame 'industry insider' phrases when an ordinary one would do just as well ("actual users" might fit the bill)?
Slashdot Mirror
The reason I suggested an HD LCD might be better for standard TV was because it tends to involve less fast-motion video, and more digital elements on-screen (text, logos, etc) which can look excellent on an LCD and sometimes look a little less sharp than people like on a plasma.
Here in Australia we have an increasing amount of HD content, albeit mostly 720p. Some of it looks phenomenal.
I waited until this was consistently, noticeably no longer the case before buying a plasma. I still would not by an LCD, although the higher end Sony 1080p models are starting to look pretty amazing when set up with optimal source material.
I also had a decent Sony CRT, which I gave to my parents when I got a Panasonic plasma. Although I thought after a while that maybe the plasma wasn't *that* much better, I have since been and re-watched the Sony, and frankly the plasma blows it back into last century, where it belongs. You just cannot beat the clarity (not to mention size and response time) of plasmas IMHO.
Just to be clear, I'm talking about SD digital versus HD digital, not analogue versus digital.
I am not saying I (or my gf) could not tell the difference. I am saying that from the point of view of whether she finds SD noticeably worse, the answer must be "no" because she doesn't necessarily notice when she is on SD not HD (I do, but I'm a tech obsessive).
Including:
- type of screen - plasma vs LCD, SD would be more noticeable on the latter IMHO.
- 720p, 1080i or 1080p? All are technically "HD".
- distance from screen - it is well established that HD only improves your experience if you are close enough to overcome your eyes' limited ability to resolve that level of detail.
- quality of signal - I have seen "HD" signals which were so compressed and crappy they looked worse than well-encoded SD signals. Similarly, many "HD" broadcasts are just re-encoded from non-HD content.
My gf routinely has the SD, rather than HD, version of various TV channels on because evidently from her point of view there is no discernable difference. This is a 42" plasma from about 4 metres away.
In any event, this just highlights that, as with all audio-visual products, how it actually looks/sounds to you is far more important than its specs. IMHO you are much better off with a good 720p plasma (Pana or Pioneer) than a mediocre 1080p LCD, for example - you will get better colour, much less ghosting, and (if set up correctly) a more faithful reproduction of the source material rather than a sharpened, cartoon-y looking version like many LCDs produce.
In addition, your expected use is critical - movies and sport tend to suggest a plasma will suit your needs, whereas lots of normal broadcast TV/desktop-type computer use might be better suited to an LCD.
I can't wait to DL this DLC onto my SKU via XBLA FTW.
Seriously, is it really too hard to write "downloadable content" in the headline? A few of us don't spend our days reading Playstation Marketeer Magazine.
It has HDMI. However, my understanding of the implementation of HDCP on HDMI is that it is not mandatory. If neither the output nor input device require it then unprotected content can still be transmitted via HDMI. So in that sense it does have a form of DRM built into it, but I don't think that it is ever used.
And people say that NASA is over-funded! Without essential research like this, the Chinese and Indians will soon dominate the microgravity spider-interation field, and yet again the USA will be left behind.
I am reminded, of course, of the Simpsons:
Actually, in Australia at least there are plenty of good reasons to be extremely arachnophobic. We have numerous potentially deadly spiders, many of which can be found in and around ordinary homes, and some of which display aggressive behaviour. Amongst the catalogue are those that just really, really hurt, those that kill you quite rapidly, and those that induce nice things like necrotised (sp?) flesh.
Although the rate of deaths from bites is very low, I would suggest that is because most people in Australia are smart enough to know that some spiders are quite dangerous and to either kill them, remove them, or stay the hell away from them. Personally I remove things like huntsmen spiders (which can bite, but won't kill you), and kill things that look like redbacks and other dangerous breeds.
And I disagree about the fear not being innate - my personal experience is that there is something hard-coded into me which induces an irrational burst of fear when I see a spider. I don't get the same thing from animals I know to be at least as dangerous, such as snakes (which are also very poisonous and very dangerous in Australia before you start on that topic).
IAAL, and I call BS. Truth matters plenty in court. What also matters is how skilfully you are able to demonstrate the truth to a court, and (probably most importantly) how well you are able to argue for your preferred application of the law to the 'truth' (i.e. facts).
I worked for a judge here in Australia for a year, and I do not believe he ever accepted a piece of evidence that was untrue. On the whole, I'd say we usually had a very strong understanding of the actual facts in each trial by the end of the evidence.
Incidentally, this will be a civil claim in Australia and will be heard by a judge, not a jury.
Actually, I disagree somewhat - I stopped playing C&C when Generals came out precisely because they abandoned the aspects of the series which I really enjoyed.
In particular, moving from the isometric perspective and highly detailed sprites to a 3D camera and mediocre polygon-based units really ruined it. For reasons I have never fully understood, they decided to stop you from zooming out enough to even see your own base in its entirety, let alone a decent chunk of the battlefield.
And game designers don't seem to realise that even a quite detailed 3D model looks crap in comparison to a well made sprite unless you very carefully control the way it's rendered - but Generals and the following games seem to just use unmodified Direct3D output, so the units look poor and are often hard to distinguish from one another or the terrain.
But I agree, not all games would benefit from being updated.
It's only a matter of time. Slashdotters are just the amphibians of the DRM-world, we are more sensitive to small changes in the climate than the average organism. The levels of idiocy imposed by hardware and software manufacturers has not yet reached its zenith.
"Normal" people will start getting angry pretty soon, when they can't hook together ordinary AV hardware and have it just work, and when their seemingly physical media of various kinds mysteriously stops working under certain circumstances. The market for DRM-free gear will also grow, I predict (it already exists, and is a touted feature on some hardware and software).
Good luck finding a computer without it.
Funny, my Dell XPS running windows XP seems to be DRM-free on a hardware level.
...computer nerds making unsubstantiated and unlikely sounding claims about quirky sexual exploits.
Do we have to implement www.isslashdotshittytoday.com?
For the avoidance of doubt, this is where you broke the suspension of disbelief:
I think you mean dx4 100, and those things ran Strike Commander like nothing I have seen...
Indeed. Contrary to the breathless summary:
what would have been "stunning" would have been if Stevens survived. In fact the pre-election polls suggested he was a goner, and the fact that he nearly won was very surprising.
What this really means is that (a) the Repugs won't have to vote to sack one of their own from the senate and (b) Palin won't get a run at this senate seat.
Agree, and why are people so scared of fixed perspective isometric graphics? That was a key part of the game, and made the turn-based concept work properly because it allowed you to fully understand what was happening on the battlefield without worrying about perspective, rotation and unneeded graphical embellishments.
1280x1024??? If you're doing a remake at least update it so it can run on modern resolutions including widescreen. LCDs in general suck at any non-native resolution, so it's even more important than before.
Wow! Brilliant insight!! Although it's almost as if I picked an arbitrary high-resolution example which happens to fit my own LCD monitor when I obviously meant "high resolution"!!!
I used to play it all the time on my Compaq Portable III. I highly doubt that any sequel will recapture that early 90s spirit.
This MUST be possible. I have never understood why companies don't release what amount to identical games under the hood with heavily updated graphics which remain true to the original art style of the previous game. Keep all of the game logic, but replace the graphics and make it run stably on an XP/Vista system.
Case in point: Sid Meier's Pirates!, which was in many respects totally identical to the old 2D version, and which looks great and is awesomely fun to play.
My dream is for someone to finally, FINALLY do this to XCom/UFO - keep the EXACT game mechanics of the original game, but make it run in 1280x1024 with photorealistic (but still manga-esque) graphics. They could keep the original music but re-record it. It would be stunning.
Other candidates for this treatment would be Syndicate/Syndicate Wars, and Theme Park.
Some of us prefer to assume that where no evidence whatsoever for the existence of a thing can be shown, then the thing itself does not exist. On a biological/animal level, I almost guarantee that this is the approach you take, too.
Although this can never definitively disprove God, it is a demonstrably effective way to operate in reality. Caveman Grok says there are mammoth to the West, which seems to contain an empty desert, although he can offer no evidence for this claim and no-one has ever seen a mammoth in the desert. Caveman Dirk says there are deer to the East, and points to deer tracks leading that way and forest in the East. On average, those who follow cavemen like Grok may find mammoth, or they may use large amounts of energy and find no food at all. Those who follow Dirk are more likely to find food. So on balance for our cavemen, it makes sense to disbelieve propositions for which there is no evidence.
In the context of this hypothetical, your position amounts to saying "those who are saying there are no mammoth to the West must accept that their position is just as unprovable as Grok's, yet raising your voice to argue your point is just as pointless as theirs." With respect, I do not think that is right.
If we permit ourselves to move away from philosophical absolutes, then I think it amounts to a strong argument that there is a better basis for atheism than theism. Instead of hunting mammoth in an empty desert, we run the risk of wasting our lives hunting for meaning in a spiritual void.
Another way of looking at this is to say "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." That truism is not provably correct (I might see the Loch Ness Monster) but it still has great practical value.
It's called rectification. If your employer can prove that it was the common intention of the parties that the contract actually just be $XX per hour (or whatever it was supposed to be), and that the mistake was the result of a typographical error or similar, then a Court will give effect to the intention not the words of the contract.
Even if they're not liable in contract they may well have breached the Trade Practices Act, which prohibits misleading or deceptive conduct in Trade or Commerce.
The most popular game of all time is going to get written about. I don't care either, but I'm not bitching that the news isn't exactly tailored to my interests.
By that logic we should see a lot more stories about The Sims, which contrary to your suggestion is actually more popular than WoW...
This story would be fairly pointless no matter which game it was about. "Game player beats expansion pack for game" is not exactly news no matter how you look at it.
What if it's never interested me? There have been a vast, vast number of articles about WoW. I want to read about other game-related news, so I can't filter it out, either.
You're kidding, but why do stories have to use lame 'industry insider' phrases when an ordinary one would do just as well ("actual users" might fit the bill)?