I'm almost certain the PSP will fail for the reasons outlined here.
It's not just that it looks geeky to carry such a brick around, it's also big enough to be inconvenient. Judging by the announced titles, the game library will also be nothing like the GBA's. And lastly, with such a giant I'm very skeptic on the battery life - that screen must eat a lot of power.
There are also similar lockdown features in GNOME's GConf2, starting with at least GNOME 2.2.
Last time I checked it was actually possible to lock a GNOME desktop down better than KDE, but this may have changed already (I suspect both are
now pretty much equal since the features have been in them for a few releases).
I've successfully used both, incidentally also in a public library setting.
The Vaasa Public Library in Finland has a network of ~100 public access computers running Debian GNU/Linux with GNOME 2.2 as the desktop environment. We have been very successful in building a restricted environment. Since the introducing GNU/Linux in 2001 we've never had any significant problems with users being able to fool around with the system.
So, unless there's other documentation somewhere stating otherwise, I don't believe this is true "trusted computing" big-brother-knows-best DRM. I'd guess that the CPU has a few custom instructions that help doing RSA or something like that.
DRM has always been supposed to be optional. The catch is that you won't get to any of the media that utilizes it unless you use it and when all your games/applications/movies/music suddenly require it, you can either deal with it and not use them or budge and use DRM.
MS/TCPA always loudly proclaim how you're going to be able to use GNU/Linux or whatever in non-trusted mode on the next generation DRMed hardware on desktop computers as well.
That would be funny if not for the fact that it takes a little more than a modchip to remove DRM when it's actually inside the processor and not a separate fritz-chip on the board.
It will not be modchipped.
Not on the mobile phones (however absurd that may be in any case) and also not on the desktop computers which are getting their share too with Intel now including LaGrande silently on their new processors starting with Prescott.
It's not used on the desktop yet but the hardware will be there when Longhorn comes out.
Others are "free" to choose how they want to distribute thier property, but that isn't good enough for him, he wants it to be free on his and only his terms.
Oh, but they're not only "free" to choose how *they* distribute "their property". They also dictate that *you* shall not distribute "your property". Copyright is not a basic property right as you seem to be implying, it's something originally created to encourage creating various kinds of works. While property rights seem to be a very basic right to human beings, exercised probably since prehistoric times, copyright is a fairly recent invention. The free software foundation has a pretty insightful essay on copyright as well, found here.
What exactly is freedom is naturally an issue of much debate, but you cannot draw conclusions from what applies to tangibles here and you must acknowledge that there must be limits placed to individual freedom so that they not stomp on the freedoms of others. A dictator like Saddam Hussein was indeed free to do whatever he please and arresting a murderer is indeed punishing him for exercising his free will. In the same way giving the author total control of his work is restricting the freedoms of others.
In my opinion, freedom isn't about being able to restrict the freedom of others, it is not being bound by arbitrary restrictions placed by others. Hurting others may be part of free will but it's not a freedom that needs any protection.
I decided to watch a movie through my TV-out today only to find that I only got monochrome through composite with the latest Nvidia drivers. Keeping TV-out on while booting revealed the Windows XP boot logo in full colour but when the graphics initialized it switched to monochrome.
This was on a GF4 Ti4200 that had previously worked just fine and given a full-colour TV-out picture under GNU/Linux to the same TV with the exact same cables.
I have no idea whether this truly is related to Macrovision but one post on a forum that got me looking for older drivers suggested it. Changing to the last drivers before the Macrovision "enhancement" certainly seemed to do the trick.
Has everyone already completely forgotten about LaGrande?
The tech sites certainly don't seem to be making much fuss about the fact that Prescott has this technology already in it. I wonder how they can be that unknowing of it. There was this big Extremetech article on LaGrande though.
Even on Slashdot no-one seems to be bringing it up these days. For me, the benchmarks aren't even worth looking at with the knowledge that these processors are the beginning of the DRM revolution. Seems they're being able to sneak the technology inside every PC just as they've planned it.
Still, sticking with AMD is going to be just a temporary measure. Is there any talk about integrating DRM into the PowerPC? If not, maybe the next motherboard upgrade could be a Pegasos or one could just go with a Mac.
Apple has developer mindshare not because of iTunes, but because it comes up with things like iTunes before anyone else does.
Apple didn't come up with the idea behind iTunes any more than the Rhythmbox developers, this Wikipedia article explains how it is based on SoundJam MP from another company and Apple just hired the people and bought the app. I would not be terribly surprised if there was something comparable even before that.
For all the talk of GPL != theft, there sure are a lot of clones of non-free software out there.
The "GPL != theft" part makes you sound a lot like a troll. Where did you get the idea that writing a similar app to an existing one is anything even remotely comparable to theft? It happens all the time even in the non-free software industry. More on that a little later.
How many Aqua GTK themes, now? And they *all* missed the point. It's not about pinstripes. Even Apple started backtracking on the pinstripes a bit. Pinstripes are the chrome, guys
People made Aqua GTK themes because they wanted them. It hasn't much to do with what direction GNOME, KDE or the free software desktop is taking. Why not rant about Windows XP which also has this Aqua theming craze and how Microsoft just doesn't get it?
The GIMP is a clone (and if you don't believe it, compare things like the order of the layer transparency menu to Photoshop's).
Again, even Adobe didn't originally come up with Photoshop. Just like Apple, they bought it after they saw what it was. (Wikipedia link. Drawing/image editing programs certainly have a long history before it as well. GIMP isn't the only clone either, there's other proprietary software such as Paint Shop Pro that is even closer to Photoshop as far as the look and feel go.
Blender couples the simplicity of emacs with the interface of vim.
Well, that's something original, isn't it? Some people think Blender's UI's just great.
XMMS is a clone. OGG Vorbis is a conceptual clone -- it may not share any code with MP3, but you can't tell me it isn't essentially an "oh, yeah, we can do it too" situation, even if it's for all the best reasons. OpenOffice is complete garbage: it's ugly and unstable compared to the ten-year-old wopro my Mac Classic runs.
And for every app you've mentioned there's also a lot of non-free clones and in many cases the dominant ones aren't the original appearances of the application type. Ogg Vorbis? It actually tries to improve (succesfully?) on the idea, providing better audio quality and/or smaller file size. There's AAC, mp3pro, WMA and a bunch of others too, you know. Why not whine about them too? What you said about Ooo.org pretty much applies to any modern Office suite.
Okay, so there's Nautilus. That's the only thing that's really pushing any part of the envelope as a desktop app. And maybe Kudzu. Other than that, it's just a little chrome on Xerox PARC, Microsoft, and Apple.
The desktop metaphor is still going strong after around 30 years (so's UNIX, by the way). The problem with lack of innovation in UI design is not just a GNOME or a KDE problem if you want to view it as one. If you want to see UI innovation you really shouldn't bee looking at the desktop environments that as their very goal are trying to provide the dominant user experience based on the 30-year-old metaphor. How about checking out something like Ion, Fluxbox and others from the plethora of available window managers? You could still also look at some of the more original stuff brewing for the big traditional environments, such as the kicker replacement called Slicker. In my opinion, GNOME has managed to stand u
Is it really? There being a non-free driver strongly discourages any hacker to implement a free software (or open source if that's your thing) driver.
Ironically, who this hurts most are the *BSD folks. No 3D acceleration for them on NVidia cards since there are only proprietary drivers that work with Linux.
In the long run it has some very dark implications for the Linux users also, though. Some might (myself included) be unhappy about not being able to run an operating system based completely on free software ie. GNU/Linux but it doesn't end just there. Linus and the other kernel developers are losing quality control of the kernel with these proprietary drivers. That is why they also refuse to investigate any problems reported while using them and introduced the concept of "tainting" the kernel with non-GPL binary modules.
ReWind is available under the MIT license just like WINE previously was. It doesn't have everything that WineX has, but most of the stuff eventually gets there. WineX itself as a product is proprietary, but it shares code with ReWind.
Much of the support for games regular wine enjoys has been contributed by "those monkeys at Transgaming".
The copy protection is the part Transgaming cannot release, but other than that they do give back to the community. After WINE changed to the LGPL, they're doing it thru ReWind but I'm sure the changes finally trickle back to the main wine tree if they're any good.
TransGaming is not such a bad company. I don't agree with what they're doing, I feel it may eventually or has already hurt GNU/Linux as a gaming platform. Still, it's nice to have games such as Warcraft 3 or Half-Life which enjoy a large following and would probably never be ported supported. It helps when someone considering switching just has to have that one game.
Point number seven is just moronic. The PSP? No one can say anything yet about what will come out of it. How about comparing to products that are out there instead of concept designs that don't even have a release date or any game library to speak of (as opposed to the small one of the N-Gage).
And then there's the one complaining about the lack of exclusive titles. GBA I can understand, but PSOne? It's old, it's not portable. I really don't see why it's going hurt N-Gage so much.
The price argument is equally ridiculous. This is a high-end mobile phone *and* a handheld console we're talking about here. What do you expect?
Can we not also give the "taco" thing a rest already? It's a getting-used-to thing, there's no particular reason it should look more stupid than talking to a regular cell phone.
Finally, it's true that the game change method is a little cumbersome, but I'm betting it's been done because the machine just has to be shut off when the game is changed. Just wanted to point that out, doesn't change the fact that it's not too convenient.
The quality of journalism at GameSpy is just horrible. I don't know why I bother reading anything over there anymore.
It's a good thing it's not the original. Some rabid retro-mac enthusiast could've killed you for destroying such a rare machine if it would've been the original 128k.:P
I was looking at the pictures and the first thing I wanted to see was whether it was the original or a plus (to decide should I gasp in horror or keep reading). Thanks for using just a Plus. It's more than adequate.;)
There's only one problem with PSOload - it's non-free. This has resulted in not being able to load Linux on the cube from a GNU/Linux machine currently as only 1.1 is ported and only 2.0 loads it AFAIK. You can also forget about using PSOLoad if you're on PPC or any other non-x86 platform GNU/Linux runs on since there's never been a build.
I hope there will eventually be a free way to load Linux and any other software on the Gamecube whether it's PSOLoad or not.
Re:It's DejaVu all over again
on
No WMA for HP iPod
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The common opinion here and elsewhere seems to be that Ogg Vorbis doesn't stand a chance and that the fate of a codec will be decided by the number of large commercial entities standing behind it (and online music stores).
For me this view seems to be far from the current reality.
I predict that people will not move from free and DRMless p2p to the iTMS or any other comparable offer. Some may, but not nearly the majority. What's more, buying real music CDs will still be the preferred method of obtaining music in the foreseeable future and people will continue to rip their tracks themselves to the format that they find the most convenient.
The codec wars will be fought on p2p where LAME-encoded MP3 is still the standard but other formats are increasinly appearing and you can bet that WMA or even AAC aren't the fastest increasing.
Secondly, they will be fought in the encoder software area where only Ogg Vorbis is free even in the beer sense. From what I've seen, a large number of both players and rippers already support vorbis. Here Microsoft has a small chance of ending up on top because WMA ripping has been made easy in XP but I suspect most people will still know better.
The third area where it'll be fought are small, independent artists and labels such as kahvi. Many of them have already moved to Vorbis.
I think nothing will seriously threaten mp3s for a while but of the possible challengers I feel Vorbis has a very good chance of prevailing over the others.
Even without DRM WMA (like most or all Microsoft formats) is still evil.
Imagine that you'd like to switch to another platform, Mac or a GNU/Linux desktop.
On GNU/Linux you're pretty much out of luck. You can probably make mplayer play the files but who wants to have a video player playing their music files? I'm also betting that you can't do it with even Mplayer on non-x86 because it's probably relying on some Windows dlls for the playback.
I don't know that much about MacOS (X or otherwise) support for WMA but I'm guessing that it's playable *for the moment* as there's supposed to be a Windows Media Player version for OS X. But in addition to the fact that WMP is an awful choice of a player, there's no telling when MS will discontinue that player and then you again end up with unplayable files.
Sticking with mp3 or preferably ogg ensures you'll never be left in a situation where those 3GB are useless because you have nothing to play them with. And seriously, what are the advantages? Against the mp3s I guess it probably could sound better at the same bitrate but AFAIK Vorbis fares very well against the MPEG4-based codecs.
The engine has the gameplay features of MGS2 but it's probably not related to it at all. The cube is a very different beast compared to the PS2 and this is the first MGS game for it. They specifically hired Silicon Knights (of Eternal Darkness and Legacy of Kain series fame) because they wanted Gamecube expertise they did not themselves have.
Anyone seen the trailer? The cutscenes are impressively well directed, I can't say that I've seen the same quality in any other game. Thanks for that go to Ruyhei Kitamura, the action movie director hired to do them.
I'm a cube owner and never played any MGS game before. This is the perfect way to get a taste of the series in my opinion. I'd guess there's a fair amount of other Gamecube owners that've never played MGS but heard a great deal about it as well and those are who this will be most sold to.
If you look at some other comments in this thread, you'll see that there are versions of Dosbox available for LinuxPPC, MacOS X etc. It really does emulate the CPU as well, you can see information about which instructions are working and which aren't at the Dosbox site (they recently reached 386).
It does work pretty well for games designed to run on a 386 or less but that's about it. Performance enhancements have been promised to be made eventually though.
I suggest you try Icculus' Duke Nukem 3D GNU/Linux port if you want to play it rather than fiddling with dosemu or dosbox (which will surely be too slow as it emulates the entire cpu).
The same goes for all the games mentioned in the guide - Quake, Wolf3D, Doom all have versions that can be run natively on GNU/Linux and some are also greatly enhanced. Schorched Earth's original version isn't but several remakes are. The Linux Game Tome is a good starting place if you wish to obtain these.
It's interesting how it might be easier to run legacy Dos apps in GNU/Linux than in Windows (XP) these days. My friend's been dreaming of running a certain old dos game on his WinXP system, but all he has is Dosbox which doesn't run it and even if it did, it would be unplayably slow.
The 100 best Doom WADs feature on Doomworld is really worth checking out. I remember playing Tei Tenga with Zdoom and couldn't believe what I was seeing - Zdoom's scripting makes it possible to have dialog, movable objects, new effects, colored lighting (ok that's maybe not scripting) and map nodes that make it possible to return to earlier "levels". Teitenga is simply one of the best single player experiences I've had and I do include all the newer games in that. Only Deus Ex is even comparable.
The original doom gameplay dynamics which still are excellent combined with modern scripting features and the level of detail possible only with today's machines and source ports really make Doom a great experience.
One more great news for today is that Daedalus, formerly known as Doom2000 has finally been released. It's done by the folks that made Final Doom's levels, TeamTNT. Sadly I can't play it as it requires a 2.0.x series Zdoom and that hasn't yet been ported to GNU/Linux. Oh well, I guess I'll go celebrate with finishing The Plutonia experiment and TNT: Evilution from Final Doom.:)
HalfLife didn't check keys in LAN. And I never had problems with Quake3 servers.
It's true that LAN gaming is still there but for many people it has really decreased in significance after internet gaming really took off. I haven't bothered to take my computer to a friend's place in *years* and I believe a lot of people are the same. LAN gaming is really insignificant and with more and more people getting faster connections it will probably become a thing in the past except for huge LAN parties (that will run legal servers).
Why do you think Half-Life sold *millions* of copies? Because everyone had to pay if they wanted to play (online). I see multiplayer games fast becoming the most profitable area of PC gaming industry.
Everyone wanting to play a first person shooter online these days has to buy a copy and back when there still were options (Unreal Tournament) no one voted with their wallet against master server authentication.
And sure, it can be cracked. The problem is, an ISP is never going to run a cracked server and most (good, anyway) servers are run by ISP's. No fun at all if you can only play on select few badly pinging servers with your brand new cracked copy of Half-Life 2.
The way I see it WON, Steam and similar systems really show how easy it will be to get everyone to keep it quiet and do what Microsoft tells them to.
* Microsofts employees have the issues related to startup time drummed into them, free software developers do not. They understand techniques like rearranging the layout of your code so commonly used objects and functions are grouped together, how to optimize the CPU working set and so on.
I hate to break it to you, but Openoffice.org's startup slowness traces back to the days when it wasn't yet OpenOffice.org. Anybody remember StarOffice 5.2? Free software developers are certainly not to blame here.
OpenOffice.org knows about the issue and is constantly improving it. I'd say most people find long startup times annoying without anyone telling them to. Programmers are no exception. Have you got any other examples of excessive startup times in the free software world to offer?
Mozilla? Again, originally non-free (although I don't know how much was left after jumping to NGLayout) and recently been getting a lot better (Mozilla Firebird). GNOME 2 has become several times faster than 1.4 etc.
Mandrake used bittorrent for their release as well to keep the load off their servers. This is *really* not what was the reason for the two-week exclusive release. If they were worried about bandwidth they would've distributed it to ftp mirrors all over the world just like with all previous Mandrake releases.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not just that it looks geeky to carry such a brick around, it's also big enough to be inconvenient. Judging by the announced titles, the game library will also be nothing like the GBA's. And lastly, with such a giant I'm very skeptic on the battery life - that screen must eat a lot of power.
now pretty much equal since the features have been in them for a few releases).
I've successfully used both, incidentally also in a public library setting.
The Vaasa Public Library in Finland has a network of ~100 public access computers running Debian GNU/Linux with GNOME 2.2 as the desktop environment. We have been very successful in building a restricted environment. Since the introducing GNU/Linux in 2001 we've never had any significant problems with users being able to fool around with the system.
Have you tried the new 1.2 releases? They really improve the sound support a lot.
DRM has always been supposed to be optional. The catch is that you won't get to any of the media that utilizes it unless you use it and when all your games/applications/movies/music suddenly require it, you can either deal with it and not use them or budge and use DRM.
MS/TCPA always loudly proclaim how you're going to be able to use GNU/Linux or whatever in non-trusted mode on the next generation DRMed hardware on desktop computers as well.
It will not be modchipped.
Not on the mobile phones (however absurd that may be in any case) and also not on the desktop computers which are getting their share too with Intel now including LaGrande silently on their new processors starting with Prescott.
It's not used on the desktop yet but the hardware will be there when Longhorn comes out.
The freedom he is talking about is the one defined by the Free software foundation's free software definition.
Oh, but they're not only "free" to choose how *they* distribute "their property". They also dictate that *you* shall not distribute "your property". Copyright is not a basic property right as you seem to be implying, it's something originally created to encourage creating various kinds of works. While property rights seem to be a very basic right to human beings, exercised probably since prehistoric times, copyright is a fairly recent invention. The free software foundation has a pretty insightful essay on copyright as well, found here.
What exactly is freedom is naturally an issue of much debate, but you cannot draw conclusions from what applies to tangibles here and you must acknowledge that there must be limits placed to individual freedom so that they not stomp on the freedoms of others. A dictator like Saddam Hussein was indeed free to do whatever he please and arresting a murderer is indeed punishing him for exercising his free will. In the same way giving the author total control of his work is restricting the freedoms of others.
In my opinion, freedom isn't about being able to restrict the freedom of others, it is not being bound by arbitrary restrictions placed by others. Hurting others may be part of free will but it's not a freedom that needs any protection.
I decided to watch a movie through my TV-out today only to find that I only got monochrome through composite with the latest Nvidia drivers. Keeping TV-out on while booting revealed the Windows XP boot logo in full colour but when the graphics initialized it switched to monochrome.
This was on a GF4 Ti4200 that had previously worked just fine and given a full-colour TV-out picture under GNU/Linux to the same TV with the exact same cables.
I have no idea whether this truly is related to Macrovision but one post on a forum that got me looking for older drivers suggested it. Changing to the last drivers before the Macrovision "enhancement" certainly seemed to do the trick.
Has everyone already completely forgotten about LaGrande?
The tech sites certainly don't seem to be making much fuss about the fact that Prescott has this technology already in it. I wonder how they can be that unknowing of it. There was this big Extremetech article on LaGrande though.
Even on Slashdot no-one seems to be bringing it up these days. For me, the benchmarks aren't even worth looking at with the knowledge that these processors are the beginning of the DRM revolution. Seems they're being able to sneak the technology inside every PC just as they've planned it.
Still, sticking with AMD is going to be just a temporary measure. Is there any talk about integrating DRM into the PowerPC? If not, maybe the next motherboard upgrade could be a Pegasos or one could just go with a Mac.
Apple didn't come up with the idea behind iTunes any more than the Rhythmbox developers, this Wikipedia article explains how it is based on SoundJam MP from another company and Apple just hired the people and bought the app. I would not be terribly surprised if there was something comparable even before that.
The "GPL != theft" part makes you sound a lot like a troll. Where did you get the idea that writing a similar app to an existing one is anything even remotely comparable to theft? It happens all the time even in the non-free software industry. More on that a little later.
People made Aqua GTK themes because they wanted them. It hasn't much to do with what direction GNOME, KDE or the free software desktop is taking. Why not rant about Windows XP which also has this Aqua theming craze and how Microsoft just doesn't get it?
Again, even Adobe didn't originally come up with Photoshop. Just like Apple, they bought it after they saw what it was. (Wikipedia link. Drawing/image editing programs certainly have a long history before it as well. GIMP isn't the only clone either, there's other proprietary software such as Paint Shop Pro that is even closer to Photoshop as far as the look and feel go.
Well, that's something original, isn't it? Some people think Blender's UI's just great.
And for every app you've mentioned there's also a lot of non-free clones and in many cases the dominant ones aren't the original appearances of the application type. Ogg Vorbis? It actually tries to improve (succesfully?) on the idea, providing better audio quality and/or smaller file size. There's AAC, mp3pro, WMA and a bunch of others too, you know. Why not whine about them too? What you said about Ooo.org pretty much applies to any modern Office suite.
The desktop metaphor is still going strong after around 30 years (so's UNIX, by the way). The problem with lack of innovation in UI design is not just a GNOME or a KDE problem if you want to view it as one. If you want to see UI innovation you really shouldn't bee looking at the desktop environments that as their very goal are trying to provide the dominant user experience based on the 30-year-old metaphor. How about checking out something like Ion, Fluxbox and others from the plethora of available window managers? You could still also look at some of the more original stuff brewing for the big traditional environments, such as the kicker replacement called Slicker. In my opinion, GNOME has managed to stand u
Is it really? There being a non-free driver strongly discourages any hacker to implement a free software (or open source if that's your thing) driver.
Ironically, who this hurts most are the *BSD folks. No 3D acceleration for them on NVidia cards since there are only proprietary drivers that work with Linux.
In the long run it has some very dark implications for the Linux users also, though. Some might (myself included) be unhappy about not being able to run an operating system based completely on free software ie. GNU/Linux but it doesn't end just there. Linus and the other kernel developers are losing quality control of the kernel with these proprietary drivers. That is why they also refuse to investigate any problems reported while using them and introduced the concept of "tainting" the kernel with non-GPL binary modules.
ReWind is available under the MIT license just like WINE previously was. It doesn't have everything that WineX has, but most of the stuff eventually gets there. WineX itself as a product is proprietary, but it shares code with ReWind.
The copy protection is the part Transgaming cannot release, but other than that they do give back to the community. After WINE changed to the LGPL, they're doing it thru ReWind but I'm sure the changes finally trickle back to the main wine tree if they're any good.
TransGaming is not such a bad company. I don't agree with what they're doing, I feel it may eventually or has already hurt GNU/Linux as a gaming platform. Still, it's nice to have games such as Warcraft 3 or Half-Life which enjoy a large following and would probably never be ported supported. It helps when someone considering switching just has to have that one game.
Heh, I suppose that was to be expected but in fact I do not own an N-Gage. :)
I might consider if I felt the need for mobile gaming enough, though. I just feel it's bashed much more than it deserves. Far from perfect, I admit.
Point number seven is just moronic. The PSP? No one can say anything yet about what will come out of it. How about comparing to products that are out there instead of concept designs that don't even have a release date or any game library to speak of (as opposed to the small one of the N-Gage).
And then there's the one complaining about the lack of exclusive titles. GBA I can understand, but PSOne? It's old, it's not portable. I really don't see why it's going hurt N-Gage so much.
The price argument is equally ridiculous. This is a high-end mobile phone *and* a handheld console we're talking about here. What do you expect?
Can we not also give the "taco" thing a rest already? It's a getting-used-to thing, there's no particular reason it should look more stupid than talking to a regular cell phone.
Finally, it's true that the game change method is a little cumbersome, but I'm betting it's been done because the machine just has to be shut off when the game is changed. Just wanted to point that out, doesn't change the fact that it's not too convenient.
The quality of journalism at GameSpy is just horrible. I don't know why I bother reading anything over there anymore.
It's a good thing it's not the original. Some rabid retro-mac enthusiast could've killed you for destroying such a rare machine if it would've been the original 128k. :P
;)
I was looking at the pictures and the first thing I wanted to see was whether it was the original or a plus (to decide should I gasp in horror or keep reading). Thanks for using just a Plus. It's more than adequate.
There's only one problem with PSOload - it's non-free. This has resulted in not being able to load Linux on the cube from a GNU/Linux machine currently as only 1.1 is ported and only 2.0 loads it AFAIK. You can also forget about using PSOLoad if you're on PPC or any other non-x86 platform GNU/Linux runs on since there's never been a build.
I hope there will eventually be a free way to load Linux and any other software on the Gamecube whether it's PSOLoad or not.
For me this view seems to be far from the current reality.
I predict that people will not move from free and DRMless p2p to the iTMS or any other comparable offer. Some may, but not nearly the majority. What's more, buying real music CDs will still be the preferred method of obtaining music in the foreseeable future and people will continue to rip their tracks themselves to the format that they find the most convenient.
The codec wars will be fought on p2p where LAME-encoded MP3 is still the standard but other formats are increasinly appearing and you can bet that WMA or even AAC aren't the fastest increasing.
Secondly, they will be fought in the encoder software area where only Ogg Vorbis is free even in the beer sense. From what I've seen, a large number of both players and rippers already support vorbis. Here Microsoft has a small chance of ending up on top because WMA ripping has been made easy in XP but I suspect most people will still know better.
The third area where it'll be fought are small, independent artists and labels such as kahvi. Many of them have already moved to Vorbis.
I think nothing will seriously threaten mp3s for a while but of the possible challengers I feel Vorbis has a very good chance of prevailing over the others.
Even without DRM WMA (like most or all Microsoft formats) is still evil.
Imagine that you'd like to switch to another platform, Mac or a GNU/Linux desktop.
On GNU/Linux you're pretty much out of luck. You can probably make mplayer play the files but who wants to have a video player playing their music files? I'm also betting that you can't do it with even Mplayer on non-x86 because it's probably relying on some Windows dlls for the playback.
I don't know that much about MacOS (X or otherwise) support for WMA but I'm guessing that it's playable *for the moment* as there's supposed to be a Windows Media Player version for OS X. But in addition to the fact that WMP is an awful choice of a player, there's no telling when MS will discontinue that player and then you again end up with unplayable files.
Sticking with mp3 or preferably ogg ensures you'll never be left in a situation where those 3GB are useless because you have nothing to play them with. And seriously, what are the advantages? Against the mp3s I guess it probably could sound better at the same bitrate but AFAIK Vorbis fares very well against the MPEG4-based codecs.
The engine has the gameplay features of MGS2 but it's probably not related to it at all. The cube is a very different beast compared to the PS2 and this is the first MGS game for it. They specifically hired Silicon Knights (of Eternal Darkness and Legacy of Kain series fame) because they wanted Gamecube expertise they did not themselves have.
Anyone seen the trailer? The cutscenes are impressively well directed, I can't say that I've seen the same quality in any other game. Thanks for that go to Ruyhei Kitamura, the action movie director hired to do them.
I'm a cube owner and never played any MGS game before. This is the perfect way to get a taste of the series in my opinion. I'd guess there's a fair amount of other Gamecube owners that've never played MGS but heard a great deal about it as well and those are who this will be most sold to.
If you look at some other comments in this thread, you'll see that there are versions of Dosbox available for LinuxPPC, MacOS X etc. It really does emulate the CPU as well, you can see information about which instructions are working and which aren't at the Dosbox site (they recently reached 386).
It does work pretty well for games designed to run on a 386 or less but that's about it. Performance enhancements have been promised to be made eventually though.
The same goes for all the games mentioned in the guide - Quake, Wolf3D, Doom all have versions that can be run natively on GNU/Linux and some are also greatly enhanced. Schorched Earth's original version isn't but several remakes are. The Linux Game Tome is a good starting place if you wish to obtain these.
It's interesting how it might be easier to run legacy Dos apps in GNU/Linux than in Windows (XP) these days. My friend's been dreaming of running a certain old dos game on his WinXP system, but all he has is Dosbox which doesn't run it and even if it did, it would be unplayably slow.
The 100 best Doom WADs feature on Doomworld is really worth checking out. I remember playing Tei Tenga with Zdoom and couldn't believe what I was seeing - Zdoom's scripting makes it possible to have dialog, movable objects, new effects, colored lighting (ok that's maybe not scripting) and map nodes that make it possible to return to earlier "levels". Teitenga is simply one of the best single player experiences I've had and I do include all the newer games in that. Only Deus Ex is even comparable.
:)
The original doom gameplay dynamics which still are excellent combined with modern scripting features and the level of detail possible only with today's machines and source ports really make Doom a great experience.
One more great news for today is that Daedalus, formerly known as Doom2000 has finally been released. It's done by the folks that made Final Doom's levels, TeamTNT. Sadly I can't play it as it requires a 2.0.x series Zdoom and that hasn't yet been ported to GNU/Linux. Oh well, I guess I'll go celebrate with finishing The Plutonia experiment and TNT: Evilution from Final Doom.
It's true that LAN gaming is still there but for many people it has really decreased in significance after internet gaming really took off. I haven't bothered to take my computer to a friend's place in *years* and I believe a lot of people are the same. LAN gaming is really insignificant and with more and more people getting faster connections it will probably become a thing in the past except for huge LAN parties (that will run legal servers).
Why do you think Half-Life sold *millions* of copies? Because everyone had to pay if they wanted to play (online). I see multiplayer games fast becoming the most profitable area of PC gaming industry.
Everyone wanting to play a first person shooter online these days has to buy a copy and back when there still were options (Unreal Tournament) no one voted with their wallet against master server authentication.
And sure, it can be cracked. The problem is, an ISP is never going to run a cracked server and most (good, anyway) servers are run by ISP's. No fun at all if you can only play on select few badly pinging servers with your brand new cracked copy of Half-Life 2.
The way I see it WON, Steam and similar systems really show how easy it will be to get everyone to keep it quiet and do what Microsoft tells them to.
I hate to break it to you, but Openoffice.org's startup slowness traces back to the days when it wasn't yet OpenOffice.org. Anybody remember StarOffice 5.2? Free software developers are certainly not to blame here.
OpenOffice.org knows about the issue and is constantly improving it. I'd say most people find long startup times annoying without anyone telling them to. Programmers are no exception. Have you got any other examples of excessive startup times in the free software world to offer?
Mozilla? Again, originally non-free (although I don't know how much was left after jumping to NGLayout) and recently been getting a lot better (Mozilla Firebird). GNOME 2 has become several times faster than 1.4 etc.
Mandrake used bittorrent for their release as well to keep the load off their servers. This is *really* not what was the reason for the two-week exclusive release. If they were worried about bandwidth they would've distributed it to ftp mirrors all over the world just like with all previous Mandrake releases.