Because buying a dagger with a swastika on it no more makes you "pro-Nazi" than the five throwing stars in my closet make me "pro-Ninja".
Many people buy and trade those things for the same reason they buy and sell Japanese swords, pistols and such, brought back by American GIs as souveniers.
Heh! That seems to imply that C++ isn't something that takes a fair amount of time to grok in order to be productive!
(I know you didn't mean that, but the implication is funny.)
It hilites one of the truths of life. The languages you know are simple, straightforward and obvious while all those languages you don't are wildly confusing and wierd.
The article reminded me of a QA guy I worked with. Always showed up at 11 am or later, usually with alcohol on his breath, often smelly fairly rank. (I was convinced the guy was an alcoholic.) Yet he was also one of the best QA guys I've worked with. Really knew his stuff, took over a QA system in a shambles, and whipped it into shape. Got things done on schedule. He was still there when I left.
Shit, if you are getting a 100 Gig drive, why not just screw the lossy compression and just save the wave files?
100 gigs should hold 150 cds in wave format.
Alright, this thing answers crazy kooks, and that makes it damn nigh insightful. go hand the news to all those that claim steganography is being used for neferious purposes.
This is important, because the FBI, NSA, CIA, etc. should definitely NOT be wasting its time looking into these crazy claims of hidden messages.
The concept isn't flawed, because the purpose isn't to immediately make money selling downloaded movies. The purpose is to prevent services like Napster from springing up. The movie industry hopes that if there is a low-cost method for downloading movies, that the geeky types who like that sort of thing will just pay the five bucks instead of throwing together some sort of peer to peer movie trading system.
It is a preemptive measure. They want to get it into place before such trading systems get popular so that they can avoid the bad publicity the music industry is being hit with. They don't want congressmen asking them why they are stalling on electronic services (as has happened to the music industry.)
Six years ago, the idea of a downloadable music service would have seemed flawed as well (too slow at 14.4, not enough harddrive space on the average machine), but ask yourself this: if the music industry had a system for downloading music in 1995, would Napster have the millions of users it does now? Probably not.
There is no "standard" aspect ratios for movies. They come in a variety of aspect ratios.
From IMDB:
Casablanca - 1.33:1
Godfather pt. I - 1.85:1
2001 - 2.1:1
Lawrance of Arabia - 2.2:1
Crouching Tiger,Hidden Dragon - 2.35:1
Final Fantasy was shot at 1.85:1.
Anyway, movie aspect ratios have varied ever since the advent of TV. Movies were originally all shot at 1.33:1, and when TV was popularized, it used that aspect ratio. The movie industry was panicked that TV would steal all its customers, so it came up with all sorts of names for new and exciting aspect ratios like "panavision" and "cinemascope". It had nothing to do with technical matters like shooting on 35 millimeter film (and not all films are shot on 35 millimeter, BTW), though, and everything to do with marketting. Because different companies used different systems, the aspect ratios varied wildly by film. Today, the aspect ratio is a choice of the director. 1.85:1 is the most common, but not the only one by any means, and is mostly used for movies where the look of the film is secondary. Special effects movies usually use something bigger. here is some more info.
I agree about the lack of manual...that really sucks (though I'd already bought the Windows version, so I had it.) But I'm surprised...I found Alpha Centauri to be much better than Civ:CTP.
Unfortunately, lacking diplomacy makes it mostly worthless as a single player game.
That, and some other things, is what I mean by "hasn't hit that mark". It is all well and good to say that your AI is better, but if you haven't got around to implementing everything, it is only better in theory, not in practice. That seems to be where open source projects often break down. They are often perpetually not quite done. (Don't flame: I know damn well that many projects are done.) Freeciv suffers from that. I've played it, and enjoyed it, but there is still work to be done before it is a real game.
In many ways, this is really Civilization IV, as both Sid Meiers and Brian Reynalds (one of the main guys behind Civilization II) developed "Alpha Centauri" for Firaxis Games. Quite a few of the "new features" for Civilization III (like borders, for one) made their debut in Alpha Centauri.
It is true that FreeCiv is more a clone of Civilization II than Civilization I these days, but it still hasn't really hit that mark yet. Certainly not in the AI.
The article missed the boat by not looking at O'Reilly. They talked about horrible Amazon sales rankings. A more clueful reporter might have noticed that the unprotected Perl CD bookshelf has a sales ranking of under 1500.
Also, it is best to make sure you do it at a time when the store is busy. Store personel (especially managers) are much more likely to cave if there are many other customers within earshot.
You are detecting itermittent dips in the framerate.
Cells in the retina have a recovery time of ~30 milliseconds. Do the math.
(If "80 FPS" seems choppy to you, it is because this is an average. The framerate only has to dip below 30 or so for a hundred milliseconds or so to be detectable.)
Slashdot Mirror
Many people buy and trade those things for the same reason they buy and sell Japanese swords, pistols and such, brought back by American GIs as souveniers.
I saw a short thing on it. That's how he makes his living. Nothing but movie trailers.
That "only Texas can fly the state flag at the same height" thing is an urban legend.
(I know you didn't mean that, but the implication is funny.)
It hilites one of the truths of life. The languages you know are simple, straightforward and obvious while all those languages you don't are wildly confusing and wierd.
"Slashdot posters" aren't a big enough market to pursue. "High-end stereo buyers", on the other hand, are.
The article reminded me of a QA guy I worked with. Always showed up at 11 am or later, usually with alcohol on his breath, often smelly fairly rank. (I was convinced the guy was an alcoholic.) Yet he was also one of the best QA guys I've worked with. Really knew his stuff, took over a QA system in a shambles, and whipped it into shape. Got things done on schedule. He was still there when I left.
It's a bitch if you are doing that when it rings. Yow! (from personal experience.)
Well, I'm glad to see at least someone figured it out...
This is important, because the FBI, NSA, CIA, etc. should definitely NOT be wasting its time looking into these crazy claims of hidden messages.
Never.
I think I'll stick with the plain-old hardwired electronics, thank you very much.
It is a preemptive measure. They want to get it into place before such trading systems get popular so that they can avoid the bad publicity the music industry is being hit with. They don't want congressmen asking them why they are stalling on electronic services (as has happened to the music industry.)
Six years ago, the idea of a downloadable music service would have seemed flawed as well (too slow at 14.4, not enough harddrive space on the average machine), but ask yourself this: if the music industry had a system for downloading music in 1995, would Napster have the millions of users it does now? Probably not.
From IMDB:
Final Fantasy was shot at 1.85:1.
Anyway, movie aspect ratios have varied ever since the advent of TV. Movies were originally all shot at 1.33:1, and when TV was popularized, it used that aspect ratio. The movie industry was panicked that TV would steal all its customers, so it came up with all sorts of names for new and exciting aspect ratios like "panavision" and "cinemascope". It had nothing to do with technical matters like shooting on 35 millimeter film (and not all films are shot on 35 millimeter, BTW), though, and everything to do with marketting. Because different companies used different systems, the aspect ratios varied wildly by film. Today, the aspect ratio is a choice of the director. 1.85:1 is the most common, but not the only one by any means, and is mostly used for movies where the look of the film is secondary. Special effects movies usually use something bigger. here is some more info.
I agree about the lack of manual...that really sucks (though I'd already bought the Windows version, so I had it.) But I'm surprised...I found Alpha Centauri to be much better than Civ:CTP.
That, and some other things, is what I mean by "hasn't hit that mark". It is all well and good to say that your AI is better, but if you haven't got around to implementing everything, it is only better in theory, not in practice. That seems to be where open source projects often break down. They are often perpetually not quite done. (Don't flame: I know damn well that many projects are done.) Freeciv suffers from that. I've played it, and enjoyed it, but there is still work to be done before it is a real game.
There is some hope. The Sid Meier's game "Alpha Centauri" is available for Linux, though it did take Loki forever to get it out.
In many ways, this is really Civilization IV, as both Sid Meiers and Brian Reynalds (one of the main guys behind Civilization II) developed "Alpha Centauri" for Firaxis Games. Quite a few of the "new features" for Civilization III (like borders, for one) made their debut in Alpha Centauri.
In other news, Civilization 3 is due October 17.
It is true that FreeCiv is more a clone of Civilization II than Civilization I these days, but it still hasn't really hit that mark yet. Certainly not in the AI.
The article missed the boat by not looking at O'Reilly. They talked about horrible Amazon sales rankings. A more clueful reporter might have noticed that the unprotected Perl CD bookshelf has a sales ranking of under 1500.
They should rename it KNotIllustratorAtAll.
"La Femme Nikita" is the only one I can think of. I don't think it lasted long, though.
In my high school computer class, we all wrote fake TRS-80 command prompts.
Cells in the retina have a recovery time of ~30 milliseconds. Do the math.
(If "80 FPS" seems choppy to you, it is because this is an average. The framerate only has to dip below 30 or so for a hundred milliseconds or so to be detectable.)
Here's a link from google