Granted, plenty of people copy works from the libraries outside of fair use standards but that's not the intended use by the library.
My local library has Xerox machines in the lobby, yet to my knowledge, they don't get letters or lawsuits from anyone. Yet, obviously, the Xerox machines are designed to photocopy copyrighted material.
So, I don't really see how you can make a clear, legal distinction between a teacher making a few dozen copies of a book that's been out of print for years to show to her class, and a kid throwing out a few hundred copies of his mp3 collection.
In fact, the MAFIAA would certainly like there to be no difference -- then they can squeeze even more money out of us. They'd like that teacher to have to buy a copy of that book for every student. They'd like it even better if only that student could read that copy, so the teacher had to buy more copies every year. After all, if they'll sue grandmothers who've never used a computer, dead people, and 13-year-olds, it's obvious the only ethics they have are Ferengi ethics.
Many of those that *are* aware, assume that the content is somehow filtered.
WTF?
Seriously, explain to me how parents make this kind of assumption? Is it just because it's Nintendo and Family-Friendly?
Or do these people take the same brain-dead approach to normal web browsing? "Aaugh! A breast! Must...sue...ISP! And Microsoft! And write angry letters to congressmen!"
Well... they did kind of do that with the Janet Jackson incident. I realize that's not the same thing, but it does show just how much some people's knees will jerk...
Immunize your kids! Explain to them that porn is wrong, and that they should avoid it, and have the kind of relationship with them where they'll listen to you and respect you. Or explain to them why you think they aren't ready for it, but that you realize they'll have to see it eventually. Or just teach them to be a decent person, and not to trust strangers, especially pedophiles.
Oh, and by the time they hit 13 or so it's really too late to do anything except that last one. By the time they hit 13, they will have porn if they want it, and they will want it.
Or:
Read The Fucking Manual! Get involved. Don't let your kids buy a device until you have a deep understanding of how it can be used, and do the research. If you bought your kid a DS or cell phone without knowing it can chat, it is not Nintendo's fault, it is your fault.
Does your house have windows? Are these windows made of glass? Look how easy it is for me to peer inside.
It's just so scary to think that people can see through transparent objects. We knew that we could see out, but we didn't realize how easy it was to look in.
These are the people for which we have invented the cluebat. It's like buying your kid a BB gun to go play Cowboys & Indians with, and then blaming the toy company when the kid blows his eye out. It's not their fault, and it actually can be a safe toy, but you should've known the risks, and so should your kid. And if you don't like the risk, buy him a squirt gun instead.
1.3 gigs starts to look a lot less significant, unless you're worried about disk space once people actually install it.
But even on single-layer, consider -- I seem to remember Half-Life 2 was around a gig, and still looks damned good.
It's a problem if you're still using CDs, sure, but that depends on the game you're making. If you're indie, then you need to keep it under 50 megs, so people can download it. If you're mainstream and trying to make it look good, you probably want to at least offer a DVD version. DVD drives cost maybe $10 more than CD drives now -- maybe -- and come with most new computers unless you build your own, and (stupidly) stick to a CD drive only. Switching CDs during an install is just damned annoying, but with a DVD, I can even see being able to play a game while it installs, and when it's done installing, you just pop the disk out and keep playing, uninterrupted.
Really, if you spend $200 on a video card, you can afford to spend $50 on a DVD drive. And if most gamers don't bother with DVD drives, maybe developers need to force the issue -- it would be a lot more helpful than what you already do with forcing people to upgrade their video card every couple years.
The two essential ones are 128k mp3 and FLAC. The mp3 is for streaming, to see if I like it, and because everyone else uses them. The FLAC is so I can have the full quality, and re-encode to Vorbis when I start running out of space.
Really, unless you're going to tweak the encoders by hand, you should just go with pretty default settings for anything you can legally and automatically encode to. I'd like a 128k mp3, a VBR mp3, a Vorbis at default settings, an AC3 if you've got surround, and a Flac -- but feel free to throw up Speex, whatever.
I thought HL2: EP1 had its moments, particularly the beginning. The hug... wow.
Otherwise agree with most of your points. I like how Halo makes you worry about ammo, but also prevents you building up an arsenal -- you can only carry two weapons. I like how Halo and Halo 2 don't have loading screens.
Invincible teammates... First, I'm fairly sure I've seen my Alyx die in HL2: Ep1. But also, it depends how you play it. You can pull back a bit and let Alyx take care of everything... and you can turn GodMode on. Or you can just play it.
One thing I wish developers would remember, though: At least try to keep up with current tech. The LOADING is a perfect example of this -- you're adding all kinds of shit like bigger and shinier textures, HDR, and whatever the cool graphics term of the year is, and you can't even do simple dynamic loading and level of detail? You keep adding more guns, planes, whatever, and your engine still relies on Internet Explorer?
These developers embarrass me as a programmer and a gamer. Please stop.
Or, let me put it this way: If you have a bad game with a good engine, you can at least add good content later, or license the engine to someone else who will. But if you have a good game with a bad engine, it's a lot harder to port your stuff to a good engine later, meaning you'll have to really start from scratch if you want to make a sequel with a good engine. Sometimes you can make incremental improvements, but if the engine really sucks (I'm looking at you, EA), it may be cheaper to scrap it altogether.
Not exactly an FPS, but it does have Quake3-like speed, especially on Insane difficulty.
Personally, I like most FPSes, and I care more about whether it's fun to play, has a decent plot, etc, than simply raw running speed. UT04 seems a nice balance between Quake3-like insane brawls and actual patience and skill with things like sniping (there are actually headshots, a concept no Quake seems to care about).
Also, did you actually play through Quake 4? I seem to remember that after your Stroggification, you can run as fast as Quake 3 -- but you'll never get the level of insanity you're looking for in a true single-player game that tries to have a story and semi-linear progression.
The gunships always felt kind of contrived though, and taking them down was nothing like the immense satisfaction you got from blasting the chopper that had been harrassing you through a good chunk of HL1. Or maybe I'm just jaded.
Yes, you are. Maybe I'm just too young to remember, but it seems to me that the HL1 chopper wasn't as obviously or as persistently harassing. Just a flyby every now and then, dropping a few troops, maybe.
In HL2, the chopper chases you for quite awhile, and you're frequently having to duck underground, or chase it off with a gun turret, until you finally get a decent weapon to take it down. And when it comes down, it comes down with a BOOM.
Final Fantasy X: that first Blitzball game, and the destruction of Zanarkand. The assault on Bevelle.
Halo 2: Return to Sender. Also, Helljumpers, and Johnson meeting the Arbiter.
Then there are the cinematics that aren't so amazing that they make me glad I bought the game, but are also fun and entertaining and nothing I'd ever skip, even when they are skippable:
Jak II and 3: Multiple, particularly Jak getting his voice in Jak II, and the end-of-the-series cinematic for Jak 3.
Doom 3: Your first Pinky. One of the more terrifying moments in the game for me, and it moves so perfectly into action, bashing the door in, and I'm going "Holy shit, I have to fight THAT??" It wasn't even a particularly tough monster, but that cinematic gave it style.
I agree, there are plenty of bad ones, but the above aren't necessarily imperative to the story. "Return to Sender", in particular, is pretty much wholly unnecessary -- there are any number of ways they could've gotten rid of that bomb, or they could've just left it disarmed. It ultimately doesn't change whether or not we head off to Installation 05, but it is still just fun to watch.
If you want a plot, play through Halo and Halo 2 for the first time, on whatever difficulty is still doable, and not insanely frustrating, but not easy.
Want hoards of people to kill? Play on Easy, and just grab a tank and let loose. Would be perfect if the cinematics were skippable (although I don't often skip them).
Unfortunately, I haven't played many games that do both well. Probably need to actually start buying some new games...
Well, Quake 4 wasn't so long, and was actually decently fun to play -- once.
But Doom 3, after awhile, Godmode just goes on. The game was too damned long and repetitive. The atmosphere is about the only thing it has going for it -- the sound, the lighting, the direction, and the monsters jumping out of walls was pretty awesome, once.
But playing a second time through is only really fun to show people that we have games on Linux, too, and that's getting old -- Beryl is a bit more useful these days.
My favorite games are the Half-Lives and the Halos. One is made by Bungie, who is owned by Microsoft, and will only play on their console (or Windows Vista) -- although there was a sort of halfhearted port of the original Halo. The other is made by Valve, which was founded by a bunch of guys who left Microsoft to make games.
Halo has decent tech, except you have to buy an xbox to experience it.
Half-Life has absolutely awful tech. Half-Life 2 still has loading screens, and they're awful -- no progress bar, but still a LONG wait. And Valve can be quite unhelpful to the community, and they've used DirectX 9 -- and I think Doom 3 proved that OpenGL could've been just as good a choice, if they weren't [ex-]Microsoft sellouts.
Looking at what's out there, it looks like Doom 3 is one of the better engines out there now -- that or the new Unreal. But Half-Life 2 uses its tech better. Doom 3 probably has more polys, and has more advanced shadows, but Half-Life 2 has the HDR, and just flat-out looks better. Even in Quake 4, people mostly look like they're plastic -- but Alyx looks as good as ever.
I really wanted to like Doom 3, and I do, but it's nowhere near as good a game as Half-Life 2, native Linux port or not, OpenGL or not, Carmack's Reverse or not. And I want to hate Halo and the Xbox, and I hate to support Microsoft so directly, but at the same time, Microsoft can afford to commission an orchestra to record the music for a game trailer.
Resistance: Fall of Man is actually looking pretty cool, too. And I know fl0w is nice. But I hate Sony soo much...
And all of that pisses me off. The companies I want to hate the most are actually doing really damned well at focusing on what really matters in games, while the companies I want to like just don't make anything fun to play. Only exception is Nintendo and some indie people (Introversion, Wolfire)...
Though now that you bring it up, I wonder how well arguing that a DVD is a computer program would work.
Indeed it could. Blu-Ray players must include a JVM, and Blu-Ray disks may include Java code. Normal DVDs can and have been used for games, including Hentai/dating games. I imagine it's also accidentally Turing-complete.
This is called "civil disobedience." I hope they find me, and put me on a big, expensive trial, then I ask for donations to pay for legal fees, get Slashdotted, and use the opportunity to fight the DMCA head-on. I'm not sure whether it's constitutional, but it kind of directly supports one oligopoly and another monopoly...
Nothing short of that kind of attitude would win here, because otherwise, it's one gigantic fucking trap. 99% of laptops come with Windows, so even if you don't use it, you're still paying Microsoft -- and the entertainment world is similar.
So it comes down to: Either stop watching movies or TV altogether, or pirate them, or beg our government to smack them around and maybe even try to put some cracks in that oligopoly so we get some real competition.
Because the sad truth is, there is no competition. It's pretty much like trying to use a computer without supporting Microsoft, or owning a car without supporting oil companies. It can be done, but it's not easy, and it almost defeats the purpose, and they won't care about you and the other three guys who do this.
So, I hope they are running enough statistics to notice how I vote with my dollars: I don't buy DVDs, I rent them, rip them, watch them when I have the time, re-encode them, then delete them when I really need space. I don't buy music CDs, I borrow them or buy songs from non-RIAA sources. I don't watch TV, I download shows. And yes, I realize I'm giving them an excuse to crack down harder, because I'm a "pirate", but if they ever drag me into court, and can prove I'm a pirate, I will use the opportunity to point out that they are the cause of my piracy, and maybe even try to make a legal case around that -- but hopefully it'll let me deliver things like "It's as legal for me to pirate stuff as it is for me to watch a DVD on my computer" to a receptive jury.
He may have no choice but to run Vista, which by all accounts wants memory like you wouldn't believe.
You must be referring to the article which said "4 gigs is the sweet spot", which is frankly BS. By all accounts, Vista is faster than XP, and we know it's needed for 64-bit, unless you want to try XP 64-bit, or move away from Windows.
He's also making the valid observation that he can forsee one or more virtual machines being hosted on this machine...
Fair enough. Then again, how many VMs do you need running at once? Especially given that you can "hibernate" the VM, with or without OS support, I don't really see needing to run more than one, maybe two. And I can definitely see 2 gigs being sufficient there -- 1 gig for the VM, 1 gig for the OS.
I understand that in another few years, that may be nowhere near enough, but if he's willing to spend that much for a laptop, he may well consider buying a new one in another couple of years.
but, I just never understand why the advice on Slashdot is to always migrate to tools which aren't applicable for the person at hand. If you write Windows software, you're probably using some big software to do it in.
Well, as I said, I'm deliberately making the unreasonable suggestion, since everyone else made the reasonable ones (mostly involving how to actually fit that much RAM into a laptop).
And, as I said, I'm not attached to vim and gcc, I'm just pointing out that vim and gcc can work comfortably in 64 megs of RAM, so it's absurd that the tools he's using need that much. Job or no job, there should be some alternative there -- and from what I can tell, the compiler is NOT what's using all the RAM, that'd be the IDE and debugger (but not so much the debugger; see gdb), so there should be alternate IDEs that don't suck down so much RAM, but still use the same backend tools.
I do agree with you that this is partly the fault of the OS for becoming so damned bloated. I just don't think it will help this particular gentleman's problem.
Not so much the OS... And if it doesn't help, it doesn't help. I just think that anytime anyone finds themselves with a non-multimedia app wanting more than a gig of RAM for a single user, they should start asking questions and looking for alternatives. (If you're reading this 20 years from now, I'm sure you'll say something like "more than a terabyte of RAM" instead, but the principle is the same.)
Indeed, which is why I also said "or whatever, there are certainly some saner options for you." I like vim/gcc, you might like something else, but the fact remains, dev software is insanely bloated for no good reason.
Because the fact is, he's not "doing stuff complex enough to need that much RAM." He's just using tools written badly enough to need that much RAM.
Could be... I like Magnatune's 50%, though. Someone has to pay for bandwidth, at least, even if they were using BitTorrent, and they're not -- so royalties will never be 100%. That 50% looks low compared to that, but when you look at how much artists are actually making -- can be close to 0% for most of them -- 50% starts to look a lot better, and it's predictable.
But remember, no matter how you dress it up, it'll never be 100% -- in fact, if I'm not mistaken, you've just described a bit of a Ponzi scheme. It may get to 99%, but never 100%, because that implies that it's free to produce and distribute music. Sure, it's cheap, a LOT cheaper than the MAFIAA charges, but it's not free.
Which would make it all the more poetic if my argument held. Standard code doesn't work on IE, and Microsoft completely ignored the issue until Firefox started to be a threat.
the UAC prompt operates in something called the secure desktop which would also have to be compromised.
All that means is that you have to avoid a UAC prompt. Spoof one to get the password, then use another means of privilege escalation which will work with a password but not UAC. I'm not sure such a thing exists, though it would kind of have to on any machine with remote desktop enabled.
However, since you say you don't have to ctrl+alt+del to enter the password, that means it's too easy to get said password. Even if it doesn't give you access to the local machine, it becomes a problem unless it's a very unique password.
There are already enough comments telling you what I imagine you'll actually do -- desktop on wheels, or a laptop with 4 gigs of RAM when they come out. I'll make the unreasonable suggestion, then -- stop tolerating something that needs so much RAM! Go back to vim/gcc -- or whatever, there are certainly some saner options for you.
I wouldn't mind a laptop with 8 or 10 gigs of RAM, but I'd much rather have a reasonably efficient system so I don't have to pay for that much RAM.
Well, seeing as file upload fields probably cannot have a default value, I'd assume this would be validated the same way. I'll leave it to someone else to test that theory, though.
Perhaps what needs to happen here is artists need to get together and found their OWN record label, paid for by artists, run by them, and run FOR them.
There are at least a few game companies waking up to this, and releasing patches (as free downloads) which remove the DRM and allow the game to play without a CD.
These are the smart companies -- the ones that look at what's available on a P2P network and say "Why are we paying someone for a 'feature' which not only doesn't work, it also pisses off our customers?" Some might even make the logical link to "How many of those 'pirates' are just people who are sick of having to stick an old, horribly-scratched CD in just to play the game?"
On the other hand, the gaming industry is an area where they don't need to use DRM to lock us to one platform. Because that's really what it's about -- if I have more than one system, I have to buy the same game several times to get it to play on the different systems, and there are technological reasons for this. Emulators only really work on games old enough that a modern PC can emulate another arch (say, RISC) several times faster than the original system operated. Contrast that to most media, which even if it's not feasible to play the original anywhere (h.264 on a slow machine, high def on an iPod), you can easily transcode it anywhere, thus preventing them from charging you once for a DVD, once for a Blu-Ray disc, once for an HD-DVD disc, once for a UMD, and once for the CD soundtrack -- just buy the DVD and transcode it to your PSP, iPod, laptop, whatever, rip the music off of the music-only track...
Look, sell me ONE cheap media system -- I prefer Blu-Ray, but HD-DVD is fine -- with open codecs and formats, no DRM, and include the music for that movie in similar files on the disc -- a bunch of Flac or Vorbis files would be nice. Allow me to download it in a standard, open format -- I'll even play for much lossier copies, I don't need HD, I just want open. Otherwise, I'll continue to pirate or rent DVDs from the video store.
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My local library has Xerox machines in the lobby, yet to my knowledge, they don't get letters or lawsuits from anyone. Yet, obviously, the Xerox machines are designed to photocopy copyrighted material.
So, I don't really see how you can make a clear, legal distinction between a teacher making a few dozen copies of a book that's been out of print for years to show to her class, and a kid throwing out a few hundred copies of his mp3 collection.
In fact, the MAFIAA would certainly like there to be no difference -- then they can squeeze even more money out of us. They'd like that teacher to have to buy a copy of that book for every student. They'd like it even better if only that student could read that copy, so the teacher had to buy more copies every year. After all, if they'll sue grandmothers who've never used a computer, dead people, and 13-year-olds, it's obvious the only ethics they have are Ferengi ethics.
WTF?
Seriously, explain to me how parents make this kind of assumption? Is it just because it's Nintendo and Family-Friendly?
Or do these people take the same brain-dead approach to normal web browsing? "Aaugh! A breast! Must...sue...ISP! And Microsoft! And write angry letters to congressmen!"
Well... they did kind of do that with the Janet Jackson incident. I realize that's not the same thing, but it does show just how much some people's knees will jerk...
Either:
Immunize your kids! Explain to them that porn is wrong, and that they should avoid it, and have the kind of relationship with them where they'll listen to you and respect you. Or explain to them why you think they aren't ready for it, but that you realize they'll have to see it eventually. Or just teach them to be a decent person, and not to trust strangers, especially pedophiles.
Oh, and by the time they hit 13 or so it's really too late to do anything except that last one. By the time they hit 13, they will have porn if they want it, and they will want it.
Or:
Read The Fucking Manual! Get involved. Don't let your kids buy a device until you have a deep understanding of how it can be used, and do the research. If you bought your kid a DS or cell phone without knowing it can chat, it is not Nintendo's fault, it is your fault.
Penny arcade makes a good point here:
These are the people for which we have invented the cluebat. It's like buying your kid a BB gun to go play Cowboys & Indians with, and then blaming the toy company when the kid blows his eye out. It's not their fault, and it actually can be a safe toy, but you should've known the risks, and so should your kid. And if you don't like the risk, buy him a squirt gun instead.
1.3 gigs starts to look a lot less significant, unless you're worried about disk space once people actually install it.
But even on single-layer, consider -- I seem to remember Half-Life 2 was around a gig, and still looks damned good.
It's a problem if you're still using CDs, sure, but that depends on the game you're making. If you're indie, then you need to keep it under 50 megs, so people can download it. If you're mainstream and trying to make it look good, you probably want to at least offer a DVD version. DVD drives cost maybe $10 more than CD drives now -- maybe -- and come with most new computers unless you build your own, and (stupidly) stick to a CD drive only. Switching CDs during an install is just damned annoying, but with a DVD, I can even see being able to play a game while it installs, and when it's done installing, you just pop the disk out and keep playing, uninterrupted.
Really, if you spend $200 on a video card, you can afford to spend $50 on a DVD drive. And if most gamers don't bother with DVD drives, maybe developers need to force the issue -- it would be a lot more helpful than what you already do with forcing people to upgrade their video card every couple years.
The two essential ones are 128k mp3 and FLAC. The mp3 is for streaming, to see if I like it, and because everyone else uses them. The FLAC is so I can have the full quality, and re-encode to Vorbis when I start running out of space.
Really, unless you're going to tweak the encoders by hand, you should just go with pretty default settings for anything you can legally and automatically encode to. I'd like a 128k mp3, a VBR mp3, a Vorbis at default settings, an AC3 if you've got surround, and a Flac -- but feel free to throw up Speex, whatever.
I thought HL2: EP1 had its moments, particularly the beginning. The hug... wow.
Otherwise agree with most of your points. I like how Halo makes you worry about ammo, but also prevents you building up an arsenal -- you can only carry two weapons. I like how Halo and Halo 2 don't have loading screens.
Invincible teammates... First, I'm fairly sure I've seen my Alyx die in HL2: Ep1. But also, it depends how you play it. You can pull back a bit and let Alyx take care of everything... and you can turn GodMode on. Or you can just play it.
One thing I wish developers would remember, though: At least try to keep up with current tech. The LOADING is a perfect example of this -- you're adding all kinds of shit like bigger and shinier textures, HDR, and whatever the cool graphics term of the year is, and you can't even do simple dynamic loading and level of detail? You keep adding more guns, planes, whatever, and your engine still relies on Internet Explorer?
These developers embarrass me as a programmer and a gamer. Please stop.
Or, let me put it this way: If you have a bad game with a good engine, you can at least add good content later, or license the engine to someone else who will. But if you have a good game with a bad engine, it's a lot harder to port your stuff to a good engine later, meaning you'll have to really start from scratch if you want to make a sequel with a good engine. Sometimes you can make incremental improvements, but if the engine really sucks (I'm looking at you, EA), it may be cheaper to scrap it altogether.
Not exactly an FPS, but it does have Quake3-like speed, especially on Insane difficulty.
Personally, I like most FPSes, and I care more about whether it's fun to play, has a decent plot, etc, than simply raw running speed. UT04 seems a nice balance between Quake3-like insane brawls and actual patience and skill with things like sniping (there are actually headshots, a concept no Quake seems to care about).
Also, did you actually play through Quake 4? I seem to remember that after your Stroggification, you can run as fast as Quake 3 -- but you'll never get the level of insanity you're looking for in a true single-player game that tries to have a story and semi-linear progression.
Yes, you are. Maybe I'm just too young to remember, but it seems to me that the HL1 chopper wasn't as obviously or as persistently harassing. Just a flyby every now and then, dropping a few troops, maybe.
In HL2, the chopper chases you for quite awhile, and you're frequently having to duck underground, or chase it off with a gun turret, until you finally get a decent weapon to take it down. And when it comes down, it comes down with a BOOM.
Final Fantasy X: that first Blitzball game, and the destruction of Zanarkand. The assault on Bevelle.
Halo 2: Return to Sender. Also, Helljumpers, and Johnson meeting the Arbiter.
Then there are the cinematics that aren't so amazing that they make me glad I bought the game, but are also fun and entertaining and nothing I'd ever skip, even when they are skippable:
Jak II and 3: Multiple, particularly Jak getting his voice in Jak II, and the end-of-the-series cinematic for Jak 3.
Doom 3: Your first Pinky. One of the more terrifying moments in the game for me, and it moves so perfectly into action, bashing the door in, and I'm going "Holy shit, I have to fight THAT??" It wasn't even a particularly tough monster, but that cinematic gave it style.
I agree, there are plenty of bad ones, but the above aren't necessarily imperative to the story. "Return to Sender", in particular, is pretty much wholly unnecessary -- there are any number of ways they could've gotten rid of that bomb, or they could've just left it disarmed. It ultimately doesn't change whether or not we head off to Installation 05, but it is still just fun to watch.
If you want a plot, play through Halo and Halo 2 for the first time, on whatever difficulty is still doable, and not insanely frustrating, but not easy.
Want hoards of people to kill? Play on Easy, and just grab a tank and let loose. Would be perfect if the cinematics were skippable (although I don't often skip them).
Unfortunately, I haven't played many games that do both well. Probably need to actually start buying some new games...
Well, Quake 4 wasn't so long, and was actually decently fun to play -- once.
But Doom 3, after awhile, Godmode just goes on. The game was too damned long and repetitive. The atmosphere is about the only thing it has going for it -- the sound, the lighting, the direction, and the monsters jumping out of walls was pretty awesome, once.
But playing a second time through is only really fun to show people that we have games on Linux, too, and that's getting old -- Beryl is a bit more useful these days.
My favorite games are the Half-Lives and the Halos. One is made by Bungie, who is owned by Microsoft, and will only play on their console (or Windows Vista) -- although there was a sort of halfhearted port of the original Halo. The other is made by Valve, which was founded by a bunch of guys who left Microsoft to make games.
Halo has decent tech, except you have to buy an xbox to experience it.
Half-Life has absolutely awful tech. Half-Life 2 still has loading screens, and they're awful -- no progress bar, but still a LONG wait. And Valve can be quite unhelpful to the community, and they've used DirectX 9 -- and I think Doom 3 proved that OpenGL could've been just as good a choice, if they weren't [ex-]Microsoft sellouts.
Looking at what's out there, it looks like Doom 3 is one of the better engines out there now -- that or the new Unreal. But Half-Life 2 uses its tech better. Doom 3 probably has more polys, and has more advanced shadows, but Half-Life 2 has the HDR, and just flat-out looks better. Even in Quake 4, people mostly look like they're plastic -- but Alyx looks as good as ever.
I really wanted to like Doom 3, and I do, but it's nowhere near as good a game as Half-Life 2, native Linux port or not, OpenGL or not, Carmack's Reverse or not. And I want to hate Halo and the Xbox, and I hate to support Microsoft so directly, but at the same time, Microsoft can afford to commission an orchestra to record the music for a game trailer.
Resistance: Fall of Man is actually looking pretty cool, too. And I know fl0w is nice. But I hate Sony soo much...
And all of that pisses me off. The companies I want to hate the most are actually doing really damned well at focusing on what really matters in games, while the companies I want to like just don't make anything fun to play. Only exception is Nintendo and some indie people (Introversion, Wolfire)...
Indeed it could. Blu-Ray players must include a JVM, and Blu-Ray disks may include Java code. Normal DVDs can and have been used for games, including Hentai/dating games. I imagine it's also accidentally Turing-complete.
This is called "civil disobedience." I hope they find me, and put me on a big, expensive trial, then I ask for donations to pay for legal fees, get Slashdotted, and use the opportunity to fight the DMCA head-on. I'm not sure whether it's constitutional, but it kind of directly supports one oligopoly and another monopoly...
Nothing short of that kind of attitude would win here, because otherwise, it's one gigantic fucking trap. 99% of laptops come with Windows, so even if you don't use it, you're still paying Microsoft -- and the entertainment world is similar.
So it comes down to: Either stop watching movies or TV altogether, or pirate them, or beg our government to smack them around and maybe even try to put some cracks in that oligopoly so we get some real competition.
Because the sad truth is, there is no competition. It's pretty much like trying to use a computer without supporting Microsoft, or owning a car without supporting oil companies. It can be done, but it's not easy, and it almost defeats the purpose, and they won't care about you and the other three guys who do this.
So, I hope they are running enough statistics to notice how I vote with my dollars: I don't buy DVDs, I rent them, rip them, watch them when I have the time, re-encode them, then delete them when I really need space. I don't buy music CDs, I borrow them or buy songs from non-RIAA sources. I don't watch TV, I download shows. And yes, I realize I'm giving them an excuse to crack down harder, because I'm a "pirate", but if they ever drag me into court, and can prove I'm a pirate, I will use the opportunity to point out that they are the cause of my piracy, and maybe even try to make a legal case around that -- but hopefully it'll let me deliver things like "It's as legal for me to pirate stuff as it is for me to watch a DVD on my computer" to a receptive jury.
You must be referring to the article which said "4 gigs is the sweet spot", which is frankly BS. By all accounts, Vista is faster than XP, and we know it's needed for 64-bit, unless you want to try XP 64-bit, or move away from Windows.
Fair enough. Then again, how many VMs do you need running at once? Especially given that you can "hibernate" the VM, with or without OS support, I don't really see needing to run more than one, maybe two. And I can definitely see 2 gigs being sufficient there -- 1 gig for the VM, 1 gig for the OS.
I understand that in another few years, that may be nowhere near enough, but if he's willing to spend that much for a laptop, he may well consider buying a new one in another couple of years.
Well, as I said, I'm deliberately making the unreasonable suggestion, since everyone else made the reasonable ones (mostly involving how to actually fit that much RAM into a laptop).
And, as I said, I'm not attached to vim and gcc, I'm just pointing out that vim and gcc can work comfortably in 64 megs of RAM, so it's absurd that the tools he's using need that much. Job or no job, there should be some alternative there -- and from what I can tell, the compiler is NOT what's using all the RAM, that'd be the IDE and debugger (but not so much the debugger; see gdb), so there should be alternate IDEs that don't suck down so much RAM, but still use the same backend tools.
Not so much the OS... And if it doesn't help, it doesn't help. I just think that anytime anyone finds themselves with a non-multimedia app wanting more than a gig of RAM for a single user, they should start asking questions and looking for alternatives. (If you're reading this 20 years from now, I'm sure you'll say something like "more than a terabyte of RAM" instead, but the principle is the same.)
Indeed, which is why I also said "or whatever, there are certainly some saner options for you." I like vim/gcc, you might like something else, but the fact remains, dev software is insanely bloated for no good reason.
Because the fact is, he's not "doing stuff complex enough to need that much RAM." He's just using tools written badly enough to need that much RAM.
Could be... I like Magnatune's 50%, though. Someone has to pay for bandwidth, at least, even if they were using BitTorrent, and they're not -- so royalties will never be 100%. That 50% looks low compared to that, but when you look at how much artists are actually making -- can be close to 0% for most of them -- 50% starts to look a lot better, and it's predictable.
But remember, no matter how you dress it up, it'll never be 100% -- in fact, if I'm not mistaken, you've just described a bit of a Ponzi scheme. It may get to 99%, but never 100%, because that implies that it's free to produce and distribute music. Sure, it's cheap, a LOT cheaper than the MAFIAA charges, but it's not free.
Which would make it all the more poetic if my argument held. Standard code doesn't work on IE, and Microsoft completely ignored the issue until Firefox started to be a threat.
All that means is that you have to avoid a UAC prompt. Spoof one to get the password, then use another means of privilege escalation which will work with a password but not UAC. I'm not sure such a thing exists, though it would kind of have to on any machine with remote desktop enabled.
However, since you say you don't have to ctrl+alt+del to enter the password, that means it's too easy to get said password. Even if it doesn't give you access to the local machine, it becomes a problem unless it's a very unique password.
There are already enough comments telling you what I imagine you'll actually do -- desktop on wheels, or a laptop with 4 gigs of RAM when they come out. I'll make the unreasonable suggestion, then -- stop tolerating something that needs so much RAM! Go back to vim/gcc -- or whatever, there are certainly some saner options for you.
I wouldn't mind a laptop with 8 or 10 gigs of RAM, but I'd much rather have a reasonably efficient system so I don't have to pay for that much RAM.
Well, seeing as file upload fields probably cannot have a default value, I'd assume this would be validated the same way. I'll leave it to someone else to test that theory, though.
Magnatune? Mindawn?
There are at least a few game companies waking up to this, and releasing patches (as free downloads) which remove the DRM and allow the game to play without a CD.
These are the smart companies -- the ones that look at what's available on a P2P network and say "Why are we paying someone for a 'feature' which not only doesn't work, it also pisses off our customers?" Some might even make the logical link to "How many of those 'pirates' are just people who are sick of having to stick an old, horribly-scratched CD in just to play the game?"
On the other hand, the gaming industry is an area where they don't need to use DRM to lock us to one platform. Because that's really what it's about -- if I have more than one system, I have to buy the same game several times to get it to play on the different systems, and there are technological reasons for this. Emulators only really work on games old enough that a modern PC can emulate another arch (say, RISC) several times faster than the original system operated. Contrast that to most media, which even if it's not feasible to play the original anywhere (h.264 on a slow machine, high def on an iPod), you can easily transcode it anywhere, thus preventing them from charging you once for a DVD, once for a Blu-Ray disc, once for an HD-DVD disc, once for a UMD, and once for the CD soundtrack -- just buy the DVD and transcode it to your PSP, iPod, laptop, whatever, rip the music off of the music-only track...
Look, sell me ONE cheap media system -- I prefer Blu-Ray, but HD-DVD is fine -- with open codecs and formats, no DRM, and include the music for that movie in similar files on the disc -- a bunch of Flac or Vorbis files would be nice. Allow me to download it in a standard, open format -- I'll even play for much lossier copies, I don't need HD, I just want open. Otherwise, I'll continue to pirate or rent DVDs from the video store.
...because Parent deserves far worse than a -1. Cap us at "+5, Insightful", but let us mod people "-12835, Flamebait"