Are you sure you connected the Wii properly? The packaged video cable sucks. With a component cable, the picture quality goes way up - it looks quite nice on my 720p projector. (A cheap 3rd party cable will do, the Nintendo cable is horribly overpriced...)
Are you sure it's a laser? Wouldn't a diffuse light source (like a simple IR LED) be more suited? After all, you want to illuminate the whole scene with IR, not just a spot with the laser...
the Milo demo was actually 'guided' by programmers behind a curtain.
Please cite your source... it's the first time I've heard this claim. I'd be genuinely interested. Anyway, I don't think the AI stuff from the Milo demo really pertains to the Natal technology very much.
Even in a pitch black room, it will at least capture the depth image (and a monochrome camera image) - which I imagine is all that's needed for "controller input". So it can still differentiate between two people - dude on the left, dude on the right - and track their movement if they switch positions. No colors though, so any "scanning" functions as in the Milo demo won't work.
But really, who would want to play in a pitch black room (except Doom)? It's bad for the eyes.
I also think the cartoon graphics were a step backwards. Might be because the first two game's graphics were so coarse, imagination had to fill in, so to speak. And imagination usually does a very good job of it.
Maybe there's some overlap, but some at least is not there. Avsim.com had a lot of stuff for the free space flight simulator Orbiter which isn't on Avsim.su.
I don't understand why they are targeting the law firm. Okay, you might not like lawyers, and it may suck to have lost the trial to them, but it's the record companies that sued them, not the law firm. They were just doing their jobs. The recording industry, on the other hand, will be completely unaffected.
5. US military is widely celebrated as a bunch of extraordinary cowards who go to war only after being convinced that they will kill their enemies without endangering themselves.
Everything else aside: This is not cowardice, but the only responsible course of action for a military. If you fight an enemy "fairly", you'll end up with equal casualties on both sides, thus abusing the soldier's trust in their superiors. In war, you don't fight fairly, you minimize your own losses. It's not pretty, but a moral necessity.
People need to understand that sometimes, those detail sliders aren't meant to be cranked all the way up on current hardware. They're there to "future-proof" the game, so that it can still look pretty 2 or 5 years down the road. Wing Commander 4 did it for example.
Of course, it's not a huge incentive for developers to future-proof a game when all they get for it is a forum-bashing like "omg the game sux i can't get 50 fps on my 1337 rig".
When I prepare coffee, I do it with boiling water. Hence, I would expect freshly made coffee to be nearly boiling hot. So I handle it carefully until it has cooled sufficiently. That much self-preservation can be expected from anyone.
It's not like they were serving a cup of lava or molten salt...
Anyone know good sources of legal free downloadable music? There's a lot of it out there, but sometimes hard to find. Here's what I've stumbled upon recently.
The "I'm a customer, meet my demands" argument simply doesn't work for free (as in beer and freedom) open-source products. You're not paying money, you can't complain about the product, at least not with the valid expectation of your complaint being heeded. By all reasonable definitions, you're *not* a customer at all.
If you don't like the software, you can either improve it - submit patches or fork it - or use something else. Nobody's under any obligation to cater to your needs. That's not "kicking your teeth". It's probably not good for community relations either, but that's a different pair of shoes.
You're not seriously suggesting to have a Win9x computer connected to the net, are you? There haven't been security updates for the OS for over two years now. Upgrade already, to Linux if you can't or won't afford a commercial OS.
Some reaction of the immune system has to be expected. That's how vaccination works, after all - it's a "sample" of the virus so the antibodies against the real thing will form. If there were no immune reaction at all, then there would be no immunity gained from the vaccine.
Some say that the stronger the reaction, the better the protection.
It's illegal in most of the EU (not sure about the UK if that's where you are), in the US and in Australia.
Besides, "cracks are available" is not much of an argument. They can be infected with all sorts of malware and can't be used on a computer you need to be able to trust.
Uh.. plenty of Steam games can be bought in a brick-and-mortar-store, on a physical medium. Everything HL2 related, for instance.
You don't think it sucks that you have to have a) ask for permission online to play a (legally bought) single-player game, and b) Valve can render the (physical-medium-attached) game nonfunctional by canceling your online account? Inacceptable in both regards, I think.
As I wrote above, I like to own my stuff, and with Steam it just doesn't feel like it.
I have a Steam account, I got HL2 bundled with a graphics card a while back. You're talking about offline mode. You have to authenticate online at least once before being able to enter offline mode. Also, each game must be activated online, you can't install games to an offline Steam client.
As with any online activation based DRM, even store-bought steam games get reduced to coasters once the authentication servers are gone.
Have a look at the Steam subscriber agreement. It pretty much says that games are tied to accounts, and that Valve can terminate any account at any time for no particular reason, without any recompense.
Steam isn't better than any other DRM, and worse than most. It's just very convenient, being able to download a game to any computer.
Effectively, however, your Steam "purchases" are rentals. Internet connection down? Games are inaccessible. Account gets banned? Games are lost. Valve goes out of business? Games are lost. Valve gets bought up? Pray the new owners don't change the terms of use to something draconian.
I wouldn't spend a dime on Steam. I like to own my stuff.
I think (software) piracy is actually starting to gain positive connotations. Just think of all the "pirate parties" that are being started all around the world.
I think a pirate (the non-seafaring variant) is increasingly being seen as a technology-affine free-thinking individual who is concerned about privacy, sensible IP laws and non-intrusive government. Depp's portrayal of Captain Sparrow probably helped too.:)
You jest, but this is precisely what the shareholders will demand of the publishers. They do not understand that piracy cannot be defeated by technical means, so they'll just keep on layering increasingly nasty DRM on the games.
At the same time, they will lobby politicians to implement even more draconian "IP-protection" laws.
So while the headline does induce a warm, fuzzy "serves you right" feeling, the implications are not so funny.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you sure you connected the Wii properly? The packaged video cable sucks. With a component cable, the picture quality goes way up - it looks quite nice on my 720p projector. (A cheap 3rd party cable will do, the Nintendo cable is horribly overpriced...)
Are you sure it's a laser? Wouldn't a diffuse light source (like a simple IR LED) be more suited? After all, you want to illuminate the whole scene with IR, not just a spot with the laser...
the Milo demo was actually 'guided' by programmers behind a curtain.
Please cite your source... it's the first time I've heard this claim. I'd be genuinely interested. Anyway, I don't think the AI stuff from the Milo demo really pertains to the Natal technology very much.
Even in a pitch black room, it will at least capture the depth image (and a monochrome camera image) - which I imagine is all that's needed for "controller input". So it can still differentiate between two people - dude on the left, dude on the right - and track their movement if they switch positions. No colors though, so any "scanning" functions as in the Milo demo won't work.
But really, who would want to play in a pitch black room (except Doom)? It's bad for the eyes.
I also think the cartoon graphics were a step backwards. Might be because the first two game's graphics were so coarse, imagination had to fill in, so to speak. And imagination usually does a very good job of it.
Maybe there's some overlap, but some at least is not there. Avsim.com had a lot of stuff for the free space flight simulator Orbiter which isn't on Avsim.su.
The content wasn't wiped out by incompetence, but by an asshole hacker. Please make that distinction.
The data seems to have been safe against anything BUT intentional, malicious violence. Whoever did this deserves some violence coming their way.
I don't understand why they are targeting the law firm. Okay, you might not like lawyers, and it may suck to have lost the trial to them, but it's the record companies that sued them, not the law firm. They were just doing their jobs. The recording industry, on the other hand, will be completely unaffected.
This doesn't seem right.
5. US military is widely celebrated as a bunch of extraordinary cowards who go to war only after being convinced that they will kill their enemies without endangering themselves.
Everything else aside: This is not cowardice, but the only responsible course of action for a military. If you fight an enemy "fairly", you'll end up with equal casualties on both sides, thus abusing the soldier's trust in their superiors. In war, you don't fight fairly, you minimize your own losses. It's not pretty, but a moral necessity.
People need to understand that sometimes, those detail sliders aren't meant to be cranked all the way up on current hardware. They're there to "future-proof" the game, so that it can still look pretty 2 or 5 years down the road. Wing Commander 4 did it for example.
Of course, it's not a huge incentive for developers to future-proof a game when all they get for it is a forum-bashing like "omg the game sux i can't get 50 fps on my 1337 rig".
I'd love to have two small, fast SSDs in my desktop in a RAID-0 as a system volume. That should noticeably reduce boot and program startup times.
As soon as they are not outrageously expensive any more, I'll buy a few...
When I prepare coffee, I do it with boiling water. Hence, I would expect freshly made coffee to be nearly boiling hot. So I handle it carefully until it has cooled sufficiently. That much self-preservation can be expected from anyone.
It's not like they were serving a cup of lava or molten salt...
Anyone know good sources of legal free downloadable music? There's a lot of it out there, but sometimes hard to find. Here's what I've stumbled upon recently.
The "I'm a customer, meet my demands" argument simply doesn't work for free (as in beer and freedom) open-source products. You're not paying money, you can't complain about the product, at least not with the valid expectation of your complaint being heeded. By all reasonable definitions, you're *not* a customer at all.
If you don't like the software, you can either improve it - submit patches or fork it - or use something else. Nobody's under any obligation to cater to your needs. That's not "kicking your teeth". It's probably not good for community relations either, but that's a different pair of shoes.
Well, I'd say talk to your administrator. It's his job to keep your software up-to-date...
You're not seriously suggesting to have a Win9x computer connected to the net, are you? There haven't been security updates for the OS for over two years now. Upgrade already, to Linux if you can't or won't afford a commercial OS.
Because installing xpis from an untrusted source is such a good idea...
If you visit a site daily, why don't you use a bookmark?
Or am I worth less as a customer to Mozilla for some reason?
You're not a customer, and free to use an alternative.
Some reaction of the immune system has to be expected. That's how vaccination works, after all - it's a "sample" of the virus so the antibodies against the real thing will form. If there were no immune reaction at all, then there would be no immunity gained from the vaccine.
Some say that the stronger the reaction, the better the protection.
It's illegal in most of the EU (not sure about the UK if that's where you are), in the US and in Australia.
Besides, "cracks are available" is not much of an argument. They can be infected with all sorts of malware and can't be used on a computer you need to be able to trust.
Uh.. plenty of Steam games can be bought in a brick-and-mortar-store, on a physical medium. Everything HL2 related, for instance.
You don't think it sucks that you have to have a) ask for permission online to play a (legally bought) single-player game, and b) Valve can render the (physical-medium-attached) game nonfunctional by canceling your online account? Inacceptable in both regards, I think.
As I wrote above, I like to own my stuff, and with Steam it just doesn't feel like it.
I have a Steam account, I got HL2 bundled with a graphics card a while back. You're talking about offline mode. You have to authenticate online at least once before being able to enter offline mode. Also, each game must be activated online, you can't install games to an offline Steam client.
As with any online activation based DRM, even store-bought steam games get reduced to coasters once the authentication servers are gone.
Have a look at the Steam subscriber agreement. It pretty much says that games are tied to accounts, and that Valve can terminate any account at any time for no particular reason, without any recompense.
No, really, I wouldn't spend my money there.
Steam isn't better than any other DRM, and worse than most. It's just very convenient, being able to download a game to any computer.
Effectively, however, your Steam "purchases" are rentals. Internet connection down? Games are inaccessible. Account gets banned? Games are lost. Valve goes out of business? Games are lost. Valve gets bought up? Pray the new owners don't change the terms of use to something draconian.
I wouldn't spend a dime on Steam. I like to own my stuff.
I think (software) piracy is actually starting to gain positive connotations. Just think of all the "pirate parties" that are being started all around the world.
I think a pirate (the non-seafaring variant) is increasingly being seen as a technology-affine free-thinking individual who is concerned about privacy, sensible IP laws and non-intrusive government. Depp's portrayal of Captain Sparrow probably helped too. :)
You jest, but this is precisely what the shareholders will demand of the publishers. They do not understand that piracy cannot be defeated by technical means, so they'll just keep on layering increasingly nasty DRM on the games.
At the same time, they will lobby politicians to implement even more draconian "IP-protection" laws.
So while the headline does induce a warm, fuzzy "serves you right" feeling, the implications are not so funny.