I'm still not seeing how this is different from, say, Windows. In both cases the window with focus becomes frontmost (barring floating windows, etc.). So you could in theory have a smaller window off to the side having focus, but that's no different in either system. Or am I missing something?
Unfortunately, I use many windows, and when I use an Apple computer, I can have only one window visible, and still the menu is for the wrong application - not such a problem if I'm using a mouse and realise, but if I use keyboard accelerators, then I can get into all sorts of trouble before I realise it's not the correct application.
Regardless of whether a single menu bar is a good idea or not, in any modern GUI, you can only have one active window, and all menu events triggered by keyboard accelerators are sent to the current window's application. How is the Mac different than any other system here?
Again, this is for developer-only releases, for which all OS upgrades are free, if you're using the T1 hardware. None of this involves end-users at all.
You couldn't possibly be more mistaken about the details here. Applications written for version 2 of the Developer-only release are intentionally not backwards-compatible with version 1 of the Developer-only release.
It simply means that if you have version 1 of the Developer-only release of OS X on Intel, and some developer writes application Foo using version 2 of the Developer-only release on Intel, Foo won't run on your Developer-only version 1 OS. You'll need to upgrade to version 2 in order to run Foo.
So, in essence, it means that running version 1 will soon be pointless, since most / all software compiled natively for it will soon be compiled from a newer version of the OS. (Again, this affects only registered developers, and doesn't affect end-users in the slightest.) Why is it a strike against piracy? Well, people were clearly able to crack version 1. This move basically makes version 1 worthless over time. If version 2 is harder to crack, it's a stab against piracy, because it means that everyone will want to run the harder-to-crack version.
According to IMDB, FF cost $137 million to make and took four years. How much money and time does it take to create a non-digital version of a similar movie, such as "Pitch Black" ($23m, don't know the time) or "Minority Report" ($107m, around four months)? And with the latter, you're talking an incredibly expensive director and expensive actor.
Also, voice talent commands a huge premium these days. I don't have the numbers off-hand, but each major voice in Shrek 2 cost millions.
Here's the big question, though: why would having an artist spend time to do facial expressions be more cheap and convenient than simply having an actor doing them?
which you've already got if you're listening to your Xbox in true DD already - otherwise, the DD you're listening to really isn't
This is technically not true. We have a high-end B&K receiver that does 7.1 DTS and Dolby Digital EX which doesn't support ProLogic II without an additional module. But that's somewhat besides the point. Most receivers these days handle Dolby Digital streams; it's the new "standard", for whatever that's worth.
too big
Because this really matters? It fits in perfectly with my receiver and, cable box, and DVD player. On the other hand, my Gamecube doesn't fit into the entertainment cabinet quite correctly.
too noisy
Mine's much quieter than my PS2. Lest you think it's a fluke, we have 3 Xboxes in our house and two PS2s, so I've got a good basis for comparison.
too fragile
Huh? Ours has been running fine for well over a year with no problems. That includes the controller. My old PS2, on the other hand, occasionally didn't load games correctly due to a fault with the DVD drive.
all those moving parts?
What the hell are you talking about? You mean, the DVD drive and the single fan? This is different from other systems how? Or do you mean a hard drive as opposed to a much-more-likely-to-be-lost-or-damaged memory card?
Nintendo makes some really fun games (we also have a Gamecube), but it's pretty hard for me to back them when the Xbox just delivers a lot more. Dolby Digital sound, component video, longer controller cables, built-in hard drive and networking (add the network adapter and a memory stick and even a Gamecube costs more than an Xbox)...these things matter to me. No, the average kid might not have a good sound setup or a big screen TV, but some of us do. The Xbox utilizes them and the Gamecube doesn't.
And it's not like there aren't a bunch of great Xbox games, either. Mario Kart is fun, but we're already rather tired of it...after more than a year, we still play Halo regularly. I'd rather have Splinter Cell in Dolby Digital and 480p than Twin Snakes in stereo and SVideo.
Certainly a good point. I wasn't trying to be a dick; just pointing it out (it's also important to know the difference in case you have equipment that can't do 720p, and so forth...kind of a pain right now).
The fact of the matter is that the people complaining are the people who are pirating. They're pissed not for some higher cause but because they want to keep getting their software for free. It's as simple as that.
Take the average person here posting "Don't the cops have something better to do than bust pirates? Like dismantle Al Queda?" here. Imagine that his wife/girlfriend/sister/mother is raped. Do you think his reaction would still be, "Don't the cops have something better to do than find the perpetrator? Like dismantle Al Queda?"
It's not logical, it's not insightful, and it's not part of some higher cause. It's coming up with whatever idiotic argument he can to fight an attack on the people who provide him with the software he wants for free.
Why are this guy's finances "Insightful"? He might not have $250 to "blow" on a PS2, but clearly, millions upon millions of people do. Not to mention that, considering the typical Slashdotter's lust for hardware, buying a PS2 for $250 hardly seems outlandish.
What I find even funnier is that the tagline says that the effective price will be below the Xbox because of the two games. Of course, that conveniently neglects the memory card, when my Xbox came with a free hard disk, and the network adapter (included with my Xbox) if you want to play online.
This might be true until you factor in HDTV. This generation of consoles don't support it, really, except for a little support in a few Xbox games. But the next generation certainly will.
Right now, you might go "but oh, HDTV is so expensive!" And, to a point, you'd be right. But think about it. My Xbox + my 65" Sony HDTV cost me just over $2 grand. Can you imagine spending $2k on a decent gaming PC? I certainly can. Yet my TV also allows me to watch movies and TV in an incredible manner, providing yet more value than a gaming PC would.
Moreover, in the future, people will already have HDTVs, meaning that the console price once again becomes $200 or whatever. So you'll see the "screen res sucks" argument fading pretty soon.
I have all three consoles. Some Gamecube games like Super Monkey Ball 2 support widescreen, but the only way you're really going to enjoy the HD benefits are with an Xbox and a rather limited set of games. That said, those that do support 720p or 1080i (I personally have NBA 2k3 and Soul Calibur II, both of which are 720p, and I know Tony Hawk 4 and others support it) look incredible. For the Xbox, for HD resolutions, you will indeed need the $20 HD cable pack, which comes with a set of component cables. Pretty trivial cost compared to everything else.
I have a Sony kp-65ws500, which is a 65" projection TV, supporting 1080i natively and 720p through downcoversion. It's around $2,200 these days and I absolutely love it. The day we got it we were using it for 13 straight hours and I've had no burn-in whatsoever (the "20 minutes" comment above simply isn't true), but I would of course try to be careful. Don't leave it paused for too long, or if there's a health bar/icon in the same place throughout the game, I'd switch the picture every few hours or so. Pretty common-sense stuff.
That said, I think you'll love the TV. It's senseless to buy a large TV these days that's not HD, and oh boy is it fun to have a large TV. It's a completely different experience from your typical 32" set. Personally, having games stretched doesn't really bother me; you won't really notice it after a few minutes of playing (and you can indeed choose letterboxing if you prefer). Plus, a lot of Xbox games are widescreen-compatible even if they're not HD. So for those games you won't get the resolution benefits, but you'll get correct widescreen.
And, as earlier comments mentioned, this is a situation that is only going to get better -- I'd be shocked if any of the next generation of consoles wasn't fully HD compatible. But the most important thing is that it's still more great today. You wouldn't want to buy an expensive TV just for future hopes and you wouldn't be. I love my Xbox on my TV and you know what, I love my Gamecube and PS2 games on it, too. Sure, none of them (with the exception of a few select Xbox games) are truly taking advantage of the HD resolution, but they still look great. And they're huge and more immersive, which makes such a difference.
Worth noting that I used to play Quake2 in BeOS 5.01
Yes, you used to play on a hacked OpenGL driver that was strictly for Glide (Voodoo) cards. Also of note is that that mode was much slower than Windows/Linux OpenGL. When he claims fast OpenGL, he was most certainly was referring to the review of the beta (which was never finished) that Eugenia posted on BeNews a few years ago. It was indeed fast, but it was never finished and never released.
I recall it having support for up to 16 processors and the memory to go with it so I've no idea why you make your claims.
I never made claims to the contrary, so I have no idea why you even mentioned these. I never said it didn't have applications or tools or games. With all due respect, did you even read what I wrote? Also, not that it matters, but if I recall correctly, they capped it at 8 processors. Still nice, of course. Further, more than a gig of RAM is not supported. The memory architecture wasn't built for it (you can read why from Be engineers such as Manuel here: http://www.freelists.org/archives/openbeos/09-2001/msg00072.html). At the time this certainly was an acceptable limitation.
there is a lot of built in compatibility as you could copy windows dlls into a folder and run Windows codecs!
This is completely incorrect. The "DivX;)" (yes, the smiley is a part of the name) project did indeed use Windows codecs, but that was a clever hack for all operating systems that wrapped around the Windows codecs for certain decoding that they couldn't have legally done otherwise. The BeOS certainly did not support Windows DLLs or codecs.
On top of that you could fairly easily recompile and application for BeOS
Yes, porting Posix applications to the BeOS was usually fairly straightforward, unless they required mmap, which held back some major application ports such as Wine). Windows, of course, has better Posix compliance and ports of toolkits such as GTK+. Of course, the original claim of the parent to my post was that BeOS applications are portable, which isn't really any more true than applications written for any other system (talking about moving an application from the BeOS to another system).
We can appreciate your enjoyment of the system, but you're not doing anyone any favors by stretching the truth (or outright lying) about the capabilities of the system.
BeOS has great GL performance
BeOS has no GL performance. For all intents and purposes, there is no hardware accelerated OpenGL. You're probably quoting the age-old benchmarks that BeNews did with a beta of the OpenGL stack (again, never finished) with Quake 2. Those numbers are, what, four years old now, and were never relevant in the first place!
Coding for the BeOS is, as some have described it, 'a joy.'
Coding small apps for the BeOS is a joy. But ask any Be engineer (there are plenty of articles online, such as JBQ's comments here: http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=66) and they'll tell you how difficult/impossible it is to code large, commercial-quality applications for the BeOS. This is due to both certain design decisions and limitations within the OS and the lack of good developer tools).
the multimedia performance is astounding
The multimedia performance is not astounding. You claim that detractors must never have used the BeOS, but as someone who used it from R3 on, it was never easy to get movie files to play in sync. No one, especially not Be employees, think the media kit worked well at all. Those "multiple files at once" demos were all way back in the day with very simplistic codecs. Heck, the BeOS doesn't even support hardware video overlay on most video cards, so if you resize a movie, it plays slower (having to do the resize in software) and looks bad. The best media performance you can get is via mplayer or vlc. Yep, that's right folks...ports of Linux applications.
BeOS apps are surprisingly portable.
Since the BeOS API is 100% proprietary, I'm really curious what you mean by this. You're probably referring to the 99%-ish Posix compliance, which is missing a few extremely important functions such as mmap. (and, you know, even Windows has Posix in it.)
Nothing sours me on a good system that I used to love like diehard fans who lie about how good it once was, and make delusions of grandeur for how it will be.
So slavery's ok too, eh, because a majority of people at the time wanted it? That makes it right, right? Because that's democracy! Or the Holocaust. Or whatever other oppression-of-the-minority incident you want to name. Give me a fucking break.
This is why we don't have democracy. We have Constitutional democracy. This means that there are certain rights that you cannot take away, even if a majority wants to. That is the entire point of the Constitution. By your logic, if a high school's senior class votes to kill one student, that should be just fine. Anything else would be fascism, right? I think you need to have a long, serious thinking session about the implications of your "majority dictates everything" beliefs.
Simple, unconstitutional democracy is a monstrous system. Democracy is only as good as the rights you respect. Whether or not there is a right to the protection of intellectual property is another topic altogether.
Suddenly it makes sense that you've had time to post 1441 Slashdot comments; it's apparently more efficient to swear and insult than to think about the points you're responding to before writing.
Cleary you're enamored of your own bullshit, which doesn't surprise me.
More ad hominem attacks. Again, I guess it's easier than responding to real points, huh?
Nothing in your post is worth responding to except for these two points
Since you apparently felt it worthwhile to spend half of your response with pointless insults, I think any reasonable person will assume that it's more like you can't respond to the points. I can't imagine that responding to any point is somehow a lesser use of time than hurtling unsubstantiated insults at strangers.
I would assume that you missed the point entirely
Actually, no, I directly quoted you, and then showed how what you said ("I do it, therefore it's my right to do it") is utterly ridiculous. Multiple times, I might add.
Fact: file sharing is here to stay. Fact: there isn't a damn thing you can do about it
The amusing thing is that I completely agree with you here, and with a decently large proportion of the rest of your comment. But that's because you've shifted the focus of your thread from "people don't use filesharing to pirate" to "the RIAA needs to adapt to the desires of their customers."
Fact: file sharing of music wouldn't be prevalent if the market responded appropriately to changing conditions.
You simply cannot state this as a fact. While it's almost a given that the cheaper something is (or the more attactive a purchase it otherwise is), the less desire there will be to steal it, you're still talking "free" vs. "some cost". So "less prevalent"? Almost certainly. That doesn't mean it wouldn't still exist in spades. Heck, a lot of the posts on Slashdot alone when Apple unveiled the iTunes Music Store were along the lines of, "Kazaa is free. I like that better."
That's called 'capitalism'. Trying to thwart the free market is called 'acting like a fucking totalitarian idiot'.
Actually, capitalism is simply a system in which rights are protected. That includes intellectual property rights. I agree completely that the beauty of capitalism--and capitalism is indeed a beautiful system--is that if one company provides a better service than another, it will win out. And yes, the RIAA should have been better to adopt their business model to embrace new technologies, such as Apple has done. But we're talking illegal (i.e. violating rights) acts here. Trying to stop illegal filesharers isn't trying to "thwart the free market", it's trying to prevent illegal actions. Violations of rights are exactly what thwart a free market. The RIAA trying to "thwart the free market" would be trying, say, to pass a law banning what Apple has done.
Sure it does. It says you're heavily invested in believing everyone else is a shit in order to make your own deplorable character more acceptable to yourself.
Oh, mercy. Yet more pointless insults because he can't think of anything else to say. I could save myself a lot of time when responding to his comments by assigning a macro to enter "ad hominem"; the comments are littered with them, and little else.
I particularly love the reference to my "deplorable character" when he knows practically nothing about me. I think someone needs to find themselves some self esteem. And no, I don't think everyone else is "shit" (as I explained in my previous post), let alone do I feel that way to make myself feel better--hey, I'm not the one with sufficient lack of self-worth that I have to throw insults out to strangers rather than contemplate and discuss real points.
My "beliefs" are simply based on the observations I have made, which I detailed in my earlier posts. You, of course, have never provided your own evidence to support your points. You
Suddenly it makes sense that you've had time to post 1401 Slashdot comments; it's apparently more efficient to swear and insult than to think about the points you're responding to before writing.
Cleary you're enamored of your own bullshit, which doesn't surprise me.
More ad hominem attacks. Again, I guess it's easier than responding to real points, huh?
Nothing in your post is worth responding to except for these two points
Since you apparently felt it worthwhile to spend half of your response with pointless insults, I think any reasonable person will assume that it's more like you can't respond to the points. I can't imagine that responding to any point is somehow a lesser use of time than hurtling unsubstantiated insults at strangers.
I would assume that you missed the point entirely
Actually, no, I directly quoted you, and then showed how what you said ("I do it, therefore it's my right to do it") is utterly ridiculous. Multiple times, I might add.
Fact: file sharing is here to stay.
Fact: there isn't a damn thing you can do about it
The amusing thing is that I completely agree with you here, and with a decently large proportion of the rest of your comment. But that's because you've shifted the focus of your thread from "people don't use filesharing to pirate" to "the RIAA needs to adapt to the desires of their customers."
Fact: file sharing of music wouldn't be prevalent if the market responded appropriately to changing conditions.
You simply cannot state this as a fact. While it's almost a given that the cheaper something is (or the more attactive a purchase it otherwise is), the less desire there will be to steal it, you're still talking "free" vs. "some cost". So "less prevalent"? Almost certainly. That doesn't mean it wouldn't still exist in spades. Heck, a lot of the posts on Slashdot alone when Apple unveiled the iTunes Music Store were along the lines of, "Kazaa is free. I like that better."
That's called 'capitalism'. Trying to thwart the free market is called 'acting like a fucking totalitarian idiot'.
Actually, capitalism is simply a system in which rights are protected. That includes intellectual property rights. I agree completely that the beauty of capitalism--and capitalism is indeed a beautiful system--is that if one company provides a better service than another, it will win out. And yes, the RIAA should have been better to adopt their business model to embrace new technologies, such as Apple has done. But we're talking illegal (i.e. violating rights) acts here. Trying to stop illegal filesharers isn't trying to "thwart the free market", it's trying to prevent illegal actions. Violations of rights are exactly what thwart a free market. The RIAA trying to "thwart the free market" would be trying, say, to pass a law banning what Apple has done.
Sure it does. It says you're heavily invested in believing everyone else is a shit in order to make your own deplorable character more acceptable to yourself.
Oh, mercy. Yet more pointless insults because he can't think of anything else to say. I could save myself a lot of time when responding to his comments by assigning a macro to enter "ad hominem"; the comments are littered with them, and little else.
I particularly love the reference to my "deplorable character" when he knows practically nothing about me. I think someone needs to find themselves some self esteem. And no, I don't think everyone else is "shit" (as I explained in my previous post), let alone do I feel that way to make myself feel better--hey, I'm not the one with sufficient lack of self-worth that I have to throw insults out to strangers rather than contemplate and discuss real points.
My "beliefs" are simply based on the observations I have made, which I detailed in my earlier posts. You, of course, have never provided your own evidence to support your points. You keep throwing out insults rather than evidence or even real rebuttals. But yeah, I guess that is easier, huh?
Your b
Yet another college brat spouting off about his dorm as if that were a reflection of real life. Get a clue, kid.
I like how you've degenerated into ad hominem attacks ("college brat") instead of defending your point. I mentioned the dorms because it is evidence showing that in hundreds of cases, at least, the percentage of people whole used the services illegally was 100. You, on the other hand, keep claiming that we don't know what is being downloaded, and thus it could be mostly legally, yet you provide no evidence whatsoever. Sure, my anecdotal evidence doesn't prove that "lots of piracy" is the case, but you're the one making the more spurious claim. I may not have proof that N != NP, but if you were to claim that they are in fact equal, the burden of evidence would certainly fall upon your shoulders.
Your assertion is not only specious, it's just plain wrong.
Even the line you quoted would seem to support my argument rather than yours.
Listen up, junior.
More great ad hominem attacks from a person who can't apparently feels unable to defend his point in a reasonable fashion. "Junior?" What are you, 65? And do you think I'm 12?
I do have the right to do this since *I'm doing it right now*.
Wow. This has got to be one of the single most hilarious lines I've ever read on Slashdot, and that's saying a lot. You simply have to love the logic in "I'm doing it, thus I have a right to do it." I guess we can all stop complaining about genocide, wife beaters, and that Slashdot favorite, Microsoft!
What the fuck are you going to do about it? Pass another law? Yeah, let me pause here while I and the other hundred million or so users of the dozen major file sharing networks laugh my ass off at you. You're completely and utterly impotent;
Ah, I see that now we've moved down into, "You can't stop me, thus I have a right to do it." Such a highly evolved philosophic viewpoint from someone feeling the need to refer to me as "junior".
Because I assume that people are basically decent human beings...That says something about *my* character. The fact that you think everyone (except yourself, of course) is a crook and a liar says a great deal about *your* character.
How I feel about other human beings says nothing about my character. For the curious, I feel that the anonymity, the "I won't get caught" mentality, and the lack of a visible victim other than the stereotypical view of "a huge and rich corporation" make people justify piracy more easily to themselves. It's not that I think people in general are bad; just that they sometimes misled by bad reasoning. It's quite similar to the tendency to side with individual plaintiffs when they have complaints against large corporations. The thought tends to be, "Well, they're rich, so they won't really be hurt by it, anyway."
Precisely my point. You have no idea what the majority of these users are doing, you're just assuming that your completely unsupported opinion on the matter is actual fact.
You're absolutely right; he's assuming. And it's one hell of a reasonable assumption. I know that every single person in my dorms stole music, movies, and/or software from KaZaA. I know that no free music or piece of software has ever come close to 230 million downloads. By contrast, I have yet to meet a single person who used KaZaA and never stole anything (and no, I don't believe you). Hey, it just hit me that it's possible that no one is using IE any more, but instead almost everyone is running Slackware with Konqueror set to send off IE's identification string and claim it's running on Windows!!
Sure we do. No 'artist' has a constitutional right to restrict sampling nor, for that matter, copying.
This is absolutely hilarious. I could just as easily (and stupidly) say that no person has a Consitutional right to work on Linux, as it's not explicitly mentioned, and thus say that Linux is unConstitutional. The Consitution protects property rights. Intellectual property is part of that.
I sample, and I buy if I like what I hear - this may be illegal, but I don't give a shit. As far as I'm concerned the law is a crock. Don't like it? I don't really care. Fact is that's the way I operate
I love this. The buyer claiming he has the right to dictate terms to the seller, without requiring the seller's consent for the transaction. "I break the window, I take what I want. Later, I send a check that more than covers it. That's the way I operate. Don't like it, tough."
Stop making claims you know to be ridiculous and pretending that you have the right to dictate to a company how any transaction will occur (without their consent).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm still not seeing how this is different from, say, Windows. In both cases the window with focus becomes frontmost (barring floating windows, etc.). So you could in theory have a smaller window off to the side having focus, but that's no different in either system. Or am I missing something?
Unfortunately, I use many windows, and when I use an Apple computer, I can have only one window visible, and still the menu is for the wrong application - not such a problem if I'm using a mouse and realise, but if I use keyboard accelerators, then I can get into all sorts of trouble before I realise it's not the correct application.
Regardless of whether a single menu bar is a good idea or not, in any modern GUI, you can only have one active window, and all menu events triggered by keyboard accelerators are sent to the current window's application. How is the Mac different than any other system here?
Again, this is for developer-only releases, for which all OS upgrades are free, if you're using the T1 hardware. None of this involves end-users at all.
You couldn't possibly be more mistaken about the details here. Applications written for version 2 of the Developer-only release are intentionally not backwards-compatible with version 1 of the Developer-only release.
It simply means that if you have version 1 of the Developer-only release of OS X on Intel, and some developer writes application Foo using version 2 of the Developer-only release on Intel, Foo won't run on your Developer-only version 1 OS. You'll need to upgrade to version 2 in order to run Foo.
So, in essence, it means that running version 1 will soon be pointless, since most / all software compiled natively for it will soon be compiled from a newer version of the OS. (Again, this affects only registered developers, and doesn't affect end-users in the slightest.) Why is it a strike against piracy? Well, people were clearly able to crack version 1. This move basically makes version 1 worthless over time. If version 2 is harder to crack, it's a stab against piracy, because it means that everyone will want to run the harder-to-crack version.
Does that help at all?
With filters, how do you have a folder called "Unread" mail or "Mail Received Yesterday"?
According to IMDB, FF cost $137 million to make and took four years. How much money and time does it take to create a non-digital version of a similar movie, such as "Pitch Black" ($23m, don't know the time) or "Minority Report" ($107m, around four months)? And with the latter, you're talking an incredibly expensive director and expensive actor.
Also, voice talent commands a huge premium these days. I don't have the numbers off-hand, but each major voice in Shrek 2 cost millions.
Here's the big question, though: why would having an artist spend time to do facial expressions be more cheap and convenient than simply having an actor doing them?
which you've already got if you're listening to your Xbox in true DD already - otherwise, the DD you're listening to really isn't
This is technically not true. We have a high-end B&K receiver that does 7.1 DTS and Dolby Digital EX which doesn't support ProLogic II without an additional module. But that's somewhat besides the point. Most receivers these days handle Dolby Digital streams; it's the new "standard", for whatever that's worth.
too big
Because this really matters? It fits in perfectly with my receiver and, cable box, and DVD player. On the other hand, my Gamecube doesn't fit into the entertainment cabinet quite correctly.
too noisy
Mine's much quieter than my PS2. Lest you think it's a fluke, we have 3 Xboxes in our house and two PS2s, so I've got a good basis for comparison.
too fragile
Huh? Ours has been running fine for well over a year with no problems. That includes the controller. My old PS2, on the other hand, occasionally didn't load games correctly due to a fault with the DVD drive.
all those moving parts?
What the hell are you talking about? You mean, the DVD drive and the single fan? This is different from other systems how? Or do you mean a hard drive as opposed to a much-more-likely-to-be-lost-or-damaged memory card?
Nintendo makes some really fun games (we also have a Gamecube), but it's pretty hard for me to back them when the Xbox just delivers a lot more. Dolby Digital sound, component video, longer controller cables, built-in hard drive and networking (add the network adapter and a memory stick and even a Gamecube costs more than an Xbox)...these things matter to me. No, the average kid might not have a good sound setup or a big screen TV, but some of us do. The Xbox utilizes them and the Gamecube doesn't.
And it's not like there aren't a bunch of great Xbox games, either. Mario Kart is fun, but we're already rather tired of it...after more than a year, we still play Halo regularly. I'd rather have Splinter Cell in Dolby Digital and 480p than Twin Snakes in stereo and SVideo.
Certainly a good point. I wasn't trying to be a dick; just pointing it out (it's also important to know the difference in case you have equipment that can't do 720p, and so forth...kind of a pain right now).
Keep in mind that full HD res is 1920x1080i, so you'll need more than 1280x768, if you want it.
1280x768 will cover 720p (1280x720), but not 1080i. Just something to keep aware of.
Amen! I wish I had mod points.
The fact of the matter is that the people complaining are the people who are pirating. They're pissed not for some higher cause but because they want to keep getting their software for free. It's as simple as that.
Take the average person here posting "Don't the cops have something better to do than bust pirates? Like dismantle Al Queda?" here. Imagine that his wife/girlfriend/sister/mother is raped. Do you think his reaction would still be, "Don't the cops have something better to do than find the perpetrator? Like dismantle Al Queda?"
It's not logical, it's not insightful, and it's not part of some higher cause. It's coming up with whatever idiotic argument he can to fight an attack on the people who provide him with the software he wants for free.
What I find even funnier is that the tagline says that the effective price will be below the Xbox because of the two games. Of course, that conveniently neglects the memory card, when my Xbox came with a free hard disk, and the network adapter (included with my Xbox) if you want to play online.
This might be true until you factor in HDTV. This generation of consoles don't support it, really, except for a little support in a few Xbox games. But the next generation certainly will. Right now, you might go "but oh, HDTV is so expensive!" And, to a point, you'd be right. But think about it. My Xbox + my 65" Sony HDTV cost me just over $2 grand. Can you imagine spending $2k on a decent gaming PC? I certainly can. Yet my TV also allows me to watch movies and TV in an incredible manner, providing yet more value than a gaming PC would. Moreover, in the future, people will already have HDTVs, meaning that the console price once again becomes $200 or whatever. So you'll see the "screen res sucks" argument fading pretty soon.
I have all three consoles. Some Gamecube games like Super Monkey Ball 2 support widescreen, but the only way you're really going to enjoy the HD benefits are with an Xbox and a rather limited set of games. That said, those that do support 720p or 1080i (I personally have NBA 2k3 and Soul Calibur II, both of which are 720p, and I know Tony Hawk 4 and others support it) look incredible. For the Xbox, for HD resolutions, you will indeed need the $20 HD cable pack, which comes with a set of component cables. Pretty trivial cost compared to everything else.
I have a Sony kp-65ws500, which is a 65" projection TV, supporting 1080i natively and 720p through downcoversion. It's around $2,200 these days and I absolutely love it. The day we got it we were using it for 13 straight hours and I've had no burn-in whatsoever (the "20 minutes" comment above simply isn't true), but I would of course try to be careful. Don't leave it paused for too long, or if there's a health bar/icon in the same place throughout the game, I'd switch the picture every few hours or so. Pretty common-sense stuff.
That said, I think you'll love the TV. It's senseless to buy a large TV these days that's not HD, and oh boy is it fun to have a large TV. It's a completely different experience from your typical 32" set. Personally, having games stretched doesn't really bother me; you won't really notice it after a few minutes of playing (and you can indeed choose letterboxing if you prefer). Plus, a lot of Xbox games are widescreen-compatible even if they're not HD. So for those games you won't get the resolution benefits, but you'll get correct widescreen.
And, as earlier comments mentioned, this is a situation that is only going to get better -- I'd be shocked if any of the next generation of consoles wasn't fully HD compatible. But the most important thing is that it's still more great today. You wouldn't want to buy an expensive TV just for future hopes and you wouldn't be. I love my Xbox on my TV and you know what, I love my Gamecube and PS2 games on it, too. Sure, none of them (with the exception of a few select Xbox games) are truly taking advantage of the HD resolution, but they still look great. And they're huge and more immersive, which makes such a difference.
Worth noting that I used to play Quake2 in BeOS 5.01
1 /msg00072.html). At the time this certainly was an acceptable limitation.
;)" (yes, the smiley is a part of the name) project did indeed use Windows codecs, but that was a clever hack for all operating systems that wrapped around the Windows codecs for certain decoding that they couldn't have legally done otherwise. The BeOS certainly did not support Windows DLLs or codecs.
Yes, you used to play on a hacked OpenGL driver that was strictly for Glide (Voodoo) cards. Also of note is that that mode was much slower than Windows/Linux OpenGL. When he claims fast OpenGL, he was most certainly was referring to the review of the beta (which was never finished) that Eugenia posted on BeNews a few years ago. It was indeed fast, but it was never finished and never released.
I recall it having support for up to 16 processors and the memory to go with it so I've no idea why you make your claims.
I never made claims to the contrary, so I have no idea why you even mentioned these. I never said it didn't have applications or tools or games. With all due respect, did you even read what I wrote? Also, not that it matters, but if I recall correctly, they capped it at 8 processors. Still nice, of course. Further, more than a gig of RAM is not supported. The memory architecture wasn't built for it (you can read why from Be engineers such as Manuel here: http://www.freelists.org/archives/openbeos/09-200
there is a lot of built in compatibility as you could copy windows dlls into a folder and run Windows codecs!
This is completely incorrect. The "DivX
On top of that you could fairly easily recompile and application for BeOS
Yes, porting Posix applications to the BeOS was usually fairly straightforward, unless they required mmap, which held back some major application ports such as Wine). Windows, of course, has better Posix compliance and ports of toolkits such as GTK+. Of course, the original claim of the parent to my post was that BeOS applications are portable, which isn't really any more true than applications written for any other system (talking about moving an application from the BeOS to another system).
We can appreciate your enjoyment of the system, but you're not doing anyone any favors by stretching the truth (or outright lying) about the capabilities of the system.
BeOS has great GL performance
BeOS has no GL performance. For all intents and purposes, there is no hardware accelerated OpenGL. You're probably quoting the age-old benchmarks that BeNews did with a beta of the OpenGL stack (again, never finished) with Quake 2. Those numbers are, what, four years old now, and were never relevant in the first place!
Coding for the BeOS is, as some have described it, 'a joy.'
Coding small apps for the BeOS is a joy. But ask any Be engineer (there are plenty of articles online, such as JBQ's comments here: http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=66) and they'll tell you how difficult/impossible it is to code large, commercial-quality applications for the BeOS. This is due to both certain design decisions and limitations within the OS and the lack of good developer tools).
the multimedia performance is astounding
The multimedia performance is not astounding. You claim that detractors must never have used the BeOS, but as someone who used it from R3 on, it was never easy to get movie files to play in sync. No one, especially not Be employees, think the media kit worked well at all. Those "multiple files at once" demos were all way back in the day with very simplistic codecs. Heck, the BeOS doesn't even support hardware video overlay on most video cards, so if you resize a movie, it plays slower (having to do the resize in software) and looks bad. The best media performance you can get is via mplayer or vlc. Yep, that's right folks...ports of Linux applications.
BeOS apps are surprisingly portable.
Since the BeOS API is 100% proprietary, I'm really curious what you mean by this. You're probably referring to the 99%-ish Posix compliance, which is missing a few extremely important functions such as mmap. (and, you know, even Windows has Posix in it.)
Nothing sours me on a good system that I used to love like diehard fans who lie about how good it once was, and make delusions of grandeur for how it will be.
So slavery's ok too, eh, because a majority of people at the time wanted it? That makes it right, right? Because that's democracy! Or the Holocaust. Or whatever other oppression-of-the-minority incident you want to name. Give me a fucking break.
This is why we don't have democracy. We have Constitutional democracy. This means that there are certain rights that you cannot take away, even if a majority wants to. That is the entire point of the Constitution. By your logic, if a high school's senior class votes to kill one student, that should be just fine. Anything else would be fascism, right? I think you need to have a long, serious thinking session about the implications of your "majority dictates everything" beliefs.
Simple, unconstitutional democracy is a monstrous system. Democracy is only as good as the rights you respect. Whether or not there is a right to the protection of intellectual property is another topic altogether.
Suddenly it makes sense that you've had time to post 1441 Slashdot comments; it's apparently more efficient to swear and insult than to think about the points you're responding to before writing.
Cleary you're enamored of your own bullshit, which doesn't surprise me.
More ad hominem attacks. Again, I guess it's easier than responding to real points, huh?
Nothing in your post is worth responding to except for these two points
Since you apparently felt it worthwhile to spend half of your response with pointless insults, I think any reasonable person will assume that it's more like you can't respond to the points. I can't imagine that responding to any point is somehow a lesser use of time than hurtling unsubstantiated insults at strangers.
I would assume that you missed the point entirely
Actually, no, I directly quoted you, and then showed how what you said ("I do it, therefore it's my right to do it") is utterly ridiculous. Multiple times, I might add.
Fact: file sharing is here to stay.
Fact: there isn't a damn thing you can do about it
The amusing thing is that I completely agree with you here, and with a decently large proportion of the rest of your comment. But that's because you've shifted the focus of your thread from "people don't use filesharing to pirate" to "the RIAA needs to adapt to the desires of their customers."
Fact: file sharing of music wouldn't be prevalent if the market responded appropriately to changing conditions.
You simply cannot state this as a fact. While it's almost a given that the cheaper something is (or the more attactive a purchase it otherwise is), the less desire there will be to steal it, you're still talking "free" vs. "some cost". So "less prevalent"? Almost certainly. That doesn't mean it wouldn't still exist in spades. Heck, a lot of the posts on Slashdot alone when Apple unveiled the iTunes Music Store were along the lines of, "Kazaa is free. I like that better."
That's called 'capitalism'. Trying to thwart the free market is called 'acting like a fucking totalitarian idiot'.
Actually, capitalism is simply a system in which rights are protected. That includes intellectual property rights. I agree completely that the beauty of capitalism--and capitalism is indeed a beautiful system--is that if one company provides a better service than another, it will win out. And yes, the RIAA should have been better to adopt their business model to embrace new technologies, such as Apple has done. But we're talking illegal (i.e. violating rights) acts here. Trying to stop illegal filesharers isn't trying to "thwart the free market", it's trying to prevent illegal actions. Violations of rights are exactly what thwart a free market. The RIAA trying to "thwart the free market" would be trying, say, to pass a law banning what Apple has done.
Sure it does. It says you're heavily invested in believing everyone else is a shit in order to make your own deplorable character more acceptable to yourself.
Oh, mercy. Yet more pointless insults because he can't think of anything else to say. I could save myself a lot of time when responding to his comments by assigning a macro to enter "ad hominem"; the comments are littered with them, and little else.
I particularly love the reference to my "deplorable character" when he knows practically nothing about me. I think someone needs to find themselves some self esteem. And no, I don't think everyone else is "shit" (as I explained in my previous post), let alone do I feel that way to make myself feel better--hey, I'm not the one with sufficient lack of self-worth that I have to throw insults out to strangers rather than contemplate and discuss real points.
My "beliefs" are simply based on the observations I have made, which I detailed in my earlier posts. You, of course, have never provided your own evidence to support your points. You
Suddenly it makes sense that you've had time to post 1401 Slashdot comments; it's apparently more efficient to swear and insult than to think about the points you're responding to before writing. Cleary you're enamored of your own bullshit, which doesn't surprise me. More ad hominem attacks. Again, I guess it's easier than responding to real points, huh? Nothing in your post is worth responding to except for these two points Since you apparently felt it worthwhile to spend half of your response with pointless insults, I think any reasonable person will assume that it's more like you can't respond to the points. I can't imagine that responding to any point is somehow a lesser use of time than hurtling unsubstantiated insults at strangers. I would assume that you missed the point entirely Actually, no, I directly quoted you, and then showed how what you said ("I do it, therefore it's my right to do it") is utterly ridiculous. Multiple times, I might add. Fact: file sharing is here to stay. Fact: there isn't a damn thing you can do about it The amusing thing is that I completely agree with you here, and with a decently large proportion of the rest of your comment. But that's because you've shifted the focus of your thread from "people don't use filesharing to pirate" to "the RIAA needs to adapt to the desires of their customers." Fact: file sharing of music wouldn't be prevalent if the market responded appropriately to changing conditions. You simply cannot state this as a fact. While it's almost a given that the cheaper something is (or the more attactive a purchase it otherwise is), the less desire there will be to steal it, you're still talking "free" vs. "some cost". So "less prevalent"? Almost certainly. That doesn't mean it wouldn't still exist in spades. Heck, a lot of the posts on Slashdot alone when Apple unveiled the iTunes Music Store were along the lines of, "Kazaa is free. I like that better." That's called 'capitalism'. Trying to thwart the free market is called 'acting like a fucking totalitarian idiot'. Actually, capitalism is simply a system in which rights are protected. That includes intellectual property rights. I agree completely that the beauty of capitalism--and capitalism is indeed a beautiful system--is that if one company provides a better service than another, it will win out. And yes, the RIAA should have been better to adopt their business model to embrace new technologies, such as Apple has done. But we're talking illegal (i.e. violating rights) acts here. Trying to stop illegal filesharers isn't trying to "thwart the free market", it's trying to prevent illegal actions. Violations of rights are exactly what thwart a free market. The RIAA trying to "thwart the free market" would be trying, say, to pass a law banning what Apple has done. Sure it does. It says you're heavily invested in believing everyone else is a shit in order to make your own deplorable character more acceptable to yourself. Oh, mercy. Yet more pointless insults because he can't think of anything else to say. I could save myself a lot of time when responding to his comments by assigning a macro to enter "ad hominem"; the comments are littered with them, and little else. I particularly love the reference to my "deplorable character" when he knows practically nothing about me. I think someone needs to find themselves some self esteem. And no, I don't think everyone else is "shit" (as I explained in my previous post), let alone do I feel that way to make myself feel better--hey, I'm not the one with sufficient lack of self-worth that I have to throw insults out to strangers rather than contemplate and discuss real points. My "beliefs" are simply based on the observations I have made, which I detailed in my earlier posts. You, of course, have never provided your own evidence to support your points. You keep throwing out insults rather than evidence or even real rebuttals. But yeah, I guess that is easier, huh? Your b
As we all know, that should read "P != NP", not "N != NP". Ah, the joys of typos...
Yet another college brat spouting off about his dorm as if that were a reflection of real life. Get a clue, kid.
I like how you've degenerated into ad hominem attacks ("college brat") instead of defending your point. I mentioned the dorms because it is evidence showing that in hundreds of cases, at least, the percentage of people whole used the services illegally was 100. You, on the other hand, keep claiming that we don't know what is being downloaded, and thus it could be mostly legally, yet you provide no evidence whatsoever. Sure, my anecdotal evidence doesn't prove that "lots of piracy" is the case, but you're the one making the more spurious claim. I may not have proof that N != NP, but if you were to claim that they are in fact equal, the burden of evidence would certainly fall upon your shoulders.
Your assertion is not only specious, it's just plain wrong.
Even the line you quoted would seem to support my argument rather than yours.
Listen up, junior.
More great ad hominem attacks from a person who can't apparently feels unable to defend his point in a reasonable fashion. "Junior?" What are you, 65? And do you think I'm 12?
I do have the right to do this since *I'm doing it right now*.
Wow. This has got to be one of the single most hilarious lines I've ever read on Slashdot, and that's saying a lot. You simply have to love the logic in "I'm doing it, thus I have a right to do it." I guess we can all stop complaining about genocide, wife beaters, and that Slashdot favorite, Microsoft!
What the fuck are you going to do about it? Pass another law? Yeah, let me pause here while I and the other hundred million or so users of the dozen major file sharing networks laugh my ass off at you. You're completely and utterly impotent;
Ah, I see that now we've moved down into, "You can't stop me, thus I have a right to do it." Such a highly evolved philosophic viewpoint from someone feeling the need to refer to me as "junior".
Because I assume that people are basically decent human beings...That says something about *my* character. The fact that you think everyone (except yourself, of course) is a crook and a liar says a great deal about *your* character.
How I feel about other human beings says nothing about my character. For the curious, I feel that the anonymity, the "I won't get caught" mentality, and the lack of a visible victim other than the stereotypical view of "a huge and rich corporation" make people justify piracy more easily to themselves. It's not that I think people in general are bad; just that they sometimes misled by bad reasoning. It's quite similar to the tendency to side with individual plaintiffs when they have complaints against large corporations. The thought tends to be, "Well, they're rich, so they won't really be hurt by it, anyway."
Precisely my point. You have no idea what the majority of these users are doing, you're just assuming that your completely unsupported opinion on the matter is actual fact.
You're absolutely right; he's assuming. And it's one hell of a reasonable assumption. I know that every single person in my dorms stole music, movies, and/or software from KaZaA. I know that no free music or piece of software has ever come close to 230 million downloads. By contrast, I have yet to meet a single person who used KaZaA and never stole anything (and no, I don't believe you). Hey, it just hit me that it's possible that no one is using IE any more, but instead almost everyone is running Slackware with Konqueror set to send off IE's identification string and claim it's running on Windows!!
Sure we do. No 'artist' has a constitutional right to restrict sampling nor, for that matter, copying.
This is absolutely hilarious. I could just as easily (and stupidly) say that no person has a Consitutional right to work on Linux, as it's not explicitly mentioned, and thus say that Linux is unConstitutional. The Consitution protects property rights. Intellectual property is part of that.
I sample, and I buy if I like what I hear - this may be illegal, but I don't give a shit. As far as I'm concerned the law is a crock. Don't like it? I don't really care. Fact is that's the way I operate
I love this. The buyer claiming he has the right to dictate terms to the seller, without requiring the seller's consent for the transaction. "I break the window, I take what I want. Later, I send a check that more than covers it. That's the way I operate. Don't like it, tough."
Stop making claims you know to be ridiculous and pretending that you have the right to dictate to a company how any transaction will occur (without their consent).