720p is a valid HDTV resolution. If the TV can display 768 progressive lines of resolution, it is a high definition set. It will have to scale and convert 1080i signals of course (just as it does with 480i/p resolution images), but it is still a valid high definition TV.
Sure, a 1080p TV is even more fun, and my 1080i CRT looks beautiful, but that doesn't make 720p non-HD.
I've moved my 30" widescreen CRT exactly once since buying it a year ago -- and that was from my car into my livingroom.
I was quite able to carry it by myself (although it is a little wide to get through doors easily by yourself) and had a friend help me for simplicity's sake.
Brightness Plasmas work by emitting light, whereas LCDs work by blocking light. Since LCDs block light, it is difficult to stop light from leaking around blocked areas. Philips' latest LCD is capable of dimming certain areas of the backlight, but the leaking is still there. Plasmas on the other hand won't get leaking. In fact, in darker scenes the detail will always prevail over an LCD.
That's totally incorrect.
Black and only black will look better on a plasma display. But since plasma pixels need to turn on and off rapidly to simulate lower brightness levels, very low brightnesses are converted to black to avoid visible flicker. This means that shadows have less detail than say on a CRT. Many LCDs have the same level of detail as a CRT just without true black (like having your brightness turned up too much).
CRTs still provide the reference for high definition viewing -- unfortunately they don't come in 40" or 50" sizes.
More importantly 90% of the non hardcore gamers I know don't know anything about the PS3 launch except what I've told them, and most of the people I know who do like gaming never bothered getting an XBox 360 because they didn't believe it would look any better on their normal TV sets (which isn't true, but oh well).
The big question is how well Sony will market the PS3 in the next few months leading up to its pre-Christmas release. I have a feeling they'll do an amazing job (as before) and the average Joes will buy it up quite happily despite what 1% of the population on Slashdot thinks.
As long as you have to plug the device into a wall socket for power in the first place, you may as well wire it for ethernet as well. Besides, I'm much more excited about the power over ethernet trend -- just add DC power to the ethernet cables and use that to power small devices instead of having power bricks everywhere.
Using any normal TrueType font, the fonts are scaled appropriately and very well. One of the few things Microsoft does well is TrueType font scaling. The fonts on my machine (scaled to 112% according to that little bar I mentionned) look excellent at 1152x864 right now, thank-you very much.
If you're not using scalable fonts, my sympathies.
Windows does in fact handle font scaling properly. Go to your display settings, advanced and choose font size. Then measure little ruler bar with a real ruler until 1" = 1" on screen to measure your effective DPI. At this point, it will reboot and scale all fonts appropriately.
That said, most Windows software designers don't handle the resized fonts properly and have their windows sized for the default pixel sizes because the Windows API is terrible for handling such things.
I'd love to see this handled properly on Linux though -- throw in colour calibration like Mac OS X while you're at it (the only feature I really like on OS X and miss on my Linux box).
Look mr I-care-about-my-karma (PS, my ID has less digits than yours), a lot of people pirate games as collectors. Back when I may or may not have been active in the BBS scene on BBSs that may or may not have had 0-day pirated games available, I may or may not have noticed that many many people downloaded everything available just to say they had them.
A friend of mine with a CD burner burned hundreds upon hundreds of PC games over the years; he hasn't played most of them, but he gets to say "look at all the games I've got". There are a lot of people doing this kind of thing.
Also note -- there's no record keeping for deletions. How many people downloaded Doom 3, realized how dull it was after the first level and deleted it afterward? How many actually played through their pirated copy? You'll never know.
In other words, no, downloads do not mean goodness -- they relate more to popularity and newness.
As as possible solution, I can see game companies selling much cheaper games with only a few levels/areas and selling more as the game goes on (much like MMORPGS without necessarily the MMO or RPG bits). Wing Commander had this as a feature by the final version, but the add-ons were free... they could have sold them for $5 each instead of making them free downloads.
I see micro-payments being a big deal in future gaming as gaming becomes more prolific -- paying real money for those extra levels or features that used to simply be hidden gimmicks in the game (hidden gimmicks are still good though). I often have a problem with being able to "buy gold" in MMORPGs, but in single player games, who cares if you're able to spend another $23 for a +10 battle axe?
Several "enterprise" software packages require Admin access, Blackberry software recommends Admin access (gives a lot of problems otherwise with Outlook sync), etc.
You obviously use a very limited subset of software.
This is why grammar nazis exist -- you replied like an ass to a message that didn't say what you think it said.
"... bundling it with bloated software like RealPlayer..." doesn't necessarily mean bundling RealPlayer with Firefox, it means bundling Firefox with RealPlayer.
Its Firefox that's being bundled with (or into or alongside) Real Player, not the other way around.
Its also often not that difficult to specify in a game's preferences "disable reflective/translucent textures" or "use opengl extensions" (Quake III has this option).
If the newest features are required for your game to work, they'll be there of course but very slow. If they're just really pretty eye candy, you can let the user decide if they're worth the performance hit.
Israel wiped the walls with several of their neighbours simultaneously in the six day war, for all the media gives them a hard time for the term, this current military campaign is definately "measured" compared to their capabilities.
Watch lists make a difference here -- any article I care about the factuality of on Wikipedia I have on my list. I get notices if it changes and I check to see what the change was, and revert it if necessary.
Sure, on lesser-known/watched articles this doesn't happen, but often those are watched by their original authors for quite some time.
This is similar to the cell phone while driving law issue -- why do we need one when there are already laws against driving distracted or dangerously? If the person is driving poorly, call the police on them, whether its because of their cell phone or from looking for a CD on the floor. There's no need for frivilous laws just to scare the public into specific behaviours that don't necessarily apply to everyone.
Its not about xbox youngun, its about DirectX. Back in the day there were DOS games, then there were windows games, but each one had to start from scratch.
Then some genius thought of making generic video drivers, that would help.
Microsoft got a better idea -- why not make every part of the driver system generic? Direct-video direct-sound direct-input... and call it Direct-X (as in, replace X with any of the above). It sucked pretty bad in the first few versions, but as usual Microsoft listened and tried pretty hard and eventually got DirectX 4 out, which pretty much worked and games started flowing to Windows as a platform.
I remember rebooting to run Doom. I much prefered what DirectX gave developers. As far as APIs go, it may not be the best, but its global -- and that's what developers like best (as do hardware companies). How can we make gaming come to Linux? Talk gaming companies into using the larger generic game platforms for Linux as well (many of them are cross-platform). Make those APIs better to design next-gen games on than DirectX 10 and you'll have your Linux games.
That's an assinine comment I see posted every now and then.
Of course the majority of Slashdot posters aren't qualified... does this look like a scientific journal article selections website to you? We're just average Joe's waxing eloquent about things we know a little about sometimes even based in reality.
That said, out of the hundreds of thousands of Slashdot subscibers, it would be reasonable to assume at least one of them is qualified... and I've seen at least one posting in here by someone claiming to be doing research into blackholes personally which was quite interesting.
There's a massive difference between saying "wow, it has Word" and actually writing notes in a meeting on the thing.
I've yet to see someone do so successfully with a Windows device and not hate it within a month whereas I've done so for years with my Newton MessagePads with no problems. Most important are shape recognition (for doodles), delayed handwriting recognition with auto-scroll (screen moves up to give you more writing room automatically) and easy note creation (just draw a line across the screen).
The filing system is eminently better too; just click the file button, pick a folder name and click ok. Everything is already saved as a file permanently, you have just to file things in their own folders after creation.
I've been using a PDA since 1994 when I got my first Apple Newton (later replaced by my Newton MessagePad 120) and I must say I've never found a suitable replacement since. Its quite sad, really.
That's FUD, but to be fair you didn't mean it to be.
Use hardware that's 100% Linux compatible, its not a big deal. Besides, its not like I can take a DLink card and shove it in a Cisco box either. Using the right hardware is always necessary.
I use Intel NICs with TX/RX CRC offloading and scatter/gather and they work very well for me.
I'd love a list of those protocols, seeing as I use Quagga (previously Zebra), ip (the tool) and QoS/TC tools on Linux regularly. I've had many Cisco certified admins point out that many of these tools are more flexible than their Cisco counterparts.
PS, last I checked, you can get a 100Mbit feed for $1k/mo here in Ontario Canada if you look hard and routing those packets won't require a PCI-X bus at all. If you're planning on doing very large bandwidth levels, then you're not really in the "midrange" router market at all, are you?
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720p is a valid HDTV resolution. If the TV can display 768 progressive lines of resolution, it is a high definition set. It will have to scale and convert 1080i signals of course (just as it does with 480i/p resolution images), but it is still a valid high definition TV.
Sure, a 1080p TV is even more fun, and my 1080i CRT looks beautiful, but that doesn't make 720p non-HD.
I've moved my 30" widescreen CRT exactly once since buying it a year ago -- and that was from my car into my livingroom.
I was quite able to carry it by myself (although it is a little wide to get through doors easily by yourself) and had a friend help me for simplicity's sake.
I have no desire whatsoever for an LCD or Plasma TV -- I'd buy a good DLP projector if I really wanted a larger screen. The resolution and brightness on my HD CRT is beautiful and at less than $800 canadian, who can argue?
That's totally incorrect.
Black and only black will look better on a plasma display. But since plasma pixels need to turn on and off rapidly to simulate lower brightness levels, very low brightnesses are converted to black to avoid visible flicker. This means that shadows have less detail than say on a CRT. Many LCDs have the same level of detail as a CRT just without true black (like having your brightness turned up too much).
CRTs still provide the reference for high definition viewing -- unfortunately they don't come in 40" or 50" sizes.
More importantly 90% of the non hardcore gamers I know don't know anything about the PS3 launch except what I've told them, and most of the people I know who do like gaming never bothered getting an XBox 360 because they didn't believe it would look any better on their normal TV sets (which isn't true, but oh well).
The big question is how well Sony will market the PS3 in the next few months leading up to its pre-Christmas release. I have a feeling they'll do an amazing job (as before) and the average Joes will buy it up quite happily despite what 1% of the population on Slashdot thinks.
As long as you have to plug the device into a wall socket for power in the first place, you may as well wire it for ethernet as well. Besides, I'm much more excited about the power over ethernet trend -- just add DC power to the ethernet cables and use that to power small devices instead of having power bricks everywhere.
I clicked preferences and disabled the startup icon.
Then when I got a faster computer, I turned it back on because I quite enjoyed the free videos they were sending me from time to time.
I use scroll lock all the time; on Windows using Excel to change how the cursor works (try it) and on Linux to pause screen output.
GUI != mouse-user-interface, just graphical-user-interface
I used Desqview/X for several months and quite enjoyed the experience.
PS, it also worked with a mouse.
Using any normal TrueType font, the fonts are scaled appropriately and very well. One of the few things Microsoft does well is TrueType font scaling. The fonts on my machine (scaled to 112% according to that little bar I mentionned) look excellent at 1152x864 right now, thank-you very much.
If you're not using scalable fonts, my sympathies.
Windows does in fact handle font scaling properly. Go to your display settings, advanced and choose font size. Then measure little ruler bar with a real ruler until 1" = 1" on screen to measure your effective DPI. At this point, it will reboot and scale all fonts appropriately.
That said, most Windows software designers don't handle the resized fonts properly and have their windows sized for the default pixel sizes because the Windows API is terrible for handling such things.
I'd love to see this handled properly on Linux though -- throw in colour calibration like Mac OS X while you're at it (the only feature I really like on OS X and miss on my Linux box).
Look mr I-care-about-my-karma (PS, my ID has less digits than yours), a lot of people pirate games as collectors. Back when I may or may not have been active in the BBS scene on BBSs that may or may not have had 0-day pirated games available, I may or may not have noticed that many many people downloaded everything available just to say they had them.
... they could have sold them for $5 each instead of making them free downloads.
A friend of mine with a CD burner burned hundreds upon hundreds of PC games over the years; he hasn't played most of them, but he gets to say "look at all the games I've got". There are a lot of people doing this kind of thing.
Also note -- there's no record keeping for deletions. How many people downloaded Doom 3, realized how dull it was after the first level and deleted it afterward? How many actually played through their pirated copy? You'll never know.
In other words, no, downloads do not mean goodness -- they relate more to popularity and newness.
As as possible solution, I can see game companies selling much cheaper games with only a few levels/areas and selling more as the game goes on (much like MMORPGS without necessarily the MMO or RPG bits). Wing Commander had this as a feature by the final version, but the add-ons were free
I see micro-payments being a big deal in future gaming as gaming becomes more prolific -- paying real money for those extra levels or features that used to simply be hidden gimmicks in the game (hidden gimmicks are still good though). I often have a problem with being able to "buy gold" in MMORPGs, but in single player games, who cares if you're able to spend another $23 for a +10 battle axe?
Several "enterprise" software packages require Admin access, Blackberry software recommends Admin access (gives a lot of problems otherwise with Outlook sync), etc.
You obviously use a very limited subset of software.
This is why grammar nazis exist -- you replied like an ass to a message that didn't say what you think it said.
..." doesn't necessarily mean bundling RealPlayer with Firefox, it means bundling Firefox with RealPlayer.
"... bundling it with bloated software like RealPlayer
Its Firefox that's being bundled with (or into or alongside) Real Player, not the other way around.
Insightful. Yeah.
Its also often not that difficult to specify in a game's preferences "disable reflective/translucent textures" or "use opengl extensions" (Quake III has this option).
If the newest features are required for your game to work, they'll be there of course but very slow. If they're just really pretty eye candy, you can let the user decide if they're worth the performance hit.
Israel wiped the walls with several of their neighbours simultaneously in the six day war, for all the media gives them a hard time for the term, this current military campaign is definately "measured" compared to their capabilities.
Watch lists make a difference here -- any article I care about the factuality of on Wikipedia I have on my list. I get notices if it changes and I check to see what the change was, and revert it if necessary.
Sure, on lesser-known/watched articles this doesn't happen, but often those are watched by their original authors for quite some time.
Here here! That's exactly what I was thinking.
This is similar to the cell phone while driving law issue -- why do we need one when there are already laws against driving distracted or dangerously? If the person is driving poorly, call the police on them, whether its because of their cell phone or from looking for a CD on the floor. There's no need for frivilous laws just to scare the public into specific behaviours that don't necessarily apply to everyone.
Its not about xbox youngun, its about DirectX. Back in the day there were DOS games, then there were windows games, but each one had to start from scratch.
... and call it Direct-X (as in, replace X with any of the above). It sucked pretty bad in the first few versions, but as usual Microsoft listened and tried pretty hard and eventually got DirectX 4 out, which pretty much worked and games started flowing to Windows as a platform.
Then some genius thought of making generic video drivers, that would help.
Microsoft got a better idea -- why not make every part of the driver system generic? Direct-video direct-sound direct-input
I remember rebooting to run Doom. I much prefered what DirectX gave developers. As far as APIs go, it may not be the best, but its global -- and that's what developers like best (as do hardware companies). How can we make gaming come to Linux? Talk gaming companies into using the larger generic game platforms for Linux as well (many of them are cross-platform). Make those APIs better to design next-gen games on than DirectX 10 and you'll have your Linux games.
They went the opposite direction -- lets make operating systems for handhelds (which they suck at) or for TV media centers, or gaming systems, etc.
:-)
Of course, they're losing money hand over fist still with the xbox project, but don't let that confuse the issue
That's an assinine comment I see posted every now and then.
... does this look like a scientific journal article selections website to you? We're just average Joe's waxing eloquent about things we know a little about sometimes even based in reality.
... and I've seen at least one posting in here by someone claiming to be doing research into blackholes personally which was quite interesting.
Of course the majority of Slashdot posters aren't qualified
That said, out of the hundreds of thousands of Slashdot subscibers, it would be reasonable to assume at least one of them is qualified
There's a massive difference between saying "wow, it has Word" and actually writing notes in a meeting on the thing.
I've yet to see someone do so successfully with a Windows device and not hate it within a month whereas I've done so for years with my Newton MessagePads with no problems. Most important are shape recognition (for doodles), delayed handwriting recognition with auto-scroll (screen moves up to give you more writing room automatically) and easy note creation (just draw a line across the screen).
The filing system is eminently better too; just click the file button, pick a folder name and click ok. Everything is already saved as a file permanently, you have just to file things in their own folders after creation.
I've been using a PDA since 1994 when I got my first Apple Newton (later replaced by my Newton MessagePad 120) and I must say I've never found a suitable replacement since. Its quite sad, really.
The only functional buttons I can think of on a PDA include volume, brightness and a scroll wheel (I liked the jog wheel on the Sonys).
I don't want buttons on the front of my PDA -- that's what the screen is for.
That's FUD, but to be fair you didn't mean it to be.
Use hardware that's 100% Linux compatible, its not a big deal. Besides, its not like I can take a DLink card and shove it in a Cisco box either. Using the right hardware is always necessary.
I use Intel NICs with TX/RX CRC offloading and scatter/gather and they work very well for me.
I'd love a list of those protocols, seeing as I use Quagga (previously Zebra), ip (the tool) and QoS/TC tools on Linux regularly. I've had many Cisco certified admins point out that many of these tools are more flexible than their Cisco counterparts.
PS, last I checked, you can get a 100Mbit feed for $1k/mo here in Ontario Canada if you look hard and routing those packets won't require a PCI-X bus at all. If you're planning on doing very large bandwidth levels, then you're not really in the "midrange" router market at all, are you?