Slashdot is "news for nerds". You're displaying typical geek closed-mindedness - this post is about footage that would allow one to be as nerdy about football as possible. That would be a great thing.
I build servers, troubleshoot networks, play video games - typically nerdy activities. But are you aware how fun it is to be a nerd about other things?
I'm a huge photography nerd - I love that a deep understanding of the physics of light and sensors, and of optics, can play as big a role in making great photographs as artistic talent.
Similarly, I'm a football nerd - the strategy and depth of the game (should you care to learn) only add to the already inherent excitement, heroism, and emotion in sports. Every game and every play matters.
This news pertains to me as much as it would to see a post on AMD's new processor architecture. Don't write anything off just because the people who beat you up in high school were into it.
I don't play WoW, but I was pretty big into Guild Wars back in the day, particularly the in-game economy. Won't the in-game market value of this pet plummet once everyone's buying it to change it into gold and flooding the auction house with it? Seems like something that'll only be worth it (that is, worth it to someone who would pay for in-game items in the first place) for a short while.
Addendum: they didn't -remove- bunny hopping in 1.3, but it was the first version where they slowed down your speed in midair to mitigate the problem. People still found ways to do it, but it was much harder and you couldn't get going as fast as 1.1 and prior.
First off, let me agree with you on Black Ops, and extend those feelings to MW2 for myself as well. In addition to the cheating: since it's random matchmaking in MW2, you can get put into a server that automatically levels you to 70 and gives you every achievement - thus ruining all the legitimate progress you've made thus far. I had a level 50-something account ruined in this fashion, and that's why I don't play anymore (not to mention the occasional cheater, which seems as frequent as the pre-VAC days of Counter-Strike).
On to the real reason I responded: Punkbuster. Maybe it worked better at preventing cheating, but I -HATED- pb, because it never autoupdated for me. Even after multiple formats, different OSes, turning off firewalls or explicitly allowing it - I, a legitimate player, would join a server, and be kicked in a matter of seconds for not having pb updated. Then I'd have to go their website, download some bullshit.htm files (were those really HTML?) and update it myself. Then I'd still get booted - this happened multiple times in Quake 3 and Call of Duty 1 through 4 for me, without fail.
That kind of sucks that TFC is $5, but only because it doesn't come with Half-Life at the base $10 price anymore (you have to spend $15 to get HL1 with the expansions and TFC - and they've apparently separated CS completely).
For quite a while after Steam was released, you still got all the "free" mods like CS and TFC with the purchase of HL1. Not sure when they switched over, but then again I wouldn't have noticed, since I've owned HL since 1999 and I've had it activated on Steam from the day I made an account in 2003.
My question is - who doesn't own TFC by now? Who, that would be interested in near-dead communities like TFC and CS 1.6, didn't already own or activate Half-Life on Steam back when you still got the free mods added to your account for doing so? I think it's a -very- small minority that will be affected by TFC costing $5 - and in fact, it could be beneficial to them if that's all they wanted to play, without spending $10 on HL1.
Personally, I think anyone who hasn't experienced Valve games before should just buy the Valve Complete Pack. If, somehow, I lost my Steam account - getting every single Valve game for $99 would be first on my list for a new account.
I just installed a new ROM on my phone, and I was disappointed to see all the -oid emulators missing from the market. I had assumed Nintendo pressured Google into removing them, but a GPL violation seems just as likely.
Anyone know where I can get the.apk's?
I beat the hell out of Dell's quote for their required specs (they had a mid-range Core 2 Quad, 8GB of DDR2, and dual Radeon 4550s for that price).
They're very happy. I make about $150 profit/labor on each, and it only takes me 45 minutes to build each machine, image it, get Windows activated, and join it to their domain.
I warrant the parts as long as their built in warranties (ranging from 1 year to lifetime), and my labor for repairs is free the first year (and on-site - better than Dell's standard 1 year ship-it-in warranty).
Granted, 1000 machines is different - but if you get a small army of people that can build as fast as I can, and if you choose good components and make a good base image, it's certainly do-able.
Subjective results:
- Chrome, Opera, and Firefox were all far more responsive while running the test than Safari, which in turn was more responsive than IE (such as when minimizing/maximizing the window). - IE9 complained during the test a few times that the page wasn't responding and offered to "recover" the page, but a glance at Task Manager showed the test was still running. - IE9's interface is nice, but it's still kind of a piece of shit under the hood compared to your other options. I'm too lazy to uninstall it and try the test on IE8.
Oh, and this is slashdot.org, not slashdot.eu - no one mentions how Symbian's doing across the pond because the discussion is about WINDOWS MOBILE.
My point was that there are many better alternatives to Windows Mobile that will remain more popular - I was not purporting to make a definitive list of the top smartphone operating systems.
I love you damn Europeans' abrasive attitude toward Americans - did I say I was talking about the whole world? Did I offend you somehow by not explicitly mentioning Nokia's OS? No need to be condescending about how many people you have in the European Union - I'm well aware that there are regions and countries of the world that are more populous than the US.
I'd say Office and Windows are still pretty damn relevant. However, in the mobile space - yeah, WinMo7 isn't going to change anything. iPhones and Android phones will still rule the smartphone market, and though BlackBerries are a dying breed in terms of the cutting-edge, even they will far exceed WinMo7's usage.
I'm glad someone else is with me on this point - I worked at Circuit City a few years ago right when 120Hz TVs were coming out, and it pissed me off to no end the salesperson and consumer frenzy over the frame-interpolation feature. Yeah, it looks nice and smooth for sports, but it looks like SHIT on movies, because they look EVEN WORSE than soap operas (which are usually filmed at 6 fps faster than film - imagine adding 36 or 96 extra fps!)
I still have clients in my business now that seek my counsel when buying HDTVs. People will ignore my explanation of this feature, and pay several hundred dollars more for a TV _solely_ for the 120 or 240Hz feature, when they don't even understand how it's probably going to make most of their viewing experiences worse (since they'll undoubtedly leave the thing on the High setting at all times).
Right, that's part of what's interesting about it - we do see a greater depth of field and a greater dynamic range with our eyes. But when you try to replicate those effects in film/video/games, it seems more fake - perhaps because we're used to seeing standard photography/videography as "real", and CG/games as having infinite depth of field and all shadows and highlights properly exposed.
That's true as far as photography/videography goes - but what I said about games is that it's the opposite - the "HDR" effect actually increases the dynamic range beyond that of your viewing medium so that it looks more like standard photography, rather than compressing the dynamic range so we can see it all.
That's exactly what I was getting at - the more dynamic range and perfect focus we see in the context of video, the more "fake" it tends to seem, despite the fact that it's more like what our eyes would perceive at the scene.
Re:a text C&P from the article
on
HDR Video a Reality
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
It's the other way around.
Even though we call it high dynamic range in videos and photographs, it's actually just compressing all the extra information from multiple exposures into a LOWER dynamic range, so we can manipulate/display it on our 8-bit screens.
Games, however - such as the Source engine after it got the HDR update with Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and Day of Defeat: Source, actually do increase the dynamic range of a scene beyond what your monitor can display. They underexpose and overexpose parts of the scene when transitions between light and dark places occur, just as your eyes would before they adjusted to the new light, or as a video camera would depending on what exposure the videographer chose. This makes it look more realistic - just take a look at a bright outdoor scene in Half-Life 2: Episode Two and check out how shiny objects in the sunlight have blown-out highlights that gleam brilliantly, and then look at the same scene in the original Half-Life 2, where that object would look flatly-lit and fake. The "non-HDR" looks more fake because the dynamic range is compressed so you can see all the detail everywhere, which also gives it that flat "game" look.
Of course, that last part is just my opinion - but I believe that in order to look more realistic, CGI needs to simulate the behavior of traditional cameras with a lower dynamic range (or that of your eyes before they've adjusted properly to bright/dim light). The everything-is-exposed-properly, compressed-dynamic-range look just appears fake to me, even though my eyes could probably perceive that range at the actual scene. I'm not sure why.
I take that part back; upon seeing some tests from June, IE9 does compare favorably with Chrome/Safari/Opera. I was basing my comment on some older tests I'd seen of IE9, wherein they were nowhere near as fast as the Webkit browsers.
Besides, do you really blame me for assuming a release of IE is going to be shit?:-)
I use Windows, and if I was using Linux I sure as hell wouldn't be on something like Fluxbox just because Firefox can't have an efficient UI like Chrome and Opera.
The menu bar doesn't exist in Firefox 4 without pressing Alt - all there is, is the menu button at the top-left, in the titlebar. A titlebar isn't necessary and is a waste of space, because the title is on the current tab anyway. That's one logical reason to put the tabs where the title and a bunch of empty space would be.
Another is that it's faster/easier to select tabs if they're against the top of the screen (assuming a maximized window) - because it doesn't require precise Y-axis movement to within a 30-pixel-tall space to choose a tab, you just slam your mouse to the top and make sure the X-coordinate is within the 150px or so that the tab takes up.
Slashdot Mirror
He monetized.
$280k to charities, $250k to production costs, $250k as bonuses to his staff, and $220k for himself.
LogMeIn, RDP, VNC.. all better alternatives to paying for that shit.
Slashdot is "news for nerds". You're displaying typical geek closed-mindedness - this post is about footage that would allow one to be as nerdy about football as possible. That would be a great thing.
I build servers, troubleshoot networks, play video games - typically nerdy activities. But are you aware how fun it is to be a nerd about other things?
I'm a huge photography nerd - I love that a deep understanding of the physics of light and sensors, and of optics, can play as big a role in making great photographs as artistic talent.
Similarly, I'm a football nerd - the strategy and depth of the game (should you care to learn) only add to the already inherent excitement, heroism, and emotion in sports. Every game and every play matters.
This news pertains to me as much as it would to see a post on AMD's new processor architecture. Don't write anything off just because the people who beat you up in high school were into it.
I don't play WoW, but I was pretty big into Guild Wars back in the day, particularly the in-game economy. Won't the in-game market value of this pet plummet once everyone's buying it to change it into gold and flooding the auction house with it? Seems like something that'll only be worth it (that is, worth it to someone who would pay for in-game items in the first place) for a short while.
Addendum: they didn't -remove- bunny hopping in 1.3, but it was the first version where they slowed down your speed in midair to mitigate the problem. People still found ways to do it, but it was much harder and you couldn't get going as fast as 1.1 and prior.
First off, let me agree with you on Black Ops, and extend those feelings to MW2 for myself as well. In addition to the cheating: since it's random matchmaking in MW2, you can get put into a server that automatically levels you to 70 and gives you every achievement - thus ruining all the legitimate progress you've made thus far. I had a level 50-something account ruined in this fashion, and that's why I don't play anymore (not to mention the occasional cheater, which seems as frequent as the pre-VAC days of Counter-Strike).
.htm files (were those really HTML?) and update it myself. Then I'd still get booted - this happened multiple times in Quake 3 and Call of Duty 1 through 4 for me, without fail.
On to the real reason I responded: Punkbuster. Maybe it worked better at preventing cheating, but I -HATED- pb, because it never autoupdated for me. Even after multiple formats, different OSes, turning off firewalls or explicitly allowing it - I, a legitimate player, would join a server, and be kicked in a matter of seconds for not having pb updated. Then I'd have to go their website, download some bullshit
That kind of sucks that TFC is $5, but only because it doesn't come with Half-Life at the base $10 price anymore (you have to spend $15 to get HL1 with the expansions and TFC - and they've apparently separated CS completely).
For quite a while after Steam was released, you still got all the "free" mods like CS and TFC with the purchase of HL1. Not sure when they switched over, but then again I wouldn't have noticed, since I've owned HL since 1999 and I've had it activated on Steam from the day I made an account in 2003.
My question is - who doesn't own TFC by now? Who, that would be interested in near-dead communities like TFC and CS 1.6, didn't already own or activate Half-Life on Steam back when you still got the free mods added to your account for doing so? I think it's a -very- small minority that will be affected by TFC costing $5 - and in fact, it could be beneficial to them if that's all they wanted to play, without spending $10 on HL1.
Personally, I think anyone who hasn't experienced Valve games before should just buy the Valve Complete Pack. If, somehow, I lost my Steam account - getting every single Valve game for $99 would be first on my list for a new account.
Nah, they removed bunny hopping in 1.3.
1.1 was my favorite, because it was the latest version before bhop got removed - I consider that the peak.
I agree on all points except there being no killer app - I'd say Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D is about as killer an app as a system could hope for.
I just installed a new ROM on my phone, and I was disappointed to see all the -oid emulators missing from the market. I had assumed Nintendo pressured Google into removing them, but a GPL violation seems just as likely. Anyone know where I can get the .apk's?
Hey, Tux Racer doesn't need that high of framerates or resolutions - it's a good enough game on its own!
I've worked retail, and your description sounds spot-on for about 90% of the employees there ;-)
I just built 20 PCs at approximately $1200 per machine (including my markup/labor and Windows 7 pro licenses) for a company in St Paul, Minnesota.
The specs:
Core i7 870
8GB G.Skill DDR3-1600 (9-9-9-24)
320GB 7200rpm Seagate 7200.12
Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3
XFX Radeon 4870 1GB
Antec 650W
DVD+-RW DL
ATX mid tower
Windows 7 Professional
I beat the hell out of Dell's quote for their required specs (they had a mid-range Core 2 Quad, 8GB of DDR2, and dual Radeon 4550s for that price).
They're very happy. I make about $150 profit/labor on each, and it only takes me 45 minutes to build each machine, image it, get Windows activated, and join it to their domain.
I warrant the parts as long as their built in warranties (ranging from 1 year to lifetime), and my labor for repairs is free the first year (and on-site - better than Dell's standard 1 year ship-it-in warranty).
Granted, 1000 machines is different - but if you get a small army of people that can build as fast as I can, and if you choose good components and make a good base image, it's certainly do-able.
I did you one better.
System:
Windows 7 x64
AMD Phenom II X4 955 (3.2GHz)
6GB DDR2-800 @ 4-4-4-12
AMD 770 Chipset
ATI Radeon HD 5670
7200rpm SATA, 3.0Gb/s, 16MB cache
Objective results:
Opera 10.60: 14149.9ms
Firefox 4 Beta 6: 15696.6ms
Chrome 6: 16165.4ms
Safari 5: 19600.1ms
IE9 Beta: 38926.2ms
Subjective results:
- Chrome, Opera, and Firefox were all far more responsive while running the test than Safari, which in turn was more responsive than IE (such as when minimizing/maximizing the window).
- IE9 complained during the test a few times that the page wasn't responding and offered to "recover" the page, but a glance at Task Manager showed the test was still running.
- IE9's interface is nice, but it's still kind of a piece of shit under the hood compared to your other options. I'm too lazy to uninstall it and try the test on IE8.
Chrome stable (6.x) gave me 16165.4 on: Windows 7 x64 Phenom II X4 955 (3.2ghz) 6GB DDR2-800 (4-4-4-12)
Oh, and this is slashdot.org, not slashdot.eu - no one mentions how Symbian's doing across the pond because the discussion is about WINDOWS MOBILE.
My point was that there are many better alternatives to Windows Mobile that will remain more popular - I was not purporting to make a definitive list of the top smartphone operating systems.
I love you damn Europeans' abrasive attitude toward Americans - did I say I was talking about the whole world? Did I offend you somehow by not explicitly mentioning Nokia's OS? No need to be condescending about how many people you have in the European Union - I'm well aware that there are regions and countries of the world that are more populous than the US.
I'd say Office and Windows are still pretty damn relevant. However, in the mobile space - yeah, WinMo7 isn't going to change anything. iPhones and Android phones will still rule the smartphone market, and though BlackBerries are a dying breed in terms of the cutting-edge, even they will far exceed WinMo7's usage.
I'm glad someone else is with me on this point - I worked at Circuit City a few years ago right when 120Hz TVs were coming out, and it pissed me off to no end the salesperson and consumer frenzy over the frame-interpolation feature. Yeah, it looks nice and smooth for sports, but it looks like SHIT on movies, because they look EVEN WORSE than soap operas (which are usually filmed at 6 fps faster than film - imagine adding 36 or 96 extra fps!)
I still have clients in my business now that seek my counsel when buying HDTVs. People will ignore my explanation of this feature, and pay several hundred dollars more for a TV _solely_ for the 120 or 240Hz feature, when they don't even understand how it's probably going to make most of their viewing experiences worse (since they'll undoubtedly leave the thing on the High setting at all times).
Right, that's part of what's interesting about it - we do see a greater depth of field and a greater dynamic range with our eyes. But when you try to replicate those effects in film/video/games, it seems more fake - perhaps because we're used to seeing standard photography/videography as "real", and CG/games as having infinite depth of field and all shadows and highlights properly exposed.
That's true as far as photography/videography goes - but what I said about games is that it's the opposite - the "HDR" effect actually increases the dynamic range beyond that of your viewing medium so that it looks more like standard photography, rather than compressing the dynamic range so we can see it all.
That's exactly what I was getting at - the more dynamic range and perfect focus we see in the context of video, the more "fake" it tends to seem, despite the fact that it's more like what our eyes would perceive at the scene.
It's the other way around.
Even though we call it high dynamic range in videos and photographs, it's actually just compressing all the extra information from multiple exposures into a LOWER dynamic range, so we can manipulate/display it on our 8-bit screens.
Games, however - such as the Source engine after it got the HDR update with Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and Day of Defeat: Source, actually do increase the dynamic range of a scene beyond what your monitor can display. They underexpose and overexpose parts of the scene when transitions between light and dark places occur, just as your eyes would before they adjusted to the new light, or as a video camera would depending on what exposure the videographer chose. This makes it look more realistic - just take a look at a bright outdoor scene in Half-Life 2: Episode Two and check out how shiny objects in the sunlight have blown-out highlights that gleam brilliantly, and then look at the same scene in the original Half-Life 2, where that object would look flatly-lit and fake. The "non-HDR" looks more fake because the dynamic range is compressed so you can see all the detail everywhere, which also gives it that flat "game" look.
Of course, that last part is just my opinion - but I believe that in order to look more realistic, CGI needs to simulate the behavior of traditional cameras with a lower dynamic range (or that of your eyes before they've adjusted properly to bright/dim light). The everything-is-exposed-properly, compressed-dynamic-range look just appears fake to me, even though my eyes could probably perceive that range at the actual scene. I'm not sure why.
I take that part back; upon seeing some tests from June, IE9 does compare favorably with Chrome/Safari/Opera. I was basing my comment on some older tests I'd seen of IE9, wherein they were nowhere near as fast as the Webkit browsers.
:-)
Besides, do you really blame me for assuming a release of IE is going to be shit?
I use Windows, and if I was using Linux I sure as hell wouldn't be on something like Fluxbox just because Firefox can't have an efficient UI like Chrome and Opera.
The menu bar doesn't exist in Firefox 4 without pressing Alt - all there is, is the menu button at the top-left, in the titlebar. A titlebar isn't necessary and is a waste of space, because the title is on the current tab anyway. That's one logical reason to put the tabs where the title and a bunch of empty space would be.
Another is that it's faster/easier to select tabs if they're against the top of the screen (assuming a maximized window) - because it doesn't require precise Y-axis movement to within a 30-pixel-tall space to choose a tab, you just slam your mouse to the top and make sure the X-coordinate is within the 150px or so that the tab takes up.